by Meg LaTorre
But as she watched her knives fly toward Bastian, it was as though they moved slowly, hanging in the air, destined to kill the man she was trying to save.
Then time returned to normal speed, and she heard the crack of metal on metal.
Smoke plumed as a shot was fired. Screams filled the room from cyborgs and humans alike.
The smoke cleared, and Gwen sighed.
Bastian’s cane, the one he never parted with, clattered onto the ground, along with the knife that had redirected the gun’s aim. The second knife was embedded in Bastian’s chest.
Gwen staggered forward, nearly losing her footing.
Did I just kill Bastian?
She noticed the slight wobble to the knife, as though it were a flagpole swaying in the breeze, and she recalled his second implant. Sighing, she watched as he pulled the knife free, seemingly unharmed. The tip of the blade was bent—likely from the metal plating beneath his chest.
Soldiers rushed toward Bastian, disarming and forcing him to his knees. As they did, the emperor raised his hand. To her surprise, silence descended over the room. The performers stared at Bastian with unmasked shock.
More soldiers emerged from the wings of the room, leaving their posts at each of the exits. Every single one directed a gun at the performers, many of which swiveled to point at Bastian… and Gwen.
She realized quite suddenly that the human soldiers outnumbered the cyborgs four to one. Perhaps more.
“I should have expected a display of violence.” Titus rose from where Gwen had pushed him onto the ground. His hair was slightly disheveled, but he was completely unharmed. “That’s what technology does to the human brain. It rattles the mind and makes us more prone to act on basic barbaric instincts.”
Says the man who tied up his honored guests.
The emperor turned to study Bastian.
The ringleader’s left eye was surrounded by a ring of purple. When had he been hit? Several soldiers held his arms and neck while others stood around him with unsheathed swords and guns.
Even from across the room, the emperor’s presence seemed to loom over Bastian, unbridled authority pooling around him. “Why?”
Why did you try to kill me?
Gwen bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood.
But Bastian didn’t respond. Instead, he looked at the far wall with eyes devoid of emotion.
“What was your motive? Did someone put you up to this?” Titus persisted. When Bastian still didn’t look him in the eye, a soldier grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at the emperor. “Answer me!”
Still, the ringleader didn’t meet Titus’s gaze. Instead, his eyelids lazily blinked as he stared sightlessly.
“I did it of my own volition,” Bastian said at last, his voice strangely monotone. “I’ve hated what you’ve done to our society with the Cyborg Prohibition Law. I saw an opening, and I took it.”
“Bullshit.” Gwen stepped toward him.
Soldiers directed more guns at her, but she ignored them.
The emperor raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten your involvement in this. I saw your knives.”
“In that case, you’re welcome,” she said, before adding, “Your Imperial Highness. I was trying to save your life and his.”
The emperor turned to face her.
“You think I won’t kill an assassin in my midst?”
“Not if he’s innocent.”
When Titus laughed, it was a throaty chuckle—like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up. “A man who’s attempted murder is hardly innocent.”
“I’m the cyborg tinkerer,” she said. “I know his cyborg technology has been tampered with and by someone on the show management team. They have programmed him to do it. He would never have raised a hand to you otherwise.”
“Who programmed him?” Titus demanded.
“Celeste Beckett, the Mistress of Cirque du Borge and Keeper of Beasts,” she replied. “I saw her tampering with his chip last night.”
“Why did you say nothing before?”
“Would you have believed a cyborg?”
Titus didn’t reply but gestured to the soldiers around the room. “Find Ms. Beckett at once. Tear this palace apart if you have to.”
“I’m here, Titus.”
Before the soldiers could move, Celeste strode from the garden door and into the center of the ballroom. Several watchmen followed her, one of which had a hand clamped on Rora’s arm and directed a pistol at her head.
The emperor’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Celeste.
“You don’t recognize me?” Celeste asked. “I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s been ten long years, and quite a few things have changed.”
