Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

Skin removal?

  And then suddenly, Chatine could see it. The faint shadow of a small, rectangular screen. The ghost of what used to be and was no more.

  The fluffy fog around her mind vanished, and all she was left with was disbelief. And joy. Pure, unclouded joy that she knew had nothing to do with any strange Défecteur herbs and everything to do with the sight of her Skin-less arm.

  How many largs had she spent hacking that Sol-damn device, every time the Ministère sent out another mandatory update? How many years had she spent trying to escape their watch? And now it was over. It was all over. Never again would they remind her to check in for her job assignment, or go to the Med Center for her vitamin D injection, or return to her couchette for curfew. Never again would they be able to track her, contact her, control her.

  “Sorry, not to consult you,” Brigitte said in an apologetic tone, “but it’s a community rule. No one who stays with us can be linked to the Ministère in any way. We don’t trust any of their devices. Especially not the Skins.”

  Chatine pulled her gaze away from her arm to stare at the woman in confusion. Did she think she was angry at her? She could have kissed her right now!

  “I—” Chatine tried to speak, but she couldn’t seem to form her thoughts into words. Everything that filtered through her mind felt insufficient. So, she opted for just a blurry yet heartfelt “Merci.”

  Brigitte smiled. The expression warped her jagged scars, but it still lit up her face and warmed her eyes. “You’re welcome.” She straightened the sheets around Chatine’s legs. “Once you’re recovered, we can walk you through your options. Where to live, how to survive off the grid, all those things. Obviously, you can’t go back to your old life. Not that you’d want to, I presume.”

  Chatine’s heart lifted at the thought of living outside the Regime. Where would she go? The Southern Peninsula, maybe? Or even a whole other planet. Perhaps Chatine could finally make it to Usonia. And her little brother could come too!

  Suddenly, thoughts of Henri flooded back into her mind. She pushed herself back up to sitting with a burst of determination. “The pilote! Of the other ship! Where is she? Is she back yet? I need to talk to her. I need to ask her where she took—”

  The look that passed between Etienne and his mother stopped her words in their tracks and set Chatine’s chest on fire.

  Brigitte tried to ease Chatine back down onto the bed. “You should probably rest.”

  But the moment Chatine’s head hit the pillow, she was up again. “No. I need to talk to that pilote. My little brother was on her ship. I need to know where she took him.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it right now, ma chérie,” Brigitte said gently. “Right now, all you can do is heal and gather your strength.”

  Chatine glanced uneasily from Brigitte to Etienne. But Etienne seemed to be going to great efforts not to look back at her. A bitter hollowness began to bloom in Chatine’s stomach, chasing away any remnants of the blissful warmth that was there.

  She glared at Etienne. “What’s going on?”

  Etienne opened his mouth to speak but was stopped by his mother’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Not. Now.” Her words were quiet yet sharp, almost threatening.

  There was something in the air. Something Chatine did not like the smell of. It was dark and hovering, turning her fluffy, white clouds into rain.

  She hastily pushed back the thick blanket but paused when she noticed that her prison uniform was gone. Instead, she’d been dressed in a strange pair of white pants flecked with gray and stitched with a myriad of pockets and zips.

  Who had dressed her in this?

  She pulled up the left cuff of the pants to see that her wound was now clean and impeccably bandaged. She tried to rise to her feet, but Brigitte pushed her back down. “Stop. You are not well enough to get up.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on,” Chatine demanded.

  “It’s not important right now,” Brigitte said.

  “Maman!” Etienne cried.

  “It’s not important right now,” she repeated, directing her heavy words at her son. “She needs to rest. Skin removals are very taxing on the system and—”

  “I’m not resting until someone tells me what the fric is happening,” Chatine said, her gaze still swiveling between Etienne and his mother.

  Etienne glared at Brigitte for a long, tense moment before muttering, “She deserves to know.” Then he stormed out the door, and Chatine was left alone with the woman and her long, rigid scars, which now looked redder and more furious than ever.

  Chatine waited. The room seemed to drop a hundred degrees in an instant, and she thought she could see puffs of her own breath hanging in the air.

  Like clouds.

  Dark, heavy, sinister clouds.

  “Where is the pilote?” Chatine asked again.

  “Do you want to try to eat something?” Brigitte’s voice was masked with a thin layer of cheerfulness that Chatine could see right through.

  “No.”

  “I really think you should have some food. You haven’t eaten in—”

  “TELL ME NOW!” The fire and ferocity in her voice caused the stitched seams on her left arm to burn.

  Brigitte turned away from her. Her shoulders sagged. Her body shuddered. When she turned back, the cheerful façade was gone, replaced with a somber expression that made Chatine feel like she was being suffocated slowly. It was as though she knew what was coming before Brigitte even spoke. It was as though her body was already preparing for the blow, and her mind was already scolding her for hoping. For thinking, for even a moment, that the Sols might have given her a second chance.

  For thinking that he was ever hers to keep.

  “The other ship never came back,” Brigitte said quietly.

  The room spun.

  “We lost contact with the pilote.”

  The floor dropped out.

  “We sent out a search party, but so far, they’ve found no sign of them.”

