“No,” she deadpanned. “It was paradise. All the chou bread you can eat and hours of stimulating conversation down in the zyttrium exploits.”
Marcellus knew she was making a joke, but he still felt chastised. Of course it was bad up there. It was horrible. The worst conditions a human being could endure. He took a breath, steeling himself to ask the question that had been secretly plaguing him ever since he’d first watched Chatine’s arrest report. “Was it my fault?”
Chatine’s head snapped toward him. “What?”
“Your arrest. Was it my fault? Did you get sent to Bastille because of me?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because Marcellus is always trying to take credit for other people’s misfortunes,” Cerise muttered. She turned toward the operating room door. “Argh! Would it kill someone to give us an update or something! He could be lying dead in there for all we know!”
Alouette shared a knowing look with Marcellus before jumping to her feet and guiding Cerise back to the cot with her. Cerise sat down on the thin mattress, and Alouette handed her a mug of hot chocolat. “Sit here. Drink this. Don’t move.” Alouette sat down beside her and linked her arm with Cerise’s. The gesture, Marcellus was certain, was meant to be both comforting and restraining.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Chatine whispered.
“I just …” Marcellus floundered for words. “You never would have been sent there if it weren’t for me. The general never would have hired you to spy on me and you never—”
“I never would have gotten out of there if it weren’t for you. You saved me. Your message from the droid—if it weren’t for that, I might have died in that tower.”
“Why were you on Bastille?” Marcellus turned back to her to see the lightness had vanished from her eyes. “Your arrest alert just said treason.”
“I lied to the general,” she explained without meeting his gaze. “I discovered where the Vangarde base was, and I told him I would lead him to it. But I lied. I led him somewhere else, and he had me sent straight to Bastille.”
At this admission, Alouette glanced over at Chatine. “You found the Refuge?”
“Refuge?” Chatine repeated curiously.
“That’s what the Vangarde call their base,” Marcellus explained.
“Yes. I found it.”
“And you protected it?” Alouette asked.
“I protected the Frets. I protected my people. And I guess, yes, I protected the Vangarde, too.”
Chatine turned to meet Marcellus’s gaze, her intense gray eyes the color of Laterre’s sky. And at that moment, something flowed through Marcellus. Something unnerving yet comforting, irritating yet familiar. He’d been so wrong about her. So many times. This girl who’d spied on him. Who’d deceived him. This girl who’d joked with him. Challenged him.
Kissed him.
This last memory made Marcellus’s frozen toes feel warmer than they’d felt in a lifetime. He hastily pulled his gaze away from hers only to have it land on Etienne. The Défecteur was glaring at Marcellus as though he had microcams affixed to the inside of Marcellus’s brain, monitoring all of his thoughts and emotions. As though he, too, were watching Marcellus and Chatine kiss on that rooftop in an endless loop.
Marcellus cleared his throat and instead turned his eyes to Alouette, but looking at her only made his heart clench with some other emotion he couldn’t quite identify. He dropped his gaze to the floor, which right now felt like the only safe place in the room.
“How did you escape?” Alouette asked Chatine.
“I … ,” Chatine began with difficulty. “I escaped when the Vangarde was breaking out Citizen Rousseau.” She looked like she was about to cry. She opened her mouth to say more, but no sound came out. Instead, it was Etienne who spoke.
He took a step out of his corner and unlocked his arms from across his broad chest. “There were two ships on the mission, but we lost contact with the other one shortly after it took off.”
Comprehension suddenly crashed into Marcellus. These people had helped the Vangarde break out Citizen Rousseau? That strange ship he’d seen on the roof belonged to them?
Etienne looked to Chatine, who was staring numbly at the ground, and the hardness of his gaze softened. “Her little brother was on the other ship.”
“Roche,” Chatine whispered, her voice cracking. “It was Roche. He was my lost baby brother, and I didn’t even know until it was too late. Back then, we called him—”
“Henri,” Alouette said with sudden realization. “I remember now. At the inn. Late at night, I would wake up to the sound of his cries. You would go to him. You would sing to him.”
