Gearbreakers

by Zoe Hana Mikuta

Planning on it, I think tiredly, because truly, I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I have also lost a lot of blood. It’s all adding up to something strange. I’m not on the asphalt, unspooling ice—

  I’m home, and little. On the floor, angry as twin hells. I missed my stance, and Jenny shoved me down again. She bends over me, dark hair in my face, bouncing on the pads of her feet.

  “You’re good, you’re good,” she’s chanting, grin wild. She offers her hand and I bat it away. “See? You’re fine. Get up or they’re going to get you. You’ve got ice in your veins, little Frostbringer—are you really just going to sit there and let yourself freeze? No? Good. Let’s keep going.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  SONA

  Did you kill her?

  No. I … am not sure. I think she killed me.

  Did you kill her?

  Did she kill me?

  It’s dark.

  She killed me.

  I knew she would. She hit her mark this time. I stood still for her, too, just like I said I would—

  “Did you kill her?” someone says. “Sona. Wake the hells up.”

  I blink. There is a light, a cold table beneath me. We spent time here, before. We left, I am sure of it. I roll my eyes around the room. Shackles hold fast around my wrists. Someone stands over me, hands braced on the metal edge.

  We left.

  Did it even matter?

  I murmur her name, but my throat is cotton and the word comes out as nothing.

  “Answer me, Sona.”

  My sight finds a hold above.

  Jole stares at me with the eyes that my weakness had allowed to become familiar. But the look in them is new, a bright, hardened fury festering within. I force myself to lift my chin.

  “Do it,” I rasp. “Whatever they sent you in here to do. Go ahead.”

  “Where is Rose, Sona?” Jole asks.

  I do not answer.

  “Did you kill her?”

  My glare stutters, just for an instant, but he catches it. Suddenly he springs forward, a hand threading over my scalp and twisting through my hair. Another piece of him that I am familiar with, the hand that would squeeze my shoulders or pat my cheek affectionately. And now, the hand that slams my head onto the tabletop.

  My sight smears. I feel sick. Did it even matter? It had to. Is that not an answer?

  “Did you kill her?!” he shouts, though it does not sound like a question any longer. He tightens his grip. “Say it! Say you killed her!”

  “I killed her,” I say, watching the glaze of tears bubble onto his eyelashes. My voice is a whisper. “I killed her.”

  The barest flinch, and then, “Apologize.”

  “What?”

  “Apologize!” Jole screams.

  “To … Rose?”

  “To Rose? To Rose?!” he gasps in disbelief. “To your Godsdamn friend, Sona! To the girl who showed you nothing but kindness, who defended you, who cared for you! Who would have killed for you!”

  I am a Gearbreaker, I want to say. Rose was loyal to Godolia. Rose deserved to die.

  But something burns inside my chest, and it constricts my breath and makes the room go hazy. Heat radiates off his cheeks and his tears and his words, and all I can find myself saying, in nothing but a mere croak, is, “I am not sorry.”

  And I know I should mean it. I know I should. But it was Rose. Rose, sweet as her name. Who was born entangled in the glory of a place I loathe.

  Jole lifts my head, slams it back downward. The room tilts.

  “Apologize!” he yells, tears dripping off his face and onto my cheeks. Gods, I hope that that is what is happening, at least, that the salt I taste does not come from my own eyes. “Tell her you’re sorry!”

  I bare my teeth, and I bite back the memories of her—her smile, her curls, her bell-like voice. She was never my Rose. She was Godolia’s. They all are.

  “I am not sorry that I cut her throat,” I growl, refusing to look away at the shock that seeps across his features.

  “Stop,” Jole snaps, but it comes out in a sob. He tries to press a hand over my mouth, but I pull my chin away.

  “One dead Pilot saves hundreds of Badlands lives, and so I will happily kill thousands more, starting with you if you do not take your fucking hands off me!”

  “There is no reason to be profane, Miss Steelcrest.”

  There is someone standing in the doorway, someone I do not recognize.

