Chatine kicked off the scratchy sheet, climbed down from her bunk, pulled on her boots, and followed the slow procession of prisoners making their way toward the stairs. The languid, mechanical movements of her fellow inmates made them look almost dead. And on some level, Chatine supposed they were. Being alive was only half the battle on Bastille. You had to have something to live for. And most of the prisoners here did not.
The Trésor tower cell block was a shadowy, circular chamber made up of twelve floors, each linked to a winding central staircase by a series of metal gangways.
Stepping onto the nearest bridge, Chatine glanced precariously over the railing. Normally, heights didn’t bother her. She was used to being up high, looking down at the world. But this dizzying, eleven-floor drop always made her stomach roll. She swept her gaze down to the ground floor, trying to imagine the place that was rumored to be buried beneath it. A place shrouded in even more darkness than the exploits.
The inmates called it the Black Hole, where the most dangerous prisoners of Bastille were kept. Chatine had heard that the walls down there were made of thick, solid PermaSteel and that there was one cell in particular that was guarded thirty hours a day by droids. This was where the most famous criminal on Laterre was kept.
Citizen Rousseau.
The woman who had led the only known rebellion against the Regime … and failed.
Of course, no one on Bastille had ever seen her in person. Being confined to the Black Hole meant no contact with the outside world. No contact at all. Chatine had been told that even the droids didn’t set foot inside that cell.
It was thirty hours a day of absolute nothingness.
Shivering, Chatine pulled her gaze back up to the line of ripped uniforms and grime-covered bodies descending the steps in front of her. As she wound around the staircase, she caught sight of one inmate who stood far shorter than the rest. A boy. Only thirteen years old. Chatine recognized him at once. Despite his grimy blue uniform and shaved head, there was no mistaking his scrawny shoulders, the determined dimple in his cheek, and the slight limp that still lingered from his last encounter with the Policier.
Chatine let out a breath. He’s still alive.
The sight of him each morning always gave her a reason to keep walking. Keep digging. Keep living. He was a small ray of Sol-light in this dark, dark place. The only Sol-light.
The prisoners shuffled lethargically down the twisting staircase until they reached the ground floor. Chatine checked for nearby droids before pushing her way through the line and positioning herself right behind the boy whose life she’d single-handedly destroyed.
“Roche,” she whispered.
His body visibly stiffened at the sound of her voice, but he said nothing.
“Please,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
He didn’t respond, and Chatine felt a punch of disappointment. Although, she honestly wasn’t sure why she thought today would be different from any other day. Roche hadn’t spoken to her since he’d been arrested. And she couldn’t exactly blame him for the silence. She was the reason he’d been sent to Bastille in the first place.
She sighed. “Fine. You don’t have to talk. But just listen to what I have to say. I’m sorry about what happened at the Policier Precinct. I—”
Just then, a massive body maneuvered in front of her. She could tell by the long hair and half-chewed ear that it was Clovis, an older member of Roche’s exploit crew who had taken on the unofficial role of his bodyguard.
“Roche kindly requests that you stop trying to make contact with him,” Clovis snapped over his shoulder, his voice low and gruff.
Chatine gritted her teeth and attempted to maneuver herself around him.
“Roche,” she hissed. “Please. I need to explain—”
“Get in line, Prisoner 51562,” boomed a nearby droid.
Chatine did as she was told, veering back into place behind Clovis. She stared intently at his dark shoulder-length hair before her gaze shifted to his left shirtsleeve, which had been rolled with precision.
A Vétéran.
That’s what Chatine secretly called his kind because of how long they’d clearly been on Bastille. She could always tell how much time someone had served based on the length of their hair. Every prisoner’s head was shaved before they left Laterre. And no sharp objects on Bastille meant no haircuts. After two weeks, Chatine’s own head was already covered with a soft fuzz of growth, and every time she touched it, she flinched at the strange bumpiness of her scalp.
