Chapter Forty-Two What Must Not Be Unleashed

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

WHAT MUST NOT BE UNLEASHED

On a big screen in Taiping’s residence, she and I follow the latest insurrection updates. The broadcaster’s booming voice lauds the inevitable defeat of the “vile traitors” by the “heroic revolutionaries.” Though quite a few stubborn rebels are still holed up in certain streets and buildings, the army’s combined efforts throughout the past night and day have largely killed, captured, or driven the rebel leaders back underground. Shaky footage accompanies the report, from Chengdu, the Red Cliff Dam, and spontaneous uprisings in other provinces inspired by the initial offensive.

I heard the situations on the ground were absolute chaos, with many civilians caught in the crossfire, but this broadcast presents an easy-to-follow story. First comes a montage of the rebels—white scarves over their faces—firing guns and throwing flaming bottles of alcohol through the streets, interspersed with shots of screaming children, crying women, blood gushing out of spasming bodies, and flailing people burning alive. Next come the clips featuring loyalist soldiers, Vanguards, Yellow Sashes, and even my Phoenix Ladies, putting Qin Zheng’s mandatory firearm training to use. They’re pictured ushering others to safety, firing out of windows or from behind columns, and triumphantly breaching buildings under rebel control. Whenever a revolutionary goes down, the camera lingers, showing their comrades crying out for them and their grimaced yet determined expression as they bear the pain. Whenever a rebel falls, it cuts to the next clip immediately. Because when you’re the one who wins, you get to decide how the story is told.

Except for me, I guess. There’s much I can’t talk about when it comes to my own battle.

“ Is this what you wanted? ” I screamed over and over at Liu Che, shaking his shoulders, once we’d landed and found the lifeless, broken bodies of our partners.

I had to listen to him cry for hours on that mountainside. I didn’t know what was going on with the rest of the insurrection, and I didn’t have enough qì left to go find out. I slumped near the wreckage of our Chrysalises, replaying what happened in my mind, wondering if this could’ve turned out differently if I hadn’t dismissed Wei Zifu as a lost cause. If I had tried harder to talk to her. She was only thirteen.

This is the kind of stuff the broadcasts don’t show.

Eventually, as the rising sun limned the peaks with gold, Qieluo and Yang Jian showed up in a hovercraft, having tracked our spirit signatures on Qin Zheng’s orders after retaking the Han frontier.

Now, the broadcast plays a camera-drone video of how they had leaped from that same hovercraft and landed on the Great Wall amid a rain of gunfire, bullets glancing off their White Tiger armor. They told me they then used their spirit senses to locate pilots held in prisons beneath the Wall. Zhuge Liang had been too noble to kill the ones who wouldn’t join him. Once Qieluo and Yang Jian broke them out, it was basically over. Yet the rebel pilots fought on, threatening to smash a hole in the Great Wall if loyalist soldiers didn’t lift their siege on the watchtower Zhuge Liang was commanding from. Then they followed through on the threat.

“ When laws grow in severity, there comes a point where they become motivational instead of deterring ,” Di Renjie used to say. “ When even the slightest infraction carries the death penalty, why not fight to the bitter end? ”

Warmth stabs behind my eyes. I draw a deep breath and tip my head back, squinting as my view of the broadcast blurs over.

Unfortunately for the rebel pilots, Qin Zheng’s conscription of girls meant pilots aren’t as hard to replace as they used to be, so Sima Yi, who was commanding the loyalist pilots, didn’t hesitate to order killing strikes. The Plum Blossom Deer appears in one clip on the broadcast, driving its twin antler daggers through another Chrysalis’ head. I wonder how many people watching this noticed its arms trembling before delivering the blow.

After a qì blast from Guo Anle’s One-Horned Boar shot down the last rebel Chrysalis, our soldiers broke into Zhuge Liang’s command room. They found him there, dead from a cyanide pill, and the word “tyrant” written in blood on the wall.

This part, they don’t show in the broadcast either. They don’t talk about what the rebels wanted other than a vague goal of “bringing back the corrupt old order.”

There won’t be any memorials to Wei Zifu or Di Renjie. She was a traitor, and people can’t know he was in the Yellow Dragon with me. I suppose Liu Che found out, but no one will believe him. He’s in the Tianlao, awaiting trial for high treason. His age makes it contentious. He might be the first child we execute.