  I do not have to. Because on the lapel of his black suit, there is a tree. Its bare branches are woven tight, layered like intertwined fingers, and below, the roots spread thinly, entangled with the cosmos. A long time ago, the Aether Tree was the ceremonial symbol of the Gods, said to be inscribed on the gates of the heavens. But when Godolia came to rise, the Zeniths claimed it as their official emblem.

  “No,” I growl, anger and shock singeing my cheeks. “You are supposed to be dead. You are all supposed to be dead!”

  “Mr. Westlin,” the Zenith continues in a cool voice, ignoring me, “I believe you accomplished what you came here to do, yes? The Academy thanks you for your assistance.”

  Jole releases me immediately, but he leans in close, lips by my temple.

  “It’s all true, what they say,” he whispers, so full of poison, so sure of his words. “You’re monsters, every last one of you.”

  He stalks away. I close my eyes. I am exhausted, and there is no need to look.

  “Where is the Frostbringer?” I snarl.

  “Miss Steelcrest.”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  “Could we have a proper introduction? I was raised to shake hands, so this is awkward, but I could at least give you my name before we begin.”

  And I was raised to flinch in his presence. Forget the Windups, the Zeniths are Godolia’s true deities. And unlike the mechas, their power is not false. Five of them in control at any given time. Five people who hold the world in their hands, be it their choice to nurture it, protect it, or, if they fancied hearing the sound of everything, everything splintering apart, simply tighten their grip.

  But he cannot be much older than I am.

  “So polite,” I murmur. “You are just a child. You were not done being raised.”

  Just another kid. Just like me. It’s laughable and heartbreaking, and it makes me ache for the end of this time, this age of children inheriting wars. Could we just stop? I want to ask. Could you want to act your age and unmake this brutality within you? Could you know we are too young to feel so cruel?

  “And yet, I have inherited my title forty years earlier than expected. You were…” A pause, a hitch of breath. Is he it? The last Zenith? “You were very thorough.”

  “There is only you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apologies,” I say. “I meant to kill you as well.”

  “You got close.” I open my eyes to find his hand running along his wrist, pulling up his sleeve. A white bandage is wound up his arm, clean and soft, the visible skin so close in color that it makes him look sickly, veins shining through in dark rivers. His head tilts slightly as he regards the bindings, and I realize a medical patch has been set at the nape of his neck as well.

  I burned him.

  Was he conscious for all of it?

  Did he watch them all crumble, just as I watched them all suffocate?

  He cocks his head to the side. Black hair pulls back into a small knot at the back of his head; pretty, almost delicate features scattered between angular cheekbones. I have the excruciating realization that he looks a lot like how I would picture an older Xander. If Xander had ever gotten the chance to grow older.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Why what?”

  “Why the excess of it?”

  I ignore the ridiculous question. “How many did I end up killing? Zeniths, subordinates, colonels? Bystanders? Might as well count the bystanders.”

  His mouth contorts. “We have not finished counting. You managed to collapse a few dozen stories
with that last missile.”

  I cannot pinpoint what hits me first—the triumph, or the revulsion, or simply the exhaustion, the fight dribbling out of me, because what could be left after this? Maybe we did just fine, just enough, after all. One Zenith, and he is a teenager, alone. This nation has such vast weight. It is not a spectacular collapse, but a collapse nonetheless.

  “Where is the Frostbringer?” I ask again.

  “You two are an extraordinary case,” the Zenith muses. “A Pilot and a Gearbreaker.”

  “I am a Gearbreaker,” I snarl, and he laughs. The warmth of it is offset by the blankness of his eyes.

  “You’re a Gearbreaker,” he repeats, a note of amusement in his tone. He is holding something in his hand, sends it slowly rolling through his fingertips. An ink pen. “Tell me, Bellsona: How could the renegades have possibly taken such a liking to you?”

  “I have a lovely personality.”

  He laughs again. “No, no. I mean, Gearbreakers hate all Pilots. Zeniths. The Academy. Godolia. Everything about us. How exactly did you defy that? How did they, after everything they’ve been taught, accept the fact that you are simply not human?”

