“LEAVE THEM ALONE! THEY’RE INNOCENT!”
Chatine’s legs burned and her heart raced as she ran through the Frets, chasing after the vanishing forms of the droids. They were faster. Nimbler. They were gigantic. As tall as the Frets themselves. And she was running through mud.
Then she was swimming. The Frets had flooded, sucking all the dirt and waste and muck into a giant sea of filth. But Chatine kept sinking, something gripping at her feet.
Finally, she managed to pull herself to dry land. Her body heaving. A lifetime of grime and poverty spewing from her lungs. She coughed up impossible things: an entire loaf of chou bread; a plastique doll arm; a gold medallion she’d once stolen from a Second Estate foreman, chain and all; a disconnected Skin. And then one of her own lungs, blackened and corroded from a lifetime of breathing in grime.
She wiped at her mouth and stood up to find she was in the Marsh. It was crammed full of people. A platform had been erected. On it stood a humming, glowing, monstrous contraption that Chatine recognized at once. The Blade. That horrible machine that had been used to execute the Premier Enfant’s governess.
Except this time, it wasn’t a lovely, auburn-haired woman that the droids were leading to the block. It was Chatine’s sister, Azelle. And cradled in her arms was their little baby brother, Henri. His precious plump cheeks, tiny chin, and clear gray eyes were exactly as Chatine had last seen them.
The droids tried to grab Henri from Azelle. She screamed and attempted to fight them off, but her efforts were futile. The blanket slipped from around Henri’s tiny body, revealing the small, raindrop-shaped birthmark on the back of his right shoulder. The very birthmark Chatine used to kiss when he cried.
“Leave them alone! They’re innocent!” Chatine screamed again, but no one heard.
The droids wrenched baby Henri free and began to lead Azelle toward the Blade. She thrashed and kicked and cried as they forced her face down onto the platform, binding her wrists and ankles with metal clamps.
Henri wailed in the fists of a droid. Chatine fought to get to him, but the crowd was too thick. Her legs were useless. Paralyzed.
And his cries continued to pierce the sky.
The Blade turned on, drowning out all the noise with its high-pitched, screeching buzz. The droids held Azelle’s head down on the block. The thin beam of blue light, which stretched between the two columns of the contraption, began to descend. Crawling its way toward her slender, exposed neck.
“Stop it!” Chatine shouted. “Someone has to stop it! Someone please save her!”
But no one stopped it. And no one saved her.
A silent, choked sob escaped Chatine as the Blade continued to descend, crackling through the air. She heard a faint sizzle, the sound of fire on flesh. Then she smelled it. Burning. Decaying. Putrefying.
Azelle’s mouth opened, letting out a scream to end all screams.
Chatine jolted awake, gasping. She blinked and stared through the gloom at the sagging bunk above her, the dream coming back to her in grim fragments. Of course, it was about Henri and Azelle. All her dreams these days were about her lost siblings.
Ever since Chatine had learned that Henri hadn’t died as a baby—as she’d believed for the past twelve years—and that her parents had, instead, sold him off like a sac of turnips to pay a debt, Chatine had been plagued by nightmares of him.
In the glow of the small orange lights that shone down all night around the perimeter of the cell block, she could see the other bunks, stacked four beds high and crammed in a circle around the eleventh floor of the Trésor tower. She was still here. Still locked away on Bastille. Stuck in this stinking overcrowded cell.
Chatine turned onto her side, trying to get comfortable on the thin, drooping mattress, but it was near impossible. Chatine had quickly learned that everything about this prison—from the serving sizes of the food, to the conditions of the bunks, to the lengths of shifts in the exploits—was designed to keep the inmates just alive enough. Strong, healthy prisoners meant riots and escape attempts. But dead prisoners meant less zyttrium sent to Laterre. It was a delicate balance.
The nearest orange light shone straight into her face, searing her vision even when her lids were closed. She’d heard some of the inmates call them “the eyes” because, while they glowed, they also watched. Blinding and brutal, they were always observing, always scanning—an extension of the droids that patrolled Bastille.
Chatine shuddered and pulled the threadbare blanket over her head, shutting her eyes tight. But the dream immediately started to suck her back in, like a cruel and grasping joke. The faces of Azelle and Henri cycled in her mind, blurring into one distorted mess of eyes and mouths and wispy hair. Finally, she gave up and flipped onto her back, her eyes wide open.
“Can’t sleep?” a voice asked, and Chatine breathed out a sigh of relief. She never quite knew when Dead Azelle would speak to her, but she was always grateful when she did.
“That’s the third dream you’ve had about me this week. I would say I’m flattered, but I’m not exactly sure I like how I’m being portrayed. Why am I always so helpless?”
