Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  “Hi, Cerise,” Marcellus said as politely as he could muster. It wasn’t that he disliked the daughter of Gustave Chevalier. He honestly didn’t think about her much. She was like every other Second Estate teenage girl who lived in Ledôme. Sparkle-headed and spoiled and obsessed with mundane things like clothes and hair fashions. And now, after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, he had even less patience than ever for girls like Cerise Chevalier.

  “I’m very busy here,” Chevalier snapped at his daughter. “I will respond to your AirLinks as soon as I’m done.”

  “I know, I know,” Cerise said with a wave of her hand. “You’re always busy. But if you had watched any of my messages, you would know that this is very important. I really really need your TéléCom to track a shipment of dresses arriving from Samsara today. There’s only one in my size in the entire shipment. And I have to have it for Petale’s birthday fête this weekend. If I don’t get to the shops the moment the dresses are put on the rack, I won’t get one.”

  Marcellus fought back a roll of his eyes. Could this girl not see that they were dealing with a very morbid situation right now? Inspecteur Limier was lying unconscious on a gurney only centimètres away, and she was babbling about dresses?

  The directeur looked mortified by the interruption. He muttered an apology to the general before quickly ushering his daughter back toward the door. “Cerise,” he hissed under his breath, as they disappeared into the hallway. Marcellus could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation.

  “… this is not a good time …”

  “… but Papa …”

  “… tired of this behavior. It won’t change my mind about anything.…”

  “… I’m totally serious about the dress.…”

  “… fine. Take the TéléCom. We will discuss this later.…”

  When Chevalier reappeared, he looked flustered and agitated. “Apologies again, General and officers.” He smoothed down his short hair, walked back to the console, and frowned at the screen. “It appears we do have some viable footage from the hour before Limier was attacked, but it looks to be corrupted.”

  The general rose from his chair and walked over to the wall monitor. “Play it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the directeur said as he tapped on the screen.

  The monitor glowed to life, and for the longest time, Marcellus could not make sense of what he was looking at. He moved closer and stood next to his grandfather, squinting at the screen.

  At first, there was nothing but shadowy blurs of green and an intermittent flashing light, accompanied by faint scraping and crackling noises. If all the files on the memory chip looked like this, finding the general’s facility was not going to be easy. A few seconds later, the distorted footage cleared somewhat, and Marcellus could make out what looked to be a thicket of trees.

  “The Forest Verdure,” Officer Meudon declared, stepping up beside Marcellus. “That’s where he went to make the arrests.”

  “Who was he arresting?” the general asked.

  “Two criminals by the name of Renard. They both had about a hundred outstanding warrants logged in the Communiqué.”

  Marcellus’s gaze snapped toward Officer Meudon. He had to be talking about Chatine’s parents. “Were they sent to Bastille?”

  The officer shook his head. “They escaped shortly after the droids led them out of the forest.”

  Wisps of movement drew Marcellus’s attention back to the screen where he could just make out a collection of small stones on the forest floor. They appeared to be arranged in some type of pattern. It took Marcellus a moment to connect the image to his memory and then, in a flash of certainty, he knew exactly where this footage had been captured. It was the old Défecteur camp that he sometimes liked to escape to when he needed to be alone. A place once inhabitated by people who had tried to live outside the rules of the Regime. Until his grandfather rounded them all up in a spate of brutal raids. Now, all that was left of the Défecteurs were abandoned camps like this one.

  The footage began to bounce violently again, as though Inspecteur Limier was running. Jumping, maybe? Shaky blurs of movement kept whisking through the frame, and the soundtrack continued to squeak, making Marcellus feel dizzy and disoriented.

  Then the image juddered and cut out, and the screen went black.

  “Is that it?” the general said in a gruff, dissatisfied whisper.

  But just as Directeur Chevalier was about to utter a clearly confused reply, the monitor flickered, and a new image blurred in and out of focus. Marcellus tilted his head, trying to make out the strange black object that filled the entire screen.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Officer Meudon squinted. “It looks like a …”

  “A boot,” the general replied flatly.

