Champion

“You are not your father,” I say, holding his gaze with my own. “You’re Anden. You don’t have to follow in his footsteps; you have your own. You’re the Elector now. You don’t have to be like him.”

I think back on my own loyalty to the former Elector, of all the video footage of him shouting orders from the cockpit of a fighter jet, or heading up tanks in the streets. He was always on the front lines. He was fearless. Now, as I look at Anden, I can see that same fearlessness burning steadily in his eyes, his need to assert himself as a worthy leader of his country. When his father was young, perhaps he had also been like Anden—idealistic, full of hopes and dreams, of the noblest intentions, brave and driven. How had he slowly twisted into the Elector who created such a dark nation? What path had he chosen to follow? Suddenly, for however brief a second, I feel like I understand the former Republic. And I know that Anden won’t go down that same road.

Anden returns my look, as if hearing my unspoken words . . . and for the first time in months, I see some of that dark cloud lift from his eyes, the blackness that gives birth to his moments of furious temper.

Without his father’s shadow in the way, he’s beautiful.

“I’ll do my best,” he whispers.

THE SECOND NIGHT OF THE COLONIES’ CEASEFIRE.

    WELL, NO POINT IN RETURNING HOME TONIGHT. PASCAO and I are gonna run through Los Angeles, marking doors and walls and alerting the people quietly to our cause, and we might as well do it from a central location like the hospital. Besides, I needed to sit with Eden for a while. An evening of blood tests haven’t treated him well—he’s thrown up twice since I’ve been here. While a nurse rushes out of the room with a bucket in hand, I pour a glass of water for my brother. He guzzles it down.

“Any luck?” he asks weakly. “Do you know if they’ve found anything yet?”

“Not yet.” I take the empty glass from him and set it back on a tray. “I’ll check in with them in a little bit, though. See how they’re doing. Better be worth all this.”

Eden sighs, closes his eyes, and leans his head against the mountain of pillows stacked on his bed. “I’m fine,” he whispers. “How’s your friend? Tess?”

Tess. She hasn’t woken up yet, and now I find myself wishing that we could go back to when she was still able to shove the lab team around. I swallow hard, trying to replace my mental image of her sickly appearance with the sweet, cheery face I’ve known for years. “She’s asleep. Lab says her fever hasn’t broken.”

Eden grits his teeth and looks back at the screen monitoring his vitals. “She seems nice,” he finally says. “From everything I’ve heard.”

I smile. “She is. After all this is over, maybe the two of you can hang out or something. You’d get along.” If we all pull through this, I add to myself, and then hurriedly banish the thought. Damn, every day it’s getting harder and harder to keep my chin up.

Our conversation ends after that, but Eden keeps one hand gripped tightly in my own. His eyes stay closed. After a while, his breathing changes into the steady rhythm of sleep, and his hand falls away to rest on his blanket. I pull the blanket up to cover him to his chin, watch him for a few more seconds, and then stand. At least he can still sleep pretty soundly. I don’t. Every hour or so, for the last two days, I shake myself out of some gruesome nightmare and have to walk it off before attempting to sleep again. My headache stays with me, a constant, dull companion, reminding me of my ticking clock.

I open the door and sneak out as quietly as I can. The hall’s empty except for a few nurses here and there. And Pascao. He’s been waiting for me on one of the hall’s benches. When he sees me, he gets up and flashes me a brief grin.

“The others are getting into position,” he says. “We’ve got about two dozen Runners, all in all, already out there and marking the sectors. I think it’s about time for the two of us to head out too.”

“Ready to rouse the people?” I say, half joking, as he leads me down the hall.

“The excitement of it all is making my bones ache.” Pascao pushes open a set of double doors at the hall’s end, ushers us into a larger waiting room, and then into an unused hospital room with the lights still turned off. He flicks them on. My eyes go immediately to something lying on the bed. It looks like a pair of suits, dark with gray outlines, both laid out neatly on top of the sterile blankets. Beside the suits is some kind of equipment that looks a little like guns. I glance at Pascao, who shoves his hands into his pockets. “Check these out,” he says in a low voice. “When I was throwing ideas around this afternoon with Baxter and a couple of Republic soldiers, they loaned out these suits for us Runners. It should help you in particular. June says she uses suits and air launchers like these to get around the city quickly, without being detected. Here.” He tosses me one. “Throw this on.”

I frown at the suit. It doesn’t look like anything particularly special, but I decide to give Pascao the benefit of the doubt.

“I’ll be in the next room,” Pascao says as he swings his own suit over his shoulder. He nudges my shoulder as he passes. “With these things, we should have no trouble covering Los Angeles tonight.”

I start to warn him that, with my recent headaches and medications, I’m probably not strong enough to keep up with him around the entire city—but he’s already out the door, leaving me alone in the room. I study the suit again, then unbutton my shirt.