As Marcellus watched the rivulets of tears make their way down Chatine’s cheeks, he felt like the whole planet was imploding around him. His insides caved in on themselves. The walls of the chalet came crumbling down. Not only had his grandfather killed Citizen Rousseau and Mabelle and Alouette’s beloved sisters in that attack. He’d also killed Roche. That clever boy Marcellus had interrogated in the Precinct. Chatine’s little brother.
General Bonnefaçon had destroyed all their lives. He was an enemy to everyone in this room. To Chatine, who’d suffered on Bastille. To Alouette, who’d lost the only family she’d ever known. To Gabriel, who was fighting for his life in that operating room right now. To Cerise, who’d left behind her comfortable life in Ledôme only to be stuck here, staring at a door and praying to the Sols that Gabriel would make it out. Even to these Défecteurs, who had been banished to the frozen tundra of the Terrain Perdu in an attempt to escape the Ministère’s wrath. They were all victims of his grandfather’s vicious game. They’d all been made miserable because of him.
And for all they knew, he could be destroying even more lives right this minute.
The thought made the room spin. Marcellus gripped tightly to the edge of his cot and tried to take deep breaths. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay locked up here. He didn’t know how much more waiting he could take.
“Your friend is stable.”
The voice came from behind Cerise, startling everyone. Marcellus looked up to see Brigitte, the former cyborg médecin, standing in the doorway of the operating room dressed in her medical scrubs, her scarred face covered by a surgical mask that stopped just below her eyes.
Cerise’s gaze seemed to track right to the splatters of blood on the front of Brigitte’s shirt. “Oh my Sols! He’s alive? He’s going to be okay?”
Brigitte grabbed Cerise’s hands in hers and squeezed them tightly. “He’s going to be okay. I was able to get all the fragments of the cluster bullet out. And I went ahead and removed his TéléSkin while he was under. He’s going to make it. He’s a fighter.”
Cerise collapsed in relief onto the nearest cot. “Oh, thank the Sols.”
“Pretty nasty things, those cluster bullets,” said Brigitte. “Do you want to tell me how he got shot?”
Cerise looked to Alouette, who looked to Marcellus, who looked to the floor again. “We were pursued by the Royal Guard.” He swallowed. “On Albion.”
He expected Brigitte to react with shock. It wasn’t every day you met a Laterrian who had been to Albion. But she simply nodded for him to continue.
Marcellus anxiously cleared his throat. “My grandfather, as you might know, is General Bonnefaçon.” Once again, the Défecteur’s expression remained neutral, even in the face of her enemy. “But I swear I don’t work for him anymore. You don’t have to worry about me—”
“If I was worried,” Brigitte interrupted calmly, “you wouldn’t be here.”
“Right.” Marcellus felt a flicker of relief, followed quickly by confusion. “Wait, why aren’t you worried?”
Brigitte cracked a small smile. “Let’s just say we have some of the same friends.”
Marcellus wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, so he simply stored it away to be questioned later. “Well, anyway, we went to Albion to track down a source who had been working
with the general to build a weapon.”
Chatine stiffened. “What kind of weapon?”
Marcellus looked to Cerise, who looked to Alouette, who held Chatine’s gaze with unwavering strength. “It’s an update. For the Third Estate Skins. It gives the general the ability to control people. To make them violent.”
“We believe he wants to turn the Third Estate into his own personal army,” Marcellus added.
“What?” Chatine said in a breathless whisper.
“Our source on Albion designed an inhibitor that would prevent the general from being able to control people through the Skins,” Marcellus explained. “But unfortunately, the majority of it was destroyed.”
“What exactly does he plan to do with this weapon?” Chatine asked.
“We don’t know yet,” said Marcellus. “All we know is that he wants control of the Regime, and he’s going to use the Third Estate to get it.”
Chatine glanced down at her left wrist, and Marcellus could make out a faint red scar where her Skin used to be.
