Chapter 1:

Sun-swept Plains

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They came at the break of dawn. 

       Mama held her breath at the kitchen table as our glass bowls shattered and the air thrummed with their call. I was first to sense the shift, the tear in the ward. Silverware and teacups buckled beneath the pressure, and my sister’s wounded gaze fell to my hands, just long enough to see the blood.

       I’d had this nightmare a thousand times. It would play out in slow motion—the empty parklands, the muddy streets and stifled cries. I knew every face in this city, and yet those moonless hours couldn’t account for much but shadows. When the air shifted just right, I sometimes still heard the click of their guns. 

​       No amount of time nor distance ever silenced it. 

​       Because I was wide awake now, and our morning sky was caving in.

       “Did you do this?” Ky whispered brokenly. She stepped back just as the windows imploded and harsh wind met our faces. It tore into the walls, seizing our picture frames and paintings. With a blink, each memory was shredded and gone. 

       I dug my nails into the kitchen table and wailed for Mama. Her mouth moved frantically, but all sound had collapsed into a dull, relentless ringing. She was shouting, and our home was breaking—of that, I was certain.

       A tug on the back of my head ripped me away from the table. As our home swayed with the storm, Mama hauled me through the blinking hallways. Ky scurried after us and cradled in her arms what possessions she could. Her small hands trembled, unwilling to leave anything behind. She screamed, though she had no reason. 

       They weren’t here for her. 

       Mama stopped in the space she shared with Papa and an old desk piled high with maps. No bed, because they never slept. She released her tight grip on my hair, and only then did I catch the tired look in her eyes. I waited for her anger. Instead, she gave me her tears. 

       “It’s okay,” she said, patting the side of my face.

       “M-Mama,” I stammered. I trembled and pushed my hands forward. I kept them bound in their bandages like she had taught me, never once removing them, no matter how much my fingertips bled. “Please. Make them stop.”

       “Quit your crying, girl.” She rubbed harshly at her tears, then began to unwrap the bandages. Just that easy, my arms were free. My nightmares were ripping into our atmosphere, and she was doing the very thing they wanted. 

       “Don’t!” My skin burned as if stretched too tight across my muscles. The pain swallowed anything I thought to say next, but if I had to fight Mama again, I would. I’d torch this place without a second thought. I’d take my sister and run. 

       “You must listen to me.” Mama shook my shoulders, ignoring Ky’s plea to stop. She took my face, staring me in the eyes. “Thirty-six, forty-nine,” she whispered, she sang. “Sixty-four, eighty-one…”

       “Mama, please…” Ky whined at my side.

       An icy shiver slid down my back, calming me. Mama’s voice echoed through my skull like a melody. The repeating numbers took root, and I blanked. No pain, only emptiness. I reached out to touch her face, as if seeing her for the first time. “I didn’t… I-I’m sorry.” 

       I felt feverish, like I had been angry about something. When my mind tried to recollect, I slammed against a tapestry of static, where the same blaring numbers made my body feel uninhabited. 

       I’d never hurt Mama.

       Right?

       “I know,” she crooned. “I know you are, but there isn’t much time.”

       Papa suddenly broke into the room, breathing heavily. By the state of his jumpsuit, he’d gone out with the storm. He wiped his oil-stained hands on a map and began to throw things into a satchel, thrusting it at Ky. “Did you hide it?” he asked Mama. When she nodded, he finally looked at me. I wasn’t good at reading people, and my encounters with others were limited to the three individuals standing around me, but Papa never made me feel like his own. I could recount his insults like the tallied numbers along my spine, and all the remaining months he’d made it a point to avoid Ky and me. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at us. Papa hated what we were. 

       “Will they find it?” Mama asked.

       “Not if they keep quiet,” he answered. “Why are you taking them?”

       “You mean our children?” When she stood, I backed away and took Ky’s hand. She flinched when our skin met but said nothing. Perhaps for my sake.

       “They’re targets, Rhea! They’re … things.” Papa opened the chest beneath the desk and rifled through the papers. He found what he was looking for, a string of keys, and pocketed them. “Always have been.”

       “You wouldn’t—”   

       “Watch me.” Papa took his bag and moved his way through Ky and me, heading right out the door and into the storm that bled the sky to grey. Meanwhile, Mama could barely see through her swollen eyes and broken heart. She packed what she could, clawed the remaining memories from the walls, and bundled the maps under the desk. Then she looked at me. 

       “Thirty-six, forty-nine,” she cued.

       “Mama, don’t!” I shouted, as something cold peddled within my chest. My mind drifted between those numbers and sunk deep into a glittering vacuum. Everything blurred before me, save for the dirty bandages that lay at my feet.

