Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  “You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Officer Bonnefaçon.” Chacal’s voice hissed ominously on the last syllable of Marcellus’s name. “I have every right to search this room. I would share more details with you, but I’m afraid it’s above your clearance level.”

  Marcellus recognized his own words echoed back at him. The same words he’d said to Chacal earlier today, when the inspecteur had cornered him outside of Fret 7.

  “We found something,” a voice announced, causing both Chacal and Marcellus to dart into the bathroom, where a uniformed deputy was kneeling over a small gap in the floor. Marcellus’s childhood hiding spot. The loose tile had been pulled up and tossed aside. And lying at the base of the shallow nook, where only days ago there was nothing, there was now, indeed, something.

  A microcam.

  Marcellus could tell from its crude design and shape that it was the same one his grandfather had stolen from that very spot. Mabelle’s microcam.

  A chill worked its way down Marcellus’s spine as Inspecteur Chacal reached into the floor and pinched the tiny object between two gloved fingers. He held it up to the light, examining it. “And what is this, Officer?”

  “I have no idea how that got there,” Marcellus said and, even though it was the truth, his voice still wavered.

  The inspecteur raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing Marcellus. He stalked into the bedroom and tapped on the wall monitor. “Well, let’s find out, shall we?”

  Marcellus stood back, dread coating his stomach. Something was going on here. Something that made the back of Marcellus’s neck prickle with sweat.

  The screen blinked to life as it connected to the small device, and a moment later, an image appeared. An image Marcellus was certain he’d never seen before. It appeared to be captured from within the warden’s office, the room Marcellus had just left. Except now it was dark and empty. As though this footage had been taken at night. The image panned around the room, closing in on various objects: the warden’s desk, the monitors on the wall, the control panel. Then, the image shifted, replaced by what looked to be three-dimensional blueprints of some kind. The complicated schematics rotated and zoomed out, until Marcellus started to recognize the shapes and patterns of the design.

  And the blood froze to ice in his veins.

  Bastille.

  These were blueprints for the prison. Marcellus could see the whole compound now. The towers, the spaceport, the zyttrium exploits—all of it cracked open and displayed in great detail.

  Inspecteur Chacal tapped on the screen to pause the playback. “Marcellus Bonnefaçon, you are under arrest for collusion with the Vangarde in the attempted break-out of Citizen Rousseau.”

  “What?” Marcellus barely had time to sputter out the word before one of the deputies was on him, grabbing his wrists and pinning them behind his back. Marcellus struggled, but the second deputy was there in an instant, restraining him and swiping Marcellus’s rayonette from its holster. “Chacal! I had nothing to do with that!”

  But the inspecteur ignored Marcellus’s protests, jabbing a finger at the frozen blueprint on the screen. “This evidence suggests otherwise. And I, personally, am witness to the fact that you disobeyed direct orders and met secretly with two Vangarde operatives in the Policier Precinct, shortly after they were arrested for attempting to break into the office of the Warden of Bastille. The very office documented on this microcam.” He shoved the device under Marcellus’s nose.

  “Chacal!” Marcellus wrestled uselessly against his captors. “This is a mistake. I…”

  Then, like lightning hitting a conductor, realization struck, and the words died on Marcellus’s tongue.

  Of course. How could he have been so blind. So stupide?

  This was no mistake. This was intentional. Very intentional. His grandfather had put that microcam there. Exactly where he’d found it the other day. Except obviously, it didn’t still have the incriminating footage that Mabelle had captured seventeen years ago. The general couldn’t risk that getting out. Which is why he’d replaced it with something that incriminated Marcellus instead.

  Because, as always, the general had been three moves ahead of Marcellus the whole time.

  He knew. He knew from the moment he’d watched that footage that Marcellus had been in contact with the Vangarde and was probably now working with them. He just couldn’t prove it. So, the general had to do what he did best.

  Frame.

  Marcellus glared at Inspecteur Chacal, who was clearly in on this. “So, this is how you got your promotion?” Marcellus asked in amazement. “You became his new lackey? Willing to go along with anything in order to get ahead?”

