“Godsdamn it,” Shaved Head mutters, toe digging into my side. A slight shuffling, and hands are sliding under my arms, lifting my dead weight from the ground.
She thinks I’m unconscious.
She’s dragging me. My heels scrape against the floor, rubber squeaking against the tiles. How many paces to the end of the hall again? How far have we gone?
Move, damn it.
But I feel nothing of myself save for the tears on my cheeks.
My sister is dead.
She’s dead, and Sona killed her. Sona, who waits for me two floors below my feet, who took my wrist like it meant something to her, like I could mean something to her.
She has to pay for it.
My fingers twitch at my sides.
She’s going to pay for it.
I twist, the guard’s hands slipping from me, roll once, stomach to back and then onto my feet.
With the knife in my hand.
Shaved Head’s mouth forms a tiny O, and the blade finds flesh.
It goes easily, for a few inches, and then it hits something tougher. I pull until it gives, and the guard falls to the floor.
Still a little numb and a lot disoriented, I drag the guards one by one back into my cell and lock the door. Then I turn. The hallway is covered in blood. Streaked across the tiles. Speckled faintly on the walls, generously over my hands, the doorknob smeared red. Half-heartedly, I wipe it away with my sleeve. Can’t do much about the state of everything else, but that’s nothing new.
I peel back the vent grate and pull myself inside, crawling until the first split. The fabric around my left wrist; I turn left. The service shaft yawns darkly, a million-story drop, or only just around a hundred, but my body won’t know much of a difference if I fall. I grip the ladder, descend past one opening, slip into the next. Crawl. Three knots; third split.
Sweat flattens my shirt to my spine. My hands pad against the metal, blotting red in ghostly outlines. Up ahead, the quick, ringing clash of swords shivers through the vent.
It’ll happen once I’m safely away from this Godsforsaken city, before she can unwind and realize what’s happening. Another gear for me; one less Pilot to kill off more of my family. Win-freaking-win.
I reach the end of the vent, and peer into a space littered with mechanical body parts. Sona traces the room in a slow circle, blade in hand, dark curls tied back, cloth wrapped around her head.
I follow the clean, practiced flick of Sona’s blade before I realize there’s someone else in the room.
As if the panic could speak, as if my hands weren’t clasped around my mouth, the other Pilot turns.
And looks me straight in the eye.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SONA
1000 Hours
“I had heard you use an eye patch,” Rose chatters as she grabs a sparring sword. The Spider whirs against my cheek, set there by her hand. “Vic was bitching about it, but, hey, it’s obviously a system that works for you.”
“I…” Need you to leave. Please, for the love of Gods, go. “I usually train alone.”
Unwillingly, my eye drifts toward the small grate bolted into the room’s corner. Eris should be in the vents by now, making her way toward me. She expects to find me alone. Will she flee if she sees two Pilots instead of one?
Unless she has fled already, despite her lack of gloves, or took a wrong turn down a hallway and ran into a thousand other Pilots. Unless she is already dead, and this whole plan was shot from the start, and it was childish and ignorant to believe that I would ever escape here.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Rose asks, punting aside lopped Auto limbs to take her stance.
“Rose,” I strain, plucking the Spider away. My knuckles are white around the grip of the sword. “I would prefer to be alone.”
“I heard that Vic is going on your run with you. It’s a low blow, really, but none of the Valkyries think that of you. Think that Gearbreaker got in your head, that is. I certainly don’t, I just think—I think you’re just about the loveliest person, Sona.” She pauses to beam at me, angling the sword thoughtfully in her hand. “Well, maybe Vic thinks something worse, but that’s only her working out the more complicated feelings she has toward you. You’ll have to forgive her.”
“Victoria—” I stop short, shake my head. I cannot be talking about this now; she just needs to go. I need to be rude, even cruel, get her to leave quicker. It does not matter; I am not going to ever see her again, anyway.
But it is Rose. Sweet, cheery, caring Rose.
And she is already charging.
It is all I can do to get my blade up in time. It locks against hers, and then we are nose to nose. I can count the freckles on her cheeks. She is still grinning.
