Glitch releases my shirt and tucks her hair behind both of her ears. Her eye is still locked on me, the other festering beneath the closed lid, as if trying to burn its way out to see my shocked expression.
“I see peace when I see you, Frostbringer,” Sona says, grinning prettily.
I manage only a half step back before my spine meets the lip of the tabletop. I can still feel her touch on my collarbone, dancing across the gear.
“You—you sound…,” I stutter, grappling for the words. Insane. Sadistic. Violent. Demonic. I run a nervous hand through my hair. “Gods. You sound like a Gearbreaker.”
For an instant, silence soaks the air between us, and I swear that both of our faces flush pink at the same time. I shouldn’t have said it, but I can’t take it back.
The look in her eyes—it’s the same expression across my crew’s features when a mecha crashes to its knees. A look of battle fervor, when you stand over your fallen enemy and feel how vividly your heartbeat pulsates in each vein, realizing how close you were to death but somehow, in the face of it all, you’re still here, and you won.
“Do you remember the plan?” Glitch murmurs swiftly, scattering my thoughts. One of her hands is deep in her jacket pocket, and through the fabric her fingertips twitch.
I nod. “Yeah. I have until the end of this hallway to take out the guards. Once I drag them back here, I go into the vent, crawl until there’s a split, and I take a … a…”
“A left,” Glitch reminds me.
“Right. I mean, yes, I take a left,” I say. “Straight until I get to the service shaft. Down the ladder, then crawl into the second opening I come to. Go until I get to the second split in the path, and that should lead to your training room.”
“Third split, Frostbringer.”
I shake my head. “Right. Third.”
I consider for a moment, and then unhook my overall straps, taking the bottom of my shirt between my fingers and tearing away a strip.
“First left,” I murmur, holding the fabric above my left wrist. “Third split.”
I knot the cloth three times, then move to tie it. It’s hard to do with one hand, and I fumble until Glitch’s fingers suddenly take my wrist, nimbly securing the knot. Without thinking, I grab her sleeve before she can step back.
“Is it too tight?” she asks, and my throat constricts at her concerned expression. I release her jacket, shaking my head again.
“This … this is going to work, right?” I ask, hating the smallness of my voice, the clear urgent need for her agreement.
It doesn’t come. “No. We are probably both going to die.”
I laugh drily. “Good pep talk, Bot.”
“Would you prefer I sugarcoat it?” she asks softly. “Listen, Gearbreaker—Frostbringer, whichever you prefer—I am not going to lie about the risks. I will not list them in their excessive quantity, or outline their particular cruelties, because you and I both know them intimately. But do you care about the consequences as much as you care about escaping? As much as you care about dying as your own person? If we do die, it will be with our weapons out, using our last breaths to spit on Godolia’s name and taking as many of their pathetic sycophants down with us as we can. Our final words will be of fury and hatred and the defiance they believe to be extinct. So I ask you again, Frostbringer, would you prefer I sugarcoat it? Or would you like better to be reminded that no matter the outcome, we will not die as theirs?”
Oh Gods, that look she’s giving me. I hide the sudden rise of my heartbeat by pulling my overall straps back onto my shoulders, taking a moment to thumb the bracelet Sona set around my wrist.
“I have a gift for you,” she says, and removes something from her belt, laying it on the table. It’s a knife with an ornate handle—the same type the Pilots used to carve my arms. For a moment, a flash of an image—Sona at a dining table, crowded by Valkyries. They’re all cutting up their food with the same utensils, passing around the salt—
Then both of her eyes lift to me, one crimson, the other that dark, rich hazel. Both large, shaped like half-moons, and an oil-black lash shoved in every available space. The image sputters out of my head.
“What?” I snap, expecting another twisted pep talk. “What is it?”
“Just … you can trust me in full, if you would like,” she murmurs. “Trust my fear like I trust yours, if it is easier.”
“Easier for what?”
“Getting out. It does not have to be enemies on all sides.” Another pause, and she shakes her head. “And after that…”
“What, we’ll be friends?”
