THE OLD WOMAN HAS TUCKED herself into a cot in the room just off the main door, muttering to herself. I take extra care when I shut the front door behind us. June and I part ways when we come to the torch line, her scurrying through and heading back toward the gate, me running along the perimeter in the other direction toward the City Center.
That is, until I find a section of torches that have been hacked from their concrete blocks, the torch heads bleeding oil and chemicals on the cobblestones instead of burning. I slow to a stop, bending down to pick up the closest decapitated head, dropping it with a clatter when the metal burns my fingers. Still hot.
Goose bumps break out across my arms and down my neck as I remember the boy earlier reminding us to go to the People’s Gate. That’s not too far from here.
It wasn’t just us who knew about the big gathering tonight.
I stare into the darkness, my legs shaking though I’m standing still. Behind me, a muted sort of roar erupts into the night from the lit area below. The sound of a crowd cheering. Like the ones at old City denunciation meetings, drunk on the idea of blood. Like the one Father watched from under the shadow of Traitor’s Arch on the day of his execution, his wife standing over his head, her eyes closed. The same place my old friend Sister Shang met her end.
I can’t change what was done in the past, but tonight it’s Howl’s head they mean to display. I will not lose one more person to that Arch.
Before I can finish this, though, there’s one more thing I need to do. I take out the link and type, I’m here. Are they ready for me?
The reply comes immediately. The Seconds farthest to the left of the City Center. Show them your birthmark and they’ll let you in. Come fast. Dr. Yang is about to start.
I have to weave in and out of the torch line more than once before I get to the People’s Gate and the bridge that fords the river between the First Quarter and the People’s Square. I keep watch but don’t see anyone hiding in the streets or gathering under the gate. Long before I’m close, my view of the City Center seems to pulse, the whole square lit up for the last day of Guonian, paper lanterns softly glowing overhead.
The sight chills me even more than the frosty air, and I wonder once again whether the Port Northian heli that forced everyone to evacuate Dazhai is now here, hovering overhead, waiting for the right moment to strike. What good does it do to gather everyone together and then send up flares telling the enemy exactly where to find you?
As I draw nearer, the murmur of many voices speaking all together reaches me from below, benches set up in the shattered remains of the City Center. The building’s roof is gone, the walls on the far side of the market reduced to a rubble of scorched marble blocks, and what used to be windows grin up at me in a gap-toothed smile, most of the panes broken out.
Traitor’s Arch, however, is whole, even the stairs that lead up to where Mother’s glass box used to sit, though the platform is now empty. Air seems to crackle around me as I sneak through the ruins of the People’s Gate. Yuan Zhiwei’s statue just below the square stands bereft, the lantern light catching on the blade of his ax.
A shadow detaches from an alleyway only a few feet away. For a split second I’m paralyzed with fear until the shadow resolves into Kasim’s wide form. “Done sightseeing?” he asks.
In answer, I start down the hill toward the City Center and the guards ringing the square. Following the Chairman’s instructions, Kasim leads me to the left side, the two of us coming out into the lantern light just as a sharp crack splinters the air. I duck, my heart startling into a gallop as I look around for the source of the shooting.
Instead, an echoing boom shudders through the air, and a bloom of red explodes in the sky above the square. Kasim and I freeze.
Guonian always ends this way, but simply knowing it was a fireworks display can’t make me forget how close it sounded to chemical bombs. Another ground-shaking boom tears through the sky, and I duck down, flashing back to the day Menghu bombed the library, Tai-ge’s father falling bloody at my feet.
“What is Dr. Yang playing at?” Kasim whispers. He puts a hand on my arm, walking close enough that it feels almost as if he’s putting himself between me and the Reds.
There are some very terrible memories in my head dedicated to Kasim, but here he is, standing between me and City soldiers as if he can’t help himself. An odd feeling comes over me, a memory of Howl’s voice like an echo in my ear: I just want to live through this.
I guess we all do, and all of us have the blood on our hands to prove it. The gun feels cold, heavy, wrong where it’s tucked inside my coat. I don’t want to do this. But it’s the only option.
“Weapons?” The guard closest to us looks up as we approach, his red stars looking muddy and tarnished at his collar. “Don’t try to hold anything back. We’ve been instructed to search everyone who comes in, and if you attempt to bring a weapon, we’ll have to assume you mean to use it.”
I open the buckles at the side of my mask, pulling it down and baring the brown birthmark—no, tattoo—that has marked me as my mother’s daughter my whole life. Butterflies churn in my belly as his eyes slide over the pigmentation in my skin.
One hand on his weapon, the Red meets my eyes. My stomach clenches when he doesn’t say anything. Did we go to the wrong guard? Did the Chairman decide he doesn’t want us at the execution after all? Or maybe he forgot to tell this man that, for the first time ever, he wants a Fourth to have a gun.
His muscles tense. So do mine, as if that will somehow stop a bullet when he decides to shoot me.
But then, he nods us in.