Prodigy (10 page)

The evening of Day’s execution.
Had Thomas been trying to help me out when he escorted me down to see the electro-bomb
storage basement? What if Commander Jameson was preparing to arrest me, and Thomas
tried getting to me first? To what, help me escape? I don’t understand.

“I did care for him, you know,” he says through my silence. He pretends bravado, some
false professionalism. Still, I hear a tinge of sadness. “But I am also a soldier
of the Republic. I did what I had to do.”

I shove the table aside and lunge for him, even though I know I’m chained down to
my chair. Thomas jumps back. I stumble against my restraints, fall to my knees, and
then grab for his leg. For anything.
You’re sick. You’re so twisted.
I want to kill him. I’ve never wanted anything this much in my entire life.

No, that’s not true. I want Metias to be alive again.

The guards outside must’ve heard the commotion because they come pouring in, and before
I know it I’m pinned down by several soldiers, cuffed with an extra set of shackles,
and untied from my chair. They drag me to my feet. I kick out furiously, running through
a list in my head of every attack I’ve ever learned in school, trying frantically
to free myself. Thomas is so close. He’s only a few feet away.

Thomas just looks at me. His hands dangle at his sides. “It was the most merciful
way for him to go,” he calls out. It makes me nauseous I know he’s right, and that
Metias would’ve almost certainly been tortured to death had Thomas not taken him down
in that alley. But I don’t care. I’m blind, smothered by my anger and confusion. How
could he do that to someone he loved? How could he possibly attempt to justify this?
What is
wrong
with him?

After Metias’s death, on nights when Thomas sat alone in his home, did he ever step
out of his façade? Did he ever shed the soldier and let the civilian grieve?

I’m dragged out of the room and back down the corridor. My hands tremble—I fight to
steady my breathing, to calm my racing heart, to push Metias back into a safe corner
of my mind. A small part of me had hoped that I was wrong about Thomas. That he hadn’t
been the one to kill my brother.

By the next morning, all traces of emotion have disappeared from Thomas’s face. He
tells me the Denver court has gotten wind of my request for the Elector and has decided
to transfer me to the Colorado State Penitentiary.

I’m off to the capital.

WE TOUCH DOWN IN LAMAR, COLORADO, ON A COLD, rainy morning, right on schedule. Razor
leaves with his squadron. Kaede and I wait in the dark stairwell leading out from
the back entrance of his office until the sounds outside have quieted and most of
the ship’s crew have left. This time there are no guards performing fingerprint scans
or ID checks, so we can follow the last of the soldiers straight off the exit ramp.
We melt right in with the troops that are actually here to fight for the Republic.

Sheets of icy rain pound the base as we step out of the pyramid dock and into the
formidable grayness of this place. The sky’s completely covered with churning storm
clouds. Landing docks line the side of the cracked cement street, an ominous row of
enormous black pyramids stretching off in either direction, slick and shiny with rain.
The air smells stale, wet. Jeeps packed with soldiers drive back and forth, splashing
mud and gravel across the pavement. The soldiers here all have a wide stripe of black
painted across their eyes from one ear to the other. Must be some sort of crazy warfront
style. The rest of the city looms in front of us—gray skyscrapers that probably serve
as barracks for the soldiers, some new with smooth sides and tinted glass windows,
others pockmarked and crumbling as if they’ve been fed a steady diet of grenades.
A few are ash and ruins, some with just one wall left, pointing upward like a broken
monument. No terraced buildings here, no grassy levels dotted with herds of cattle.

We hurry along the street with our stiff jacket collars turned up in a pitiful attempt
to shield us from the rain. “This place has been bombed, yeah?” I mutter to Kaede.
My teeth chatter with each word.

Kaede opens her mouth in mock surprise. “Wow. You’re a cracked genius, you know that?”

“I don’t get it.” I study the crumbling buildings that dot the horizon. “What’s with
the shell-shocked look here? Isn’t the actual fighting happening farther away?”

Kaede leans in so the other soldiers on the street don’t hear us. “The Colonies have
been pushing in along this part of the border since I was, what, seventeen? Anyway,
for years. They’ve probably gotten a good hundred miles in from where the Republic
claims the Colorado line is.”

After so many years of listening to the constant bombardment of Republic propaganda,
it’s jarring to hear someone tell me the truth. “What—so are you saying the Colonies
are winning the war, then?” I ask in a low voice.

“They’ve been winning for a while now. You heard it from me first. Give it a few more
years, kid, and the Colonies will be right in your backyard.” She sounds kinda disgusted.
Maybe there’s some lingering resentment she has against the Colonies. “Make of that
what you will,” she mutters. “I’m just here for the money.”

