Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

But the Patriarche was adamant. “The people have to know she’s dead! Every planet in the System Alliance must be alerted. And the Vangarde have to know their precious Rousseau is gone.”

  “The Vangarde will use her death to rally the people around their cause,” the general said. “This is a highly volatile time on our planet, and martyrs make for much better motivators than prisoners. It’s the reason we made the decision not to kill her when she was first captured.”

  “You made that decision,” the Patriarche said, jabbing a finger in the general’s direction.

  Marcellus kneaded his hands together. The energy in the room was making him antsy. He was desperate to get this whole catastrophe over with so he could get out of here and contact the Vangarde.

  “The final decision to incarcerate Rousseau was your father’s,” the general replied tightly to the Patriarche. “I simply provided council.”

  “Well, my father was an imbecile,” the Patriarche raged. “He was the one who let the planet break out in rebellion in the first place. I’m sorry, General. I cannot let my people go on thinking she is still alive and well. I want her dead face broadcast on every TéléSkin on Laterre.” He turned back to Marcellus. “Contact the droids. Tell them to start preparations for the body to be retrieved.”

  Marcellus glanced momentarily at his grandfather before reaching a shaking hand toward his screen.

  “Arrête,” the general commanded. “Put the TéléCom down, Marcellus.”

  The Patriarche snarled at the general’s blatant disobedience. Marcellus paused, his chest tightening as his gaze bounced between his superior and his superior’s superior. But General Bonnefaçon was no longer even looking at Marcellus or the Patriarche. He was back to looking at the monitor. Something on it had caught his attention.

  “Proceed,” the Patriarche commanded Marcellus.

  “No.” The general stepped even closer to the monitor, his eyes dark and intense, his jaw hardened.

  “General Bonnefaçon,” the Patriarche spat, the rage rolling off him in thick waves. “How dare you—”

  “Shut up!” the general said, holding up a hand to the Patriarche’s face.

  Marcellus was certain the Patriarche was going to have a heart attack right then and there. Eyes blazing, Lyon Paresse took a furious step toward the general, but was suddenly held back by Chaumont who whispered something in his ear.

  The Patriarche’s fists clenched, but he reluctantly stayed put.

  Marcellus studied the general, trying to figure out what had caught his attention. He approached carefully and stood beside the general. He stared up at the monitor, which still displayed Citizen Rousseau’s lifeless body sprawled out on the gurney.

  “What is it?” the warden asked, walking over from his desk.

  For a long moment, the general didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the monitor, his eyes flicking furiously over the screen. Then, out of nowhere, he roared out a command. “Rolland, zoom in on her left hand!”

  The technicien jabbed furiously at her control panel until the microcam pushed forward and to the left, focusing entirely on the prisoner’s hand.

  “More,” the general said.

  Rolland did as she was told until Rousseau’s long, skeletal fingers were the only thing in the frame.

  The Patriarche hurried over and stood on the other side of the general. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wait,” the general said, his eyes narrowing.

  Everyone in the room was as still and silent as that corpse. All eyes were trained on the monitor.

  And then, it happened.

  It was so small, so fast, it was almost imperceptible. In fact, it was imperceptible until just a few moments ago. But now, it was all Marcellus could see.

  The smallest finger on Citizen Rousseau’s left hand twitched ever so slightly, before falling still again.

  “There!” the general called out.

  The Patriarche gasped and stumbled back, away from the screen, as though Citizen Rousseau might come crawling through the monitor to strangle him. Marcellus took a step forward, leaning in to get a better look.

  “She’s alive?” he whispered.

  But before anyone could answer, it happened again. The smallest finger. The smallest movement. But there was something very strange about it. Something almost familiar. As though it were the exact same movement. The same twitch, followed by the same stillness.

  The general must have come to an identical conclusion, because a second later, he reached into his pocket, unfolded his TéléCom, and bellowed into the screen. “This is General Bonnefaçon to Bastille Central Command. We need an immediate status update for prisoner 40102. Please send the nearest droid to the morgue for visual confirmation.”

