Morning Star (Red Rising #3) - Pierce Brown Page 0,3

startles me. A spasm of light that flares white, then erodes into devilish neon as a mushroom grows in the planet’s blackness.

“Do you see that?” I ask over the coms, blinking away the cigar burn the distant detonation made in my vision. Our coms crackle with curses as the others turn to see.

“Shit,” Sevro murmurs. “New Thebes?”

“No,” Pebble answers. “Farther north. That’s the Aventine Peninsula. So it’s probably Cyprion. Last intel said the Red Legion was moving toward the city.”

Then comes another flash. And the seven of us hunker motionless on the crest of the building, watching as a second nuclear bomb detonates a thumb’s distance away from the first.

“Bloodydamn. Is it us or them?” I ask. “Sevro!”

“I don’t know,” Sevro says impatiently.

“You don’t know?” Victra asks.

How could he not know? I want to shout. But I grasp the answer, because Dancer ’s words now haunt

me. “Sevro’s not running this war,” he told me, weeks ago after another failed Howler mission. “He’s just a man pouring gas on the fire.” Maybe I didn’t understand how far gone this war is, how far reaching the chaos has become.

Could I have been wrong to trust him so blindly? I watch his expressionless mask. The skin of his

armor drinks in the colors of the city around, reflecting nothing. An abyss for light. He turns slowly from the explosion and begins to climb again. Already moving on.

“HoloNews has it,” Pebble says. “Fast. They say Red Legion used nukes against Gold forces near Cyprion. Least that’s the story.”

“Bloodydamn liars,” Clown snaps. “Another bait and switch.”

“Where would Red Legion get nukes?” Victra asks. Harmony would use them if she had any. But I wager it was Gold using the bombs on Red Legion instead.

“Doesn’t mean shit to us now. Lock it up,” Sevro says. “Still got to do what we came to do. Get your asses in gear.” Numbly, we obey. When we reach our entry zone on the crescent of the double helix tower, rehearsed routine takes over. I pull a small acid flask from the pack on Victra’s back. Sevro releases a nanocam no larger than my fingernail into the air, where it hovers above the glass, scanning for life inside the museum. There is none—not a surprise at 03:00. He pulls out a pulseGenerator and waits for Pebble to finish her work on her datapad.

“What’s what, Pebble?” he asks impatiently.

“Codes worked. I’m in the system, ” she says. “Just have to find the right zone. There it is. Laser grid is…down. Thermal cams are…frozen. Heartbeat sensors are…off. Congratulations, everyone.

We’re officially ghosts! So long as no one manually pulls an alarm.”

Sevro activates the pulseGenerator and a faint iridescent bubble blooms around us, creating a seal, so that the vacuum of space doesn’t invade the building with us. Would be a quick way to be discovered. I put a small suction cup on the center of the glass then open the acid container and apply the foam to the window in a two-meter-by-two-meter box around the suction cup. The acid bubbles as it eats through the glass, creating an opening. With a small rush of air from the building into our pulseField, the glass pane pops up where Victra grabs it to keep it from flying into space.

“Rags first,” Sevro says. It’s a hundred meters to the museum floor below.

Ragnar clamps a rappelling winch to the edge of the glass and clips his harness to the magnetic wire. Pulling his razor out, he reactivates his ghostCloak and pushes through the hole. It’s disturbing

to the senses seeing his near-invisible form accelerate down to the floor, gripped by the skyhook’s artificial gravity while I’m still floating. He looks a demon made of the heat that shimmers above the desert on a summer day.

“Clear.”

Sevro follows. “Break an arm,” Victra says, pushing me into the hole after him. I float forward, then feel myself gripped by gravity as I cross the boundary into the room. I slide down the wire, picking up speed. My stomach lurches at the sudden influx of weight, food sloshing around. I land hard on the ground, almost twisting my ankle as I pull up my silenced scorcher and search for contacts. The rest of the Howlers land behind me. We crouch back to back in the grand hall. The floor is gray marble. The length of the hall is impossible to gauge, because it curves according to the crescent, bowing upward and out of sight, playing with gravity and giving me a sense of vertigo.

Metal relics tower around us. Old rockets from man’s Pioneer Age. The coat of arms of the Luna Company marks the hull of a gray probe near Ragnar. It looks decidedly like Octavia au Lune’s house crest.

“So this is what it’s like to feel fat,” Sevro says with a grunt as he takes a small jump in the heavy gravity. “Disgusting.”

“Quicksilver’s from Earth,” Victra says. “Jacks it up even higher when he’s negotiating with anyone from low-grav birthplaces.”

It’s three times what I’m used to on Mars, eight times what they prefer on Io or Europa, but in rebuilding my body, Mickey jacked the simulators up to twice Earth’s gravity. It’s an unpleasant sensation weighing nearly eight hundred pounds, but it works the muscles something horrible.

We strip our oxygen tanks and stow them in the engine rim of an old space shuttle painted with the flag of pre-empire America. So we’re left with our small packs, scarabSkin, demonHelms, and weapons. Sevro pulls up Victra’s crude maps of the tower ’s interior and asks Pebble if she’s found Quicksilver yet.

“I can’t. It’s odd. The cameras are off in the top two levels. Same with biometric readers. Can’t pinpoint him like we planned.”

“Off?” I ask.

“Maybe he’s having an orgy or wankin’ off and doesn’t want his Security to see.” Sevro grunts with a shrug. “Either way, he’s hiding something, so that’s where we’re headed.”

I cue Sevro’s personal line so the others can’t hear us. “We can’t wander around looking for him. If we’re caught in the halls without leverage—”

“We won’t wander.” He cuts me off before addressing the Howlers. “Cloaks on, ladies. Razors and silenced scorchers. PulseFists only if shit gets dirty.” He ripples transparent. “Howlers, on me.”

We slink from the museum into a maze of otherworldly hallways, following Sevro’s lead. Floors

of black marble. Walls of glass. Ten-meter-high ceilings made from pulseFields, which look into aquariums where vibrant reefs of coral stretch like fungal tentacles. Reptilian mermaids one foot long with humanoid faces, gray skin, and skulls shaped like crowns swim through a kingdom of scalding

blue and violent orange. Hateful little crow eyes glare down at us as they pass.

The walls are moodGlass and pulse with subtle alternating colors. Now heartbeats of magenta, soon rippling curtains of cobalt-silver. It’s dreamlike. Amidst the maze are little alcoves. Miniature art galleries showcasing works of contemporary dot holographs and twenty-first century AD

ostentaciousism instead of the reserved neoclassical Romanism so in vogue with Peerless Scarred.

