How can I fight this?
How can anyone fight this?
I realize my sight is on the window. Outside, darkness envelops the clouds, and suddenly, I think of the Gearbreaker. The harsh glint of her midnight eyes, glaring back at me as she clutches lightning in her grasp, breathes out thunder in her snarl.
She stands, amid it all, furious and beautifully vindictive, and she does not flinch. She does not even waver.
Lovely thoughts.
My fingernails uproot from my palms. I flip them onto my trousers, pressing down, quelling the bleeding.
Lovely, destructive thoughts.
CHAPTER NINE
ERIS
Above me, the Berserker’s titanium palms split into a garden of a hundred tiny valves.
OhmyGodsthisisdefinitelydefinitelywhereIamgoingtodie—
The air came alive with the hiss of gunfire.
Shit. Hands thrown over my head, bullets tearing the grass beside my flat form. Soil puckering, rupturing, particles flying into my ears and throat. Shit shit shit—
Jenny, my crew captain, wore her trademark expression as she wove between the mecha’s footsteps—a sparkling grin, a fair competitor to the glint of the Berserker’s skin. For only a single moment she hovered by my side, just enough time to yank me to my feet.
“No one in my crew dies on their bellies,” she barked, grip tightening until I gave a convincing nod. “Good, then. You’re coming inside with me.”
A warning shout sounded from one of the crew members, and a blast shrieked across the field as a trench exploded open across the Berserker’s shin.
And then the world was this: my sister, already stuffed to the brim with arrogance, standing with a straight spine, a hellish grin balanced by the cavalier tilt of her chin, and a deity kneeling before her.
My arm sheathed in her iron grip, Jenny sprinted forward. She released me to launch herself onto the Windup’s foot and spun back to hoist me up the rest of the way.
Her hand swept over my forehead, tugging my new welding goggles into place.
“Now you look like a real Gearbreaker,” Jenny declared.
“I look like a dirt-covered ten-year-old,” I snapped.
“You’re ten already?”
“Oh my Gods, yes, and die.”
“That’s the spirit!” Dark eyes shining, her grin listed upward.
I followed her example, finding that the sun had disappeared, replaced by an ugly chrome head that glared down with crimson eyes.
“That’s right, fucker!” she shouted up. “You’re done for!”
“It heard you, Jen.”
“That was the point,” she stated, and then, as the Berserker reached for us, shoved me into the opening.
Instinct seized me. I snatched a ladder rung, and then I was climbing, a new kind of exhilaration controlling my actions. Below us, two of the mecha’s fingers had followed us into the leg, wriggling, thick as tree trunks.
Jenny sent a wad of spit across its knuckle, dragged the back of her hand across her lips, and nodded at me to keep climbing.
I made it out of the thigh and into the hips, poking my head out the opening. And a guard’s boot slammed into the bridge of my nose.
My grip broke, and then I was free-falling—utterly, unimaginatively devastated by the notion that my corpse would be without a single tattoo to speak of—
Until Jenny’s hand caught my wrist.
Her gaze tore from mine to glare upward at the guard’s rifle, pointed down at us. With one hand on the ladder rung and the other tethering me, she had no way to reach her pistol.
But I could. My hand shot up, stealing it from her waistband, landing an even shot to the guard’s collarbone. His finger stumbled against the trigger, and the bullet harmlessly cut the air next to my neck, pinging once off the mecha’s writhing digits and ricocheting out the opening.
The guard teetered above, balanced on the edge for a single second before tipping, plummeting, hands brushing past my hood as he descended.
He cracked against the mecha’s fingers, which twisted, pinching him between them before retracting.
“Your nose is broken,” Jenny informed me once we were out of the leg, black eyes giving only a moment to my condition before wandering above. “But that was a nice shot, kid. I’ll take my gun back now.”
I wordlessly handed back her pistol, afraid that I might start bawling if I opened my mouth, then watched as she scaled one of the iron beams. Her bronze shears appeared in her palm, taking a coil of cords between the blades and handily snipping. The exposed copper shimmered as it dipped.