  The general waited. Everyone waited. Finally, the Patriarche stomped forward, and before the general could stop him, he jabbed his finger against the screen of the general’s TéléCom, routing the audio to the device’s external speakers just in time to hear the response. The robotic voice was coming from thousands of kilomètres away, but Marcellus still felt it as though it were being whispered directly into his ear.

  “There is currently one droid stationed in the Med Center. Visual status cannot be confirmed. Prisoner 40102 is no longer in the Bastille morgue.”

  “Sols!” General Bonnefaçon shouted.

  “What’s going on?” the Patriarche demanded. “I don’t understand. How can she not be in the morgue?” He swatted at the screen. “I can see her right there with my own eyes.”

  “The feed has been looped,” the general explained hastily. “She’s not there. She’s gone. We’re watching an archive.”

  Gone.

  The impossible word tumbled around Marcellus’s brain as he stared at the image on the screen. At that tiny finger and that tiny intermittent twitch.

  “Looped?” the Patriarche repeated, as though it were far too advanced a term for him and he was still having trouble keeping up.

  But the general didn’t have time for any more explanations. He was already back on his TéléCom. Even though his face was twisted with rage, his voice was eerily calm. “This is General Bonnefaçon to flight dispatch. I want every combatteur we have on the Masséna Spacecraft carrier en route to Bastille immediately.” There was a short pause before General Bonnefaçon spoke again, and this time, the words sent a thrill of anticipation ricocheting down Marcellus’s spine. A thrill of, dare he think it, hope. “The Vangarde have just declared war on the Regime.”

  - CHAPTER 13 - ALOUETTE

  THE RECEPTION ROOM OF THE blood bordel was small, dotted with rickety tables, threadbare rugs, and low-hanging lamps. Through the dim glow, Alouette could make out chairs covered with worn-out velvet, and on a long, sagging couch that had seen better days, a few girls huddled together. The moment Alouette stepped into the room, they looked up at her, their eyes big and round and glassy. More girls emerged from the corners and shadows, like small creatures poking tentatively out from a cave.

  Alouette hesitated for a moment, unsure where to go or what to say. The haunted, round eyes just stared at her, and no one said a word.

  Until Alouette felt something touch her elbow, light and gentle like a butterfly.

  “What lovely hair,” a voice whispered.

  Alouette looked down to see a tiny girl in a silky azure dress, stained at its collar and shabby at its hems. The girl’s eyes were wider and more haunted than all the others in the room. But she was gazing up at Alouette with a shy smile. “Is this your first time?”

  “Actually, I—” Alouette tried to say, but another girl in an ill-fitting yellow dress sidled up to them.

  “If you relax, it doesn’t hurt at all,” she said. Her voice was rough and harsh, but her expression was kind.

  Alouette’s gaze moved quickly over the girls. She tried to picture her mother sitting there, on that couch, in this room, huddled and staring. But she simply couldn’t grip the image in her mind. It was too loose, too slippery. And she d
idn’t have enough to hold on to. She had no real memories of her mother. No kind eyes. No gentle, reassuring arms embracing her. No scents. Nothing.

  All she had was a small titan box stashed away in her bag.

  And those words flitting around her like nasty, biting insects.

  “… the daughter of a worthless blood whore.”

  That horrible cyborg inspecteur, Limier, had said this about Alouette back in the Forest Verdure. The words were spiteful and malicious, and at first, Alouette hadn’t dared believe them. Until she remembered that cyborgs were incapable of lying. It was part of their programming. And that’s when Alouette realized the words—as painful as they were to hear—were a clue.

  Her mother had once been one of these girls. She’d sold her blood in a bordel. This bordel. It had to be. Montfer was the last known location Alouette had for her mother, and Dahlia had said this was the only bordel in the city.

  “Just remember, don’t accept the first offer they give you,” said the girl in yellow, nudging Alouette with her pointy elbow. “You can always negotiate a higher price.”

