Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  “Maybe,” Cerise replied glumly. “But my intentions are not going to save Gabriel’s life. And I’m sorry to say, neither are yours.”

  Alouette was at a loss for words. She wanted so badly to comfort Cerise. To comfort herself. To tell them both it would all be okay. Gabriel would live. They would find a way to evade the Albion warships and they would get home in time to stop the general. But she couldn’t say any of those things.

  For the first time in her life, she felt words fail her.

  Like the world was forgetting them all over again.

  She glanced down at a smudge of egg yolk starting to harden on the counter. And suddenly, all she could focus on was that stain. She bent down, grabbed the fallen sponge from the floor, and attacked the stain with the strength and devotion of a soldier taking on an insurgent army. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her knuckles ached. Until she felt Cerise’s gentle hand land on hers.

  “Hey,” Cerise whispered, carefully prying the sponge from Alouette’s grip. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do that. I’ll finish cleaning.”

  Alouette started to protest. “But I—”

  “I know.” Cerise’s smile was warm and fleeting and unexpected. “But it’s my mess. I should be the one to clean it up.”

  * * *

  Alouette needed to walk. To pace. To move. She was used to being in confined spaces. The Refuge wasn’t much bigger than this ship. But she’d never, in her entire life, felt more trapped than she did right now.

  “Are you okay?” a voice asked. She looked up to see Marcellus sitting at one of the tables in the viewing lounge with Dr. Collins’s canister positioned on the chair next to him, like he was afraid to let it out of his sight.

  She tried for a deep breath. “I’m …” She still couldn’t find the words.

  But it turned out, she didn’t need them. “I know.” Marcellus exhaled. “Me too.”

  Alouette had never seen him look so drained. So defeated. The events of the last few days had left his face gaunt and his vibrant hazel eyes hollow and haunted.

  “I’m going out of my mind,” he said. “I hate just sitting here while Gabriel gets worse and my grandfather gets closer to his weapon. As soon as Dr. Cromwell delivers the TéléReversion program and the general updates the Skins, that will be it. He’ll activate his Third Estate army, and he’ll take control of the Regime. And meanwhile, we’re just sitting here, waiting for the fric-ing Albion Royal Space Fleet to find us.”

  Alouette glanced at the glowing, cratered moon that loomed just outside the window and wondered if the pull of it wasn’t driving them all a little mad.

  With a sigh, Marcellus dragged a hand roughly through his already disheveled hair. “I’ve been trying to distract myself with this, but clearly it’s not working.” He gestured to the table and Alouette caught sight of a familiar red spine. The Vangarde’s compendium of reports was open in front of him.

  Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You can read that? Have you been practicing the Forgotten Word?”

  Marcellus shrugged. “It’s still difficult. But I had to communicate with the Vangarde, so, yeah, I’ve been practicing. I was surprised, actually, at how quickly it came back to me. Once I stopped fighting it. It’s like, for seven years, I was pressing against a door, trying to keep everything locked inside. Then, once I let go, the memories just rushed out.” He caught Alouette’s gaze and flashed her a half smile. “But it was you who first reminded me how to open it.”

  Alouette felt for the metal tag dangling from her neck, remembering how earnestly he’d struggled to read its engraving back in the Forest Verdure, when they’d sat around a fire that Marcellus had built. When the world felt full of possibility. Not heartache.

  “I’m still pretty rusty though,” Marcellus said. “Certain words and letter combinations trip me up. Like, is this how you spell your mother’s name? L-I-S-O-L-E?”

  Alouette tilted her head toward the book and saw that Marcellus was reading the report about her mother getting fired from the Palais. She nodded. “Yes. That’s—” But the words evaporated on her tongue when her gaze snagged on the date scrawled at the top of the page.

  Month 7, Day 4, 488.

  She could have sworn the reports about her mother were all written in Month 6. Around the same time that the Rebellion of 488 ended.

