by Audrey Grey
Ignoring the body in the chair, I find the door, crack it. The wind rips it from my hands.
Bridge, sky, bridge, sky.
I wait. Time dribbles by. And then I look down, and instead of train tracks I see air.
There’s a hideous metal-on-metal noise, as if the train is screaming, and the floor vanishes from my feet. Total silence, as if I’m inside a vacuum. I am suspended in the air. Weightless. A curious falling feeling fills my middle. Steaming black coffee trickles from the black mug floating by my head. For a single, haunting moment, I am frozen.
My father stands amidst the paused wreckage. But not the glitched version—the flesh and blood one. The kiss-you-before-bed one. The burn-your-toast one.
The dead one.
Every last detail of him is real. The white hairs that make his auburn hair appear blond in the sunlight. The two deep-set lines that crinkle his forehead. His wire-framed spectacles, lens cracked in the corner, peek from his pocket. Glass shards, frozen in time, sparkle around his head. And I understand that somehow, somehow, he has left this last piece of himself for me inside the Sim.
“The key,” he says, his deep-set eyes imploring. “You must keep the key safe. Do whatever it takes.”
“Daddy, wait,” I beg in a strangled voice.
“We don’t have much time. Listen, don’t trust anyone. You need to find your journ—”
Just like that, he’s gone. As if we were paused and someone has pushed play, everything erupts at once. Glass shards embed inside the exposed flesh of my head and hands. Something smashes my mouth, and I feel my front teeth grind to bits. The air shrieks with horrible death noises—a cacophony of horrifying screams.
One of them, I know, is the man with the Gold rose.
It takes all the energy I have left to hold onto the open door, drag myself over the side, the wind painting my face with my blood.
Survive. My father’s voice pierces the chaos. I straighten up, my dress billowing out in a whipping plume of yellow.
I will, Daddy, I promise, whatever it takes. Then I spread my arms and fly.
A god-awful noise awakens me. It takes less than a second to realize I’m screaming, or rather, gurgling animalistic half-shrieks and flailing madly. Brogue bear-hugs me to a stand.
I go limp, but my mind is wild with rage. “What the Fienian hell was that?” Flame is the closest, so I focus my wrath on her. “Did you put my parents in the Sim to mess with my mind?”
“Believe me, Princess,” Flame spits, “that ship sailed a long time ago.”
I look to Cage. “I want to go back in.”
Brogue squeezes my shoulders. “Easy, Lady March—”
“No!” I bat his hands away. “He was trying to tell me something, and Flame extracted me before I could hear it!”
“No,” Flame says carefully. I must look on the verge of violence because she’s backed against Riser’s Casket, keeping at least four feet between us. “That was the glitch. It makes you see and hear things that aren’t there.” There’s a pause. “And I didn’t pull you. You were too far gone.”
“O-kay,” I say, “then who did?”
Everyone is staring at me. I realize something has gone wrong and they don’t want to tell me.
“You did.” It’s Nicolai. Or rather his hooded hologram. The following silence tells me pulling yourself out is not a normal part of the Sim.
“But how?”
“Good question, considering it’s impossible.”
The way the others are looking at me makes me uncomfortable. I clear my throat. “So, what next?”
Brogue crosses his arms. “I don’t think you’re ready—”
“She’s right,” Flame interrupts. “We need to move on.”
They argue for a few minutes, but Flame gets her way. The first thing we do is correct the flaws pointed out from the last Sim, an exercise that takes only a few minutes and feels like I’m dreaming.
Next, the weapons training Sim. These are pretty straightforward level two Sims. I learn my speed makes me good with the dagger, short-sword, and hand-to-hand sparring, but my marksmanship with the pistol and crossbow is atrocious. Riser excels at every form of weaponry, something he’s only too happy to point out as he beats me every time.
Brogue finally goads Flame into conceding us a break. Fifteen minutes, then we’ll fix the glaring deficiencies in my marksmanship and Riser can choke on that gloating grin he’s wearing.