  I lift my chin. “I am human.”

  The Zenith stops twirling his pen, takes a step forward, and drives the tip into my hand, straight through to the glass of the table. Blood ruptures from the wound and wets my hip. He does not flinch. And, of course, neither do I. Satisfied with the lack of a reaction, his smirk deepens.

  “Martyrs are such a tricky business, aren’t they, Miss Steelcrest?” he murmurs, inches away, and I wish he smelled of smoke, of singed flesh. But there’s nothing besides the fresh tinge of salve on his wounds. He is already healing. “Badlands people … they feed on hope more than anything else. The Gearbreakers provided them that. As much as they were allowed, anyway.”

  I keep my features schooled, but my heartbeat kicks awake in my chest.

  “The agreement was, simply, to tread lightly. Take those dime-a-dozen Windups—the Berserkers, the Arguses, the Phoenixes. Take some Pilots too dull to evolve into our more formidable deities, and give the people just enough hope to keep going. In their heads, they are rebels. Voxter was to leave our greater Gods alone to do their good work. No direct attack was to be made on Godolia, and his barbarians would be allowed their scraps of hope. In exchange, we would not slaughter every last Badlands soul in his army.”

  A bitter look flares across his features, but he stifles it quickly. The smirk twists into a smile, cold as tundra.

  “And then, you. By some feat of heavens or hells, Voxter did not slaughter you as soon as he laid eyes on you, thought it would be a spectacle to have his Gearbreakers toy with an Archangel skeleton. Only when Jenny Shindanai somehow managed to get it to fly did he realize his mistake, realize that his Gearbreakers would be just another dust spot in the desert if it ever reached Godolia. He begged for the Zeniths to fix it, and they sent a few Phoenixes, deeming the problem solved. Except Voxter had blundered that as well. By the time he bothered to send word that Heavensday remained the target, well … the prototype Archangel wasn’t ready until it was almost too late.”

  The pen rises from my hand, blood welling in a small pool. I could almost laugh. I realize I want to laugh, and so I do, and the sound spasms from me like it loathes being ripped free, but I keep pulling it out, like thread on a fraying sleeve. Jenny Shindanai is going to kill Voxter. She is going to kill him, and it will be horrifying and so precisely, brilliantly violent, and I am going to miss it.

  He waits patiently for me to be done, and I roll my head back to him, smiling dizzily.

  “My predecessors were fools, Miss Steelcrest,” he says softly. This does get a reaction, surprise flitting across my features before I can stifle it. I never expected another Zenith to even consider the possibility, much less say it aloud. “Too merciful. Too empathetic about the whims of the people on the losing side, so blind to the fact that every single one of them, if given the opportunity, would let this nation crumble to ash. Like we are not the bridge to the heavens, the one pure strand of this mortal coil.”

  You fanatic, I think to myself, you never even stood a chance, did you?

  “When will you kill me?”

  The Zenith cocks his head to the side again, as if surprised by the question.

  “My name is Enyo.”

  “I do not care.”

  “Miss Steelcrest, I am not going to kill you.”

  I look to the ceiling, let my vision drown under the light. My hate has carved furrows in me; it has cleaved a path up my throat where the words can follow effortlessly, but they come out tiredly, because I am tired of them, so exhausted of this anger without end.

  “I would let this place crumble,” I murmur. “I would let it all turn to ash.”

  I want it to be a burial ground, deep as hells; I want the soil to breathe and scream, and I want so much pain here. I want to take Eris’s hand and to dance on this scorched earth until we are senseless, until we can forget we made this grave. Because the options were run or fight, lose everything or win something; there was little choice to begin with.

  “It does not matter,” Enyo says. “Because you are not one of them.”

  “This place…” I shake my head. “This place is so fucking delusional.”

  Enyo waves his hand dismissively. “To an extent. But with you, I have complete clarity. Natural skill, Bellsona … now, that is rare. We are not going to allow it to simply be thrown down the nearest incinerator or collect dust in a cell. As for that hatred and disgust … those are trivial feelings. They can be redirected.” A pause. “Corrupted.”

