Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  “That doesn’t explain—” started Paris.

  “Doesn’t it?” challenged Kate. “Maybe he wanted his death to mean something.”

  “You have no right to talk,” said Marcon.

  “If you hadn’t gone,” added Shia, “Henry wouldn’t—”

  “If I hadn’t gone,” said Kate, “Henry Flynn would have found another excuse to get himself killed.”

  The air grew brittle, and August felt Ilsa and Soro stiffen.

  “We don’t know that he’s dead,” said Emily tightly.

  “What do we tell the task force?” asked Marcon.

  “We can’t tell them,” argued Shia.

  “You have to,” said Kate and Bennett at the same time.

  Emily straightened. “Henry would want them to know.”

  Ilsa tapped on the doorframe. August and Soro glanced toward her—no one else seemed to hear. He watched as his sister produced a tablet, fingers dancing on the screen.

  “The last thing we need,” said Marcon, “is an uprising.”

  “Actually,” said Paris. “I think that’s exactly what we need.”

  Ilsa’s fingers gave a flourish and every screen in the room burst to life, showing feeds, not of the city outside, but of the Compound itself, the training-hall-turned-barracks, the lobby, the canteen—room after room filled with people, all of them talking. Sound spilled into the room, a cacophony of voices as cadets and captains, soldiers and night squads, spoke up and over and around one another.

  “They’ve got Commander Flynn.”

  “We can’t just sit here.”

  “We should be out there.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Well,” said Kate, “it looks like they already know.”

  August remembered Henry’s last words. “He’s a man, not a movement,” he said echoing his father. “But if a movement is what it takes to end this war . . .”

  Emily met his gaze across the table. “If Henry is alive,” she said slowly, “then we will fight to get him back.”

  Marcon crossed his arms. “And what if he’s not?”

  Sloan pried the shards of metal from his skin with a pair of tweezers, dropping the slivers into the dish one by one, each coated in viscous black blood.

  His suit was ruined, his shirt cast aside, his bare chest a mess of torn flesh. The shards were silver, and his skin sizzled as he dug them out, but the sensation was shallow and fleeting, and it was not so very different from pleasure. He told himself to relish it, though his hand trembled as he worked.

  The two engineers lay slumped against the table, their throats torn open.

  He hadn’t had time to savor the kills, but the meal had helped with the wound, helped rinse away the rancid taste of Kate’s blood in his mouth.

  Across the room, Flynn’s head lolled forward, a thin ribbon of blood tracing a line from the man’s temple to his chin before dripping to the floor. Sloan had always imagined Henry Flynn as the flip side of a coin, Callum Harker’s equal but opposite force.

  He was wrong.

  Up close, Flynn was nothing but a too-thin human with graying temples and sallow skin. He smelled—sickly. So disappointing. Still, Sloan couldn’t help but marvel at the fortune of it, having the head of the FTF dropped in his lap. He’d lost Katherine and gained an idol—even it was a false one.

  Sloan straightened, wiping the last of the blood from his shoulder.

  “Why isn’t he dead?” asked Alice, storming in. “And what happened to you?” Her gaze flicked to the engineers. “You didn’t save me any.”

  Sloan slid on a fresh black shirt. “You’re supposed to be watching our pet.”

  “Where is Kate?” she demanded. “You promised—”

  “Katherine will return to us,” said Sloan. “And when she does,” he added, “you can have her.” Alice beamed at that.

  “Did you evacuate the Malchai?” asked Sloan.

  “Most of them,” she said, hopping onto the counter. She looked down at the bowl of shrapnel and crinkled her nose. “There’s a few in the lobby, but they were sound asleep. I didn’t want to wake them.” Her attention flicked to Flynn. “Speaking of . . .”

  Sloan turned in time to see Flynn’s eyelids flutter open. He tried to move, but Sloan had bound him to the chair with wire, and he watched as Flynn struggled, winced, and then went still, realizing where he was.

