by Audrey Grey
Chapter 28
Talia
As much as Talia hated to admit it, part of her wished she’d never woken up to this nightmare. Not only was she being marched to her death, but she was going to be publicly executed in the city of her birth, the royal birthplace of every Starchaser ever born.
Despite the mangled streets jutting with steel and the once vibrant, lush hills now covered by metal, she’d recognized Palesia immediately. The two moons, shrouded in wispy gray clouds, hung faintly over the ragged buildings which seemed to go on forever, a glittering sea of metal and pollution, the air flecked with hovercrafts of every kind. The once beautiful marble structures she remembered from her youth had been replaced with hideously warped and spiraling designs that clawed at the clouds with angry fingers.
She shouldn’t be that surprised the new queen chose the old capitol to make her home. The planet Calisto had always been the most temperate of the Seven, with long Summers and rich, fertile soil. Strategically placed closest to mineral-rich planets Thoros and Aegaeon, Calisto boasted twenty-nine off-world colonies to run to for supplies. But the way it had been rebuilt was as if someone had purposefully soiled what once made the city beautiful, stamping out its identity, which made little sense.
The queen openly hated fleshers, but to go to this extreme . . .
The second she’d left the ship—or, rather, been dragged off in handcuffs—an overwhelming feeling that the complete transformation of Talia’s once beloved city was personal struck her. An attack on her family and the entire human race.
She and the crew of the Odysseus disembarked over four hours ago. From there, they took two hovers and had walked at least three miles. Still, the golden arc of the gates leading to the final bridge that would take them to the new palace seemed miles away. The city’s streets were at a near standstill, mocks coming and going, hardly complaining in the sweltering, fetid streets steeped in deep shadows. Many of the mocks were dressed in jewel-bright clothes, trailing similarly well-dressed children. Ragged, rail-thin human nannies and servants buzzed around the mocks like flies, reminding Talia of a different time when the roles were reversed.
She wondered if their starvation was on account of mocks forgetting how much humans ate, or simply a cruelty.
At first she surmised today must be some sort of holiday for the mocks. But, from the little talk between her jailers, she gleaned all these mocks were here to see the queen. Apparently, they arrived in droves from all of the surrounding planets to pay respects.
Beside Talia, Leo made some comment beneath his breath about the citizens being brainwashed. He wasn’t bound like Talia. Rather, he was controlled with thin metal cuffs around his wrists. Explosives. And Lux held the remote that would set them off and sever his hands—if he didn’t behave. Although the wild look in his eyes said the odds he wouldn’t cause a scene were dwindling.
“What do you mean?” Lux asked, squinting at him.
He cut her a sideways glance, his lips pulled into a grimace of disgust. “The Alliance discovered that anyone who’s jumped into a new body in the last twenty years has suddenly developed a blind obedience to the queen.”
“So she’s . . . what? Programming devotion into them?”
“Looks that way.”
Lux narrowed her eyes and prodded Leo forward, harder than needed. He grimaced, shooting his former friend a frown before trudging on with his head hung low.
Two Starfighters similar to the Predators she used to fly buzzed above, cutting white slashes into the dirty-gray sky, their paths strategic and ready for combat. A military training academy must have been nearby. As Talia eyed the crafts with longing, she jostled her arms, the manacles binding her wrists behind her back cutting into her bones.
Wincing, she flexed her wrists and stifled a sigh. Great, it could be hours more before they crossed over into the queen’s estate. Not that Talia was in a hurry to meet this queen and suffer her wrath, but what was the point of putting off the inevitable? Especially when it was stifling hot outside and Talia was bundled in the heaviest cloak in existence. The thick fabric was meant to disguise her in case Xander was still searching for her—stars forbid someone other than Will present her to this new queen—but the wool was scratchy and fell below Talia’s feet, constantly tripping her up.
The hood of the cape slipped farther down, eclipsing her vision. Will, who’d been glued to her side since the second they’d stepped foot on Palesia, pulled the fabric back for her, but he refused to look her in the eye. Coward.