“We will be alive,” she corrects me, and one of her hands brushes against her opposite forearm, where the panel rests beneath the jacket sleeve. It’s a gesture so slight that I’m sure she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. “I suppose it is up to you whether I stay that way.”
I know what she’s getting at. She’ll be wound, real body rendered helpless. With my gloves, I’ll be anything but.
I look at the knife, glossy handle slick with light, blade hovering over the table’s surface. There’s us, reflected partially in the metal. An incomplete picture. There’s none of her twitching fingers, her Mod eye, the Valkyrie jacket hugged around her shoulders. There’s just this: a girl staring at me, carefully, a fragment of my dirty face, and a knife on the table.
“Glitch?”
“Yes?” she asks, not a flicker of doubt in responding to my ridiculous pet name.
“It’s Eris,” I say, hushing Jenny’s voice in my head. I swallow hard. “My name is Eris.”
A pause, and then a slight smile plays on her lips, one that, this time, doesn’t leave my blood chilled.
“Eris,” Sona repeats, trying out my name.
It’s not soft, like the way Milo always says it, but she does say it carefully. Like turning it the wrong way could cut her tongue.
Then she says, “Eris, could you please hit me very hard across the face?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SONA
0900 Hours
Her name is Eris.
I repeat it over and over in my head, as if I am afraid to lose the memory of the slight crack in her scowl, the eyes that for a slender moment rested on the one I loathe, but held the gaze as if it was not disgusting or unnatural.
I will not tell her name to Lucindo, nor will I dare utter it to anyone else until we are rid of this Godsforsaken city. Let Godolia know her only as a Gearbreaker or the Frostbringer. Let them know only the threat that rings in the mention, and let them demonize and damn the aliases. But the name Eris will not belong to them.
I find Lucindo in the Valkyrie common room. He takes one look at my face and scrambles to his feet, leaping over the back of the couch to grab my arm as I walk past, spinning me to face him.
“What—” he starts.
“I failed,” I say bluntly, voice hard. My gaze is dropped to his boots. I am ashamed. I am not internally celebrating. “The Frostbringer, I tried … She will not—”
“Sona…” Now his other hand slips around my free arm, squeezing. Do not touch me, you vile infestation. “You did the best you could.”
“I need a Spider,” I mutter, pushing past him. The sprawling hallways are decorated with photographs and paintings, flowers pressed behind glass and mirrors with intricate frames. I catch a glimpse of the cut on my cheek as I pass one by; and also of Lucindo, dogging close behind. “I am fine, Lucindo.”
“She’ll be corrupted,” he reassures me. “I’ll send for them to get the process started immediately.”
“She will die.”
“You don’t think she’s strong enough to survive?”
I stop short and spin. “I think she, even after everything she has done, is just a reckless child. She talks like she is above all of this, but she is just another Badlands girl forgetting how small she truly is. My only hope is that corruption will shoot some sense into her before she dies.”
Lucindo is suddenly smiling. “I was
half-afraid you were going sweet on the Gearbreaker, Sona.”
Good Gods. I would roll my eyes if I thought it would do him any good. We are talking about murdering a girl, and still he finds room to flirt with me. I do not care enough to tell him that one, boys have never been my interest, and two, I am planning to burn his nation to the ground. So instead I will be mean, and watch him gouge out some form of affection from it regardless. It is a predictable practice.
“I am about as sweet on her as you are on me,” I respond, the yawn in my voice a simple taunt. But Lucindo is a simple boy, and his cheeks slip into a deeper hue. If I could see his colors, I believe he would be a collection of pastels—pale pink skin, cyan eye, milky hair.
“Which is to say what, exactly?” he manages.
“You could say nothing at all, so I can go get some training done in peace.” I look briefly at his forearms, exposed by the rolled sleeves of his jacket, at the panel set into each one. I have thought about tearing out his silver dishes before, just as an experiment, a test run, to see how much blood he would lose. If he could survive that, then perhaps I could, too.
