Chapter Thirty-Nine: That Kind of Guy, That Kind of Girl

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THAT KIND OF GUY, THAT KIND OF GIRL

Shortly after we get back to the Great Wall, the counterattack is announced, to considerable commotion across Sui and Tang. Not every reaction is positive. To quell the remaining doubts, we deploy into one last defensive battle to prove we can start the Vermilion Bird off in a stable form.

With Yizhi in the cockpit with us, strapped into a side seat, the battle is so effortless that, when it’s over, I’m winded by disbelief as I look around the field of Hundun husks. Victories have come so sparingly for us that it doesn’t feel real for one to happen so easily.

But it did, and afterward, the Hunduns stop attacking.

The peace is suspicious. The strategists theorize that the Hunduns have realized a total clash is inevitable, and now they’re holding back to have a bigger advantage on their own turf.

The Sui-Tang frontier borrows whatever Chrysalises the other provinces can spare. The recharging they need from their journeys across Huaxia’s rivers and mountains gives us a final two weeks before the counterattack is launched.

Shimin has told me more about Bagua Zhang, the martial art Wende taught him. It’s a beautiful style, but not a noble one. You’re constantly swiveling behind your enemy, stepping into their weak spots and tricking them into making moves that hand you control of the fight. It’s the style of those who can’t win with brute force.

It’s how we spin our plan to trap An Lushan. Superficially, we obey orders and do every training exercise the strategists demand. But in the shadows, we move like snakes, coiling and winding around our prey and his daily habits.

Then, the night before the counterattack, as most soldiers are distracted by the drunk pilots partying on top of the Great Wall, we strike.

An Lushan jolts awake with a shredding scream. He seizes against the chains and straps binding him to a tilt table—the kind I was tested in to become Yang Guang’s concubine. It looks hilariously small under his massive frame. The scalding water dribbles off his prominent brows and nose, mats his beard, and soaks his strategist robes. He was naked when Shimin dragged his unconscious body out of bed, but we took time to dress him, gather his hair into a topknot, and pin his boxy strategist hat in place.

It’s very important that he be immediately recognizable as himself.

Shimin drops the steaming bucket. It ricochets off the metal platform we’re on with several resounding clangs. We say nothing, letting An Lushan take in the situation for himself. The frigid, rust-clotted testing chamber he’s woken up in. The bonds he has no hope of escaping.

The camera between us, glaring a red eye at him.

“What is this?” he bellows, breath and wet robes misting in the icy air. Chains rattle as he writhes some more, but they just draw more cries out of him. His every movement must be blistering.

An instinctive horror shocks through me, urging me to stop this suffering of a fellow human. But then I feel Shimin’s presence beside me, remember the way he suffered with a muzzle on his face and his veins full of liquor, and everything in me goes as cold and hard as the chamber’s metal plating.

An Lushan didn’t treat us like humans, so why should we treat him like one?

It was easy to knock him out with heavy-duty sleeping pills once we’d figured out his routine. Every day, he has freshly made steamed buns delivered to him from the training camp cafeteria. Hours ago, Yizhi bumped into the delivery boy hard enough to knock the steamer out of his hands, apologized profusely while offering to buy him a fresh batch, then poured the dissolved pills over the new buns before handing them back.

“We have a few questions,” I coo, caressing a towel in my lap like a cat as I sit in my wheelchair. “About the piloting system, specifically. Tell us—in what exact ways is it rigged against girls?”

“Are you two out of your minds?” An Lushan’s face strains red.

“Well, you made us this way.” A grin stretches across my cheeks. “So, talk. Talk fast. Or we’ll do much, much worse.”

“Release me! Now!”

I sigh, whipping the towel open. “Shimin.”

He fetches a bottle of liquor from a cluster of tools Yizhi planted behind the tilt table.

An Lushan’s eyes go huge.

If he’s assuming that we plan on following his example of force-feeding it to him, he would be wrong.

We are not that uncreative.

Shimin shoves the tilt table so that An Lushan’s head swings near the ground. I press the towel over his squirming face.

I thought Shimin would look happier to get revenge, but when he uncaps the bottle and crouches down, his expression is chillingly vacant. He upturns the bottle. Liquor pours out in a rhythmic glug glug glug over An Lushan’s smothered nose and mouth.

