Skyhunter (Skyhunter, #1)

by Marie Lu

Ghosts travel in packs. This is the first lesson you’re taught when you become a Striker. You learn that Ghosts used to be human, before the Karensa Federation strapped them down and poured dark poison down their throats, twisting them into monstrous war beasts.

That’s how you know they’re coming. The grinding sound.

But the most important thing to remember is this: To kill a Ghost, you must starve its eternally regenerating body. To do this, you must bleed a Ghost out, cutting it at its neck, the only place with a vulnerable vein. It’s what I have trained my whole life to do. My name is Talin. I am a Striker for Mara, the last free nation on this side of the sea. We are legendary bringers of death, assassins of monsters. And the only thing standing between our home and annihilation.

All Strikers work in pairs. We are bonded until death from the moment we take our oath. Corian and I have trained together, have fought side by side, have been able to guess each other’s thoughts since we were twelve. I’m more a sister to him than his blood sisters. When I move, he watches my back. When I lead, he follows. I do the same for him in return. Our lives are intertwined, one indivisible from the other.

Corian and I have always been opposites in everything. He is the thirdborn—wen—son of the Barra family, one of the wealthiest in Newage. His appearance is golden in every way. When he laughs, he leans into it with his entire body, a constantly shifting mosaic of strong lines. It’s the kind of aura that you can’t help but be drawn toward. People buzz around him at holiday banquets, all eager to be seen chatting with him.

My full name is Talin Kanami. I’m a refugee from Basea, a nation south of Mara that fell to the Federation ten years ago. My skin is light brown, my eyes green and slender and long lashed, my hair so black that it shines blue, like a slick of oil in the light.

I’m proud of my Basean features, but many in Mara call refugees like me rats. The Maran Senate has banned us from serving in the Striker patrols. I’m here only because Corian a...

As we finish, Firstblade Aramin Wen Calla comes striding down our ranks for a final check. Our leader is young; some grumble that he’s too young for his position. Not long ago, he’d trained alongside the rest of us as a recruit. But even a few short years as the Firstblade has prematurely streaked silver into Aramin’s thick knot of hair tied atop his head. His eyes are as gray and hard as a thunderstorm, rimmed with ferocious dark powder. His lips are twisted down in a permanent scowl. Black fragments of jawbone stud his ears like multiple earrings. Following the tradition of other Strikers who have lost their Shields in the past, the Firstblade had cut those bones straight out of the Ghosts that had killed his own partners years ago.

There are no speeches of glory, no rousing battle cries. No one needs to tell us that we are the last defense Mara has against the Federation.

If not for the Federation on the other side of this mountainous warfront, if not for their Ghosts stalking the narrow passes, the land is achingly beautiful. The air is cold and crisp, half the sky clear and half a darkening gray. The moon hangs powder white above the tree line, craters visibly speckling its body. A cloud of birds glides through bands of fog drifting through the valley’s basin. The water of a nearby stream glows bright blue from the light of tiny river minnows, what our breakfast of fishcakes had been formed from, although now they teem only in the thousands where there used to be millions. Farther down the plains, I glimpse a herd of rare shaggy cows grazing in the mist. Even now, close to winter, they are searching for the sweet, yellow wildflowers carpeting the foothills, gemstones gleaming in the snow. But what really makes this landscape breathtaking are the ruins of an ancient, long-gone civilization. The structures, scattered everywhere across all nations, are strange and lovely—bones of crimson steel bridges that rise hundreds of feet in the air, crumbling white and dark pillars cut into huge, impossibly perfect cubes. Now the steel and stone are overgrown with blankets of dripping green vegetation.

I wonder where they went. One theory says they died out, killed by a sickness, and that we descended from the few survivors. Another claims they abandoned this earth to live elsewhere among the stars, and we are the stragglers left behind. Or maybe they too had demons to face, had destroyed one another with their hatred. I wonder if they would approve of how we have scavenged their leftovers.

Corian has told me before that Ghosts remind him of humans the most when they are in their last throes. Their movements slow, their breaths curl in the air, and their shrieks, weakened, turn into the sound of something anguished and pitiful. Their eyes water with pink, blood-tinted tears. It is said that they cry because their rotting, eternally growing bodies are in excruciating pain all the time. Their dying whines are a plea for mercy. I always warn him that they do not have the heart he has. He always reminds me that they once did, that before the Federation filled them with poison, they had smiled and laughed and been in love, that real hearts used to beat in their chests. Even though Corian stands over the leader as its executioner, he reaches down to pick one of the blue flowers dotting the forest floor. Then he bends a knee in the middle of the glade, his long coat pooling in a circle around him, and places the flower carefully beside the body. He pulls down his mask and bows his head. His fingers sweep across the floor in a single arc. His lips move without a sound. He always does this, and it is why I respect him. He is saying: May you find rest.

