31With the destruction of the solar panels, our offensive against the Spectres shifts from a cunning campaign borne of subtle sabotage and carefully engineered accidents to an all-out assault. No longer do we skulk in the shadows while letting such benignities as “wear and tear” or “bad luck” take the credit for our misdeeds. There’s no point. The enemy knows of our existence now, and with that knowledge any hope of anonymity is gone. Instead, we embrace our newfound identities as resistance fighters, materializing out of the forest to go after power lines, smash up solar arrays, and ransack supply depots, striking the enemy where they least expect it before evanescing back into the trees like the early mists that fade away into the understory each morn. With every attack, our experience grows; with every success, we become more emboldened.

Three weeks after our attack on the terraforming bunker, we hit our biggest target yet: a power station located out near the hydroelectric dam on the fringes of Settlement 1. We don’t even attempt to be subtle but simply smash in the windows and toss in a couple of our precious demo charges. They explode on my signal, tearing the station asunder with enough force to send pieces of debris flying all the way to the river, where they sizzle and sigh before slipping down beneath the wavering currents forever.

I watch it all burn from the safety of an Iona tree a few klicks away. Though the sinking debris is dazzling enough, it’s the station that takes center stage, luminous and flickering within the twisting fire. Even after the others have gone back to camp I remain, perched high in the Iona’s upper branches, unable to turn away from the destruction I’ve wrought. The red-and-gold flames glow against the bottomless night, writhing around each other in a sensuous ballet rendered only more mesmerizing by its place within this rain-soaked world where the very trees weep and nothing ever burns. With every flame that billows below me, an answering one leaps within my heart, fed by the undeniable knowledge that I did this. I struck the enemy; I destroyed their installation.

I took my revenge.

Not once, not twice, but again and again and again I take it, blazing a swath of destruction through the enemy’s territory with meticulous abandon. While outwardly I ensure that our assaults are an exemplar of military precision—every element planned out, every detail immaculate—inside me stirs a reckless elation that refuses to be denied.

That I don’t want to deny.

Something was unleashed in me the night we destroyed the solar panels. Maybe it materialized out of the shards of that smashed array, like a phoenix rising from the ash, or maybe it was always there, biding within the darkest corners of my heart, but something was born in me during those short minutes that passed between my first step onto the landing pad and my last step off, fragments of glass still clinging to my boots. It seeps through my veins, a sort of creeping darkness that basks in destruction and revels in ruination. With every strike we make, it only grows stronger, and though I’ve tried to deny it time and again, even I am at last forced to admit the truth: that though I liked peace . . .

I love war.

Everything about it—from the initial recon to the strategy sessions and the rallying of the troops, all the way up to the sheer adrenaline rush as we hit the enemy—elicits a dark satisfaction within me, curling through my gut and filling the desperate void inside with something I never knew I needed until now.

A purpose.

For the first time since Lia’s death, I have an objective, an aim, a reason for being. The ennui of my old life is gone, swept away by the drums of war, and in its place brims a dark exhilaration that fulfills me in a way I never thought possible. It winds through my soul, changing me, transforming me into something I can’t define but am helpless to stop—if I even want to stop it. I feel like I’m becoming something greater, something stronger than myself. It excites me . . . but it scares me too, as though some quintessential part of me is being overwritten to accommodate it, though I’m not sure which.

I’m not the only one who’s changing. With every success, the group becomes bolder and more confident, able to take on greater challenges as students who used to ply pens harden into soldiers who wield weapons. Vida’s mean girl persona has morphed into a hard-bitten strength, Trey and Kieran are steady as rocks, and Xylla has put away her schoolgirl silliness in favor of a newfound maturity that only enhances her position as the best sharpshooter in the group. Mercury has gained more confidence, and even Divya has found within herself a trembling courage surprising to all. Though we still have a few holdouts—students who are either unwilling or unable to fight—as a whole, we’ve changed. No longer are we a ragtag group of academy brats on the run from an invasion that was never supposed to happen.