Recharging our battery packs to our ghostCloaks, we duck into a gallery where lurks a gaudy purple metallic dog shaped like a balloon animal.

Victra sighs. “Goryhell. Man’s got the taste of a tabloid socialite.”

Ragnar cocks his head at the dog. “What is it?”

“Art,” Victra says. “Supposedly.”

The tone of condescension Victra strikes intrigues me, as does the building. It pulses with artifice.

The art, the walls, the mermaids, all so on the nose of what the Peerless Scarred would expect of a newly moneyed Silver. Quicksilver must know Gold psychology intimately in order to have been allowed to grow so wealthy. So I wonder, is this extravagance all something far more clever? A mask so obvious and easy to accept that no one would ever think to look beneath it? Quicksilver, for all his reputation, has never been called stupid. So perhaps this tawdry dreamscape isn’t for him. It’s for his guests.

Which makes me think something here is amiss as we reach an unlit atrium with unpolished sandstone floors perforated by pink jasmine trees and slink across the floor in a V formation toward the set of double doors that leads to Quicksilver ’s bedroom suite. Cloaks deactivated so we can better see. Razors rigid and held out, metal drifting centimeters above the sandstone.

This isn’t a home. It’s a stage. Made to manipulate. Sinister in the cold calculation with which it was constructed. I don’t like it. I key Sevro’s frequency again. “Something’s wrong here. Where are the servants? The guards?”

“Maybe he likes his privacy…”

“I think it’s a trap.”

“A trap? Your head or your gut talkin’?”

“My gut.”

He’s quiet for a breath, and I wonder if he’s speaking to someone else on the other line. Maybe he’s speaking to all of them. “What’s your rec?”

“Pull back. Assess the situation to see….”

“Pull back?” He snaps the question out. “For all we know, they just dropped nukes on our people.

We need this.” I try to interrupt, but he steamrolls me. “Shit, I’ve run thirteen ops just to get intel on this Silvery asshole. We leave now, that’s all slagged. They’ll know we were here. We won’t have this chance again. He’s the key to getting the Jackal. You gotta trust me, Reap. Do you?”

I bite back a curse and cut the signal short, not sure if I’m angry with him or with myself, or because I know the Jackal removed the spark that made me feel different. Every opinion I have feeble, and malleable to others. Because I know, deep down, beneath the intimidating scarabSkin, beneath the demon mask, is a callow little boy who cried because he was scared of being alone in the dark.

Purple light suddenly floods the room as a luxury vessel cruises past the wall of windows at our

backs. We hastily line up to either side of the door to Quicksilver ’s suite, preparing to breach. I watch the vessel drift along through my black optics. Lights pulse on one of its decks as several hundred Pixies writhe to some Etrurian club beat that’s all the rage on far-off Luna, as if a war didn’t wage on the planet beneath this moon. As if we didn’t move to rupture their way of life. They’ll drink champagne from Earth in clothes made on Venus in ships fueled by Mars. And they’ll laugh and consume and screw and face no consequences. So many little locusts. I feel Sevro’s righteous wrath burn in me.

Suffering isn’t real to them. War isn’t real. It’s just a three-letter word for other people that they see in the digital newsfeeds. Just a stream of uncomfortable images they skip past. A whole business of weapons and arms and ships and hierarchies they don’t even notice, all to shield these fools from the true agony of what it means to be human. Soon they’ll know.

And on their deathbeds, they’ll remember tonight. Who they were with. What they were doing when

that three-letter word gripped them and never let go. This pleasure cruise, this hideous decadence is the last gasp of the Golden Age.

And what a pathetic gasp it is.

“Of course I trust you,” I say, tightening my grip on my razor. Ragnar ’s watching us, even though he can’t hear our signal. Victra’s waiting to breach the door.

The light fades, and the ship disappears into the cityscape. I’m surprised to realize I don’t feel satisfaction in knowing what’s about to happen. In knowing their age will fall. Neither does it bring joy to think of all the lights in all the cities across this empire of man dimming, or all the ships slowing, or all the brilliant Golds fading as their buildings rust and crumble. Would that I could hear Mustang’s take on this plan. Before, I’ve missed her lips, her scent, but now I miss the comfort that comes knowing her mind is aligned with mine. When I was with her, I did not feel so alone. She’d probably chastise us for focusing on breaking rather than building.

Why do I feel this way now? I’m surrounded by friends, striking at Gold as I have always wished.

Yet something itches in the back of my brain. Like eyes watch me. Whatever Sevro says, something is wrong here. Not just in this building, but with his plan. Is this how I would have done it? How Fitchner would have done it? If it succeeds, what do we usher in after the dust has settled and the helium no longer flows? A dark age? Sevro is a force unto himself. His rage a thing to move mountains.

I was once like that. And look what that got me.

“Kill his guards. Stun the Pinks. Smash, grab, and go,” Sevro is saying to his Howlers. My hand tightens on my blade. He gives the signal, and Ragnar and Victra slip through the doors. The rest of us follow into the dark.

The lights are off. It’s tomb silent. The front room empty. An electric-green jellyfish floats in a tank on a table, casting weird shadows. We move through to the bedroom, smashing through the gold filigreed doors. I guard the door with Pebble, crouching on a knee, silenced railgun cradled in my hands, sheathing my razor on my arm. Behind us, a man sleeps in a four-poster bed. Ragnar grabs him by the foot and jerks him out. Clad in expensive sleepwear, he sprawls onto the floor. Waking midair and screaming silently into Ragnar ’s hand.

“Shit. It’s not him,” Victra says behind me. “It’s a Pink.” I glance back. Ragnar kneels over the Pink, blocking him from my view.

Sevro hits the bedpost, cracking it. “It’s three in the morning. Where the hell is he?”

“It is four p.m. market time on Luna,” Victra says. “Maybe he’s in his office? Ask the slave.”

“Where is your master?” Sevro’s mask makes his voice warble like a steel cable struck by an iron rod. I keep my eyes trained on the living room until the Pink’s whimper makes me look back. Sevro’s got his knee in the man’s groin. “Pretty pajamas, boyo. Wanna see what they look like in red?”

I flinch at the coldness in this voice. Knowing the tone all too well. Hearing it from the Jackal as he tortured me in Attica.

“Where is your master?” Sevro twists his knee. The Pink wails in pain, but still refuses to answer.

The Howlers watch the torture in silence, bent, faceless stains in the dark room. There’s no discussion. No moral question at play, I know they’ve done this before. I feel dirty in the realization, in hearing the Pink sobbing on the ground. This is more a part of war than trumpets or starships.

Quiet, unremembered moments of cruelty.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.”

