Shatter the Suns

CHAPTER 1

POWER GROWS FROM THE BARREL of a gun. I don’t care if it is in politics, if it’s between two people who think they are friends or two people who have been enemies since the day they were born. Guns hone who you are and what you believe to one black-and-white plane, one purpose. When it comes to power, guns are too dangerous. Not only because they kill, but because if you’re the one holding the weapon, you don’t have to listen.

That is why I prefer games to assert my dominance. No one is dead at the end of a good round of Find the Bean.

Unfortunately, I’m not doing so well at the moment.

June’s eyes meet mine from across the table, blank as the icy blue sky above us. Tai-ge raises an eyebrow as he looks over, sandwiched between two trading post roughers. His hands line up with the others, a long procession of palms on the table. I blink as another set creeps up onto the table next to mine, tiny fingers spread wide. Lihua smiles up at me, then turns to glare at Tai-ge as if he’s the only reason I haven’t won the game yet.

You’ve got it. I point to him. He can’t keep a straight face. Never could.

Tai-ge shows me both of his hands. Nothing but dirty calluses.

The wind blows through the pine needles, a frozen whistle that swirls around us up so high in the trees. An Outsider trading post, hidden from Reds and Menghu alike. Cai Ayi, the proprietor, laughs, the sound bubbling out and washing over all of us at the table. Look at their eyes, Jiang Sev. You can see it in their eyes. Her double chin jiggles as she piles odds and ends from an earlier trade into a wooden box, too interested in our game to really pay attention. Look at Loss. He’s ready to explode.

You can’t help her, Cai Ayi! Loss complains. One of the five roughers that work for Cai Ayi, he’s a craggy mountain towering over me from across the table. Lihua wrinkles her nose at him, and he gives her a slow wink.

What do you think, Lihua? I ask, bending to whisper in her ear. The little girl just smiles and looks at her hands palm down on the table, delighted to be playing a game with big kids. After everything she went through to get here, I’m proud of her smile, proud she doesn’t think all adults are waiting to stick her with needles like they did back in the Sanatorium. She nestles in close to me, the first prickles of hair growing on her head poking into my arm. She’s the only one of the kids down here with us. Peishan, my old friend who we managed to extract from the City along with the kids, keeps them away when we’re here if she can manage it.

Pulling at the fringe of hair that falls unevenly past my chin, I squint at Loss. He smiles.

I transfer my gaze to the other rougher at the table, Ze-ming. It’s there, I say, pointing to his right hand.

Ze-ming grins, flicking the white bean that was hidden under his palm at me. Got me. Good thing, too. You were running out of tries before it got embarrassing.

I flip the bean into my palm and tilt my head toward him. Does winning mean I get a discount?

Ze-ming rolls his eyes and points to the bean. For your superior powers of observation, that one is half off. Beyond that, you’d have to take it up with Cai Ayi.

Cai Ayi laughs again, shaking her head as she carefully closes the crate. This game isn’t smart enough for that, honey. You beat Loss at weiqi and we’ll talk.

June sits a little straighter, though she doesn’t look up from the table. She probably could beat Loss and all his ancestors seven generations back, but she won’t speak up to challenge him. I grin at Loss, meaning to ask for her, but he’s too busy making faces at Lihua to pay attention.

Cai Ayi’s establishment is almost big enough to be a housing unit from the City, lights dancing so high in the leaves that it’s hard to believe they belong to people when you’re looking up from the ground. A single rope ladder is the only way to get up to the first platform, a patchwork of rough-hewn logs wedged between the large branches of the tree. Roughers stand watch over the ropes that fan out from there, a tightrope walk to the storehouse, or the canteen where Cai Ayi makes flower teas. Up a little higher, wooden plank bridges line the branches to form living quarters. A good step closer to civilization than I would have thought possible Outside a few months ago. Cai Ayi and her roughers are all well fed, easy to talk to, and ready to sell anything not nailed down. Quicklights. Food. The two canisters of inhibitor spray I have tucked snugly in my pocket. All honestly acquired, so they say, but I’ve seen the City seal stamped on more than one item here, and I’m pretty sure Chairman Sun doesn’t come out this far to get his slippers.

I give Lihua an extra hug before I stand up. Cai Ayi may have agreed to board the children that June, Tai-ge, and I pulled out of the ashes of the Sanatorium, but I doubt the deal will hold if she finds out Lihua has a little help from a hidden Mantis bottle. The Sanatorium gave orphans a medicine that caused compulsions just like SS does in order to isolate them from the rest of the City and experiment on them. It wasn’t just fake cases of SS in the Sanatorium, though. Luckily, out of all the kids we stole away from the City, Lihua is the only one legitimately infected.