Nearby soldiers shifted the barrels of their guns from Bastian and the performers to Celeste and her small group of watchmen.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” Celeste continued. “My name is Emmeline Bellemore.”
Titus’s eyes widened. “It’s not possible. The Bellemore estate was burned to the ground. There were no survivors.”
Gwen’s blood grew cold.
Could it be true? Celeste was Emmeline Bellemore, one of the scientists who’d founded cyborg technology? How had she survived?
“We had hidden underground laboratories where we performed secret experiments,” Emmeline said. “I was there the day the bombs came. The bombs that destroyed my technology, my research, and family. But you didn’t just kill them. You murdered hundreds of my employees and their families, all of whom had nearby residences.”
Gwen looked at Rora, whose eyes were also wide.
“According to your own laws,” Emmeline said, “you should be tried and executed for murdering hundreds of people.”
“Lies.” Titus waved his hand in casual dismissal. But despite the neutral expression on his face, his back grew rigid. “That fire was an accident. The investigators who brought in the evidence said as much.”
“And how much did you pay them to say that?” Emmeline demanded.
Some of the soldiers shared glances while others held an air of disinterest. None lowered their weapons.
Titus merely smiled. “Are you here for revenge, Ms. Bellemore? Is that it?”
“Three, four, and seven,” Emmeline said. “That’s how old my children were when you murdered them.”
Titus sniffed. “Do you deny Ms. Grimm’s accusation? Or did you program this cyborg to attempt to assassinate me?”
A slow, dangerous smile crept across Emmeline’s lips. “I did.”
“I must say, you’ve made this far too easy for me,” Titus said. “You’ve admitted in front of everyone here your involvement in my attempted murder. You’ve also given me the very thing I needed.”
For the first time, Celeste—or Emmeline—seemed uncertain of herself. The angry blush faded from her cheeks as doubt flashed across her eyes.
“Not only is the entirety of Cirque du Borge mine now, thanks to the law and your attempted crime, but I had been looking for someone who could create a weapon. And now I have the last two people in the Crescent Star System with the ability to do so.”
Gwen’s brows drew together.
“I’ve waited ten years for the Union’s temperament to grow unfriendly toward cyborgs,” Titus continued. “They are monsters, and now my people agree. It’s time cyborgs were wiped out from the Union for our own safety. As we’ve seen today, cyborgs are violent creatures and can’t be trusted not to give in to their barbaric instincts—whether or not they were programmed to do so.”
He spared a passing glance at Gwen.
“You’re crazy if you think I’ll help you,” Emmeline said. “I’ll die first.”
“You will. But I don’t need you. Not anymore.” Titus looked fully at Gwen now. “I need a cyborg tinkerer and a ship tinkerer to make a weapon powerful enough to destroy cyborgs. I didn’t expect to get both in one.”
Gwen could feel the eyes of the performers on her like a physical weight.
&
nbsp; It was then she noticed the watchmen slowly emerging from the shadows and stationing themselves in a perfect circle around the room. None moved. None made a sound. All the while, the emperor’s soldiers fixed weapons on Emmeline, Bastian, and Gwen.
“We will use the technology from a ship’s cannon to summon enough power that we can destroy a cyborg’s mainframe with a single blast from a distance,” the emperor said. “We have tried to build smaller weapons over the years, but none worked. I intend to wipe cyborgs from the Union as I sit safely on my ship. When it is over, there will be nothing more to fear. The cyborg threat will have finally passed. And in the meantime, we will use the circus performers as test subjects until the technology is perfected.”
Her mind reeled with this information. She thought of her friends and what this weapon could mean.
An end to life as they knew it.
Thoughts raced through her mind, one clashing with the next.
She made a decision.
“I’ll help you.” Gasps echoed from performers around the stage as she spoke. “Only if you agree not to harm or experiment on Bastian or my friends.”
“I won’t leave any cyborgs alive,” Titus said through gritted teeth.
Gwen shrugged. “Good luck finding another cyborg/ship tinkerer hybrid.” She gestured to Bastian. “He searched all of the Crescent Star System for me.”