The voice. I remember that voice from my past. I rush from my post at the door and join Sevro,

pulling him off of the Pink. Because I know the man and his gentle features. His long, angular nose, rose-quartz eyes, and dark honey skin. He’s as responsible for making me what I am as Mickey ever

was. It’s Matteo. Beautiful and fragile, now gasping on the ground, arm broken. Bleeding from his mouth, holding his groin where Sevro beat him.

“The hell’s your damage?” Sevro snarls at me.

“I know him!” I say.

“What?”

Taking advantage of my distraction, and seeing nothing but the black demon visages of our helms,

Matteo lunges for a datapad sitting on the bed stand. Sevro’s faster. With a meaty thud the hardest bone density in the species of man meets the softest. Sevro’s fist shatters Matteo’s fragile jaw. He gags and

falls convulsing to the floor, eyes rolling back into his head. I watch in a haze, the violence seeming unreal and yet so cold and primitive and easy. Just muscle and bone moving the way it shouldn’t. I find myself reaching for Matteo, falling over his twitching body, shoving Sevro back.

“Don’t touch him!” Matteo’s been knocked unconscious, mercifully. I can’t tell if he has spinal damage or brain trauma. I touch the gentle curls of his now-dusky hair. It has a blue sheen to it. His hand’s clutched tight like a child’s, a slender silver band on his ring finger. Where has he been this whole time? Why is he here? “I know him,” I whisper.

Ragnar ’s bending beside him protectively, though there’s nothing we can do here for Matteo.

Clown tosses the datapad to Sevro. “Panic switch.”

“What do you mean you know him?” Sevro asks.

“He’s a Son of Ares,” I say, in a daze. “Or he was. He was one of my teachers before the Institute.

He taught me Aureate culture.”

“Goryhell,” Screwface mutters.

Victra toes his wrist where little flowers embellish his pink Sigils. “He’s a Rose of the Garden. Like Theodora.” She glances to Ragnar. “He costs as much as you, Stained.”

“You’re sure it’s the same man?” Sevro asks me.

“Of course I’m bloodydamn sure. His name is Matteo.”

“Then why is he here?” Ragnar asks.

“Doesn’t look like a captive,” Victra says. “Those are expensive pajamas. He’s probably a paramour. Quicksilver’s not known for celibacy, after all.”

“He must have turned,” Sevro says harshly.

“Or he was on an assignment for your father,” I say.

“Then why didn’t he contact us? He’s defected. Means Quicksilver has infiltrated the Sons.” Sevro spins to look at the door. “Shit. He could know about Tinos. He could know about this bloodydamn raid.”

My mind races. Did Ares send Matteo here? Or did Matteo leave a sinking ship? Maybe Matteo told

them about me before Harmony did….It’s a knife in the gut thinking that. I didn’t know him long, but I cared for him. He was a kind person, and there’s so few of those left. Now look what we’ve done to him.

“We should get the hell out of here,” Clown is saying.

“Not without Quicksilver,” Sevro replies.

“We don’t know where Quicksilver is,” I say. “There’s more to this. We have to wait for Matteo to

wake up. Someone have a stimshot?”

“Dose would kill him,” Victra says. “Pink circulatory system can’t handle military crank. ”

“We don’t have time for talking, ” Sevro barks. “Can’t risk being pinned in here. We move now.” I try to speak, but he rolls on, looking to Clown who is using Matteo’s datapad. “Clown, waddya got?”

“I’ve got a food request on the internal server’s kitchen subsection. Looks like someone has ordered a whole host of mutton and jam sandwiches and coffee to room C19.”

“Reaper, what do you think?” Ragnar asks.

“It could be a trap,” I say. “We need to adjust—”

Victra laughs scornfully, cutting me off. “Even if it is a trap, look who we’re packing. We’ll punch through that shit.”

“Bloodydamn right, Julii.” Sevro moves toward the door. “Screwface. Bring the Pink and stow him.

Fangs out. Ragnar, Victra in front. Blood’s comin’.”

—

One level down, we meet our first security team. Half a dozen lurchers stand in front of large glass door that ripples like the surface of a pond. They wear black suits instead of military armor. Implants in the shape of silver heels stick out from the skin behind their left ears. There’s more patrolling this level, but no servants. Several Grays in similar suits took a coffee cart into the room a few minutes earlier. Strange that they wouldn’t use Pinks or Browns for delivering coffee. Security is tight. So whoever is in Quicksilver ’s office must be important. Or at least very paranoid.

“We’re flowing quick,” Sevro says, leaning back around the hallway corner where we wait thirty meters from the group of Grays. “Neutralize those shitheads, then breach fastlike.”

“We don’t know who is in there,” Clown says

“And there’s only one way to find out,” Sevro barks. “Go.”

Ragnar and Victra go first around the corner, ghostCloaks bending the light. The rest of us follow at a dead sprint. One of the Grays squints down the hall at us. The implanted thermal optics in his irises throb red as they activate and see the heat radiating from our battery packs. “GhostCloaks!” he shouts. Six sets of practiced hands flow to scorchers. Far too late. Ragnar and Victra tear into them.

Ragnar swings his razor, cutting off one’s arm and severing the jugular of another. Blood sprays over the glass walls. Victra fires her silenced scorcher. Magnetically hurled slugs slam into two heads. I slide forward between falling bodies. Stick my razor through a man’s rib cage. Feeling the pop and give of his heart. I retract my blade into whip form to free it. Let it stiffen again back to my slingBlade before the man drops.

The Grays haven’t managed to fire a single shot. But one has pressed a button on his datapad, and

the deep throbbing sound of the tower ’s alarm echoes down the hall. The walls pulse red, signaling an emergency. Sevro cuts the last man down.

“Breach the room. Now!” he shouts.

Something’s wrong. I feel it in my gut, but Victra and Sevro are propelling this forward. And Ragnar ’s kicking in the door. Ever a slave to momentum, I plunge in after him.

Quicksilver ’s conference room is less flamboyant than the rooms above. Its ceiling is ten meters

high. Its walls are of digital glass that swirls subtly with silver smoke. Two rows of marble pillars run parallel on either side of a giant onyx conference table with a dead white tree rising from its center.

At the far end of the room, a huge viewing window looks out at the industry of the Hive. Regulus ag Sun, hailed from Mercury to Pluto as Quicksilver, richest man under the sun, stands before the window, mauling a glass of red wine with a fleshy hand.