“Cuts like butter,” Jenny sighed, peering down at me. “See, Eris? No reason to be intimidated by these things.” She gestured around the air. “They are built to be feared, so once you stop fearing them, you’re the one with the upper hand.”
Her face lifted, and she pushed her goggles to her forehead to get a better look. Then her pistol rose, shot screaming through the air, and a guard fell from above, past me and into the leg chute.
Jenny continued her work, the wires sparking and dying around her, until the hum of electricity dulled and the gears decelerated before stopping altogether. Stillness took to the air, but despite that, something was still whirring—I could feel it in my fingertips, its kick in each tooth. My heart had never beat like this before.
I’d never had a heart like this before.
Jenny descended, landing soundlessly as a tabby cat, and nudged me with her shoulder.
“Don’t go all shell-shocked on me now.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to put into simple words how much my nose hurt and how scared shitless I was and how all of it made me feel a little more than human, how I liked the sound of the bad things breaking by my hand and how this was everything—
All I said, in the least warbling tone I could manage, was, “What now?”
Jenny grinned again, looking upward, into the silence.
“Now we go for the Pilot.”
* * *
Today, this is the story I choose to tell them as they pick at me. My first takedown.
Gritting it out through clenched teeth, between the growls, the escaped sobs, piece by fractured piece, exchanging true names for feared aliases, pain for some bright piece of memory, everything to me but useless to them.
I’m not even paying attention to you anymore, fuckers. I’m not even here.
“Where is the Gearbreaker compound, Frostbringer?”
Ice water, today.
Seems even the Bots have a sense of humor.
They pull me back from the metal bucket, arms pinned behind my back. I’m shivering so hard that they rattle along with me, and when I notice this, I get a fantastic, dumb spur of confidence—or maybe just desperation—and kick to my feet.
Throwing my weight to the left, I rip one arm free, and immediately crack my elbow against the guard’s nose. He recoils—and I think, that was a good idea—then surges forward—ah, you know, actually, maybe it wasn’t—
His knee hits me in a bad, soft spot in my gut while the other guard holds me steady.
She lets me drop to all fours when I start heaving. They watch me work my ration of a spoonful of water and gruel from my stomach onto the floor.
Oh my Gods, I think, with a dry, funny kind of thrill, this is definitely where I’m going to die.
“I feel better now,” I say, dragging the back of my hand against my lips to wipe away the bile. “We can keep going.”
CHAPTER TEN
SONA
The light is gray the next morning. Fingertips gentle against my left eye, I pad through the quiet halls of the Valkyrie floor, lost—again—in their sprawl. A curving corridor for the bedrooms and a library to the west; a pool, sauna, and steam room to the north; three lounges scattered throughout. Gray is rare this far up, even higher than the Academy floors. The clouds dislike how we reach, usually, and keep their distance.
There is a beautiful kitchen, too, countertop sta
cked with sugared breakfast pastries. Somewhere. Where the hells—
I turn the corner and run straight into Victoria.
Almost. Her hand extends a blink before, saving our heads from knocking together. Her eyes skip from the right side of my face to my left, where my fingertips hold down the lid. I lower them, conscious of her hand against my sleeve.
“Do you know where the kitchen is?” I ask.
Victoria snickers. “You’ve been here for weeks, sweetheart.”
“That new eye is doing you wonders,” I say.
Now her hand falls. She uses it to flick her pale hair over her shoulder and turns away.
“That,” she huffs, corner of her mouth twitching, “was dangerously close to a compliment.”
I follow her around a few corners until we reach the kitchen. Jole slumps at one of the countertop stools, dead asleep, the ridge of his cheekbone against Rose’s elbow. On the countertop beside a steaming cup of tea, her Valkyrie jacket is flipped inside out, exposing a large rip in the fabric of the pocket. In her hand is a needle strung with dark thread.
