Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

“I don’t have to kill you to stop you.”

  His grandfather snorted out a laugh, like this was the most ridiculous, childish thing Marcellus had ever said in his life.

  And maybe it was. Maybe Marcellus was still a child. A child with a tender heart he’d inherited from his mother. A child who had never even been able to shoot down a bird. Maybe he would always be that child. And maybe that was exactly what the planet needed right now.

  More tender hearts and less death.

  More wisdom and less violence.

  More people like his father and less people like his grandfather.

  It was no longer just the blood of a three-year-old child and her innocent governess on the general’s hands. It was now the blood of all those people down there.

  “I came here tonight to end you,” Marcellus went on, gaining certainty and clarity with every word. “I was convinced that was what my father would have wanted. What he would have done himself. But I was wrong. Julien Bonnefaçon joined the Vangarde to stop the violence. He never would have wanted this. He would have found another way. He would have made sure that you answered for your crimes. Every single one of them. Just as I will.”

  For a flicker of an instant, Marcellus swore he saw something unfamiliar in his grandfather’s expression. Something akin to fear. Not the kind that comes when you face your own mortality, but the kind that comes when you face your own conscience.

  “I don’t have time for this, Marcellus,” his grandfather snapped before turning and continuing toward the door.

  With a calm, steady composure, Marcellus flicked the switch on the rayonette once more, toggling it back to paralyze mode. To non-lethal mode.

  To the other way.

  The one that didn’t avenge his father, but rather exonerated him.

  Marcellus took aim at his grandfather’s left leg and squeezed the trigger. But just then, the whoosh of a rayonette pulse came from somewhere behind him, followed by the sound of flesh tearing. Marcellus cried out as the sting of a thousand lasers ripped through his shoulder.

  He staggered back, dizzy from the pain. A dark veil curtained his vision. He squinted through it to see his grandfather rushing toward the door and fleeing into the hallway. Marcellus tried to take aim again, but he could barely raise his arm. The pain was excruciating. The rayonette clattered to the ground. Marcellus buckled over on the balcony and stifled another cry. When he glanced down at his right shoulder, he saw the fabric of his tuxedo jacket was charred and smoldering, the exposed skin underneath nothing more than an oozing blackened wound from what had to be the graze of a lethal pulse.

  But who had fired it?

  Struggling to stay upright, Marcellus spun around on the balcony and glanced over the railing, at the terrace. To where Inspecteur Chacal was raising his weapon again and aiming it straight at Marcellus’s head.

  Marcellus barely had time to register the danger before a plume of green silk seemed to emerge from nowhere. It charged into the inspecteur with the force of a droid. The rayonette flew from his hand and clattered down the stairs. Chacal crashed onto his back with his assailant landing on top of him.

  Marcellus’s heart stopped.

  It was Chatine. The green dress was ragged and torn. Her face was streaked with blood. But she was unharmed. At least, for now.

  She tried to scramble away from the fallen inspecteur. But he grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her back with a growl. She clawed at the ground, but it was no use. The inspecteur’s hold was too tight. And he was too angry.

  “You filthy, good-for-nothing déchet!” he roared. His orange eye gleamed with fury as he withdrew the metal baton from his belt and raised it above her head.

  Chatine twisted under his grasp, just managing to dodge the blow as she flipped onto her back.

  Panicked, Marcellus hoisted up his rayonette, but his right arm screamed in pain. He switched to his other hand and fired but the pulse exploded against the base of a flower planter a few mètres away, nowhere even near his target.

  Chatine scrabbled backward across the terrace. Chacal launched himself toward her, abandoning his baton and instead reaching for her neck with his bare hands. Marcellus watched in horror as he began to squeeze.

  Chatine’s eyes bulged. Her strangled voice tried to cry out. Her feet kicked and her hands grappled on the ground for something to use as a weapon. But there was nothing.

  The inspecteur squeezed harder. A vicious, spiteful determination lighting up both of his eyes.