He’s bald. Forehead wrinkled as a washboard. Pugilist lips. Hunched simian shoulders leading to butcher fingers that sprout from the sleeves of a high-collared Venusian turquoise robe embroidered with apple trees. He’s in his sixties. Skin bronzed with a marrow-deep tan. A small goatee and mustache accent his face in a vain attempt to give it shape, though it seems he’s stayed away from Carvers for the most part. His feet are bare. But it’s his three eyes that demand attention. Two are heavy-lidded and Silver. An earthy, efficient shade. The third is Gold and implanted in a simple silver ring the man wears on the middle finger of his fat right hand.

We’ve interrupted his meeting.

Nearly thirty Coppers and Silvers pack the room. They’re formed into two parties and sit across from one another at a giant’s onyx table littered with coffee cups, wine carafes, and datapads. A blue holo document floats in the air between the two factions, obviously the object of their attention until the door shattered inward. Now they push back from the table, most too stunned yet to feel fear, or to even see us as the Howlers enter the room in ghostCloaks. But it isn’t just Coppers and Silvers at the

table.

“Oh, shit,” Victra sputters.

Among the professional Colors rise six Golden knights in full pulseArmor. And I know them all.

On the left, a dark-faced older man wearing the pure black armor of the Death Knight, on either side of him are pudgy-faced Moira—a Fury, sister of Aja—and good old Cassius au Bellona. To the right

are Kavax au Telemanus, Daxo au Telemanus, and the girl who left me on my knees in the old mining

tunnels of Mars nearly one year ago.

Mustang.

“Hold your fire!” I shout, pushing down Victra’s weapon, but Sevro’s barking orders, and Victra brings her weapon back up. We form a staggered line with our pulseFists and scorchers aimed at the Golds. We hold fire because we need Quicksilver alive, and I know Sevro’s as stunned as I to see Mustang, Cassius, and the Telemanuses here.

“On the ground or we waste you!” Sevro screams, voice inhuman and magnified by his demonHelm. The Howlers join him, filling the air with a harpy’s chorus of commands. My blood pumps cold. The alarm throbs around the roaring voices. Not knowing what to do, I point my pulseFist at the most dangerous Gold in the room, Cassius, knowing what must be going through Sevro’s mind as he sees his father ’s killer in the flesh. My helmet syncs with the weapon, to illuminate weak points in his armor, but my eyes drink in Mustang as she sets down a cup of coffee, graceful as ever, and steps back from the table, the pulseFist implanted in the left gauntlet of her armor slowly beginning to blossom open.

My mind and heart war against each other. What the hell is she doing here? She’s supposed to be in the Rim. Like her, the other Golds aren’t listening to us. They don’t know who we are past our helmets. No wolfcloaks today. They step back, eyes wary, judging the situation. Cassius’s razor slithers on his right arm. Kavax slowly lifts himself from his chair along with Daxo. Quicksilver waves his hands frantically.

“Stop!” he shouts, voice nearly lost in the chaos. “Do not fire! This is a diplomatic meeting!

Identify yourselves!” We’ve stumbled into the middle of some negotiation, I realize. A surrender of Mustang’s forces? An alliance? Noticeably absent is the Jackal. Is Quicksilver betraying him? He must be. So must the Sovereign. That’s why this place is so deserted. No servants, minimum security.

Quicksilver wanted only men he trusted at this meeting held so close under his ally’s nose.

My stomach lurches as I realize the rest of the room must think we’re Boneriders. Which means they think we’re here to kill them, and this is going to end only one way.

“On the bloodydamn ground!” Victra bellows.

“What do we do?” Pebble asks over the com. “Reaper?”

“I claim the Bellona,” Sevro says.

“Use stun weapons!” I say. “It’s Mustang—”

“Won’t do shit against that armor,” Sevro interrupts. “If they lift their weapons, kill the pricks. Full pulse charges. I’m not risking any of our family.”

“Sevro, listen to me. We need to talk to—” My words cut short because he uses the master command built into his helmet to jam my com output signal. I can hear them, but they can’t hear me. I

curse futilely at him.

“Bellona, stop moving!” Clown shouts. “I said stop.”

Opposite Mustang, Cassius silently drifts through the Silvers, using them as cover to close the gap between us. He’s only ten meters away. Getting closer. I sense Victra tensing beside me, hungry to be let loose on one of the men who she blames for her mother ’s death, but there’s civilians between us and the Golds, and Quicksilver ’s a prize we can’t afford to lose.

My eyes judge the plump cheeks of the Silvers and Coppers. Not a soul here is oppressed. Not a belly here has ever been hungry. These are collaborators. Sevro would scalp them one by one if given a rusty knife and a few idle hours.

“Reaper…” Ragnar says quietly, looking to me for instruction.

“Take your hand away from the razor!” Victra shouts at Cassius. He stays quiet. Coming forward, certain as a glacier. Moira and the Death Knight follow after him. Kavax’s helmet is slithering up to cover his head. Mustang’s face is already covered. Her pulseFist active and pointed at the ground.

I know death well enough to hear it gather its breath.

I activate my external speakers. “Kavax, Mustang, stop. It’s me. It’s—”

“Stop moving, you piece of shit!” Victra snarls. Cassius smiles pleasantly and he lunges forward.

Ragnar makes a weird twisting movement to my left, and one of the two razors he carries flies through the air and skewers the Death Knight through his forehead. The Silvers gape at the famous

Olympic Knight teetering to the ground.

“KAVAX AU TELEMANUS,” Kavax roars and rushes forward with Daxo. Mustang breaks

sideways. Moira charges, lifting her pulseFist.

“Waste ’em,” Sevro says with a snarl.

The room erupts. Air torn to shreds by superheated particles as the Howlers open fire at point-blank range into the crowded room. Marble turns to dust. Chairs melt into gnarled chunks of metal

and kick across the floor. Meat and bone explode, filling the air with red mist, as Silvers and Coppers are caught in the crossfire. Sevro misses Cassius, who dives behind a pillar. Kavax is shot a dozen times, but he doesn’t falter even as his shields overheat. He’s going to smash into Sevro and Victra with his razor when Ragnar charges from the side and hits the smaller man so hard with his shoulder that Kavax is lifted clean off his feet. Daxo attacks Ragnar from behind, and three giants tumble to the side of the room, crushing two scrabbling Coppers half their size as they go. The Coppers scream on the ground, legs shattered.

Behind Kavax, Mustang takes two shots to the chest, but her pulseShield holds. She stumbles, fires back at us, hitting Pebble in her thigh. Pebble’s lifted backward and flipped into the wall, leg shattered from the blast. She screams and clutches at it. Clown and Victra cover her, firing back at Mustang, dragging Pebble behind a pillar. Screwface and four other Howlers who guarded the door and kept

Matteo outside now fire into the room from the hallway.