“Oh, you are good,” she sings as we trace around the room, up and over broken bot parts, shoes sucking against the spilled gear oil. She chatters as she fights, hums during the spaces in between, light on her feet and practiced in her strikes, second in skill only to Lucindo in our unit. Rose brings her sword to my neck thrice, each time bubbling a bright laugh before pulling away to reset her stance. She does not want to hurt me. She wants to teach.
Lump forming in my throat, I force my gaze to her face as we start up again. Not at her right eye, the deep, warm brown, but at the left, smoldering red. I hate that color. I hate Godolia. I hate the Pilots, all the ones who have happily stitched their skin with wire for the chance to become the Academy’s puppets. I hate her.
I need to.
I swing. Rose parries with a grin, and says, “Oh, I wanted to ask you—”
She goes very still.
It seems to happen slowly, her head snapping upward, enough of a lapse for the horror to fill up all the empty space and take root.
“I think…,” she murmurs. Her gaze is lifted toward the grate. “I think I saw someone in the vent.”
“You are trying to distract me,” I say smoothly, ice in my veins, allowing my eyes to touch on the grate for a moment. Eris is not there, but she may have been, just a moment before seeing the unknown person and ducking away. But nothing escapes Rose.
“No!” she presses, taking a step forward. “I saw someone; give me a second…”
I watch her reach the wall, rising to the tops of her toes, height just barely enough to see over the grate’s edge. A small gasp falls from her lips.
My feet move.
“It’s the Gearbreaker! Sona, get—”
Rose turns to face me again, and I run my blade across the width of her neck.
The skin splits open too easily, the act too seamless, too silent. Her hands go up to clutch the wound, and blood trickles over her lithe fingers and rolls in large teardrops down her sleeves. She stumbles forward, and I can clearly see her lips moving to form my name, a tone that would be soaked through with shock if the blood were not there to silence it.
I do not move, thinking she will collapse before she can reach me, or thinking that I too will break if I try to run, but either way suddenly she is too close, and she is too helpless, and her stubbornness and strength are too incomprehensible as she releases her neck to grapple onto the collar of my shirt, and it is all too much. I can feel her warmth spilling against me as she pulls herself closer to keep on her feet, and without thinking, I shove her backward with everything I can manage.
Rose twitches against the ground, blood pooling from her neck, red spreading from beneath her form like a canary’s wings. Her lips are somehow still moving, my name still across them. Help me, Sona. Why, Sona?
“Just die already,” I say softly—a wish, a plea.
And then, as if she was simply waiting for my permission, the red pool stops expanding. Her eye flickers out, glow dulling until it becomes nearly colorless, and yet, her gaze still clings to me.
“Come out, Frostbringer,” I call. There is a blatant tremor to my voice. Pathetic, sympathetic. “We do not have any time to waste.”
Nothing happens at first, and for a moment, I am afra
id that she bolted. But then a hand emerges from the darkness, pressing against the bars of the grate. Her arms tuck around her head, rolling as she lands, on both feet before me in the next second.
She brushes her hair back from her face with one blood-streaked hand. She has a split lip, both cheeks flushed pink. “Who—”
I shake my head. It does not matter, because it cannot matter.
From the canvas bag, I remove a stolen Berserker jacket with Eris’s effects wrapped up inside. I hold it out to her.
“You’re shaking,” she tells me.
“I am not,” I say, shoving the jacket at her. I retract my hands, stare over each digit. Somehow, impossibly, she is right. My hands are trembling. “That’s … that’s not supposed to happen anymore.”
Eris slips on the jacket. It fits loose around her frame, but will suffice nonetheless. She tugs the welding goggles over her head, leaving them to perch on her hairline, and then pulls on the gloves. A sigh falls from her lips once they are secure—an expression of near bliss, of finally being back in the comforting grasp of familiarity.
I drop my blade to the floor.
