“We can’t just leave them here.” He felt anger simmering just under his skin. He was furious at her, himself, at everyone.
“We can’t stay, either,” Lydia said. She turned around, and Aly unconsciously backed up. “Do you have any idea what’s at stake? How important the two of you are? Better question—do you know why they haven’t killed you yet?”
He felt like his brain had been seared. A white-hot flash of confusion and déjà vu.
“Why did they frame you?” Vin had asked. Challenged. “I’m the spy. I’m the one who sent out the hail.”
“They were prepping you, Aly,” Lydia said now, answering her own question. “They wanted to Ravage your cube. While you were alive. Wanted all your memories so they could mount a case against you. Prove without a shadow of a doubt that you did it—that you killed the Princess.”
Aly shook his head. He didn’t believe it; he couldn’t even think it. The Ravaging. He remembered all those people they’d found on the zeppelin . . . the woman drawing triangles she believed were her son’s face . . .
Kara had said they were leaching memories, souls.
He suddenly felt like he might throw up.
Did that mean they had the technology, too, to twist his memories, to shape them into a story?
“Now take how horrified you feel and multiply it by infinity, and you’ll know how I feel,” Lydia said quietly. Her jaw was set. Her eyes burned into him, made him want to look away.
“Why?” Kara asked. Aly shook his head, afraid to know the answer. “What’s it got to do with you?”
“It’s got everything to do with me,” Lydia said, looking back toward her daughter. “I’m the one who designed the technology. I’m the one who taught them how.”
TWENTY-THREE
RHIANNON
AT last, she would come face-to-face with the real killer. Nero.
“I know I’m intimidating,” Rhee said drily, “but are these escorts really necessary?” Her hands were cuffed behind her back as she walked alongside the man with the eye patch. Two NXs flanked her on either side, and the zipping noise of their joints grated on her nerves.
The man smirked in a way that lifted the scarred corner of his mouth. “Let’s just say they’re here to encourage your best behavior.”
As if her life were a reward she’d have to earn through being quiet, obedient, good. The man clasped the back of her neck, the way her father would—but pinching it so that her muscles tightened involuntarily. The man wore Dahlen’s ring on his pinky finger, which was curved around her neck toward her cube. Rhee didn’t know where they were keeping Dahlen, and not knowing made her feel like a balloon descending—all her logic, her perfectly constructed revenge fantasies, emptying out into the void.
“Where are we going?” They’d made so many turns that she couldn’t keep count, until eventually they stood before a nondescript door.
It was an auditorium inside, stadium seating facing down into a dark pit that was the stage. Her skin crawled, recalling the moment Veyron had led her to the room of her ancestors’ altars—the night he tried to kill her. Dahlen had saved her then. She only hoped she had time to save him now.
The droids split behind her and walked to either side of the room and halfway down the stairs, where they stood guard. Rhee walked down the center aisle, keenly aware that the scarred man had allowed her to do so. Whereas the auditorium on the Eliedio had been carpeted, with low lights and plush red velvet seats, this had a clinical quality to it. Shiny metal chairs. The antiseptic smell of bleach and lemon. A glass barrier, she realized once she descended all the way, that split the seats from whatever was on the dark stage. Rhee’s hands had been cuffed behind her back.
She pressed her face up against the cool glass, watching her breath fog up, fearing what waited in the shadows.
The lights came on then, and Rhee swallowed a gasp. White tiles. Metal tables with wheels, covered in white sheets and sharp medical tools arrayed in delicate, almost beautiful arrangements—like an ancient mandala. Lining the wall of the round room were more tables, more vials, cranks for ancestors knew what.
Nero emerged. His wide shoulders cut a silhouette that Rhee would’ve thought impressive before, but now she saw it for what it was: a man playing dress-up in his double-breasted blazer, desperate for power, full of hatred. “Princess,” he said as he walked up to the empty center, bowing in Rhee’s direction. His formality was a slap in the face. “How do you like my new facility?”
“You disgust me.”
