War Storm

“Watch your feet,” she hisses over my head, letting the message pass through our ranks. With a click she switches on her dim, red flashlight. The rest of us follow suit, except for the Haven shadows. They only deepen their focus, masking the hellish glow. “The tunnels come up behind the tree line. Drag your toes. Look for thick undergrowth.”

We do as she says, though Kilorn covers far more ground than I do. He kicks his long legs through the dead and rotting leaves, feeling for the telltale hardness of a trapdoor. “Don’t suppose you remember exactly where it is, do you?” he grumbles at Cameron.

She looks up from a crouch on the ground, her hands in the leaves. “I’ve never been in the tunnels before,” she huffs. “Not old enough to make the smuggle runs. Besides, that’s not my family’s way,” she adds, her eyes narrowing. “Keep your bleeding head down, that’s what we held to. And see where it got us?”

“Digging through the dirt for a hole,” Kilorn answers. I hear the smirk in his voice.

“Leading an army,” I offer instead. “That’s where you got yourself, Cameron.”

Her expression changes, tightening. But her lips pull into something close to a smile. A sad one. I understand it. She said before, in Corvium, that she was done with the killing. Done with the lethal burden of her ability to silence and suffocate. Her goal now is to protect. Defend. Though she has more cause than most to feel rage, to seek vengeance, she has the infinite strength to turn away.

I don’t.

The tunnels glow with our red light, bathing us all in crimson. Even the Silvers sworn to Cal or the Rift. The Haven shadows, the Iral silks. A dozen of them, scattered into our number. All of them, for a moment, red as the dawn.

I keep an eye on them as we walk, passing beneath the walls of New Town. They have orders from their lords and kings. I don’t trust them, not by a long shot, but I trust their allegiances. Silvers are loyal to blood. They do as blood commands.

And we are not helpless either.

Ella and Rafe bring up the rear of our number. Both seem energized by our mission, itching for another fight after our defeat in Piedmont. Tyton walks closer to the middle of our party, letting me take the lead, so that the electricons are evenly dispersed. His eyes seem to glow in the low light.

Cameron taps her hand at her hip. Counting steps. Her keen eyes watch the walls with blistering focus. She slides a finger over the place where the packed dirt fades to concrete. It shifts something in her, shadowing her features.

“I know what it feels like,” I whisper to her. “To come back as something else.”

Her eyes snap to mine, one brow raised. “What are you talking about?”

“I only went home once after I found out what I was,” I explain. It was only a few hours. But more than enough time to change my life again. Remembering that visit to my old village is difficult, if not painful. Shade wasn’t dead yet, but I thought he was. And I joined the Scarlet Guard to avenge him. All while Tiberias waited outside, leaning against his rebuilt cycle. Still a prince. Always a prince. I try to shake off the memory like a bad dream. “It won’t be easy, to look at familiar things and see something you don’t recognize.”

Cameron only tightens her jaw. “This isn’t my home, Barrow. No prison is ever a home,” she murmurs. “And that’s all these slums are.”

“So why not leave?” I want to smack Kilorn for his lack of grace, as well as for the rudeness of the question. He catches my glare and sputters. “I mean, you have these tunnels . . .”

I’m surprised by her answering grin. “You wouldn’t understand, Kilorn,” she says, shaking her head with a roll of her eyes. “You think you grew up hard, but this is harder. You thought you were tethered to that river village, trapped by what? A little money? A job? Some guards looking at you sideways?” He flushes deeper as she rattles off each word in time. “Well, we had this.”

Her hand strays to her collar, pulling it aside to show her tattooed neck in full. Her occupation, her place, her prison stamped in permanent ink. NT-ARSM-188907.

“Every one of us is a number up there,” Cameron continues, jabbing a finger at the ceiling. “You disappear, the next number in line disappears too. And not well. Whole families have to run. And where do they go? Where can they go?”

Her voice trails off, the echo dying in the red shadows.

“I hope that’s in the past now,” she mumbles, if only to herself.

“I promise it is,” Davidson replies from a polite distance. His angled eyes crinkle when he tries to offer a bitter smile. If nothing else, the premier is a firm reminder of what can be. How high someone like us can climb.

Cameron and I exchange glances. We want to believe him.

We have to believe him.

I tie my kerchief tighter into place, blinking harsh tears out of my eyes. The air itself seems to burn, and my skin smarts. It’s both dry and damp at the same time, unnatural and just plain wrong.

It isn’t dawn yet, but the smoky sky is lighter than it was before as the sun begins its approach from the east. A high-pitched, electric whistle blows at the end of the alley, then echoes out over the slum, from one factory to another, signaling the massive migration that is the shift change.

“The dawn walk,” Cameron mutters.

The sight makes my breath catch. Hundreds of Red workers flood the streets of New Town. Men and women and children, dark-skinned and pale-faced, old and young, all trudging together through the poisoned air. Like some grim parade. Most look at their feet, exhausted by their work, broken by this place.

It feeds the rage always burning in my heart.

Cameron slips into their midst, with Kilorn and me on her heels. Behind us, the rest of our band melts into the countless dirty faces, blending in with ease. I look back, finding Davidson, who follows at a safe distance. In the growing light, his face tightens, betraying the slight lines of age and care worn into his skin. He fists one hand into his jacket, close to his heart, and gives me a curt nod.

Our steady parade of workers empties onto another street, wider than the rest, lined with stoic block apartments organized like regimented soldiers. Another factory shift hurries toward us from the opposite direction, intent on taking our place.

Gently, Cameron nudges me to the side, moving me in line with the rest of the Red tech workers. They step quickly, in time with one another, creating space for the new shift to pass. As they do, Cameron shoves her fist into her own jacket as Davidson did.

So do I.

Marking ourselves.

The escorts are not Scarlet Guard. Or they weren’t, before all this started. Their allegiances are to one another, to their slum. To small resistances, the only kind possible in here.

Ours is a tall, black-skinned man, willowy like Cameron, his hair braided and pulled back into a tight, neat bun streaked with shades of gray. Cameron’s foot taps as he approaches, her body almost radiating energy. He reaches us and clasps her arm,

“Daddy,” I hear her breathe as he pulls her into an embrace. “Where’s Mama?”

He covers her hand with his own. “She’s coming off shift. I told her to keep her head down and her eyes open. First bolt of lightning, she’s running.”

Cameron exhales slowly. She dips her head, nodding to herself. The dark around us continues to lift, fading to lighter shades of blue as dawn approaches. “Good.”

“I hope you didn’t bring Morrey here,” her father adds, his tone light but scolding. And so familiar. It reminds me of my own parents, chiding me for a broken plate.