“Is that any way to speak to your unit captain, soldier?”
“Mm, and tell me, how would you prefer I speak to you, Captain?” I say, voice hushed, as I mull over these fantasies. “If you are looking for soft words, I would recommend the brothel district.”
“You wound me greatly, Sona Steelcrest.”
“I have not laid a finger on you, and do not plan to.”
Lucindo smirks, hand rising to ruffle the back of his head, which is tilted over mine.
“You’ll be okay for your run?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he says, and hesitates. A cold dread suddenly wraps itself around my spine. “I, uh … I had to assign Victoria to accompany you today.”
My mask slips. “What? Why? I am still on trial runs; it is just another escort mission. I do not need—”
“Gearbreakers were spotted late last night in the area you’re being sent to.” He shakes his head. “Sona—”
“And you know how I handled myself before!”
“I do, but…” He trails off, a guilty look snaking across his features.
“Do the Zeniths believe the Gearbreaker’s words are twisting my thoughts? My loyalties?” I demand, mind reeling. “Is that what you think?”
“Of course I don’t!”
“Then take her off my run!”
“It’s not my call, Sona—”
I leave him in the hall, my feet finding my bedroom, hands finding my sheets. I seize its fraying edge, peel back yet another strip, and stuff it into my pocket. My canvas bag is tugged roughly over my shoulder before I leave the room, somehow reaching the elevator, then the right training room, barely keeping it together long enough to unlatch the zipper of the Valkyrie jacket. There is sweat slicking my neck, and the mirror makes the room too bright. You need to get it together and—
When I pull my hands from the sleeves, I pause, raising them to the light.
Am I shaking?
I skim my fingers over the knuckles of the opposite hand.
How could I not be shaking?
My heartbeat quickens, and so does the hum. My fingernails curl into my sides, seeking an invisible seam or a ridge separating my skin from the Spider’s thread, to dip into and tear back. There is nothing—it is me, it is all me, humming, glowing, pretending to gasp for breath. I am not steadfast; I am not something rigid. I am a child who must kill today, and it makes me scared for myself.
I am so, so scared, and they will not even let me tremble.
“Give me an Auto,” I grit through clenched teeth, forcing my grip around a sparring sword. Its weight and its handle and the way it sits snug against my palm are the most familiar things in the world, like giving an old friend a handshake. If I had any old friends.
The mirror that envelops the back wall splits down its middle, peeling back to reveal a slim corridor. Inside, a row of Autos spiral back into darkness. The frontmost one lifts its head.
My stance is weak, my reaction time atrocious. The finishing blow is heavy-handed, too much brute force and not enough control. Before I call for the next Auto, I rip the sheet fabric from my jacket pocket and tie it around my head—its length long enough to wrap around twice—knotting it behind my right ear. Color touches the world again, dark blue across the floor mat and a vicious silver into the blades of the sparring swords.
The second falls quicker, the third easier.
When the fourth charges, there is movement in the doorway that pulls my glance. No. Our blades crash, but I lose my footing, and I am on the floor with its knee swinging for my chest. It cannot kill me, but bludgeoning is well within its parameters.
Then Rose is there, shoving it back with her bare hands, jeering with a vibrant laugh, “Yeah, yeah, you can piss off, you old bag of bolts.”
It revs back and swings; she ducks beneath its blade and plants an effortless roundhouse into its side, and, stealing a discarded Auto blade, makes a quick and neat line to sever head from neck.
She turns, curls crowding her face as she leans over me. In her other hand, held tenderly, skitters a Spider.
“Heard you needed this,” Rose says, smile pinching her eyes. “Want a training partner?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ERIS
0945 Hours
The knife goes in my shoe.
I realize this is a horrible idea only after the guards come and bind my wrists behind my back.
