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  “Not to fear…the enmity between our houses is hard to forget, Cassius. But we must find common ground in times like these. For the sake of Gold.” The Jackal smiles, though inside I know he’s imagining sawing off both their heads with a dull knife. “Anyway, we all have our schoolyard stories. I’m hardly ashamed.”

  “There was one other matter we wished to discuss,” Aja says.

  It’s Antonia’s turn to sigh. “I told you there would be. What does our Sovereign require now?”

  “It pertains to what Cassius mentioned earlier.”

  “My methods,” the Jackal confirms.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought the Sovereign was pleased with the pacification effort.”

  “She is, but…”

  “She asked for order. I have provided. Helium-3 continues to flow, with only a three point two percent decrease in production. The Rising is struggling for air; soon Ares will be found and Tinos and all this will be behind us. Fabii is the one who is taking his—”

  Aja interrupts. “It’s the kill squads.”

  “Ah.”

  “And the liquidation protocols you’ve instituted in rebellious mines. She’s worried that the severity of your methods against the lowReds will create a backlash comparable to earlier propaganda setbacks. There have been bombings on the Palatine Hill. Strikes in latfundias on Earth. Even protests at the gate of the Citadel itself. The spirit of rebellion is alive. But it is fractured. It must remain so.”

  “I doubt we’ll be seeing many more protests after the Obsidians are sent in,” Antonia says smugly.

  “Still…”

  “There is no danger of my tactics reaching the public eye. The Sons’ abilities to propagate their message has been neutered,” the Jackal says. “I control the message now, Aja. The people know this war is already lost. They’ll never see a picture of the bodies. Never glimpse a liquidated mine. What they will continue to see is Red attacks on civilian targets. MidColor and highColor children dead in schools. The public is with us….”

  “And if they do see what you’re doing?” Cassius asks.

  The Jackal does not immediately reply. Instead, he signals a barely dressed Pink over from the couches in the adjacent sitting room. The girl, hardly older than Eo was, comes to his side and stares meekly at the ground. Her eyes are rose quartz, her hair a silvery lilac that hangs in braids down to her bare lower back. She was raised to pleasure these monsters, and I fear knowing what those soft eyes of hers have seen. My pain seems suddenly so tiny. The madness in my mind so quiet. The Jackal strokes the girl’s face and, still looking at me, shoves his fingers into her mouth, prying her teeth apart. He moves the girl’s head with his stump so I can see, then so Aja and Cassius might.

  She has no tongue.

  “I did this myself after we took her eight months ago. She attempted to assassinate one of my Boneriders at an Agea Pearl club. She hates me. Wants nothing more in this world than to see me rotting in the ground.” Letting go of her face, he pops his sidearm out of his holster and thrusts it into the girl’s hands. “Shoot me in the head, Calliope. For all the indignities I have heaped upon you and your kind. Go on. I took your tongue. You remember what I did to you in the library. It will happen again and again and again.” He returns his hand to her face, squeezing her fragile jaw. “And again. Pull the trigger, you little tart. Pull it!” The Pink shakes in fear and throws the gun on the floor, falling to her knees to clutch his feet. He stands benevolent and loving above her, touching her head with his hand.

  “There, there, Calliope. You did well. You did well.” The Jackal turns to Aja. “For the public, honey is always better than vinegar. But for those who war with wrenches, with poison, with sabotage in the sewers and terror in the streets, and nibble at us like cockroaches in the night, fear is the only method.” His eyes find mine. “Fear and extermination.”

  Blood beads where buzzing metal pinches my scalp. Dirty blond hair puddles onto the concrete as the Gray finishes scalping me with an electric razor. His compatriots call him Danto. He rolls my head around to make sure he’s got it all before clapping me hard on the top of it. “How ’bout a bath, dominus?” he asks. “Grimmus likes her prisoners to smell nice ’n civil, hear?” He taps the muzzle they strapped to my face after I tried to bite one of them. They moved me with an electric collar around my neck, arms bound still behind my back, a squad of twelve hardcore lurchers dragging me through the halls like a bag of trash.