  “I have to admit,” said Sloan, buttoning his shirt, “I expected more.”

  Flynn coughed, a deep rattle in his chest. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “You didn’t put up much of a fight,” he mused. “One might almost think you wanted to end up in this position. Hoping to rally the troops?” The man looked up at that, and Sloan saw that he was right. “That was quite a gamble, Mr. Flynn.”

  “Unlike you,” he said, a hitch in his voice, “I care about more—than my own life. The task force—will finally—bring the fight here—to me—to you.”

  Sloan reached out and spun Flynn’s chair toward the windows. They were still two hours from dawn, and the night was at its thickest. He pointed toward the beacon of light that was the FTF Compound and lowered his head to whisper in the man’s ear. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I’m counting on.”

  Flynn tensed.

  Alice, now cross-legged on the counter, only chuckled. “Time to lay out the cards, and see who has the better hand.”

  Flynn shook his head. “Kate knew you’d see it as a game.”

  Alice’s eyes brightened at the mention of her maker, but Sloan held up a hand.

  “Do you believe in fate? Callum did not. Neither do I. And yet, here you are.”

  Alice began toying with a circle of metal. It was a collar, the kind worn by the Fangs. Sloan plucked it from her hands.

  “Make yourself useful,” he told her, flicking his fingers toward a camera on a stand. Alice sighed and hopped off the counter. Sloan returned to Flynn’s side and fastened the collar around the man’s throat, relishing the visible shiver that ran through Flynn at the metal’s touch. Sloan swung the chair back around and considered his work. Something was missing. He took up a roll of tape.

  “When I first met Leo, he asked me if I believed in God.” The tape made a ripping sound as he pulled a length free. “I think he expected me to say no, but if we are not proof of a higher power, what is?” He tore the strip with his teeth. “I like to think that we are simply what you humans have sowed and reaped. You have earned us. Leo and I saw eye to eye on that.”

  Flynn’s gaze hardened. “He drove a metal bar into your back.”

  Sloan flicked his hand dismissively. “I would have done the same to him. Monstrous acts, I can respect. Besides, he did miss.”

  Flynn looked at him with fire in his eyes. So there was still a spark left.

  “If you’re going to kill me—”

  “Oh, I don’t plan on doing that, much as I would enjoy it.” Sloan leaned in. “Dead, you are a martyr.”

  He pressed the tape over Flynn’s mouth.

  “Alive, you’re simply bait.”

  They were all idiots, thought Kate.

  Henry Flynn had handed the FTF a cause, a reason to fight. And the Council couldn’t get out of their own damn way.

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s alive,” she said, a remark that earned her August’s wide eyes and Soro’s cold glare and a whole lot of judgment from the rest of the room. She pressed on. “You’ve always been divided into North and South, us and them. You keep talking about safety, about defense; but these people, your soldiers, they want to fight, and now they have something—someone—to fight for. So for God’s sake, don’t waste it.”

  Just then the screens throughout the room crackled and went dark. Everyone looked to Ilsa, but Ilsa was staring at her own tablet in a way that made it clear this wasn’t her doing.

  The signal came back up, but instead of broadcasting from the various Compound rooms, every single screen showed the same image.

  H
enry Flynn.

  Bloody, half-conscious, but alive.

  There was no sound on the feed, and even if there had been, his mouth was taped shut, some kind of steel contraption around his neck. It took her a second to process the wires, the small timer ticking down.

  59:57

  59:56

  59:55

  59:54

  And just like that, the room burst into motion. Chairs pushed back and people rose. The signal was being broadcast across the entire feed, to every screen and every tablet, not just in the command center but across the whole Compound.

  It was a gift. A point of no return. The FTFs, already gunning for their fight, had just been given their target—the tower—and even if the Council members wanted to argue, they’d never be able to stop the soldiers now.