The Vétérans were mostly older prisoners. Many of them too old to even work in the exploits. Instead, they held jobs all over the prison—kitchen staff, janitors, morgue workers. Every one of them had long hair and every one of them wore their left shirtsleeve rolled up, like a badge of honor for how long they’d lasted.
But what intrigued Chatine the most about Vétérans like Clovis was that they never spoke to one another. Never looked at one another. Never sat together in the cantine. Never even seemed to acknowledge one another.
The line of inmates progressed sluggishly forward, nearing the cantine. Chatine knew it would be only a matter of minutes before she and Roche were separated.
“Roche,” she whispered, stepping around Clovis again. “You have to believe me. I never meant to betray you. I was just trying to—”
Clovis sidestepped, blocking her with his back once again. “Roche kindly requests that you follow protocol and refrain from speaking to your fellow inmates.”
“Why don’t you let him tell me that,” Chatine snapped. She was getting very tired of always being thwarted by this clochard every time she tried to get close to Roche.
Clovis’s heavy footsteps slowed, and for a moment, his large frame looked to be coiling up, preparing to spin around and spring toward Chatine. But he didn’t. He kept walking, his neck muscles visibly straining under the collar of his prison shirt. And when he did speak again, his tone reverberated with pure malice. “Roche kindly reminds you that he doesn’t speak to mouchards.”
Chatine felt the stab in her gut at the word. It was exactly what Roche had called her when he’d found out she’d betrayed him, the day he’d been arrested and his fate on Bastille was cast in PermaSteel.
Now, every day, as she watched Roche board the rickety lift and descend into the depths of the zyttrium exploits, the guilt consumed her a little more, until she felt like nothing more than a skeleton. A corpse eaten away by the rot. He was just a scrawny kid. A thirteen-year-old Oublie, forgotten and abandoned and parentless. He’d just been trying to make his way in the harsh world of the Frets. And Chatine had ruined his life.
Chatine nodded, swallowing the sourness that was rising up in her throat. “Fine,” she said stiffly. “But you can tell Roche that I’m not giving up. He can ignore me, he can turn his stupide one-eared guard dogs on me, I don’t care. I’m not going to stop trying to talk to him until he forgives me. I won’t—”
She felt the shock of the tazeur against her skin before she even saw the droid. Her body convulsed for a second, lightning bolts of pain shooting through her bones and veins. Her vision blurred, her muscles cramped, and something began to clang relentlessly in her ears.
Her legs wobbled beneath her. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was lie down and never move again. But then she felt a shove at her back as the line moved forward and inmates pushed to get into the cantine and consume their meager rations of food. She stumbled, struggling to put one useless foot in front of the other, as a voice broke through the ringing in her ears. It was Clovis. And he was laughing. A sharp, derisive sound. “Forgive you?” he spat. “Don’t hold your breath, Renard.”
- CHAPTER 7 - MARCELLUS
MARCELLUS HAD NEVER LIKED THE Frets. The sights and sounds and smells were too sharp. Too immediate. Too disturbing. But today, as he darted through the alleyways, it seemed like everything here had been amplified overnight. The garbage and debris seemed to be piled up even higher than usual. The rusted edges o
f the walls and broken pipes seemed to jut out at sharper, more severe angles. The massive crumbling freightships seemed even more unstable, threatening to collapse and kill everyone at any moment.
And then there were the droids.
The Ministère’s ground troops. Three-mètre-high PermaSteel monsters that stalked the alleyways, scanning, observing, punishing. Thanks to the Patriarche’s increased production, there were now more on patrol today than Marcellus had ever seen.
The rickety stairwell was empty. Everyone was out in the Marsh, protesting the wage cuts the Patriarche had ordered yesterday. By the time Marcellus reached the tenth floor he was slightly winded and stopped to pause at the end of a long hallway dotted with small porthole windows.
