Chapter Ten: Iron Demon

CHAPTER TEN

IRON DEMON

Ilie on the cement floor of a dark, cramped cell. A feeble hint of light seeps through a barred window in the heavy door.

I understand the game now.

It’s not that girls are always worse at piloting Chrysalises. It’s that whenever there’s a girl with a tremendously high spirit pressure, she gets shoved with a boy with an even higher one, so no male will ever be overpowered.

10,000. The number flits around and around in my head like birds on fire. An unimaginable value, one that’s supposed to belong only to hyperbole (“Wow, his spirit pressure must be, like, ten thousand!”).

Only for one boy in the past two centuries has it been literal.

Li Shimin, the Iron Demon, doesn’t have co-pilots. He has sacrifices.

My next battle will be my execution.

I curl up tighter in the scratchy, foul-smelling blanket the army tossed me. I rake my nails down my skull and squeeze, as if I could crush the bone and scramble my brains and pop myself out of existence. That would be nice. Better than letting someone else have the satisfaction of doing it.

My laughter flows into the shadows at random intervals. Did I actually think, even for a moment, that what I pulled off in the Nine-Tailed Fox would matter? That they would let me live after I murdered one of their most popular and powerful pilots?

I got what I wanted. I avenged Big Sister. I should’ve been ready to die…thirteen meals ago.

That’s my only measure of how long I’ve been locked in here. It could mean thirteen days. I hope it does. It takes half a moon—two weeks—for exhausted qi to fully recharge. That’s how long pilots are rotated off duty after a battle.

I don’t know why I ate those meals. I should’ve flushed them down the toilet and let myself starve to death in protest. Yet when the first plate of stir-fried vegetables and rice came through the hatch near the bottom of the door, it took my grumbling stomach less than thirty seconds to bulldoze my determination. Iron Widow, my ass.

You need to restore your qi,my brain tells itself.

Restore it for what? Going against Li Shimin?

Skies, am I turning into one of those girls who totter to their deaths under the delusion that they could be the one-in-ten-thousand Iron Princess?

That’s really what you are, though.

I flinch at the reminder from some deeper part of me.

Yang Guang’s spirit pressure was over 6,000. I overpowered him in a Chrysalis.

I am a Princess-class pilot.

It’s so weird to think that’s true, yet what does it matter? The army would rather send me off to die than risk my partnership with anyone less powerful than Li Shimin.

No wonder we make so little progress in the war.

I can’t stop wondering how many people saw what I did. The army is infested with bribes from media companies; there are barely any restrictions on livestreams. Maybe my grandfather caught one. He wakes up a lot during the night. It would’ve been like I killed Yang Guang right in front of him—a thought that never fails to tug my mouth into an open grin.

But stored videos are a different matter. The Council of Sages and its government full of scholar-bureaucrats have the final say on what stays on the networks. Given that I’ve never heard of any Iron Widow, there’s a good chance they’ve decreed the scrubbing of all related footage.

Unless the media companies have pushed back.

I’m bound to be hot gossip everywhere; I bet people would pay astronomical amounts to watch what happened. City people would shell out a whole day’s salary to unlock a view. Rural people would pool their money and watch it in groups on someone’s tablet.

Only sleazy media moguls can salvage my brief legacy now.

Come on, corporate greed.

I snort, then a pang strikes my heart.

Yizhi. His father is the biggest sleazy media mogul. There’s no way Yizhi wouldn’t have access to the footage.

What does he think? Is he as surprised as everyone else? Is he horrified that I really am capable of murder?

Is he proud of me?

I wish I could tell him that Yang Guang never ended up getting what he wanted from my body. It shouldn’t matter, yet I can’t help wishing Yizhi knew that.

I wish I could’ve heard his voice one last time.

I lift my hand into the light from the door, which cuts through the cell in slanted shafts. Dust drifts in the dingy fluorescence. I tense my fingers so they make a clawed shadow on the wall.

I’ve dreamed a lot of being big again. Towering toward the sky, racing over the earth, reaching for the cosmos.

Being free from pain.

I eye my torn robes, which I’ve thrown into a corner. I couldn’t keep them near me after I realized they could be a means of escape, if I had the guts. I could tie one end of the fabric around the toilet piping, the other end around my neck, and then twist until I’m gone.

Thirteen meals now, I’ve imagined doing this. I swear the fabric is starting to writhe like a bundle of snakes. I have heard that the brighter a snake is, the deadlier.

I sit up, ready to—

My bare leg brushes a coarse patch of dried blood on the floor. I jump out of my trance.

Other girls have been locked in this cell. The halos of bloodstains, almost black in the shadows, tell of their miserable stays. It must creep the male guards out to no end, but I’m not scared. I’m a girl; I get it.