“I’m disappointed to hear that.” His face hardened, its beauty smoothed away by something deeply sinister. “Because the truth is I admire you very much. Veyron did too.”
Rhee felt sick at the mere mention of his name. She’d killed a man, and she would do it again. She would never be worthy of Julian or his forgiveness.
“How did you turn him?” she asked of Veyron.
“He begged to spare your life, said he loved you like a daughter . . .”
She banged her shoulder against the glass barrier in anger. “Answer me!”
“You know the answer, Rhiannon. In the end you weren’t his daughter. And it was between you and Julian. I still haven’t decided if I should spare the boy, seeing as Veyron didn’t technically fulfill the contract.”
“Julian will kill you first,” she said, hoping it was true. He was strong, and fast. He had good instincts. But he also had a soft heart—he was too trusting. She should have stayed with him. Looked out for him, like she always had.
“I’m untouchable,” Nero said, and Rhee feared he meant it. “Do you think I’ve acted rashly? That I seized my chance when I could?” He shook his head. “I own everything and everyone. I’ve been planning since I was your age, picking and choosing my allies, building a loyal army of followers.”
“They’re not followers, they’re viewers, you fool. They’re fickle. This isn’t loyalty! You’ve preyed on their fear and—”
“And I got exactly the result I wanted,” he said, cutting her off. “I have millions of Kalusians foaming at the mouth for war. We’re going to invade Wraeta.”
Rhee shook her head. Her mouth was dry. “Why?”
“You know the difference between you and me, Princess?” Nero asked, ignoring her and clearly relishing the moment. “I played the long game. But you—you want what you want, and you want it now. Do you have any idea how much time it actually takes to start a war? A successful one, at least . . .” He paused, and then brought his sleeve up to shine one of the brass buttons on the front of his blazer. “When one’s plan fails, you have to have another in place, one you can enact immediately. And when Veyron failed, I found another Wraetan to blame for your death.”
“How poetic,” Rhee said through gritted teeth. But she fumed beneath the sarcasm. Veyron and the boy who’d been blamed for her death, both of them sacrificed at the altar of Nero’s war lust.
“And meanwhile, you’d taken care of the hardest part: Seotra. So blinded by your own desires that you constructed a narrative, set up your father’s best friend, and then had him burn. So you tell me: Who’s the fool?”
Rhee felt suddenly hollow. Instead of blood and guts there was nothing inside except oxygen. Nero had lit a match and set her on fire from the inside out.
“At a loss for words, Princess? You? Ask me again—ask me why I’m invading Wraeta.” Nero’s face lit up as he waited for her to respond. There was true happiness in the contours of his smile. But Rhee thought it was like watching skin peel away, exposing the rotten soul underneath.
Fine. She would play. “Why?”
“Because Wraeta has the overwriter.”
Rhee would have laughed if she didn’t know Nero was serious. The overwriter was another myth, a dangerous idea someone had claimed to invent at the last G-1K summit. A technology that could not only read a cube but change it, alterin
g a person’s memories and thoughts and feelings.
“You can’t really believe the overwriter exists,” Rhee scoffed, wishing she sounded more confident.
“I don’t believe it does,” Nero said. “I know it. Fame and adoration fall short. A face like this will age.” Nero smiled again as he motioned to himself. “But power won’t. Imagine being able to speak through any cube, to anyone at will, throughout the whole universe. Imagine being able to whisper to them, not through their ears but their minds . . .”
“You’re sick.” She shook her head. She felt numb. She didn’t bother to ask why he thought the overwriter existed, or why he believed it was on Wraeta. He was obviously insane.
“And it seems you’re cursed. Everyone you love dies.” There were still glimpses of the man she thought she knew. The whole time he’d been plotting her death. It was beyond any kind of evil she could’ve imagined. She ached for her dagger. She imagined cleaving his heart into quarters, separating the arteries the way you might carve out the membranes in an orange.
“You killed them.” Nero had taken everyone she loved away from her. Though Rhee remembered the Elder’s words and felt a flicker of hope that her sister was still alive.