  Suddenly, the shaky image made sense. It was a heavy, black, Ministère-issued boot. Limier’s, presumably. And it was pushing down on something. The footage cut out again and returned a second later. And Marcellus could now see the boot was standing on a hand. A hand desperately clutching hold of a rayonette.

  The three men leaned in closer. There was a violent crash of movement and Marcellus nearly leapt back. The image blurred and shuddered, flickering rapidly in and out. The squeaks and crackles seemed to reach a fever-pitch. Suddenly, the rayonette was clutched in Limier’s own hand and pointed down at the ground. At someone crouching below him. A girl?

  And then, in a confusion of light and motion and trees, Marcellus saw them.

  Deep dark eyes, like two vast pools of night sky.

  Alouette?

  Marcellus bit down on his lip to keep the shock from barreling out of him.

  For a long time, the image was frozen on her terrified face. Marcellus glanced uneasily over at his grandfather, who was gritting his teeth, as though he wished he could reach through the screen and grab her. Marcellus’s heart hammered in his chest as he thought about Mabelle’s words to him earlier this morning.

  “Little Lark is no longer with the Vangarde.… She left.”

  Marcellus tore his gaze away from the monitor and glanced uneasily at the unconscious inspecteur lying only a mètre away, the bandages on his head concealing a wealth of untold secrets.

  “When was this footage captured?” The question fired out of Marcellus like an explosif.

  The directeur tapped on his console and reported back. “Month 7, Day 15, 28.12.”

  Marcellus’s mind whirled as he thought back to the last time he’d seen Alouette. In the hallway of Fret 7 in the very early morning of Month 7, Day 16. This footage was captured before that. Which meant …

  But he never finished the thought, because suddenly, Alouette was on her feet. She was descending upon the inspecteur with a speed that astonished Marcellus. Fists punching and arms swinging and elbows arcing. He had never seen anything like it. Her movements were fast yet fluid. Powerful yet graceful. All the while her eyes flashed and sparked with fury and determination.

  “What on Laterre?” Officer Meudon spat. “Who is that?”

  The general said nothing in response, just continued to glare at the screen. The footage shook again as Limier was thrust backward. Then everyone in the room drew in a collective breath as Alouette filled the entire frame once more, and her huge black eyes stared straight back at them.

  But no one was looking at her eyes. Because clutched in her slim fingers … was the rayonette.

  And it was pointed straight at Limier.

  CRASH!

  Marcellus spun around to see a smashed monitor lying on the floor and the serpentlike breathing tube dangling from the handrail of the gurney. The cyborg inspecteur was no longer unconscious. He was now thrashing violently. His whole body bucking. His hands scratching at his face as though he could claw the memory right out of his mind.

  “I need a médecin in here now!” the directeur shouted.

  Seconds later, two cyborgs in green scrubs strode briskly into the room, their faces the epitome
of serene despite the chaos around them. The inspecteur continued to spasm as the cyborgs attempted to examine him. Foam pooled at the corners of his mouth and his circuitry, which was inert and dull only moments ago, now sparked frenetically like broken stars.

  “Subdural hematoma,” one of the médecins said in an even monotone. “We need to get him into surgery immediately and remove the blood clot from his brain.”

  The directeur nodded once and the cyborgs were instantly on the move, guiding the gurney toward the door of the infirmerie. Marcellus jumped back, out of the way, and watched helplessly as Inspecteur Limier disappeared down the hallway, taking all his secrets with him.

  Stunned, Marcellus turned his gaze back to the monitor on the wall, which he now saw was frozen on the image of Alouette’s determined glare and the glint of the rayonette in her hands. He didn’t have to watch the rest of the footage to know what came next. The proof had just vanished out the door.

  Marcellus stole another glance at his grandfather. The general was also staring at the frozen footage. But this time, Marcellus swore he saw something else reflected in those cryptic hazel eyes. Something that went beyond hatred and rage. It almost looked like fear.

