You’ll see, he’d said. One day you’ll make the same choices as me.
Kind, good Lew-Eadin, with a partner and son to go home to. Who had done nothing more than remain loyal to a friend. Or brilliant, cunning Zhade, who’d kissed her and danced with her and saved her, and then betrayed her. Who was still betraying her. The choice was simple.
She sucked in a ragged breath. A tear escaped her eye.
“Zhade,” she whispered. “Kill Zhade.”
Lew-Eadin was too far gone to react. She heard Zhade let out a breath beside her. Then, too quick for Andra’s foggy brain to process, Maret turned, and plunged the knife into Lew’s chest.
She blinked, confused.
It was supposed to be Zhade. But he was whole and unhurt, and the relief she felt was horrifying, and Lew . . .
It took a moment for the consequences to catch up to the action. Lew’s face was confused, waiting. Waiting for Andra to say something, waiting to be saved, waiting for death. Time stopped. Rewound. Andra saw it happening again and again. Saw all the different moves she could have made, things she could have said. But each scenario ended with a knife in Lew’s chest. Time sped forward.
Maret pulled away, dragging the knife out slowly. Lew looked down. Blood gushed from the wound in spurts, and he tried to stop it with his hands, but they only shook. His head snapped up. He found Andra. He opened his mouth, and it was filled with blood. A gurgle. And then he fell to the ground.
Andra rushed forward, rolling Lew onto his back.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking. “I’m sorry.”
She mentally reached for her ’implant. She could put him in stasis and then heal him, just like she’d done with Doon. But she didn’t have the dagger, and all that happened was a lightning crack of pain, splitting Andra’s skull. She cried out, grasping her head, almost dropping her hold on Lew-Eadin. His breathing picked up.
“Tell Dzeni . . .” He drew in a gasp. Blood trickled from his lips. “I’m happy . . . I got to meet . . . our son.”
Andra found Lew’s hand, held it tightly. It was limp and sticky with blood.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m trying,” she babbled, reaching. Desperately reaching for the ’swarm of nanos that could save him. Each attempt was accompanied with a shock of pain, but she kept trying. Her eyes flooded with tears.
Lew used the last of his strength to grab her collar and draw her close.
“Save them,” he rasped. “Save them, Andra.”
His eyes shut. His breathing stopped.
She didn’t know how long she held him, let his blood weigh down her clothes, let her tears wash his face. But Zhade finally had to pull her away. She was too tired, too overwhelmed to be disgusted by his touch.
Maret watched her as he used a towel to wipe the blood from his knife.
“Sometimes,” he said, “fate decides for you.”
THIRTY-ONE
thirl, n. or v.
Definition:
a hole, perforation.
to pierce, wound.
a form of thrall.
Andra slept until her execution. It seemed like a just punishment—reliving Lew’s murder over and over in dreams. Rashmi woke her once, the AI’s skinny arm stretched through the bars, tugging on Andra’s sleeve.
“You were screaming.” Her voice rasped like sandpaper.
“I’m fine,” Andra muttered.
A beat. Then: “I can’t sleep when you scream.” She scuttled to the opposite side of her cell.
Andra turned away and fell back asleep, back into her dreams. Lew died again. And again. Sprays of blood. A look of pain. The meaty sound of a knife entering flesh. Lew’s eyes, and their sudden shift to hollowness, his life stolen as he bled out on a velvet carpet. Zhade’s hands pulling her away. The ache in Andra’s skull. Her own uselessness.
Even worse were the dreams where Zhade died instead—died because she’d chosen him, died in Lew-Eadin’s place—and the relief Andra didn’t feel.
The door clanked open, waking her, and Zhade stood in the doorway, a solid figure, rigid and tall. He didn’t lazily lean against the doorframe. He didn’t shove his hands in his pockets. He didn’t wink or swagger or smirk.
Even after everything, Andra still felt guilt for choosing him to die. Even though the choice had been forced on her. Even though it was Lew-Eadin who died. Even though Zhade was about to watch her be sacrificed.
“How did you find me?” Her voice rasped. “At the Schism?”
“The glamour mask,” he said flatly. “I put a tracking spell on it.”
She looked away.
Without a word, he pulled her to her feet, his grip firm. He led her out of the cell and tied her hands behind her back. The rope was coarse and chafed her wrists.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Your execution.”
She heard Rashmi move, caught a glimpse of her hand outstretched between the bars, Andra’s ’locket clutched in her tiny fist. An offering. Andra shook her head, but didn’t turn to face her. Zhade led Andra out of the dungeons.
“So . . . how are they going to kill me?” She tried to make her tone light, like she was asking what they were serving for breakfast, but her voice warbled at the end. She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to apologize.
“Beheading.”
Panic flared inside her, a desperate need to turn back time and fix things, to change course. Her own helplessness overwhelmed her, followed swiftly by an icy calm, and she felt the world in detached fragments. Rickety steps. A calloused hand on her arm. Rough fabric clinging to her skin.
“Beheading,” she repeated. “Dramatic.”
Zhade didn’t respond.