A wet, animalistic shrieking gurgles against the towel. The sharp scent of alcohol bursts through the chamber. Shimin grips the bottle tighter. The slightest hint of strain crosses his face.

I remove the towel. Shimin heaves the tilt table upright. An Lushan wails harder and sharper as the alcohol crawls down his body covered with burns. His pain seems to electrify the very air.

Too bad neither Shimin nor I have a high Wood aptitude. Wood qi conducting out of Fire-type spirit metal is an outright spectacle. If we’d been allowed to craft Yizhi a suit of armor, he could’ve shot green lightning out of it—his secondary qi was tested to be Wood type. It would’ve been a great addition to this mix of horrors.

“Talk.” I wheel out of the camera’s sight. “We know the system is rigged against girls. Give us the specifics. And don’t even think about lying. Sima Yi is going through the same thing as we speak. If your answers are different, we’ll know.”

Sima Yi is actually safe and snoring in his bed, but it’s believable.

“Girls—girls are naturally weaker pilots!” An Lushan wheezes. “That’s just the way it is!”

“I don’t buy that. Shimin, let’s continue.”

Table swing. Streaming liquor. Wet screaming and choking.

“How is the piloting system rigged against girls?” I say, impossibly calm.

An Lushan curses rabidly, starting to slur. Alcohol works fast when it goes right through the nostrils. Which was part of our plan.

“You know, we knew you’d be tough to crack.” I cock my head. “But you should consider something: is keeping the army’s secrets worth losing your bloodline?”

He jerks still against the tilt table. “What?”

Shimin hands me a tablet from the tool pile. I hold it up, showing a picture of a boy strapped to a chair in a dark concrete room. A boy the age and build of An Lushan’s son.

It’s actually an image doctored by Yizhi’s company contacts, but I make no explanations. No attempt at verbal bluffing. An Lushan can trap himself with his own racing thoughts.

He shakes his head wildly. “That’s not—that can’t be—you didn’t.”

“You have five minutes to tell the truth,” is all I say. I open a timer on the tablet and prop it in my lap.

“He’s just a kid!” His hoarse voice breaks like glass. “A kid!”

“How is the piloting system rigged against girls?” I repeat. No justifications. No room for negotiation.

“Please…” He actually weeps.

I motion to Shimin. He goes to flip the tilt table again.

“The yin seat—!” An Lushan cries.

Shimin falls still, hand on a corner of the tilt table.

“What was that?” I lean in.

An Lushan breathes in shallow spurts, squeezing his eyes shut. “The yin seat has less active input, more passive input.”

Every muscle in me tightens, quivering. The resignation in his voice is unmistakable.

This is, at last, the truth.

“What do active input and passive input mean?” I grip the armrests of my wheelchair with slick hands. “Explain.”

“Active input is spirit pressure and neural signals from the spine.” He keeps his eyes shut. “Passive input is just qi flow.”

Cold tingles sweep up my cheeks. So, it’s like the difference between Shimin and I commanding the Vermilion Bird versus Yizhi simply supplying it with his qi.

Glass shatters on metal, startling me.

Shimin has dropped the bottle of liquor.

“Are you saying…” He breathes deeply. “A girl’s spirit pressure is actively dampened in a Chrysalis?”

Oh. He’s thinking of Wende. Wende, who should’ve been his Match, yet caved under his spirit pressure. It wasn’t because she was weaker after all.

It was because the pilot system didn’t physically let her pilot at full potential.

“Girls supply more qi,” An Lushan says, as if that’s supposed to calm us down. As if that doesn’t simply mean the boy is set up to drain the girl like a battery.

Shimin storms away, armored steps echoing like gunshots. He braces himself against the steel-plated wall at the back of the platform. His fists tighten and loosen on the glistening metal.

My whole body pulsates with the same realizations that must be crashing down on him: all Balanced Matches are not really balanced matches. A girl would have to overcome this artificial dampener to truly balance with a boy.

The girl would have to be stronger.

Which explains why the female pilot in Matches always seems to have a bigger spirit pressure than her partner. In reality, we do. We must.