  “She’s right,” the tiny girl in blue whispered, still smiling. “I learned that lesson too late.”

  “But I’m not here to—”Alouette began, but she was cut off again as an authoritative voice rang across the room.

  “Heloise! What are you doing, standing there chattering?”

  An older woman emerged from the darkness wearing green medical scrubs as threadbare and stained as the rugs on the floor. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun and her small, shrewish eyes glimmered in the room’s low light.

  “I called you five minutes ago,” she went on. “It’s time for your treatment.”

  The small girl in the blue dress—Heloise—gave Alouette one last smile, before wordlessly slinking away and disappearing behind an unmarked door at the other end of the reception area.

  “And Zéphine,” continued the woman. “You can go in now too.”

  As Alouette watched the girl in the yellow dress follow Heloise through the door, she suddenly couldn’t help but notice how young she was. So frail and thin, she looked almost sickly. All of them did, in fact. There was a drabness about their complexions, a hint of bruises and rashes on their bare shoulders, and their eyes were sunken and tired.

  Alouette had read about the illegal blood trade in the Chronicles. Young girls being lured to the bordels to have the nutrients stripped from their blood and shipped off to some fabrique to turn them into rejuvenating face creams and injections for the upper estates. Girls could make ten times what they made in a Ministère-assigned job. But many girls went too far. Sold too much. They grew thin and sick and wasted. And many of them ended up in the morgue.

  All for the sake of a larg.

  Was that how her mother had died? Had she sold too much? Alouette had always been told her mother had gotten very sick, but no one had divulged more than that. Was this place responsible for her death?

  “Welcome, chérie.” Alouette turned toward the woman in the green scrubs who was now speaking directly to her. “It’s always nice to see a new face here. And such a pretty one too. I’m Médecin Clodie.”

  Alouette studied the woman’s clean, unmarked features. There was no way she was a true médecin. She would have had cyborg circuitry implanted. Alouette guessed it was a made-up title. Something they told girls to make them feel more comfortable. To make the establishment feel more professional.

  A blatant lie.

  There was nothing professional about murder.

  Despite her disdain, Alouette forced herself to smile back, trying to match the woman’s kind, open expression. If she was going to get any answers here, she couldn’t let her disgust show.

  “We’re glad you came to visit us tonight,” said Clodie, still smiling. “Would you please come with me?”

  The woman led Alouette into an adjacent room as dimly lit and shabby as the reception area. But there were no sagging couches or faded rugs here. Instead, the bare floor was grimy and stained—with what, Alouette shuddered to imagine—and in the middle of the room sat a long row of reclining chairs with tattered leather seats and rusting armrests. Next to each chair was a sinister gray machine covered in wheezing pumps, clanking pistons, and small spinning filters. Half of the recliners held young girls, some seemingly no older than twelve, whose spindly arms were connected to the whirring contraptions by long tubes filled with dark crimson liquid.

  The other recliners were empty.

  Waiting for their next victims.

  Alouette watched in horror as Heloise climbed onto one of the empty chairs, pushed back the ragged sleeve of her blue dress, and extended her left arm. Next to her, another woman in dirty scrubs prepared a long needle. Alouette’s stomach flipped at the sight, and she had to look away.

  “Right in here,” said Clodie, ushering Alouette through another door. This room was small and held nothing but an old desk and two scuffed chairs. Clodie closed the door and took the seat behind the desk before gesturing for Alouette to sit. “I’m just going to ask you some preliminary questions.” She flashed Alouette another fake smile.

  “Actually … ,” Alouette said, glancing nervously at the closed door. She turned back to Clodie, who had pulled a TéléCom from the desk drawer and was now tapping into it. “You see … I was just hoping I might speak with whoever is in charge.”

  “The madame is very busy,” said Clodie dismissively. “What is your age?”

  “I really need to speak to her.”

  Clodie’s smile grew tighter. “I will check if she’s available as soon as we’re done here. Your age?”

  “Sixteen.”