“Could you do it the other way?” I ask, because the worst thing they could respond with is We’re going to kill you, which already feels implied. I’m answered with silence. “You could at least say something.” The door is suddenly looking a lot like a gravestone. The hallway is laughably short, if I remember correctly. Sweat pricks at the back of my neck. “I’m not leaving until you say something!”
A guard with a shaved head shoves me toward the door and grunts, “Shut up.”
“Say something else.”
She shoves me again, harder, and I lose my footing, landing awkwardly on my shoulder without any hands to catch myself. I roll my cheek against the ground and sigh into the floor, because it looks like it’s going to be that kind of day.
“Get up,” another guard barks, grabbing the back of my shirt and lifting me to my knees. I flick my sight to the right, note that he’s the one with the cuff keys, and then slam my forehead into his crotch.
“I didn’t enjoy that either,” I say as he doubles over, before the third guard brings his fist to my temple. My vision slurs—does that even make sense, I’m not sure—and he wraps his hand in my collar and lifts me clean off my feet.
“Don’t,” Shaved Head warns as my toes scrape against the ground. “She’s going to be corrupted, and it’s going to hurt a hells of a lot worse than whatever you’re about to do.”
“You could try,” I say, and then spit on Third’s cheek. His grip clenches momentarily, face darkening, but then, with remarkable composure, his fingers loosen from the fabric.
“You know, Starbreach had a mouth like yours,” he growls, hand coiled around my arm, hauling me toward the door. “Didn’t work out so well for her, either.”
My entire body goes cold.
“What?” I murmur as we enter the hall.
Key Guard wraps a hand in my hair and pulls, my head bent back below his. “Crushed flat and drowned, her and the whole crew.”
“Guess making that kid a Valkyrie was the right move.” Shaved Head laughs. “I heard she stained the shores red.”
“No,” I breathe. Glitch wouldn’t—she said—Sona said—no.
Jenny.
Jenny, dead. It doesn’t fit. Doesn’t suit her.
Please no.
We are forty paces from the end of the hall. Third and Key have my arms; Shaved Head is a step in front of us.
“Aw, the little Gearbreaker is tearing up,” coos Third, and I turn and spit on his ch
eek again.
He recoils. I lift my leg and drive my heel into the side of Key’s knee.
He crumples with a shriek, hand slipping from my arm, and I lunge my weight to bring my knee into the bridge of his nose. His head snaps back, limbs going limp.
“Get up, you idiot,” Shaved Head shouts, while Third yanks me back with a growl. He opens his mouth to say something, and I spit on his face a third time. Never gets old.
He shoves me away with one hand still clutching onto me, so he can have enough room to strike me with the other. I drop to the floor—and to the guard on the floor—the blow sailing over my head, fingers grasping behind me, against fabric, fabric, belt, metal, and by the time he pulls me up, the keys are flipping into my palm. The first one doesn’t click—note: cell door—and before I can try the next, his knuckles crack against my mouth. I feel the moment my lip splits open, and that must act as some sort of karmic payment, because the next key on the ring fits properly, and the cuffs drop from my wrists.
My fingers catch them before they fall. I twine my knuckles in their chain and swing a hook into the guard’s ribs, then his stomach, uppercut into his jaw. He groans, grappling for the gun at his side, and at the same time, Shaved Head lunges for me, a baton materialized in her hand. It glances inches from my neck, a hum emitting in my ear, the taste of metal sparking on my tongue—electrified, really?—and I drive my foot to crush Third’s hand into the wall. Shaved Head’s boot finds my side; I drop to my knees with a groan, curl three fingers around the loop of one cuff, and send the other snapping across Third’s brow. Eyes rolling, he falters against the wall and goes still.
Shaved Head descends on me, knee pinning my shoulder to the floor, baton arcing to collide with my crown. I flinch, so it only skims my temple, pain threading the point of contact in a violent, barbed web, and—I realize I can’t see.
My eyes are seized shut. I can’t move, fingers splayed taut at my side, toes stiff in my shoes. Panic grabs me, throttles me. This is it. I failed, I’m going to d—
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