We’re freedom fighters.

A simple designation, but one we continue to prove day after day as we strike the enemy whenever and wherever we can. Though at first our efforts seem largely ineffectual, we’ve begun to see real results. We take out solar panels, and the lights flicker. We clog up water filters, and the faucets stop running for an entire afternoon. In the time it takes the enemy to get the system going again, they use up nearly a fifth of their underground water reserve. The day we took out the power station, an entire section of the main bunker lost power for almost five full minutes before the backup generators kicked in. Individually, no one assault is particularly damaging, but together?

They’re starting to add up.

I monitor them using my terraformer access, and the strain on their system is undeniable. The terraforming bunkers simply weren’t made to support so many people. The early surface work of terraforming was done almost entirely by machines controlled by a skeleton crew who lived in the bunkers. Most of the space underground was for storage, not people. Only after the surface was rendered habitable did the laborers come, and they lived aboveground in cheap, disposable shelters that could be easily shipped and assembled. Now TruCon has filled the bunkers with ten times as many people as they’re meant to hold, and though they’ve worked around the inherent deficits admirably by building additional support structures and tapping into the town’s systems, now that those very support systems are under attack, the chinks in their operation are starting to grow.

It’s a situation that cannot hold. As long as our attacks aboveground continue, the underground systems will have to keep picking up the slack until eventually they hit their maximum capacity, and when they do, the enemy’s entire operation will begin to fall apart. It’s not a matter of if but when. The only question is whether they can complete their work before we eat away at enough of their auxiliary structures for the bunker to fail. So now we’re locked in a relentless race, the enemy and us, with only Iolanthe to witness our deadly game.

I pass on the fruits of our labors to the others, flashing images of darkened underground rooms and regaling them with tales of dry faucets and declining water reserves. With every new proof of our destructiveness, their hunger grows. Spirits rise, and morale is better than it’s ever been. For so long, we’ve been on the defensive, forced to always run or hide from an enemy who can’t be killed or even captured. We’ve cowered in fear and hopelessness, never knowing when they might come for us, but with this new offensive, everything has changed. The hopelessness has gone and the fear has diminished, and now instead of timorously waiting for the enemy to attack, it’s the enemy who must wait for our next attack. It’s almost intoxicating, this idea that, for once, it’s not us who must fear the enemy but the enemy who must fear us, and I’m not the only one who feels it. The usual grumbling has all but disappeared, and everyone has embraced training with new vigor. Even the dread that accompanied our earlier missions has faded, replaced by an eager anticipation driven by the one thing no one can resist.

Winning.

Everyone loves to win, and despite all I’ve garnered for them since the invasion—food, shelter, a place of their own—nothing I’ve given them can ever bind them to me as thoroughly as the thrill of victory. We’re riding high on an ever-swelling wave of triumph, and until that wave crashes across the shore, there isn’t anyone or anything that can stop us.

I sit in the Command Tent, chair tipped back and feet up on the edge of the desk as I plan out our next mission. Before me, a holo model of the settlements hovers over my tip-pad, all our potential targets tricked out red, yellow, and blue. Red for those we’ve hit, yellow for those we plan to strike, and blue for any I consider currently out of reach.

“Look at this!” I crow, waving my hand at all the red. “At the rate we’re going, we’re going to have the Specs shut down within a month—two, tops. Three, if we end up having to go for some of those blue targets, though hopefully the red and yellow will be enough.” I purse my lips in thought. “I’m kind of disappointed, actually. I thought the enemy would put up a better fight than this.”

From the other side of the desk, Zane peruses the map for a moment before raising one eyebrow and dryly asking, “What is it they say? ‘Pride goeth before the fall’?”

A half-amused smile toys about my lips. “You think I’m being overconfident?”

Zane merely shrugs, but his eyes dance.

I laugh. “You’re probably right,” I agree as I drop my feet back to the floor. “So far, we’ve mostly been hitting the easier targets—the stuff that’s relatively unguarded and out of the way—but as we go on, our missions are going to get progressively harder, especially now that we’re openly attacking them. To be honest, I’m surprised they haven’t done more to counter us.”