Cai Ayi made it quite clear that infected are not allowed at her establishment. It feels almost irresponsible keeping Lihua’s affliction to ourselves, but she can’t come with us where we’re going. And we can’t tell, because I’ve seen what happens when you disobey Post rules. Loss threw one Wood Rat right off a platform for noncompliance, and it wasn’t even a level close to the ground.

I can understand why infected aren’t allowed, since compulsing Post patrons could end with a decision between fighting a Seph who means to cut off your toes to the tune of a nursery song or falling from the topmost platform. I’m not sure what she’ll do if she finds out about Lihua. Interacting with Cai Ayi and the roughers is like eating a peach. Soft and sweet on the outside, but I’m afraid that if I take many more bites I’ll break my teeth on a hard, bitter core.

I follow June with my eyes as she hops down from her seat at the table and walks over to Cai Ayi. Bareheaded, as if her golden curls don’t matter. This far out, they don’t.

Cai Ayi smiles at her, pulling out the bag of items we asked for, but June shakes her head, stonily silent until Cai Ayi fizzes over with laughter, adding an extra packet of dried pears.

Tai-ge puts down the set of kitchen knives that is going to pay for our supplies this week: the pears and a backpack for each of us. I pick up the closest pack, fingers skimming the clean fabric, though it shows obvious signs of previous ownership. Red ownership. Unit numbers are stamped in sharp, blocky numbers on the underside of each pack.

What’s that? Tai-ge asks, peering over the edge of the box Cai Ayi has just pried open with a metal screech.

Some minor growth regulators. She looks up with a grin, dropping the hammer she used to prize the box open. I have a buyer for this batch due here in a few minutes, but if you’re interested in starting a garden wherever it is June has you two stashed, I may be able to help.

Minor growth regulators?

Not the kind that’s going to put up a gas cloud. I don’t deal in weapons, whatever their primary purpose is supposed to be. Not good for business. All my customers would be picking one another off. Or attacking the Post.

Tai-ge stares down at the growth regulators, the City seal stamped in red on the paper sacks. What would you want for one of these?

Cai Ayi harrumphs. Leave your bargaining to June, boy, or you’ll end up walking home stark naked. I’ve taken a shine to your fancy boots.

June steps forward to touch the bag of growth regulators and pulls something from her pocket. A book. She holds it up, sunlight catching gilt-edged pages.

No! No, not that. I intervene, holding my hand out for the book. It’s silly—a fairy tale that somehow followed me out of the Mountain—but I don’t want to give it up just yet. June shrugs and hands it over. She pulls the knives back toward her, then unstraps a pair of binoculars from around her neck and points to the bag of pears, the packs, and the growth regulators.

Cai Ayi nods slowly. You sure, June? Binoculars are one of those things you can’t find out here easily, I’d guess. We took these from the Chairman’s house, but we found another pair that were in the supplies on board the heli we stole. Cai Ayi’s shrug is just a little too pleased. She’s getting a good trade here. All right.

She pulls out the top bag of growth regulator and hands it over to Tai-ge, then pushes the package of kitchen knives back to June, who shakes her head. She points to Lihua and then the binoculars.

The pleased look on Cai Ayi’s face falls a little slack. But she nods. "I suppose that’s a slightly fairer trade. I can board your friends for another month. For the binoculars and the knives."

June shakes her head, handing the knives to me and holding out the binoculars.

Cai Ayi stares at her, but then the grin crinkles back up on her face. Fine, fine, fine. I’ll keep your bald little rats for another three weeks, shall we say? Plus the bags, the pears . . . She ticks them off on her fingers.

Taking the knives back from me, June looks top-heavy, as if she’s about to keel over under the weight of the binoculars and knives combined. She snakes one arm out and points to Lihua, then puts up two fingers.

Cai Ayi laughs. Two months? All for some kitchen knives? You drive a hard bargain, my girl. But she smiles and takes the binoculars and knives both, setting the latter down on the now-half-empty crate to eye the binocular’s glassy lenses. Sky above knows what you want with growth regulators anyway. Aren’t you folk just running through? If you were planning to stay, you’d have already set up a real camp instead of paying my exorbitant boarding fees.

Never know when you need to plant some tarot. Tai-ge hefts the bag over his shoulder and we move to the ladder that leads to the ground.

