It takes Morrey longer than the other hostages.
Some believed within minutes. Others held out for days, stubbornly clinging to the lies they’d been spoon-fed. The Scarlet Guard is a collection of terrorists, the Scarlet Guard is evil. The Scarlet Guard will make life worse for you. King Maven freed you from war and will free you from more still. Twisted half-truths spun into propaganda. I can understand how they and so many others were taken in. Maven exploited a thirst in Reds who didn’t know what it was to be manipulated. They saw a Silver pledging to listen when his predecessors would not, to hear the voices of people who had never been heard. An easy hope to buy into.
And the Scarlet Guard are far from innocent heroes. They are flawed at best, combating oppression with violence. The children of the Dagger Legion remain wary. They’re all just teenagers bouncing from the trenches of one army to another. I don’t blame them for keeping their eyes open.
Morrey still clings to his misgivings. Because of me, what I am. Maven accused the Guard of murdering people like me. No matter how much my brother tries, he can’t shake the words.
As we sit down to breakfast, our bowls of oatmeal hot to the touch, I brace myself for the usual questions. We like to eat outside on the grass, beneath the open sky, with the training fields stretched out. After fifteen years in our slum, every fresh breeze feels like a miracle. I sit cross-legged, my dark green coveralls soft from wear and too much washing to count.
“Why don’t you leave?” Morrey asks, jumping right in. He stirs the oatmeal three times, counterclockwise. “You haven’t pledged your oath to the Guard. You don’t have any reason to stay here.”
“Why do you do that?” I tap his spoon with mine. A stupid question, but an easy dodge. I never have a good answer for him, and I hate that he makes me wonder.
He shrugs his narrow shoulders. “I like the routine,” he mumbles. “At home . . . well, you know home was bleeding awful, but . . .” He stirs again, the metal scraping. “You remember the schedules, the whistles.”
“I do.” I still hear them in my dreams. “And you miss that?”
He scoffs. “Of course not. I just . . . Not knowing what’s going to happen. I don’t understand it. It’s—it’s scary.”
I spoon up some oatmeal. It’s thick and tasty. Morrey gave me his sugar ration, and the extra sweetness undercuts whatever discomfort I feel. “I think that’s how everyone feels. I think it’s why I stay.”
Morrey turns to look at me, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the still-rising sun. It illuminates his face, throwing into harsh contrast how much he’s changed. Steady rations have filled him out. And the cleaner air clearly agrees with him. I haven’t heard the scraping cough that used to punctuate his sentences.
One thing hasn’t changed, though. He still has the tattoo, just as I do. Black ink like a brand around his neck. Our letters and numbers match almost exactly.
NT-ARSM-188908, his reads. New Town, Assembly and Repair, Small Manufacturing. I’m 188907. I was born first. My neck itches at the memory of the day when we were marked, permanently bound to our indentured jobs.
“I don’t know where to go.” I say the words out loud for the first time, even though I’ve been thinking them every day since I escaped Corros. “We can’t go home.”
“I guess not,” he mumbles. “So what do we do here? You’re going to stay and let these people—”
“I told you before, they don’t want to kill newbloods. That was a lie, Maven’s lie—”
“I’m not talking about that. So the Scarlet Guard isn’t going to kill you—but they’re still putting you in danger. You spend every minute you’re not with me training to fight, to kill. And in Corvium I saw . . . when you led us out . . .”
Don’t say what I did. I remember it well enough without him describing the way I killed two Silvers. Faster than I’ve ever killed before. Blood pouring from their eyes and mouths, their insides dying organ by organ as my silence destroyed everything in them. I felt it then. I feel it still. The sensation of death pulses through my body.
“I know you can help.” He puts his oatmeal down and takes my hand. In the factories, I used to hold on to him. Our roles reverse. “I don’t want to see them turn you into a weapon. You’re my sister, Cameron. You did everything you could to save me. Let me do the same.”
With a huff, I fall back against the soft grass, leaving the bowl at my side.
