Lightning took out the power supply during the downpour. Chloe woke later in the morning, sunlight filtering into her room through the curtain, to the sound of Hardy barking at Cole and Glenn about getting the power back up.
"It's completely fried," Glenn was explaining to the Chancellor. Chloe could identify him by his thick Southern accent. "I can try to work some magic, but I can't make any promises. It's going to be lights out for quite some time."
Hardy grunted. "Go on then. Try the magic, and I'll try to reach out again to those blockheads over in the Capital. Can't keep sitting around here waiting for them to try to kill us again."
The focus of her hearing shifted then from the distant conversation between Hardy and the two men, to the sound of footsteps, gentle and rhythmic, growing louder with each passing moment, getting closer and closer to her room, and then — someone knocked on the door.
"Chlo?" came Jon's voice from the other side. "You up?"
"One sec!"
She was at her door in exactly a second, covering the distance between bed and door in a blur. While she unlocked it, she slipped on a blue denim jacket. She pulled it open and looked up at her stepbrother's face.
Jon's face didn't have the lines that typically creased it, the lines of worry and stress and burden. These past three weeks out of action had been something of a well-deserved vacation for him. He'd cut his black hair short and was sporting a buzz cut. His eyebrows also looked like they'd been shaped, appearing more angled now, sharper and darker, giving his face a different edge. His gray eyes, typically stormy or brooding, looked a little lighter.
He was pulling on a baggy white tee when Chloe opened the door, his muscles flexing slightly as he did. He finished with the shirt and started to slip on a brown leather jacket. As he did, he glanced at her, frowned, then tipped his face forward just slightly past the threshold of the door and sniffed the air.
"You went out last night?" he asked, raising one eyebrow, slipping the jacket on. "Smells like rain in here."
She told him about Lucas while they made their way out of the Hall, and of the conversation they'd had in the rain.
"A little worried about him," Jon said as they emerged from the hall. There were still puddles of water around, greatly reduced in depth now that the rain had subsided. The air, however, reeked of Servant and hound remains, worse than before the rain. Outside, men were scooping Servant remains into wheelbarrows with greatly disgusted expressions on their faces.
"But he's not wrong," Jon continued as they headed toward the Grove. "It's been too long without any signs of the Servants, without any movement from the Others. And Jin's been incredibly quiet these past few days, like even she doesn't know what might come next. Like she's scared."
"She's got a million different reasons to be scared," Chloe said. "More than just the Others. If we get called in to one of the other districts, they're not going to be particularly welcoming toward the princess of the alien civilization that's all but reduced our world to a rotting wasteland."
"Hardy'll vouch for her." Jon sounded uncertain even as he said it. "She should be fine."
"Even you don't believe that."
"I don't, no." Jon shook his head. "But let's face it. She's strong. Stronger than the Pandorans. Regardless of how hostile her welcome is, there's very little anyone else can do to hurt her. So she should be fine."
"Should?"
"District 1's a different story," Jon said.
"You think we'll be going there? To the Capital?"
"I think if we were going to be redeployed to any of the other districts, we would have been by now. We were all there when Hardy first briefed the Capital on everything that had happened, everything we'd learned. They're not going to have us moving around with someone like Jin in tow without assessing the situation first. They'll want to see for themselves, want to gauge the threat she poses. Something tells me that's why we haven't heard back yet. They're preparing."
"For us?"
"For her," Jon said, lowering his voice as they came within view of the Grove, the small park in the district where they'd taken to having all of their meals together recently. Already there were Lucas and Aiden, sat at one table, blood bags in front of them. At the other tables sat the district guards who had survived the battle three weeks ago, all looking lean and miserable, steaming bowls of unimpressive-looking soup in front of them.
And then, at a table all to herself, was Jin, black hair falling loosely around her face. She was in a gray tank top, leaving the tattoo on her hand visible. On her table sat a plate of smoked meat, though it looked more charred than smoked. Jin was examining it with a quizzical, almost puzzled expression.