“You can’t even look at me, can you?” she snapped, making sure her voice conveyed the annoyance clawing through her veins.
His shoulders stiffened, but he continued staring straight ahead. Perspiration darkened his temples, and a bead of sweat trickled down his jaw.
“You do realize mocks don’t sweat?”
His eyes widened as he glanced at her, but the comment did its job. Will quickly swiped his palm across his jaw. “So?”
“So you’re not fully mock. Which means you’re still part human, no matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise.”
Some of his hair had fallen into his face, and he scraped the strands back, keeping his gaze forward. “If I am, it’s not by choice.”
“And the way you play the piano,” Talia continued. Even though she knew he wasn’t about to let her go at this point, she couldn’t help needling him, the jerk. “No mock could ever play with that kind of emotion.”
A muscle feathered in his neck, but otherwise he was an impermeable mask, shoulders back and head held high. He’d changed into a different uniform than the one she was used to, a fine-tailored cardinal-red jacket fitted to his wide shoulders, its high collar accentuating the sharp lines of his face. Three gold bars lined the breast-pocket, and medals adorned the shoulders.
For the first time, she realized how devastatingly beautiful he was. And cruel—that too. As if the jacket had transformed him, his lips were pressed taut, his eyes distant and cold. She was wasting her time; no amount of ribbing would break the layer of ice guarding his heart.
Huffing, she yanked her wrists against the shackles, wincing once again as the metal cuffs bit into flesh, human flesh. Something Will, despite the small shred of humanity clinging to him, would never be. He’d chosen to be a mock—and loved it.
A murmur trilled the air, drawing her attention from Will’s stony exterior to a circle of onlookers gathered around the end of the street. Mocks crawled over each other to see whatever was in the center, the smaller children perched on awnings and the sides of buildings for a better view. An opening appeared between two older mocks, and Talia caught a flicker of something.
The woman in the center of the crowd was a hologram, that much was clear by the shimmer of her form. The way her body glinted and flickered when someone managed to touch her. She was tall—taller than the mocks in the crowd by at least a few feet—but that could have been the hologram’s proportions. Head-to-toe onyx armor covered her strong body, so smooth the material could have been painted on. Whatever the dark armor was made of, it had a luster that captured the eye—though no one would stare for long with the woman’s face just above. Talia found herself gaping at the strange mixture of sharp, contrasting features. Milky skin stretched over angles not natural in the human body. The woman’s eyes were too large, her irises too black, her lips made for sneering.
A spasm of pain wriggled through Talia. Something about the face was familiar—but not. Cruel, yet calming. Whispers joined to create a song made up of one word: queen.
That was when Talia noticed the jagged, mangled metal crown embedded inside the woman’s nest of sable hair. The crown was dark like her armor and fitted like a helmet, three-foot long wiry tentacles coming off and forming a serpentine corona around her skull. As Talia gaped at the woman, tiny spherical drones no bigger than baby hummingbirds broke off from the tentacles and flitted over the crowd.
A few minutes later, one of the queen’s drones found the Odysse
us’s crew. A perfect sphere made of a metallic, greenish alloy. Will halted, his body going rigid as the drone hovered six inches from his face. It remained for a few seconds, as if scanning his features, and then moved on to Lux, who pushed her chin out, unafraid. Leo and Jane were next.
Talia was last. She could almost feel the drone’s curiosity as it wavered in front of her, taking longer than the others. Her face, distorted inside the reflective ball’s surface, mirrored back to her. All at once, the machine zipped away through the crowd so fast and became invisible to the naked eye.
Relief crashed over Talia, and she pressed ahead, shoving through the crowd and away from the queen, even if she was only a hologram. Something about her settled low inside Talia’s gut. A feeling, a memory. The fact that she was going to meet this queen soon turned Talia’s veins to ice, despite the humid heat trapped beneath the cloak with her.
They were nearly to the gate of the queen’s estate when Talia noticed the surrounding mocks had parted to make a wide path, their faces all fixed in the same cold, vicious expression. Her skin crawled beneath their raking eyes, full of inhuman hatred—but it seemed as if one mock stared back at her.