“I told you,” Eris says, and something passes over her face that I do not catch. “You’re a glitch.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ERIS
1025 Hours
I don’t think Sona realized that she flinched when I hit the floor. I don’t think she’s aware of the look on her face now, the tremble to her lip, the slight fracture in the measured poise. Her shirt is slick down its front, the green material dyed a startling black, the blood only showing its true color on her right wrist and fingers and across the silver blade. Her curls swell around the strip of fabric wrapped around her hair, baby hairs stuck to the thin sheen of sweat on her brow.
All at once, I’m realizing how young she is, how young we both are. Just two girls, scared absolutely shitless, with hands painted red before midday.
“Was that your first kill?” I ask, securing my gloves—oh, my wonderful gloves—around my wrists and tugging on the soft, leather-rimmed goggles. The Berserker jacket is something unfortunate, but it’s the best cover as the most common Windup unit.
I wait for her to lie. To nod her head, to say easily, I have never killed before and this is why you can trust me. But instead, she lifts her eye to mine, and there is no triumph there, no steel, just a look so steady and sad and raw it twists something in me.
“No,” Sona says. “I have killed so many people.”
“Oh,” I say, because there is no other possible follow-up to that.
She doesn’t move for a few seconds, staring at the dead Pilot. Then in a single, fluid motion, she pulls her bloodied shirt up and over her head. I stare, then realize that’s the opposite of what I should do, and avert my eyes as she runs her tongue over her fingers, using her spit to wipe away the red dots scattered across her collarbone. Once clean, she zips her Valkyrie jacket up to her throat.
“We need to go,” she says, dropping the shirt to the floor. “I put the medical patch in your pocket.”
“This is not going to work,” I say, even as I seal the patch over my eye. I yank away the strands of my hair that stick underneath the tape.
Sona calmly unwraps the bandage from around her head, winding it into a ball before storing it.
“As you have said before,” she says, turning toward the door. “Come.”
I ball my hands into fists, feeling how the veins of the cryo gloves stretch taut over the surface, and bury them deep into my pockets. Somehow, in hiding their power, I feel a bit of my unease dissipate.
I follow Sona out of the training room and down the hallway, then wait as she presses the elevator button. Her expression is so resolved that I wonder if one of the Mods included plating her facial structure with steel.
When the doors open, she doesn’t even blink before stepping over the threshold, as if it were possible that she didn’t also feel a jolt of panic at the five other Pilots standing inside the elevator.
“Are you coming?” Sona asks. “There is more than enough room.”
She blends in so seamlessly with them. Oh, ha, and you know why she does—you absolute freaking idiot—it might be because she is one of them. That might help, good Gods, what the hells am I doing here—
Where the hells else can I go?
And then, too soon, I am standing next to her, and too soon the elevator doors are closing, their quiet click like the final nail in a coffin. Oh Gods, I’m breathing. The oversized jacket might be enough to cover the quick rise and fall of my chest, but the others must be able to hear the rapid cannon of my heartbeat. Jenny’s voice rings in my ears: Go for the Pilot go for the Pilot go—
Sona’s hand slips over my forearm, a gesture so soft and quick that I nearly miss it. But even from underneath the jacket sleeve, I can feel her warmth, the purpose beneath it. It’s a reassurance, a comfort that couldn’t possibly come from someone like her. And yet, I find the ability to draw a full, slow breath.
You still have to kill her.
The elevator stops, opening up to what looks like a cafeteria. Long rows of tables sprawl beneath a wall of windows, gray light filtering over the bustling space. Everywhere there are Windup jackets, Pilots with glowing eyes, pinched with laughter. Hands gripped around pieces of bread, panels scraping their forearms. Someone at the table nearest to us flashes a grin into their mug. It suddenly smells like coffee and cinnamon toast, startlingly soft compared to the bleachy air of the elevator.
Everyone but us exits the elevator. Even in the empty space, we stay silent, as if words will break the thin aura of pure dumb luck wound around us.