Chloe and Jon stopped at a cooler, fetched blood bags, then made their way to Jin's table. Jin's expression shifted slightly as they sat, looking almost relieved for a moment before returning to one of bafflement at the plate in front of her.
"What is this?" Jin asked, lifting the plate and tilting her head to examine it from a different angle.
"Meat," Jon answered, in an almost revolted tone. Chloe thought she could hear his stomach turn.
Part of the downsides of what they were was an aversion to cooked meat. Cooked anything, generally. Anything that wasn't blood would trigger great nausea in them, leave them sick for a while if they ate it. Chocolates and sweets were the only exception — they still caused some irritation, but not the sickening kind, more the kind that dulled their appetites and let them go a little longer without needing to feed on blood.
"What meat is this?" Jin queried. "Nighthound?"
"No, should be lamb." Jon shrugged. "Would you please just eat it?"
"It's scorched," Jin said, setting the plate down and looking thoroughly displeased. She crossed her arms and pouted. "Such a meal is beneath me, not fitting for someone of my royal station."
Jon blinked once, incredulously. "You're joking, right?"
"Would you eat this?" Jin asked, pushing the plate toward Jon. Jon recoiled and was quick to shove it back in her direction.
"No," was his cold response. "And you know why."
"We all have our dietary restrictions," Jin said. "You cannot eat meat. I cannot eat filth." She rose to her feet, took the plate and moved toward one of the other tables where the district guards sat.
She spoke to them for a while, and despite their clear discomfort at her presence, one of them still accepted her plate of food.
That alone was enough indication of how dire things had gotten.
The evacuation before the battle meant all the cooks had gone, and so the meals coming out of the kitchen now were being prepared by Cole and Glenn, neither of whom knew their way around a kitchen particularly well. Chloe tried to imagine just how dreadful the soup must have tasted if someone was willing to accept charred lamb as an alternative — from Jin, no less.
Jin returned to their table. "Your people have shockingly low standards," she said. "Any word from your leaders yet? Any orders?"
"None yet." Jon shook his head.
"Do you trust them?" Jin queried.
Jon frowned. "Sorry?"
"These leaders of yours in the Capital, the Council. Surely you must know some of the people who sit on it. Do you trust them? Their judgement? Do you trust that they will do the right thing?"
"Are you asking if we think they'll try to kill you?" Chloe raised one eyebrow.
"I have heard that the ones there are considerably stronger than you are," Jin said, and for a moment she did look genuinely concerned. "I do not trust that my fate will be as secure with them as it is with you."
"They'll do what they consider to be right," Jon answered.
"And if that involves the forfeit of my life?"
"Won't happen," Chloe said. "They're politicians. They'll listen to what we have to say. You have far more knowledge about what's going on than any of us. That kind of knowledge is priceless. If they can see how useful you are, they'll be a lot more willing to play nice. But they will want you monitored."
"I am not a child." Jin returned to pouting.
After breakfast, Jon, Chloe, Lucas, Aiden and Jin set out on their usual patrols, scanning the immediate vicinity of the district for any signs of trouble. This included the road leading up to the district and the woods surrounding it. Other than a few starving stragglers here and there, and a couple of deer in the woods that had been infected, there was nothing.
"Ravan will be dead by now," Jin said after their patrol, speaking of the crazed alien scientist apparently responsible for the angry gods and Nighthounds that had given them such trouble before. "No doubt my father would have been enraged by his failures. One failure, my father might forgive. A second, he would deem incompetence, perhaps even disloyalty. Neither of those are things he would forgive."
"So if the crazy scientist's dead, that's it?" Aiden asked. "Not much left to worry about?"
Jin snorted. "Ravan is not the only brilliant man in my father's employ. Others will have filled the void his absence has left, no doubt devising plans of their own as we speak. It is perhaps why trouble has not yet found us. I am not sure we should be wishing for it to do so. When my father attacks again, there is no doubt it will be with a force more overwhelming than anything Ravan could conjure."
Back at the district, they split off to their respective tasks. Jon went straight to the hall to speak with Hardy and find out if there'd been any word from the Capital. Lucas vanished without a word, though it wasn't hard to guess where he'd gone. He'd visited Spike's grave far too frequently these past three weeks.