I give Lihua one last hug and pull the straps of my pack over my shoulders, gritting my teeth at the prospect of climbing down the rope ladder. The City seal sitting between my shoulder blades feels odd, like if I don’t keep an eye on it, the falcon and beaker will burn through my coat and brand me between the shoulder blades.

Sure you don’t want an escort back to your camp? Ze-ming calls after us as we start down the ladder. Amusement curls in his voice.

They’ve offered every time we come. Ze-ming’s grin wards off June’s murderous glare in response to the question. Scavengers supposedly prey on Post customers, though we’ve yet to stumble into a nest of Wood Rats. I get the feeling that the roughers do a fair amount of scavenging themselves.

At least they’re like me, for the most part. Playing games and telling jokes, even if they do have a darker streak. Mother played games, and I’m now wondering if her last words were another one, a riddle only I could solve to confuse the people she worried might be listening.

Except I have no idea what the words Port North could mean.

What I do know, though, is she told me to find my family in Port North. My family. Could that mean that I am not as alone as I’d thought? I shoot Tai-ge a smile and am rewarded when his cheeks dimple and he grins back. June’s on my other side, her hand companionably on my arm. The sky might be icy, the ground cracked with cold, but I feel the fire of hope inside my chest as we go down the ladder.

My mother hid the cure to SS with my family. June, Tai-ge, and I are going to find them.

CHAPTER 2

TAI-GE’S EYES SCAN THE ICED-OVER branches and bushes as we start the trek back toward the heli, his hand on the knife in his jacket pocket. He flinches as the pack rubs against his shoulders, and though his sleeves hide it, I know it must be irritating the long, scabby lines running up and down his arms. Scratches drawn by infected fingernails and teeth, attempting to keep us on the ground or come with us as we escaped the City. I’ll have to check them over when we get back, make sure they’re still healing properly. Not that my barefoot doctor qualifications will do much to help if Tai-ge has any real problems.

June’s head is completely hidden by her pack, bobbing along in front of me as if it’s walking by itself. Do Cai Ayi and the roughers know? I ask. I mean, about contagious SS and Menghu invading the City? I shiver, thinking of the tiger insignia snarling from Menghu collars. A more accurate depiction of the people inside those uniforms than I realized, back when I first met Helix, Cale, and Mei. Before I watched them kill people with no more thought than they took stirring sauce into their noodles.

Before they all tried to kill me.

June glances back at me around the edge of the pack and shrugs. They’ll find our camp soon if we don’t move.

I shift my pack, the frame rubbing against my shoulder blades, the flickering hope inside me dimming a degree or two. I’m all for leaving, but it’s getting to Port North that’s the problem. No one seems to have heard of it. Not Tai-ge with all his Red connections. Not June, though she’s spent her whole life Outside. Not Cai Ayi or the Roughers, either, Loss going so far as to ask what a Port was exactly.

A question I’d like to know the answer to as well.

It’s been two weeks since I left Mother at the peak of Traitor’s Arch. Two weeks since we escaped the burning City. My insides squirm at the thought of the people we deserted there, crying to be let on the heli, fighting with one another, shooting at one another. . . .

Howl falling to the ground, Tai-ge’s bullets in his chest.

I shake my head, shoving the image away. It feels as if we’ve been playing Cai Ayi’s Find the Bean game since the moment Mother gave me her instructions. Pointing and slapping at hands instead of placing our stones with the care and attention of a weiqi master.

Well, no more waiting. We don’t have time to hope our ancestors or fate or luck throw something our way. If we don’t move, it won’t be the roughers we have to worry about. Mother was right to worry about who was listening when she told me to go to Port North. Dr. Yang was there, and if he gets to the cure first, then there won’t be much left to hope for.

I touch the inhibitor spray in my pocket—the reassuring weight a promise no one else will be able to hold me at gunpoint so easily ever again—and twist to look back at Tai-ge. What did you want with growth regulators? As far as I know, it’s the wrong season for growing onions. The skies have been clear, turning the banks of snow around us rock-hard. We’re lucky there are lots of paths cut through this area already, so following us isn’t so easy as watching for footprints.

Weak growth regulators can be used as an explosive if you add the right ingredients. Tai-ge answers. If I siphon off some of our fuel, we could potentially use it.

Siphon off heli fuel? Do we have enough to spare?

The heli mostly runs on solar. Fuel’s for takeoff. Tai-ge grunts, pain pinching one eye shut as he readjusts the bag over his hurt shoulders. You still set on breaking into Dazhai?

Dazhai. The farm to which the Firsts fled, taking their Mantis and most of the City’s Outside patrollers with them, if the radio transmissions are to be believed.