And those true Matches, Matches like Shimin and Wende, that might’ve worked out if the inputs had been equal?

All were lost to the artificial imbalance.

“I’ve told the truth,” An Lushan chokes through his pain. “Now let my son—”

“Why?” I cry out, my voice clanging off the chamber walls. “Why would the army do this? Why wouldn’t you just make it equal? Wouldn’t you get so many more Matches?”

“Spirit pressures…too unpredictable. This is…only way. To be sure who comes back.”

“The boys,” I say, tongue and lips going numb. “To be sure the boys will come back.”

“Can’t get eager pilots…if they’re afraid of their partners…every battle.”

“You don’t think girls are afraid?”

“Girls…know how to sacrifice.”

Nausea overwhelms me. I want to join Shimin at the wall. I want to smash my head against it until my skull shatters into blood and brains.

“Let my son go,” An Lushan has the gall to keep pleading.

“You disgust me.” My words warp out around a sob. “You all disgust me.”

“Don’t take this out…on my son.” Horror blanches his features. “The girls knew. They knew they were more likely to die. They chose it!”

“No!” I scream. “Their families chose for them! And they didn’t fight it, because they believed in that tiny fantasy chance that they’d end up in a Balanced Match!”

“That has nothing to do with my son!” He rattles against his bonds. “Let him go!”

I shake my head over and over. “Your son lives in a world that wastes the potential of half its population. All while the Hunduns are waiting just outside the Great Wall, waiting to pulverize us. We’re heading toward our own destruction, and you think it has nothing to do with him?”

“Let him go! You promised!”

“We made no such promise.” Shimin’s voice booms through the chamber like a tangible thing, so loud it makes me flinch in my wheelchair. He turns around, qi meridians igniting at full intensity, red interlaced with gold.

I’m stunned. Then an ice-clear laugh escapes my mouth. Yes, let’s cause An Lushan as much pain as possible.

“That’s right.” I stare into his eyes and hurl out a lie like a dagger. “Our people killed him hours ago.”

A transformation passes over An Lushan. One second, a suffering and tortured man. The next, a wailing and thrashing beast that curses me with every name that can be spewed to degrade a woman.

Shimin stomps back and flips the tilt table with a violent motion. An Lushan’s curses hitch.

“Don’t speak to my partner like that.” Shimin glares down at him.

“You won’t get away with this!” An Lushan roars, upside-down. “They’ll find evidence! You’ll pay!”

Shimin laughs, a deep, unnatural sound that pierces me with a twinge of concern. He grasps the heavy steel collar the army has clamped around his throat for two years. Light flushes bright red in his grip. Heat ripples near his hands, warping the metal.

He snaps the collar off his neck and hurls it to the ground with the force of a thunderclap.

Shivers race over my skin as the impact reverberates through the chamber. It’s been so long since I’ve felt any kind of fear around him that I’ve forgotten how terrifying he can be. Something has awakened inside him. Something not necessarily for the better.

What have I done?My thoughts tangle up. What have I unleashed?

But I catch myself the next second, because it’s not me who has wronged him. It’s everyone else.

Thatkind of guy, they called him.

Thatkind of girl, they called me.

Well. Here we are. Meeting expectations.

“Whatever happens, you won’t find out.” Shimin fetches a fresh bottle of liquor. He speaks like he’s finally embodying the Iron Demon he never liked being. He crouches in front of An Lushan, brandishing the bottle. It reflects the glow of Shimin’s meridians, which have dimmed to a fuming red. “I’m going to drown you with this, and I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”

“It’s such a tragedy,” I join in with mock grief, lifting the dripping towel. “Senior Strategist An has gone missing overnight. Oh, well. There’s no time to comb every crevasse in the Wall for him. The counterattack can go on without him. Chief Strategist Zhuge is helming the battle anyway. And he’s way more likable.”

An Lushan seems bewildered for a moment, then bursts into hysterical laughter. “You think being heroes will protect you? Good luck! The moment you win is the moment you’re free to be slaughtered!”

“Oh, no.” I touch my chest. “We have much bigger plans for that moment. And your confession will make it possible.”

