Devil in the Device

by Lora Beth Johnson

  “Too much power,” she’d said. “You’d fry your brain in an instant.”

  But she hadn’t seen what he could do with the Crown. Hadn’t seen him command nearish a hundred angels at once.

  His collection was growing. Though he’d commanded all citians to surrender their angels apalace a turn ago, his guards still found resistance—citians who held on to their magic despite the danger. He’d tried reasoning with them, but each day he heard more and more whispers of hidden angels acity. So he’d had to start taking them by force. He wasn’t happy bout it, but it was necessary. Most oft, he sent his guards to seize the angels, but he’d received word of some angels hidden in Southwarden.

  Above a bakery.

  Dzeni.

  Zhade shot Meta a look as people in the crowded market square dove out of the way of his entourage. Meta shouldn’t be asking him bout his Crown lessons afront of people, specialish citians.

  “Jealous I’m passing time with your zerox?” he asked quietish.

  Meta snorted. “Scuze. I’m the one who wanted her dead, marah.”

  “Evens.” Zhade looked back to see if the guards were spending attention. Sole Gryf could hear. “She’s proved useful. If we’d killed her, I’d still be figuring the Crown, and how would we fight the angels?”

  Meta was quiet a moment. “I don’t imagine you have need of the Crown to fight them. Sides, you should have more shakes of the people holding them than the angels themselves. We don’t reck they’ve gone rogue.”

  Zhade nearish stumbled. “We convoed this. I’m not hurting Dzeni. I can reason with her. For certz, she’ll see things our way. We sole want to hold her safe.”

  “And if she won’t see reason?” Meta asked.

  Zhade clenched his jaw. “She will.”

  Meta looked away, eyes narrowed, and shrugged, staying silent the rest of the march to the bakery.

  It was mereish as he had memory: a teetering apartment with a white facade and intricateish embellished windows and eaves. Though the bakery was on the ground level, Cheska’s apartment was at the top. Without knocking, Zhade burst through the side door to the stairs. Kidduns were playing on the steps, olds chatting to one another from across the hall. When they saw him, their eyes widened and they scurried into their homes, afraid.

  Good, Zhade thought. It wasn’t that he wanted his people ascared of him. It was that he wanted them to hold a healthy fear for the angels. Sides, citians’ fear of Maret was part of what had held him in power.

  Zhade’s boots clipped against the stairs. The armor of the guards clanked behind him, their spears stomping against the floor with each step. When they reached Cheska’s apartment, Zhade knocked. There was no answer.

  The door was painted a light blue, yellow starflowers etched into the edges. A kiddun’s handprints smudged the finish.

  Now that he was here, he wished he didn’t have to do this. He didn’t want to face Dzeni like this. She wouldn’t approve of his seizing the angels, taking them by force. And if she discovered he’d been taking lessons from Tsurina . . .

  A scream sounded from inside.

  Dzeni.

  Zhade threw himself against the door, but it didn't budge. Gryfud moved Zhade out of the way and kicked the door in. It flew off its hinges.

  Zhade charged in and froze. A group of red-eyed angels stood in the entry room.

  Dzeni, Dehgo, and a woman with white-blonde hair were surrounded by the rogue angels. The blonde woman was weeping. Next to her was Dzeni, face ashen but determined, blood and dirt streaking her cheeks. With one arm she held Dehgo behind her, and with the other she held a kitchen knife. They were sheltered in the small gods’ dome he’d given them. The sheen of the thin barrier was flickering, bout to die.

  Cheska lay crumpled on the ground, blood gushing in an ever-expanding pool round him. An angel stood above him. Cheska’s chest was cracked open, and on the tip of the angel’s spear was his heart.

  Meta barked orders in Tsurina’s voice, and the guards formed a circle round the ring of angels advancing on the small gods’ dome that held Dzeni and the woman who must be Swan, Cheska’s promised.