Well, it had been a happy accident on Anchorage, but the emperor didn’t need to know that.
As he studied her, Titus’s dark eyes flickered back and forth.
She couldn’t help but wonder how desperate the emperor was. Had he really frightened off or killed as many cyborg tinkerers as people said? There certainly weren’t any she knew of—hence Bastian’s recruiting her in the first place.
After what seemed like an eternity, Titus said, “Agreed. Anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” She turned and pointed at Emmeline. “I’d like the pleasure of killing the woman who fucked with my boyfriend’s brain.”
“No,” he said. “I’d like to keep her around for insurance purposes, should you prove unable to create this weapon.”
Emmeline opened her mouth to speak, but Gwen spoke first. “Then you’d have an unwilling tinkerer and an unwilling scientist. That’s a gamble if I ever saw one.”
Titus snickered. “I can force you to work. You’ve already shown you have people you care for.”
“You can try, but what leverage are they if you plan to kill them anyway?”
Face pinching, the emperor drew his mouth into a thin line.
Gwen met his glare, waiting for him to make a move. She’d played her hand, and it was time to see where the cards fell. Either she’d be put to death for becoming a cyborg or she’d given herself a small chance to save her friends.
The emperor nodded to one of his soldiers near Bastian. The man picked something up before tossing it at Gwen’s feet. Blinking, she smiled and grabbed her knife.
“You better be as good as you think you are,” Titus said. “Or else your friends will pay for it. You have yourself a deal, Ms. Grimm.”
Emmeline didn’t move from where she stood a few feet away. Instead, she watched Gwen with narrowed eyes.
Held by a watchman a few paces away, Rora shook her head almost imperceptibly, eyes pleading with Gwen.
Don’t do it, she seemed to say. But she knew what was at stake and did nothing to stop Gwen as she limped over to Emmeline.
When Gwen stood before the Mistress of Cirque du Borge, the murderer of hundreds of cyborg performers, and the bitch who broke her leg and stole Bastian’s memories, she raised the knife to her throat. The room was silent as everyone watched, waiting for what came next.
With a wicked grin, Gwen leaned into Emmeline. Pressing her cheek against the woman’s, she whispered, “Do you have it?”
Pulling back, she studied Emmeline, trying to read her expression. The Keeper of Beasts showed no emotion on her face. None other than annoyed skepticism.
Gwen was careful to keep her voice low so only Emmeline would hear. “Give me Bastian’s chip, and I’ll help you. We can work together to get back to the ship—”
Emmeline showed her teeth in what she likely fancied as a smile.
“I have no intention of leaving this place.”
“You’ll let the entire circus be used in experiments for some ridiculous revenge?”
“That man killed my husband, my children.” An ember of fervor burned behind Emmeline’s gaze; a fervor that had likely been locked safely away for ten years… and was now set free.
“And he intends to kill every cyborg in the Union—cyborgs you helped create,” Gwen persisted. “Don’t abandon them. They’re your children, too.”
Smiling, Emmeline removed her hand from a hidden pocket. Gwen had been so preoccupied with getting Bastian’s chip back that she hadn’t even noticed the Mistress’s moving hands. Suddenly, Emmeline shoved Gwen backward. Stumbling, she couldn’t catch herself with her bad leg and crashed to the floor.
Emmeline held a device with a large red button. Slowly, she pressed down. The watchmen, who had stood silent and unmoving around the room, jolted as though they were awakening machines. Slowly, each of them moved a hand toward their masks—masks Gwen had never seen them without. Removing the hat and mask, they tossed both to the ground.
Horror frosted her veins.
Beneath the helmets were cyborg faces melded haphazardly with flesh. Some had cyborg eyes, like Gwen’s, that whirred with an angry red light while others had cheekless jaws of steel with unnaturally pointed canines. Yet others bore steel plating extending upward from machine-enforced chests to necks seeming to lack any flesh at all. Most of the watchmen bore bruising and unhealed flesh around implants—new implants.
All at once, she realized.
