Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  Alouette tensed, afraid to even breathe.

  The man’s eyes raked up and down Alouette before cutting back to Clodie who stood huddled and shaking in the custody of the other officer. Then, in a quick decision, Leclair snapped his fingers again and nodded to Clodie. “You. Disconnect this girl. Now.”

  - CHAPTER 21 - MARCELLUS

  MARCELLUS’S FOOT SLAMMED INTO THE rusty door of the couchette for the third time, and the faulty lock finally gave way. The door burst open and he barreled inside, his eyes immediately landing on a small rickety table piled high with titan spoons, clearly stolen. He grabbed hold of the table and, with a yank that sent the spoons scattering to the floor, dragged it across the room and shoved it against the busted door until it felt somewhat secure.

  Not that Marcellus really cared if someone were to break in. Let them come. Let them rob him and beat him and take everything he had left. It certainly wasn’t much.

  He glanced around the abandoned couchette in shock and horror. He’d seen glimpses of Third Estate dwellings during his door-to-door interrogations, but he’d never actually been inside one before. It was worse than he’d imagined.

  Dust and grease clung to every nook, corner, and surface. In a tiny kitchen, which took up the back part of the room, cockroaches skittered over a pile of rotting turnips. A leak from the low ceiling dripped into a foul-colored puddle on the floor, and between two sagging chairs in the living space, rats nosed and sniffed at a stack of empty weed wine bottles.

  So this is how she lived.

  Marcellus felt a pang of remorse and longing rip through him. He’d been so blind for so long. Too long. Maybe if he’d opened his eyes sooner, realized the truth sooner, taken action sooner, things would be different.

  Chatine Renard might still be here.

  He scanned every centimètre of the decaying couchette, trying to imagine her here. Living inside these walls. Walking across these floors. Eating at that table. Dodging cockroaches, and rats, and puddles.

  He knew the Renards’ old couchette would be abandoned. Chatine’s parents wouldn’t dare return here after they’d escaped arrest. And her sister, Azelle, was dead. Perished in the bombing of the TéléSkin fabrique.

  Now all that was left of any of them was this dirty, dilapidated furniture, a few rotten turnips, and a handful of stolen spoons. No wonder Chatine had spied on him for the general. No wonder she had done everything and anything she could to try to escape this. Marcellus was now certain he would have done the same.

  Fatigue and grief overtook him, turning his mind to fog and his muscles to mud. He staggered into one of the bedrooms and sat down on the unmade bed. Then, he took out his TéléCom and, after confirming that the tracking feature was still deactivated, spoke the words he’d been dreading to speak for the entire moto ride to the Frets. Terrified of what the response might be. And even more terrified that he already knew.

  “Locate Prisoner 51562.”

  The search seemed to take forever. Like the TéléCom was purposefully trying to torture him. Marcellus held his breath.

  “Prisoner 51562. Location unknown.”

  Marcellus’s heart skipped.

  Unknown?

  That had to be a mistake. He’d seen her on that roof. He’d watched her get flung into the air from that explosif. He’d seen her …

  His thoughts juddered to a halt. He hadn’t seen her die. He’d never found her body. He’d found Mabelle’s instead.

  Is it possible?

  He didn’t want to allow himself to hope. It felt too dangerous. Like wading into deep water with stones tied to your feet.

  “Locate Prisoner 51562,” he said again, careful to keep his voice steady and clear. No misunderstandings. No mistakes.

  “Prisoner 51562. Location unknown.”

  Marcellus let out a hesitant breath. Unknown was good. Unknown was alive. If she was dead, if her life had been snuffed out by that explosif, her Skin would have registered it. She’d be marked dead in the Communiqué, and the search results would have reported that. Which meant … she was still out there. Alive. Somewhere.

  Just like Alouette.

  The two were both now painfully lost to him. Vanished. Locations unknown.