  Before Zhade could order them back, Meta charged the angel holding Cheska’s heart. The remaining guards followed suit, pulling out their swords. They hacked at the angels, but swords did little against the hard casing. One guard was speared through the neck, another through the stomach.

  Zhade drew his sword on instinct but then had memory of the Crown. He tried to command the angel nearest to him to stop, but there was something blocking him from its consciousness. This wasn’t right. Zhade could control angels. He’d done it this moren.

  Screams filled the air as the small dome blinked out, leaving Dzeni, Dehgo, and Swan defenseless.

  Gryfud beat back an angel and dragged a sobbing Swan to safety behind a counter. Dzeni used the moment of distraction to bring her kitchen knife down on the back of the angel’s neck, severing its head. It hit the ground, arms and legs twitching, its stardust releasing to the air. Zhade gathered it to himself. If he couldn’t control the rogue angels, he would use something he could control.

  Meta took down an angel, and Gryfud took out another. Their stardust scattered, and again, Zhade called to it through the Crown.

  But it wasn’t enough. He needed more. More stardust, more . . . energy. The battle raged round him, and he sought the nearest source of power—the miniature gods’ dome. It was broken but not drained. Power coursed through it. Power he could use.

  Sole, Andra had said not to, that using the Crown to access domes would destroy him.

  For certz it wouldn’t. This was a small one, and Zhade was strong.

  He called the power to himself, absorbing every bit of energy left in the dome. He felt his senses sharpen, every molecule of himself alight. He was limitless, unstoppable.

  He could see through the stardust in the room, sense through it. His consciousness was divided into a million pieces, drawn in a million different directions. But he wasn’t drained of himself; instead, he was expanded. He was Zhade and he was the magic. He was each minuscule piece of stardust in the room. He filled the space.

  He saw himself from outside of himself. Saw his brother’s features, his brother’s Crown, but the stance, the confidence was all Zhade’s. He saw Swan crumpled in a corner, her eyes focused on the hole in her promised’s chest. He felt the cavern where Cheska’s heart has been, felt his blood seep onto the floor. Heard the floor creak under the boots of the guards. Each clash of steel vibrated inside him. Each cry from Dzeni’s lips felt as though it were coming from his own.

  He was everywhere and nowhere, and somehow he recked how the battle would end. The guards were well trained and fought fierceish, but they were outnumbered. One by one, they would fall, Tsabin, Ranzh, Gryfud, til it was sole Meta who stood tween a host of angels and Dzeni. She would die, then Wead’s promised. Then their son. Then Swan. Til all that was left was Zhade.

  And they wouldn’t kill him.

  Not because they didn’t want to.

  But because they couldn’t. He was too powerful.

  Suddenish, he was consumed by a memory, a vision, of controlling stardust. Of forming spears. Of thrusting them into three hearts—

  He blinked. He’d never done that. Then why did he have the memory in his head as crystal as glass?

  “Zhade! Please!” Dzeni’s voice broke through the haze, and Zhade had memory of himself. Had memory of his duty as guv, his care for Dzeni, his love for her kiddun. In a single breath, he gathered all the stardust in the room, as though he were collecting starflowers. He felt the stardust inside the angels, their very souls. It was dark and unattainable, something other.

  He pulled it from them, siphoning their souls. He started small, gathering it into small collections. One piece of stardust became two, became four, became eight, til there were mil
lions of pieces attached together in glittering pockets. He gathered and gathered, relishing in the sheer power of it. He was no longer himself. No longer mereish Zhade, but something more. Something better.

  The angels began to slow, their movements sluggish, and with one final burst of energy, Zhade shouted, “Get down!”

  Meta hit the floor, dragging Dzeni with her. Gryfud threw himself over Dehgo, and the other guards formed a barrier between the angels and Swan.

  And the room exploded.

  Zhade blasted the angels back, tearing through their torsos and chests and limbs with their own magic, their own souls. Stardust ripped through them in glittering balls of concentrated destruction. Angel shrapnel flung itself round the room, embedding into the walls, bursting through the windows, toppling furniture. Zhade used the stardust to create his own dome, to shield Dzeni and Meta and his guards, and it felt as though he were creating something out of nothing. He felt like a god.