The cyborg implants Gwen had been removing for weeks… Emmeline had been using them on the watchmen. The Mistress hadn’t just been reclaiming valuable circus property. She’d had a plan this whole time. Hacking off the watchmen’s body parts, the Mistress had replaced them with machinery to make the ultimate soldier.
And the watchmen had had no choice at all because Emmeline had tampered with their chips and removed both their memories and free will—just as she had to Bastian.
A dangerous fervor swelled in Emmeline’s eyes. “This is what you feared, Titus. Humans who are as strong as machines and lack empathy. I’ve made it so.”
As the watchmen strode forward, closing in on the soldiers, glass shattered inward. Cyborg animals crashed through the garden windows, bellowing.
Gwen looked at Rora, whose eyes were round with fear.
We are so fucked.
Chapter 35
The watchmen moved like a horde of the dead, flesh hanging from machine. Some wielded weapons—swords, guns, knives, batons—while others used hands of gears, wires, and plating, tearing the armored royal guards in two.
The cyborg restraining Rora dropped her as though he’d entirely forgotten her existence and ran toward an oncoming soldier.
Reaching for her crutch, Gwen scrambled to her feet and hurried over to Rora. “Come on!”
Rora wrapped an arm under Gwen, and the two narrowly missed an arctic bear as it barreled over the ground where they’d just been. Screams erupted as the creature sank its teeth into the nearest soldier, tearing his arm from his body with its cyborg jaws.
But it wasn’t just the watchmen and the animals.
Around them, the performers fell on top of the soldiers. They didn’t flinch as the bladed end of the guns stabbed through flesh and machine. Clawing at each other as much as the soldiers, one by one, the performers took the soldiers down.
Bodies sodden with blood littered the floor like discarded set props.
Mouth agape, Gwen and Rora stared at each other. The performers, watchmen, and animals had turned into mindless zombies, throwing themselves into danger to kill the emperor’s soldiers. Yet… Gwen and Rora were unaffected.
Before Gwen could think more about it, she spotted movement.
Emmeline moved across the ballroom toward the emperor. Bears, lions, tigers, and every other cyborg animal moved around her as though programmed not to touch her.
Bastian’s chip.
Lunging, Gwen caught Emmeline’s ankle, and they both tumbled to the ground and into the middle of the roaring beasts.
“Get off me!” Emmeline screamed as she clawed at Gwen with her metal fingernails.
Managing to dodge a few of Emmeline’s swipes, Gwen scrambled on top of the Mistress. As she did, Emmeline became more frantic, her talons biting into Gwen’s neck, face—whatever she could reach.
“I know why you are unchanged,” Emmeline gasped, eyes fearful. “But why are they? No one else should be able to move on their own right now.”
They?
Looking up, Gwen spotted Marzanna, still bound at the wrists, as she retreated into a corner, away from an approaching soldier. Rora had picked up one of the watchmen’s wooden batons and hurried after her.
Gasping, Gwen realized what she meant.
The only cyborgs in the ballroom not under Emmeline’s control were the two Gwen had tinkered. Somehow, tinkering with their chips using the portable mainframe a few weeks ago had saved them from this fate.
The coding.
Gwen must have overridden the Mistress’s coding. Either that, or rebooting their system had. But why wasn’t Gwen a mindless zombie? She couldn’t tinker her own chip.
Emmeline landed a blow to Gwen’s jaw, and she toppled sideways. The Mistress pushed to her feet, screaming as she watched the emperor and a troop of his soldiers disappear through a doorway.
Groaning, Gwen struggled to get up. Where had her crutch gone?
“I’ll finish you later,” Emmeline hissed before watchmen surrounded her and marched in pursuit of the emperor.
Crawling over to where her crutch had fallen a short distance away, Gwen grabbed it before hurrying after her friends.
Screaming, Marzanna held up bound hands as the soldier aimed his gun. At the same time, Rora swung the wooden baton against his breastplate, which rang loudly. Spinning, he turned and prepared to fire his gun at Rora.