“Well, up until our most recent attacks, they probably didn’t think they needed to.”

“What are you saying?” I demand in mock seriousness. “You think they don’t see thirty-five snotty teenagers stuck in the middle of the Rainforest as a threat?”

“Possibly not,” Zane concedes, and we both laugh. Not for the first time, I’m struck by how changed Zane is when he smiles—more like a boy his actual age than an old soul who’s seen too much.

Rising to my feet, I gesture to a cluster of targets, all business once again. “For our next strike, I was thinking one of these. Maybe this facility here or . . .”

My words trail off mid-sentence as I suddenly become aware of terse voices just outside the tent. I cock my head, listening for a moment, then go to the window and lift the flap. Not far away, Vida and Jovan stand near the entrance to their private shelter talking. Though I can’t make out the words, it’s clear from the tone of their voices and their tight expressions that this is not a pleasant chat.

“Is it just me,” I ask presently, with a nod to the arguing couple, “or have they been fighting a lot more than usual lately?”

“It’s not just you.”

“I don’t get it—usually they would have broken up by now. Broken up, and then gotten back together.” I frown. “Did they break up, and I missed it?”

“If they did, I didn’t hear about it.” Zane and I exchange a quizzical look, both of us clearly thinking the same thing—that if V and J had broken up, we all would have heard about it.

I watch them for another moment, strangely uneasy as I consider the situation. Normally, I wouldn’t give two figs about V and J’s relationship strife. They’ve been off and on as long as I can remember, and if we were still at the academy, it wouldn’t even register. Though I find over-the-top PDA and sarcastic sniping equally obnoxious, both are relatively harmless in a school setting.

Only we’re not at the academy. We’re out in the middle of the jungle, waging a war against an enemy far more powerful than we are, and as much as I hate to admit it, Vida and Jovan are a key part of that. Despite my overall leadership, both are still wildly popular with their cliques, and as such, their cooperation is essential to my campaign. Neither likes me, and either would supplant me in an instant if they could, but with my star on the rise after our recent victories, popular support is still solidly behind me. As a result, the three of us have managed to strike an uneasy balance of power, with me in overall command while Vida and Jovan, though under me, still retain their social authority over the girls and guys respectively. It’s a delicate balance, this unacknowledged triangle, and yet, if it were to shift in any way . . .

I shake my head, neither wanting nor knowing how to finish that thought. Hopefully they’ll patch things up in the next day or so and it will become a nonissue.

However, as the next few days pass, it becomes clear that the situation is getting worse, not better. Though there’s been no official breakup and the couple is still sharing their private tent, it’s obvious to everyone at camp that something is wrong. I notice it at meals and in our inner circle strategy sessions: strained expressions and tense body language, purposeful physical distancing, and silent exchanges fraught with unspoken minefields. It’s almost as if the two are engaged in a perpetual standoff over an issue wholly intangible to everyone but them. Before long, their tension is spilling out on everyone around them. Vida is constantly on edge, like a wild animal on the verge of attack, and Jovan has become downright insufferable. Even something as basic as planning a simple supply run has become a battleground, and I can’t help wondering if it won’t be the enemy that takes us down in the end, but ourselves.

It all comes to a head six weeks after our initial attack on the underground bunker. Vida, Kieran, Trey, Megumi, Zane, and I return from a two-day supply run on a small emergency depot at the north end of town. Normally when we return from a mission, we’re greeted with heys and high fives and inquiries about the mission, but not today. Today all we’re greeted with is silence.

A bad feeling creeps into my stomach. Though the others are scattered about the camp in their usual groupings, not a single one comes over to meet us. Instead, they simply hover within their cliques, eyes on us as they wait for whatever they expect to occur.

My first thought is ghouls, but a quick check of the force fence rules that out, nor have the surveillance drones guarding the camp picked up anything unusual. No, what’s happening here is clearly homegrown.