A little girl with sun-gold hair and blue eyes broke off from the crowd and said, “Welcome back, Tal.”
Something inside that small, innocent voice saying Talia’s name sent claws of fear scraping against the inside of her ribs. “What’s happening,” Talia asked, glancing over at Will as her heart pounded deep and muffled inside her chest. “Why are they talking to me?”
“She’s hijacked their minds,” Will answered, fear infused in his voice despite his earlier efforts at appearing unaffected. “Anyone who’s uploaded in the last forty-eight hours can have their mind taken over by her.”
Well, that’s not creepy. Gritting her teeth, she forced her breathing into a steady rhythm as the massive gates creaked open, allowing access to the castle. “She knows who I am.”
“It appears so,” Will said from the corner of his mouth, still staring straight ahead as they entered the empty courtyard.
“You sure about this, Captain?” Lux asked under her breath, likely so the onlookers—and the queen—couldn’t hear. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at us. Or the princess. Something feels wrong.”
Talia wholeheartedly agreed. But if Will heard Lux, he didn’t answer. Instead he pressed forward, yanking Talia by her arm so they were almost running. She surveyed the courtyard, scanning the walls for another opening to escape through. All of this was new, right down to the cloudy wall around the palace that resembled ice.
She stumbled up a flight of steps, unable to get past the differences. There used to be a swan fountain in the courtyard here, one open to the Palesian people for seven hours during the day, always swarming with citizens. Now there was nothing save a few mock guards, all with their gazes trained on Talia.
Whoever this queen was, she didn’t like company. As the gate crashed shut behind them, condemning them to whatever lay ahead, Talia blinked, something niggling at her, just out of reach.
Like a punch to the gut, all the pieces fell into place. The queen recognized Talia, had called her by a nickname only one person had ever used.
Ailat.
The realization knocked the breath from Talia’s lungs, and she stumbled backward a step, jerking Will back too and nearly dislocating her wrists. Could it really be her ex-best friend? Will tightened his grip on her upper arm as he glanced back, only to stop in place. Talia’s expression must have been horrified, because a whisper of emotion flickered across his face.
“What?” he asked. “What is it?”
“Please don’t do this.” Her voice was a whisper, a plea, and his eyes softened infinitesimally. “She’ll kill me. We have . . . history. A misunderstanding.”
The second the declaration had been spoken aloud, the dark suspicion nested deep inside, Talia knew it to be true. Ailat was responsible for her parent’s death, and from the way she looked at Talia through the other mocks, her former friend would like nothing better than to murder Talia too.
Will’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, and he absentmindedly stroked the bars on his shoulder. Indecision played over his face, the warring emotions twisting his visage into a mixture of resolve and guilt. “You talk like she has bloodlust, but she’s not like humans . . .”
But even as he said it, his voice began to falter, and two deep lines etched into his forehead. Talia shifted on her feet. From the windows cut into the spiraling castle above came a heavy sense of someone watching her, but she couldn’t quite force herself to look up.
Don’t be a stubborn idiot, Will! “I can make the world better,” she said, talking fast. “But I need your help. If there’s any humanity left inside you, Will Perrault, any at all, then dare this one last time to hope.” She paused, letting her words sink in, before she continued, her voice pleading. “Release me.”
His resolve was starting to break, she knew, because his fingers loosened around her bicep. He flicked his gaze to Lux and opened his mouth to give an order—but froze, just as an older man came around the side of the courtyard and called out his name. The man wore a similar uniform to Will’s, shoulders flashing with metal. Whoever this man was, he was high up in station and the military.
“General?” The word came out on a breath of air, and Will inched his hand toward his blaster, even as his lips trembled into a smile. Confusion leaked from his pores and rooted him in place. His programming wasn’t prepared for such a conflict.
“You brought the princess,” the general called, striding toward them. “Good boy.” As soon as he was within several feet, he halted, his gaze sliding to Will’s hand resting on the butt of his blaster. “Now wipe that hesitation from your face before the queen sees it and march up those stairs with your prisoner.”