“Morning,” she calls, eyes not lifting from her stitching. It is obvious she has never sewn anything in her life, judging by the way her thumb is bleeding from multiple pinpricks. Her hand jerks gracelessly, and the needle jabs again. The concentrated expression on her face does not so much as twitch.
I grab a pastry, heavy with glazed fruit. “Good morning.”
“How was your run, Vic?” Rose asks.
“We don’t have to talk,” Victoria retorts, filling up a mug of coffee and exiting.
“Mmkay, bye-bye,” Rose calls as I take the remaining seat beside her. “I think she’s warming to you, Sona.”
“No thank you,” I say, taking a bite. I can see Jole’s left pupil glowing underneath his copper-colored lid, only slightly, as if the skin there could blush.
“I think she’s been stealing looks at you from the get-go, and it means something,” Rose says. “Kiss and make up, already. And then kiss again.”
“I am going to eat in my room.”
“What, not your type?” Rose calls after me. “She might even qualify as your knight in shining armor, after today’s run!”
I raise a brow and pause in the doorway, words muffled by bread and sugar. “Yes? And how is that, exactly?”
“She likes girls, you maybe—”
“The knight thing, Rose.”
“Ah.” She takes a sip of her tea. “Vic was sent out to clean up Franconia this morning.”
The pastry dangling from my fingertips slips to the floor.
She does not notice. Her blood spots the countertop.
“What do you mean, ‘clean up’?” I ask carefully.
“You know.” She turns from her needlework, cheery grin lighting her face. Thumb tracing a slow line beneath her chin, ear to ear. “Spotless.”
* * *
Sunup to sundown was spent beneath the soil. With no set of hands to spare on watching those too young to work, children were brought to the mines alongside their parents. Day after day, we reaped the earth, picked and pried at its shell until every soul was filthy with coal grime, powdered over the patches of skin that the lack of sunlight had rubbed pale.
Bone weary, dust caked, and near stripped down to nothing but bone and muscle, Silvertwin’s people shuffled like ghosts from their homes to the mines and back again, forever tied to the earth to meet Godolia’s staggering quotas. Sunlight was only seen in slivers, in the last look toward the horizon before the plummet—a sickle-shaped, marigold glow that sent the shadows spilling from the notched leaves of the ancient sycamores. Other than the fleeting dawns and dusks, Silvertwin saw only a sky shrouded in darkness.
Godolia knew this, because they had created this, created what our whole lives would be. And so they knew to send the Phantom, too.
The train held enough coal, iron, copper, and zinc to satisfy Godolia’s gluttony for that month, but come one morning we found that it had failed to depart in the night. It was an autonomous transport—its railways strung between the neighboring towns, plundering their resources before looping back toward Godolia—and no one held the knowledge of how to fix the tech.
Ignorantly, we did not fear the potential consequences of the missed quota, as we knew that we were not at fault. We went along with business as usual, as if Godolia had a kind and understanding reputation. As if decades ago they had not forced those in the Badlands—the people who happened to live within the limits of nations that had lost the Springtide War—to form their resource villages.
They sent the Windups at twilight, when the exit tunnels would be choked with exhausted bodies shuffling toward the elevators.
We thought it was an earthquake.
And we panicked.
The frenzy of a thousand feet as people surged toward the exit. The clutch of fear shaking from them any notion of the nine-year-old girl caught underneath their steps, suffocating in the footprints.
At one point, my kneecap succumbed to their weight and snapped. My screams were heard only by the earth, which in return sent particles of filth clawing down my throat and wedging between my teeth.
Nearby, one of the birdcages had split open, wire frame crumpled like an eggshell. I could see the gleam of the canary’s eyes, black and flickering around in its sockets, as if it had the good sense to be frightened, too. Then, a boot, and the sound of delicate bones breaking, resonating like kindling crackling in a warm hearth.
Somehow, I managed to roll to the side, back pressing against the packed dirt wall.