  Marcellus glanced around the empty room, his gaze eventually snagging on a small tin box on a table next to the bed. Curious, he opened it and rifled through the assortment of stray wires, metal fasteners, and clips. He suddenly remembered the ripped pants and hooded coat Chatine had worn. The fabric had been held together with random pieces of metal like these.

  This must be her room.

  Guilt started to splinter its way through his mind. The same guilt that had plagued him ever since he’d first watched her arrest report. “Treason,” the TéléCom had said. Marcellus didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but regardless, he knew she was sent to that moon because of him. His grandfather’s suspicion of him is what had gotten her embroiled with the general in the first place. And her yearning to escape all of this—this squalor and misery—had turned her into just another piece in the general’s deadly game.

  Marcellus was just about to close the lid of the box when he noticed something else lying at the bottom. Something that stood out amongst the rusted scraps of metal.

  Digging his fingers inside, he pulled out the strangest looking object. It was hard and smooth and clearly made of plastique. It almost looked like …

  An arm?

  Yes, Marcellus was now certain it was. A little plastique arm complete with a hand and five tiny fingers, most likely once belonging to a doll.

  What was Chatine doing with a detached doll arm?

  Marcellus had no idea. He started to return it to the tin box, but something compelled him to stop. He wasn’t sure what that something was. A feeling of some sort. An intuition that this was important to her. Why else would she keep such a strange item locked in a box near her bed?

  He tucked the tiny arm into the pocket of his uniform and lay back on the bed, his gaze fanning around the room. It was stuffy and dingy and, like the rest of the couchette, covered in a layer of grime. But there was something about it—something about her lingering presence here—that eased the clutch in his chest the slightest bit. Enough for his eyes to close and the darkness of the past few hours to consume him.

  * * *

  Marcellus wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when he heard the soft click of a door being opened and footsteps entering the room.

  He sat bolt upright and lunged for his bedside lamp, only to remember that he wasn’t in his own bed. He was in Chatine Renard’s dirty, abandoned couchette.

  He squinted groggily into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

  There was no response. Just a faint squeak. Like someone sitting down in a nearby chair.

  Marcellus reached for his rayonette, but it had been confiscated during his arrest. His heart pounded beneath his rib cage. Had Inspecteur Chacal found him so quickly?

  The soft squeak came again, followed by what sounded like the tapping of fingers on a hard surface.

  Marcellus pulled his TéléCom out of his pocket and unfolded it, using the light from the screen to illuminate the small bedroom.

  It was empty. Apart from the vermin, of course.

  “Good evening,” came a rich, smooth voice in Marcellus’s ear.

  His grandfather’s voice.

  Marcellus jumped out of bed and spun around, casting the light from his TéléCom every which way.

  “I’m sorry I could not speak sooner. Another pressing matter detained me.”

  And that’s when Marcellus realized that the voice wasn’t coming from this room. It was coming from his audio patch.

  The auditeur. He’d planted it in his grandfather’s office just before they’d been summoned to the imperial appartements earlier tonight. After the horrific events of the evening, Marcellus had completely forgotten about the tiny listening device hidden in the Monarch piece of the Regiments game, streaming his grandfat
her’s most private conversations straight to Marcellus’s TéléCom.

  For a moment, Marcellus’s grief and aching sense of defeat gave way to a flicker of pride. The general had no idea Marcellus was listening.

  “That’s good to hear,” his grandfather was now saying. “The timing of your update couldn’t be better. A great enemy of Laterre has just been defeated. The Patriarche is thrilled and, more important, appeased. He believes the biggest threat to the Regime is dealt with. Which makes it the perfect moment for us to move forward with our plans. How long until the project is ready to initiate?”

  Marcellus’s skin prickled with apprehension.

  Project?

  This was it. This had to be the weapon Mabelle had told him about.

  There was a torturously long pause, during which Marcellus desperately wished he could hear the other side of the conversation. But his grandfather must have been on an AirLink, because Marcellus could only hear silence.