I only wonder what those other girls did to land in here. Did they fight back too? Try to escape? Reject orders to pleasure a pilot?

Were any of them also Iron Widows forcibly extinguished from history?

I imagine the struggles that went down in the air around me. The voices that refused to be silenced, the hands that refused to be bound, the spirits that refused to be broken.

Once again, I tear my eyes off the robes and lie down, breathing the chilly phantoms of their fury.

It’s hilarious. Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.

She comes to me in a dream.

“Jiejie,” I choke out, rushing for Big Sister with no pain in my steps.

That’s how I always know it’s not real.

Yet I can’t stop myself from reaching for her, from wanting to stay here forever. Wherever she is, that’s where I want to be.

“Don’t follow after me, Tian-Tian.” She caresses my face, but her fingers crumble into smoke before I can cherish their warmth. “There’s nothing here. It’s not a solution. Not an escape. I’m not free. I’m just gone.”

My knees wobble and give out. I collapse, trying to hold on to her, but my hands pass through her no matter what I do. “I don’t care,” I sob. “Let me stay with you. Please. He’s dead. I killed him. I avenged you.”

Her eyelids droop. “And do you really think that changed anything?”

“What do you mean?” I shake my head over and over. “It’s one less monster in the world.”

“And there are tens of thousands more just like him.”

An ache spreads through me, wringing every fiber of my soul. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“Your worst, of course.” She smiles. “Don’t let them fool you, Tian-Tian. There’s more strength in you than you can imagine. Don’t run away. Don’t let them get what they want.”

Her robes turn shapeless, too, like the cloudy mists that drift year-long above the rice terraces we grew up in. The mist we would imagine as different faces, animals, and objects as we huddled together in the backyard, helping each other ignore the echoing shouts in our heads and the fresh welts on our bodies.

Suddenly, her hazy figure morphs into the Nine-Tailed Fox’s Heroic Form. Cold metal fingers grasp my face and wrench me to my feet. Burning white eyes glare into mine.

“Be their nightmare, Wu Zetian.”

This isn’t the first time the alarms have gone off since I was locked up—triggering new transformations in powerful Chrysalises always provokes more attacks—but it’s the first since Li Shimin and the Vermilion Bird have had their full two weeks to recharge. I flash back to the males of my family crowding around the dining table, watching that last battle of his. Funny, how a memory born to be discarded can become so much more significant.

Eyes on the puddle of my robes in the shadows, I rise. Pain shoots through my feet as usual, but the cold has dulled the edges of it and prevented any festering. I pick the fabric up. For a few seconds, I stare at it, kneading it. Then, instead of wrapping it around my neck and yanking, I pull it over my body.

When the door shrieks open to the side, I’m right there, immediately face-to-face with the soldiers. They jerk back.

I offer my hands with no expression. Just a cock of my head.

My compliance seems to unnerve them more than if I’d kicked and screamed. With suspicious eyes, they cuff my arms behind my back and drag me out. Every movement aches after being locked in a frigid cell for so long, and the pain of walking flings stars through my vision, but I don’t let it show on my face.

Marching boot steps. Metal corridors. Wailing alarms. Flashing red lights. Jangling elevator.

The doors rattle open to the outside, letting in a flood of pale light and cool humidity.

I wince from the assault on my eyes, but gasp and shudder, taking huge breaths of the fresh air. My eyes take several moments to adjust. Heavy fog has consumed the landscape. Of course. Hunduns never attack without something affecting visibility, because they don’t need the visual advantage like we do.

The soldiers march me across a gridded steel docking bridge, like the one that led to the Nine-Tailed Fox. Except this one is set so high that our heads almost brush the watchtower loft above.

My jaw slips open at the sight of the Vermilion Bird. It’s so much bigger than the Fox, or even the Headless Warrior. Its Dormant Form looks like a massive ruby bird shielding itself with its wings. Its surface is so Fire-type rough and wild that it actually does look feathered. The docking bridge leads to the back of its slender neck.

I imagine getting in and taking actual flight, wielding the strength of the strongest Chrysalis in Huaxia. Even if I die, it might not be a bad way to go.

The sound of the elevator doors opening again scatters my fantasies.

When I turn, my eyes snag on bright orange. Cold sweat breaks out beneath my pathetic remains of robes.

An olive-green spill of soldiers spreads out ahead of the tallest, most powerfully built guy I have ever seen. His stark orange jumpsuit strains against his physique. Thick manacles bind his arms behind him. A burlap sack obscures his head.