From way up here, the city below looked peaceful. The dense layer of clouds seemed to swaddle the tops of the buildings like a soft, downy blanket. The bustle from the crowded marketplace could no longer be heard. And the rain—the constant, ever-present rain that pinged gently on the corroded walls and dingy streets—almost sounded like a soothing lullaby. And Marcellus could almost bring himself to believe that everyone down there was safe.
But of course, he knew the truth.
No one down there was safe.
Laterre was on the brink of war. The Third Estate were protesting daily in the streets. The Patriarche’s grief had turned him from an apathetic leader to a brutal, irrational one. And General Bonnefaçon was developing a weapon that threatened the lives of everyone on this planet.
Unless Marcellus could figure out a way to stop him.
He turned and pounded on the PermaSteel door at the end of the hall, gripping his rayonette tightly in his hand.
“Ministère! Open up!”
The heavy door squeaked open and a voice boomed from the murkiness inside. “What do you want?”
Marcellus looked up to see a huge guard with a mouthful of missing teeth glaring back at him, and he nearly lost his nerve. Until he remembered that he was dressed in his officer uniform. And he was armed. He had all the power here.
He waved the rayonette in the man’s face. “I am conducting an authorized search of this facility in the name of the Ministère.”
The guard began to shut the door, but Marcellus blocked it with his boot. “I need to speak to whoever is in charge here. Things will go a lot easier for you if you comply.”
The guard looked more annoyed than afraid. As though he had much better things to do than entertain Ministère officers in the middle of the day. Without a word, he opened the door wider and gestured for Marcellus to enter.
Marcellus followed the guard down a dark corridor strewn with puddles. Just like all the other Frets in Vallonay, Fret 17 used to be a freightship that once soared majestically across the galaxies, bringing survivors from the First World to Laterre hundreds of years ago. Now the old structure sat lopsided and decomposing in the mud, housing thousands upon thousands of people in the cramped couchettes that filled the floors below.
This floor, however, held no rooms except for the one that stood at the end of the hallway.
Marcellus had never been up here before. Up until a few hours ago, he hadn’t known this place and its one solitary resident even existed.
“It’s all yours,” the guard mumbled unceremoniously as they reached the door. Then, before Marcellus could blink, he took off down the hallway, scurrying away faster than a cockroach from the light.
Marcellus rolled his eyes and pushed on the rusting handle. The door eased open with a whine and he stepped inside, jerking to an abrupt halt at the sight in front of him. It was one of the most incredible views Marcellus had ever seen.
Huge windows made of clear sheets of plastique looked out over the whole of Vallonay. Under the cloudy gray sky, Laterre’s capital stretched out for kilomètres. Marcellus could make out the shimmering curve of Ledôme high up on its hill and in the flatlands below, he could see the outlines of hothouses and fermes. To his left, the docklands hugged the edge of the Secana Sea, which stretched out dark blue and endless into the distance.
“It’s quite the view isn’t it?”
The voice startled Marcellus and his gaze snapped around, landing on a huge chair stationed in the center of the room, in front of a vast, decrepit flight console. In the chair sat the man Marcellus had come to see. He just never imagined he would look like this.
The man’s face was a collage of scars, craters, and pockmarks, and his left eye drooped like it was being pulled down by an invisible weight. It was a face unlike anything Marcellus had seen before. A face wrecked and transfigured by … he couldn’t even imagine what.
“I haven’t gotten fully used to the sight myself,” the man in the chair said. “It still startles me from time to time.”
Marcellus now wasn’t sure whether the man was talking about the view out the window or his face.
“Welcome to the Bridge, Officer,” the man said, eyeing Marcellus’s crisp white uniform with a twinkle of approval.
“The Bridge?”
The man gestured around the vast room. “That’s what all of this used to be. Back when these hunks of metal could fly. They call me the Capitaine.” He winked his good eye. “It’s a little play on words. Now, to what do I owe the honor?”
Marcellus holstered his rayonette and forced himself to meet the man’s eye. “I was told you could help me.”
The Capitaine cocked his head. “You were, were you? And who told you that?”