  Another Gray jerks me from my chair by my collar as Danto goes to pull a power hose from the wall. They’re more than a head shorter than I am, but compact and rugged. The lives they live are hard—chasing Outriders in the belt, stalking Syndicate killers through the depths of Luna, hunting Sons of Ares in the mines…

  I hate them touching me. All the sights and sounds they make. It’s too much. Too gruff. Too hard. Everything they do hurts. Jerking me around. Slapping me casually. I try my best to keep the tears away, but I don’t know how to compartmentalize it all.

  The line of twelve soldiers crowds together, watching me as Danto aims the hose. They’ve got three Obsidian men with them. Most lurcher squads do. The water hits me like a horse kick in the chest. Tearing skin. I spin on the concrete floor, sliding across the room till I’m pinned in the corner. My skull slams against the wall. Stars swarm my sight. I swallow water. Choking, hunching to protect my face because my hands are still pinned behind my back.

  When they’ve finished, I’m still gasping and coughing around the muzzle, trying to suck in air. They uncuff me and slip my arms and legs into a black prisoner’s jumpsuit before binding me again. There’s a hood too that they’ll soon jerk over my head to rob me of what little humanity I have left. I’m thrown back into the chair. They click my restraints into the chair’s receptacle so I’m locked down. Everything’s redundant. Every move watched. They guard me like what I was, not what I am. I squint at them, vision bleary and nearsighted. Water drips from my eyelashes. I try to sniff, but my nose is clogged tight with congealed blood from nostril to nasal cavity. They broke it when they put the muzzle on.

  We’re in a processing room for the Board of Quality Control, which oversees the administrative functions of the prison beneath the Jackal’s fortress. The building has the concrete box shape of every government facility. Poisonous lighting makes everyone here look like a walking corpse with pores the size of meteor craters. Aside from the Grays, the Obsidian, and a single Yellow doctor, there’s a chair, an examination table, and a hose. But the fluid stains around the floor’s metal drain and the nail scratches on the metal chair are the face and soul of this room. The ending of lives begins here.

  Cassius would never come to this hole. Few Golds would ever need or want to unless they made the wrong enemies. It’s the inside of the clock, where the gears whir and grind. How could anyone be brave in a place so inhuman as this?

  “Crazy, ain’t it?” Danto asks those behind him. He looks back at me. “All my life, never seen something so slaggin’ odd.”

  “Carver musta put a hundred kilos on him,” says another.

  “More. Ever see him in his armor? He was a damned monster.”

  Danto flicks my muzzle with a tattooed finger. “Bet it hurt bein’ born twice. Gotta respect that. Pain’s the universal language. Ain’t it, Ruster?” When I don’t respond, he leans forward and stomps on my bare foot with his steel-heeled boot. The big toenail splits. Pain and blood rupture from the exposed nail bed. My head lolls sideways as I gasp. “Ain’t it?” he asks again. Tears leak from my eyes, not from the pain, but from the casualness of his cruelty. It makes me feel so small. Why does it take so little for him to hurt me so much? It almost makes me miss the box.

  “He’s only a baboon in a suit,” another says. “Leave off him. He don’t know any better.”

  “Don’t know any better?” Danto asks. “Bullshit. He liked the fit of master’s clothes. Liked lording over us.” Danto crouches so he’s looking into my eyes. I try to look aw
ay, frightened he’ll hurt me again, but he seizes my head and pulls open my eyelids with his thumbs so we’re eye to eye. “Two of my sisters died in that Rain of yours, Ruster. Lost a lot of friends, ya hear?” He hits the side of my head with something metal. I see spots. Feel more blood leak from me. Behind him, their centurion checks his datapad. “You’d want the same for my kids, wouldn’t you?” Danto searches my eyes for an answer. I have none he’d accept.

  Like the rest, Danto’s a veteran legionnaire, rough as a rusted sewer grate. Tech festoons his black combat gear, where scuffed purple dragons coil in faint filigree. Optic implants in the eyes for thermal vision and the reading of battlemaps. Under his skin he’ll have more embedded tech to help him hunt Golds and Obsidians. The tattoo of an XIII clutched by a moving sea dragon stains all their necks, little heaps of ash at the base of the numeral. These are members of Legio XIII Dracones, the favored Praetorian legion of the Ash Lord and now his daughter, Aja. Civilians would just call them dragoons. Mustang hated the fanatics. It’s a whole independent army of thirty thousand chosen by Aja to be the hand of the Sovereign away from Luna.