  The general let out a grunt of approval. “Excellent. I’m am so grateful for your generous support and hard work. It will not be forgotten.”

  Who was the general talking to? Could it be the source Denise had been in contact with? Mabelle had said that it was someone on the inside. Someone working with the general to build the weapon.

  “I am certain that this marks the beginning of a new age,” the general continued, his voice ringing with a pride that Marcellus had never heard before. This was not the artificial patriotism with which the general delivered his Universal Alerts, nor the unwavering loyalty he exuded when speaking to the Patriarche. This was something else. Pure, untarnished conviction. “The scum of Laterre will soon be eliminated. The fat will be trimmed. The Regime will finally rid itself of the déchets and be brought to order.” The general let out a satisfied puff of air. “Our dark nights will be over and a new Laterre will be born. Streamlined and functioning, lean and clean, just as it should be.”

  Marcellus struggled to recapture his breath, but it was as though all the air in the room had been sucked out.

  Eliminated. Streamlined. Rid itself of the déchets?

  His grandfather was planning to eliminate the Third Estate? All of the Third Estate? But that didn’t make any sense. General Bonnefaçon, of all people, knew how necessary the Third Estate was. Without them, the planet would surely crumble.

  “Our two planets have been enemies for far too long,” the general went on. “It is time we become allies. When Laterre is under my control, I will make sure that the new and improved Regime benefits us both. Her majesty will not regret her investment in this joint venture.”

  Thoughts swirled in Marcellus’s head like a hurricane forming over the Secana Sea, threatening to move inland and wipe out entire cities and towns.

  Her majesty?

  No. It couldn’t be. The general would never …

  Would he?

  “Keep me apprised as things progress on your end, and I will do the same.”

  There was a soft tap, and then silence filled Marcellus’s audio patch. Deep, dark silence that spread across the couchette like a poisonous gas. It slithered out of the general’s office, traveled the corridors of the Grand Palais, slinked across the vast landscape of Vallonay, all the way to the Frets. It permeated Marcellus’s skin and sank straight down into his bones. Until that deadly silence was all he could see, hear, and feel.

  - CHAPTER 22 - ALOUETTE

  THIS HAD NOT BEEN A part of Alouette’s plan. She’d left Vallonay and the Refuge and come to Montfer to escape the darkness, to finally shed light on her past, and to find her truth.

  And now, this was where she’d ended up.

  Arrested and cuffed.

  Shoved into a cramped, windowless cell in the Montfer Policier Precinct.

  Back in the darkness.

  With even more questions than she’d started with.

  Even though she was huddled together with the other girls who had been arrested at the bordel, Alouette still shivered from the cold. The cell’s somber black ceiling and walls seemed to loom menacingly all around, and the air hung damp and thick.

  The effects of the extraction were starting to gnaw at her. Her head felt woozy, and she could see bruises blooming on her arms. Purplish-blue memories of the nutrients that had been taken from her.

  Even though it caused the cuffs to cut into her wrists, she clutched her sac tightly to her chest. For some reason, the officers hadn’t searched any of them when they’d detained them in the bordel. But Alouette still feared that her sac might eventually be taken from her. All of her precious items confiscated.

  “When are you planning to let us go?” Madame Blanchard called out. She stood at the cell’s heavy door, still in her slinky gold dress. “Come on,” she snapped when she received no answer from the officers outside. “We’ve been in here for hours.”

  Only silence met her from the other side of the door.

  The madame banged again with her cuffed fists, getting more desperate. “Someone at the Ministère obviously got their AirLinks crossed because this lot are about as likely to be rebels as I am to be First Estate!” Defeated, the madame finally collapsed down onto one of the benches. Beside her, Clodie sat shivering in her threadbare green scrubs, her eyes closed, her lips moving silently as though she were praying.

  Alouette glanced over at the other girls crammed onto the bench next to her. They had thankfully stopped crying an hour ago, but their faces were still haunted. Guilt coursed through Alouette, mixing with the fear knotting up her stomach. If the officers had tracked Alouette to Montfer because they knew she’d been living with the Vangarde, then this was all her fault.