  Marcellus took off at a run, charging out the door of his rooms, through the corridor, and down the imperial staircase. His ribcage throbbed in pain, like someone was stabbing him repeatedly in the side. He spilled out onto the terrace and crashed to a halt when he saw Chatine was no longer on her back. And the inspecteur was no longer strangling her. He was standing upright, grasping at something impaled in his neck. Blood oozed from the wound. His throat made a strange gurgling sound. He staggered backward, looking surprised and infuriated, the circuitry across his face flickering violently.

  Marcellus’s gaze pivoted from Chacal to Chatine. She was still on the ground, panting furiously, her wide, petrified eyes locked on the inspecteur. The hem of her dress was pushed slightly up, revealing one bare foot.

  And that’s when Marcellus recognized the weapon protruding from the inspecteur’s neck.

  It was the sharp stiletto heel of a shoe.

  The inspecteur continued to stagger backward as he tried desperately to dislodge the object. And then it was as if the whole world slowed to a juddering, lumbering crawl. Marcellus could only watch, numbed by the searing pain in his shoulder and the fear clutching at his chest, as the inspecteur’s right boot snagged beneath him. Suddenly, he was falling, tumbling like a planet spun off its orbit, down the sweeping stone stairs to the Imperial Lawn below.

  With each step, his cybernetic eye flashed and flickered.

  Until his body hit the giant flagstone at the bottom of the staircase, and the cruel orange light winked out.

  - CHAPTER 74 - CHATINE

  CHATINE RENARD HAD KNOWN DEATH all her life. When you were born into the Third Estate, it surrounded you wherever you went. It hid in the shadows of the Frets. It lurked in the darkness of Bastille exploits. It waited for you to fall asleep every night so it could plague your dreams. For Chatine, death had always been a permanent fixture. A crack in the ground that you were forever straddling.

  But nothing could have prepared her for this.

  She sat on the top step of the curving stone staircase next to Marcellus, wordlessly taking in the world below. And that was exactly what the Imperial Lawn looked like now. Another world.

  Amid broken tables, destroyed gâteaus, and a sea of broken glass, bodies lay twisted and wide-eyed and eerily still. Blood was everywhere. On the once-pristine tablecloths. On the shredded remains of silk gowns. On the discarded shoes. Even on the row of glowing lamps strung overhead. A few survivors knelt over the mangled bodies, weeping silently. Others wandered the lawn in an astounded, horrified daze, like sleepwalkers locked in a bad dream. The only sounds were the fountains, still gushing and bubbling obliviously up into the night air, and the mournful hoot of a lone owl off in the trees.

  Chatine wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting there before the sound of sirens punctured the silence. Officers and sergents and even droids started to file into the gardens. Chatine was quite certain that, under normal circumstances, droids weren’t even allowed in Ledôme. But these were clearly not normal circumstances.

  “We have to get out of here,” she whispered to Marcellus. It was the first time either of them had spoken since they’d watched Inspecteur Chacal plummet to his death from this very step.

  Marcellus nodded but didn’t speak. Chatine was sure he was in some kind of trance. Death had a tendency to do that. She stood up and offered her hands to help him to his feet. But he didn’t move. Nor did he look at her.

  “Alouette,” he said numbly, his eyes glazed and unbli
nking. “And Cerise. They … My grandfather said … We have to find them.”

  “We will,” Chatine assured him, glancing over her shoulder at the uniformed men and women filling the gardens. They were already starting to take survivors into custody. “But first we need to get away from the Palais.”

  She offered her hands again, and this time he took them, wincing in pain as she pulled him to his feet. Chatine glanced down and, for the first time, noticed the gruesome gash on his right shoulder. It was blackened and charred like overcooked meat.

  That can’t be good.

  Scurrying across the terrace, they found their way down a back set of stairs and into another garden dotted with ornate ponds and marble statues. “How do we get out of here?” Chatine asked.

  Marcellus pointed up ahead at the glimmering fence that marked the edge of the Palais grounds. “The loophole is just up there.” He seemed to struggle with his speech, as though each word required effort to pronounce.