  The chasm opened up beneath her.

  “We believe they never made it off Bastille.”

  And the planet of Laterre swallowed Chatine whole.

  - CHAPTER 32 - MARCELLUS

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE travel that made it feel like time was moving in slow motion. Or maybe it was just this space travel. Marcellus stood in the middle of the bridge, watching the flight clock tick down.

  4 days. 13 hours. 9 minutes.

  It seemed for every minute that passed on the hologram, a thousand hours would pass in his mind.

  At this rate, he’d be an old man by the time they reached Albion. And his grandfather would rule Laterre. And they would be too late.

  “I just can’t get over how endless it is.”

  Marcellus startled at the sound of the voice and peered up to see Alouette standing in the doorway.

  “The flight?” Marcellus asked, certain she, too, was experiencing this strange sense of time paralysis.

  She shook her head. “The view.”

  “Ah. Right.” Marcellus turned toward the massive domed windows and sighed. “Yes. It’s almost unfathomable.”

  Alouette moved through the flight bridge and came to stand next to him. The glow from the console seemed to turn her curls a beautiful indigo blue, and her dark brown eyes twinkled like jewels in one of the Matrone’s ceremonial tiaras. Marcellus stole a quick glance at her from the corner of his eye. He still couldn’t believe she was actually here. With him. On a voyageur destined for Albion. So much had happened since he’d first seen her in the Jondrette. And now that he was finally able to breathe and think, all the questions that had been queuing up in his mind came flooding back.

  “So,” he said, trying to keep his voice light, conversational. “You’ve been busy.”

  She turned and flashed him a confused look. “Busy?”

  He counted on his fingers. “Running away from the Vangarde, getting arrested, escaping the Policier, incapacitating I
nspecteur Limier—”

  “Is he dead?” The question darted out of her, fast and desperate, as though it had been plaguing her for weeks.

  “Limier? No. I mean, I don’t think so.” Marcellus’s mind flashed back to the inspecteur convulsing violently on that gurney in the infirmerie. “Last I heard, the médecins were still working on him, but they didn’t know whether or not he’d fully recover.”

  Alouette dropped her gaze to the ground, looking pained. “It was an accident. I was just defending myself.”

  “I know. It’s okay.” Marcellus felt the sudden urge to reach out and comfort her, but he didn’t know how. It had only been a few weeks since they’d sat at that fireside together in the Forest Verdure, but somehow it felt like years ago. Like they’d been different people back then, leading different lives. And now they had to start all over again.

  “He came after my father,” Alouette said, her gaze still trained on the floor, as though it were the only safe place to look.

  “Jean LeGrand?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But he goes by Hugo Taureau now, and as it turns out, he wasn’t my real father. That’s why I was in Montfer. I was trying to learn the truth about my past. Mostly about my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Marcellus had never heard Alouette talk about her mother.

  “Her name was Lisole. She died a long time ago.” Alouette’s voice fell to a cracked whisper. “I don’t even remember her.”

  Marcellus glanced away as something sharp jabbed him from the inside. An old wound he’d thought he’d healed from. He couldn’t remember his mother either.

  “I just wanted answers,” Alouette went on, sounding like she was being stabbed by that same sharp object. “I just wanted to know where I came from.”

  “And?” Marcellus asked. “Did you find out?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I followed a clue to a bordel in Montfer, where my mother used to sell her blood when I was a baby. To try to make ends meet. I thought the madame would be helpful. But she just made everything more confusing. She seemed to be under the impression that I was …” Her voice trailed off, as though whatever was supposed to come next was too difficult to say aloud.

  “That you were what?”

  She let out a deep shudder. “Dead.”

  Marcellus flinched. That was certainly not what he’d expected her to say. “Dead?”

  “That’s what my mother told her.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Alouette shook her head. “I don’t know. Then the madame turned on me, and the Policier came, and it was sort of a mess.” She reached down and rubbed at her wrist where Marcellus could see hints of dark purple bruises. “Anyway, the whole thing was just one big dead end. And now …” Alouette bit her lip as though her next words terrified her. “Now I’m starting to wonder if I ever should have left.”

  “Why did you leave?” Marcellus asked. “My contact at the Vangarde said you were no longer with them.”

  “I was never with them,” Alouette said, somewhat forcefully. Then she took a breath that seemed to calm her. “I mean, not that I knew about. They told me nothing.”

  “And you never even suspected?”

  “No,” she said. “Never. They were always just sisters to me. Teachers and scholars. They were never …”—she paused, hesitating—“revolutionaries. I guess that makes me the fool, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Marcellus rushed to say.

  Alouette’s face softened. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m still just trying to process it all. Twelve years of lies is a lot to sort through. I didn’t find out who they really were until that night I saw you in the Frets. After you showed me those images of Sister Jacqui and Sister Denise.”

  Marcellus knew the moment she was referring to. He could still see the look in her eyes when they’d stood in that hallway of Fret 7 and he’d told her about the Vangarde operatives who had been captured breaking into the warden’s office. She’d looked at him like he was speaking in another language.

  “Do you know where they are?” Alouette blurted out, the possibility clearly just occurring to her.