I stumble sideways, lost in the chaos, as the marble where I stood shatters. Silvers scramble under the table. Others kick away from their chairs, racing for the imagined safety of the columns on the fringes of the room. Hypersonic pulsefire rips between them, over their heads, through them.

Buckling the columns. Quicksilver runs behind two Coppers, using them as human shields when shrapnel rips into them, and they all tumble down in a mess of limbs and blood.

Moira, the Fury, rushes Sevro to impale my friend from behind with her razor as he tries to move

past Ragnar, who’s fighting both Telemanuses, to get at Cassius. I fire my pulseFist point-blank into her side just before she reaches him. Her armor ’s pulseShield absorbs the first few rounds, rippling blue in a cocoon around her. She stumbles sideways, and if I did not continue to fire, she’d have

nothing but a bruise in the morning. But my middle finger is heavy on the trigger of the weapon.

She’s an engineer of oppression, and one of the best minds of Gold. And she tried to kill Sevro. Bad play.

I fire till her shield buckles inward, till she falls to a knee, till she twitches and screams as the molecules of her skin and organs superheat. Boiling blood comes out her eyes and nose. Armor and

flesh fuse together, and I feel the rage ride wild inside me, numbing me to fear, to sense, to compassion. This is the Reaper who laid Cassius low. Who slew Karnus. Who Gold cannot kill.

Moira’s pulseFist fires wildly as the tendons of her fingers contract in the heat. Shooting into the ceiling on full automatic. Twitching sideways, whipping a stream of death across the room. Two Silvers running for cover explode. The glass of the viewport at the far end of the room, which looks out onto the space city, cracks perilously. Howlers scramble for cover till the pulseFist glows molten on Moira’s left hand and the barrel overheats to melt inward with a corrupt fizzle. With that last gasp of rage, the wisest of the Sovereign’s three Furies lies in a charred husk.

My only wish is that it could have been Aja.

I turn back to the room, feeling the cool hand of wrath guiding me, hungering for more blood. But

all those that are left are my friends. Or once were. I shudder with hollowness as the rage leaves me as fast as it came. Replaced by panic as I watch my friends try to kill one another. The ordered lines have broken down into a hi-tech brawl. Feet sliding on glass. Shoulder blades slamming into walls.

PulseFist battles between pillars. Hands and knees scrambling against the floor as pulseFists wail and blades clamor and hack.

And it’s only now, only with this terrifying clarity, that I realize that there is only one common thread that binds them. It’s not an idea. Not my wife’s dream. Not trust or alliances or Color.

It’s me.

And without me, this is what they will do. Without me, this is what Sevro has been doing. What an

inevitable waste it seems. Death begets death begets death.

I have to stop it.

At the center of the room, Cassius stumbles after Victra through twisted chairs and shattered glass.

Blood slicks the floor beneath them. Her damaged ghostCloak sparks on and off and she flashes between ghost and shadow like an undecided demon. Cassius cuts her again across the thigh and spins as Clown shoots at him, cutting Clown across the side of his head before bending back to dodge a shot from Pebble on the ground across the room. Victra rolls under the table to escape Cassius, slicing at his ankles. He jumps onto the table, firing his pulseFist into the onyx till it caves in the center, trapping her beneath. He’s inches from killing her when Sevro shoots him from behind, the blast absorbed by Cassius’s shield, but one that knocks him several meters to the side.

To the right, Ragnar, Daxo, and Kavax fight a duel of titans. Ragnar pins Kavax’s arm to the wall

with his razor, leaves the weapon, ducks, fires his pulseFist into Daxo at point-blank range. Daxo’s shields absorb the blast, and his razor misses Rangar and takes out a chunk of the wall instead. Ragnar hits Daxo in his joints and is about to snap his neck when Kavax skewers him through the shoulder

with a razor, screaming his family name. I rush to help my Stained friend, but as I do I feel someone to my left.

I turn just in time to see Mustang flying through the air at me, her helmet covering her face, her razor arching down to cut me in two. I bring my own razor up just in time. Blades slam together.

Vibrations rattle down my arm. I’m slower than I remember, much of my muscle instinct lost to the

darkness despite Mickey’s lab and my training bouts with Victra. Plus Mustang’s gotten faster.

I’m pressed back. I try to flow around Mustang, but she moves her razor like she’s been at war for

the last year. I try to slip to the side, like Lorn taught me, but there’s no escape. She’s smart, using the rubble, the pillars, to corner me. I’m being hemmed in, corralled by the flashing metal. My defense doesn’t cave, but it erodes along the edges as I protect my core.

The blade parts an inch-deep gash through my left shoulder. Stings like a pitviper bite. I curse and she slices through more flesh. I’d shout at her to stop. Shout my name, something, if I had even half a second to breathe, but it’s all I can do to keep my arms moving. I bend back just in time as she cuts a shallow gash through the neck of my scarabSkin. Three quick cuts at the tendons of my right arm follow, just missing. Building a rhythm. My back’s touching the wall. Cut. Cut. Stab. Fire opening up my skin. I’m going to die here. I call for help over my com, but they’re still jammed by Sevro.

We’ve bitten off more than we can chew.

I scream in futility as Mustang’s blade scrapes through three of my ribs. She spins the blade in her hand. Swings backhanded to cut my head off. I manage to deflect the razor into the wall with mine, pinning it above my head so her helmet is near my mask. I head-butt her. But her helmet’s stronger than the composite duroplastic of my mask. She reels back her own head and slams it into mine, using my own tactic. A seam of pain splinters down my skull. I nearly black out. Vision rushing out, in. Still standing. Feel part of my mask crack off and slide off my face. Nose broken again. Seeing spots. The rest of the mask crumbles and I stare at the death-eyed horse helmet of Mustang as she prepares to end me.

Her razor arm draws back to deliver the killing stroke. And it stays there above her head.

Trembling as she looks at my exposed face. Her helmet slithers away to reveal her own. Sweat-soaked hair clings to her forehead, darkening the golden luster. Beneath, her eyes are wild, and I wish I could say it’s love or joy I see in them, but it’s not. If anything, it’s fear, maybe horror that draws the blood from her face as she stumbles back, gesturing speechlessly with her off-hand.

“Darrow…?”

She looks over her shoulder to see the mayhem that still grips the room, our quiet moment a little bubble in the storm. Cassius flees, disappearing through a side door, leaving the corpse of the Death Knight and Moira behind. Our eyes meet before he disappears. Victra gives chase until Sevro reels her back in. The rest of the Howlers are turning toward Mustang. I take a step toward her, and stop when the tip of her razor pricks my collarbone.

“I saw you die.”

She backs away toward the main door, boots sliding over the marble, crunching on bits of glass from the walls. “Kavax, Daxo!” she calls, a vein in her neck bulging from strain. “Pull back!”

