“Celebrating five hundred years since Year One,” Roc agrees.
“My father will use the day to reinforce how lucky we all are, try to garner support for ending the war peacefully.”
“Yeah, he’ll be talking peace while bombing the bejesus out of the Moon Realm,” Ram adds.
“Probably,” I say.
“So that’s why everyone’s inside? Because of the Festival?” Tawni asks.
“Absolutely,” I say. “This is the event of the year for these people. You’ve seen it on the telebox before, right?”
Adele and Tawni nod. “Sure,” Adele says. “Everyone watches it.”
“Well, what you don’t see is how everyone goes to bed early the night before, so they are well-rested for the forty-eight-hour party that starts the next morning.”
“So the Sun Realm’s going to be swarming with people for the next two days,” Roc adds. “Our timing couldn’t be worse. It’s the calm before the cave-in.”
“Shit,” Ram says. I look at the faces around me, their lips pursed, their expressions grim.
“Why wouldn’t my mom have told us?” Adele asks, practically pulling the question right out of my mouth.
Trevor sighs. “She did. She told me.”
Adele’s head snaps to face Trevor. “What?” A flash of pink appears on her cheeks and her fists tighten at her sides.
“She told me,” he repeats. “She thought the Festival would likely be cancelled, but she told me just in case it wasn’t—so we’d have a contingency plan.”
“Why didn’t she just tell all of us?” I ask, still not understanding all the secrecy.
“She didn’t want to worry everyone about something that probably wouldn’t matter,” Trevor explains.
No one speaks for a moment as we ponder his statement. Finally, I ask, “What’s the contingency plan?”
“To blend in,” Trevor says. “Rather than sneaking around, we might actually be able to pass for a group of sun dwellers enjoying the Festival. There will be lots of people, right?”
“More than you can imagine,” Roc says.
I glance at Adele. Her cheeks are pale again, her hands open. “He’s right,” she says. “I think this is a good thing. The more chaos there is up here, the better chance we have of blending in. My mom would have known that.”
“I agree,” I say. Perhaps it is a good thing. The sun dwellers will be too busy getting drunk and celebrating to notice the traitors in their midst. At least I hope.
While the others chew on Adele’s words, I take in our surroundings, and I understand why this guard tower is so undermanned. It rises above the subchapter, in the center of the city, like a single finger held in the air. In a time of war, like now, most personnel will have been dispatched to the subchapter borders, leaving the least experienced guard—the boy—to hold down this well-protected tower. Whether the Resistance purposely chose their secret entrance into subchapter 18 to be in a guard tower, or whether the tower was built later on, I do not know.
I notice that, like me, Adele’s scanning the city. Under the moonlit night her face is a luminescent pale, her mouth slightly open as she gawks at a world that is like another planet to her. Wide, rich, brown cobblestone streets intersect the city, marching in every direction like dominoes. Red-bricked buildings and apartments rise all around us, grand and regal and wealthy, with large spotless glass windows and marble balconies hanging off the sides.
The windows remind me that we’re far too exposed.
Ram’s thinking the same thing. “We gotta move,” he rumbles.
I look at Roc. “We can’t use the main intra-Realm tunnel,” I say.
“I think there’s an old shipping tunnel that’s not used much anymore,” Roc says.
“Lead the way.”
We move out, jammed against the buildings, single file. Everyone’s on the balls of their feet, reducing the footfalls to no more than whispers in the dark. Even Ram manages to jog noiselessly, which impresses me considering his size. We stick to the shadows, in case some insomniac sun dweller decides to peek out their window just as we pass by. The Enforcers aren’t a concern because the Sun Realm has the lowest number of Enforcers of all the Realms—our crime rate is close to nil.
We pass a circular courtyard, hugging the curved edges, gazing at the massive statue of the first Nailin president, Wilfred Nailin, in the center. The one who started it all.
It’s an eerie feeling, zigzagging through the sun dweller city at night, the breeze ruffling my hair and clothes. It almost feels…nice. It takes my mind off what I did in the tower, what I might have to do in the next couple days. I draw the line at saying it’s peaceful, but that’s how it feels. Far too peaceful.
Dark gray rock walls loom over us as we exit the bounds of the city, crossing a wide plain of rock, far from the edge of the city. At ground level is the black mouth of a tunnel. We don’t break stride as we race toward it, seeking the safety of darkness. As its jaws close around us, I let out a sigh of relief.
We play our flashlights around the space, which is empty aside for a cluster of large rocks at one side.
“Where does this lead?” I ask Roc in the dark.
“It leads to—” Roc doesn’t have a chance to finish before the spotlight bursts in his face, darting around the side of the rock cluster.
As he throws his hands over his eyes, a voice says, “It leads to hell.”
Chapter Five
Adele
Not again, I think. Blinded by the light, I’m blinking, blinking, trying to see the sun dweller guardsman, waiting for the sickening sounds of death as Tristan kills another one.
He had no choice.
Heavy boots thud all around us.
My vision clears much faster this time, and when the world reappears it’s much worse than before. We’re surrounded by a dozen red-uniformed men in various stages of alertness and dressing. Based on their half-clothed attire—some are bare-chested, wearing only thick red pants, others have their red tunics through one arm but not the other—we’ve stumbled upon a sleeping sun dweller platoon. They were behind the big rocks on the edge of the cave, well-hidden from our prying eyes. Some quick-witted and wide awake night watchman must have alerted them just before we snuck into their camp.
Just our luck.
None of them move, just stare at us with angry eyes and half-snarls. Each bears a weapon, some swords, some bows with arrows cocked, most black guns. My favorite. Instinctively I try to sense the weight of the gun strapped beneath my tunic in the small of my back. But then I remember: it’s not there; Tawni’s got it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I do have a small knife strapped to my leg, which I mostly use for small jobs, like cutting ropes. Not for killing. Never for killing.
Now what?
“Get on your knees!” one of the sun dwellers shouts. He’s naked from the waist up, with dark curly hair all over his chest, like he might have an ape for a father and a human mother—he spits on the ground—no, make that an ape for a mom, too.
None of us move.
“NOW!” the ape yells, his voice booming through the naturally acoustic cave. NOW, Now, now… His voice fades in the distance, down the “safe” and “unused” tunnel we’re supposed to be heading down.
Still no one moves.
The guy cocks his double-handled gun, probably an automatic or semi-automatic.
“We have no choice. Do what he says,” Tristan commands. Although on the face his words sound compliant, there’s a hint of resistance in his tone, as if he has other plans.
Roc and Tawni are on their knees even before Tristan can obey his own order; I suspect they were halfway there before he spoke. Trevor and I slide down next. Sharp needles of rock pierce and prick my clothes. Ram’s the last to join us, his big nostrils flaring like a bull, his eyes wide and wild, and for a second I think he might attack them all on his own. But eventually he drops to one knee, his other boulder-sized kneecap angled forward as if in a stretch.