He shook his head. “That’s not true. Not the Fontisian.” He sighed. “I won’t be the one to kill him. You will.”
TWENTY-FOUR
ALYOSHA
ALY couldn’t believe it. He was still unsteady on his feet—and Kara backed up, recoiling from her mom like she was diseased. Lydia had just told them she was responsible for all of this. When he tried to take Kara’s arm, she yanked it away.
“You helped them Ravage those people?” she asked Lydia.
“I didn’t know,” her mom answered. “I was just a scientist. I was working on ways to speed up person-to-person transfers, to facilitate information flow. When I got invited to the G-1K summit I was thrilled. I never dreamed . . .” She trailed off. “Summits were just as much about philosophy as they were science. We were talking about existence and memory—and people came in with brilliant, crazy ideas. It’s what made it so exciting. Dynamic. But when Diac Zofim claimed he’d found a way not just to extract memories but to change them . . . no one believed him at first.”
“What are you saying?” Aly asked.
“Diac invented the overwriter before anyone knew it existed. But as soon as word got around, he ended up dead—and the tech disappeared. That’s what Nero wants. He’ll torture anyone with any answers until he finds it.”
“That’s why he’s been Ravaging scientists who were invited to the G-1K,” Kara whispered. “He’s sorting through their memories, looking for clues about the overwriter.”
Lydia nodded. “If they catch us we’re worse than dead. We’d be shells. Every memory—every part of your mind that makes you you—ripped out, your humanity severed.”
A part of Aly hadn’t believed it was true until now. He looked over at Kara. “Those people on the zeppelin . . . You were right.”
She nodded. Her face was stone-cold. “They’d had the procedure. All of them.”
“Activists, scientists, prominent figures—they’re disappearing, and being fed out into the world with no cube. There’s no more time,” Lydia said, edging closer. “Nero will put you up on that screen and make you say you murdered that little girl. And then he’ll execute you to set an example.”
Aly was definitely going to throw up.
Lydia took the device from Kara and held the projection of the prison layout, pointing out the safest route that had them evading any wandering Tasinn. “First right, sprint; third left, sprint; seventh left, normal pace . . .” She listed them as sequences of seven, and Aly barely thought as he took off, repeating the sequence in his head. It was the kind of distraction he needed, hustling on autopilot just like he’d done in boot camp. Follow orders, do them quick.
They sprinted some more, stop and go, kneeling, hiding, passing through more air locks, and figuring out which direction was up and which was down. And even though he’d gotten beat down by gravity, sore and bruised, falling every direction when they slipped between sections—he was getting into the groove, finding his feet again, and racing past both of them. Lydia was losing her breath, and at one point Aly and Kara had to put their arms together around her waist to hurry her along. She was limping. The last fall had been worse than it looked.
But they had weaved their way toward the south quadrant and were nearly there.
“Last door. Stay low,” Lydia whispered as she touched the keypad and swiped them through.
“How did you get access?” Aly asked carefully.
“She hacked in,” Kara said. He thought he’d noticed Lydia’s face change, a flinch, almost—like an invisible insect had flown straight for her eyes. Vin had had that same look the day Aly left him behind on their ship.
They followed Lydia into a cold garage, fifty meters long maybe, all-terrain vehicles parked neatly in stalls. “There’s the line of confiscated droids,” she said pointing to the row along the wall. Aly found himself sprinting for them, calling Pavel’s name—which was pointless since Pavel was powered down. Aly found him, eventually, compacted into his dome shape and hidden behind some boxier load-bearing models. He spun Pavel in a circle, looking for any external damage and feeling just like a little kid again, getting exactly what he wanted for his birthday. He thought about powering him up but was too scared; they might’ve loaded him with some sort of tracking device or virus. They had to wait till they were somewhere safe so he could run the diagnostics and quash any added software. He squeezed Pavel, not caring if anyone was looking.
And that’s when the alarm started to sound.