The Telemanuses scramble to separate themselves from Ragnar, confused at who the masked man

they are fighting is and why they’re bleeding in so many places. They try to regroup on Mustang, both men rushing for her in a hasty retreat, but as they pass me to join her near the door, I know I can’t just watch her go. So I whip my razor around Kavax’s neck. He gags and reels against me, but I hold on. With the press of a button, I could retract my whip and sever his head. But I’ve no interest in killing the man. He falls only when Ragnar sweeps his leg and puts a knee into his chest. Slamming to the floor. Screwface and the others are on him, pinning him down.

“Don’t kill him,” I shout. Screwface knew Pax. He’s met the Telemanuses, so he holds his blade and snaps at the newer Howlers to do the same. Daxo tries to rush to his father ’s aid, but Ragnar and I bar his way. His bright eyes stare in confusion at my face.

“Go, Virginia!” Kavax roars from the ground. “Flee!”

“I have the Pax. Orion is alive,” Mustang says, eying the bloody Howlers who are at my back, coming for her and Daxo. “Don’t kill him. Please.” And then, with a sorrowful look to Kavax, she

flees the room.

“What did she mean, Orion’s alive?” I ask Kavax. He’s as shell-shocked as I am, nervously eying the black-clad Howlers prowling through the room. We didn’t lose one, but we’re in shit shape. “Kavax!”

“What she said,” he rumbles. “Exactly what she said. The Pax is safe.”

“Darrow!” Sevro shouts as he reenters the room with Victra. They pursued Cassius through the blackened door on the far side of the room but return empty-handed and limping. “On me!” There’s

more I want to ask Kavax, but Victra’s wounded. I rush to her as she leans against the shattered onyx table, hunched over a deep gash in her biceps. Her mask’s off, face twisted and sweating as she injects herself with painkillers and blood coagulant to stem the flow from the wound. I see the hint of bone through the blood.

“Victra…”

“Shit,” she says with a dark laugh. “Your boyfriend is faster than he used to be. Almost got him in the hall, but I think Aja taught him a little of your Willow Way.”

“Looked like,” I say. “You prime?”

“Don’t worry about me, darling.” She gives me a wink as Sevro calls my name again. He and Clown are bent over Moira’s smoking remains. The terrorist lord is unfazed by the carnage around

us.

“One of the Furies,” Clown says. “Roasted.”

“Good cooking, Reap,” Sevro drawls. “Crispy on the edges, bloody down the middle. Just how I like. Aja’s gonna be pissed—”

“You cut my coms,” I interrupt angrily.

“You were acting a bitch. Confusing my men.”

“Acting a bitch? The hell is wrong with you? I was using my head instead of just shooting everything. We could have done without murdering half the damn room.”

His eyes are darker and crueler than those of the friend I remember. “This is war, boyo. Murder ’s the name of the game. Don’t be sad we’re good at it.”

“That was Mustang!” I say, stepping close to him. “What if we killed her?” He shrugs. I poke his

chest. “Did you know she would be here? Tell me the truth.”

“Naw,” he says slowly. “Didn’t know. Now back up, boyo.” He looks up at me impudently, like he

wouldn’t mind taking a swing. I don’t back up.

“What was she doing here?”

“How the hell would I know?” He looks past me to Ragnar, who is pushing Kavax back toward the

Howlers gathering in the center of the room. “Everyone prepare to squab out. We’re gonna have to cut through an army to get out of this shit den. Evac point is ten floors up on the black side.”

“Where’s our prize?” Victra asks, eying the carnage. Bodies litter the ground. Silvers shivering in pain. Coppers crawling across the floor, dragging broken legs.

“Probably fried,” I say.

“Prolly,” Clown agrees, casting me a commiserating look as we move from Sevro to pick through

the bodies. “It’s a slaggin’ mess.”

“Did you know Mustang would be here?” I ask.

“Not at all. Seriously, boss.” He glances back at Sevro. “What’d you mean he jammed your coms?”

“Stop jawin’ and find the bloodydamn Silver,” Sevro barks from the center of the room.

“Somebody grab the Pink from the hall.”

Clown finds Quicksilver at the opposite end of the room, farthest from the hallway door, to the right of the grand viewport that looks down onto Phobos. He’s lying motionless, pinned under a pillar that broke from its place in the floor to fall sideways against the wall. The blood of others covers his turquoise tunic. Bits of glass jut from wounded knuckles. I feel his pulse. He’s alive. So the mission wasn’t a damn waste. But there’s a contusion on his forehead from shrapnel. I call Ragnar and Victra, the two strongest of our party, to help pry the pillar off the man.

Ragnar wedges the razor he threw into the Death Knight’s head under the pillar, using a rock as a

fulcrum, and is about to heave upward with me when Victra calls for us to wait. “Look,” she says.

Where the pillar ’s top meets the wall, there’s a faint blue glow along a seam that runs from the floor up the wall to form a rectangle in the wall. It’s a hidden door. Quicksilver must have been rushing toward it when the pillar fell. Victra puts her ear against the door, and her eyes narrow.

“PulseTorches,” she says. “Oh, ho.” She laughs. “Silver ’s bodyguards are through there. Must have hid them in case things got tense. They’re speaking Nagal. ” The language of the Obsidians. And they’re cutting their way through the wall. We’d be dead if the pillar hadn’t fallen and blocked the door.

Pure luck saved our hides. All three of us know it, and it deepens the anger I have with Sevro and calms a bit of the wildness in Victra’s eyes. Suddenly she’s seeing how reckless this was. We never should have rushed into this place without its blueprints. Sevro did what I would have done a year ago.

Same result. The three of us share a common thought, glancing at the main door of the room. We don’t have long.

Ragnar and Victra help me pry Quicksilver free. The unconscious man’s legs drag behind him, broken, as Victra carries him back to the center of the room. There, Sevro is readying Clown and Pebble to push out from the room with our prisoners, Matteo and Kavax, who stares at me openmouthed. But Pebble can’t even stand. We’re all in shit shape.

“We’ve too many prisoners,” I say. “We won’t be able to move fast. And we don’t have any EMPs

this time.” Not that they’d do anyone any good on a space station when all that separates us from space is inch-thin bulkheads and air recyclers.

“Then we trim the fat,” Sevro says, stalking toward Kavax, who sits wounded and bound with his

hands behind his back. He points his pulseFist into Kavax’s face. “Nothin’ personal, big man.”

Sevro pulls the trigger. I shove him sideways. The pulse blast misses Kavax’s head and slams into

the ground near the slumped form of Matteo, nearly taking off the man’s leg. Sevro wheels on me,

pulseFist pointing at my head.