  59:42

  59:41

  59:40

  Ilsa spread her hands across the largest screen, fingers splayed over Henry Flynn’s gray face, while August and Emily and Soro spoke into their comms, relaying orders through the ranks.

  “. . . assemble squads One through Thirty-six . . .”

  “. . . authorizing arms clearance . . .”

  “. . . lockdown procedure . . .”

  Kate was still staring at the feed, not at Flynn, but at the room around him. She recognized the floor-to-ceiling windows at his back, the chair he was tied to, the steel and glass and wood, all those cold surfaces and sharp edges that marked her father’s taste.

  The penthouse.

  58:28

  58:27

  58:26

  “I know exactly where he is.”

  For six months, August had watched the FTF slowly break apart.

  Now, in a single breath, it came together.

  It was like a symphony, he thought. Every instrument in tune.

  Team after team of FTF cadets fell into rank across the Compound, tasked with guarding the structure and the ten thousand civilians now sheltering inside while the Night Squads prepared to take the tower. He spotted Colin among them, and the boy offered August a smile and a small salute as he passed, violin in hand.

  Kate walked at August’s side, her gaze steady, her face blank. He’d grown used to seeing her shifting expressions, her varying moods, and it was unnerving to remember how good she was at hiding them.

  Could he have convinced her to stay behind?

  No.

  This was her fight as much as his.

  Perhaps even more.

  He was almost to the doors when Ilsa caught his wrist and pulled him back.

  “What is it?” he asked, and she threw her arms around his neck, her grip so strong, it startled him.

  Don’t go, her arms seemed to say. Or maybe, simply, Come back.

  And he wondered if she’d known all along that this was where they were headed. If this was what she’d seen in the city she’d made on the kitchen counter, the one reduced to grains of sugar that tasted like ash.

  August pulled away, or Ilsa pushed him, he wasn’t sure, only knew that the weight of her arms was gone.

  The heart of the Night Squads had assembled on the light grid, more than three hundred soldiers armed and ready for war, and August swung the violin case onto his shoulder as they made their way to the jeep at the front of the convoy. Harris, Jackson, and Ani were already inside; Em was at the wheel.

  A bandage dotted with blood shone beneath Harris’s collar, but he was wide-eyed, and gunning for a fight. He made room, and August was halfway into the jeep when Soro strode over from another vehicle and held out a bag. Not to him, but to Kate.

  When she hesitated, clearly suspicious, Soro dropped the bag at her feet and walked back toward their own squad. It landed with a metallic clang, and Kate knelt and retrieved a pair of iron spikes.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she called after the Sunai before stepping up into the jeep.

  August laid the violin across his lap, and Kate sat beside him, turning a spike between her fingers, and as the jeep pulled out, he glanced back at the Compound and saw his sister standing at the front doors, one hand pressed against the glass, but he was too far away to read her face.

  Sloan approached the gold shroud.

  The shadow in the cage was growing restless. Its silence had changed from a hand to a fist, from a fist to a leaden weight, its displeasure like a cold snap in the basement.

  chaoschaoschaoschaos whispered the Corsai from their corners.

  The truck idled nearby. A Malchai opened the back and lowered a ramp, and Sloan watched as four more took up wooden poles and slipped them beneath the covered cage and lifted. The monster inside weighed nothing, but the cage was steel, and the Malchai struggled under its weight.

  “Mind the gold,” advised Sloan, adjusting his gloves.

  The sheet shifted, nearly brushing a Malchai’s skin, and he snarled, almost dropping his end, but Sloan was there to catch it. He would have torn out the monster’s throat, but they were on a schedule.

  At last, the cage was loaded onto the truck, and Sloan stepped up beside it, the closeness of the gold a pain he tried to savor. He could feel the shadow beneath the shroud, like an ache in his teeth, a thirst in his throat, and knew that it was hungry.

  “Soon, my pet.”

  39:08

  39:07

  39:06

  The convoy tore through the night, Emily Flynn’s voice carrying in the car and across the comms at the same time.