It was only then that Marcellus realized the médecin still hadn’t reacted to what he’d just told them. And when he peered back up at Brigitte, he noticed she was not looking at him. She was looking back into the operating room, a pensive, almost troubled expression on her face.
“What is it?” Marcellus asked, alarmed.
It felt like forever before Brigitte spoke. Her gaze was still trained on the operating room door, her mind clearly working. “Something happened when I was operating on your friend.”
“What?” Cerise asked.
“Right before I removed his Skin,” Brigitte said haltingly, like she was trying to organize her thoughts and speak at the same time, “something appeared on the screen. I believe it was one of your Universal Alerts.”
Marcellus’s stomach rolled. His grandfather. The weapon. It was already starting. “What was it?” he asked desperately, leaping to his feet. “What did the general say?”
When Brigitte finally turned back to Marcellus, there was something in her eyes that told him it was even worse than he imagined. “No, not the general. It was the Patriarche.”
- CHAPTER 60 - MARCELLUS
“FELLOW LATERRIANS. OUR PLANET HAS recently experienced several disturbing setbacks.”
The stout, jowly face of Lyon Paresse filled the screen of the strange Défecteur device. Just like their ships, it was unlike anything Marcellus had ever seen. It was the same shape as a TéléCom, but it looked ancient. Like an old First World relic, with its maze of wires, hard black casing, and winking lights.
Everyone in the Med Center was gathered around the screen, listening to the Patriarche’s voice seep out of the device’s small, tinny speakers.
“A few weeks ago, we said good-bye to our beloved daughter and Premier Enfant, Marie Paresse. At barely three years old, she was taken from us by a brutal, depraved group of terrorists. Thankfully, we were able to apprehend Marie’s murderer, Nadette Epernay, and bring her to justice.”
Marcellus cringed as the view on the screen changed from the Patriarche’s bereft face to the archived footage of Marie’s governess being marched to her death. Two hulking droids led her across the stage at the center of the Marsh, toward the terrible exécuteur with its glowing blue laser fuzzing and sparking ominously in the wet air. The girl was young. Beautiful. And so innocent. Framed for a crime she didn’t commit. Just another pawn in the general’s terrifying game of power and corruption.
Marcellus knew exactly why they were replaying this footage for the entire planet to see. It was a reminder. A threat. That any of them could be next.
The footage continued and Marcellus watched, once again, as the head of Nadette Epernay was severed from her body in one blinding, remorseless slice of blue light. Beside him, Chatine winced and averted her eyes.
As the dreadful smell of burning flesh flooded Marcellus’s memory, the Patriarche’s voice resumed over the ghastly images.
“Because of this fateful event and the turmoil that followed, we were forced to cancel the annual Ascension until balance and order could be restored to our planet.”
The archived footage ended, and the Patriarche returned to the screen. But even though it was Lyon Paresse’s face being broadcast to all of Laterre, Marcellus knew these weren’t his words. He recognized his grandfather’s precise language and diplomatic phrasing. And judging from the Patriarche’s stilted tone, Marcellus had no doubt that these carefully considered words were being broadcast into an audio patch for him to parrot.
“And now, I am pleased to announce,” the Patriarche continued with a taut, forced smile, “as I’m sure you will all be pleased to hear, that not only has the annual Ascension ceremony been rescheduled, it will begin promptly in five minutes.”
Alouette glanced up from the device long enough to share a wary look with Marcellus. She was clearly as suspicious and distrusting of this turn of events as he was. After all, it had been less than a week since the Patriarche had shot down the idea of a rescheduled Ascension. Which meant whatever was happening here, whatever the general had convinced the Patriarche to agree to, it wasn’t a coincidence.
It wasn’t the general “taking his chances,” as Alouette had said.
“This, however, will be a very different kind of Ascension,” the Patriarche went on, drawing Marcellus’s focus back to the screen. “Unlike any we have experienced on Laterre before. I realize that despite the recent”—the Patriarche paused, looking displeased by the general’s choice of words—“…setbacks, there are still many of you—the majority of you, in fact—who have chosen not to rebel. Who have not participated in the chaos and turmoil that has invaded our planet. There are many of you who have continued to perform your honest work for an honest chance and who have continued to show loyalty to me, my family, and our beloved and beautiful Regime. And I would like to personally demonstrate my deepest appreciation and gratitude to you.”
