THE HALLWAYS OF THE MINISTÈRE headquarters were buzzing with activity. Officers and cyborgs crisscrossed the pristine, chrome-tiled hallways, their heads bent over the broadcasts playing out on their TéléComs. Marcellus followed behind his grandfather and watched as people saluted and then scattered at the sight of the almighty general, the Regime’s most dedicated and loyal servant.
If only they knew, Marcellus thought bitterly.
The door to the Ministère’s Cyborg and Technology labs whooshed open, and Marcellus and the general stepped through into another hallway, this one brilliant white and immaculately sterile. Marcellus squinted under the bright, harsh lights as their boots clicked rhythmically and purposefully across the polished floors.
Marcellus knew exactly where they were heading. He’d walked this route many times in his years of training as an officer and now a commandeur. Past the labs where new state-of-the-art tech was developed, the hallway that housed the cyborg initiation and training facilities, and the myriad of server rooms where Laterre’s intricate communication networks and power grids were controlled. The difference was, today, Marcellus’s mind was filled with thoughts of deception and treason.
Somehow, he had to plant a surveillance device in his grandfather’s study. He knew he’d never be able to gain access to the office alone. No one was allowed in there without the general. Even the maids had to clean the room while he was present. Which meant that Marcellus would have to do it right under his grandfather’s nose.
And then there was the problem of acquiring the device itself. These hallways were packed full of every kind of surveillance equipment imaginable. But all Ministère-issued devices were trackable. He couldn’t risk it being found.
He had to find another way.
“Access granted.”
The biometric lock on the infirmerie door disengaged and the general didn’t hesitate. He pushed the door open and blustered inside. Marcellus followed after him, decidedly less enthusiastic. The thought of seeing the cyborg inspecteur again was making him break out in a cold sweat. He had never liked Inspecteur Limier. The man was suspicious of everything and dogged to a fault. In short, the very last person you wanted to have around when you had a secret to hide. And right now, Marcellus didn’t need another pair of eyes watching him.
But as he stepped inside the infirmerie a moment later, he felt his tensed muscles instantly relax. This was not the Inspecteur Limier of Marcellus’s memories. The once fearsome cyborg now looked helpless and vulnerable. He lay unmoving and silent on a gurney under a crisp green sheet, while a collection of monitors blinked and hummed around him. A bandage had been wrapped in a complicated crisscrossing pattern over the top of his head, and a breathing tube snaked between his colorless lips like a grim, glowing serpent.
“What’s his status?” the general asked.
“It’s hard to tell at this point,” replied a voice, and Marcellus turned to find Gustave Chevalier—Directeur of the Ministère’s Cyborg and Technology Labs—standing behind them. The directeur’s cropped hair and narrow moustache were, per usual, as spotless and gleaming as his white coat. “His vitals seem stable for now, but we won’t know anything for certain until we run some tests.”
“Where was he found?” asked the general.
At this question, an officer in a white uniform stepped forward. Marcellus recognized him as Officer Meudon. “A ferme superviseur found him unconscious in the wheat-fleur fields this afternoon and called it in. We believe he must have collapsed there. He was still breathing, but unresponsive.”
Marcellus braved another glance at Vallonay’s most-prized and celebrated inspecteur. Limier’s taut skin appeared to be made of wax. His once-flickering circuitry, which was threaded across his forehead and cheek, was lifeless and gray, like a forlorn and abandoned spiderweb. Marcellus was grateful the cyborg’s eyes were closed, so he couldn’t see his enhanced left eye. The same eye that used to unnerve Marcellus every time it glowed bright orange and roved over him, assessing and inspecting and searching for signs of weakness. Signs of treachery and deceit.
“Who did this to him?” The question emerged like a growl from the back of the general’s throat.
“We don’t know,” Officer Meudon replied.
“Access his memory chip,” General Bonnefaçon ordered. “Whatever he saw last will have been captured by his cybernetic eye.”
Directeur Chevalier winced slightly. “Unfortunately, his entire cybernetic system has been compromised. We believe he was shot in the face by a rayonette pulse, and it scorched his circuitry. It’s likely that his memory chip was severely damaged in the attack. But I will see what I can find.”
The general nodded, and Directeur Chevalier walked over to a small control panel near the inspecteur’s bed. He tapped on the interface and the light from the screen illuminated his smooth, unblemished features, most likely the result of youth injections. Marcellus often thought it peculiar that the man who was personally in charge of recruiting and vetting candidates for the Cyborg Initiation Program was not a cyborg himself.
“Accessing the files now,” he announced. “It will take a few minutes to process them.”
The general sighed and lowered himself into a chair in the corner, all the while never taking his steady gaze off Limier. For a brief moment, Marcellus caught a glimpse of something on his grandfather’s face that he had only ever seen once before in his life. It was when the general had lost his previous commandeur, Michele Vernay. Vernay had been captured and killed while trying to assassinate Queen Matilda, the “Mad Queen” of Albion, during the Usonian War of Independence. Marcellus had been there when the general had received the alert. He’d seen the pain flash in his grandfather’s eyes. And then he’d seen that pain turn to anger.