Marcellus thought of the convict at the Policier Precinct that he’d bribed for information leading him here. And the promise of silence Marcellus had made in return. “I can’t say.”
“Of course, you can’t.” The Capitaine croaked out a laugh, and Marcellus couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was mocking him. “Help you with what, mon ami? I must warn you, though. If you’re looking for a mouchard, I don’t do deals with the Ministère.”
Marcellus shook his head. He was not looking for a snitch. “I need a microcam. Something untraceable and discreet.”
“I see.” The Capitaine leaned back in his seat. “And what would you want with an untraceable, discreet microcam?”
“I—” Marcellus started to say, but the Capitaine cut him off with another cackle.
“Let me guess, you can’t say, right?”
The man was definitely mocking him.
“I suppose you want to eavesdrop on someone,” the Capitaine went on, rising from his chair and walking over to a bank of metal cabinets. He pulled one open and riffled through a small bin. “A suspect, perhaps?”
Marcellus swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yes. A suspect,” and then, he quickly added, “believed to be working with the Vangarde.”
The Capitaine turned to flash him a thin smile. “Right.”
As the Capitaine continued to sift through his cabinet, Marcellus caught brief glimpses of a grand assortment of contraband: TéléComs, a pair of Policier cuffs, even a glinting rayonette. All the things the Ministère didn’t want the Third Estate to have. And every single one of them stolen, Marcellus had no doubt. If he were really here on a Ministère-sanctioned search, as he’d claimed to be, this place would be the mother lode.
“Here we are.” The Capitaine closed the cabinet, walked back to his chair, sat down, and held out his hand. In his leathered palm sat a tiny wafer-thin device, no bigger than a pea. A web of glimmering filaments threaded across its smooth surface.
Marcellus frowned down at it. “That doesn’t look like a microcam.”
“That’s because I don’t have a microcam.”
“What?”
“Fresh out, I’m afraid. This is the next best thing. An auditeur.”
An auditeur? Marcellus felt his hopes sink once again. He didn’t want a listening device. He wanted a cam. He wanted visual. He wanted no mistakes. Nothing left unseen.
“It’s a very advanced device,” the Capitaine said encouragingly. “Invisible to scans. It will connect directly to your TéléCom via regular
communication channels. The signal will be encrypted to look like an AirLink. No one will ever discover it. Including your … suspect.” He flashed Marcellus another wry grin.
“But I want a microcam,” Marcellus said.
“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Marcellus let out a huff and dropped his gaze back down to the Capitaine’s open palm.
“You’re welcome to take your business elsewhere,” the Capitaine said. “But anyone will tell you—as I’m sure the person who sent you here already did—that I’m the most trustworthy shop in town. As well as the most”—he winked again at Marcellus—“discreet.”
Marcellus pondered his options. He could leave and try to find someone else who could sell him an illegal microcam, or he could attempt to plant this auditeur instead. It was, as the Capitaine said, the next best thing. If his grandfather conducted any business in his office, either in person or by AirLink, Marcellus would be able to hear it.
Plus, he was running out of time.
It had been a full day since his grandfather had stolen Mabelle’s microcam from Marcellus’s rooms. He’d, undoubtably, watched the footage by now.
And tonight was their weekly game of Regiments in the general’s study. It was the perfect moment for Marcellus to find a place to hide the device. Possibly the only moment. Because who knew when Marcellus would be invited back into his grandfather’s office … if ever?
“Fine,” Marcellus said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ten titan buttons he’d removed from one of his officer uniforms earlier. He spread them out on the console. But for the longest time, the Capitaine simply stared at them, his one sagging eye twitching as though he were computing something.
“I was told that would be enough,” Marcellus said nervously, remembering the convict’s instructions.
The Capitaine leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Seems you get told a lot of things, mon ami.” His gaze roved over Marcellus from head to toe. “Anyone ever tell you not to believe everything you’re told?”
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