I fall silent.
The Colonies will be the new United States.
Can it really be possible that after all these years of war, it might finally come
to an end? I try to imagine a world without the Republic—without the Elector, the
Trials, the plagues. The Colonies as the victor. Man, too good to be true. And with
the Elector’s potential assassination, this might all come true even sooner. I’m tempted
to press her more on it, but Kaede shushes me before I can start, and we end up walking
in silence.

We make a turn several blocks down and follow a double row of railroad tracks for
what feels like several miles. Finally, we stop when we reach a street corner far
from the barracks, darkened by the shadows of ruined buildings alongside it. Lone
soldiers walk by here and there. “There’s a lull in the fighting right now,” Kaede
murmurs as she squints down the track. “Has been for a few days. But it’ll pick up
soon. You’re gonna be so grateful to be hanging with us; none of these Republic soldiers
will have the luxury of hiding underground when the bombs come raining down.”

“Underground?”

But Kaede’s attention is fixed on a soldier walking straight toward us along one side
of the tracks. I blink water out of my eyes and try to get a better look at him. He’s
dressed no differently from us, in a soaked cadet jacket with a diagonal flap of cloth
covering part of the buttons, and single silver stripes along each shoulder. His dark
skin is slick behind the sheets of pouring rain, and his short curls are plastered
to his head. His breath comes out in white clouds. When he gets closer, I can see
that his eyes are a startling, pale gray.

He walks by without acknowledging us, and gives Kaede the subtlest gesture: two fingers
of his right hand held out in a V.

We cross the tracks and continue for several more blocks. Here the buildings are crowded
close together and the streets are so narrow that only two people can fit down an
alley at a time. This must have once been an area where civilians lived. Many of the
windows are blown out and others are covered with tattered cloth. I see a couple of
people’s shadows inside them, lit by flickering candles. Whoever isn’t a soldier in
this town must be doing what my father used to do—cooking, cleaning, and caring for
the troops. Dad must’ve lived in squalor like this too whenever he headed out to the
warfront for his tours of duty.

Kaede shakes me out of my thoughts by pulling us abruptly into one of the dark, narrow
alleys. “Move fast,” she whispers.

“You know who you’re talking to, right?”

She ignores me, kneels down along the edge of one wall where there’s a metal grating
lining the ground, then takes out a tiny black device with her good arm. She runs
it quickly along an edge of the grating. A second passes. Then the grating lifts off
the ground on two hinges and silently slides open, revealing a black hole. It’s purposely
designed to be worn and dirty, I realize, but this thing’s been modified into a secret
entrance. Kaede stoops down and jumps into the hole. I follow suit. My boots splash
into shallow water, and the grating above us slides shut again.

Kaede grabs my hand and leads me through a tunnel. It smells stale here, like old
stone and rain and rusted metal. Ice-cold water drips from the ceiling and through
my wet hair. We travel only a few feet in before taking a sharp right turn, letting
the darkness swallow us whole.

“There used to be miles of tunnels like this in almost every warfront city,” Kaede
whispers into the silence.

“Yeah? What were they for?”

“Rumor’s that all these old tunnels used to be for eastern Americans trying to sneak
west to get away from the floods. Even back before the war began. So each of these
tunnels goes right under the warfront barricades between the Republic and the Colonies.”
Kaede makes a sliding motion with her hand that I can barely make out in the gloom.
“After the war started, both countries started using them offensively, so the Republic
destroyed all the entrances within their borders and the Colonies did the same on
the other end. The Patriots managed to dig out and rebuild five tunnels in secret.
We’ll be using this Lamar one”—she pauses to gesture at the dripping ceiling—“and
one in Pierra. A nearby city.”

I try to imagine what it must’ve once been like, a time when there wasn’t a Republic
or Colonies and a single country covered the middle of North America. “And no one
knows these are here?”

Kaede snorts. “You think we’d be using these if the Republic knew about them? Not
even the Colonies know. But they’re great for Patriot missions.”

“Do the Colonies sponsor you guys, then?”

Kaede smiles a little at that. “Who else would give us enough money to maintain tunnels
like this? I haven’t met our sponsors over there yet—Razor handles those relationships.
But the money keeps coming, so they must be satisfied with the job we’re doing.”

We walk for a while without talking. My eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness
so that I can see rust crusting the tunnel’s sides. Rivulets of water drip patterns
across the metal walls. “Are you happy that they’re winning the war?” I say after
a few minutes. Hopefully she’s willing to talk about the Colonies again. “I mean,
since they practically kicked you out of their country? Why’d you leave in the first
place?”