All of that had transpired in less than a minute. A fleeting moment of vulnerability. Once it was over, his grandfather had returned to his stoic, impervious self again.
But now Marcellus could see the same torment flash in his grandfather’s eyes as he watched Limier’s chest precariously rise and fall in an uneven rhythm. The general cared about this man. Marcellus knew that. And in that moment—and that moment only—Marcellus felt the tiniest drop of sympathy for his grandfather. He was a man who had known loss. And Limier had been his grandfather’s most loyal inspecteur for years. He entrusted the cyborg with things he didn’t share with anyone else. Even his own grandson.
The thought pulled Marcellus up short, and his gaze darted back to Limier and Directeur Chevalier, who was still trying to connect to the inspecteur’s memory chip.
If memory files could be accessed from the moments before Limier was attacked, could other files be accessed as well? Memories from further back?
Marcellus’s fingers twitched as an idea began to form in his mind. The inspecteur was the general’s most prized interrogator. No one could pull the truth out of a criminal like Limier. Which meant he had to know the location of his grandfather’s secret facility. The very facility where Marcellus was certain the Vangarde operatives Jacqui and Denise were being held. His gaze zeroed in on Directeur Chevalier’s control panel, where files were slowly appearing on the screen. If he could search those files and find out where the operatives were being held, Denise could tell him what she knows about the general’s weapon and perhaps direct him to the source she’s been—
“Papa! There you are!” A shrill voice punctured Marcellus’s thoughts, and he turned to see a tall, slender girl sweep through the door and hurry toward Directeur Chevalier. She wore a bright purple velvet dress, cinched at the waist with an oversized belt, and her shiny obsidian-black hair was fashioned atop her head in a ridiculous construction that Marcellus thought resembled a willow tree in the Palais gardens.
“I’ve sent you nearly a thousand AirLinks,” the girl went on, her chipper voice a startling contrast to the somber tension in the room. “Are you ignoring me again, silly Papa? Oh, hi, General. Hi, Marcellus. Didn’t see you there. Marcellus, you’re looking … dapper as always.”
“Hi, Cerise,” Marcellus said as politely as he could muster. It wasn’t that he disliked the daughter of Gustave Chevalier. He honestly didn’t think about her much. She was like every other Second Estate teenage girl who lived in Ledôme. Sparkle-headed and spoiled and obsessed with mundane things like clothes and hair fashions. And now, after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, he had even less patience than ever for girls like Cerise Chevalier.
“I’m very busy here,” Chevalier snapped at his daughter. “I will respond to your AirLinks as soon as I’m done.”
“I know, I know,” Cerise said with a wave of her hand. “You’re always busy. But if you had watched any of my messages, you would know that this is very important. I really really need your TéléCom to track a shipment of dresses arriving from Samsara today. There’s only one in my size in the entire shipment. And I have to have it for Petale’s birthday fête this weekend. If I don’t get to the shops the moment the dresses are put on the rack, I won’t get one.”
Marcellus fought back a roll of his eyes. Could this girl not see that they were dealing with a very morbid situation right now? Inspecteur Limier was lying unconscious on a gurney only centimètres away, and she was babbling about dresses?
The directeur looked mortified by the interruption. He muttered an apology to the general before quickly ushering his daughter back toward the door. “Cerise,” he hissed under his breath, as they disappeared into the hallway. Marcellus could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation.
“… this is not a good time …”
“… but Papa …”
“… tired of this behavior. It won’t change my mind about anything.…”
“… I’m totally serious about the dress.…”
“… fine. Take the TéléCom. We will discuss this later.…”
When Chevalier reappeared, he looked flustered and agitated. “Apologies again, General and officers.” He smoothed down his short hair, walked back to the console, and frowned at the screen. “It appears we do have some viable footage from the hour before Limier was attacked, but it looks to be corrupted.”
The general rose from his chair and walked over to the wall monitor. “Play it.”
“Yes, sir,” the directeur said as he tapped on the screen.
The monitor glowed to life, and for the longest time, Marcellus could not make sense of what he was looking at. He moved closer and stood next to his grandfather, squinting at the screen.
At first, there was nothing but shadowy blurs of green and an intermittent flashing light, accompanied by faint scraping and crackling noises. If all the files on the memory chip looked like this, finding the general’s facility was not going to be easy. A few seconds later, the distorted footage cleared somewhat, and Marcellus could make out what looked to be a thicket of trees.
“The Forest Verdure,” Officer Meudon declared, stepping up beside Marcellus. “That’s where he went to make the arrests.”
“Who was he arresting?” the general asked.
“Two criminals by the name of Renard. They both had about a hundred outstanding warrants logged in the Communiqué.”
Marcellus’s gaze snapped toward Officer Meudon. He had to be talking about Chatine’s parents. “Were they sent to Bastille?”
The officer shook his head. “They escaped shortly after the droids led them out of the forest.”