The palace was empty. The light filtering through the windows felt cold, useless. They passed the throne room. It was silent. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous atrium. They followed the same route Andra had taken when she’d helped Doon escape, and for a moment, wild hope fluttered in her chest that Zhade was doing the same for her. Then she realized where they were going. They were killing her in the garden. In the courtyard where they’d kept her all those years.
Through the window in the door, she could see the space crammed with people, much more crowded than the Third Festival. There were no happy faces, no laughing children, no butter cookies. The dais that had held her cryo’tank was now set up for an execution.
“It will be quick,” Zhade said. “Find someone you reck in the crowd. Watch them. It’ll help.”
“I don’t know anyone,” Andra mumbled. And she didn’t. Everyone she knew had either betrayed her or died.
“Don’t you?” he said.
He opened the door, holding it for her not to be courteous but because her hands were tied. She didn’t wait for him to lead her out. She could do this on her own.
I am a goddess, and I will lean on no one.
She stepped into the courtyard and was immediately hit with a wave of sound. It was a chant, like the one she’d heard at the maids’ execution. Like the one they’d intoned at the worship ceremony. The space was packed, people stacked on top of one another. Some had climbed trees, others stood in the middle of the fountain. The gate was yawning open, and the crowd continued beyond the wall, around the corner, as far as Andra could see. Their faces were painted with wild glee. A sacrifice of another goddess. A way to fix the ’dome, or so they thought.
They barely made room for her as she passed, and she had to shove through, had to fight her way to her own execution. For a moment, she felt Zhade’s arms curl around her, as though he were protecting her, but she pushed him away. She didn’t want him comforting her like he had at the ruins. It was because of him she was in this position.
When they finally reached their destination, Maret was waiting for them, Tsurina behi
nd him. The bruise on his face had been covered with a cos’mask, the blood wiped away, but his complexion was leached of color. This must be why she was being beheaded, rather than death by ’bot. The crown must be killing him. She felt no pleasure at the thought.
Next to Maret stood Kiv, a huge sword in his hand.
Zhade brought Andra to a stop in front of a wood block—one with a notch just the right size for her neck—and the crowd hushed. As one, they craned forward, trying to get a clear view of the platform, waiting.
She couldn’t fathom it—dying. Death. No one would wake her up from this, even a thousand years too late. She’d just . . . stop.
Her dad believed in an afterlife, or at least that souls moved on. He didn’t talk about it much, because her mother believed nothing was waiting after death except oblivion. Andra didn’t know which idea terrified her more.
Zhade handed her over to Kiv and took his place next to his brother. She felt weighed down, heavy and sluggish as Kiv pushed her to her knees behind the block. He lowered her head so that it was in position to be severed from her body. The thought made her panic. She wanted her body to remain intact, even in death, even though she knew the wish was ridiculous.
She was about to die.
Kiv drew his sword. Andra could hear the shing of the weapon leaving the scabbard. That was the implement that would kill her. She was seeing the manner of her death and it was weird, like stepping outside of her own life to see the outline. Sitting too close in the theater. The back of a cross-stitch, the code of a sim. The sword glinted in the light. I’m going to end you, it said.
She felt, rather than saw, Kiv lift the sword. The shadow of it lay on the ground before her.
Find someone in the crowd.
One last time, she took Zhade’s advice. Her gaze flitted from face to face until it locked on to one she knew. Black skin, shaved head, modded eye, permanent scowl.
Xana. She was alive.
Her bionic eye winked. A twitch?
Or a message?
She didn’t have time to decipher it. Kiv’s arm started to descend, carrying with it the sword. No, wait, she thought. Something burgeoned inside Andra, panic and adrenaline and maybe her spirit ready to be released. She felt the air displaced by the slice of the blade, heard it sing in the wind. She tensed, her neck tingling with anticipation, and the blow landed . . .
. . . inches from her face,
the sword stuck in the wood platform,
the blade quivering.
She was alive.
She was—
Zhade pulled her away from the block, drawing his sword. Andra scrambled to her feet and found her hands were no longer tied.
Xana was pushing through the crowd toward them, a laser’gun in her left hand. She fired, tossing Zhade another ’gun. He grabbed it and smiled grimly. Zhade, that genius idiot, must have programmed them to work for people without ’implants. Skilla was with them, and some others from the Schism. The crowd screamed and the courtyard became chaos.
The remaining guards charged, but Zhade pushed Andra behind him and fired. Xana joined them on the platform, holding the guards at bay. One hit the tiled ground. Thanel, Andra thought his name was. He wasn’t much older than her.
Andra caught sight of Lilibet in the crowd. She must have been arrested when Andra escaped the palace, because chains shackled her wrists and ankles, her clothes hanging in tatters. A guard advanced on her, lifting his sword.
“Lilibet!” Andra shouted above all the noise. “Look out!”
Lilibet screamed. The blade arced toward her, and suddenly Kiv was there, stopping the sword with his own. He grunted, kicking the guard in the stomach, sending him reeling into the fountain.
Lilibet beamed. The corner of Kiv’s mouth twitched, and then he knelt, scooping Lilibet up, tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. She squealed in delight as the battle raged on around her.