“You won’t be able to change a thing.” A wild leer puppets An Lushan’s face. “Real women know their place. It won’t matter if they learn the truth!”

“You know what I think?” I say. “I think this whole concept of women being docile and obedient is nothing but wishful thinking. Or why would you put so much effort into lying to us? Into crippling our bodies? Into coercing us with made-up morals you claim are sacred? You insecure men, you’re afraid. You can force us into compliance, but, deep down, you know you can’t force us to truly love and respect you. And without love and respect, there will always be a seed of hatred and resistance. Growing. Festering. Waiting.” I dig my nails into An Lushan’s upside-down head like roots pressing at pavement. “Before you die, let me confirm something for you: girls like me are everywhere, barely putting up the facade of wives and daughters and concubines. And I don’t think they’ll be very happy about the army’s lies.”

An Lushan opens his mouth to spew something else, but I silence him with the towel, like he tried so hard to silence me. Shimin unleashes a nonstop deluge of the liquor once used to break his mind.

An Lushan’s last words drown in wet, choking misery.

Yizhi has used every anti-surveillance device he could get his hands on to prevent our suite from being bugged, but still, we take no chances. Shimin and I wrap our armor wings around ourselves to squeeze into the kitchen with him. My wheelchair barely fits. Yizhi turns on the exhaust hood and pours a lake of oil into a huge wok. Beside him, the counters are covered with foil trays full of handmade buns. A clay pot of Shimin’s herbal medicine simmers on the stove, providing not only noise but visual cover as well; steam mists the windows in shifting, ephemeral clouds, blocking the view of any potential scouting drones.

If this were any other occasion, I’d be laughing. Perks of refusing to play by the rules: you don’t have to choose between the boy who’d torture a man to death with you and the boy who’d welcome you back with pastries after.

But the camera sits in my lap like a bomb. I can’t gather the strength to even begin explaining what we’ve learned.

After Yizhi drops the first buns into the oil, filling the steamy air with explosive crackles and hisses, I hold up the camera.

“Look for yourself,” I say through my teeth. “Just look for yourself.”

Scowling, Yizhi takes the camera and leans against the counter. Shimin grabs a pair of chopsticks and takes over the bun frying, turning them in the oil. A heavenly scent soon fills the kitchen, making my mouth water despite the tension coiled inside me.

Beyond the hazed-up windows, the drunken war songs of the partying pilots muffle through the glass. A grimy glow shifts over Yizhi’s face as he plays back the footage, holding the camera so close to his ear that he’s watching with a single eye. For the first time in a long while, self-consciousnesses rises in me. He’s watching me and Shimin at our worst. Normal people would be horrified that we could do this to another human and then stroll out with no regrets.

When An Lushan’s screams pierce through the camera speakers, however, Yizhi’s gaze remains cool. He doesn’t even blink. Only when the confessions burst out do his delicate features twitch in shock.

He gapes at us, as if questioning whether we somehow doctored this footage. I return a stony stare, a silent “Sorry. This is exactly how the world is.”

Honestly, after the initial shock, the information makes perfect sense. I’m livid at myself for not realizing it sooner.

“Girls are naturally weaker in spirit than boys.”

How did I not ask that crucial Wait, why? for so long? How many aspects of the piloting system—and the world in general—are based on sterile facts, and how many are just illusions? Illusions that reinforce themselves generation after generation, because people don’t question the convenient boxes they’re penned into, the arbitrary rules they live by?

When the footage ends, a sharp crack startles me. Shimin stands in the pale smoke of the snapping and sputtering wok, eyes shut, pressing an armored fist to his mouth. In his other hand, his chopsticks are now broken. His whole body is stiff with an effort not to tremble, as if he’s detoxing all over again.

“Shimin…” Yizhi breathes, reaching for him.

“Sorry, I…” Shimin falls still. His eyes peel wide, irises kindling scarlet. “No, I’m not sorry!” He whips around. The chopstick fragments clatter to the greasy floor. Tears flow freely down his face from his demonic red eyes. “None of this is my fault!”

“It really isn’t,” Yizhi says in a dark tone, with a somber look to match.