“Get that out of my face,” I say down the barrel. Heat radiating into my eyes, causing them to sting so I have to look away.

“Who do you think that is,” Sevro snarls. “Your friend? He’s not your friend.”

“We need him alive. He’s a chip to barter. And Orion might be alive.”

“Chip to barter?” Sevro snorts. “What about Moira? Had no problem frying her, but you spare him.” Sevro squints at me, lowering his weapon. His lips curl back from his janky teeth. “Oh, it’s for Mustang. Of course it is.”

“He’s Pax’s father,” I say.

“And Pax is dead. Why? ’Cause you let enemies live. This isn’t the Institute, boyo. This is war.” He jams a finger in my face. “And war is really bloodydamn simple. Kill the enemy when you can, however you can, as fast as you can. Or they kill you and yours.”

Sevro turns from me, realizing now that the others are watching us with growing trepidation.

“You’re wrong about this,” I say.

“We can’t drag them with us.”

“Halls are swarming, boss,” Screwface says, returning from the main hall. “More than a hundred

security personnel. We’re slagged.”

“We can cut through them if we go light,” Sevro says.

“A hundred?” Clown says. “Boss…”

“Check your juice packs,” Sevro says, squinting at his pulseFist.

No. I’ll not let Sevro’s shortsightedness ruin us.

“Slag that,” I say. “Pebble, hail Holiday. Tell her evac is squabbed. Give her our coordinates. She’s to park one kilometer beyond the glass, ass end our way.” Pebble doesn’t reach for her datapad. She glances at Sevro, torn between us, not knowing who to follow. “I’m back,” I say. “Now do it.”

“Do it, Pebble,” Ragnar says.

Victra gives a small nod. Pebble grimaces at Sevro, “Sorry, Sevro.” She nods to me and opens up

her com to hail Holiday. The rest of the Howlers look to me, and it hurts knowing I’ve made them choose like this.

“Clown, grab Moira’s datapad if it isn’t fried and get the data from the console if you can. I want to know what contract they were negotiating,” I say quickly, “Screwface, take Sleepy and cover the hall.

Ragnar, Kavax is yours. He tries to flee, cut his feet off. Victra, you got any rappelling line left?” She checks her belt and nods. “Start tying us together. Everyone in the center of the room. Has to be tight.”

I turn to Sevro. “Lay charges at the door. Company’s coming.”

He says nothing. It’s not anger behind his eyes. It’s the secret seeds of self-doubt and fear coming to blossom, hate seeping into his eyes. I know the look. I’ve felt it on my own face too many times to count. I’m ripping away the only thing he’s ever cared about. His Howlers. After all he’s done, I make them choose me over him, when he doesn’t trust I’m ready. It’s an indictment of his leadership, a validation of the intense self-doubt I know he must feel in the wake of his father ’s passing.

It shouldn’t have been that way. I said I’d follow and I didn’t. That’s on me. But this isn’t the time for coddling. I tried words with him, tried using our friendship to make him see reason, but since I’ve been back I’ve seen him respond to things only with violence and force. So now I’ll speak his bloodydamn language. I step forward. “Unless you want to die here, sack up and get moving.”

His wrinkled little face hardens as he watches his Howlers run to do my bidding. “You get them killed, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Makes two of us. Now go.”

He turns away, running toward the door to plant the remaining explosives from his belt. I remain

looking around the broken room, finally seeing organization in the chaos as my friends work

together. They’ll all have deduced my plan by now. They know how manic it is. But the confidence with which they work breathes life into me. They put the trust in me that Sevro wouldn’t. Still, I catch Ragnar glancing at the viewport three times now. All our suits are compromised. Not one of us will be able to stay pressurized in vacuum. I don’t even have a mask. Whether we live or die is up to Holiday. I wish there was some way I could control the variables, but if the time in darkness taught me anything, it’s that the world is larger than my grasp. Have to trust others. “Jammers on, everyone,” I say, toggling my own on my belt. Don’t want the cameras outside spotting anyone’s exposed faces.

“Holiday is in position,” Pebble says. I glance out the window to see the transport hovering a click beyond the window. Hardly larger than a pen tip at this distance.

“On my mark, we are going to fire at the center of the viewport,” I tell my friends, making an effort to keep the fear from my voice. “Screwface! Sleepy! Get back here. Put your masks on the unconscious prisoners.”

“Oh, goryhell,” Victra mutters. “I was hoping you had a better plan than that.”

“If you try to hold your breath, your lungs will explode. So exhale soon as the viewport shatters.

Let yourself pass out. Have sweet dreams, and pray for Holiday to be as quick on the stick as Clown is in the bedroom.”

They laugh and cluster tight, letting Victra wind her rappelling line through our munitions belts so we’re together like grapes on a vine. Sevro’s finishing laying explosives at the door, Sleepy and Screwface join us, waving at him to hurry.

“Attention,” a voice booms from hidden speakers in the walls as Victra leans close to me to link me with Ragnar. “This is Alec ti Yamato. Head of Security for Sun Industries. You are surrounded.

Discard your weapons. Release your hostages. Or we will be forced to fire on you. You have five seconds to comply.”

There’s no one in the room but us. The main doors are closed. Sevro runs back to us from laying

the charges. “Sevro, fastlike!” I shout. He’s not halfway to us when he crumples to the ground like an empty can crushed by a boot. I’m slammed down to the floor by the same force. Knees buckling.

Bones, lungs, throat all stomped down by massive gravity. My vision swims. Blood moving sluggishly to my head. I try to lift my arm. It weighs more than three hundred pounds. Security has increased the artificial gravity in the room, and only Ragnar ’s not on his belly. He’s fallen to a knee, shoulders hunched and straining, like Atlas holding up the world.

“The hell is that…” Victra manages, on the floor looking past me to the door. It’s opened, and through it comes not a Gray or an Obsidian or Gold. But a giant black egg the size of a small man, rolling sideways. It’s smooth and glossy, and small white numbers mark its side. A robot. As illegal as EMPs. Augustus’s great fear. Like reaching out of an oil spill, the metal morphs at the point of the egg to reveal a small canon, which aims at Sevro. I try to rise. Try to aim my pulseFist. But the gravity is too much. I can’t even lift my arm to point the weapon. For all her strength, Victra can’t either.

Sevro’s grunting on the floor, crawling away from the machine.

“The viewport!” I manage. “Ragnar. Fire at the viewport.”

His pulseFist is at his side. Straining, he begins to lift it against the massive gravity. Arm shaking.

Throat gargling that eerie war chant that sounds like a distant avalanche. The sound rises, an otherworldy bellow till his whole body convulses with effort and his arm draws level and the smallest of stars is born in his palm as the pulseFist gathers its trembling molten charge.