  Marcellus shook his head, hating to disappoint her. “I’m sorry. I don’t. My grandfather has a detention facility hidden somewhere. It’s where he takes prisoners to …”

  He didn’t dare finish that sentence. But the darkness that passed over her eyes told him without a doubt that she knew. She understood exactly what happened at a facility like that.

  “And you have no idea where this”—Alouette swallowed—“facility might be?”

  “No. My grandfather never told me. I’m pretty sure there are only two people on the planet who know where it is: the general and Limier. At least Limier did know, at one point. His circuitry was pretty fried from the rayonette pulse. And it damaged his memory chip.”

  Alouette nodded, her fingers fidgeting absentmindedly with something inside her sac. Marcellus glanced down to see a glint of silver from her string of metal beads. He stared at them, remembering the night he’d stood in that same dark and dingy hallway of Fret 7 and that necklace had somehow triggered a strange message to appear on the screen of his TéléCom.

  “You never told me what it said.” Marcellus’s voice was quiet and hesitant.

  Alouette looked at him, confused.

  “The message that Denise sent you through my TéléCom.”

  At first, Alouette didn’t respond. She just continued to thread her fingers pensively through the beads. And Marcellus worried that she still wouldn’t tell him. Even after everything that had just happened. But then, in a distant, trance-like voice, she whispered, “When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.”

  Marcellus stood stunned and silent for a long moment, trying to make sense of these peculiar words.

  When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall?

  “What does that mean?”

  Alouette shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. Fly home? I don’t even know where that is. I’m not entirely sure I have a home. I just …” She dropped her gaze back to the floor. “I just feel so … lost.”

  Marcellus’s brain squeezed as he tried to make sense of all this. But it was like trying to look at a picture through broken plastique. The edges were blurry, the image was warped, and nothing seemed to fit together.

  The pounding of footsteps jolted Marcellus out of his thoughts, and he turned toward the flight bridge door just as Cerise barreled through it, clutching a TéléCom in her hand.

  Panic instantly spiraled through him. Had their mission failed already?

  “Marcellus!” she said, winded. “You need to hear this.”

  “Hear what?”

  “I was just working on your TéléCom, to check that the tracking capabilities were still deactivated, and I found”—she paused and put a hand to her heaving chest, trying to catch her breath—“a signal.”

  “What kind of signal?” he asked.

  “An open AirLink signal. It’s encrypted but it’s coming straight from the south wing of the Grand Palais.”

  Comprehension flooded Marcellus, and he exhaled a sigh of relief. “That’s an auditeur. I planted it in the general’s office before I left.”

  Cerise scoffed. “I know. I figured that part out on my own. Merci for telling me, by the way. It nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought the general was tracking us.”

  Marcellus cringed. “Sorry. There’s been a lot going on. And I honestly didn’t think the signal would reach out here.”

  “The signal does. But I had to amplify it to be able to hear what was being said.” Cerise hastily tapped on the TéléCom. “I think you should hear this. It’s about the Vangarde.”

  Alouette flinched and looked to Marcellus with wide, fearful eyes. He nodded to Cerise. “Play it through the speakers.”

  Cerise tapped on the screen and Marcellus felt Alouette’s hand slip shakily into his. He gave it a reassuring
squeeze.

  “When I recognized my father’s voice,” Cerise explained, “I immediately started logging the transmission.”

  “Your father?” Marcellus had rarely known Directeur Chevalier to come to the general’s private study in the Palais. They normally met in the Ministère’s Cyborg and Technology Labs.

  Cerise nodded gravely and Marcellus recognized the regret that flashed in her dark eyes. As though she really despised being the one to convey whatever they were about to hear.

  “What’s all the commotion?” Gabriel appeared in the doorway, rubbing at his eyes. “I was trying to sleep.”

  “Shh,” Cerise urged him and pressed play on the TéléCom.

  At first there was nothing but a low hum through the speakers. Then, with a sharp click, Directeur Chevalier’s voice began speaking, midsentence. “… the results of the analysis you requested for the devices found on the captured Vangarde operatives.”

  Devices?

  It took Marcellus a moment to connect the dots in his mind. He remembered something his grandfather had said during their last hunting trip with the Patriarche. He’d told the Patriarche that Directeur Chevalier’s team was analyzing the necklaces that had been found on Jacqui and Denise when they were arrested.

  Necklaces just like the one still peeking out from Alouette’s sac.

  “As we suspected,” the directeur went on, “they are not just decorative. The two devices we analyzed are part of a larger communication network that the Vangarde have been using.”

  Alouette turned to Marcellus with desperate, searching eyes. “What is he talking about?”

  Marcellus drew in a heavy breath and nodded toward Alouette’s bag. “He’s talking about the beads.”

  Alouette’s whole body went rigid. “The sisters’ beads?”

  “What can you tell me about this network?” the general’s voice boomed out from the TéléCom, causing Marcellus to flinch.

  “The devices were still active when we apprehended the operatives,” the directeur said, “so we were able to trace the signal back to a server. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to discern the location yet. But what we did discover is that there are eleven devices total, all connecting through the same network.”