The suit’s surprisingly featherweight, and fits comfortably from my feet all the way to my zipped-up neck. I adjust it around my elbows and knees, then walk around for a bit. To my shock, my arms and legs feel stronger than usual. Much stronger. I try a quick jump. The suit absorbs almost all of my weight’s force, and without much effort I’m able to jump high enough to clear the bed. I bend one arm, then the other. They feel strong enough to lift something heavier than what I’ve been used to for the past several months. A sudden thrill rushes through me.

I can run in this.

Pascao raps on my door, then comes back in with his own suit on. “How’s it feel, pretty boy?” he asks, looking me over. “Fits you nicely.”

“What are these for?” I reply, still testing my new physical limits.

“What do you think? The Republic usually issues these to their soldiers for physically taxing missions. There are special springs installed near joints—elbows, knees, whatever. In other words, it’ll make you a little acrobatic hero.”

Incredible. Now that Pascao’s mentioned it, I can feel the very slight push and pull of some sort of spring along my elbows, and the subtle lift the springs give my knees whenever I bend them. “It feels good,” I say, while Pascao watches me with a look of approval. “Really good. It feels like I can scale a building again.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Pascao says, his voice lowering again to a whisper. His lighthearted attitude fades. “If the Colonies land their airships here in LA after the Elector announces a surrender, the Republic will get its troops into position to stage a surprise attack on those airships. They can cripple a hell of a lot of them before the Colonies even realize what we’re up to. I’ll lead the Patriots in with the Republic’s teams, and we’ll wire up some of the airship bases to blow up ships that are docked on them.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I flex one of my arms gingerly, marveling at the strength that the suit gives me. My heart hammers in my chest. If I don’t carry out this plan just right, and the Chancellor figures out what we’re really up to, then the Republic will lose the advantage of our fake surrender. We only get one shot at this.

We slide open the hospital room’s glass doors and head out onto the balcony. The night’s cool air refreshes me, taking away some of the grief and stress of the last few days. With this suit, I feel a little like myself again. I glance up at the buildings. “Should we test these things out?” I ask Pascao, hoisting the air launcher on my shoulder.

Pascao grins, then tosses me a can of bright red spray paint. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

So off we go. I scale down to the first floor so fast that I nearly lose my footing, and then make my way effortlessly to the ground. We split up, each covering a different section of the city. As I run my sector, I can’t help but smile. I’m free again, I can taste the wind and touch the sky. In this moment, my troubles melt away and once again I’m able to run away from my problems—I’m able to blend right in with the rust and rubble of the city, changing it into something that belongs to me.

I make my way through Tanagashi sector’s dark alleys until I come across landmark buildings, places where I know most people will have to pass by, and then take out my spray paint can. I write the following on the wall:

LISTEN FOR ME.

Below that, I draw the one thing I know everyone will recognize as coming from me—a red streak painted onto an outline of a face.

I mark everything I can think of. When I’m finished, I use the air launcher to travel to a neighboring sector, and there, I repeat the entire process. Hours later, my hair drenched in sweat and my muscles aching, I make my way back to the Central Hospital. Pascao’s waiting outside for me, a sheen of sweat across his own face. He gives me a mock salute.

“Care to race back up?” he asks, flashing me a grin.

I don’t reply. I just start climbing, and so does he. Pascao’s figure is nearly invisible in the darkness, a shapeless form that leaps and bounds each story with the ease of a natural Runner. I dash after him. Another story, and then another.

We make it back to the balcony that runs all along the tower’s fourth floor. Inside lies the hospital wing we’d left from. Even though I’m out of breath and my head is pounding again, I made the run almost as fast as Pascao did. “Hell,” I mutter to him as we both lean against the railing in exhaustion. “Where was this equipment when I was at my healthiest? I could’ve single-handedly destroyed the Republic without breaking a sweat, yeah?”

Pascao’s teeth shine in the night. He surveys the cityscape. “Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t have it. Otherwise there’d be no Republic for us to save.”

“Is it worth it?” I ask after a while, enjoying the cool winds. “Are you really willing to sacrifice your life for a country that hasn’t done much of anything for you?”

Pascao stays silent for a moment, then lifts one arm and points toward some spot on the horizon. I try to make out what he wants me to see. “When I was little,” he replies, “I grew up in Winter sector. I watched two of my little sisters fail the Trial. When I went to the stadium myself and had to take my own Trial, I almost failed too. I stumbled and fell on one of the physical jumps, you know. Ironic, don’t you think? Anyway, one of the soldiers saw me fall. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. When I realized that no one else had seen me except for him, I begged him to let it go. He looked damn tortured, but he didn’t record my fall. When I whispered my thanks, he told me that he remembered my two sisters. He said, ‘I think two deaths in your family’s enough.’” Pascao pauses for a moment. “I’ve always hated the Republic for what they did to the people I loved, to all of us. But sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that soldier, and what his life was like, and who he cared about, and whether or not he’s even still alive. Who knows? Maybe he’s already gone.” He shrugs at the thought. “If I look the other way and decide to let the Republic handle its own business, and then it falls, I guess I could just leave the country. Find a way to live somewhere else, hide out from the government.” He looks at me. “I don’t really know why I want to stand on the hill with them now. Maybe I have a little bit of faith.”