My body must need the break more than I think because I find myself in my room. It’s well past midnight. Outside my open window a black city engraved against a velvet-blue sky crackles with stars. Crawling through the small space, I skirt across the roof and peer over the edge, probably closer than I should, shivering in the windy night air. One question burns at me.
What kind of monster kills their father?
“Going to jump?” Riser’s voice startles me back to myself. I pivot just in time, clinging to the crumbling shingles with my entire body as a gust of wind sends a loose tile clattering over the side.
My cheeks burn as he watches me clamber to a steadier position posted against the eave. “Do you care about anything?” I demand, angry he startled me. “I mean, besides yourself.”
“I care about you trusting me.”
His response is not what I expected, which explains why I can’t think of a single reply. Again there is that unwanted twinge of affection. The smallest purl of longing.
Reconstructed feelings, I remind myself. Not. Real.
“Even with everything they did to me, there are still so many things about your world I don’t understand.” He blinks, the moonlight etching flimsy shadows under his bottom lashes. “But I know if we don’t trust one another, this won’t work.”
“That’s why you did it? On the train?”
He leans in close, warmth radiating from where his breath spills against my neck. “Die and you’d trust me. Your words. So I did.”
“I was doing fine on my own.”
“Taking out the entire train. Smart.” Part of his mouth curls in a soft smile. “Still, I let you win.”
He says it simply. He’s telling me what he gave up for me, how much my trust is worth.
“How’d you get to our mark so fast?”
Something flickers inside his normally detached eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would say it is remorse. “I found the note immediately, and then I killed everyone in the first train car, and I didn’t stop killing until I reached the man with the Gold rose.”
He averts his gaze. At least I know Flame has managed to interject a bit of humanity into his black soul. I think of all those children and shudder. It’s strange, though. I understand testing my ability to kill, but Riser didn’t have any problems in that department. So what were they testing him on?
“Why go to all that trouble if you were just going to let me win, anyway?”
“I had no intentions of letting you win. Just”—he frowns—“when I reached the man with the rose, he handed me this small mirror, and it had a vision of you on top of the train, like I was watching you through a lens.” He pulls at the bronze button of his collar, as if struggling to breathe. “Then I was with you. I should have killed you, but for some reason I couldn’t.”
And all at once I know what they were testing. His loyalty to me. Or maybe just his ability to ally with another human being, or to trust, or perhaps it’s specific to me, like protecting me. I’m not sure. Obviously from Flame’s reaction, they weren’t expecting him to take it that far, though.
The one thing I do know is now I have an extra weapon in my arsenal to use against Riser. And I will use it, fighting the affection they reconstructed into me with everything I have until we’ve killed the Emperor and can go our separate ways. Unless Riser turns on me before then. The thought fills me with a heavy sense of dread, and I promise myself that I’ll do whatever it takes to win the extra seat on Hyperion and save Max.
A star streaks across the sky. It trails away and m
y eyes adjust, picking out a dark form in its wake. Pandora makes me think of the Archduchess—they’re alike, after all—and a strange feeling tickles the back of my neck. The Emperor scares me because I know what he is. But the Archduchess frightens me more, exactly because I don’t know what she is, or how far she’ll go to find me.
“You’re thinking about the woman from the prison, aren’t you?” Riser’s voice is soft, confiding. “You have the same terrified look you had then when Nicolai mentioned her the first time.”
“She did. Terrify me,” I say, unnerved by how easily Riser can read me when I find it impossible to decipher him. “She still does. And she won’t stop until she finds me.” Worried my hands will begin to shake, I fold them in my lap. Even Everly March is scared of the Archduchess, apparently.
“What does she want?”
We sit in silence for a minute as I mull over his question, wondering how much to tell him. “My father gave me something, a key, I think. I don’t know what it unlocks, but the Emperor sent her to retrieve it.”