  “Let me see that,” Alouette said hastily, turning the book toward her. Her eyes skimmed over the dense handwriting, butterflies taking flight in her stomach as she quickly realized that this was not the same report. This was a different report which mentioned her mother’s name. Written more than a month later. Alouette had been so convinced she’d read all there was to read about her mother. And then the voyageur had been overtaken by the Trafalgar warship, and the book had been pushed to the back corners of her mind. She hadn’t looked at it since.

  “What is it?” Marcellus asked.

  “It’s another report. About my mother.”

  “Read it aloud!” he urged.

  Alouette nodded and bent her head over the page.

  Month 7, Day 4, 488

  Operative: Mabelle Dubois

  Location: The Frets, Vallonay

  I found Lisole today in one of the dingiest, darkest hallways of Fret 10. Her couchette was leaking and cold, littered with cockroaches and dirty puddles. The sparkle had gone from her eyes. Her beautiful dark curls had been shorn off.

  Even some of her teeth were missing.

  “I borrowed money from the wrong people,” she said, covering her still swollen mouth with one hand and waving me inside with the other.

  She insisted I sit in the one rickety chair in the room, while she leaned against the filthy, cracked window.

  I couldn’t conceal my sadness and concern as I peered around the couchette.

  “They wouldn’t give me a work assignment.” She glanced down and smoothed her hand over her belly, now a gentle curve under her ragged dress. “Not like this, anyway.”

  In a rush of words, I said all I’d come to say. I told her who we were. Our mission. I told her about our safe hideaway, concealed from the rest of the planet.

  “You can live there. You and your baby will be safe in our protection. Guided by our love. The sisters will take care of you both.”

  But she shook her head. She refused. She told me she didn’t want to get tangled up in any more trouble.

  Our name, soiled from the recent failed rebellion, clearly terrified her.

  I tried to explain that we were innocent in that horrific bombing that killed those exploit workers one month ago. I tried to tell her that we were framed. We are not the terrorists the Ministe`re has painted us to be. I don’t know whether or not she believed me.

  “I just want to find a quiet life,” she said. “A life away from everyone and everything. Just the two of us.” She stroked her belly again.

  I warned her the world wasn’t safe for her or her child. I told her she could never have the quiet life she wanted. Trouble would follow her wherever she went. That seemed to stir something inside of her. She gazed out the broken window, looking distant and haunted and hopeless. She must have realized that I was right. That we were her and her child’s only chance. Because she gave the tiniest, most fragile of nods.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll come.”

  I told her to take a day to settle her affairs. I promised to return tomorrow to take her to safety. But just in case anything should happen to me, I gave her instructions on how to signal us.

  I know that she has made the right choice. For her own sake and the sake of the child. We can protect them. We must protect them.

  An electricity thrummed through Alouette. “She was pregnant,” she said quietly, her mind struggling to make all the pieces fit. “She must have been pregnant before she left the Palais.”

  Using her finger to mark her place in the book, Alouette hastily flipped back through the pages until she reached the first set of reports. Her gaze slid over the ha
ndwritten words, stopping only a little below the top of the page. She quietly reread the lines aloud. “I rushed into the hallway to find Lisole fighting with a handsome auburn-haired Palais guard. Her eyes were puffy and red. Her hair was a mess, and across her cheek, I saw an angry red mark. I knew, immediately, that she’d been struck.”

  “Do you think … ,” Marcellus began, clearly coming to the same conclusion as Alouette.

  Alouette thought about her mother’s titan box, still tucked away in her couchette. About those intertwined locks of hair. One dark and curly, the other a luminous shade of auburn.

  “Did she try to tell him?” Alouette wondered aloud as she turned back to her marked page. “Did she tell him about the baby, and he wanted nothing to do with it, so he had her arrested? Made up some story about her stealing from the Palais?” Perhaps that was what Mabelle had meant before, when she wrote that she feared Lisole had “gotten herself in too deep.”

  “Look,” Marcellus said. He had flipped forward a few pages and was now pointing at a new report, dated the very next day. “Her name appears here too.”