  Chatine nodded and took a step toward the fence but glanced back just in time to see Marcellus teetering on his feet. His eyes rolled back into his head and he started to go down. “Marcellus!” Chatine dove to catch him, but he was too heavy. She felt her knees buckling under his weight. A second later, another figure emerged, darting out from a nearby hedge. It was a woman in a dark Policier uniform. A sergent.

  Chatine’s hopes plummeted. Marcellus would be recognized for sure. He had lost his hat and Sol-glasses somewhere in the battle, and the dirt and blood on his face did little to disguise him.

  The woman rushed over to Chatine and helped lower Marcellus onto the ground. “What happened to him?” she asked, speaking in hushed, urgent tones.

  Chatine tried to respond, but nothing came out. She stared at the woman in confusion as she gently slapped Marcellus’s cheeks, trying to rouse him. Why wasn’t she arresting him?

  Marcellus’s eyes dragged open and his gaze settled on the sergent’s face. But instead of reacting in fear, as Chatine had, his face twisted in what looked like recognition. “You’re that woman I saw fighting … ,” he started to say, but his words were garbled and eventually died completely.

  “It’s okay,” she said, reaching down the front of her uniform and pulling out a long string of what looked like metal beads. On the end hung a small rectangular tag, which she showed to Marcellus as though it was supposed to mean something to him. “I’m on your side. My name is Sister Laurel. I’m going to help you.”

  “Sister?” Marcellus’s forehead crumpled weakly. “But the general said … We thought you were all …”

  “Shh,” Laurel whispered. “Don’t try to speak. Just relax.”

  With delicate fingers, she peeled back what was left of Marcellus’s tuxedo jacket and shirt. He winced sharply at her touch and looked like he might lose consciousness again. “Was this from a lethal pulse?” she asked Chatine.

  “I-I don’t know,” Chatine finally managed to stammer out. “What if it was?”

  “Then it needs to be tended to immediately.” Laurel reached into the pocket of her sergent’s uniform and pulled out a small vial. She uncorked it and ran it under Marcellus’s nose. Chatine had no idea what was in that vial, but Marcellus jerked violently awake at the smell of it. Like he’d been doused with ice cold water. Laurel helped him back to his feet before turning to Chatine. “That should help a little with the pain and keep him conscious, but you need to take him back to the Refuge. There are motos parked just outside the fence, near the entrance to the hunting grounds.”

  The Refuge. The word clattered noisily around Chatine’s mind. Wasn’t that what Alouette had called the Vangarde’s secret base? Chatine looked at the woman in the uniform again, suddenly seeing her with new eyes.

  She was one of them.

  “No,” Marcellus said, shaking his head. He seemed clearer now. More lucid. “I can’t go back. I have to find Alouette.”

  “You have to get medical attention,” Laurel said sternly. “Let me worry about Alouette. I have a team of operatives here. And we know where she is.”

  “Where—” Marcellus started to ask but was cut off by a noise behind them. The rustle of footsteps on grass.

  Laurel gave Chatine a pointed look. “Go. Now.”

  * * *

  Chatine guided the moto through the darkened Vallonay landscape. Marcellus clung to her waist as she steered toward the cluster of rusting, crooked edifices in the distance.

  Another place she never thought she’d return to.

  The Frets were exactly as Chatine had remembered them. Two weeks on Bastille and nearly another two in the Terrain Perdu, and nothing had changed. The Marsh still smelled like rotting seaweed. The ground around the shuttered market stalls was still littered with the scraps of mangy vegetables. And the clang and whir of patrolling droids was still deafening. But for some reason, Chatine felt immune to it all. She observed the stacks of trash and dank, grimy passageways with a distant curiosity. Almost as though she were a visitor from another planet. A foreign dignitary sent on a diplomatic mission to chronicle the state of the system.

  As she and Marcellus weaved through the marketplace in the direction of Fret 7, she no longer felt the coldness in her bones, the hunger in her belly, or the suffering in her heart. The misery that had followed her around this planet for the past eighteen years was somehow nowhere to be found. Vanished in the stiff, biting winds of the Terrain Perdu.

  “Are you sure you remember where it is?” Marcellus asked her for what had to be the fifth time since they’d left the Grand Palais.