Everything flashed red. The noise was awful, like a crowbar cleaving open his brain, and he held P even tighter to his chest. Scrambling back, only the flashes of red to light his way, he got turned around and didn’t know where he was. More important, he didn’t know where Lydia and Kara were.
Then he heard the roar of a motor and was suddenly blinded by two headlights bearing down on him. An all-terrain rover skidded just past him to a stop, and reversed. The door popped open to show Kara leaning over the passenger seat.
“Get in!” she called over the screaming alarm. Of course she knew how to drive one of these things.
Aly hopped in, and when the door closed behind him he heard the air lock engage. He placed Pavel by his feet as Kara shifted gears, barreling two tons of metal death through the stalls of parked cars, zigzagging their way toward the exit. “Hang on!” she called behind her as she gunned it toward the garage door, a second layer of reinforced metal grates closing over the entrance. Red lights assaulted their eyes. They burst through both levels, the grates denting their roof. Once they’d cleared the exit, the rover bounced as it trod over the debris. It was dark, the sky scorched, the ground covered with millions of electromagnetic creatures that crawled and wormed over one another, crushed under their tread.
Lydia was slumped in the backseat, letting out shallow breaths. She’d lost her color; her skin looked gray. But they’d escaped. They’d done it.
“Thank you,” Aly said, twisting in his seat to grab Lydia’s hand. She did her best to squeeze his fingers, but it was as if all her strength had left her.
“You asked how?” she wheezed. “How I accessed all those doors? How I had the blueprints?”
“You said already.” Kara looked at her mom through the rearview mirror. “You hacked the system.”
“You said that.” Lydia licked her lips, but there was no water to give her. “I gave them what they wanted. Mind, body, cube—that trinity made this prison possible. Made it impregnable, or so they thought. But they created fail-safes, just in case.”
“What are you saying, Mom?” Kara asked. Her voice was rising toward panic. Aly motioned for her to move over so he could drive, and she didn’t argue. She crawled into the b
ackseat with Lydia, and he slid over to grab the wheel.
The steering wheel vibrated in his hands, and he could feel how hard the car resisted the pressure of gravity bearing down on them. He did a two-step with the clutch and gas before he downshifted. In the rearview he could see Kara slip her arm under her mom’s head.
“He knows,” Lydia said, locking eyes with Aly in the rearview. “Don’t you, Aly?”
“What is she talking about?” Kara demanded.
“Your mom wasn’t a prisoner,” Aly said, after a moment’s hesitation. “She was a warden. Right?”
Lydia’s eyes flickered, even as Kara shook her head.
“No,” she said. “That’s impossible. That’s impossible. Right, Mom?”
Lydia didn’t answer directly. “The Uniforce, they put something in me. A poison, right here, behind my heart.” She brought her hand to her chest. “Once my coordinates get too far from the prison, it’ll trigger. The whole thing will burst . . .”
“No.”
“I haven’t seen your real eye color in years, not since we first met.” Lydia smiled, and brought her hand up to Kara’s cheek. Aly felt a pulse of shock. So he hadn’t been hallucinating earlier. Her eyes really were changing colors. “You stopped taking your meds?”
“Mom, don’t worry about that right now. I had to lower my dosage because I was running out.” Kara was clinging to Lydia, choking on sobs. “Please. What’s going on? We’ll slow down. We’ll hide until we can figure out how to remove the poison . . . Aly, stop. Stop.”
But Lydia shook her head. “Don’t, Alyosha. You both have to get far from here. You owe me. I risked everything so that you could escape. Do it!” she said hoarsely, and Aly kept his foot on the gas, wishing he could block out the sound of Kara weeping. He knew the feeling, pleading for more time, trying to reverse it, trying to make a different ending.
“It’s too late, anyway. It was too late the moment we left the prison.” Lydia coughed, and black liquid welled to her lips. For a long time, she said nothing, and Aly thought it was over, though he could still hear the wheezing of her breath whenever she exhaled. Kara was still crying, not even bothering to try to hide it. But finally, Lydia took a deep, rattling breath.
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