When the elevator stops again, she exits at a brisk pace. I suppress my urge to shudder as I silently trail her through the Windup hangar. It is a quite literal Gearbreaker hell. The sheer number of bright and shiny Windups—with their expanses of undented and unscathed skin and the eyes that I feel smoldering above my head—causes a dark thought to begin to throb, the same one that lies hidden inside every person who calls the Hollows their home: No matter how many mechas we dismantle, no matter how many tattoos we get inked across our skin, there will always be more Windups.
Thirty paces ahead of me, she stops at the base of one of the Valkyries. Her Valkyrie. Sona leans toward the side of its golden boot, offering her left eye as the key. When the door slides open, she turns back to look at me, hand raised to gesture. Then it freezes, and her gaze slips to the left.
I get the message immediately. I turn right, slipping between two other mechas, and glance back over my shoulder. The Pilot who was approaching behind me passes by a few feet away, pale golden hair fluttering with each of her hard steps. She marches straight up to Sona, who opens her mouth in greeting before the Pilot shoves her back against the mecha.
Heart rabbiting in my chest, I force my steps to even out, and I approach as close as I dare. Hugging the Berserker jacket closer around my form, I stop to hover behind the ankle of the Valkyrie neighboring Sona’s.
“—blood everywhere,” the Pilot hisses, finger drilling into Glitch’s chest. Glitch looks on, face impassive, save for the vicious glaze to her eyes. “Where the hells is the Gearbreaker, Bellsona?”
High cheekbones, statuesque height, porcelain skin, one jade iris to best the Hollows’ oak trees in high summer. I stumble for the Pilot’s name. Victoria.
I plucked out her eye, and now she’s bright and shiny and ready to bite Sona’s head off.
Shit.
“And why would I know this?” Sona murmurs, eyes dropped to Victoria’s hand gripping her sleeve.
“You jumped at the chance to interrogate the Frostbringer, and now she leaves a bloodbath behind just in time for your run? I don’t think so.” A cold laugh twists her words, and the sureness of them chills me. Yep, she got it. One hundred percent. “You are playing pretend, sweetheart. Have been since the Academy spit you into this unit, crowned on your high fucking horse. You hesitate, and I see it. You probabl
y didn’t even kill Starbreach. You don’t have the guts.”
A new expression takes over Sona’s face, a look that I’ve felt across my own features a hundred times just today: the gripping urge to hit something. I expect it to quell in a second, for that incredible control to grind it down into dust. Instead, she unfurls. She straightens her spine and snatches Victoria’s arm, pulling, shortening the distance between them.
“And you are a jealous child,” Glitch sneers in Victoria’s face, a cruel smirk crinkling her left eye. “It is so pathetic to watch, and so very irritating. I do not kiss the ground you walk on, so I must want to destroy you and everything you stand for, is that it? Make no mistake, Victoria. I am a damn good Pilot, and a hells of a swordsman, and I could do so much to you. But I do not. I do not bow or kneel or flinch, and you hate it, but you should take comfort. I do not hate you. I think nothing of you at all.”
Victoria, to her credit, meets this absolutely decimating speech with a flare of her own. “You don’t flinch for me, fine. You don’t care for me, even better. But when they shower you with praise, when they cheer to your stories, when they pull you close—that is when you writhe, sweetheart. The only reason you don’t recoil from me is because I’m the only one here who does not adore you.”
“Does it look like I am one to recoil?” Glitch snarls.
It’s that moment when they both realize how close they are.
Glitch blinks. When Victoria brings her mouth to hers, she blinks again.
Then her eyes lie closed, those long, dark lashes dusting her cheeks. At her side, her hand flicks toward the door.
Right before I duck into the Windup, Victoria brings her hand to Sona’s cheek.
I climb, the thumping of my heart attempting to propel me from the ladder rungs.
You probably didn’t even kill Starbreach.
Could it be true?
Can I risk it?
It’s eerie being alone in the mecha’s head. Whenever I’ve had the occasion to in the past, the room would’ve already succumbed to, well, me, pieces of it chipped or shattered or frostbitten. And amid it all, the Pilot, bloodied and bruised, still thrashing around in their false body or already limp and tangled up in their wires.
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