And then:
“Bellsona! Bellsona!”
My name, fractured. Choked on.
Lolling my sight upward, I saw that heavenly, unreachable pinprick of gray light that marked the exit. Saw a crack shoot across the ceiling, a fissure as large as my torso and as jagged as a serrated blade.
My name, skipping up the corridor, torn from my parents’ lips.
“Bell—”
The earth caved in, dirt and coal burying my senses, hushing the screams of every person who had stumbled by me.
For a few dazed minutes, I thought that after everything we had taken from the earth, she had finally awoken to take something back.
But after my tears flushed the filth from my eyes, when I blinked and found myself staring at the cracks in the cavern ceiling, where the fresh night air was seeping through, I knew the truth. I saw its movement through the slivers, felt my breath freeze in my chest. This was not the earth’s doing.
A Paladin, using its immense weight, had rooted itself over the hollowed-out ground, and simply took a few steps. A few effortless steps, and my entire world had split apart. The metal skin shone even with the absence of the sun, greaves creaking as it took a step away, disappearing from my sight.
Move.
Again, the ground quaked, and again, screams were snatched from the air as they were buried by black soil.
You need to move.
Broken leg trailing behind me, I heaved myself onto a slab of split earth. Adrenaline dwindled my life to small movements, my thoughts only of escape. Squeeze through the narrow slits. Ignore the pieces of fragmented stone that tear the skin. Ignore the bodies beneath. Ignore the broken fingernails, the taste of blood on the lips, the ring of their shrieks still nipping at the ears.
Climb, the panic ordered. My body obeyed, fear like a noose around my throat, tugging me toward the surface. This place would not be my tomb. I refused to die in my own grave.
I pulled myself over the edge and collapsed onto my back, sucking in the untainted air as the world spun. Grass against my shoulders. Aether blotted like cotton over my head. To my right, the sycamore forest, leaves chattering happily in the wind.
Oh. My fingers twitched against the cool earth. I am dreaming.
Suddenly I was pulled to my feet, the pain of my leg spewing black dots onto the starred heavens. I whirled to find a hand around my wrist, pulling me toward the tree line. Once we disap
peared into the foliage, the person spun around and a palm was being pressed to my cheek.
“Are you hurt?” the man said breathlessly, and I faintly recognized him as the canary breeder. His pale eyes burned bright with tears. “Bellsona, are you hurt?”
My stomach rolled at the sound of my name. I slapped his hand away to double over and empty my stomach on the forest floor.
I am dreaming, I reminded myself afterward, straightening, and then, to remind him also, said, “Ajeossi. This is a dream.”
He moved his hand to my shoulder and shook me until my teeth rattled.
I recoiled, screeching, and his palm clamped over my mouth.
Blood dripped from my fractured fingernails, my knee bent beneath me at an unnatural angle. Pain was a grounding thing; it made the moment solid, cauterized it into something real.
My lips moved against his fingers. “Where are my parents?”
I watched his eyes wander back toward the entrance of the mine, looking for a convincing lie. The mouth of the earth was coughing clouds of dust, and within it moved the barest hints of silhouettes: other survivors. He looked back at me, tried to smile.
“I will go search for your parents,” he said, voice cracking. He swallowed hard, tried again. “I will go search for your parents, over by the mine. Stay here, all right? I will be only a moment.”
Wordlessly, I watched his figure wobble toward the mouth, take a single step out of the tree line.
And then the night shed its skin.
The sky shifted, and suddenly the canary keeper was flying, legs kicking helplessly, scream curdling from his throat. A moment later his body shattered against the earth. He had no wings, but his arms spread flat like the canary’s, the same red seeping out of parted, twitching lips.
The night took another step, and through the gaps in the trees I saw its hand reach into the mine’s mouth to pluck out another form. Another scream, another round of bones crackling. This time the person twitched on the ground, limbs erupting at wrong angles, and the mecha took careful notice, turning back to complete its work.
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