There’s also a hefty collar around his neck with a chain leash attached, making me momentarily confused if this is a boy or a beast. The facts jumble in my head—Li Shimin is supposed to be nineteen, only a year older than me.

But, of course, he is also the Iron Demon, murderer of his own family and mind-devourer of every girl he has ridden with. Why wouldn’t he look like this?

With both hands, a soldier yanks on Li Shimin’s long leash. He stumbles forward, steps booming across the bridge. The soldiers stalk at his side, pointing guns at him. My feet twitch, itching to back away.

When he gets close to the Chrysalis, they yank the sack from his head.

I almost fail to hold back my gasp. I don’t know what’s more terrifying—the dark steel muzzle clamped around much of his face, the intensity in his char-black eyes, or his short hair.

Hair is considered a precious gift from our parents. We are not allowed to cut it, unless we renounce our family and become a monk or nun. But even those people shave it clean off. To have it short and wild like his is a physical testament to his crime, the worst in the Huaxia penal code: patricide.

I knew this was coming, yet it’s my first real sight of someone like this, and it raises my hackles like I’ve been thrown into a wolf’s den.

The soldiers push him toward me.

I try to back away for real now, but my own guards hold me in place. Which makes the ridiculousness of the situation sink in like nothing else—they have really placed me on the same level of heinous as this guy.

We stare at each other, the Iron Demon and the Iron Widow, our arms cuffed, a crown of gun barrels around our heads, trapped among soldiers and fog and battle sounds.

Or…he’s not actually looking at me. His glare hasn’t gotten any less intense, but it’s piercing past me, not at me.

Frowning, I angle myself into his line of sight.

His glower swims elsewhere.

Tension ripples away from me. The corners of my mouth perk up in delirious amusement.

“Hey,” I say, because there’s a good chance I’m about to die, so why hold back? “At least have the guts to look me in the eye before you kill me.”

He ignores me.

I twist to catch his eyes. When his head immediately turns, I do it again. And again. And again.

“Stop!” a soldier shouts, exasperated, after I do a particularly jerky maneuver.

They turn us both to the Vermilion Bird. Spirit metal clashes distantly through the dense fog.

I can’t stop looking at Li Shimin. He may be only half Rongdi, but his non-Han blood is really prominent. His face has more depth and dimension than most Han folks’ do; his eyes are set deep under strong brows—part of what makes his glare so intense. He wears no pilot crown.

Almost all my fear is gone now, replaced with a giddy fervor. I might as well enjoy this. He’s as guarded and bound as I am; what can he do?

“So…” I arch a brow. “Killed your whole family, huh?”

He looks farther away from me, his leash rattling.

“Did they deserve it?” I press.

He finally meets my gaze. There’s no guilt, no rage, no hesitation in his eyes. Only a resolve so clear it steals my breath away.

He nods.

My lips quiver. I don’t know what to say except, “I believe you.”

I don’t catch his reaction before the soldiers start shouting and pushing us because of some signal they’ve received. Someone opens a hatch at the base of the Vermilion Bird’s head.

While ushering us into the cockpit, the soldiers unzip the back of Li Shimin’s jumpsuit. My skin crawls at the patchwork of discolored scars across his back. I swear they look like marks from the electric prods used to subdue livestock.

The soldiers tug me past him to line us up above the yin and yang seats. Keys unlock our cuffs. A new surge of fear crackles through me at the sight, over my shoulder, of Li Shimin shaking his unbound hands. More scars riddle his long fingers.

But why am I freaking out? It’s pointless to assume the worst, when the worst would end in my death.

I have to try. I have to fight. If I don’t live, he will. And more girls will be sacrificed to him.

The soldiers shove him into the spirit armor pieces on the yang seat. He gives a grunt when the thin but sharp needles enter his spine, then Fire-red qi flashes in his eyes and surges across the network of meridians in his face. The armor pieces snap shut around him.

My flesh goes stiff and cold as the soldiers flip aside the back of my robes and jam me into the yin seat. The familiar tickle of needles dots my spine like ice drops. Armor pieces lock me in. Li Shimin’s armored arms come around me. I’m not exactly a small person, yet I feel small now. His heat, even through our armor, stifles me like the worst of summer.

When I turn my head, my temple brushes against the warm metal of his muzzle. It gives me an idea.

“You clearly don’t believe in rules, yet you let them put this on you,” I whisper as the soldiers’ boot steps echo out of the cockpit. “Don’t you think that’s laughable?”

No response.

But—right. Muzzle.

“Come on,” I continue. “Do something different once we’re in there. Let me take control. It’s the only way to free us both.”

Someone slams the cockpit shut, plunging us into darkness.

“Let me take control, Li Shimin. Let me—”

Needles thrust into my spine.