We disconnected the heli positioning device so no one will be able to follow its signature back to us. Unfortunately, it also left us blind until Tai-ge tweaked the radio so it would intercept transmissions. It’s hard to glean much, just positions and reports and requests. Nothing to tell us who else survived the Menghu invasion of the City, or where Dr. Yang is, or whether the contagious strain of SS he set loose on the City is raging in this direction yet. But we have listened enough to know that if there’s a map out there with Port North on it, it’s probably at Dazhai.

Yes. I keep my voice chipper. I’m still set on breaking into Dazhai. You think we should use the growth regulators to blow something up? That sounds a little dramatic.

Tai-ge grimaces. I’d say ‘desperate’ is a bit more accurate. A pause, and I know what’s coming—an argument we’ve already had several times. Sev, we don’t have to break into a camp full of our own people. We could just . . . walk in. Find the highest-ranking Red and tell them we know where to find a cure to SS.

I can almost feel June scowling in front of me, as if she’s calling down her own personal storm cloud. She knows what will happen if we go to anyone from the City. It’s hard to forget after seeing Lihua, her hair still growing out from being shaved. She had a death date affixed to her name back in the City. All the kids we flew out of there did.

At least, it’s hard for me to forget.

Tai-ge’s spent his whole life with everything wrapped up and sealed like a red envelope at New Year’s. I think sometimes he wishes he could forget that it wasn’t just Peishan and Lihua who had expiration dates while they were still inside City walls. I was on the City’s lung-stopping assembly line too, with every possible stamp of approval just waiting to clear the paperwork.

Tai-ge saw firsthand what happens when you try to go against the City.

I swallow, trying not to push away the memory as I would have a few months ago. Face it head-on, or the memories will congeal inside me. Tai-ge’s father, the general of the Liberation army, about to shoot me. Tai-ge trying to explain to him Dr. Yang’s connection to the Menghu as they poured into the City. The explosion. The blood, the screams, my eardrums shattered by the bomb. Little pieces of jade raining down on us as we ran.

We can’t ever go back. No one is going to listen to us, Tai-ge. And if they find June, they’ll kill her.

If I’m there, they can’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . Tai-ge bites back the rest of his answer, looking at his feet instead of June’s hunched shoulders. Fine. We can talk about this back at camp.

There isn’t anything to talk about that we haven’t already said. The cure can’t go to the City, or the Chairman will use it the same way he did Mantis: to control people. We still don’t know how deep Dr. Yang’s hooks were in the City. Walking back into rows of tents stamped with the City’s falcon-and-beaker seal might lead us straight back to him. But as I search for new words that will convince Tai-ge of this, June stops, her chin raised toward the treetops. She breathes in deep, then lets it out.

What is it? I look out into the snow-silent forest, goose bumps erupting down my arms as the shadowy trees peer back at me.

She takes another deep breath, so much air it must be filling her to the toes. When she lets it out, the air clouds above her in an icy mist.

My voice lodges in my throat. Did you hear something?

Maybe. She rubs her nose, then starts down the path.

Is it not enough that I’m here? Tai-ge whispers, continuing our conversation as if June hadn’t stopped.

My stomach clenches. He thought I was a traitor but came for me down in the Hole anyway. I’ve always been the one flaw in his devotion to the City. Still, Tai-ge made the choice. He chose me. It’s like the second half of a dream—the half I never let myself imagine before, when we were in the City. Tai-ge sitting next to me, planning with me, wanting to be with me, all without the barrier of stars sharp between us.

I’m glad you’re here. I stop and turn to meet his eyes, trying to inject the weight and importance I feel attached to those words. I know how much Tai-ge gave up to be here. His family, or what’s left of it. His convictions about life and how the world should work. He came because he trusts me, because he missed me when I was gone from the City. Because they lied about where I was, about what I was. I give him a slow smile, waiting until I know he’s truly listening. I wouldn’t trade you for anyone, Tai-ge. Of course it’s enough.

He nods, the side of his mouth curling to match mine. We might not agree about everything, but we’ll figure it out.

No one speaks for the rest of the walk, and the silence stretches tight across my shoulders, making me want to shrug it away. Our camp was June’s idea, a casual suggestion to put the heli down in a wide clearing shielded from the wind by a set of rocky cliffs on one side, tall trees on the other. She didn’t tell us about the Post until we’d landed. She constantly surprises me, though I don’t know why. She’s lived out here long enough to know where to find food and supplies. I guess I assumed she didn’t because I didn’t. A dangerous way to think.