  The room fell silent, the last angel toppling to the floor. The air filled with dust and stardust, as Dzeni and Meta slowish raised their heads. Dehgo pushed out from under Gryfud and clawed his march to his mam, as she pleaded for him to be careful of the glass littering the floor. The guards stood, patting themselves off. Gryfud lifted Swan to her feet. Her gaze remained transfixed on her promised, whose body was now riddled with holes from the explosion.

  All eyes on the room went to Zhade, waiting for his command.

  “Gryf, get these three somewhere safe.” He gave Gryfud a pointed look, gesturing to Dzeni, Dehgo, and Swan. “Come back for the body,” Zhade added, when it appeared Swan would not be separated from it. Gryfud gentlish lifted Swan into his arms and carried her out of the room. Dzeni followed, Dehgo held tight in her arms, but not before giving Zhade one last look.

  He turned to Meta. Her brown eyes were wide, blood dripping down her cheek. She was looking at him as though she’d never seen him before.

  “Gather all the angels left acity and bring them to the cathedzal.” He made eye contact with each of the guards. “Hunt them all, quell any resistance. All angels should be in my possession by the end of the day, no meteor the cost. Do we comp?”

  “Firm, Guv,” the guards said.

  Meta continued to stare at him, something like fear etched on her face. Finalish she nodded.

  “Good.”

  Zhade kicked the remains of an angel out of his march, and left the guards to their task.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  00110010 00110101

  Andra had spent the last week upgrading neural’implants.

  She and Cruz started with the youngest members of the LAC. She'd wanted to start with the senior scientists, the ones who could help most with the upgrades and building the rocket. But Cruz said the younger ones would trust more easily. That they wouldn’t have the older scientists’ skepticism of Andra’s youth.

  By dinnertime the first day, she’d upgraded five—three from the cryonics department, one from terraforming, and one from medical. By the fifth day, she and Cruz had upgraded a total of thirty. At this pace, it was going to take months.

  Not to mention, the voice telling her to destroy emerged several times a day, and she continuously had to hide the dead nanos she coughed up. Andra had already sat through seven procedures today, and she felt like she’d run a marathon. Which she had never done, nor ever would do, but imagined was quite tiring. Cruz was ready to work through dinner, but he wasn’t the one with the reset tool sticking out of his heart.

  She told Cruz she needed a break, grabbed a few pieces of toast and a packet of syntheal from the colonists’ makeshift cafeteria, and headed toward her room in the Vaults.

  She was almost back when she remembered she had another responsibility she couldn’t ignore. She mentally reached out to Mechy, to let him know she was coming.

  When she entered the small Vaults lab that was now Maret’s cell, he was fully clothed—sand-colored pants and a black shirt, which he wore unbuttoned like his brother would—and lounging on a pile of Lilibet’s blankets, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed, the ends of his hair tickling his shoulders. He was no longer ’cuffed to a chair. Instead, he was behind a force shield Mechy had constructed. Unlike the metal bars and easily manipulated locks of the palace dungeons, only a thin, translucent field of energy separated them. It was barely visible, just a blue sheen around the edges, but Andra could feel its presence in her mind. A comforting barrier between her and Maret.

  Lilibet had brought him food and water and a cushion to sleep on. The food lay uneaten to the side, the cushion still plump and sitting where it had been slid through a momentary gap in the shield.

  Andra cleared her throat, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “So I’m to shit on the floor, evens?” he asked.

  Andra flushed. She hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll have someone bring you a bucket,” she murmured.

  He smiled to himself. “Shame. If you for true wanted me to talk, you might consider denying such comforts. Have you never held anyone prisoner before?”

  She swallowed. “You know I haven’t. And as I’m such an amateur, you’d best hope I remember to keep you alive.”