I know Riser’s emotions for me are reconstructed. So I discount the way his body maneuvers to form a protective barrier around me. “Does it have to do with the thing your father was working on?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I lie, choking down my surprise.
“Here.” The book Riser offers me is bound in leather, M.G. embossed on the cover. “Consider it another token of my trust.”
I cradle my journal protectively in my lap. “You read this?”
“Not all of it.” My face must mirror my horror because he elaborates. “I didn’t plan to, I didn’t even think I could read . . . but then, I don’t know”—he cracks a devilish smile—“it was just so riveting.”
My mouth hangs open. Stripped naked. That’s how I feel right now. No one was ever supposed to see those pages. “Well, you had—you had no right to read it!”
Something flutters in the wind at my feet—a photo. It must have fallen from the book. I retrieve the faded picture, twisting it to catch the meager moonlight. My throat constricts, and I lay the image face down in my lap.
“Who are they?” Riser asks, his voice less sarcastic than usual. Maybe he’s trying to make up for invading my privacy? Despite myself, some of my anger fades.
I flip the photo and brave another look. The emotion I thought I felt dissipates into apathy. “It was before I was born, when they were at the University.”
“Who?”
“The two on the right standing up are Maia’s . . . my parents.” My father looks sharp in a crisp white tunic and brown doublet. My mother, the strict Royalist even then, shows off a stunning high-necked silver gown—to hide her scar—and chin-length silver wig that makes her hazel eyes appear a vibrant green. “It was the evening of the conference put on by the Emperor to discuss their plans for the asteroid.” To their left stands a tall, pale, delicate Gold girl no more than eighteen, hugely pregnant, who looks as if the slightest breeze will topple her.
As if anchoring herself, the young girl’s slim fingers curve around the shoulder of the young man sitting in the redwood chair in front of them. His face holds the arrogant look of youth and privilege, his left leg slung over his right, white-gloved hand holding up the near-empty crystal tumbler in a subtle demand for more. War medals adorn his gold military jacket, and a deep-purple cloak embroidered with the Royalist phoenix coats the chair like blood.
I’ve seen the picture before; otherwise I wouldn’t recognize the young man who seems to be the focus of the picture.
“You must know who that is.” I gesture to the man with the medals.
“Of course.” Riser rubs a finger across his bottom lip. I wonder if the habit belongs to the old or the new Riser.
“The Emperor and his wife, Eleanor.” I point to the young girl, Caspian’s mother. “They were my mother’s childhood friends.” My fingernails gouge into my palm. “This picture was taken on the one year anniversary of Pandora’s discovery.” Not two years later, Eleanor and her newborn daughter were killed in the bombing.
Riser studies the picture with his miss-nothing eyes. “They seem happy for the occasion.”
Don’t they? I clear the bitterness from my throat, slipping the picture randomly inside the book pages. “They had just announced Project Hyperion. They were going to save the world.”
I don’t like the way my voice catches. Or the way Riser is looking at me, like I am about to cry. Maybe I am—or would be—if Lady March were capable of tears. I thrust the book at him and shake my head. “Take it. Burn it. Whatever. I don’t want it.”
Riser refuses. “Keep it. You may change your mind, later.”
“What do you know?”
“I know,” Riser says softly, “if I had a picture of my mother, I would want to keep it.”
His voice has gone cold, his face slackened to camouflage the emotions he must be feeling. But he can’t hide the deep-set pain flickering inside his mismatched eyes.
Fighting off the sudden, overwhelming urge to touch him, comfort him somehow, I say, “What happened to her?”
He blinks, swallows hard, as if he can somehow swallow down her memory, and presses his lips into a thin white line. “The pit happened to her.”
The angry tone of his voice tells me I have crossed a line. He’s already pulling away from me. I struggle with something to say that will bring him back. “You said this was a token of trust.” I hold up my journal. “What did you mean?”