It’s twilight by the time we get back to the camp, a breeze stealing the ice’s foggy breath and ruffling the shrouded hulk of the heli where it sits against the cliffs. We pass a metal column as we enter the clearing. A similar column perches at the top of the rocky outcropping towering over the heli, thick cables trailing to the ground where a metal bench sits, half covered by dirt and ice. Ruins from before the Influenza War. Though why anyone would ride a slick metal bench up a mountain, completely exposed to the frigid air, is beyond me.

Tai-ge holds the heli’s canvas cover up for June to go in first, waiting for me to follow before ducking under himself. The two of us climb up the ladder after June, waiting for her to open the hatch.

Prison, June says, her cool whisper sinking into the voice lock and flinging it open.

A joke, I think. Her only voiced complaint. Even I feel a little cramped in the heli cockpit after sleeping under the stars. But it isn’t safe out there. I shiver, giving one last look to the trees. Anyone could be in these mountains. And if people weren’t enough, the gores would be.

Just inside the hatch, I have to climb over June’s sleeping bag and skip to avoid landing my wet boots on Tai-ge’s sleeping bag. Still, it’s much roomier than it was before we extracted all but the pilot and copilot chairs to make space for us to sleep. We unlace our boots and throw them next to the supplies piled by the cargo bay door. Tai-ge flicks on the radio to eavesdrop on Red transmissions, and June goes to the bags of food, placing the new bag of dried pears on top of the other supplies like a crown.

The wind sneaks through the heli, rattling the cargo bay door. We chose to steal this particular aircraft, meant for troop transport, because of the extra room. We had ten Sanatorium victims with us, their heads shaved clean. As we took off, a grenade hit us from underneath, leaving long tears in the heli’s underbelly. Not an ideal place for Peishan, Lihua, and the others, since it wasn’t just the cold we were worried about coming through the long gashes in the metal. It was a relief when Cai Ayi agreed to take them on. Even Lihua, who wasn’t keen to leave June or the heli at first, seems to have settled a bit.

Let’s eat outside tonight. I grab a bag of rice, hefting it in my hand. It should last us another week or so. After that we won’t have much more to trade if we want to keep eating. I can’t stand sitting in here. The forest outside might be troubling, but sitting inside feels too much like hiding. We’ll stay close to the ladder. Then tomorrow morning we’ll get our things ready for Dazhai and let Peishan know we’ll be gone for a bit.

Tai-ge hesitates, but June is down the ladder before he can say anything. Together, June and I gather Junis wood and build a fire, then the three of us slump in our sleeping bags around the smokeless flames, telling stories and jokes. Tai-ge even sings a Red drinking song, the departure from his straight-backed, buttoned-up state making me clap along, laughing at the rhymes. Even June smiles.

When the last flames die, leaving only char and ash in our fire ring, Tai-ge pulls me up to go back inside where it’s safe. I pause to look up at the stars. Thousands of stitches in a quilted sky. It brings to mind the story Howl told me that first night after we left the City, a ridiculous fairy tale of a star falling in love with a peasant, only to be separated forever on opposite sides of the sky.

It wasn’t only Tai-ge’s world that gave one last shuddering breath during that invasion. I lost things that day too. My eyes catch on Zhinu, the daughter of the sun. She’s alone up there in the sky. She always will be.

What are you looking for? Tai-ge’s hand bumps mine as we look up into the night.

I grab his hand and squeeze it. I want to believe there’s something more waiting for me at Port North than the dark empty ring surrounding Zhinu’s lonely spot in the stars. That maybe it’s a place I could belong instead of a fairy tale waiting to uncurl into yet another bad dream. But some hopes are too fragile to speak out loud, so I stand there with my hand in Tai-ge’s, the silence between us too big to fill.

CHAPTER 3

THAT NIGHT, THE DREAMS COME. Not the ones I used to have of being trapped inside my own body, paralyzed by SS. Now Cale visits me, a pile of Red corpses under her feet and her gun pointed at my head. June’s old clan—Tian, Cas, Parhat, and Liu—lying in pools of their own blood. A gore’s black eyes watch me from behind a curtain of vines, and Cale’s dead weight on my shoulders pins me to the ground when the monster charges. Mother. Her papery skin tearing under my fingers, her eyes vacant.

