Sky Without Stars

by Jessica Brody

  “You can stop this!” Chatine felt her knees go weak. “You have to stop this. Don’t let them take him to Bastille.”

  Marcellus’s gaze drifted toward the door. He seemed to be lost in a mix of pity and confusion. He released Chatine and collapsed into one of the nearby chairs, running his fingers through his dark hair.

  Chatine dropped to her knees. If she couldn’t stop them with her fists, maybe she could stop them with her words. “Please.” She no longer cared that her voice sounded high and whiny. She just needed to undo what she’d done. She needed to take it all back. Even if that meant she was discovered for who she really was. “He’s not what you think! You’re making a mistake!”

  “Am I?” Marcellus roared, launching out of his chair so quickly, it flew out from under him and crashed into the wall. Marcellus looked shocked by his own strength. Chatine scrambled up, suddenly afraid of getting kicked like a dog at his feet.

  But then, a moment later, Marcellus’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. The old, soft, gutless Marcellus that Chatine had grown accustomed to was back. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know what to think. I can’t just release him after he’s admitted to working with the Vangarde. Sols, I’m losing it. I’m losing my grip on everything!”

  Fire rose up inside of Chatine again. How dare he pretend to be tormented? How dare he stand there, deliberating Roche’s fate like he deliberated what flavor tarte to have for breakfast? He knew nothing of suffering. None of the Second Estate did.

  Marcellus ran his fingers through his hair again. It was already all mussed up from the last time, but now it looked like he’d washed it and let it dry in a windstorm. His loose curls, finally broken free, twisted every which way.

  “Do you believe him?” he asked a moment later. “Do you believe he’s working for them?”

  “No,” she said automatically.

  Because it didn’t matter what she did or did not believe. She couldn’t let Roche go down for this. She couldn’t be responsible for sending him to Bastille.

  “No?” Marcellus repeated vacantly.

  “He’s making it up. He’s trying to feel important in all this chaos. He can’t possibly be involved.”

  “Then how did he know that word?”

  Marcellus’s question sank like a stone inside Chatine’s chest. The graveness in his voice confirmed all her suspicions.

  The word had significance.

  “Lark?” she asked, and she swore she saw Marcellus flinch.

  His hand fell from his hair and he looked at her. “Yes. Does that mean something to you?”

  Chatine released a breath, grateful that, for once, she didn’t have to think about the answer. She didn’t have to contemplate its implications, carefully align it in her head with all the lies she’d already told that day.

  She could just tell the truth. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What does it mean to you?”

  Marcellus continued to look at her, his gaze intensifying with every passing second, until Chatine could swear that he was about to answer her. That he, too, was going to tell the truth.

  But she would never know.

  Because a second later, Marcellus’s TéléCom lit up on the table, pulling their attention toward it. Chatine could see Inspecteur Limier on the screen, his circuits flashing the way she’d only seen them do in the face of grave danger.

  Marcellus reached for the TéléCom. “Go ahead, Inspecteur,” he said.

  Then, Chatine watched as Marcellus’s expression went from confusion to horror in a heartbeat.

  - CHAPTER 58 -

  MARCELLUS

  “WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO you?” Théo asked Marcellus, his arms crossed over his chest like a challenge.

  A war waged inside of Marcellus. It was a battle bigger than the failed Rebellion of 488, bigger than even the Usonian War of Independence, which broke the planet free from Albion’s reign.

  Because it wasn’t just a war over territories and governments and control.

  It was a war over his mind.

  A war over his heart.

  A war over a single word.

  “Lark.”

  What does it mean to you? That was the ultimate question Marcellus was faced with. And he had a feeling that however he chose to answer, it just might decide the rest of his life. He turned toward Théo. The boy’s piercing stone-gray eyes were waiting for him, waiting for a reply.

  But Marcellus never got the chance to give one.

  Because a second later, his TéléCom lit up on the table and Inspecteur Limier’s sharp, clipped voice rushed into his ear.

  “Officer Bonnefaçon. We have a very serious situation in the Fabrique District.”

  Marcellus’s stomach lurched as he reached for the device and accepted the connection. He’d never heard the inspecteur’s voice sound so grave.

  “Go ahead, Inspecteur.”

  The inspecteur’s cold, orange eye stared at Marcellus through the screen as he spoke. “There’s been an incident in the TéléSkin fabrique. Someone has set off an explosif.”

  “Wh-what?!” Marcellus sputtered. “Are the workers okay?”

  The inspecteur’s facial circuitry flickered once as the data was accessed. “The device was rudimentary, and the damage was contained to the processing department.”

  Marcellus cringed. I knew that Universal Alert would only make things worse.

  “The Communiqué shows twelve lives lost,” Limier went on. “I’m AirLinking you the profiles now. The families are being notified presently over their TéléSkins.”

  Marcellus tried to blink his surroundings back into focus. The words were too foreign. They belonged in another time. On another planet. Delivered to another officer.

  It’s happening again.

  Suddenly all he could see was the face of his dead father in the morgue.

  The man responsible for the last explosion on Laterre. Seventeen years ago.

  That explosion had put an end to a revolution.

  This one, he feared, had the power to start one.

