“I know all this.”
“Well, what you don’t know is what Sevro did next.”
I look to my friend. “What did you do?”
“What I had to.” He takes control of the hologram and wipes Jupiter away, replacing it with me. Sixteen years old. Scrawny and pale and naked on a table as Mickey stands over me with his buzzsaw. A chill trickles down my spine. But it’s not even my spine. Not really. It belongs to these people. To the revolution. I feel…used as I realize what he’s done.
“You released it.”
“Damn right,” Sevro says nastily, and I feel all their eyes settling on me, now understanding why my blade is painted on the roofs of Tinos’s refugees. They all know I was once a Red. They know one of their own conquered Mars in an Iron Rain.
I started the war.
“I released your Carving to every mine. To every holoSite. To every millimeter of this bloodydamn Society. The Golds thought they could kill you off. That they could beat you and make your death mean nothing. I’ll be damned if I’d let that happen.” He thumps his hand on a table. “Damned if I’d let you disappear facelessly into the machine like my mother. There’s not a Red on Mars that doesn’t know your name, Reap. Not a single person in the digital world who doesn’t know that a Red rose to become a prince of the Golds, to conquer Mars. I made you a myth. And now that you’re back from the dead, you’re not just a martyr. You’re the bloodydamn messiah the Reds have been waiting for their entire lives.”
I sit with my legs dangling off the edge of the hangar, watching the city beneath teem with life. The clamor of a thousand hushed voices rises to me like a sea of leaves brushing together. The refugees know I’m alive. SlingBlades have been painted on walls. On roofs. The desperate silent cry of a lost people. For six years I’ve wanted to be back among them. But looking down, seeing their plight, remembering Kieran’s words, I feel myself drowning in their hope.
They expect too much.
They don’t understand that we can’t win this war. Ares even knew we could never go toe-to-toe with Gold. So how am I supposed to lift them up? To show them the way?
I’m afraid, not just that I can’t give them what they want. But that by releasing the truth, Sevro’s burned the boat behind us. There’s no going back for us.
So what does that mean for my family? For my friends and these people? I felt so overwhelmed by these questions, by Sevro’s use of my Carving, that I stormed out without a word. It was petulant.
Behind me, Ragnar moves past my wheelchair and slides down next to me. Legs dangling off the edge like mine. His boots comically large. The breeze of a passing shuttle catches the ribbons in his beard. He says nothing, at ease with the silence. It makes me feel safe knowing he’s here. Knowing he’s with me. Like I thought I would feel near Sevro. But he’s changed. Too much weight in that helm of Ares.
“When I was a boy, we always wanted to know who the bravest of us was,” I say. “We’d sneak out of our homes at night and go down into the deeptunnels and stand with our backs to the darkness. You could hear the pitvipers if you were quiet. But you could never tell how close they were. Most boys would break and run after a minute, maybe five. I always stood the longest. Till Eo found out about our game.” I shake my head. “Now I don’t think I’d last a minute.”
“Because you now know how much there is to lose.”
Ragnar’s black eyes hold the shadows of a vast history. Nearly forty, he’s a man who was raised in a world of ice and magic, sold to the Gods to buy life for his people, and served as a slave longer than I’ve been alive. How much better does he understand life than I do?
“Do you still miss home? Your sister?” I ask.
“I do. I long for the early snow in the throes of summer, how it stuck to the fur of Sefi’s boots as I carried her on my shoulders to see Níðhǫggr break through the spring ice.”
Níðhǫggr was a dragon who lived under the world tree of the Old Norse societies and spent his days gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil. Many Obsidian tribes believe he comes up from the deep waters of their sea to break the ice that blocks their harbors and open the veins of the pole for their spring raiding boats. In honor of him, they send the bodies of their criminals to the deep in a holiday called Ostara, the first day of true spring light.
“I sent friends to the Spires and the Ice to spread your word. To tell my people their gods are false. They are in bondage, and we will soon come to free them. They will know Eo’s song.”
Eo’s song. It seems so fragile and silly now.
“I don’t feel her anymore, Ragnar.” I glance behind us to the Oranges and Reds who spare glances our direction as they work on the ripWings in the hangar. “I know they think I’m their link to her. But I lost her in the darkness. I used to think she was watching me. I used to talk to her. Now…she’s a stranger.” I hang my head. “So much of this is my fault, Ragnar. If I hadn’t been so proud, I would have seen the signs. Fitchner would be alive. Lorn would be alive.”
“You think you know the strands of fate?” He laughs at my arrogance. “You do not know what would have happened if they lived.”
“I know I can’t be what these people need.”
He frowns. “And how would you know what they need when you are afraid of them? When you can’t even look upon them?” I don’t know how to answer. He stands abruptly and extends a hand to me. “Come with me.”
—
The hospital was once a cafeteria. Rows of gurneys and makeshift beds now fill it along with coughs and solemn whispers as Red, Pink, and Yellow nurses in yellow scrubs move through the beds checking the patients. The back of the room is a burn ward, separated from the rest of the patients by plastic containment walls. A woman’s screaming on the other side of the plastic, fighting a nurse as he tries to give her an injection. Two other nurses rush to subdue her.
I feel swallowed by the sterile sadness of the place. There’s no gore. No blood dripping on the floor. But this is the aftermath of my escape from Attica. Even with a Carver as good as Mickey, they won’t have the resources to mend these people. The wounded stare up at the stone ceiling wondering what life will be like now. That’s what this feeling is in this room. Trauma. Not of flesh. But lives and dreams interrupted.
I’d retreat from the room, but Ragnar rolls me forward to the edge of a young man’s bed. He watched me as I came in. His hair is short. His face plump and awkward with a prominent under bite.
“What’s what?” I ask, my voice remembering the flavor of the mine.
He shrugs. “Just dancin’ time away, hear?”
“I hear.” I extend a hand. “Darrow…of Lykos.”
“We know.” His hands are so small he can’t even wrap his fingers around mine. He chuckles at the ridiculousness of it. “Vanno of Karos.”
“Night or day?”
“Dayshift, you pigger. I look like some saggy-faced night digger?”
“Well, you never know these days…”
“True enough. I’m Omicron. Third drillboy, second line.”