Prodigy

in less than a month, Tess left her childhood behind and became an adult. I cough uncomfortably. It’s an odd new relationship.
    Then she stands up and pulls her hand away. She looks toward the door instead of at me. “Sorry, you should be resting. I’ll check on you later. Try to go back to sleep.”
    That’s when I realize that Tess must’ve been the one to drop off our uniforms in the bathroom. She might’ve seen me kissing June. I try to think through the fog in my mind, to say something to her before she leaves, but she’s already walked out the door and disappeared down the hall.

0545 H OURS.
    V ENEZIA.
    D AY O NE AS AN OFFICIAL MEMBER OF THE P ATRIOTS.
    I CHOSE NOT TO BE IN THE ROOM DURING THE SURGERY; Tess, of course, stayed to assist the Medic. The image of Day lying unconscious on the table, face pale and blank, head turned ninety degrees to the ceiling, would remind me a little too much of the night I’d hunched over Metias’s dead body in the hospital alley. I prefer not to let the Patriots see my weaknesses. So I stay away, sitting alone on one of the couches in the main room.
    I also keep my distance in order to really think about Razor’s plan for me:
    I’m going to be arrested by Republic soldiers.
    I’m going to find a way to get a private audience with the Elector, and then I’m going to gain his trust.
    I’m going to tell him about a bogus assassination plot that will lead to a full pardon of all my crimes against the Republic.
    Then I’m going to lure him to his
actual
assassination.
    That’s my role. Thinking about it is one thing; pulling it off is another. I study my hands and wonder whether I’m ready to have blood on them, whether I’m ready to kill someone. What was it Metias had always told me?
“Few people ever kill for the right reasons, June.”
But then I remember what Day said in the bathroom.
“Getting rid of the person in charge seems like a small price to pay for starting a revolution. Don’t you think so?”
    The Republic took Metias away from me. I think of the Trials, the lies about my parents’ deaths. The engineered plagues. From this luxury high-rise I can see Vegas’s Trial stadium behind the skyscrapers, gleaming, off in the distance. Few people kill for the right reasons, but if
any
reason is the right one, it must be this. Isn’t it?
    My hands are trembling slightly. I steady them.
    It’s quiet in this apartment now. Razor has left again (he stepped out at 0332 in full uniform), and Kaede is dozing on the far end of my couch. If I were to drop a pin on the marble floor in here, the sound would probably hurt my ears. After a while, I turn my attention to the small screen on the wall. It’s muted, but I still watch the familiar cycle of news play. Flood warnings, storm warnings. Airship arrival and departure times. Victories against the Colonies along the warfront. Sometimes I wonder whether the Republic makes up those victories too, and whether we’re actually winning or losing the war. The headlines roll on. There’s even a public announcement warning that any civilian caught with a red streak in his or her hair will be arrested on sight.
    The news cycle ends abruptly. I straighten when I see the next bit of footage: The new Elector is about to give his first live speech to the public.
    I hesitate, then glance over at Kaede. She seems to be sleeping pretty soundly. I get up, cross the room on light feet, then skim a finger across the monitor to turn up the volume.
    The sound is tiny, but enough for me to hear. I watch as Anden (or rather, the Elector Primo) steps gracefully up to the podium. He nods to the usual barrage of government-appointed reporters in front of him. He looks exactly the way I remember him, a younger version of his father, with slender glasses and a regal tilt to his chin, dressed impeccably in a formal, gold-trimmed black uniform with double rows of shining buttons.
    “Now is a time of great change. Our resolve is being tested more than ever, and the war with our enemy has reached a climax,” he says. He speaks as though his father hadn’t died, as if he had always been our Elector Primo. “We have won our last three warfront battles and seized three of the Colonies’ southern cities. We are on the brink of victory, and it won’t be long before the Republic spans to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. It is our manifest destiny.”
    He goes on, reassuring the people of our military’s strength and promising later