  Month 7, Day 5, 488

  Operative: Mabelle Dubois

  Location: The Frets, Vallonay

  Today, I knocked on the door of her couchette, but all I heard were cold, empty echoes and the skittering feet of vermin. I waited. I knocked again. I called her name. But still, there was only silence behind the door.

  Finally, a neighbor peeked out from the next couchette and told me that Lisole had left yesterday.

  “Good riddance,” he snarled. “I didn’t want some baby screaming and wailing all night.”

  I asked if he knew where she’d gone, but he shook his head and shoved the door closed in my face.

  It was then I realized that she never intended to come with me. She only agreed so that I would leave her alone. Our name—and every falsehood that has been tangled up with it—has become our downfall.

  Obviously, we must look for her. We must never stop searching. She is my friend. We were once as close as sisters. I care for her. And obviously, I care for the welfare of the child. The baby will be like a daughter to me. To all of us.

  Wherever she has gone, we will attempt to bring her back to Vallonay. But I fear, deep in my heart, that we may never find someone who doesn’t want to be found.

  When Alouette glanced up from the page again, she had tears in her eyes. She now understood why Principale Francine had given her this specific book. It was the beginning of a story. The story of how Alouette had found her way to the Refuge twelve years ago.

  “Mabelle,” she whispered wistfully. “She was my mother’s friend. She … saved me.”

  And suddenly, the rest of the story unfurled before her like a long-buried path emerging from the mist. “She invited my mother to live in the Refuge. She gave her instructions on how to signal the sisters. At first, my mother was too scared to come, convinced she would be better off on her own than hiding out with a group of rebels. But she must have eventually changed her mind and given those instructions to Hugo before she died. She must have come to realize that the Refuge was the safest place for me, despite it being the base for the Vangarde.” Alouette’s mouth quirked into a tiny smile as she touched the string of devotion beads around her neck. “And she was right.”

  Marcellus winced, his jawline taut against the memory of his former governess and the horrible way she’d died. “So I guess, in a way, Mabelle saved us both.”

  She glanced up at him, and when their eyes locked, Alouette felt something inexplicable pass between them. An understanding. A kinship. A connection that she knew would never be broken. No matter how many warships arrived to search for them. No matter what the future held.

  “I … ,” she began to say, but she didn’t quite know how to finish. And it didn’t seem to matter anyway, because a moment later, Alouette heard a soft groaning sound coming from the ship’s internal speakers. Her gaze shot toward the nearest monitor on the wall. Gabriel was no longer sleeping soundly. He was now thrashing violently on the bed.

  Alouette was on the move in an instant, sprinting to the infirmerie with Marcellus close behind her.

  The sheets of Gabriel’s bed were a tangled mess, and he was clearly in pain. His face and arms were covered in sweat.

  “Are the médicaments wearing off?” Cerise asked, appearing in the doorway.

  Alouette shook her head. “They should be good for another few hours.” She reached over and felt his forehead. It was hot and clammy. Her mind whirred.

  Infection? This fast?

  “What’s wrong with him?” Cerise’s small, broken voice made her sound like a child.

  Alouette sighed and looked up into Cerise’s eyes. They were rimmed with fear. “It’s the cluster bullet. All those tiny pieces of shrapnel create prime breeding grounds for infection.”

  “Can’t you do something for him?” Marcellus asked.

  “I can give him more médicaments, but it will only help for so long. He needs surgery.”

  Cerise’s gaze bounced to the glowing blue moon outside the porthole window of the infirmerie and then back again, obviously coming to the same conclusion as Alouette.

  They were running of time.

  Gabriel thrashed again, his hand flying up and nearly smacking Cerise in the face. She let out a sad little laugh, “Well, I suppose I had that coming.”

  “Marcellus. Help me.” Alouette held Gabriel’s right arm down and Marcellus rushed forward to grab his other arm. But instead of pinning it to the bed, he was just standing there, staring at the inside of Gabriel’s left wrist.