He lets me think, and instead turns his eyes on the horizon. He waves a dark hand at the fields in front of us. “It’s so bleeding green here. Do you think the rest of the world is like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could find out.” His voice is so soft I pretend not to hear him, and we lapse into an easy silence. I watch spring winds chase clouds across the sky while he eats, his motions quick and efficient. “Or we could go home. Mama and Dad—”
“Impossible.” I focus on the blue above, blue like we never saw in that hellhole we were born in.
“You saved me.”
“And we almost died. Better odds, and we almost died.” I exhale slowly. “There’s nothing we can do for them right now. I thought maybe once but—all we can do is hope.”
Sorrow tugs at his face, souring his expression. But he nods. “And stay alive. Stay ourselves. You hear me, Cam?” He grabs my hand. “Don’t let this change you.”
He’s right. Even though I’m angry, even though I feel so much hatred for everything that threatens my family—is feeding that rage worth the cost?
“So what should I do?” I finally force myself to ask.
“I don’t know what having an ability’s like. You have friends who do.” His eyes twinkle as he pauses for effect. “You do have friends, right?” He quirks a smirk at me over the rim of his bowl. I smack his arm for the implication.
My mind jumps to Farley first, but she’s still in the hospital, adjusting to a new baby, and she doesn’t have an ability. Doesn’t know what it’s like to be so lethal, in control of something so deadly.
“I’m scared, Morrey. When you throw a tantrum, you just yell and cry. With me, with what I can do . . .” I reach a hand to the sky, flexing my fingers against the clouds. “I’m scared of it.”
“Maybe that’s good.”
“What do you mean?”
“At home, you remember how they use the kids? To fix the big gears, the deep wires?” Morrey widens his dark eyes, trying to make me understand.
The memory echoes. Iron on iron, the screech and twist of constantly whirring machinery across endless factory floors. I can almost smell the oil, almost feel the wrench in my hand. It was a relief when Morrey and I got too big to be spiders—what the overseers called the little kids in our division. Small enough to go where adult workers couldn’t, too young to be afraid of being crushed.
“Fear can be a good thing, Cam,” he pushes on. “Fear doesn’t let you forget. And the fear you have, the respect you have for this deadly thing inside of you, I think that’s an ability too.”
My oatmeal is cold now, but I force a mouthful so I don’t have to talk. Now the sugary taste is overpowering, and the glop sticks to my teeth.
“Your braids are a mess,” Morrey mutters to himself. He turns to another routine, an old one familiar to us both. Our parents worked earlier than we did, and we had to help each other get ready at dawn. He’s long since known how to fix my hair, and it takes no time at all for him to untangle it. It feels good to have him back, and I’m overcome with emotion as he plaits my curly black hair into two braids.
He doesn’t push me to make a decision, but the conversation is enough to let questions I already had rise to the surface. Who do I want to be? What choice am I going to make?
In the distance, around the edge of the training fields, I spot two familiar figures. One tall, one short, both of them jogging the boundary. They do this every day, their exercises familiar to most of us. Despite Cal’s much longer legs, Mare doesn’t have a problem keeping up. As they get closer, I can see her smiling. I don’t understand a lot of things about the lightning girl, and smiling during a run is one of them.
“Thanks, Morrey,” I say, getting to my feet when he finishes.
My brother doesn’t stand with me. He follows my gaze, laying eyes on Mare as she gets closer. She doesn’t make him tense up, but Cal does. Morrey quickly busies himself with the bowls, ducking his head to hide his scowl. No love lost between the Coles and the prince of Norta.
Mare raises her chin as she jogs, acknowledging us both.
The prince tries to hide his annoyance when she slows her pace, easing into a walk to approach me and Morrey. Cal doesn’t do it well, but he nods at both of us in an attempt at a polite greeting.
“Morning,” Mare says, shifting from foot to foot as she catches her breath. Her complexion has improved more than anything; a golden warmth is returning to her brown skin. “Cameron, Morrey,” she says, her eyes ticking between us with catlike speed. Her brain is always spinning, looking for cracks. After what she’s been through, how could she be any other way?
She must sense the hesitation in me, because she stays put, waiting for me to say something. I almost lose my nerve, but Morrey brushes against my leg. Just bite the bullet, I tell myself. She might even understand.