Will’s fingers tightened on Talia’s arm, but he stayed put. “What happens to her once the queen has her?”
The general’s faded blue eyes landed on her, and she swallowed the urge to spit in his face. There was something inhuman about his superior gaze, sterile, as if she didn’t deserve to stand in his presence. “Oh, I’m sure the queen will think of something . . . inventive to do with her.”
A fist of ice curled around her gut and squeezed. No way in hell would she be taken. She glanced over at Lux, at the weapon tucked neatly inside her waistband—but a weapon was useless with these handcuffs.
“Why not just let her live out her life somewhere, in secret?” But Will shook his head as he spoke, as if even he knew his suggestion was preposterous. “Or stick her on some tiny off-world colony?”
The general blinked at Will, slowly. “You’re not stupid, Will, so stop acting like you are. The queen can’t let a Starchaser live, not until the rest of the Alliance is rooted out and no longer a threat. Keeping her alive gives them the one thing that makes them dangerous.”
“What’s that?”
“Hope.”
As soon as that word registered in Will, his expression changed. She could see the human realization click into place behind his eyes, and she prepared herself for what she knew would follow.
A fight.
Before anyone could react, Will had his blaster out and pointed at the general.
“What are you doing with that, boy?” The man’s voice was soft, terrifying, and remarkably devoid of the usual fear that came with a blaster pointed toward the face.
Will took a step back toward Talia, jumbling with the keys to her shackles. They popped free, releasing her wrists—and her pride—with a click. “The right thing, Father.”
Father?
Disappointment flashed in the general’s eyes, and he shook his head. “I should have believed Xander.”
The man lifted his arm in some type of signal, and the courtyard came to life. A man in his early twenties marched around the corner of the palace, his fiery-red uniform the same as Will’s—though not as dashing on this man as it was on Will. Behind the
newcomer loomed a line of silver hunters, their heavy metal legs punching the gravel and sifting up dust.
A line had just been drawn.
Will’s eyes flashed hatred at the man, whose name Will said with a hiss. “Xander.”
Xander grinned at Will, cruelty marring the features of his narrow face. “I told Father you’d mess it all up, flesher scum.”
Will smiled back, and in the blink of Talia’s eye, fire from his blaster streaked through the air almost in slow motion. But right before the shot hit Xander, a hunter knocked him down, taking the brunt of the blast. A black hole singed the hunter’s metal flesh, just above its waist, but it hardly seemed to notice the wide chasm exposing its inner working parts as it returned to its feet.
Will turned to his crew. “Run!”
Another blast rocked the courtyard as Will just barely missed a hunter taking aim at them. The general scurried to the safety of the columns, disappearing at the top of the steps.
“Get Talia back to the ship, now!” Will added, sensing his crew’s need to stay and fight with him. “That’s an order!”
Never in her short time of knowing him had Will’s voice been so clear or commanding. Before Talia could respond, Leo was dragging her toward the gate, Lux a step ahead. She used her blaster to persuade one of the guards to open the gate. As it screeched open, a blast from a hunter’s weapon skimmed their heads, just missing Leo and obliterating the right half of the gate for them.
“We got a problem!” Lux informed them, panting heavily. The crowd along the bridge, controlled by the queen, had formed an impenetrable mock barrier. A few of them even held makeshift weapons. Shovels. Bricks. A belt, even.
“That does not look good,” Leo muttered. “Even with full blaster charges, there’s no way in stars we’ll take them all out. There’s just too many.”
Talia glanced at the water surrounding the palace. From the bridge to the water was a twenty-foot drop, at least. But there were boats below. Fast ones. If they could bypass the bridge . . .
Lux must have read Talia’s look because the navigator followed the princess’s gaze, grinning. “The water! Get ready to jump.” Brushing back a lavender flourish of hair from her face, Lux lifted a remote and called into the com. “Dorian, tell Jane it’s time for the Odysseus to go dark and take flight. We’ll meet at the place we last saw Mom and Dad. Make it quick, yeah?”