Impostors Page 10

  And when that happens, he only knows one way to respond.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

  “Oh.” Col turns away, the back of his hand against his lips. “I thought you wanted me to kiss you.”

  He doesn’t understand. He can’t hear Rafi in my ears.

  He’s going to escalate.

  I swear I didn’t know about this.

  Just get out, Frey. Get out!

  I open my mouth to explain, but Rafi’s message hasn’t come in time. From the north, a speck of light shrieks across the sky, faster than anything I’ve ever seen.

  It leaves a trace, a wavering trail of plasma, the air itself on fire …

  And plunges deep into the heart of Victoria.

  My father makes his own reality. Sometimes with force. Sometimes with atrocity.

  The flash reaches us first, then a boom that ripples the air, setting us wavering for a moment on the hoverboard.

  From the center of the distant city, a dark fist of smoke begins to rise.

  Col stands there, his eyes wide.

  There’s no room inside me to feel anything but resolve. I need to protect him now, with an urgency that feels like hunger.

  “We have to move,” I say softly. “He’ll hit the factories next.”

  “But that’s my …” Col starts, and his words shudder to a halt.

  I turn him gently away from the column of smoke rising from his home, and lean forward to urge our hoverboard deeper into the darkness.

  More missiles hit as we fly away.

  They come as shrieks of light across the heavens, arcing down to earth in the city behind us. Flashes kindle the horizon, followed by tardy thunder that sets our hoverboard shuddering.

  The missiles leave glowing streaks in their wake, until the sky is sliced to pieces. There’s a smell like ozone and burned plastic. My eyes sting.

  I try to breathe away the shock, to wrap my mind around my father’s strategy.

  The strikes are hitting the periphery of Victoria, focused on the factory belt. At least they’re not destroying more of the city center—all that life and color, those fragile, hovering buildings.

  “What’s happening?” Col keeps asking in disbelief. None of this makes sense to him. This is not normal.

  When we’re far enough away from Victoria, I ease to a halt over the dark trees and turn to face him, the board unsteady beneath us.

  “Aribella was right—your family’s forces were stronger than my father expected. So he hit back where you were most vulnerable. It’s what I tried to say yesterday. He always escalates.”

  Col drags his eyes from the spectacle behind us, faces me.

  “This is what you meant? An attack on the city? On my family? You didn’t say anything about …”

  He flings out an arm at Victoria. A dozen columns of smoke rise from its periphery, but none as high as the black tower rising from its center.

  House Palafox, now smoke and dust.

  I don’t want to see it. But even when I close my eyes, the traces of missiles are burned into my vision.

  “It’s always the same, Col. Back home, the newsfeeds thought they could report what was happening, until he shut them down. The elected council thought they were in charge, until they weren’t. His allies thought they could pull him back if he went too far. But he astounds everyone.”

  “That was all in Shreve.” Col turns to face his home again. “No one’s done anything like this in three hundred years!”

  It’s true. No one’s bombed a population center since the Rusties. The first families never attack one another directly.

  “The unthinkable is what he’s best at, Col.”

  “My mother.” His voice drops away.

  “The attack started out in the ruins.” I sound like I’m trying to convince myself. “She might have been headed there.”

  “Maybe. But Abuela wouldn’t have left home.”

  Grandmother, my father whispers in my ear.

  “We don’t know anything yet, Col.”

  He turns on me, suddenly pleading. “But you were there too! Why would he risk killing you?”

  “To show that he could.”

  Col just stares at me. There’s no way he can understand all this at once. It’s taken me sixteen years to see how my father’s mind works.

  But I try to explain.

  “He wanted to show the world that nobody can win against him, no matter what cards they hold. Proving that he could throw me away was just as important as taking the ruins.”

  As I speak, my chest tightens. The spreading smoke is catching up with us.

  “The other cities will fear him even more now. They’ll know there’s no weapon he won’t use. No one he won’t hurt.”

  Something clicks in Col’s stunned expression.

  “My little brother—we have to warn him!”

  I look back at the burning city. The wind is stretching the columns of smoke inland toward the mountains, angling their shape. Like a host of vast black anvils has dropped from the sky.

  “He knows already, Col. This will be on all the feeds.”

  “But Teo needs to know that he’s not safe. And that I’m still alive!”

  Col is shaking, and I take hold of his arms.

  “He’s at a boarding school, right? How many other important families send their kids there?”

  “I don’t know. A hundred?”

  I hold him tighter. “My father can’t attack a place like that. He wants the other cities divided. Nothing will unify them like their own children getting hurt.”

  Col steadies himself. “So there’s a limit.”

  “He can’t have the whole world turn on him at once.” My voice rasps from the smoke.

  There’s a pause. Col is staring at me.

  “How can you think this way? How can you even begin to understand him?”

  I don’t have an answer for that. But my brain is still whirring.

  To the rest of the world, my father risked his only daughter. But even if I never make it home, he’s still got Rafi. He can reveal her in a day or so. Concoct some story about her daring escape. Yet another chance to prove that he always wins.