  “Officer Bonnefaçon?” Inspecteur Limier’s voice pulled Marcellus back to the room. “Officer?”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “We are preparing an immediate cleanup effort,” Limier stated evenly. “It’s now more important than ever that life continue as normal on Laterre. That people go to work so that our Regime can go on functioning.”

  Continue as normal? Marcellus thought, sickened. Twelve people were dead. Wiped out from existence like burned-out stars. Just like that.

  What about their families? All the people getting heartless, automated alerts on their Skins right now? How would they just continue as normal?

  But still, Marcellus heard himself saying, “Yes, of course, Inspecteur.”

  “Your grandfather would like you to return to the Ministère headquarters right away. He will be holding a briefing shortly.”

  Marcellus nodded. “I will be there.”

  The connection blinked out, and Marcellus dropped the TéléCom into his lap. The razor-thin device suddenly felt as heavy as a stone.

  “What is happening?” he whispered aloud.

  He got no reply. It was only then he realized he was alone in the room. The door was ajar. And the boy—Théo—was gone.

  Marcellus gaped at the empty space, trying to figure out when, during the conversation, the boy had slipped out.

  “Lucas Fontaine. Third Estate. Fret 12.”

  Marcellus’s gaze was pulled back to the TéléCom lying on his lap. The profiles Inspecteur Limier had sent were now scrolling on his screen.

  Faces of the dead.

  “Anouk Duchêne. Third Estate. Fret 20.” Marcellus reached for the device to silence it. He couldn’t handle this right now. He needed to think.

  “Azelle Renard. Third Estate. Fret 7.”

  Renard?

  Marcellus’s hand froze. He stared down at the image on the screen. A pretty girl wi
th cat-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and a slender face. The resemblance to Théo was incredible. It was almost as though Marcellus were looking at a female version of the boy he’d come to know over the past few days.

  He glanced back at the empty space where Théo had stood only moments ago, and suddenly a knot the size of a planet formed in his chest.

  “The families are being notified presently over their TéléSkins.”

  “Sols!” Marcellus swore, leaping out of his seat. As he raced down the hallway of the Precinct, toward the exit, he gripped the TéléCom tightly in his hand, bellowing into the screen. “Locate Théo Renard!”

  Outside the Precinct, it was raining. Hard. As though the Laterre sky were weeping for everything it had lost this week.

  “No location found,” the TéléCom announced. “Tracker disabled.”

  Marcellus wiped the fat raindrops from his eyes and stared down at the screen.

  Disabled? The Third Estate can disable their trackers?

  He let out a sigh as he jumped on his moto and started the engine. There was still so much he had to learn about this planet.

  Starting with how to find someone who clearly didn’t want to be found.

  - CHAPTER 59 -

  CHATINE

  ALONE.

  Chatine was alone again. She sat on the roof of the textile fabrique, staring down at the pile of rubble below, the rain falling thick and heavy on her hood and dripping into her eyes. Most of the neighboring building was still intact, but the section in front of Chatine was a tangle of shattered mortar and twisted metal. A few spirals of lingering smoke tried to rise from the debris, only to be snuffed out by the wet air.

  The alert she’d received from the Ministère when she was in the Precinct was still playing in an endless loop on her Skin. Chatine had yet to find the energy to turn it off. She could hear the message only in bits and pieces now.

  “Please accept our condolences . . . Her body is being transferred to the Vallonay Med Center . . . grateful for her loyalty to the Regime . . . May she rest with the Sols.”

  Staring down at the place her sister once worked, Chatine felt like the only person left on this entire planet. She was used to it, though. She had always been on her own. It was the one constant in her life she could count on. She was born alone. She’d practically raised herself alone. She’d spent the first five years of her life alone.

  But then Henri had come and for that brief, blissful year, she hadn’t been alone anymore. She’d finally had a friend. A companion.

  Then he died and Chatine was alone again.

  Of course, she’d always had Azelle. But they’d never been close. As small children, they’d squabbled constantly. As they grew older, however, Azelle had tried to reach out to Chatine. Tried to become her friend. But after Henri died, Chatine had decided friends were overrated. Plus, Azelle was so different from the rest of their family. It was almost as if she didn’t have a drop of Renard blood in her veins.

  But somehow—by some curious joke of the Sols—Chatine and Azelle had been born into the same family. They had shared a bed and scraps of food. But they’d never shared secrets. Chatine had never told her sister of her plan to escape to Usonia. Because she knew, if she did, Azelle would only laugh at her and tell her how foolish she was being. The same way Chatine had laughed at Azelle’s foolish plan to win the Ascension.

  Maybe Chatine should have told her.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have laughed.

  Maybe she would have pleaded for Chatine to take her, too.

  And maybe Chatine would have said yes.

  She wanted to think, now, that she would have said yes.

  That they could have found a life on Usonia together.

  But it didn’t matter anymore. Because Azelle was gone. And her sister’s hope of ever finding a better life—won or earned or otherwise—was gone too.

  And now Chatine felt more alone than ever.

  The crushing absence of her sister hit harder than she ever imagined it would. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow her fault. That everything was her fault. The Délabré finding her stash. Roche getting arrested. And now this.