Aiden, Chloe and Jin joined those working on the district cleanup, although only Aiden and Chloe offered much help while Jin stood aside and berated them for doing things clumsily and inadvertently making worse messes.
"I know this is supposed to be for the greater good," Aiden said, lifting three Nighthound corpses into a wheelbarrow, "but I swear if she doesn't shut up, I'll haul her over to her father myself."
Chloe snorted, then glanced over her shoulder at Jin, who was standing atop a pile of rubble with her arms folded, staring down at them all with narrowed eyes. She was certain Jin's intention was to look regal, or intimidating, or as though their rightful place was beneath her. But all she looked like to Chloe was lonely, and afraid.
Cleanup went on uninterrupted for another two hours and might have gone on even longer if Chloe, Aiden and Jin hadn't all heard it at the same time.
As soon as Chloe picked up on the sound, her ears twitched and the hairs on her arms stood on end. She straightened at once, face darkening as she lowered the mud-and-blood-stained shovel in her hand.
She turned and fixed her gaze on the horizon, eyes narrowed. Jin leaped down from the pile of rubble, grabbed a shovel and snapped it in two, keeping hold of the more lethal end.
The sound grew louder and louder, drawing nearer to the district. There was the unmistakable hum and whine of engines, and the loud, sharp, mechanical but rhythmic thwop-thwop of rotor blades slicing through air.
A few seconds later, dark shapes came into view on the horizon. Six of them. At the same time, Chloe picked up on more sounds, not from the choppers now visible in the sky, but from behind her. The sounds of tires crunching against earth.
She spun around just in time to see armored trucks drive into the district, the letters N.A. painted on their sides and hoods in gold.
The National Army.
The trucks cordoned off the district entrance. A few more drove toward them and formed a ring around them.
Jin shifted uncomfortably, eyes darting left and right, gripping her makeshift spear hard, ready to let loose at any moment.
The choppers were directly above them now, dropping in altitude, their blades and engines deafeningly loud. Chloe winced as she tried to dull out the noise. The choppers touched down around them, surrounding them just as the trucks had.
Men and women clad in camouflage and tactical gear, complete with battle helmets, emerged from the trucks immediately, all of them wielding dangerous-looking rifles that pulsed with light. More emerged from the choppers, but amongst these were people clad not in camouflage but in black, people who hadn't bothered with helmets or rifles.
There were three of them, and all three had sharp, dangerous-looking eyes. On the sleeves of their gear, each had been branded with an emblem — a badge of sorts — identifying them not with the Army, but with a sponsor.
Chloe read House Lincoln off the emblem on one of them, a tall, lean, freckled boy with middle-parted brown hair, a few strands of which fell across his forehead and into his striking blue eyes. His jaw, chiseled and looking almost hand-sculpted, was clenched in an expression of seriousness, his lips pressed tightly together.
He marched straight toward them and she caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the side of his neck, though she couldn't make out exactly what it was. He stopped in front of Chloe, staring into her eyes coldly and with some disregard. His lips parted, and his voice was cold.
"Where's your Chancellor?"
Hardy arrived then, with Jon, Aiden and Lucas, the latter shooting distrustful glances at the soldiers surrounding them.
Hardy stopped in front of the brown-haired Pandoran and offered a handshake. "Chancellor William James Hardy, Seventh District," he greeted.
The boy, despite appearing unimpressed and faintly annoyed, accepted Hardy's handshake. "Andre Nicholson," he said. "First District." He cast a scanning glance around, his eyes lingering on Jin a beat too long and darkening as they did.
Chloe shifted slightly, placing herself directly between Andre and Jin, a fire of defiance in her eyes.
Andre's gaze moved to her. His expression shifted slightly, as though he found the gesture amusing. Then he returned his attention to Hardy.
"We have orders to lead you to the Capital," Andre said. "You and anyone else still here — you ride with the ground convoy." He gestured toward the trucks. "But her," he added, pointing a finger past Chloe and straight at Jin, "she comes with us in the choppers."