I wake in a sweat, fear wrapped tight around my ribs. Rolling over, I go through a calming ritual of finding June’s corn silk hair snarled across the rucksack she’s using for a pillow. Safe. Next, Tai-ge, the shadows sinking deeper into the creases in his face that I don’t remember being there before. Still alive. My breath catches at the blank space where Peishan and the kids are supposed to be, but then I remember: They’re up in the trees with Cai Ayi. Before, when we all squeezed together in the cockpit, they snuggled together in the corner, arms and hands and tear-smudged cheeks sprouting from the muddled pile of humans.

I force my eyes to close again, but I can’t stand the thought of sleep. Can’t let the dead creep into my head again. I’m so tired, though, my body won’t comply. Just as dreams start to twist my thoughts into stories, a noise scrapes my eyes back open. The whisper of metal brushing metal. Screwing my eyes shut, I wrap my fingers tight around the inhibitor spray.

I don’t hear the sound again. But that doesn’t stop me lying awake, waiting.

•  •  •

I must have fallen asleep, because I wake to Tai-ge at the control panel, the buzz of static in my ears. An echoing fear lances through me before I can brush it down as my brain tries to sort through the sounds that must have woken me. Voices squeezed through the tiny holes in the radio, Tai-ge whispering into the microphone . . .

I rub my eyes. Nightmares trying to claw their way into daylight. Tai-ge’s not talking to anyone over the radio. He’s listening to more reports. Anything new? I ask.

He shakes his head.

Sleep okay? I ask.

Tai-ge’s hands drag down his cheeks, as though pulling them off might wake him up. Like a chicken waiting for his turn to be fried.

Let’s not wait any longer, then. We’ll eat, get our packs together. I pull myself up from the sleeping bag. Choose a landing spot far enough away from Dazhai that we’ll be able to get away before the Seconds can come find the heli. . . .

June bolts up from her sleeping bag, almost like a bird diving for safety in the face of a predator. She grabs from our pile of potatoes, has the hatch open, and is down the ladder before I can finish my sentence. I glance back at Tai-ge, his mouth hanging open. He still isn’t used to June.

Shall we continue this conversation outside? I ask, pulling the sleeping bag down and extracting my legs.

He nods. Yeah. Let me find Dazhai on the downloaded maps and plot a course first. I’ll be down in a sec. Throw a potato on the fire for me, would you?

Yes, sir. I give him a mock salute and am gratified when it teases an almost-smile from my friend instead of festering at the back of his expression like an unwelcome memory. He’s going to be okay. All of this is going to be okay.

June glances up from kicking at the ashes of our fire ring when I come down, the Junis residue catching in the morning breeze adding a burned tinge to the air. I help her arrange wood from what we gathered the night before into something that might catch fire, though I suspect my presence is being tolerated rather than actually helping. By the time we have flames leaping between us, Tai-ge slides down the ladder. He rubs his eyes as he walks toward us, stomach audibly rumbling.

Find what we need? I ask.

I think so. He fiddles with the zip to his coat before looking back up. I still feel like we’re doing this the hard way.

June stands up, a potato in each hand. Leftover rice up in the heli, she informs me.

I blink at her, waiting for her to continue, but instead she turns around to start poking at the edge of the fire. Though I’m still not adept at interpreting June’s lack of words, I think that might have been a request for me to get the leftover rice.

As I pull myself through the hatch, a dull thud sounds from deep inside the heli, the sound of metal on glass making my skin crawl. Rodents? Rats lived in the walls back at the orphanage. They would come out at night, looking for bits of contraband food smuggled up to the rooms. I hate rats. More than spiders or mosquitoes or . . .

How could rats have found their way up the heli ladder?

I hear another thud, something moving around in the aircraft’s bulbous stomach, just behind the cargo bay’s barricaded doors—where I heard the sound last night. And then, quiet. I close my eyes, trying to rein in my imagination. Maybe rats can get up here. Really large . . . person-size rats.

Did Loss and Ze-ming follow us? Or could it be Menghu, tiger snarls on their faces to match the slavering insignia on their collars? Wood Rats, ready to strip the heli down? Dr. Yang, planning to slit our throats before we realize he’s here? Gores tearing through the broken metal? Or, worst of all, swarms and swarms of infected, crying for help beneath us, just waiting to break our bones and bite our fingers off one by one . . . I shake my head, trying to end the images, each more preposterous than the last.

June, too tired to climb up through the metal tears below like she usually does, pushed all the boxes away from the cargo bay doors before we went to sleep yesterday to check that nothing had snuck in. She’s inspected the empty space every day we’ve been out here, the threat of stowaways or hijackers much more likely this close to the Post. We’ve been so careful. There couldn’t be anyone back there. It must just be rats.