  This was all a dreadful magic trick—a city aflame, the Palafoxes dead, but his own daughter appears.

  But first he has to wait to see if I’m okay. If two identical daughters show up, the story of his victory gets messy.

  And that’s when I realize—I have a small measure of power over my father.

  He doesn’t know I’m alive. There must be some way to use this. But only if I stay hidden instead of going home.

  The smoke is getting thicker. Ash flutters down around us.

  “We should keep moving,” I say.

  Col looks out into the darkness. “Where?”

  I shake my head. All I know is that I’m not going to the ruins. There will be no rescue by my father’s forces. No triumphant return home for his brilliant warrior-daughter.

  The leash around my neck is gone.

  “You told me something,” Col says. “Right before the missile hit my house.”

  I look up from the fire. It’s the best we could do—a pile of damp leaves and twigs that it took us ages to light. The night is cold, and we’re still wet, though the rain has stopped. Neither of us has spoken in an hour.

  “I don’t remember.” All I know is, he was kissing me just before the missile hit. Something was flickering to life between us, but my father’s atrocity has torn it all away.

  Col’s gaze is sharp in the firelight. Tears have left streaks in the smoke and ash on his face.

  “You said, ‘They’ll pick me up at the ruins.’ You had an escape plan worked out with your father.”

  I take a shuddering breath, then nod.

  “And all this stuff.” Col points at what’s left of my escape kit—the firestarter, the plastic bags collecting rain from the dripping trees. “Do you always have a getaway bag ready?”

  “When I’m a hos
tage? Yes.”

  His expression doesn’t soften. Now that the shock has sunk in, he’s had time to wonder how much I knew about my father’s plans.

  Something starts to crumble inside my chest.

  Col is all I have left. If he stops trusting me, neither of us will survive.

  “You got onto the roof so fast,” he says. “Wide awake and ready to run. You knew the attack was coming, didn’t you?”

  There’s no way through this but the truth.

  “Aribella was right about my cyrano.” I take it out of my pocket. The metal glows dully in the firelight. “It scans for hidden messages in Shreve’s public feeds, encoded in the pixels. A warning came, telling me to run.”

  “Kill it,” Col says.

  I stare at the cyrano.

  There’s no city interface out here, and it’s not like I need etiquette tips. But the device is my last link to Rafi. There’s no other way for her to get a message to me. No more warnings. No more advice from my big sister.

  But every second I hesitate costs me Col’s trust.

  I drop the cyrano in the fire.

  For the first time in my life, Rafi and I are truly separated.

  And yet, as the smell of burned circuitry rises up, relief floods through me. My father’s voice is gone from my ear forever.

  I’ve traded my sister for freedom.

  Col still stares at me like an enemy. “So why didn’t you warn us?”

  “They only gave me two minutes’ head start.”

  He shakes his head. “Two minutes? Why would they cut it so close?”

  “Because …”

  I wore the red jacket. A game between me and my sister, while my father was planning murder.

  But it’s too unbelievable, that I’m a spare daughter, nothing but a decoy. That having a crush on Col meant I could be thrown away.

  As unbelievable as the fact that two hours ago Col was kissing me, and now he thinks I betrayed him.

  Something turns hard in my throat.

  “My father couldn’t risk an earlier warning. If you caught me trying to run, you might guess what was coming.”

  Col looks down into the fire. “Or maybe you wanted everything to happen exactly as it did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The whole time you were in my home, Rafia, you weren’t your usual self. You were someone I could be friends with. You gained my trust. And once the attack was on its way, you got us both to safety just in time.” Col looks around at the darkness. “And now we’re out here alone, a hundred klicks from my city’s forces.”

  “Col, helping me escape was your idea! You showed me those bungee jackets on the roof!”

  He leans back from the fire, his expression unchanged.

  Logic doesn’t matter. He doesn’t trust me anymore.

  “Your father,” he says, then spits into the fire. “He wants to wrap this war up quickly, right? That’s much easier if you bring me to him. A hostage, so the rest of my city surrenders. A puppet to put in charge of Victoria.”

  “Never.” I reach out and take his hand. “I knew about the attack two minutes before you did. All my prep was just in case something went wrong. And I never thought he’d …”

  Kill your mother. Your grandmother.

  Destroy your home.

  Set your city on fire.

  Col pulls his hand away from me, and my heart tears a little.

  There’s only one way to convince him.

  I point two fingers, and the pulse knife jumps up from beside me. It hovers in the air, trembling and eager, aimed at his face.

  Ready to kill.

  “Col. If I really wanted to take you to my father, do you think I’d have to trick you?”

  He stares straight at the knife, like he doesn’t care what happens next. Like he’s daring me to turn him into mist.

  But then he says, “Save the battery. I forgot the pulse charger.”

  I close my fist, and the knife drops back to the ground.

  My nightshirt feels cold and damp. A few cactus spines are still caught in it—all that remains of House Palafox’s gardens. That jungle full of life. Those butterflies.

  We sit there in silence, until I gather the nerve to ask …

  “Do we still have an alliance? Or do you think I killed your family?”