“Would you mind taking a walk with me?”
Before her capture, she would have scoffed, told me to train, brushed me away like an annoying fly. She barely tolerated me. Now she bobs her head. With a single gesture, Mare waves off Cal like only she can.
Prison changed her, like it changed us all.
“Sure, Cameron.”
It feels like I talk for hours, spilling everything I’ve been keeping inside. The fear, the anger, the sick sensation I get every time I think about what I can do and what I’ve done. How it used to thrill me. How such power made me feel invincible, indestructible—and now it makes me feel ashamed. It feels like stabbing myself in the stomach and letting my guts fall out. I avoid her eyes as I speak, keeping my gaze firmly on my feet as we pace the training grounds. As we press on, more and more soldiers flood the field. Newbloods and Reds, all going through their morning exercises. In their uniforms, green coveralls provided by Montfort, it’s hard to tell which is which. We all look the same, united. “I want to protect my brother. He tells me we should go, leave . . .” My voice weakens, trailing off until there are no more words.
Mare is forceful in her reply. “My sister says the same thing. Every day. She wants to take up Davidson’s offer. Relocate. Let other people fight.” Her eyes darken with intensity. They wobble over the landscape full of green uniforms. She is mechanical in her observations, whether she knows it or not, reading risks and threats. “She said we’ve given enough.”
“So what will you do?”
“I can’t turn my back.” She bites her lip, thoughtful. “There’s too much anger in me. If I don’t find a way to get rid of it, it might poison me for the rest of my life. But that probably isn’t what you want to hear.” It would be an accusation from anyone else. From Cal, or Farley. From who Mare was six months ago. Instead her words are softer.
“Holding on will eat me alive,” I admit. “Continuing on this way, using my ability to kill . . . it will make me a monster.”
Monster. She shivers when I say it, withdrawing inside herself. Mare Barrow has had her fair share of monsters. She looks away, idly tugging on a braid of hair curling with sweat and humidity.
“Monsters are so easily made, especially in people like us,” she mumbles. But she recovers quickly. “You didn’t fight in Archeon. Or if you did, I didn’t see you.”
“No, I was just there to . . .” Keep you in check. In the moment, a good plan. But now that I know what she went through, I feel terrible.
She doesn’t push.
“Kilorn’s idea back in Trial,” I say. “He works well branching the newbloods and Reds, and he knew I wanted to take a step back. So I went along—but not to fight, not to kill, unless absolutely necessary.”
“And you want to continue on that path.” Not a question.
Slowly, I nod. I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. “I think it’s better this way. Defend, not destroy.” At my side, my fingers flex. Silence pools beneath my flesh. I don’t hate my ability, but I can hate what it does.
Mare fixes me with a grin. “I’m not your commander. I can’t tell you what to do, or how to fight. But I think it’s a good idea. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, point them my way.”
I smile. Somehow I feel a weight lift. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry, by the way,” she adds, coming closer. “I’m the reason you’re here. I know now, what I did to you, forcing you to join up—it was wrong. And I’m sorry.”
“You’re absolutely right. You did wrong, that’s for bleeding sure. But I got what I wanted, in the end.”
“Morrey.” She sighs. “I’m glad you got him back.” Her smile doesn’t disappear, but it certainly fades, weakened by all mention of brothers.
On the low rise ahead, Morrey waits, now standing in silhouette against the base buildings spread out behind him. Cal is gone. Good.
Even though he’s been with us for months, Cal is awkward without purpose, bad at conversation, and always on edge when he doesn’t have a strategy to mull over. Part of me still thinks he sees us all as disposable—cards to picked up and thrown away as strategy dictates. But he loves Mare, I remind myself. He loves a girl with Red blood.
That must count for something.
Before we make it back to my brother, one last fear bubbles up in my throat.
“Am I abandoning you all? The newbloods.”
My ability is silent death. I am a weapon, like it or not. I can be used. I can be useful. Is it selfish to walk away?
I get the feeling it’s a question Mare has asked herself many times. But her answer is for me, and me alone.
“Of course not,” she mutters. “You’re still here. And you’re one less monster for us to worry about. One less ghost.”