Chatine stared up at the bunk above her and listened to her own breathing. It was coarse and ragged. She hadn’t been able to take a deep breath since the droids had hauled Anaïs’s body to the morgue yesterday.
Chatine had warned herself not to look when the hulking creature pushed aside the rubble from the girl’s fragile, young face. She’d done everything in her power to turn away. But, in the end, she knew she owed it to the girl to look. To remember her crushed skull and blood-stained scalp. To capture it in her mind, no matter how much she knew it would haunt her.
Because if Chatine didn’t remember, who would?
“It wasn’t your fault,” Azelle said, her voice taking on a careful tone, like she was skirting around the edge of a cliff. “There was nothing you could do. About either of us.”
Of course, Chatine knew that.
Didn’t she?
Azelle sighed. “Do you ever wonder what happened to Maman and Papa?”
Chatine flipped onto her stomach. She did wonder that. Almost daily. Even though her parents had been arrested only a few hours before Chatine, they’d mysteriously never showed up on Bastille, once again somehow managing to dodge their fate.
“Do you think they escaped?” Azelle asked. “Or maybe they’re dead?”
For the sake of the entire System Divine, Chatine hoped it was the latter. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but it was quickly becoming obvious that it wasn’t going to happen.
“I think it might be one of those nights,” Azelle said, and Chatine knew she was right.
Careful to keep her hands out of view of the “eyes,” Chatine reached into the small tear in her mattress and felt around for the tiny object she kept hidden inside. Every night, she was terrified she’d come back to her bunk to find it stolen. But she knew better than to keep it on her, where the droids could find it. She nudged around with her fingertip until her skin touched metal.
Then she closed her eyes, for just a moment, and pictured the silver ring. His ring. She hadn’t actually seen it since she’d arrived on Bastille and stashed it in the first hiding place she could find. But every night, as she lay here on this bunk, she could feel it. With every turn of her body, she could sense it pulsing. As though it were its own moon with its own gravitational pull.
The feel of the cool metal against her skin brought back a wave of memories. The kind of memories she only allowed herself to indulge in on the worst of nights here.
Marcellus.
Sitting across from her in a cruiseur, his hazel eyes twinkling, his lips quirked into a small smile.
Marcellus.
Kissing her on the rooftop of the garment fabrique. Deeply. Intensely. Endlessly.
And then finally, Marcellus.
Turning away from her. Calling her a traitor and a déchet. Walking out of her life forever.
Chatine’s heart wrenched. Would he ever forgive her for betraying him? For spying on him for the general? For stealing his mother’s ring? Somehow, she doubted it.
Yet, somehow, it still mattered to her that he did.
Eventually. Maybe. Someday.
“All prisoners rise.” A robotic voice blared through Chatine’s audio chip like a monster in her head. Chatine yanked her hand out from the tear in the mattress as the dingy overhead lights illuminated. All around her, she heard the groans of people waking up and stumbling out of their beds.
Chatine kicked off the scratchy sheet, climbed down from her bunk, pulled on her boots, and followed the slow procession of prisoners making their way toward the stairs. The languid, mechanical movements of her fellow inmates made them look almost dead. And on some level, Chatine supposed they were. Being alive was only half the battle on Bastille. You had to have something to live for. And most of the prisoners here did not.
The Trésor tower cell block was a shadowy, circular chamber made up of twelve floors, each linked to a winding central staircase by a series of metal gangways.
Stepping onto the nearest bridge, Chatine glanced precariously over the railing. Normally, heights didn’t bother her. She was used to being up high, looking down at the world. But this dizzying, eleven-floor drop always made her stomach roll. She swept her gaze down to the ground floor, trying to imagine the place that was rumored to be buried beneath it. A place shrouded in even more darkness than the exploits.
The inmates called it the Black Hole, where the most dangerous prisoners of Bastille were kept. Chatine had heard that the walls down there were made of thick, solid PermaSteel and that there was one cell in particular that was guarded thirty hours a day by droids. This was where the most famous criminal on Laterre was kept.
Citizen Rousseau.
The woman who had led the only known rebellion against the Regime … and failed.
Of course, no one on Bastille had ever seen her in person. Being confined to the Black Hole meant no contact with the outside world. No contact at all. Chatine had been told that even the droids didn’t set foot inside that cell.
It was thirty hours a day of absolute nothingness.
Shivering, Chatine pulled her gaze back up to the line of ripped uniforms and grime-covered bodies descending the steps in front of her. As she wound around the staircase, she caught sight of one inmate who stood far shorter than the rest. A boy. Only thirteen years old. Chatine recognized him at once. Despite his grimy blue uniform and shaved head, there was no mistaking his scrawny shoulders, the determined dimple in his cheek, and the slight limp that still lingered from his last encounter with the Policier.
Chatine let out a breath. He’s still alive.