       “You won’t fear them. That’s not who you are.” Mama crossed the room and gripped my arms again. “That’s not who you were created to be. Fear—it’s not what we’re here for. Promise me, girl.”

       I wanted to say no. To touch my unbound hands to the wall and disappear. Instead, I nodded, pretending to be unafraid and failing. “I won’t fear them.”

She leaned over and whispered the words into my ear. The walls toppled around us, yet Mama held my face like we had the time of seven moons to burn here. “Thirty-six, forty-nine, sect. Let me hear you say it.”

       A hot tear spilled from my eye. I forgot my name first—I always did.  “Thirty-six, forty-nine, sixty-four, eighty-one...”

       “Sect.” With a kiss to my forehead, I was dragged into the burning daylight and our city now flooded with fire. And all I knew was that I feared fear, despite what she told me. I feared the inevitability of a conclusion, a voiceless void. I feared whatever darkness waited at the end of this.

       Mama pulled sweaters from her bag and hastily tossed them to me, never taking her eyes off the dimming sky. She said, “Put these on. If they take one good look at you, they’ll know.”

       I helped Ky into her sweater before zipping up my own, tucking her brown curls behind her ear and reclaiming her hand. My sister and I made many promises while lying in the desert, during long hours of dreaming beyond the ward and spitting seeds into the craters. This was one of them—her hand in mine, her trust in me, and my vow to save her life, even at the expense of my own.

       “We’re gonna be okay,” I told her. “We’ll hit the nearest road out of here, got me?”

       Her frown eased, though I doubted my words did anything to reassure her. She nodded anyway, squeezing my hand once, then twice. “Got you.”

       “We’ll go—”

       “We’ll go together,” she finished. Ky shifted her bag in her arms as her eyes went to the chaotic mess outside. The stars plunged from the sky like inflamed rocks, and blood covered the dusty streets. Their aircrafts torched every building asunder, leaving the west planetarium to crumble to the ground. Just outside our window, where the desert had once stretched free for miles, hundreds of desiccated bodies now lay. Lifeless.

       Mama spotted Papa across the road. The burning skyscrapers cast him in complete darkness, yet I knew our green truck was there, spare machine parts roped to its roof with the rest of our things. Papa spent more time sitting behind that wheel than he did at home.

       “Keep moving.” Taking my arm, Mama pulled us through the rushing hordes. I recognized the faces as they flew by. Most of them were the abandoned children that had lived in empty sheds, too afraid of life out in the open. One stood in the center of the road, screaming with his hands raised high in the air. The wind flicked his frail body across the torrent. He caught sight of me as I moved past and, with a blink, his brown eyes refocused to red.

       Don’t, I thought with a grimace. My feet slowed as I watched desperation settle over the emaciated features of his face, and a sick feeling overwhelmed me. There were people who had abandoned everything to find solace here, and he was willingly giving in. 

       A large craft dropped from the sky, releasing its hooks, and illuminated his tear-stained face. With a flash of light, they tore into his skin and took him.

       He didn’t scream; he never called for his father again.

       “Over here!” Mama cried. She had pulled Ky ahead while I remained frozen beneath the craft’s lights. As soon as I turned, pulling on my hood to hide my face, it was tugged back, a meaty hand clasped to my shoulder and spinning me around. If they saw who I was, would their hooks tear into me too? Would I cry as they carried me away, or would my body be too broken to feel anything at all? The very idea lit a fire in my core, because how could I leave now, when I had so many promises to keep?

       The hand tugged so hard I slipped out of my sweater. I allowed myself to look them in the face, and instead of the metal armor and the striking insignia I expected to find, I saw the man who lived in the empty bunker beside ours. The one Papa had caught smashing our windows and shooting off his revolver late at night. The madman they kept locked in a cellar, until now.

       “I knew it was you,” he seethed. Without warning, he locked his hand around my throat and threw me against the side of a nearby tower. “Think I’ll get a little extra for the commissary if I toss you over?”

       “You’d get … nothing,” I spluttered, clawing at his filthy hands. “They take everyone! They take … just look.” Like salt to a wound, I knew this truth stung; it did more damage than any storm ever could. 

       Cautiously, the man gazed up and his eyes widened at the sight of the darkening sky. If there was a sun hidden behind the clouds, I couldn’t tell. Their crafts engulfed the azure and faded all to black. 

       “All they want is you. You, you, you!”  With a drunken sneer, the man pressed down on my throat, robbing me of my next breath. He watched me struggle like I was something lesser, like everything wicked had come and I was it. Rather than deny what he said, I felt the nauseating burden of shame. Guilt. Like Papa, I hated what they made me.

       “Stop,” I whispered, losing consciousness. “Please.” I slid a hand down his arm and gripped his face, intending only to push him away. Though without my bandages, the stress caused my mind to trip into overdrive—slowly, and then too fast for me to pull back. It sensed his fear and fed from it. I had no time to think before it was done. 

