Peering through the yellowish haze and dust particles, Anna sees only red. A body to her left, red-suited and limp: the red from his uniform seems to have liquefied, spreading around him on the stone like a dark pool, making it hard to distinguish where he ends and the pool begins. To her right, there’s a nameless soldier, black and red and dead. The third soldier is straight ahead, still alive, clutching the edge of the half-destroyed staircase, as if holding onto it is the only thing he has left—which is probably true. He’s holding on with only one arm, not by choice but out of necessity, as his other arm is lying separately on the ground, between the other two fallen sun dwellers.
Anna knows it was her work that caused this. She’s not proud of this irrefutable fact, but she’s also not ashamed. She did what she had to do. For herself, for Maia, for her family, for the people. I won’t die here. Not now. Although she knows her strong and confident promise is not a predictor of the future—nor has she ever felt one speck of clairvoyance inside her—it gives her comfort to know she’s still fighting.
She steps over the arm, takes aim, and puts a bullet into the back of the guy’s—who’s still clutching the steps like a lifeline—head.
It’s not anger or revenge or even her survival instincts that prompts her actions—no, that’s not it at all. She does it to end his suffering.
Chapter Ten
Three dead, one unconscious. It could have been worse. It could have been them.
Although Anna was initially concerned about Maia—her face was ghost-pale and her fingers trembling as she helped tie up the unconscious guy—she seems okay as she ascends the steps at Anna’s side. Even so, better to check.
“You okay?” Anna says.
“My ankle’s feeling a bit better, I should be fine,” Maia says, glancing down.
“I don’t mean your ankle.”
Maia looks up, makes eye contact for a second, but then returns her gaze to her feet. “Oh.”
“Look, I know that was…violent back—”
“I’ve seen plenty of violence in my life,” Maia interjects. “It isn’t that. You did what you had to do. It’s just…”
Anna stops near the top of the steps, watching the entrance to the cellar carefully for any more unwanted visitors. “It’s just what, Maia?”
“I froze,” Maia says. “I couldn’t have done what you did. I was scared and I just froze up. I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not. What you did, it was incredible.”
“Violence is never incredible,” Anna says, cocking her head to the side when a shot from a rifle cracks in the distance. “But it’s sometimes necessary. No one’s ever ready for it when it comes.”
“Then how do you act when the time comes?” Maia’s question is a simple one, but something tells Anna the answer is vital to the girl’s chances of getting through the next few hours alive.
“Everyone’s different, but what I do is think of all the people who are counting on me to come through for them, the people I want to see again, and I do everything for them. When I threw that grenade I was thinking of how brave Adele is, going to the Sun Realm. When I attacked that guy, Elsey was in my head, how if I didn’t knock him out I might never see her sweet face again.” In any other circumstance, tears might fill Anna’s eyes, but at this time, in this place, Anna’s eyes are dry, so dry they sting a little. She knows that tears are a luxury she can’t afford during war.
“But…I don’t have anyone,” Maia says.
“You have me,” Anna says. “Never forget that.”
She climbs the last two steps, gun drawn, her finger tight on the trigger. Adele and Elsey, and now Maia, swim through her thoughts as she prepares for war.
Chapter Eleven
Each footstep coincides with the slam of her heart against the inside of her chest.
Being outside the cellar again feels strange. She was so certain its four walls were the last she’d ever see, but now, by a stroke of luck or pure will—or fate perhaps—she has a second chance to make her daughters proud.
To her left she spots a threesome of hunting sun dweller soldiers; in their crimson uniforms they look like three smudges of blood on a backdrop of smoky gray. She ducks behind a crumbled wall before they turn her way. Beside her, Maia says, “They’re everywhere. How will we get past them all?”
“We will,” Anna says, fierce determination pulsing through her like an electric charge. “They’re spread out and they don’t expect much resistance.” And little do they know: there’s a few thousand moon dweller soldiers trapped underground, if we can just get them out…
She skates along the wall, the barrel of her gun seeing everything her eyes do, her head on a swivel, her anger rising with each piece of rubble she steps over. Any fear she felt upon ascending from the hell of the cellar is gone, wiped clean inadvertently by the bloody rags of a warring and oppressive government.
Leaving the cover of the wall, she cuts between a pair of crumbling houses, darts across what used to be a residential street, and slips behind another house; this one is still standing, save for its roof, which looks as if it’s been pummeled a dozen times by a wrecking ball. She hears voices nearby.
After glancing at Maia, who seems calmer since leaving the cellar, she heads toward the sound, hopping a wall and galloping across another rubble-strewn backyard. At the next wall she pauses, and then, upon hearing voices, motions toward the other side of the walclass="underline" soldiers beyond, her finger says.
She creeps along the wall, moving in between two houses, then hops the wall, immediately flattening herself on the stone sidewalk next to the neighboring house. Maia land softly behind her. The sounds are close—just behind the house.
They tiptoe along the house, until they’re close enough to make out what the voices are saying.
“On your knees!” a deep voice bellows.
“This is our house. You have no right to do this!” a man says.
“Please, Bear, do what they say,” a woman pleads.
“You should listen to your wife,” the deep voice—a sun dweller soldier most likely—advises.
“Marley, these people, they think they can push us around because we let them. Well, no more. I won’t get on my knees. I won’t!”
Thud! A groan of pain. A woman’s scream. “No, no, no! Leave him alone!” Thud, thud, thud, thud! “Stop it! Stop kicking him!”
The sun dweller soldiers are distracted by the beating they’re giving some poor moon dweller. Anna sneaks a peek, sees four red coats, three of which are relentlessly kicking someone on the ground. Big: not the soldiers, the guy getting kicked. Probably why his wife called him Bear—a nickname, most likely.
The fourth soldier stands nearby, supervising. The commanding officer. He’s smiling. Someone needs to change that.
Anna motions to Maia to split up, to circle around to the left while she goes right. Maia’s eyes are wide, but Anna notices that the steeliness has returned. Good timing.
Seeing Maia nod in understanding, she darts out from cover, veers to the right—the distraction. Before anyone sees her, she’s upon the first kicking soldier, pistol whipping him in the back of his head with her gun. The next red-clad bully is too busy stomping on the helpless innocent to notice his buddy’s fall. The CO, however, does notice and starts to say something, “Watch ou—” but is cut off when Maia sticks the cold steel of her gun to his temple. “Don’t move,” she says.
Anna, still moving, kicks high and hard, catching the second soldier in the neck, rocking him to the side and into soldier number three, who is turning, finally realizing something is happening. They go down in a tangled pile, the blood from a wicked gash on soldier two’s forehead streaming down his nose, lips, and neck, mixing with the red of his uniform. He’s clutching his head, his face pale, his mouth contorted in a silent groan of agony.