  “Every squad has been assigned a floor to clear. You will move systematically through the tower. Malchai are to be eliminated on sight. Fangs are to be incapacitated. As you’ve been informed, there is another kind of monster somewhere in the building, one with the ability to alter minds. If you encounter it, you are to close your eyes. If any members of your team are affected, you are to incapacitate them. . . .”

  They reached the Seam.

  The gates were open.

  They didn’t stop.

  Time ticked away inside Kate’s head as the jeep barreled toward the wall of darkness at the tower’s base. Her arm throbbed from the jagged wound Sloan’s teeth had made earlier that night, but she held on to the pain like a tether, the blood seeping through the bandage a reminder that she was still human.

  The jeeps hit the blackout zone and plunged in, their high beams scattering the creatures in the dark. August leaned over and spoke into her good ear.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Nothing. Something. Everything.

  She wasn’t sure.

  She had been, until she’d seen Henry Flynn on that feed, bound up like a prize, like a present. It was too simple. Too obvious. Too easy.

  Was it a taunt? Was it a trap? What was waiting for them in that tower? Sloan? Alice? The Chaos Eater? Were they all playing by Sloan’s rules? Did they have a choice?

  She was missing something—they were all missing something—and it was right there, just out of focus, a glance out of sight.

  “Kate?” pressed August.

  “What if we’re wrong?” she murmured softly, so that only he could hear. “What if this is a mistake?”

  August’s brow furrowed. “This is what Henry wanted,” he said. “What we needed. A reason to attack.”

  And he was right.

  Everything was going exactly to plan.

  And that was exactly why she didn’t trust it.

  The jeeps came to a stop at the base of the tower.

  August strained to hear as they cut the engines, but there were too many soldiers, too much static.

  They kept the lights up, blocking out the darkness, and the Corsai shifting hungrily within it. Claws scraped against the sides of the jeeps wherever the light failed to reach, a high-pitched whine of nails on metal.

  The Night Squads gathered at the base of the stairs. Most had guns, but Kate gripped an iron spike, August had his bow out like a sword, and Soro held their flute-knife in a fighter’s grip. They climbed the tower steps as if every one of the six stairs might be rigged, but nothing happened.
No wires tripped. No sudden blasts.

  August and Soro took the lead, stopping before the tower doors. The space beyond was dark and August spread his hands against the glass, listening for the tick of a bomb, the rattle and hiss of Corsai waiting to be unleashed—but all he heard were the racing hearts of the FTF at his back, and a soft, almost imperceptible breathing somewhere inside. He nodded at Soro, and together they threw open the tower doors.

  Light grenades rolled across the lobby floor, the bounce of metal on stone followed a second later by waves of glaring white as the FTF poured in, their weapons raised. A dozen Malchai sprang up, hissing in surprise before lunging at the nearest soldiers, their teeth bared.

  August turned and slashed a monster’s throat as Kate drove her spike through another’s chest, and Harris made a triumphant sound as he cut down a third. Soro dispatched two more, clearing a path, and they sprinted across the lobby to the bank of elevators on the other side. Emily got there first, calling the car as the rest reached the doors and spun back to face whatever was coming for them.

  But nothing came.

  The dozen Malchai were dead, and the other Night Squads were already peeling off, heading for the other floors.

  Too easy, thought August as the doors slid open behind them.

  “Too easy,” whispered Kate as they stepped inside. She punched the button for the penthouse with the familiarity of someone returning home. She seemed to realize it, too, her hand hovering in the air.

  “Don’t jinx us,” warned Ani as the elevator rose.

  “Yeah,” said Jackson. “We can fall to our death at any second.”

  They all went quiet then, the only sounds in the steel box their heartbeats and the almost-inaudible murmur of Emily marking time.

  August had never been afraid of dying, for all he thought about it. It bothered him, of course, the idea of being unmade, but his own death was a concept he couldn’t grasp, no matter how hard he tried.