Free Prodigy by Marie Lu

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 announcements
     about changes he wants to implement—who knows how much of it is true. I go back to
     studying his face. His voice is not unlike his father’s, but I find myself drawn to
     the sincerity in it. Twenty years old. Maybe he actually believes everything he’s
     saying, or maybe he just does a great job of hiding his doubts. I wonder how he feels
     about his father’s death, and how he is able, at press conferences like this, to pull
     himself together enough to play his role. No doubt Congress is eager to manipulate
     such a young new Elector, to try to run the show behind the scenes and push him around
     like a chess piece. Based on what Razor said, they must be clashing daily. Anden might
     be as power- hungry as his father was if he refuses to listen to the Senate at all.
    What exactly
are
the differences between Anden and his father? What does Anden think the Republic
     should be—and for that matter, what do
I
think it should be?
    I mute the screen again and walk away.
Don’t dwell too deeply on who Anden is.
I can’t think about him as if he were a real person—a person I have to kill.
    Finally, as the first rays of dawn start spilling into the room, Tess comes out of
     the bedroom with the news that Day is awake and alert. “He’s in good shape,” she says
     to Kaede. “Right now he’s sitting up, and he should be able to walk around in a few
     hours.” Then she sees me and her smile fades. “Um. You can see him if you want.”
    Kaede cracks open an eye, shrugs, and goes back to sleep. I give Tess the friendliest
     smile I can manage, then take a deep breath and head for the bedroom.
    Day is propped up with pillows and covered up to his chest with a thick blanket. He
     must be tired, but he still winks when he sees me walk in, a gesture that makes my
     heart skip a beat. His hair spills around him in a shining circle. A few bent paper
     clips lie in his lap (taken from the supply boxes in the corner—I guess he
did
get up). Apparently he was in the middle of making something out of them. I let out
     a sigh of relief when I can tell that he’s not in any pain. “Hey,” I say to him. “Glad
     to see you’re alive.”
    “Glad to see I’m alive too,” he replies. His eyes follow me as I sit down next to
     him on the bed. “Did I miss anything while I was out?”
    “Yeah. You missed listening to Kaede snore on the couch. For someone always ducking
     the law, that girl sure sleeps soundly.”
    Day laughs a little. I marvel again at his high spirits, something I haven’t seen
     much of over the last few weeks. My gaze wanders to where the blanket covers his healing
     leg. “How is it?”
    Day scoots the blanket aside. Underneath, there are plates of smooth metal (steel
     and titanium) where his wound had been. The Medic also replaced his bad knee with
     an artificial one, and now a good third of his leg is metallic. He reminds me of the
     soldiers who come back from the warfront, with their synthetic hands and arms and
     legs, metal where skin used to be. The Medic must be very familiar with war injuries.
     No doubt Razor’s officer