  The newly implanted circuitry across Chacal’s face flickered, confirming everything Marcellus needed to know.

  “Take him in,” the inspecteur growled.

  The two deputies shoved hard at Marcellus’s back, compelling him forward. Moving him closer to the fate that was awaiting him at the Policier Precinct. At the prisoner transport center. And finally, on the moon.

  “Just like your father …”

  In his mind, like a flash of lightning, Marcellus suddenly saw his father’s body, wracked and frozen and decimated. Julien Bonnefaçon had been framed for the murder of six hundred exploit workers. He’d been sent to Bastille and had died there, many grueling and freezing years later.

  And now, so would Marcellus.

  From the day he was born, he had been destined to walk this path.

  Destined to follow in the footsteps of a traitor.

  As the deputies led him down the hallway of the south wing, down the imperial staircase, and through the Grand Foyer, Marcellus’s whole body was numb. All he could feel was the failure. The defeat.

  General Bonnefaçon had won. Again. Just like he always did. In every game. Every maneuver. Every challenge. Every battle. He was the planet’s greatest military strategist. And Marcellus was nothing.

  Now his grandfather was going to get away with all of it. He was going to develop this deadly weapon and take control of the Regime, and there was no one left to stop him. Citizen Rousseau was dead. Mabelle was dead. His grandfather had killed them both.

  They stepped outside, into the warm night air of Ledôme, where Marcellus could see a Policier patroleur waiting in the forecourt. As the deputies led him toward the vehicle, Marcellus felt a shiver in his bones. It was as though he could feel someone watching him. He pulled to a stop and glanced back, into the night. No one was there, but Marcellus’s gaze was instantly drawn upward. To a large window with a single light illuminated inside. Standing in the center of the frame, like a First World portrait, was General Bonnefaçon. He glared down at Marcellus, his expression made of pure PermaSteel, his eyes made of fire.

  Marcellus’s gaze locked into his grandfather’s, and in one brief, burning moment, everything was exchanged. Every horrible insult the general had ever thrown at him. And every heated reply Marcellus had never had the courage to throw back. Every doubt and every tense silence.

  An eighteen-year-old schism opened up in the short distance that now stood between them.

  The deputies shoved at his back, urging him to keep walking, but just then something detonated inside of Marcellus. Something deep and dark and determined.

  A roar ripped out of him, shocking everyone, including himself. He threw off the two deputies holding on to his arms with such force that both of them were flung to the ground.

  “Get up you imbeciles!” Chacal shouted from somewhere behind him. “Stop him!”

  But Marcellus was already on the move. He sprinted across the forecourt, heading for the docking station just behind the patroleur. A second later, he heard something sizzle past his left ear. His gaze whipped to the side and he saw it.

  The warping, the twisting, the blurring of the air around him.

  Rayonette pulses.

  Marcellus gasped and ran faster. He was now halfway across the forecourt, the docking station in sight.

 
“Don’t let him get away!” Chacal shouted.

  Whoosh. Whoosh.

  Two more pulses tore through the air, one after the other. Marcellus took cover behind a sculpture of a partially dressed woman that stood guard in the center of the forecourt. The first pulse ricocheted off her chest, causing the marble to crack and splinter, before shooting upward toward the TéléSky.

  The second pulse glanced Marcellus’s right shoulder. He bit back a scream that bubbled up in his throat and kept running, even though it felt as if his whole arm and shoulder had been ripped through by a jagged knife.

  “You filthy déchet lover,” the inspecteur growled at him. “You will pay for this.”

  Footsteps echoed across the flagstones. Three more pulses surged through the air. Marcellus dove behind the idling patroleur and scrambled toward the docking station where his moto gleamed and hovered, like it was eagerly awaiting his arrival. As he mounted the bike and disengaged the lock, he could feel numbness spreading to his fingers. The paralyzeur was working its way through his nerves, shutting down all feeling, all sensation. He shook out his right hand, trying to bring some of the sensation back. But it was a lost cause. The paralyzeur would take hours to wear off. He was going to have to somehow drive this moto one-handed.