I reach for the chain that hooks over the handle to keep the door shut just to prove my fears wrong. As my hand touches the chain, something falls on the other side of the door, metal clattering as it hits. Accompanied by a hushed exclamation involving Yuan Zhiwei’s underclothing.

City rats? Who can swear.

I jerk back from the door, almost falling over as my foot catches in the folds of Tai-ge’s sleeping bag. Trying to be quiet, I slide through the hatch and back down the ladder, one hand clamped tight over my mouth. Tai-ge stands up when I get to the bottom, alarm twisting his eyebrows in a knot. June is nowhere to be seen, her leaf-wrapped potatoes left to cook at the base of our fire.

Are you okay? Tai-ge asks, looking me over as if there should be blood. What’s wrong?

I put a finger to my lips to shush him. Did June climb up into the cargo bay? I whisper, hoping against hope that it was her I heard.

Tai-ge shakes his head. Why are we whispering?

There’s someone up there.

His hand slips down to his side where a gun would normally hang, and he looks a little lost when there’s nothing to grab. We don’t have any more ammunition, so the guns are stashed up in the cockpit. June ran off into the forest to . . . Tai-ge stops. Actually, I don’t know why she ran off into the forest. June doesn’t usually talk to me directly. How many people?

I shrug. I don’t know. One? Probably?

Did they hear you?

I . . . don’t think so. It’s almost more disconcerting to see Tai-ge turn his calculating gaze toward the heli’s torn undersides than it is to see the longing in his eyes as he listens to Reds talk back and forth on the radio. We used to do tutoring sessions when his family was still in charge of brainwashing me back into City graces, but it was all history and ideology. I don’t like to think of Tai-ge as someone who knows how to mark a target.

You make some noise up front with the door. Tai-ge jumps up. I’ll come in from underneath and take them by surprise.

You’re not trained for one-on-one fighting, are you? You were supposed to have some cushy job behind a desk.

I’ll be just fine, Sev. Even I had to work my way through normal combat training. ‘Believe you can conquer, and the world will bend.’

Is that a quote from Chairman Sun’s book of sayings . . . ?

Tai-ge ducks under the heli instead of answering. I hop on the ladder’s bottom rung, watching until he’s ready to climb up into the tears in the heli’s belly before scrambling through the hatch. He doesn’t seem flustered or worried that someone has invaded the closest thing we have to a home. I feel violated, as though something sacred is broken.

Once inside, I’m so distracted by the sound of my own heartbeat thumping in my chest that I don’t notice the chain lock hanging limp against the cargo bay door until my hand is on the knob. Did June leave it loose last night? As I push the door open, it yanks out from under my hand, sending me stumbling into the cargo bay. Arms grab hold of me as I fall, pinning my arms to my sides.

The prick of a knife lights a line of fire under my chin. Don’t move. Don’t yell. The voice is male. Whispering, but calm. Wait until your friend gets up here.

That voice. Like the sting of alcohol on a cut as my brain tries to tell me I recognize it. Someone I heard speak in a dream, now come to life. I pull against him, curve around the arm pressing into my ribs so I can bite him, stomp on his feet, elbow his stomach. Anything to get away or warn Tai-ge. But jerking my head to the side only brings the knife closer, my breath drawing out in a gasp as the blade digs against my windpipe. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see scarring against the tan of my attacker’s hand. A First mark.

It can’t be. My brain refuses to process it. . . I try to cry out a warning, but before I can make a sound, Tai-ge’s head pops up through the jagged metal hole. When he spots me, the color drains from his face.

Sevvy! He scrambles up, eyes wide. Let her go. You can have whatever you want. Just leave her alone.

Everyone. Calm. Down. I can feel the man’s heartbeat through his coat, pumping fast. A metallic thud echoes through the room, and the man’s arms loosen. I push out of the circle of his grip, half running, half falling toward Tai-ge. He grabs me, and I spin around in time to see June hit my attacker again, the medikit sounding hollow as it strikes his head.

But the man still doesn’t fall, hood shadowing his face as he stumbles forward, barely catching himself on unsteady feet. Just in time to catch a full blast of my inhibitor spray to his face. The knife falls to the ground, hood pulling back an inch or two as the rest of him goes down.

Which is when I start to scream. Because all the disbelief and horror attempting to shield me from the truth fall away. Of course I know his voice.

It’s Howl.

CHAPTER 4

DEAD. HOWL WAS SUPPOSED TO be dead.

And dead people can’t hurt you.