  The woman tapped something into the TéléCom and looked up again. “And where do you live?”

  “Can you check if she’s available now?” Alouette asked, growing restless. “It’s very important.”

  The woman pursed her lips and spoke into the TéléCom. “Client prefers not to divulge location.” She turned back to Alouette. “Have you recently been exposed to any metals or disease like the rot?”

  “Please,” Alouette said. “I only need a few minutes of her time.”

  The woman sighed and stood up. “Apparently, we have to do this the other way.” She reached into the drawer of her desk, pulled out a small spherical object, and handed it to Alouette. “Hold this please.”

  Alouette took the object and studied it curiously. It looked like one of the marbles Jacqui used to let Alouette play with back in the Refuge when she was little, except this was twice the size and had strange rectangular indentations covering the surface. “What is—OUCH!” She dropped it on the desk and stared at her index finger, which now had a small pin prick of blood on the tip.

  Clodie picked up the sphere and turned it around, examining a row of tiny colored lights that had appeared on the surface. “Oh my,” she said delightedly, a genuine smile swiftly replacing the artificial one. “You are a prime candidate for extraction. Your blood nutrient level is off the charts.”

  Alouette tensed, frustration coursing through her nutrient-dense veins. The woman had tricked her.

  “I’m happy to report we can offer you fifty largs in exchange for an extraction. The procedure is quite simple. And painless. We don’t actually take your blood—that’s a popular misconception. We simply draw it out, a little at a time, extract the nutrients we need and return the blood back to your—”

  “No,” Alouette said, narrowing her eyes.

  “If you need something to help you relax, we can offer you that too.”

  “I’m not selling you my blood. I want to talk to the madame.”

  Clodie flinched but quickly recomposed herself. “It’s a very competitive offer. More than you can expect from any other establishment.”

  Alouette jumped out of her seat. This place was making her too anxious. Maybe she should just forget the whole thing. The madame probably didn’t even remember her mother. It had been more than fifteen years ago
. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “This was a mistake. I’m—”

  “Wait,” Clodie stood up and smoothed out the front of her scrubs. “We don’t normally do this, so please don’t tell the other girls. But”—she paused, lowering her voice and taking in a breath—“a hundred largs.”

  Alouette stared at the woman, dumbfounded. She was really going to offer her a hundred largs for the nutrients in her blood? That was ludicrous. That was appalling. That was …

  Desperate.

  Alouette scanned the woman’s angular features, which were taut in what could only be described as desperation. Alouette remembered what the girl in yellow had told her back in the reception area—“don’t accept the first offer”—and an idea came to her. She arranged her face in what she hoped was a tenacious expression and stood up straight. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I talk to the madame.”

  “I assure you the madame has given me full authority to negotiate on the establishment’s behalf.”

  “Good,” said Alouette defiantly. “Then, if you want the nutrients in my’’—she fought back a gag—“blood, I’m sure you’ll have no problem getting me a meeting with her.”

  The woman’s jaw tightened. She stared long and hard at Alouette. Despite her churning stomach, Alouette forced herself to stare long and hard back. “Fine,” the woman finally relented. “Wait here. I’ll see if she’s available.”

  As soon as Clodie was gone, Alouette collapsed back into the chair, like she’d just swum the Secana Sea. But she also felt a swell of pride. Two weeks away from the Refuge, and Alouette was already becoming a different person.

  “You asked to see me?” came a woman’s voice a few minutes later. Alouette pivoted in her chair as her gaze landed first on a shiny, heeled shoe, then a sleek gold dress and even sleeker shoulder-length golden hair, before finally resting on the most disturbing face Alouette had ever seen. The woman’s eyebrows were arched unnaturally high, as though a string were pulling them straight toward the ceiling. The skin of her forehead looked as though it had been peeled off, stretched to the limit, and then pasted back on. And her cheekbones appeared to be in the entirely wrong place. Was this what those poor girls’ blood was being used for? To make someone look like that? Alouette fought hard to not react to the sight.