  “Yes,” Chatine said. “I went to Bastille protecting this place. Trust me, I remember where it is.”

  They entered the long, dark hallway of Fret 7, a place Chatine had once called home. In a former lifetime. With one arm dangling limp at his side and the other clutching his ribcage, Marcellus followed closely behind her, his gaze darting anxiously at each closed couchette door that they passed.

  She didn’t blame him for being nervous. In their blood-stained formal attire, they didn’t exactly blend in around here.

  The mechanical room was damp and dingy, with rusting machines, a tangle of knotted pipes and cobwebs, and a giant greasy puddle in the center of the floor. Marcellus glanced around in awe, his gaze halting at a broken pipe that was dangling from one of the PermaSteel walls. He stared at it like he was staring straight into his past. Into his other lifetime. “I can’t believe the base has been right here,” he whispered dazedly, “this whole time.”

  “The best crocs hide in plain sight.”

  He looked at her, and for a moment, their gazes locked, a thousand silent words streaming between them, their two former lifetimes crashing back together. The old Marcellus and the old Chatine saying their adieus.

  Chatine offered him a small smile before hurrying behind a large, decrepit piece of machinery and kneeling down. She wedged her fingernails under the rusting metal and slid the grate to the side, uncovering a dark cylindrical shaft cut into the floor. In the dim light of the mechanical room, they could see a single ladder leading down, eventually swallowed by the darkness below.

  Marcellus looked up at Chatine with a slightly petrified expression and quirked an eyebrow. “Ladies first?”

  She snorted. “Then, by all means, after you.”

  With a smirk, Marcellus maneuvered himself onto the ladder, cringing in pain as he grabbed the first rung. Once he’d reached the bottom and called back up to her, Chatine took a deep breath and crept toward the edge. She had climbed up countless walls in these Frets, but never had she climbed down beneath them. As she replaced the grate above her head and descended the ladder, she tried to chase away the barrage of disturbing memories that flooded her mind. Memories of being trapped in those dark exploits, under the surface of Bastille. Whatever happened next, wherever her new path may lead, she was determined to never set foot on that moon again.

  She felt Marcellus’s hand at her back, indicating she’d reached the bottom. She hoppe
d off the ladder and found herself in a dim, hollowed-out space with a large PermaSteel door cut into the wall.

  She looked to Marcellus. “What do we do now?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose we could just knock.”

  “Knock?” Chatine said with a roll of her eyes. “We’re standing at the door of the most famous rebel group on the planet, and you want to knock?”

  He scoffed. “Well, do you have a better idea? Do you want to try to ram the door open with your—”

  Suddenly, a deep, ominous click echoed off the bedrock walls, sending a shiver through Chatine. She turned to Marcellus again, unsure what to do. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Chatine saw the flicker of movement. Her gaze snapped back to the door, and she leapt out of the way just as the large, solid bloc of PermaSteel began to swing toward them.

  - CHAPTER 75 - ALOUETTE

  THE ELEVATOR WHISKED DOWN, LIKE a plummeting rock. Alouette gripped hold of the ornate metalwork as the breeze battered at her hair. Below, the lights of Ledôme’s boulevards, parks, and manoirs grew larger and brighter as she descended, and in the distance, the windows and floodlit lawns of the Grand Palais glowed into view.

  Looking over it all, Alouette felt strangely numb and completely alive, all at the same time. It was as if she’d gone up this tower as one person, and now she was returning to the ground as another. Something had shifted inside her, and everything was now reforming, reshaping, evolving. Who she was. Where she came from. What she was capable of.

  She was still Alouette Taureau, the girl who’d been saved and loved by a convict named Jean LeGrand. She was still the Little Lark, too, the girl who’d been raised, nurtured, and trained by the Sisterhood. But she’d flown beyond those names now. There was something new brewing inside her. Beginning to emerge.

  These half-formed and dream-like thoughts cycled through Alouette’s mind as the elevator finally touched down and its door clanged open. She stepped out, and for a second, gazed up at the vast TéléSky. The stars blinked and sparkled in the blackness.