Because sometimes the things that cut closest to your heart deserve the weight of being last.

But a heart can grieve in silence, so I sink to my knees beside Corian’s body and allow the tears to come.

We sow the seeds of Infinite Destiny for our children so that they may rule from this earth to the stars.

He frowns at me. “Well?” he asks. “And your name is?” I pat my throat twice and sign to him. “I’m Talin. I can’t speak.” I don’t expect him to understand what I said. But his eyes widen—and then he smiles and signs back. “Good. All Striker apprentices must learn how to sign,” he answers. “You know that, right?” I remember everything about that moment—the movement of his hands through the air, the easy way he took in my soundless words, the kind smile on his face. I knew that Ghosts on the warfront had powerful hearing, but I didn’t know that Strikers used sign language to communicate out there. My lips twitch with a grin. He’d understood me. He understands me. “They use the same signs that I do?” “Very close. You’ll pick it up in no time.” I notice some of the differences now, like how some gestures are simplified, while others are more elaborate.

In that moment, I make a vow to be like him. I’m going to find a way to walk through life with courage seared into my bones.

The realization surges through me. We are going to die here tonight. Adena takes in the scene with a sense of eerie calm. The same thoughts must have occurred to her too, just as they must have occurred to every single one of us. But she doesn’t show it on her face. Beside her, Jeran—the same boy who had just been blushing earlier about his cooking—has already pulled on his black mask. I pull on mine too. Beside me, Red shifts closer—and for an instant, I think he’s going to attack me with his chains. But he doesn’t make a move. Instead, his stance is turned in the direction of the Federation’s troops, and his eyes have narrowed in rage. He casts me a single, steady look. I twist my blade toward his chains. He flinches before he realizes that I’m freeing him. With two slices, the chain comes apart, and his arms snap free. I cut him loose from his leg bounds too. He gives me a blank stare, as if not quite willing to believe that I’ve released him. And for an instant, I wonder if it’s a stupid idea. Then, he gives me a single nod. I return it, relishing this tiny moment where we can understand each other. If we’re going to die here tonight, it doesn’t make much difference whether my prisoner is shackled or not. Maybe he’ll even fight alongside me. It’s the only thought I have time for. Then we fan out into an attack and charge straight into the jaws of death.

I’ve trained with the most elite warriors of Mara since I was twelve years old. I have seen Strikers and soldiers alike cut down their enemies without mercy. I am not naïve about what we are capable of doing to one another in war. But never in my life have I seen an attack like what he unleashes.

It’s only then that I pick out some of the downcast expressions and anguished eyes in the crowd. Here and there, I spot a man looking anxiously from one cage to the next in search of something, or a woman hugging a child to her with a pained expression. Near me stands a little girl leaning so far out to see the cages that she looks like she’ll fall any second. She continues to strain at the edge of the crowd until someone pulls her back. The families of those who had been mutilated into Ghosts. Those permanently separated from one another and then condemned to this half death. They’re here too, silent and helpless, looking on at all the people around them who don’t seem to care. Searching quietly for something familiar in the faces of these creatures. Trying to find the lost pieces of their families and terrified that they will get their wish. Those who have felt firsthand the true cruelty of the Federation, their tool for keeping their military mighty and their people under control.

And suddenly my anger at this crowd dampens, replaced by true sorrow. How many of them applaud and cheer because they have no choice, because not doing so invites the risk that the Federation will come to their doors one night and rip their families apart? How many of them, then, have faked this glee so often that they now believe it?

We’re not leaving this place without you, I tell him. And all of this—these sick games, this awful display, the torment of these souls—will come to an end. We will avenge your family, and mine. I promise. I don’t know how much of that promise Red can feel. But the thread of emotions between us turns dark, determined. My eyes lock on the Premier still standing casually up on the balconies, his cool eyes turned down at this hall. We may all die by the end of this mission, but so long as I’m alive, I’m going to bring this Federation down. I’ll tear down every brick of this place if I have to, until there is no breath left in my body.

They may try to take everything from you, my mother had said to me on our first night in Mara’s Outer City, huddled over a fire. Her eyes were locked on mine, sharp as flint. But you can take from them too.

He smiles grimly at the look on my face. “There’s fear in you. It drives everything you do. I saw it in you when you first crossed my path at the bathhouse. But fear is a good thing. It breeds insecurities, which then breed ambition. And I always admire ambition.