What is he doing here? How did he find us? I grip my head, trying to control the chaos of my thoughts. My stomach fills with bile as I try to look anywhere but the slow rise and fall of his chest. June still holds the medikit outstretched in her hand as if she can’t quite believe what she’s done. Her mouth is open, trying to find words, and there’s a tear on her cheek.

I crouch on the floor next to him, betrayal a smoky haze that curls around my throat.

Howl can’t be alive. When I last saw him, he was twitching on a hangar floor, Tai-ge’s and June’s bullets in his chest, infected streaming across the floor, explosions, fire . . . Even after everything that happened between us, after running away from the Mountain in the middle of the night to get away from him and Dr. Yang’s knives . . . some small part of me hoped I’d been wrong. That Howl had followed me so he could explain.

It’s easy to absolve the dead. To allow them to squeeze back into the dreams they spun around you like a web because there’s something pitiful and small about a body left to go cold. But regretting those bullets was just making up fairy tales, coming up with excuses for why I let Howl lie to me without tasting the deception in every word.

I wanted to believe.

It’s just like that ridiculous book he gave me, the lure of a happy ending blinding the reader to reality even when it’s rotting right in front of them. I should have let June give the book, gilded cover and all, to Cai Ayi.

He . . . June’s voice brings my head up. She gulps and tries again. He said . . .

"You knew he was here? The words come out in a blazing rush, and June shrinks back. How long has he been back here?"

Just last night. Her eyes barely make it up from the floor, connecting with mine for less than a second before dropping back down. He said he wasn’t going to hurt you.

Yuan’s bloody ax! Tai-ge bursts in, voice too loud as he paces. They’re going to come for us. They’re going to find us and kill us. Slowly.

June’s horror dulls to confusion. Menghu?

"The Menghu? What in Yuan’s name is wrong with you? Tai-ge rants, falling to the floor beside Howl, pulling his hood back the rest of the way. The Chairman’s son has been missing for months now. Of all the places he could crop up . . . and we come at him with a rusty medikit and inhibitor spray."

My brain can’t quite put Tai-ge’s words together, each of them crumbling to nonsense inside my head. You shot him. My voice tears at the edges. Back in the City. When we were running. Turning back to June, I try to ignore my hands shaking. You both shot him. I saw him on the ground. He was dead.

"I never—! Tai-ge swears again. I wouldn’t have shot at a First. I would have recognized him."

June pulls something out from under the bench screwed into the wall. A padded vest with two tears puncturing the front flaps. I’ve heard of these. Leftover from Before. Bulletproof.

Maybe he won’t remember. Tai-ge’s voice drips with desperation as he crouches next to Howl’s limp form, easing his head up from the floor. If we figure out where he came from and fix him up, then the Chairman could—

Tai-ge! I’m surprised by the acid corroding my voice. "Get away from him. He’s not who you think it is. June and Tai-ge both stare at me, Tai-ge taking a second before he carefully lowers Howl’s head back to the floor. June. I soften my voice. Find some rope. Tape. Anything."

I’m sorry . . . June’s mouth screws shut over the words. She drops the medikit and backs toward the cockpit doors. You two were so . . . She won’t look at me, her eyes nailed to the floor. I thought . . . he promised.

Howl lies, June. You aren’t the first to believe him. I turn to Tai-ge, his hands wringing together until the skin is bloodless and pale. Find whatever he’s using to communicate. I think back to the link Howl gave me in the Mountain, hidden inside his dead brother’s gore-tooth necklace. Jewelry, maybe? Something small.

Tai-ge stares at me as if I’m about to commit an unpardonable crime. I pick up the medikit, blood smearing across my fingers as I open it. There’s some blue reinforced tape inside.

I pull a strip of the tape loose and take a deep breath. Start with Howl’s feet. Focus on the pull of the tape, the muddy flecks littered across Howl’s Menghu-issue boots as I bind them together. Shoelaces that look waxy and new. A frayed spot in the leather by his big toe. Anything but the memories flooding back. Of Sole, a medic who used to partner with him on bloody patrols, telling me stories of Howl killing every City-born he could find, children included. Of Howl showing me his forged City stars and promising to help me find a place I could belong.

I thought I could let myself regret the questions I didn’t get to ask. The ones that would have settled what Howl was after once and for all. My shoulder scrunches around the tender line burning down the curve of my neck where Howl held his blade.

Those questions have firm answers now. Howl came after me, and he came with a knife.

Tai-ge? I insert some steel into my voice, trying not to hold my breath as I wind the tape again around Howl’s ankles. A link? Weapons?

The floor creaks behind me as Tai-ge finally moves, extracting a pack from under the