  With a snarl, the general turned away from the monitor and stalked toward the door, pausing just long enough to point at Officer Meudon and then at the screen. “I want that girl found.”

  - CHAPTER 6 - CHATINE

  “LEAVE THEM ALONE! THEY’RE INNOCENT!”

  Chatine’s legs burned and her heart raced as she ran through the Frets, chasing after the vanishing forms of the droids. They were faster. Nimbler. They were gigantic. As tall as the Frets themselves. And she was running through mud.

  Then she was swimming. The Frets had flooded, sucking all the dirt and waste and muck into a giant sea of filth. But Chatine kept sinking, something gripping at her feet.

  Finally, she managed to pull herself to dry land. Her body heaving. A lifetime of grime and poverty spewing from her lungs. She coughed up impossible things: an entire loaf of chou bread; a plastique doll arm; a gold medallion she’d once stolen from a Second Estate foreman, chain and all; a disconnected Skin. And then one of her own lungs, blackened and corroded from a lifetime of breathing in grime.

  She wiped at her mouth and stood up to find she was in the Marsh. It was crammed full of people. A platform had been erected. On it stood a humming, glowing, monstrous contraption that Chatine recognized at once. The Blade. That horrible machine that had been used to execute the Premier Enfant’s governess.

  Except this time, it wasn’t a lovely, auburn-haired woman that the droids were leading to the block. It was Chatine’s sister, Azelle. And cradled in her arms was their little baby brother, Henri. His precious plump cheeks, tiny chin, and clear gray eyes were exactly as Chatine had last seen them.

  The droids tried to grab Henri from Azelle. She screamed and attempted to fight them off, but her efforts were futile. The blanket slipped from around Henri’s tiny body, revealing the small, raindrop-shaped birthmark on the back of his right shoulder. The very birthmark Chatine used to kiss when he cried.

  “Leave them alone! They’re innocent!” Chatine screamed again, but no one heard.

  The droids wrenched baby Henri free and began to lead Azelle toward the Blade. She thrashed and kicked and cried as they forced her face down onto the platform, binding her wrists and ankles with metal clamps.

  Henri wailed in the fists of a droid. Chatine fought to get to him, but the crowd was too thick. Her legs were useless. Paralyzed.

  And his cries continued to pierce the sky.

  The Blade turned on, drowning out all the noise with its high-pitched, screeching buzz. The droids held Azelle’s head down on the block. The thin beam of blue light, which stretched between the two columns of the contraption, began to descend. Crawling its way toward her slender, exposed neck.

  “Stop it!” Chatine shouted. “Someone has to stop it! Someone please save her!”

  But no one stopped it. And no one saved her.

  A silent, choked sob escaped Chatine as the Blade continued to descend, crackling through the air. She heard a faint sizzle, the sound of fire on flesh. Then she smelled it. Burning. Decaying. Putrefying.

  Azelle’s mouth opened, letting out a scream to end all screams.

  Chatine jolted awake, gasping. She blinked and stared through the gloom at the sagging bunk above her, the dream coming back to her in grim fragments. Of course, it was about Henri and Azelle. All her dreams these days were about her lost siblings.

  Ever since Chatine had learned that Henri hadn’t died as a baby—as she’d believed for the past twelve years—and that her parents had, instead, sold him off like a sac of turnips to pay a debt, Chatine had been plagued by nightmares of him.

  In the glow of the small orange lights that shone down all night around the perimeter of the cell block, she could see the other bunks, stacked four beds high and crammed in a circle around the eleventh floor of the Trésor tower. She was still here. Still locked away on Bastille. Stuck in this stinking overcrowded cell.

  Chatine turned onto her side, trying to get comfortable on the thin, drooping mattress, but it was near impossible. Chatine had quickly learned that everything about this prison—from the serving sizes of the food, to the conditions of the bunks, to the lengths of shifts in the exploits—was designed to keep the inmates just alive enough. Strong, healthy prisoners meant riots and escape attempts. But dead prisoners meant less zyttrium sent to Laterre. It was a delicate balance.