The sight of him each morning always gave her a reason to keep walking. Keep digging. Keep living. He was a small ray of Sol-light in this dark, dark place. The only Sol-light.
The prisoners shuffled lethargically down the twisting staircase until they reached the ground floor. Chatine checked for nearby droids before pushing her way through the line and positioning herself right behind the boy whose life she’d single-handedly destroyed.
“Roche,” she whispered.
His body visibly stiffened at the sound of her voice, but he said nothing.
“Please,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
He didn’t respond, and Chatine felt a punch of disappointment. Although, she honestly wasn’t sure why she thought today would be different from any other day. Roche hadn’t spoken to her since he’d been arrested. And she couldn’t exactly blame him for the silence. She was the reason he’d been sent to Bastille in the first place.
She sighed. “Fine. You don’t have to talk. But just listen to what I have to say. I’m sorry about what happened at the Policier Precinct. I—”
Just then, a massive body maneuvered in front of her. She could tell by the long hair and half-chewed ear that it was Clovis, an older member of Roche’s exploit crew who had taken on the unofficial role of his bodyguard.
“Roche kindly requests that you stop trying to make contact with him,” Clovis snapped over his shoulder, his voice low and gruff.
Chatine gritted her teeth and attempted to maneuver herself around him.
“Roche,” she hissed. “Please. I need to explain—”
“Get in line, Prisoner 51562,” boomed a nearby droid.
Chatine did as she was told, veering back into place behind Clovis. She stared intently at his dark shoulder-length hair before her gaze shifted to his left shirtsleeve, which had been rolled with precision.
A Vétéran.
That’s what Chatine secretly called his kind because of how long they’d clearly been on Bastille. She could always tell how much time someone had served based on the length of their hair. Every prisoner’s head was shaved before they left Laterre. And no sharp objects on Bastille meant no haircuts. After two weeks, Chatine’s own head was already covered with a soft fuzz of growth, and every time she touched it, she flinched at the strange bumpiness of her scalp.
The Vétérans were mostly older prisoners. Many of them too old to even work in the exploits. Instead, they held jobs all over the prison—kitchen staff, janitors, morgue workers. Every one of them had long hair and every one of them wore their left shirtsleeve rolled up, like a badge of honor for how long they’d lasted.
But what intrigued Chatine the most about Vétérans like Clovis was that they never spoke to one another. Never looked at one another. Never sat together in the cantine. Never even seemed to acknowledge one another.
The line of inmates progressed sluggishly forward, nearing the cantine. Chatine knew it would be only a matter of minutes before she and Roche were separated.
“Roche,” she whispered, stepping around Clovis again. “You have to believe me. I never meant to betray you. I was just trying to—”
Clovis sidestepped, blocking her with his back once again. “Roche kindly requests that you follow protocol and refrain from speaking to your fellow inmates.”
“Why don’t you let him tell me that,” Chatine snapped. She was getting very tired of always being thwarted by this clochard every time she tried to get close to Roche.
Clovis’s heavy footsteps slowed, and for a moment, his large frame looked to be coiling up, preparing to spin around and spring toward Chatine. But he didn’t. He kept walking, his neck muscles visibly straining under the collar of his prison shirt. And when he did speak again, his tone reverberated with pure malice. “Roche kindly reminds you that he doesn’t speak to mouchards.”
Chatine felt the stab in her gut at the word. It was exactly what Roche had called her when he’d found out she’d betrayed him, the day he’d been arrested and his fate on Bastille was cast in PermaSteel.
Now, every day, as she watched Roche board the rickety lift and descend into the depths of the zyttrium exploits, the guilt consumed her a little more, until she felt like nothing more than a skeleton. A corpse eaten away by the rot. He was just a scrawny kid. A thirteen-year-old Oublie, forgotten and abandoned and parentless. He’d just been trying to make his way in the harsh world of the Frets. And Chatine had ruined his life.
Chatine nodded, swallowing the sourness that was rising up in her throat. “Fine,” she said stiffly. “But you can tell Roche that I’m not giving up. He can ignore me, he can turn his stupide one-eared guard dogs on me, I don’t care. I’m not going to stop trying to talk to him until he forgives me. I won’t—”
She felt the shock of the tazeur against her skin before she even saw the droid. Her body convulsed for a second, lightning bolts of pain shooting through her bones and veins. Her vision blurred, her muscles cramped, and something began to clang relentlessly in her ears.
Her legs wobbled beneath her. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was lie down and never move again. But then she felt a shove at her back as the line moved forward and inmates pushed to get into the cantine and consume their meager rations of food. She stumbled, struggling to put one useless foot in front of the other, as a voice broke through the ringing in her ears. It was Clovis. And he was laughing. A sharp, derisive sound. “Forgive you?” he spat. “Don’t hold your breath, Renard.”