  My stomach violently recoils at the word.

  “The corruption process relies on pain,” I manage. “It does not work on Pilots. It will not work on me.”

  The Zenith gives me a long look, and for a strange moment I get the sense that it is laced with something akin to disappointment.

  “You are a Pilot, Bellsona,” Enyo says. “Just like every machine, parts of you can be turned off and on. Your eyesight, your basic bodily functions, hells, even your taste buds. That includes your ability to feel pain. It takes a mere button press. And I, as a Zenith, happen to have every switch at my disposal.”

  I suffocate my burst of fear by forcing poison into my words. “I would think torture is beneath your status.”

  This time, the look that sparks in his eyes stays pinned. I was right. It was grief. Horrific, soul-wrenching grief. I cling to it like fingers do the shore after a shipwreck.

  “Correct again, Miss Steelcrest. But I insisted. After all…” The coy smile disintegrates. “You did kill my family.”

  Enyo raises his hand and snaps his fingers once. A scream tears free from my throat as pain—real and viciously bright—fragments across my right hand, biting across the raw flesh of the open wound.

  “All right.” Enyo sighs, letting his pen come to rest between his fingers. With his other hand, he gently rolls back my sleeve, tucking it neatly above my elbow. “Let’s see if we can get those pesky feelings out, shall we?”

  Layer by layer, he carves my gears away. Eventually, my screams dwindle to meek whimpers, and then I hear him work all too clearly. By the last one, all I have the energy to give is a slight twitch, useless against the iron restraints.

  “Where is the Frostbringer?” I murmur, when I can remember something else besides this pain. Sometimes I slip away but still forget to ask. Sometimes I am so far away from all of this, back home; sometimes I am in a place that looks like this but is not. I know because my ribs move differently, and I breathe not to pretend but to brace myself, because my pulse is fast in my fingertips and I do not know why. I have had a heart before, but never one like this. She rolls her eyes. Please, Glitch. Does it look like I scare easy?

  It’s okay to be scared.

  Then I come back, and I am leaking red, but so is the rest of the world. Nothing new, nothing new.

  “Where is she?” I say, aga
in, because we save each other, and I need to be saved.

  Enyo’s hand smooths over my forehead, warmth smearing my brow.

  “My dear Pilot, we are going to accomplish such great things together. There is no need to worry. Take comfort.” He breathes his words like a prayer. “Godolia is a merciful place.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This was supposed to be a book about mecha sword fights and angry kids, but it ended up being more along the lines of a love story, as these things usually turn out. A rom-com with robots, if you will. If you read the whole book before reading these words you might absolutely despise me for saying that, but I think it’s a little funny, and besides, that would mean you did read the whole book, and so you can detest me all you’d like, I have so much love for you, thank you for everything.

  I have so many people in my life I have such fierce adoration for, and I have the paper to attempt to convey it, so here it goes:

  To Kiva, my darling, the strawberry to my shortcake. You spectacular entity. Thank you for telling me to breathe. I’ll slay dragons with you, dear, when this reality permits it, our names scrawled on our apartment mailbox, the bathtub in the middle of the kitchen, the cat that owns us pacing the rugs we’ve strewn all over the floorboards.

  To Titan. I’m older, but you seem ancient sometimes, and you’ve taught me a lot about the world without even intending to. You were right when you said it comes in waves.

  To Dad. You’re a rock, and you have a weird sense of humor. I can’t help but think the world would’ve pummeled me beyond repair already if I hadn’t adopted from you a healthy sheen of sarcasm and the ability to stand my ground, and when I can’t, you have my back. I’m a tough kid because of you. I hope you liked the robots.

  To Mom. You like to think I chose you, but I think I was just lucky. How fortunate I am to have the kind of relationship I do with you, how vividly I feel it when I treat myself harshly and you say no one can talk about your daughter like that, when you say I deserve the world. You have no idea how much weight it holds, how I carry it with me wherever I go because I cannot always feel that way about myself, and it saves me.