  He’s silent, thinking. The leaves are dripping. The wet wood in the fire hisses softly.

  I can’t just sit here, so I move toward him across the darkness. But I don’t know how to do this—how to touch someone this way. I don’t know anything.

  When my trembling hand falls on his shoulder, he flinches. A sob racks his body.

  “There must have been something I could’ve done to stop this. But I made it worse by trusting you.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Col.” My sister’s mantra.

  “I should have forced my mother to listen—”

  “It’s not her fault either. It’s him. It’s always him.”

  Col starts to shiver, and I pull him closer to the fire. My workout sweats have wicked away the rain, but his clothes are still wet.

  I look up—no stars, no moon, no aircraft. Just the choking darkness of a city burned and thrown into the air.

  Too much smoke for anyone to see our little fire. I grab the last handful of the kindling and throw it on the pile. It hisses like a wet, angry cat.

  “They must think we’re dead,” Col says. “We should keep it that way.”

  I hold his gaze across the fire. It’s a good idea, but there’s one problem.

  Rafi’s still at home, safe and sound. Once my father is certain that I’m dead, he’ll reveal her to the world—and Col will know I was always an impostor, sent to make his family drop their guard.

  He’ll know I’ve been lying to him all along.

  But I can’t tell him the truth about myself tonight. His world is already shaken enough.

  “Good idea,” I say.

  “If he thinks I’m dead, your father won’t look for me. We can move easier if we aren’t being hunted.”

  “Move? Where are we headed, anyway? Is there someone who can protect you?”

  “I don’t want protection. I want revenge.”

  A surge of exhaustion rises in me. Col still hasn’t learned that with my father, there is no winning.

  “Listen, Col. Whatever military Victoria has left, it’s not enough to beat him. You’ll only get more of your people killed!”

  “I know,” he says.

  “The other first families won’t help either. They’ll feel sorry for you, and they’ll embargo Shreve for a while. Someone might give you asylum, as long as you keep your head down. But no city will risk all-out war with him!”

  “Then I’ll work with people who have no cities. Who’ve always hated him. And who already have their own army.”

  I shake my head. “Who the hell is that?”

  Col leans back from the fire and gives me a cold smile.

  “I’m going to join the rebels.”

  The next morning, I’m watching Col sleep.

  He’s curled in on himself. The fire is spent and my clothes, my hands, and the inside of my head all smell like smoke. And yet the sky is blue, finally clear of smoke from the attack on Victoria.

  It’s weird, but even after everything that’s happened, I’m still thinking about our kiss. It was my first real kiss. And that look in his eyes …

  He’ll never look at me that way again. Or trust me. Not once he finds out that I was at the center of my father’s plans against his family.

  Col doesn’t even know my real name. And every time I think about telling him, I think of Sensei Noriko, which is enough to shut my mouth.

  Still, we need to have this conversation soon, before the real Rafi shows up in the feeds.

  “Let’s kill a rabbit,” Col says when he wakes up.

  “Sounds good.” Finding the rebels might take a while, and I’m starving.

  We drink our rainwater, pack up o
ur meager camp, and hike to the edge of the forest. We leave the hoverboard out in the sun, its solar panels unfolded.

  Col leads me along the boundary between trees and prairie, his hunting bow in his hand. We keep to the forest shadows, peering out into the tall sunlit grass.

  “There are two kinds of rabbits here,” he says, somehow still a tour guide. “The ones with small ears are volcano rabbits. Not enough fat to be worth eating.”

  “Volcano rabbits? Really?”

  Col shrugs. “Nature doesn’t care what you call it. We’re hunting the cottontails—the ones with big ears.”

  “Okay. But this is your show. My knife doesn’t do rabbits.”

  “Too slow?”

  I snort. “It can break the sound barrier. But it’s overkill—unless you know how to cook rabbit mist.”

  He gives the knife a look. “What’s that thing actually for?”

  “For when people try to kill me. If I have to get out of a room, it cuts through a wall. If I need cover, it turns furniture into dust clouds.”

  “No wonder Jefa had it locked up.” Col’s eyes go from the knife to me. “How do you know so much about ancient weapons?”

  There’s no answer for that except the truth.

  “I know about all weapons, Col. I’ve been learning how to kill since I was seven.”

  He looks at me. “Did you say seven?”

  “Years old, yeah.”

  And I can tell from his eyes—the way he sees me just changed.

  Col knew right away that I wasn’t the temperamental socialite of Rafi’s feeds. He liked me because I was someone unexpected, someone who’d tricked the whole world. But now he’s seeing a deeper me—the trained killer—and I’m starting to scare him.

  “After I join the rebels, where will you go?” he asks out of nowhere.

  I stare at him. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no way the rebels will trust you, Rafi. Because of who you are.”

  “Who I am? Your family has been at war with them for years!”

  “They never tried to kill me.”

  I take a slow breath. Going to sleep last night, I kept thinking about that—Col wants to join the people who attacked my convoy only two weeks ago.

  “Maybe they were waiting for the right time. Are you sure you want to join them, Col?”