Prodigy

staying in here.”
    “We’ll have an extra bed brought in for you,” she says, motioning toward the room’s empty space. “We’ll come check on you again in the morning.”
    I go back to my vigil over June. When the guard doesn’t leave, I look up at her and raise my eyebrows. She turns red. “Anything else I can do for you?”
    She shrugs it off and tries to look nonchalant. “No. I just . . . so, you’re Daniel Altan Wing, eh?” She says my name like she’s trying it on for size. “Evergreen Ent keeps printing stories about you in their tabs. The Republic Rebel, the Phantom, the Wild Card—they probably come up with a new name and photo for you every day. Say you escaped a Los Angeles prison all by yourself. Hey, did you really date that singer Lincoln?”
    The idea is so ludicrous that I have to laugh. I didn’t know Colonians kept up with the Republic’s government-appointed propaganda singers. “Lincoln’s a little old for me, don’t you think?”
    My laugh breaks the tension, and the soldier laughs along with me. “Well, this week you are. Last week Evergreen Ent reported that you’d dodged all the bullets from a Republic firing squad and escaped your execution.” The soldier goes back to laughing again, but I fall silent.
    No, I didn’t dodge any bullets. I let my older brother take them for me.
    The soldier’s laugh trickles away awkwardly when she sees my expression. She clears her throat. “As for that tunnel you two came through, we’ve sealed it up. Third one we’ve sealed in a month. Every now and then Republic refugees come in just like you did, you know, and the people living in Tribune have gotten really tired of dealing with them. No one likes civilians from an enemy territory suddenly taking up residence in one’s hometown. We usually end up kicking them back over the warfront. You’re a lucky one.” The soldier sighs. “Back in the day, this all used to be the United States of America. You know that, yes?”
    My quarter pendant suddenly feels heavy around my neck. “I know.”
    “Well, do you know about the floods? Came fast, in less than two years, and wiped out half of the low-lying south. Places Reps like you have probably never even heard of. Louisiana, gone. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Carolinas, gone. So fast you’d swear they never existed in the first place, at least if you couldn’t still see some of their buildings peeking out far off in the ocean.”
    “And that’s why you guys came here?”
    “More land in the west. You have any idea how many refugees there were? Then the west built a wall to keep the easterners from overcrowding their states, from the top of the Dakotas down through Texas.” The soldier slams one fist into the palm of her other hand. “So we had to build tunnels to get in. There used to be thousands of them back when the migration was at its peak. Then the war started. When the Republic started using the tunnels to launch surprise assaults on us, we sealed them all off. The war’s been going on for so long that most people don’t even remember that the fight’s about land. But when the floodwaters finally settled, things over here stabilized. And we became the Colonies of America.” She says this with her chest puffed out. “This war won’t go on for much longer—we’ve been winning for a while now.”
    I remember Kaede telling me that the Colonies were winning the war when we first touched down in Lamar. I hadn’t thought too much of it then—after all, what’s one person’s assumption? Rumor? But now this soldier’s saying it like it’s the truth.
    Both of us pause as the commotion outside the building gets louder. I tilt my head. There have been crowds of people coming and going from the hospital ever since we got here, but I hadn’t thought about it. Now I think I hear my name. “Do you know what’s going on out there?” I ask. “Can we move my friend to a quieter room?”
    The soldier crosses her arms. “Want to see all the commotion for yourself?” She gestures for me to get up and follow her.
    The shouting outside has reached a thunderous pitch. When the soldier swings the balcony’s doors open and leads us out into the night air, I’m greeted by a gust of icy wind and a huge chorus of cheers. Flashing lights blind me—for a second all I can do is stand there against the metal railings and take in the scene. It’s some insanely late hour of the night, but there must be hundreds of