Wan’er is still in the Tianlao as well. Qin Zheng said he’ll talk to me after the insurrection gets put down, but for now, he’s too busy coordinating the battles. Genuine, good faith complaints from inside the revolution have to wait until the guns stop firing to be addressed.

“ End the tyranny, Your Highness. ”

Those last words I remember hearing from Di Renjie must’ve been all in my head. He died the moment I disconnected. I found his body in the yīn seat, having never gotten up.

How many more pilots will die like him?

How many will have to feel them die?

Did he ever realize, through our mind link, that the war itself is a lie? Will the truth really die with me?

I think of Liu Che sobbing his throat raw on the mountain. Of Liang Yuhuan staring at the wall after killing her co-pilot in her first battle. Of the Hunduns in the ocean that once hovered for a moment of peace around me.

On the low glass table before us, Taiping’s tablet doubles in my vision. I could grab it and…

No, I can’t implicate her.

But I know one person in this palace I wouldn’t mind incriminating.

I push up from Taiping’s couch with a grip on my scythe. “I have to go do something,” I say, my voice still hoarse from screaming for Di Renjie. “Alone.”

No one stops me from getting to Sima Yi’s office on the floor beneath the throne room. Why would they? I’m the Empress of Huaxia, allegedly free to do whatever I want.

He startles when I shove through his door.

“Your Highness!” he chides, then visibly relaxes. Since when did the sight of me start relaxing people? Unacceptable.

I swing my scythe while crossing to his desk. His eyes and mouth spring wide when the curved blade catches behind his neck. With my free hand, I jam a piece of cloth into his mouth.

“Mmm!” He lurches away from my blade.

I launch myself over his desk, scattering documents and stationery, and tie him down with a rope I picked up from the kitchens. It takes the wind out of me, moving so drastically while I’m qì-exhausted, but Sima Yi, who doesn’t get much exercise, isn’t hard to overpower in spirit armor.

As he squirms against the rope, I snatch his tablet off a metal stand on his desk. My heart pounds so rapidly my breathing turns ragged. There was no way to be more graceful or stealthy about this, since I needed him to have unlocked his tablet recently with his fingerprint.

I pause at what’s on his screen: a picture of him and Zhuge Liang at some kind of banquet, bronze goblets raised in their hands. I swipe. More pictures of them at various state events, in war rooms, or concentrating over a game of wéiqí .

I give Sima Yi a look. His eyes slide sideways, and color rises on his face. If this were any other occasion, I’d unpack this a little more, but this isn’t the time. I keep swiping on his tablet until I find the dragon head icon of Citizen Central, the platform everyone in Huaxia uses to communicate nowadays. Remembering how I’ve seen Wan’er and Taiping make public posts on Citizens’ Plaza, I compose an announcement in Sima Yi’s name. With his stylus in my shaking hand, I write the words that have festered inside me for too long:

The Hunduns are the real natives of this planet. Our ancestors were dropped here as prisoners.

Qin Zheng will rush to sweep this away as a lie by a hacker, but it’ll create a doubt that’ll linger long after our deaths. So much about this world made more sense to me once the truth sank in. It can’t die with me. It can’t.

I hit the Post button.

A circle spins.

Before it finishes, the tablet blacks out. Harsh white text appears on the screen, line after line.

Wu Zetian, this is an action beyond our agreed parameters.

There are consequences to unleashing secrets that must not be unleashed.

You ought to learn this lesson well.

My hands stiffen against the tablet. Muffled audio comes out of its speakers.

“ I’m telling you to fake the data, ” comes Yizhi’s voice, distant and faint. “ I’ll infect him with a bacteria strain from the lab to mess him up a little. Then you can convince him his immune system isn’t adapted to modern pathogens. It sounds scientifically plausible enough that he’ll believe it. ”

“ Why in the skies would I do that? ” says another, much older voice.

“ Because the gods will it. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want anything terrible to happen to your family, Doctor Hua. ”

The bottom drops out of my world.

“Don’t—!” I clutch my head with one hand as if I could claw this exchange out of my brain. This information can’t stay in my memories. The next time I link up with Qin Zheng—

No, maybe if I refuse to do that again until the mission—

“Okay, I get it!” I cry. “Don’t send this to him!”

We are past the point of threats, Wu Zetian.

From upstairs comes the sound of a cascade of shattering glass, followed by Qin Zheng roaring Yizhi’s name.