The Patriarche took a long, rehearsed pause. Marcellus felt like his lungs were trapped in a vise.
“Which is why,” Lyon Paresse continued, “for this special Ascension ceremony, we will be choosing not one person to Ascend to the Second Estate, but fifty.”
“Fifty!?” Cerise spat, her gaze snapping up from the device. “That’s unheard of.”
Marcellus nodded, his gut twisting more with every passing second. “Yes, it is.”
“That’s right, my fellow Laterrians,” the Patriarche said, his forced smile widening to the point where he looked like a broken toy. “In just a few minutes, fifty lucky members of the Third Estate will be chosen to Ascend. And of course, like every winner before them, all fifty Ascendants and their families will receive brand-new manoirs in Ledôme and will be invited to attend the Ascension banquet at the Grand Palais tomorrow night. There, my wife, Matrone Veronik Paresse, and I will personally welcome you all to your new life.”
The Patriarche’s lips pulled back again to reveal his perfectly white teeth in an expression that was undoubtedly supposed to appear pleasing but ended up only looking disquieting. As though some part of him knew there was something very sinister about this turn of events.
“Fifty winners?” Chatine repeated, dumbfounded.
“And their families,” Cerise added.
“That has to be close to two hundred people,” Alouette said.
Marcellus closed his eyes, feeling the planet wobble beneath his feet like a rumbling foreshadow of what was to come. “It’s the Peasant’s Revolt,” he whispered as a chilling tingle shot down his spine.
Cerise turned to him. “You mean from the Regiments game?”
Marcellus nodded. “Surround and capture the Monarch. He’s going to use the Third Estate to kill the Patriarche.”
“What?” Chatine asked.
Marcellus’s breath was coming fast and furious now. “It’s the perfect plan. Ledôme is nearly impenetrable. Its perimeter is guarded by droids at all times. Normally, the Third Estate aren’t allowed i
nside, and the Patriarche never leaves it. Apart from a few strongly vetted servants and Palais staff, the Patriarche never comes close to the Third Estate.”
“Except during Ascension banquets,” Cerise whispered, the pieces evidently clicking into place in her mind as well.
“Exactly,” Marcellus said. “That’s how he plans to take control of the Regime. By sending in the Third Estate to murder the Patriarche and put an end to the Paresse family for good. He just had to find a way to get enough of them inside.” Marcellus released a shudder of a breath, once again in awe of his grandfather’s brilliant mind.
He glanced back at the screen of the strange Défecteur device. The Ascension ceremony had already begun. Faces spun across the screen, randomly stopping at winner after winner after winner.
The general’s unwitting army mobilizing before his very eyes.
This was how the Regime would end. This was how the general would pull off his master plan. His Peasant’s Revolt. By convincing the Monarch to invite the Peasants into his home so that they could destroy him. This was no longer the fool’s move that Marcellus had always believed it to be. Now it was the move that would secure General Bonnefaçon his long-awaited and hard-fought victory.
“The Regime will finally rid itself of the déchets and be brought to order.”
Marcellus had interpreted his grandfather’s words all wrong. The “déchets” he was referring to were not the Third Estate. They were the First Estate. Those were the people the general thought of as “garbage.” Fat to be trimmed. Scum to be eliminated. And he was going to use the Third Estate to do it.
“I don’t understand.” Chatine started to pace. “If all he has to do to take control of the Regime is kill the Patriarche, why doesn’t he just do it himself? Smother him with a pillow in his sleep? Mess with his hunting gun so it blows up in his face? Poison him like he did with the Premier Enfant? I can think of several easier ways to kill someone than going through all this trouble.”
It was a valid question. One that Marcellus didn’t immediately have an answer to. But he was grateful that someone else in the room did.
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