Kiv brought her to the platform. Andra tensed, but Zhade gave him a nod, and Kiv joined the fight with the massive sword he hadn’t killed her with.
Zhade and Kiv and the Schism members circled protectively around Andra. They were sorely outnumbered, and ’guns only lasted so many shots. Swords could kill as many people as the bearer had the heart to, and the guards began to close in on them. Soon, they were surrounded, their ’guns spluttering out their final rounds.
“What happens?” Xana asked.
“I’m out, you?” Zhade asked, turning his ’gun over in his hand.
“Out,” she said. They drew their swords.
Andra felt the same mounting sensation that had welled up inside her when she lay on the execution block. It wasn’t panic or anxiety, but something like power. Something in her was calling out, and she recognized the familiarity of it. It was the same thing she’d felt when Zhade had put the nano’patch on her and her ’implant had sparked to life to destroy it. She remembered what came after.
The guards surrounding them darted forward.
“No—” Andra gasped.
Just before the guards reached them, a noise like a million bursting balloons ripped through the air. Andra’s mind buzzed, burned. She fell to her knees, cradling her head. The others fell beside her as their ears began to bleed. Zhade gripped her hand, but she was in too much pain to push him away.
She knew she should be getting up. She knew she should be fighting.
There were enemies.
Swords.
Death.
But her companions, the guards, the crowd, even Maret and Tsurina were on the ground. The entire courtyard was paralyzed, and if Andra’s head would stop pounding, if her vision would clear, if she could just push herself to her feet, she could escape.
As suddenly as the noise started, it stopped. She braced herself for the inevitable attack, but no one moved. Andra looked up, knowing what she was about to see, but completely unprepared for the sight of it.
The sky was aflame, the light no longer soft, but red and violent. The last of the ’dome was wilting away, the edges crumpling like burning paper. To the west, the atmosphere was a mass of swirling darkness, and there was fire.
Her ’implant had called for help, and something had answered.
There was a pocket inside the city.
PART FOUR
SACRIFICE
Decide your fate.
—Words scratched into a dungeon cell in Eerensed, circa July 3102
THIRTY-TWO
plan, n.
Definition:
a series of steps to be carried out.
a scheme devised; a method of action expressed in language.
a means to an end.
Andra rushed through the tangled streets of Eerensed, sweat trickling down her back, her feet so covered in blisters, they’d grown numb. In the chaos, it had almost been too easy to get away. She and her rescuers fled across the river into Southwarden, passing overturned carts and fleeing animals. Other than that, the streets were abandoned, filled only with the distant sounds of screaming. Andra’s head still pounded, but she couldn’t focus on anything other than the adrenaline rush of not being dead.
She was alive.
She was alive, and there was a pocket in the city.
And it was her fault.
She didn’t know how, or why, but it was the same as when she’d destroyed the nano’patch in the desert and the pocket had hurt Lew. This time, her ’implant had tried to save her by calling a pocket to Eerensed. The strain must have been too much for the ’dome, and it had finally collapsed.
The temperature skyrocketed, and the heat of the cobblestones scorched through her shoes as she followed the others to a safe location. Relatively speaking. They would never be truly safe with the ’dome gone, living on the edge of a pocket. She tried to ignore the hum of it, avoided looking over h
er shoulder at the stygian mass of nanos behind them.
They couldn’t go back to the Hive caves—Maret would be able to find them, and besides, there was probably nothing left. Instead, they went to the house in Southwarden where Lew had been taken after losing his arm.
Andra felt a sharp pang when she thought of Lew, and she hadn’t looked at Zhade since they escaped. She couldn’t navigate her feelings about him, toward him—anger and gratitude and guilt and . . . other emotions.
The meddoc’s house was tucked into an alleyway between two empty shops. Rust ate the hinges of its mud-colored door and settled into the grooves of the corroded design of a crescent moon.
Skilla knocked. The sound was hollow, and they all held their breaths as they waited. Finally, the door opened, wide enough for someone to peek through. For a moment, the person only stared, then shut the door. There was a clicking and scraping of locks being undone, and the door opened again, this time wide enough for them to pass through, except Kiv, who had to hunch and nudge the door out of his way. Andra followed last.
The room was dark, thin shafts of light sieving in through the curtains. Dirt covered the floor, and everything was shades of gray. In front of them stood an elderly woman, her thinning silver hair stark against her rich brown skin, which was wrinkled and sagging, but her eyes were that of a hawk, and she peered at each of them in turn, her gaze finally falling on Skilla.
She jerked her head toward the back of the room. Skilla nodded and led them to a small door. This one required all of them to duck, not just Kiv. Behind was a set of stairs, and beyond that, a tunnel.
They followed Skilla to another room, dirtier than the first, but much larger. It reminded Andra of the caves—something carved out of the ruins of something else, its walls made of rock and steel and dirt. Maybe a dozen people, bloodied and ragged, milled around, speaking in hushed tones. They looked up when Andra and the others entered, but that was the only reaction they gave. Andra searched the faces. She didn’t recognize any of them, until her gaze landed on Doon.
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