Slowly, the haunted look fades from his eyes as he focuses on my journal. “Because I could have given it to Nicolai.”
Creep! Anger warms my face as I realize Riser has been digging through my family’s private things at Nicolai’s behest. “What else does the Puppeteer have you searching for?”
Riser shrugs, looking less embarrassed than he should for this deep invasion of privacy. “He mentioned a key. One that can help him unlock the thing your father hid.”
That again! As always, at the mention of the machine my father was building, the thing he hid from all of us, the thing that got him labeled a traitor and killed, my brain begins to whir with questions.
Why would my father build a bomb? Was he working for the Fienians? But no, there is no way the father I knew—the man who used part of his own rations to feed the stray cats behind our house and insisted on tucking me in every single night, no matter how tired he was—could have built a bomb. At least, not to hurt people.
But is there any other kind?
Forcing myself out of my memory, I pick at Lady March’s perfect fingernails. “What else did you find?”
“Nothing.”
Surprisingly, I believe he’s telling me the truth. How much does Nicolai know? I wonder. And how did he learn of the key? Now that I think about it, it’s probably why I was chosen in the first place, and probably why we have Microplants—so Nicolai can discover the key’s location through my thoughts. The only reason he hasn’t discovered the key so far is because I’m careful when I feel Nicolai mucking around inside my mind. But that could change, so I must be careful.
I stare at the dark outline of the city for a minute. Then I stand, careful to keep my feet steady, and with an angry, clumsy throw, watch my journal disappear. There’s soft fluttering as old pages and photos separate from the book, bursting in the wind.
I turn to Riser, now also standing. “Tell Nicolai the key is safe as long as Max and I are.”
We both freeze as a noise interrupts the quiet. Shuffling, or maybe whispering down below. Before I can say a word, Riser slinks past me along the tiles, lowering himself until he can peek over the roof. That’s when I realize how still the night is. Brogue had commented on the quiet earlier, and I blew him off.
And only one thing can make a Diamond City go silent.
Centurions. Ignoring the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I join Riser. The street is empty. The wind tosses an empty bucket across the cobblestones and into the grass. Somewhere far away a door opens
and quickly shuts.
Riser nods toward the row of houses just below us on the left. It takes a second for my eyes to wade through the shadows.
I was right about the Centurions: There are twelve of them. And I was right about the Archduchess finding me, too. She stands apart from her men, silver wig braided beneath her hat. Gold-handled pistols glint from each hip. She has a page from my journal clutched inside her hand, examining it. Slowly, her dark lips peel from her teeth in a horrid little smile.
She looks up at the roof.
At me.
A hideous buzzing noise cleaves the quiet, as if we have awakened a hive of furious bees. Two spinning shadows dart toward us.
Drones.
Chapter Seventeen
I don’t recall moving, but I am suddenly inside my room. The stars spin around my head. My body, obviously taking over, clears the stairs in two leaps. Where to go? I am at the front door before I realize my folly. Of course they will have someone posted here as well.
Trapped. I am trapped!
I bolt for the office, Riser on my heels. Unlike me, his breathing is even and he appears quite composed, so I let him tell the others. They don’t seem surprised, which gives me hope they were expecting this and have a plan. Brogue gathers the other Mercs, who somehow have procured two black leather backpacks with what I assume are supplies. I almost kiss him when he snatches Bramble from the stairs and tosses him into one of the packs.
My hopeful feeling dies as I listen to Brogue’s plan. Something about fighting our way past the Centurions at the front door. My mind stops listening after that because I know the plan won’t work. The Archduchess would not leave our escape to chance.
It needs to be something she’s not expecting.
I explain my plan, trying hard to sound rational and in control, but it takes a few minutes to convince them to follow me. We take the elevator in silence, the emergency backup generator making the ride a bit choppy, Brogue and the others cutting their eyes at me. If I’m wrong, we’ll be trapped, at the mercy of the Archduchess. And there’s no question how that will end.