  “I’m scared,” a small voice said, breaking through Alouette’s thoughts. She turned to see Heloise looking up at her with wide, desperate eyes. She was so petite, so skinny, and the cold had turned her lips so blue they almost matched the azure of her flimsy dress.

  Alouette didn’t know what to say or how to chase away the terror in Heloise’s gaze. Because, in truth, she felt the same. She knew her own eyes were probably brimming with the same fear.

  Alouette scooted along the bench, pressing herself closer to Heloise’s shivering body. “It’s okay. Fear is like a wave. It comes and then it goes away. Just try to breathe.”

  As soon as the words whispered out of her, she knew instantly where they’d come from. They were the same words Sister Jacqui used to say to her when Alouette was a child and had woken from a nightmare.

  With a sigh, Heloise laid her head on Alouette’s shoulder and—as the girl’s shudders subsided, turning into the long, whispery breaths of sleep—Alouette’s mind returned to her mother. Lisole. She had once been thin and sickly just like this girl. She had once sold her blood to make ends meet. But that still didn’t answer the larger, burning questions that were searing holes in Alouette’s mind.

  Why had her mother really left Montfer? Where did she go? And why had she told Madame Blanchard that her baby was dead before giving Alouette to the Renards?

  Alouette exhaled a long breath and, with her cuffed hands, reached into the sac strapped around her body. She’d kept it close to her the entire voyage here, never once letting it out of her sight. Each item inside had been chosen with care and purpose. When she’d left the Refuge, she knew she could only take a few things with her. And now, just like she’d done countless times during her journey, she brushed her fingertips lightly over the items, trying to draw strength from each one.

  A flashlight, to light her way.

  Her metal devotion beads, because despite her anger at the lies and the darkness, she still couldn’t bring herself to leave them behind.

  One of the titan blocs Hugo Taureau had given her before he’d left for Reichenstat. She’d traded the other in the Marsh for passage on the bateau and new clothes.

  The locked titan box with the delicate engraving of two First World beasts on its lid that had once belonged to her mother.

  And of course, her trusty screwdr
iver. Sister Denise had given it to her for her eighth birthday, and that same day, she’d showed Alouette how to disassemble a Ministère device. It was an old biometric lock that Denise had said she’d bought from a stall in the Marsh. Alouette could still feel Denise’s hands on hers, guiding the screwdriver, pointing out the various wires and mechanisms and circuitry. And Sister Jacqui—dear Sister Jacqui—smiling over from her desk, watching the two of them work.

  Suddenly, in the shadow of everything that had happened, that memory began to change shape, take on new meaning. Alouette had always believed Sister Denise’s obsession with dismantling Ministère devices was just a hobby. Now she realized it had been a necessity.

  Was that how she and Jacqui had broken into the Ministère headquarters? Because Denise knew the innerworkings of a biometric lock?

  As Alouette’s fingertips brushed against the screwdriver’s plastique handle now, she had to blink back the tears that threatened to blur her vision as, once again, Principale Francine’s painful words sliced through her memory.

  “We don’t even know where the Ministère is holding them.”

  Alouette didn’t have to be a member of the Vangarde to know what was happening to Jacqui and Denise now. She knew how brutal the Ministère could be. And the thought of her beloved sisters being tortured made Alouette’s stomach clench with agony and uselessness and guilt.

  She could have stayed. She could have joined the Vangarde and tried to help find Jacqui and Denise. But instead she’d chosen to leave. To travel the Secana Sea in search of answers. Answers that now seemed farther away than ever.

  What if she’d left the Refuge for nothing? What if she’d come all this way for nothing?

  Alouette shoved the thought away and dug her cuffed hands farther into the bag, until finally her fingertips brushed against the very last item. The one thing that didn’t really belong to her. The one thing she’d stolen from the Refuge that night.