  The nearest orange light shone straight into her face, searing her vision even when her lids were closed. She’d heard some of the inmates call them “the eyes” because, while they glowed, they also watched. Blinding and brutal, they were always observing, always scanning—an extension of the droids that patrolled Bastille.

  Chatine shuddered and pulled the threadbare blanket over her head, shutting her eyes tight. But the dream immediately started to suck her back in, like a cruel and grasping joke. The faces of Azelle and Henri cycled in her mind, blurring into one distorted mess of eyes and mouths and wispy hair. Finally, she gave up and flipped onto her back, her eyes wide open.

  “Can’t sleep?” a voice asked, and Chatine breathed out a sigh of relief. She never quite knew when Dead Azelle would speak to her, but she was always grateful when she did.

  “That’s the third dream you’ve had about me this week. I would say I’m flattered, but I’m not exactly sure I like how I’m being portrayed. Why am I always so helpless?”

  Chatine stared up at the bunk above her and listened to her own breathing. It was coarse and ragged. She hadn’t been able to take a deep breath since the droids had hauled Anaïs’s body to the morgue yesterday.

  Chatine had warned herself not to look when the hulking creature pushed aside the rubble from the girl’s fragile, young face. She’d done everything in her power to turn away. But, in the end, she knew she owed it to the girl to look. To remember her crushed skull and blood-stained scalp. To capture it in her mind, no matter how much she knew it would haunt her.

  Because if Chatine didn’t remember, who would?

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Azelle said, her voice taking on a careful tone, like she was skirting around the edge of a cliff. “There was nothing you could do. About either of us.”

  Of course, Chatine knew that.

  Didn’t she?

  Azelle sighed. “Do you ever wonder what happened to Maman and Papa?”

  Chatine flipped onto her stomach. She did wonder that. Almost daily. Even though her parents had been arrested only a few hours before Chatine, they’d mysteriously never showed up on Bastille, once again somehow managing to dodge their fate.

  “Do you think they escaped?” Azelle asked. “Or maybe they’re dead?”

  For the sake of the entire System Divine, Chatine hoped it was the latter. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but it was quickly becoming obvious that it wasn’t going to happ
en.

  “I think it might be one of those nights,” Azelle said, and Chatine knew she was right.

  Careful to keep her hands out of view of the “eyes,” Chatine reached into the small tear in her mattress and felt around for the tiny object she kept hidden inside. Every night, she was terrified she’d come back to her bunk to find it stolen. But she knew better than to keep it on her, where the droids could find it. She nudged around with her fingertip until her skin touched metal.

  Then she closed her eyes, for just a moment, and pictured the silver ring. His ring. She hadn’t actually seen it since she’d arrived on Bastille and stashed it in the first hiding place she could find. But every night, as she lay here on this bunk, she could feel it. With every turn of her body, she could sense it pulsing. As though it were its own moon with its own gravitational pull.

  The feel of the cool metal against her skin brought back a wave of memories. The kind of memories she only allowed herself to indulge in on the worst of nights here.

  Marcellus.

  Sitting across from her in a cruiseur, his hazel eyes twinkling, his lips quirked into a small smile.

  Marcellus.

  Kissing her on the rooftop of the garment fabrique. Deeply. Intensely. Endlessly.

  And then finally, Marcellus.

  Turning away from her. Calling her a traitor and a déchet. Walking out of her life forever.

  Chatine’s heart wrenched. Would he ever forgive her for betraying him? For spying on him for the general? For stealing his mother’s ring? Somehow, she doubted it.

  Yet, somehow, it still mattered to her that he did.

  Eventually. Maybe. Someday.

  “All prisoners rise.” A robotic voice blared through Chatine’s audio chip like a monster in her head. Chatine yanked her hand out from the tear in the mattress as the dingy overhead lights illuminated. All around her, she heard the groans of people waking up and stumbling out of their beds.