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As if in a dream, the fighting stopped. The foremost squadron ceased moving, lowering their weapons with an almost hypnotic fascination as the cloud reached the wall, paused, gathered itself like a wave, and then ponderously lapped over into the dugouts.
Then the screaming began.
“Retreat,” shouted a squadron officer. “Retreat!”
The Militia reversed direction immediately, commencing a disorganized stampede away from the gas. They abandoned their hard-won stations along the wharf in a frenzy to get away from the gas.
Rin coughed and glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Most of the soldiers who hadn’t escaped the gas lay gasping and twitching on the ground, clawing at their faces as if their own throats were attacking them. Others lay quite still.
An arrowhead lashed across her cheek and embedded itself in the ground before her. The side of her mouth exploded in pain; she cupped a hand against it and continued running. The Federation soldiers were firing from behind the poisonous fog, they were going to pick them off one by one . . .
The forest line loomed up before her. She would be fine once she could take cover behind the foliage. Rin ducked her head and sprinted for the trees. Only a hundred yards . . . fifty . . . twenty . . .
Behind her she heard a strangled cry. She twisted her head to look and tripped over a rock, just as another arrow whistled over her head. Blood streamed from her cheek into her eyes. Rin wiped it furiously off and rolled over flat against the ground.
The source of the cry was Nezha. He was crawling furiously forward, but the gas had caught up to him. He met her eyes through the fog. He might have lifted one hand toward her.
She watched in horror, mouth open in a silent scream, as the gas enveloped him.
Through the gas, she saw forms advancing. Federation soldiers. They wore bulky contraptions over their heads, masks that concealed their necks and faces. They seemed unaffected by the gas.
One of them lifted a bulky gloved hand and pointed where Nezha lay.
Without thinking, Rin took a deep breath of air and rushed into the fog.
It burned her skin as soon as she touched it.
She clenched her teeth and forged ahead through the pain—but she’d hardly gone ten paces when someone grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back out of the gas zone. She struggled furiously to escape their grip.
Altan didn’t let go.
“Back off!” She elbowed him in the face. Altan stumbled and grabbed at his nose. Rin tried to duck past him, but Altan wrenched her backward by her wrist.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“They’ve got Nezha!” she screamed.
“I don’t care.” He pushed her in the direction of the tree line. “Retreat.”
“You’re leaving one of our men to die!”
“He’s not one of our men, he’s one of the Seventh’s men. Go.”
“I won’t leave my friend behind!”
“You will do as I command.”
“But Nezha—”
“I’m not sorry about this,” Altan said, and jammed a fist into her solar plexus.
Stunned, paralyzed, she sank to her knees.
She heard Altan shout out an order, and then someone picked her up and slung her over their shoulders as if she were a child. She beat and screamed as the soldier began jogging in the direction of the barracks. From the soldier’s back, she thought she could see the masked Federation soldiers dragging Nezha away.
The gas attack created the precisely the effect that the Federation intended. The sugar bomb had been devastating—the gas attack was monstrous. Khurdalain erupted into a state of terror. Though the gas itself dissipated within an hour, rumors of it spread quickly. The fog was an invisible enemy, one that killed indiscriminately. There was no hiding from the fumes. Civilians began fleeing the city en masse, no longer confident in the Militia’s ability to protect them. Panic enveloped the streets.
Jun’s soldiers had shouted themselves hoarse in the alleys, trying to convince civilians they would be safer behind city walls. But the people weren’t listening. They felt trapped. The narrow, winding roads of Khurdalain meant certain death in case of another gas attack.
While the city collapsed into chaos, the commanders commenced an emergency meeting in the nearest headquarters. The Cike crammed into the Ram Warlord’s office along with the Warlords and their junior officers. Rin leaned against the corner of the wall, listening dully as the commanders argued over their immediate strategy.
Only one of Jun’s soldiers on the beach had survived the attack. He had been posted in the back, and had dropped his weapon and run as soon as he saw his comrades choking.
“It was like breathing fire,” he reported. “Like red-hot needles were piercing my lungs. I thought I was being strangled by some invisible demon . . . my throat closed up, I couldn’t breathe . . .” He shuddered.
Rin listened, and resented him for not being Nezha.
It was only fifty yards. I could have saved him. I could have dragged us both out.
“We need to evacuate downtown right now,” Jun said. He was remarkably calm for a man who had just lost more than a hundred men to a poisonous fog. “My men will—”
“Your men will do crowd control. The civilians are going to trample themselves trying to get out of the city, and it’ll be easy for Mugen to pick them off if they’re not corralled out in an orderly fashion,” Altan said.
Amazingly, Jun didn’t argue.
“We’ll pack up headquarters and move it farther back into the Sihang warehouse,” Altan continued. “We can dump the prisoner in the basement.”
Rin jerked her head up. “What prisoner?”
She was faintly aware that she should not be talking, that as an unranked soldier of the Cike she was not technically a part of this meeting and was certainly acting out of line. But she was too grief-stricken and exhausted to care.
Unegen leaned down and murmured into her ear, “One of the Federation soldiers got caught in their own gas. Altan took his mask and pulled him out.”
Rin blinked in disbelief.
“You went back in?” she asked. Her voice rang very loudly in her ears. “You had a mask?”
Altan shot her an irritated look. “This is not the time,” he said.
She clambered to her feet. “You let one of our people die?”
“You and I can discuss this later.”
She understood, in the abstract, the strategic boon of taking a Federation prisoner; the last Federation soldiers who had been captured spying across the bank had promptly been torn apart by furious civilians. And yet . . .
“You are unbelievable,” Rin said.
“We will see to headquarters evacuation,” Altan said loudly over her. “We’ll regroup in the warehouse.”
Jun nodded curtly, then muttered something to his officers. They saluted him and left the headquarters at a run.
At the same time, Altan issued orders to the Cike.
“Qara, Unegen, Ramsa: secure us a safe route to the warehouse and guide Jun’s officers there. Baji and Suni, help Enki pack up shop. The rest of you resume positions in case of another gas attack.” He paused at the door. “Rin. You stay.”
She hung back as the rest of them exited the office. Unegen cast her a nervous look on his way out.