  They hate me.

  They hate lowColors with a marrow-deep racism even Golds can’t match.

  “Go for the ears, Danto, if you wanna make him yelp,” one of the Grays suggests. The woman stands at the door, nutcracker jaw bobbing up and down as she gnaws on a gumbubble. Her ashen hair is shaved into a short Mohawk. Voice drawling in some Earthborn dialect. She leans against the metal beside a yawning male Gray with a delicate nose more like a Pink’s than a soldier’s. “You hit them with a cupped hand, you can pop the eardrum with the pressure.”

  “Thanks, Holi.”

  “Here to help.”

  Danto cups his hand. “Like this?” He hits my head.

  “Little more curve to it.”

  The centurion snaps his fingers. “Danto. Grimmus wants him in one piece. Back up and let the doc take a look.” I breathe a sigh of relief at the reprieve.

  The fat Yellow doctor ambles forward to inspect me with beady ocher eyes. The pale lights above make the bald patch on his head shine like a pale, waxed apple. He runs his bioscope over my chest, watching the visual through little digital implants in his eyes. “Well, Doc?” the centurion asks.

  “Remarkable,” the Yellow whispers after a moment. “Bone density and organs are quite healthy despite the low-caloric diet. Muscles have atrophied, as we’ve observed in laboratory settings, but not as poorly as natural Aureate tissue.”

  “You’re saying he’s better than Gold?” the centurion asks.

  “I did not say that,” the doctor snaps.

  “Relax. There’s no cameras, Doc. This is a processing room. What’s the verdict?”

  “It can travel.”

  “It?” I manage in a low, unearthly growl from behind my muzzle.

  The doctor recoils, surprised I can speak.

  “And long-term sedation? Got three weeks to Luna at this orbit.”

  “That will be fine.” The doctor gives me a frightened look. “But I would up the dose by ten milligrams per day, Captain, just to be safe. It has an abnormally strong circulatory system.”

  “Right.” The captain nods to the female Gray. “You’re up, Holi. Put him to bed. Then let’s get the cart and roll out. You’re square, Doc. Head back to your safe little espresso-and-silk world now. We’ll take care of—”

  Pop. The front half of the centurion’s forehead comes off. Something metal hits the wall. I stare at the centurion, mind not processing why his face is gone. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Like knuckle joints. Red mist geysers into the air from the heads of the nearest dragoons. Spraying my face. I duck my head away. Behind them, the nutcracker-jawed woman walks casually through their ranks, shooting them point-blank in the backs of their heads. The rest pull their rifles up, scrambling, unable to even utter curses before a second Gray double-taps five of them from his place at the door with an old-fashioned gunpowder slug shooter. Silencer on the barrel so it’s cool and quiet. Obsidians are the first to hit the floor, leaking red.

  “Clear,” the woman says.

  “Plus two,” the man replies. He shoots the Yellow doctor as he crawls to the door trying to escape, then puts a boot on Danto’s chest. The Gray stares up at him, bleeding from under the jaw.

  “Trigg…”

  “Ares sends his regards, motherfucker.” The Gray shoots Danto just under the brim of his tactical helmet, between the eyes, and spins the slug shooter in his hand, blowing smoke from the end before sheathing it in a leg holster. “Clear.”

  My lips work against my muzzle, struggling to form a coherent thought. “Who…are you…” The Gray woman nudges a body out of her way.

  “Name’s Holiday ti Nakamura. That’s Trigg, my baby brother.” She raises a scar-notched eyebrow. Her wide face is blasted by freckles. Nose smashed flat. Eyes dark gray and narrow. “Question is, who are you?”

  “Who am I?” I mumble.

  “We came for the Reaper. But if that’s you, I think we should get our money back.” She winks suddenly. “I’m joking, sir.”

  “Holiday, cut it.” Trigg pushes her aside protectively. “Can’t you see he’s shell-shocked?” Trigg approaches carefully, hands out, voice soothing. “You’re prime, sir. We’re here to rescue you.” His words are thicker, less polished than Holiday’s. I flinch as he takes another step. Search his hands for a weapon. He’s going to hurt me. “Just gonna unlock you. That’s all. You want that, yeah?”

  It’s a lie. A Jackal trick. He’s got the XIII tattoo. These are Praetorians, not Sons. Liars. Killers.