Shimin lets out a bone-dry laugh, shaking his head. He slaps the window. The foggy glass splinters under his armored hand. The glow of his eyes reflect as fuzzy red spots. “All this time…all those girls…”

I wheel closer and take his other hand. “I told you. You were being used.”

Yizhi leaves the camera on the counter and removes his sleeve protectors. With the clean hems of his student strategist robes, he wipes Shimin’s tears away. “And, remember—even if the circumstances were all wrong, those battles weren’t meaningless.”

Shimin glances between me and Yizhi, eyes dimming black again.

However, a different red glow appears in the window.

I seize up, thinking it’s a drone, but then Yizhi clears the glass with his hand—

It’s a paper prayer lantern, coasting above the Hundun wilds like a blazing, flickering star, soaring toward the real twinkles that fill the night. A few more trail after it, but are quickly hazed into blurs by the steam and smoke around us. The three of us look to each other, then silently and unanimously decide to open the window.

The dusty scent of the wild courses in on a fluttering wind, entwining with the burning smell from the wok. I fetch another pair of chopsticks and fish out the charring buns. The last thing we need is for the fire alarms to go off.

A noise of amazement from Yizhi turns my head. A line of more lanterns has drifted out, mirroring the Great Wall, making a luminous orange dragon against the sparkling cosmos.

“For vengeance!” the partying pilots shout from the stretch of Wall behind this watchtower.

“For freedom!”

“For humanity!”

“You pilots…” Yizhi says without taking his eyes off the lanterns, half-up hair lifting in the night wind. “You do something important.”

“But we can do better,” I say.

“Yeah,” Shimin says. He’s not looking at the lanterns. He’s looking at Yizhi. “We can.”

His armored thumb strays over Yizhi’s graceful jawline, brushing away a streak of flour.

Yizhi’s eyes widen.

“Sorry—” Shimin’s hand bounces away.

Yizhi looks at a loss for words for a few seconds, then schools his expression. “Don’t be, handsome.”

He winks.

I have to bite my lip not to laugh at the look on Shimin’s face.

“Really, don’t be,” Yizhi says again, more serious. More breathless. His fingertips skim the newly exposed skin at Shimin’s neck, mottled with red welts and scratchy scars from the abandoned collar.

Shimin takes a shaky breath through his lips. Yizhi peers at them for a long, languid moment, then into Shimin’s eyes. Steam and night air billow between them, countercurrents of hot and cold. The distant lanterns hang above their heads like a radiant bridge. My face warms, and my pulse pounds against my eardrums.

Is this really happening?

Is it finally happening?

Shimin’s gaze pours over Yizhi’s features, but jumps to me with a flash of guilt.

I roll my eyes, make a triangle with my fingers, and nod.

A chuckle startles out of him.

Yizhi laughs as well. “There aren’t nearly enough nice feelings in the world, so why deprive ourselves?” he says in a near whisper, yet his stare pins Shimin in place with a different intensity.

Shimin gulps. “The last thing I needed was another reason for the world to hate me. Though, now…”

“Now?” Yizhi’s voice goes as airy as the steam wreathing around them.

“Now, I see—” Shimin grabs Yizhi’s chin. “It’s all fucking bullshit.”

He slams the window shut with his other arm, then leans down and takes Yizhi’s lips with his own.

My heart stutters, drawing my chest tight. But I’m at peace with this. Instead of a betrayal of any form, it feels like a completion. My killer boy, my sweet boy. The final line in this triangular formation we’ve been dancing in, making us stronger than ever.

This is unconventional, yet another implicit rule we’re breaking, but you know what? It works for us. And I think the three of us are done with letting this world tell us what’s okay and what isn’t.

When Yizhi and Shimin break from the kiss, they reach out in sync and pull me closer. Together, they turn to me. My heartbeat soars ever higher, into my throat.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten that settled…” My laugh turns into a sigh. My eyes harden. “Let’s change the world.”

There’s still one last thing to do: trim the video to leave nothing but the confessions.

We weren’t bluffing to An Lushan about having a bigger plan. Right after we win back the Zhou province, in that precise moment of victory when all camera drones are focused on us, I will leave the cockpit, raise a tablet, and broadcast the truth to the whole of Huaxia.