  Maret chuckled to himself.

  Andra got as close as she dared to the force shield. She knew it was there, could feel it, but part of her was waiting for Maret to pounce. To burst through the barrier, hand to her throat before she could even blink.

  “What is it, this information you say you know?” Andra asked, her voice wobbling.

  Maret cocked his knees and leaned forward, blond hair hanging in greasy streaks across his face. “I reck that you’re asking the wrong question.”

  “Then what’s the right question?”

  He shook his head, lips quirked. “Not that one either.”

  “Why are you such an ass?”

  “Ooh. Am I getting to you?” He tsked. “In an interrogation, you always want to be the one in control.”

  Her cheeks went warm. “I’m not the one in a cage,” she snapped.

  This wasn’t in her skill set—interrogating people. She looked for the voice that haunted her, that corruption inside her that told her to destroy. That ruthlessness, that hate, could guide her now.

  It was like slipping into a cold lake. Her breath left her in a rush and her muscles tensed, but once she was submerged in the feeling, it was . . . refreshing. To let the darkness in.

  Destroy, it hissed.

  Yes, she answered. He deserved to be destroyed for all he had done. To his brother. To Eerensed. To Andra. It would be right to be rid of him. To do what Zhade had tried to do months ago. Cold clarity overtook her. She would do it. She would—

  “Andra?” a voice said into her mind.

  Mechy.

  She came back to herself, the cold feeling draining from her in an instant.

  What had she been thinking? She’d almost let it take control.

  And for what? The information Maret said he was holding back? That could be a lie? The information he said she so desperately needed. But she didn’t know what she needed. Maybe Rashmi’s memories from before? Or was it something about Andra? He had once said that he knew what she was and why she’d been created. But surely that had just been a taunt. And besides, Griffin’s clone had already said her purpose was to help humanity.

  “Is everything evens, Goddess?” Maret sneered.

  “Of course,” Andra snapped.

  He watched her, eyes unblinking, expression unreadable.

  She took a calming breath. “You used to trust me.” When he scoffed, she added, “Sort of. You asked me to help you save your brother. You protected me from your mother sacrificing me at the festival.”

  “Firm, and look how that turned out for me. My brother tried to kill me, and you attacked me. Several times. And now, you’ve put me in some sort of magical c
age.”

  He stood, thin and long-limbed, and stalked toward her. Andra willed herself not to back away as he touched his finger to the force shield, holding eye contact as the tip of his finger burned against the barrier. His fingertip sizzled, his eyes started to water. Technically, he could push through if he wanted, if he didn’t mind losing his finger, then his hand, then his arm. If he kept going, he would be dead before he made it halfway through.

  “Stop.” Andra flinched.

  Maret smiled and pulled his finger away from the energy field. The tip was blackened. On instinct, Andra sent some nearby nanos to heal it. They passed through the field effortlessly and went to work on Maret’s wound.

  His eyes widened as he swatted at the nanos, stumbling back. “Get those away from me,” he rasped.

  She pulled the med’nanos back. “Interesting,” she said, trying to mimic the tone he’d just used with her. “Does the stardust scare you?” She brought the nanos closer to Maret, coalescing them into a shimmering cloud.

  “When it’s controlled by you, for certz I am, you soulless demon. You nearish killed everyone on a whim that day in the throne room.” He held his burned finger to his chest, as though he were shielding it from her. “And you imagine I’m a monster.”

  That brought Andra up short. The nanos dispersed back into the air, and Maret relaxed.

  “What did I do?” she asked. “That day in the throne room.”

  Was this the information he claimed to know?

  Maret narrowed his eyes, a quirk to his lips. “You controlled the pocket.”

  Andra held her breath. He knew something. She felt it in her bones.

  “The question is,” he said, “what did it do to you?”

  * * *

  Back in her room, Andra put on a fresh pair of clothes. She splashed her face with cold water and watched as it dripped from her reflection. Her eyes and nose were red, and there was an overall haggard look to her features.