Kaede laughs bitterly. The sound of our boots sloshing through water echoes down the
tunnel. “Yeah, I guess I’m happy,” she says. “What’s the alternative? Watching the
Republic win? You tell me what’s better. But you grew up in the Republic. Who knows
what you’d think of the Colonies. You might think it’s a paradise.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” I reply. “My father used to tell me stories about
the Colonies. He said there were cities completely lit up by electricity.”

“Your dad worked for a resistance or something?”

“I’m not sure. He never said it out loud. We all assumed he must’ve been doing
something
behind the Republic’s back, though. He’d bring back these . . . trinkets related
to the United States. Just odd things for a normal person to have. He would talk about
getting us all out of the Republic someday.” I pause there, lost for a moment in an
old memory. My pendant feels heavy around my neck. “Don’t think I’ll ever really know
what he was up to.”

Kaede nods. “Well, I grew up along one of the Colonies’ eastern coastlines, where
it borders the South Atlantic. I haven’t been back in years—I’m sure the water’s gone
at least a dozen more feet inland by now. Anyway, I got into one of their Airship
Academies and became one of their top pilots in training.”

If the Colonies don’t have the Trials, I wonder how they choose who to admit into
their schools. “So, what happened?”

“Killed a guy,” Kaede replies. She says it like it’s the most natural thing in the
world. In the darkness, she draws closer to me and peers boldly at my face. “What?
Hey, don’t give me that—it was an accident. He was jealous that our flight commanders
liked me so much, so he tried to push me over the edge of our airship. I damaged one
of my eyes good during that scuffle. I found him in his locker room later and knocked
him out.” She makes a disgusted sound. “Turned out I’d hit his head
too
hard, and he never woke up. My sponsor pulled out after that little incident tainted
my reputation with the corps—and not because I killed him, either. Who wants an employee—a
fighter pilot
—with a bad eye, even after surgery?” She stops walking and points at her right eye.
“I was damaged goods. My price went way down. Anyway, the Academy booted me out after
my sponsor dropped me. It’s a shame, honestly. I missed out on my last year of training
because of that damn con.”

I don’t understand some of the terms Kaede uses—
corps, employees
—but I decide to ask her about them some other time. I’m sure I’ll gradually get more
info about the Colonies out of her. For now, I still want to know more about the people
I’m working for. “And then you joined the Patriots?”

She flips her hand in a nonchalant gesture and stretches her arms out in front of
her. I’m reminded of how tall Kaede is, how her shoulders line up with mine. “Fact
of the matter is, Razor pays me. Sometimes I even get to fly. But I’m here for the
money, kid, and as long as I keep getting my cash, I’ll do whatever I can to help
stitch the United States back together. If that means letting the Republic collapse,
fine. If it means the goddy Colonies taking over, fine. Get this war over and the
US thing going. Get people living normal lives again. That’s what I care about.”

I can’t help feeling a little amused. Even though Kaede tries to seem uncommitted,
I can tell that she’s proud to be a Patriot. “Well, Tess seems to like you well enough,”
I reply. “So I guess you must be all right.”

Kaede laughs in earnest. “Gotta admit, she’s a sweet one. I’m glad I didn’t kill her
in that Skiz duel. You’ll see—there’s not a single Patriot who doesn’t like her. Don’t
forget to show some love to your little friend now and then, okay? I know you’ve got
the hots for June, but Tess is head over heels mad for you. In case you couldn’t tell.”

That makes my smile fade a little. “I guess I just never really thought about her
like that,” I murmur.

“With
her
past, she deserves some love, yeah?”

I put my hand out and stop Kaede. “She told you about her past?”

Kaede glances back at me. “She’s never told you her stories, has she?” she says, genuinely
bewildered.

“I could never get them out of her. She always sidestepped it, and after a while I
just gave up trying.”

Kaede sobers. “She probably doesn’t want you to feel sorry for her,” she finally says.
“She was the youngest of five. She was nine at the time, I think. Parents couldn’t
afford to feed all of them, so one night they locked her out of the house and never
let her back in. She said she pounded on the door for days.”

I can’t say I’m surprised to hear this. The Republic’s so lazy when it comes to dealing
with street orphans that none of us ever got a second glance—my family’s love was
all I had to hang on to in my early street years. Apparently, Tess didn’t even have
that.
No wonder she was so clingy when I first met her. I must have been the only person
in the world who cared about her.