Pushing aside my discomfort, I lead the others into camp. It’s only as we near the tents that a tense Xylla jogs up, Divya at her heels. To my surprise, she doesn’t go for her boyfriend, Trey, but instead heads directly to Vida.

“Hey, V!” she says a little too brightly. “You got back just in time. Divs and I were just going to get lunch. Come join us!”

“Thanks, but I need a shower. I’ll catch you guys later.”

“No, really!” Xylla insists, stepping in front of Vida before she can go any farther. “You should join us. We managed to scrounge up the ingredients—well, most of the ingredients—for this Orestian meal Divya used to eat at home. I mean, we weren’t able to get the carrots, or the beets or pickles either, and instead of beef we have beef jerky, and we have to substitute powdered sweet potatoes for real potatoes, but otherwise we have everything. It’s going to be really good, right, Divs?”

Divya quickly nods.

“Enough, Xyl! I’m tired. I just need a shower and a nap.” Vida pushes past her and starts walking over to the tent she shares with Jovan.

“I . . . you . . . we . . . don’t go in there!”

At Xylla’s desperate cry, Vida stops. Slowly she turns, impatience spreading across her face like a thundercloud. “And why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s just that, well, while you were away,” Xylla stammers, glancing at Divya for a second before taking a deep breath and finishing in a rush, “JovansyncedupwithDjen.”

Dead silence falls over the group. I stop breathing, the exhale poised at the edge of my lungs as I wait for the inevitable—

“What?!” Vida’s face goes pale, then reddens, flushing along her cheekbones and down her neck. Her gaze zeroes in on the two-person tent she calls home. With a loud curse, she drops her bag and takes off across the clearing.

What follows isn’t pretty, as an enraged Vida rips open the flap of her tent and storms inside with a fury that would make the most hardened soldier quail. Shouting emerges a second later, first Vida’s strident voice followed soon after by Jovan’s deeper one and Djen’s alto. Any second now, I expect Vida to emerge with Djen by the hair, but the argument stays inside, loud enough to hear across the clearing but too muffled for me to make out any words.

Minutes later, the voices die down, followed by several items flying through the tent flap. Vida emerges a moment later. Alone. I hold my breath, wondering if we’re about to be treated to an outdoor version of what just occurred indoors, but all Vida does is grab her stuff, pivot stiffly on her heel, and stalk down the line of shelters, where she disappears into her former—now apparently current—tent. Five minutes later, she emerges with her towel and a change of clothes, head held high and back straight, acting for all the world as though the last ten minutes never happened as she strides toward the showers.

She disappears into a stall, and Kieran lets out a low whistle. “That was intense.”

No kidding. I’ve witnessed my share of V and J breakups, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

Neither has anyone else, by the sound of it. Astounded murmurs are echoing through the camp, the silence broken now that V and J’s careening relationship has officially crashed. I watch the others with misgiving. This is going to be bad. Already, I can sense the dynamics of the group shifting as they take in this new social schism. This isn’t just any breakup. In the school setting, this is the sort of breakup that can cleave social groups asunder and burn established hierarchies to the ground. The sort that can raise girls from the gutter to the top in an instant, and topple Queen Bs as though they’re nothing. It’s the sort of breakup that can change everything. It’s bad enough when this sort of thing happens in a school setting, but out here?

Stars only know what’ll happen.

“So what do we do now?” Divya finally ventures in a quiet voice.

“Do?” I answer. “There’s nothing we can do except let this play out. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your head down and stay out of it as much as possible.”

The others nod, and with nothing more to be said, the group parts, everyone drifting off until only Zane and I remain. Together we watch the myriad reactions ripple and roil through camp, tacit observers of a rising new social order we can only guess at. A minute passes, then two.

“Maybe this won’t be so bad,” Zane ventures at last. “It’s not like they haven’t broken up before. Maybe this’ll be just like the other times.”

A beat passes. “Maybe,” I agree.

But when I glance into his eyes, I can tell he doesn’t believe it any more than I do.