  Revving the engine, Marcellus took one final glance up at the window. General Bonnefaçon still stood there, watching him with an almost amused expression. And, for a moment, Marcellus swore he could hear his grandfather’s thoughts as clearly as if the general were whispering them right into his ear.

  “Always so hasty to act, aren’t you, Marcellus?”

  The moto roared beneath him, anxious to take him far away from this place. From that steely gaze. From those words that Marcellus feared were all too true.

  Just as Chacal and his deputies came barreling around the patroleur with their rayonettes raised, Marcellus lifted his feet and sped out of the gates, out of Ledôme, and into the night. He refused to turn around. Refused to glance behind him. Even though he was certain he was never coming back.

  - Chapter 20 - ALOUETTE

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST TELL me?”

  “We were always going to tell you, Little Lark. We’ve just been waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Waiting for you to be ready. And now you are.”

  Everything around Alouette was blurry and hazy, covered in clouds. The memory of her last night in the Refuge seeped in and out of her consciousness like wisps of smoke. Too thick to ignore. Too thin to grasp on to.

  “You lied! You should have told me! You should have trusted me!”

  “I’m sorry. But please know, we only lied to protect you. Little Lark—”

  “Don’t call me that! I am not your Little Lark. Not anymore.”

  Colors flashed in and out of her view—green, silver, a dirty, muted brown. She tried to blink, but she wasn’t sure if her eyelids were actually moving or not. Her muscles were millions of kilomètres away from her mind. Out of reach. Out of contact.

  She felt something hard and plastique beneath her. A chair? But she couldn’t sit up. Her body was weighed down. And her arms—why couldn’t she move her arms?

  The clouds finally started to clear from her vision, but she was still seeing two of everything. Two hulking silver machines. Two sets of spindly tubes snaking out of the top, filled with a dark red liquid. She attempted to follow them with her eyes, until they disappeared into the flesh of two arms.

  Her arm.

  Her blood.

  Whisking out of her, into that giant, whirring contraption.

  And that’s when the clouds started to clear from her brain, too. She was lying in a chair in the extraction room of the blood bordel. Metal clamps encircled her wrists, holding them in place. She managed to cast a single glance around the room, but it was strangely vacant now. All the other chairs were empty.

  “Wha ahr yoo doin … ?” Alouette’s words were mangled and deformed.

  Madame Blanchard’s face appeared over her, her harsh features blurring in and out of focus as she leaned in close. “I’m sorry to do this, Madeline, but your blood is just too valuable to let you walk out the door.”

  Alouette’s brain registered the fear, but for some reason she couldn’t feel it. Whatever médicament they had injected her with was too strong. “Buh my mama … ,” she garbled. She wanted to remind the madame that her mother had been a friend. The woman had said so herself.

  Somehow the madame’s tightly drawn face restricted even further as something passionate and vengeful flashed in her eyes. “Your maman was a croc. Obviously, she conned us both. She lied about you being dead, and, like a sot, I believed her. She’s a good liar, that Lisole. She put on quite a show. Tears, shaking, the whole bit. She had me wrapped around her scrawny little finger. But now, seeing you here—quite alive, I might add—I realize what a fool I was. Clearly, it was all just a hoax—the death, the funeral, the grieving. A stunt so she could sneak out of town without paying her debts.” The madame let out a bitter laugh. “And it worked! I felt sorry for her. Which is exactly why I didn’t chase after her to collect the four months of rent she owed me … and the fifteen-hundred-larg advance I gave her on her next extractions.”

  A woman in green scrubs appeared beside the madame. Alouette vaguely remembered her introducing herself earlier as Clodie. She examined the tube twisting out of Alouette’s arm before cranking a dial on a nearby control panel. The big silver machine let out a vicious roar as its pumps began to whir faster. The blood from Alouette’s veins continued to snake and coil its way up the clear plastique tube.