  But that was ridiculous. She knew that. She hadn’t done this. She hadn’t set that explosif. It had probably been some stupide worker, trying to make a point by blowing up the building where the Skins were made. Destroying the machines that manufactured the chains for the Third Estate.

  Regardless of who did it, it was done.

  An entire section of the fabrique was gone.

  The only evidence that it had ever been there in the first place were these smoking remains. This massive, cavernous chasm in the side of the building. And the matching chasm that had opened up inside of Chatine, threatening to consume her whole.

  As she stared into them both, Chatine found herself wondering if maybe Azelle had had the right idea this whole time. Maybe they were all better off just following the rules, going to work every day, checking in and out on their Skins, praying to the Sols to win an impossible lottery year after year.

  Being dutiful servants of the Regime.

  Because look what the alternative had gotten them.

  Another pile of ashes.

  Chatine knew what this meant. Something big was coming. A storm was brewing. A storm the likes of which even the rain-soaked people of Laterre hadn’t yet seen.

  And Chatine did not want to be around to see it.

  “Hey.”

  Chatine jumped and turned to see the last person she ever expected to see on the roof of a fabrique. But there he was. His crisp white uniform was stained from the ash and dust mingling with the moist air. He sat down next to her on the edge of the building and peered over the precipice, into the charred wreckage below. He sucked in a breath and leaned back.

  “Do you always like to be up so high?”

  “Yes. Always.” Chatine felt herself stiffen beside him, slipping back into her regular disguise. But with him, it wasn’t just the disguise of Théo, the wily boy of the Frets. It was more than that. Whenever she was around Marcellus, she felt as though she had to be another level of another person. The best version of her fake self. She had to be the craftiest. The smartest. The quickest. The snarkiest.

  She had to be memorable.

  That’s what it was, she now realized. All this time, she’d been desperate for him to remember her. She didn’t just want to fade into the back of his mind when his training was over and he returned to his easy life in Ledôme. She wanted to be the Fret rat he could never forget.

  “You’re a hard person to track down, you know that?” He flashed her a cryptic smile that Chatine couldn’t quite interpret.

  “Been looking for me long, Officer?” she asked in the most teasing voice she could muster.

  But it felt forced.

  And stupide.

  And desperate.

  And she was tired of being memorable.

  Now she just wanted to go back to hiding.

  “Yes, actually,” Marcellus replied in all seriousness. “After you ran out of the Precinct, I looked everywhere for you.”

  Chatine felt her heart do a double beat behind her ribs. She scorned it.

  “Well, here I am!” She opened her arms wide, as though gesturing not to this building, not to this run-down Fabrique District, but to all of Laterre. To all of the System Divine. To this whole Sol-forsaken universe.

  Then, before she could even fathom what she was doing, Chatine was on her feet. She was standing at the very edge of the building, at the edge of the world, gazing down into the dark abyss. She opened her mouth, and as loud as her lungs would allow, she shouted, “Here I am! I’m right here! Do you see me? Because I’ve been here this whole time! This whole fric-ing time.”

  So much for going back into hiding.

  Marcellus leapt to his feet. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m screaming!” she screamed back.

  He grabbed her by the sleeve of the coat and p
ulled her away from the edge. “Well, can you at least scream a little farther back? You’re making me nervous.”

  Chatine turned toward him, opened her mouth, and let out the wildest, most maniacal laugh she’d ever heard coming from her own lips. “Am I making you nervous, monsieur? Do you not want me to die? Do you not want me to fall over the edge of this building and plunge to my death? Wouldn’t that make life easier for you? One less Third Estate scum to deal with? One less body to freeze to death in the Frets? One less mouth to not feed?”

  In that moment, Marcellus looked genuinely frightened of her. “W-w-what?” he stammered. “Of course not! What are you even talking about?”

  “Would you miss me, monsieur?” Chatine went on. She had lost her mind. She knew that. But she no longer cared. “Would you be sad if I died?”

  “Yes,” Marcellus said. His face was full of torment. She was making him uneasy. She was glad of it. “Of course I would be sad.”

  “Why?” Chatine insisted. “Why would you be sad? Why would you even care? You don’t seem to care about anyone else who dies around here. Another Third Estate body in the morgue. Another pile of frozen dust to scoop up. What’s it to you? You don’t care. None of you do!”

  Marcellus’s lips pressed into a firm, angry line. “We care,” he said, but then a second later amended his statement. “I care.”

  “Why? Why do you care what happens to me?”

  Marcellus looked saddened by the question. As though he felt like this wasn’t a question he should have to answer. But Chatine didn’t agree. It was not only a question he had to answer, but a question she needed him to answer.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “Because . . . ,” he began uncertainly. “Because you’re my friend, Théo.”

  Chatine let out another laugh. This one, however, was dark. Spiritless.

  Miserable.

  “Théo,” she repeated with an air of disgust. “Théo.” Then her voice grew quiet. Pensive. “That’s my name. That will always be my name to you. It’s not the kind of name you sing. It’s not the kind of name you fight for. Or stand up to white-haired giants for. It’s the kind of name you say with spite and pity. Théo.”