Wisps of movement drew Marcellus’s attention back to the screen where he could just make out a collection of small stones on the forest floor. They appeared to be arranged in some type of pattern. It took Marcellus a moment to connect the image to his memory and then, in a flash of certainty, he knew exactly where this footage had been captured. It was the old Défecteur camp that he sometimes liked to escape to when he needed to be alone. A place once inhabitated by people who had tried to live outside the rules of the Regime. Until his grandfather rounded them all up in a spate of brutal raids. Now, all that was left of the Défecteurs were abandoned camps like this one.
The footage began to bounce violently again, as though Inspecteur Limier was running. Jumping, maybe? Shaky blurs of movement kept whisking through the frame, and the soundtrack continued to squeak, making Marcellus feel dizzy and disoriented.
Then the image juddered and cut out, and the screen went black.
“Is that it?” the general said in a gruff, dissatisfied whisper.
But just as Directeur Chevalier was about to utter a clearly confused reply, the monitor flickered, and a new image blurred in and out of focus. Marcellus tilted his head, trying to make out the strange black object that filled the entire screen.
“What is that?” he asked.
Officer Meudon squinted. “It looks like a …”
“A boot,” the general replied flatly.
Suddenly, the shaky image made sense. It was a heavy, black, Ministère-issued boot. Limier’s, presumably. And it was pushing down on something. The footage cut out again and returned a second later. And Marcellus could now see the boot was standing on a hand. A hand desperately clutching hold of a rayonette.
The three men leaned in closer. There was a violent crash of movement and Marcellus nearly leapt back. The image blurred and shuddered, flickering rapidly in and out. The squeaks and crackles seemed to reach a fever-pitch. Suddenly, the rayonette was clutched in Limier’s own hand and pointed down at the ground. At someone crouching below him. A girl?
And then, in a confusion of light and motion and trees, Marcellus saw them.
Deep dark eyes, like two vast pools of night sky.
Alouette?
Marcellus bit down on his lip to keep the shock from barreling out of him.
For a long time, the image was frozen on her terrified face. Marcellus glanced uneasily over at his grandfather, who was gritting his teeth, as though he wished he could reach through the screen and grab her. Marcellus’s heart hammered in his chest as he thought about Mabelle’s words to him earlier this morning.
“Little Lark is no longer with the Vangarde.… She left.”
Marcellus tore his gaze away from the monitor and glanced uneasily at the unconscious inspecteur lying only a mètre away, the bandages on his head concealing a wealth of untold secrets.
“When was this footage captured?” The question fired out of Marcellus like an explosif.
The directeur tapped on his console and reported back. “Month 7, Day 15, 28.12.”
Marcellus’s mind whirled as he thought back to the last time he’d seen Alouette. In the hallway of Fret 7 in the very early morning of Month 7, Day 16. This footage was captured before that. Which meant …
But he never finished the thought, because suddenly, Alouette was on her feet. She was descending upon the inspecteur with a speed that astonished Marcellus. Fists punching and arms swinging and elbows arcing. He had never seen anything like it. Her movements were fast yet fluid. Powerful yet graceful. All the while her eyes flashed and sparked with fury and determination.
“What on Laterre?” Officer Meudon spat. “Who is that?”
The general said nothing in response, just continued to glare at the screen. The footage shook again as Limier was thrust backward. Then everyone in the room drew in a collective breath as Alouette filled the entire frame once more, and her huge black eyes stared straight back at them.
But no one was looking at her eyes. Because clutched in her slim fingers … was the rayonette.
And it was pointed straight at Limier.
CRASH!
Marcellus spun around to see a smashed monitor lying on the floor and the serpentlike breathing tube dangling from the handrail of the gurney. The cyborg inspecteur was no longer unconscious. He was now thrashing violently. His whole body bucking. His hands scratching at his face as though he could claw the memory right out of his mind.
“I need a médecin in here now!” the directeur shouted.
Seconds later, two cyborgs in green scrubs strode briskly into the room, their faces the epitome of serene despite the chaos around them. The inspecteur continued to spasm as the cyborgs attempted to examine him. Foam pooled at the corners of his mouth and his circuitry, which was inert and dull only moments ago, now sparked frenetically like broken stars.
“Subdural hematoma,” one of the médecins said in an even monotone. “We need to get him into surgery immediately and remove the blood clot from his brain.”
The directeur nodded once and the cyborgs were instantly on the move, guiding the gurney toward the door of the infirmerie. Marcellus jumped back, out of the way, and watched helplessly as Inspecteur Limier disappeared down the hallway, taking all his secrets with him.
Stunned, Marcellus turned his gaze back to the monitor on the wall, which he now saw was frozen on the image of Alouette’s determined glare and the glint of the rayonette in her hands. He didn’t have to watch the rest of the footage to know what came next. The proof had just vanished out the door.
Marcellus stole another glance at his grandfather. The general was also staring at the frozen footage. But this time, Marcellus swore he saw something else reflected in those cryptic hazel eyes. Something that went beyond hatred and rage. It almost looked like fear.
With a snarl, the general turned away from the monitor and stalked toward the door, pausing just long enough to point at Officer Meudon and then at the screen. “I want that girl found.”