  “But now,” Madame Blanchard continued with a heavy sigh, as though this whole ordeal were fatiguing her, “fortunately, I know exactly how to get back what she owes me.”

  A shiver passed over Alouette as she suddenly understood why the other stations in the room were empty. This wasn’t just an extraction. This was a violation. They were stealing the nutrients right out of her veins.

  Alouette tried to fight. She tried to sit up. She tried to move. But her muscles were held hostage.

  “No,” was all she could mutter in her weak, groggy voice as she watched the blood flow out of her body, into the ravenous, whirring machine.

  “You see?” Clodie said with another one of her artificial smiles. “It’s really not that bad, is it?”

  Alouette wasn’t sure if it was the medicament flowing through her, or the blood flowing out of her, but she felt herself start to drift away again, the clouds pulling her back in.

  “That’s a good girl,” she heard Clodie whisper in her ear. “Just a few more—”

  “Arrête!”

  A voice rang out across the extraction room, crashing through the clouds in Alouette’s mind and causing a flurry of panicked footsteps around her. Clodie yelped and jumped back from the machine that was still spinning and churning with Alouette’s blood trapped inside.

  Through her hazy vision, Alouette saw two male figures approach, both dressed head-to-toe in glistening white.

  Pristine white.

  Ministère white.

  “You are commanded to abort all extractions,” One of the men announced. “I am Officer Leclair and this is Officer Sauvage. We are shutting down this facility.”

  In that moment, it felt as though every molecule of Alouette’s blood shot out of her vein and into the monstrous machine.

  Officers? Of the Ministère?

  Clodie scuttled to the corner of the room like an insect. But the madame looked unfazed by the disruption. She strode toward the uniformed men, her sleek gold dress fluttering around her slim calves. “Officers, how nice of you to stop by.” Her voice was coy, playful. Nothing like the vengeful tone Alouette had heard only moments ago. “How can I help you today?”

  “Your establishment is being shut down,” said Officer Leclair. “With immediate effect.”

  Madame Blanchard’s face remained unwrinkled, unlined, and unmoving. “I see. How much will it
be this time, Officer?”

  Officer Leclair ignored the question. “You and everyone inside this facility are under arrest. We have already detained the girls in the reception area.”

  “Your price has gone up, I take it,” Madame Blanchard said with a tight smile.

  Officer Leclair stepped forward. “You don’t seem to be hearing me, madame. This is not a joke. Laterre is currently in a precarious state of instability, and it is a known fact that illegal establishments like this one are breeding grounds for rebel activity.”

  Rebel activity. The words slammed into Alouette. The officers knew. They knew who she’d been living with for the past twelve years. They were looking for her.

  “Rebel activity?” the madame scoffed. “Here? Are you serious?”

  “I am very serious,” said Officer Leclair. “If everyone complies quietly and promptly, I will not be forced to call in the droids.”

  He snapped his fingers at his colleague, and Officer Sauvage leapt into action, coaxing Clodie out of her hiding place with a wave of his rayonette.

  The smile instantly vanished from the madame’s face, and where there was once a flawless brow, lines started to appear. “I’m sure we can figure this out, Officers,” Madame Blanchard pleaded. “I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement. If you just speak to Sergent Langlais at the Montfer Policier Precinct, he can tell you that—”

  “This is not a Policier matter,” Leclair snapped. “This is a Ministère matter. We’ve been sent here by General Bonnefaçon himself.”

  The madame closed her mouth, looking chastised and defeated.

  Alouette’s brain fought to break through her drug-induced haze. General Bonnefaçon? Marcellus’s grandfather. Had Marcellus turned her in? No, he would never do that. The general had found her some other way. She’d made a wrong step somewhere. Or the general had spies in Montfer who had tracked her down.

  Leclair’s beady gray eyes scanned the extraction room, landing promptly on Alouette. For a moment, the officer just stared, his tongue jabbing the inside of his cheek, as though he were trying to make sense of something.