Everything in me screams to tear it all apart. But instead, I stand idly by. I think of my mother and do not allow myself to feel.

The horror of facing Ghosts has forever changed for me. I will no longer have to fear being hunted down by them in the woods along the old warfront. The gnashing of their teeth and the shriek of their voices no longer threaten me. Now I have to bear a different fear, the fear of watching them turn that same viciousness against the country I’d fought so long to defend.

Once, I stood on the opposite side, facing them down. Now they are my allies, and I will watch them destroy everything.

As the scene finally comes to its awful end, General Caitoman turns and speaks quietly to Constantine. This time, his voice is not full of cold humor. He is annoyed.

“I will have that woman’s words investigated,” he murmurs. He means the rebel, I realize, who’d dared to speak. “They will not amass their army.”

Army. I feel Constantine’s emotions surge again, then settle into a careful tension.

And suddenly, with a start, I know the real reason why Constantine had come to witness these punishments. It isn’t because he is bored. It isn’t because he’s trying to discipline me—although I know he relishes that.

It’s because he needs to see these rebels’ lives ended before his eyes. It’s because he sees them as real threats. Because he is afraid. And that means he knows there must be some truth to the woman’s words.

I am just one of many, she had said. Your Federation will fall. It is only a matter of time.

And I realize that maybe, just maybe, the reports of unrest inside the Federation are more serious than I thought. That the cracks might run deep enough to shatter it.

2

RED

There’s a word in Maran that I like. Restitution.

Adena explained it to me yesterday, when we were stripping the bark off a tree to fashion makeshift weapon harnesses.

Restitution? Adena had said. It means the return of something lost or stolen from you. A correction of wrongs.

There’s no equivalent word in Karenese. Inside the Federation, you’re told that those capable of claiming something for themselves are the fateful owners. If you’re too weak to hold on to what you love, the thinking goes, then maybe you don’t deserve it. Maybe it belongs in the hands of someone else.

It’s nice to know that this isn’t what others believe. And I can’t help but wonder: What else do I not know?

I crouch among the bushes lining the edge of a hill, my gaze following the double steel walls ringing Newage. This is the safest vantage point, a spot hidden in thickets and trees from which the train station set up by Karensan workers is clearly visible.

Behind us is our crowded campsite. Not that there are many who survived the siege: Two dozen are uninjured, a dozen are wounded. Jeran, Aramin, Tomm, and Pira are among the Strikers I know here. Adena calls us—what was it?—a ragtag team. Not wrong, I guess—we are ragged. But everyone still keeps things tidy. Drying clothes are hung in a neat line. Shoes are lined up and polished to the best of our abilities. You have to keep morale up, right? Some sense of order.