The entirety of my friend shudders and his fingers release the trigger. His arm wrenches back. The pulsefire leaps forward to scream into the center of the glass pane. The many stars ripple as the pane bends outward and cracks shoot down the window.

“Kadir njar laga…” Ragnar bellows.

And the glass shatters. Space drinks the air of the room. Everything slides. A Copper flips past us, screaming. She goes silent when she hits vacuum. Others who cowered during our brawl cling to the

broken table in the center of the room. They wrap themselves around pillars. Fingers bleeding, nails cracking. Legs flailing. Grips giving out. Corpses flip end over end out into space as the abyss hungers for everything the building has. Sevro’s ripped into the air away from the robot, lighter than our combined group. I reach for him and grab his short Mohawk till Victra wraps her legs around him and pulls him to her body.

I’m terrified as we slide toward the broken viewport. Hands shaking. Doubting my decision as I now stare it in the face. Sevro was right. We should have pushed into the building. Killed Kavax or used him as a shield. Anything but the cold. Anything but the Jackal’s darkness from which I only just escaped.

It’s just fear, I tell myself. It’s just fear making me panic. And it’s spread through my friends. I see the horror on their faces. How they look back at me and see that fear reflected in my own. I cannot be afraid. I’ve spent too long being afraid. Too long being diminished by loss. Too long being everything except what I need to be. And whether I am the Reaper, or whether it’s just another mask, it’s one I must wear, not just for them, but for myself.

“Omnis vir lupus!” I shout, kicking my head back to howl, exhaling all the air in my lungs. Beside me, Ragnar ’s eyes widen in wild ecstasy. He opens his massive mouth and bellows out a howl to make his ancestors hear him from their icy crypts. Then Pebble joins, and Clown, and even regal Victra. It’s rage and fear leaving our bodies. Though space drags us across the floor to its embrace. Though death might come for us. I am home in this weird screaming mass of humanity. And as we pretend to

be brave, we become so.

All except Sevro, who remains silent as we fly into space.

We rip through the broken viewport into vacuum at eighty kilometers an hour. Silence swallows our

howling. A shock hits my body, like I’ve fallen into cold water. My body twitches. The oxygen expands in my blood, forcing my mouth to hiccup for air that isn’t there. Lungs don’t inflate. They’re collapsed fibrous sacks . My body jerks, desperate for oxygen. But as the seconds tick by and I see the inhuman metal of Phobos’s skyscrapers, and watch my friends linked together in the darkness, held

together by hands and bits of wire, a stillness settles over me. The same stillness that came in the snows with Mustang, that came when the Howlers and I hunkered tight in the gulches of the Institute to roast goat meat and listen to Quinn tell her stories. I sink slowly into another memory. Not of Lykos, or Eo or Mustang. But of the cold Academy hangar bay where Victra, Tactus, Roque, and I first learned from a pale Blue professor what space does to a man’s body.

“Ebulism, or the formation of bubbles in body fluids due to reduced ambient pressure, is the most severe component of vacuum exposure. Water in the tissues of your body will vaporize, causing gross swelling….”

“My darling airhead, I’m well accustomed to gross swelling. Just ask your mother. And your father.

And your sister.” I hear Tactus say in the memory. And I remember Roque’s laugh. How his cheeks blushed at the crudeness of the joke, which makes me wonder why he stood so close to Tactus. Why

he cared so much about our bawdy friend’s drug use and then wept by Tactus’s bedside when he lay

dead. The teacher continues….

“…and multiplicative increase in body volume in ten seconds, followed by circulatory failure…”

I feel sleepy even as pressure builds in my eyes, warping my vision and distending the tissue there.

Pressure builds in my freezing fingers and aching, popped eardrums. My tongue is huge and cold, like an ice serpent slithering through my mouth into my belly as liquid evaporates. Skin stretches, inflating. My fingers are plantains. Gas in my stomach ballooning my gut. Darkness coming to claim me. I glimpse Sevro beside me. His face is freakish, swollen to twice its normal size. Legs still wrapped around him, Victra looks a monster. She’s awake and staring at him with cartoonish, bloodshot eyes, hiccupping for oxygen like a fish out of water. Their hands tighten around each other ’s.

“Water and dissolved gas in the blood forms bubbles in your major veins, which travel throughout the circulatory system, obstructing blood flow and delivering unconsciousness in fifteen seconds….”

My body fades. Seconds becoming an eternal twilight, everything slowed, everything so pointless

and poignant as I see how ridiculous our human strength is in the end. Take us from our bubbles of life, and what are we? The metal towers around us look carved of ice. The lights and flashing HC

screens like the scales of dragons frozen inside them.

Mars is over our heads, consuming and omnipotent. But in Phobos’s fast rotation, we’re already nearing a place on the planet where dawn comes and light carves a crescent into the darkness. Molten wounds still glow where the two nuclear bombs detonated. And I wonder, in my last moments, if the

planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and

die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality.

—

I’m blind.

I wake on metal. Feel plastic against my face. Gasping around me. Bodies moving. The coldness of

a shuttle engine rumbling under the deck. My body seizes and shivers. I suck down the oxygen. It feels like my head has caved in. The pain is everywhere and fading with each pulse of my heart. My fingers are their normal size. I rub them together, trying to orient myself. I’m shivering, but there’s a thermal blanket on me, unsentimental hands rubbing me to promote circulation. To my left, I hear Pebble calling for Clown. We’ll all be blind for several minutes as our optic nerves recalibrate. He answers her groggily and she nearly breaks down crying.

“Victra!” Sevro’s slurring. “Wake up. Wake up.” Gear rattles as he shakes her. “Wake up!” He slaps her face. She wakes with a gasp.

“…the hell. Did you just hit me?”

“I thought…”

She slaps him back.

“Who is that?” I ask the hands that rub my shoulders through the blanket.

“Holiday, sir. We scooped you popsicles up four minutes ago.”

“How long…How long were we out there?”

“ ’Bout two minutes, thirty seconds. It was a shitshow. We had to empty the cargo bay and have the pilot fly backward into you, then pressurize it on the fly. These carrots can’t soldier, but they can damn well steer garbage ships. Still, if you hadn’t been linked, most of you would be dead as lead.

There’s rubble and corpses floating around the sector now. HC crews crawling everywhere.”

“Ragnar?” I ask fearfully, not having heard him yet.

“I am here, my friend. The Abyss will not claim us yet.” He begins to laugh. “Not just yet.”

We’re in trouble, and Sevro knows it. Seizing command back from me as soon as we land in the