  “I won’t unlock you if you don’t want me to.”

  No. No, he killed the guards. He’s here to help. He has to be here to help. I give Trigg a wary nod and he slips behind me. I don’t trust him. I half expect a needle. A twist. But all I feel is release as my risk is rewarded. The cuffs unlock. My shoulder joints crack and, moaning, I pull my hands in front of my body for the first time in nine months. The pain causes them to shake. The nails have grown long and vile. But these hands are mine again. I charge to my feet to escape, and collapse to the floor.

  “Whoa…whoa,” Holiday says, hefting me back into the chair. “Easy there, hero. You’ve got mad muscle atrophy. Gonna need an oil change.”

  Trigg comes back around to stand in front of me, smiling lopsided, face open and boyish, not nearly as intimidating as his sister, despite the two gold teardrop tattoos that leak from his right eye. He has the look of a loyal hound. Gently he removes the muzzle from my face, then remembers something with a start. “I’ve got something for you, sir.”

  “Not now, Trigg.” Holiday eyes the door. “Ain’t got the seconds.”

  “He needs it,” Trigg says under his breath, but waits till Holiday gives him a nod before he pulls a leather bundle from his tortoise pack. He extends it to me. “It’s yours, sir. Take it.” He senses my apprehension. “Hey, I didn’t lie about unlocking you, did I?”

  “No…”

  I put my hands out and he sets the leather bundle in them. Fingers trembling, I pull back the string holding the bundle together and feel the power before I even see the deadly shimmer. My hands almost drop the bundle, as frightened of it as my eyes were of the light.

  It is my razor. The one given to me by Mustang. The one I’ve lost twice now. Once to Karnus, then again at my Triumph to the Jackal. It is white and smooth as a child’s first tooth. My hands slide over the cold metal and its salt-stained calf-leather grip. Touch wakening melancholy memories of strength long faded and warmth long forgotten. The smell of hazelnut drifts back to me, transporting me to Lorn’s practice rooms, where he would teach me as his favorite granddaughter learned to bake in the adjacent kitchen.

  The razor slithers through the air, so beautiful, so deceitful in its promise of power. The blade would tell me I’m a god, as it has told generations of men who came before me, but I now know the lie in that. The terrible price it’s made men pay for pride.
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br />   It scares me to hold it again.

  And it rasps like a pitviper’s mating call as it forms into a curved slingBlade. It was blank and smooth when last I saw it, but it ripples now with images etched into the white metal. I tilt the blade so I can better see the form etched just above the hilt. I stare dumbly. Eo looks back at me. An image of her etched into the metal. The artist caught her not on the scaffold, not in the moment that will forever define her to others, but intimately, as the girl I loved. She’s crouched, hair messy about her shoulders, picking a haemanthus from the ground, looking up, just about to smile. And above Eo is my father kissing my mother at the door of our home. And toward the tip of the blade, Leanna, Loran, and I chasing Kieran down a tunnel, wearing Octobernacht masks. It is my childhood.

  Whoever made this art knows me.

  “The Golds carve their deeds into their swords. The grand, violent shit they’ve done. But Ares thought you’d prefer to see the people you love,” Holiday says quietly from behind Trigg. She glances back to the door.

  “Ares is dead.” I search their faces, seeing the deceit there. Seeing the wickedness in their eyes. “The Jackal sent you. It’s a trick. A trap. To lead you to the Sons’ base.” My hand tightens around the razor’s grip. “To use me. You’re lying.”

  Holiday steps back from me, wary of the blade in my hand. But Trigg is ripped apart by the accusation. “Lying? To you? We’d die for you, sir. We’d have died for Persephone…Eo.” He struggles to find the words, and I get a sense he’s used to letting his sister do the talking. “There’s an army waiting for you outside these walls—does that register? An army waiting for its…its soul to come back to it.” He leans forward imploringly as Holiday looks back to the door. “We’re from South Pacifica, the ass end of Earth. I thought I’d die there guarding grain silos. But I’m here. On Mars. And our only job is to get you home….”

  “I’ve met better liars than you,” I sneer.

  “Screw this.” Holiday reaches for her datapad.

  Trigg tries to stop her. “Ares said it was only for emergencies. If they hack the signal…”