       My unbound palm radiated with heat, searing his flesh with beastly sores. I stared, aghast, as pain etched its way into the lines of his face and my touch spread like a disease. It didn’t take long for him to drop and begin ripping at his clothes. His cries bled through the congested streets and joined the hysteria. Below the dying sky, I lit him up like the sun-swept plains.

       “You did this… You did this…” he continued to mumble between blistered lips. Flames licked at his skin and distorted him with burns. On my hands and knees, I crawled to get away. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I didn’t mean to hurt any of them, yet the people who ran circles around me might as well have been dead. The sun hadn’t shined the same since I’d been here, no matter how hard I crossed my fingers and played pretend. 

       I stood and shoved my hands within my sweater to stop them from trembling. When the man finally quit moving, he was nothing but charred remains. I’d stripped away everything that made him recognizable.

       With a single touch.

       An overhead silhouette caught my attention as another craft descended from the sky and breached the ward. The barrier held up like a paper-thin fence; it never stood a chance. “Ky Porter,” came an automated voice, followed by flashing green lights. “Adrian Leif, Sarai Cruz, Iris Badden…” They spoke each name like they were broadcasting their time of death. In a foul way, I suppose they were. 

       They singled out their targets and narrowed their lasers while I broke into the masses. If I regretted anything today, it would be promising everything would be okay and failing to make it so. They’d take that hope from her, and it would break her enough for the both of us.

       As if she heard my thoughts, Ky pulled away from Mama and hurdled into the street in search of me. With everyone running in one direction, I moved against the grain, peeling away from the horror at my back. They knew where I was now. Their beams tracked my movements like spotlights. Bombs detonated to my far right, shredding into skin and bone, leaving nothing but suspended soot. Distraught, I tried to guess how much time we had to drive far west where the desert met the marshes, but it was painfully clear that we were days too late.

       From the other side of the crowd, Ky reached her hand out for me. She’d just dug her nails into my palm when one of them grabbed her by the waist and flung her into the arms of another. They stood taller than average, and their movements were always swift and deliberate. Metallic armor covered all view of their face; their guns never left their side. 

      When Ky screamed in their hold, her agony encased the entire storm. For a moment, time slowed down.

       Thirty-six, forty-nine, sect…

       “Ky!” 

       They lunged for me. In blind panic, I lashed out with my heel, sending a plume of dirt into their line of sight. When they jumped right, I feigned left, maneuvering through the crowd with shaking limbs. Still, they pulled Ky further away, until her wild hair and yellow sweater disappeared into the pandemonium. Only her cries remained, and I clung to the sound.

       I powered forward, sorting through the bodies and watching as my sister was thrown to the ground and tagged. They crushed her to the dirt, her bags forgotten, as she cried out for Mama. Her copper collar flickered to green. She closed her eyes, releasing one last scream, and then I heard her silence like a crack in the atmosphere. They marked her like they did the rest, and when she reopened her eyes, I swore I only saw her shadow. She was a blank slate, one of them.

       “No.” The word tasted foreign in my mouth, and I frantically dry-heaved into the dirt, a hand pressed to my chest. Keep her close, I swore to  myself. You promised. Crazed and fighting to stay upright, I pivoted and ran after their crafts in the sky. My legs were two weights, mooring me to these sands, this fate. When I was finally alone in an open field, I stopped running and raised my hands high above my head, so awfully alike that boy with the white rag.

       “Take me!” I shouted. They moved in at the sound of my voice and aimed their guns at my chest. “Release her and I’ll go! Just don’t hurt her.” 

       “We’ve been waiting for you,” one of them said.

       “Come with us,” said another.

       “I-I’ll go.” As lasers cast down from their crafts, I felt the ground shift beneath my feet.  I let the storm blow away my tears. “I’ll go with you if you release her. It’s me you want, right?” I was bargaining with death. I knew nothing would come of me if I gave in, but if it could free Ky from their collar, then hell, I’d offer my soul. 

       Would they let me make the trade? A life for a life? I glanced at Ky’s unconscious body, still lying in the dust, and internally begged her to get up. To run so far from here that she never dreamed of the ward again.

       Ky didn’t move. She never got up.

       My name … what is it?

       A soft click resounded from my left, and I heard it as if it had come from beside me. “Ky Porter—” When I took a step back, their guns buzzed. The clouds lit up with an automated voice: “—You have been activated.” 

       Mama stood beside the truck, her jacket billowing over her thin frame. She cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed. She was a broken kind of beautiful—a face so miserable it was impossible to look away. Her pain-streaked eyes pierced me as she shouted, and after long seconds of tuning everything out, I heard her.​

       You won’t fear them. 

       That’s not who you are.