  “What’s wrong?” Alouette glanced over to see that Gabriel’s Skin was alight. Marcellus pushed up the fabric of his sleeve, revealing the whole of the screen. And that’s when Alouette saw it. That’s when they all saw it.

  Flashing in the center of Gabriel’s Skin was a curious orange rectangle that seemed to be gradually filling with color.

  “What is that?” Alouette asked, although she had a gut-wrenching feeling she already knew.

  Cerise tapped on the screen to link the Skin with the ship’s internal speakers. The implanted device connected just in time for them to hear the eerie robotic voice announce, “Operating system upgrade complete. Your Skin has been updated.”

  - CHAPTER 49 - MARCELLUS

  “NO,” MARCELLUS WHISPERED, STARING WIDE-EYED at Gabriel’s now darkened Skin. “No! It’s too soon.”

  “Was that it?” Cerise asked, looking desperately from Marcellus to Gabriel’s arm then back to Marcellus. “Was that the update?”

  Marcellus nodded dazedly. “I think it was.”

  “But,” Alouette protested, “but I thought we had more time. Dr. Cromwell said he would send the TéléReversion program in a week. Why would he send it early?”

  Marcellus had been asking himself that very same question. But strangely, it was the memory of his grandfather’s voice that supplied the answer.

  “This is not over, Marcellus.”

  That was the last thing the general had said to him, before he’d smashed the auditeur under the heel of his boot.

  “Because he knows I was there,” Marcellus replied, feeling a shiver crackle down his spine. “He knows I saw the demonstration. He knows we escaped Albion and are trying to get back to Laterre. He can’t risk me interfering with his plans. He must have demanded Dr. Cromwell send the program before the final tests were complete.” He paused, exhaling a shaky breath. “I think we have to assume that the general now has his weapon, and that every Third Estater on the planet is an explosif waiting to detonate.”

  A tense, grim silence fell across the room. For a moment, no one spoke. No one even dared to breathe. Even Gabriel, who was still unconscious on the bed next to them, seemed to still as this weight descended upon them.

  At once, Marcellus, Cerise, and Alouette turned toward the window. Toward the massive moon of Adalisa that was holding them hostage.

  “Sols!” Marcellus shoute
d. He spun around and sent his fist flying into one of the infirmerie cabinets. The door busted open and medical supplies came spilling out. Alouette and Cerise just stared at him, astonished, as he shook out his now-aching hand, drops of blood sprinkling onto the pristine white floor. “We’re trapped here! We’ll never get back to Laterre. Those warships won’t give up until we’re found and captured. I thought we could stop him. I thought …” But his voice trailed off. Because it didn’t matter what he thought anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

  He had lost.

  His grandfather had won, and Marcellus, the general’s sad excuse for a protégé, had lost.

  Marcellus leaned against the examination table and buried his head in his hands, once again feeling the sharp sting of his grandfather’s clever, strategic mind. Once again feeling like no matter what he did, how far he traveled, he was still three moves behind.

  Always three moves behind.

  He thought about the metal canister filled with vials of Dr. Collins’s inhibitor. Their one hope of stopping the general. And they’d never even be able to use them. “It’s over,” he whispered.

  “Maybe not,” said a soft yet pensive voice, and Marcellus looked up to see Cerise had moved over to the monitor on the wall and was now tapping furiously on the screen. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before, but now it’s so obvious.”

  “What’s obvious?” Alouette asked warily.

  “We still don’t know exactly what the general is going to do with the weapon, right?” Cerise peered at them from the monitor. “But he must have some sort of plan. A strategy. If we can get back to Laterre and get the inhibitor into the water supply before he implements his plan, maybe we can still stop him from doing any permanent damage.”

  Marcellus wasn’t following. Had Cerise completely forgotten about the Albion warships lying in wait on the other side of this moon? “Cerise, what are you talking about? Even if we can somehow get past the warships, it’ll still take five days to get back to Laterre. We’ll be too late. Not to mention the general will be waiting there for us with his own ships.”