MARCELLUS HAD NEVER LIKED THE Frets. The sights and sounds and smells were too sharp. Too immediate. Too disturbing. But today, as he darted through the alleyways, it seemed like everything here had been amplified overnight. The garbage and debris seemed to be piled up even higher than usual. The rusted edges of the walls and broken pipes seemed to jut out at sharper, more severe angles. The massive crumbling freightships seemed even more unstable, threatening to collapse and kill everyone at any moment.
And then there were the droids.
The Ministère’s ground troops. Three-mètre-high PermaSteel monsters that stalked the alleyways, scanning, observing, punishing. Thanks to the Patriarche’s increased production, there were now more on patrol today than Marcellus had ever seen.
The rickety stairwell was empty. Everyone was out in the Marsh, protesting the wage cuts the Patriarche had ordered yesterday. By the time Marcellus reached the tenth floor he was slightly winded and stopped to pause at the end of a long hallway dotted with small porthole windows.
From way up here, the city below looked peaceful. The dense layer of clouds seemed to swaddle the tops of the buildings like a soft, downy blanket. The bustle from the crowded marketplace could no longer be heard. And the rain—the constant, ever-present rain that pinged gently on the corroded walls and dingy streets—almost sounded like a soothing lullaby. And Marcellus could almost bring himself to believe that everyone down there was safe.
But of course, he knew the truth.
No one down there was safe.
Laterre was on the brink of war. The Third Estate were protesting daily in the streets. The Patriarche’s grief had turned him from an apathetic leader to a brutal, irrational one. And General Bonnefaçon was developing a weapon that threatened the lives of everyone on this planet.
Unless Marcellus could figure out a way to stop him.
He turned and pounded on the PermaSteel door at the end of the hall, gripping his rayonette tightly in his hand.
“Ministère! Open up!”
The heavy door squeaked open and a voice boomed from the murkiness inside. “What do you want?”
Marcellus looked up to see a huge guard with a mouthful of missing teeth glaring back at him, and he nearly lost his nerve. Until he remembered that he was dressed in his officer uniform. And he was armed. He had all the power here.
He waved the rayonette in the man’s face. “I am conducting an authorized search of this facility in the name of the Ministère.”
The guard began to shut the door, but Marcellus blocked it with his boot. “I need to speak to whoever is in charge here. Things will go a lot easier for you if you comply.”
The guard looked more annoyed than afraid. As though he had much better things to do than entertain Ministère officers in the middle of the day. Without a word, he opened the door wider and gestured for Marcellus to enter.
Marcellus followed the guard down a dark corridor strewn with puddles. Just like all the other Frets in Vallonay, Fret 17 used to be a freightship that once soared majestically across the galaxies, bringing survivors from the First World to Laterre hundreds of years ago. Now the old structure sat lopsided and decomposing in the mud, housing thousands upon thousands of people in the cramped couchettes that filled the floors below.
This floor, however, held no rooms except for the one that stood at the end of the hallway.
Marcellus had never been up here before. Up until a few hours ago, he hadn’t known this place and its one solitary resident even existed.
“It’s all yours,” the guard mumbled unceremoniously as they reached the door. Then, before Marcellus could blink, he took off down the hallway, scurrying away faster than a cockroach from the light.
Marcellus rolled his eyes and pushed on the rusting handle. The door eased open with a whine and he stepped inside, jerking to an abrupt halt at the sight in front of him. It was one of the most incredible views Marcellus had ever seen.
Huge windows made of clear sheets of plastique looked out over the whole of Vallonay. Under the cloudy gray sky, Laterre’s capital stretched out for kilomètres. Marcellus could make out the shimmering curve of Ledôme high up on its hill and in the flatlands below, he could see the outlines of hothouses and fermes. To his left, the docklands hugged the edge of the Secana Sea, which stretched out dark blue and endless into the distance.
“It’s quite the view isn’t it?”
The voice startled Marcellus and his gaze snapped around, landing on a huge chair stationed in the center of the room, in front of a vast, decrepit flight console. In the chair sat the man Marcellus had come to see. He just never imagined he would look like this.
The man’s face was a collage of scars, craters, and pockmarks, and his left eye drooped like it was being pulled down by an invisible weight. It was a face unlike anything Marcellus had seen before. A face wrecked and transfigured by … he couldn’t even imagine what.
“I haven’t gotten fully used to the sight myself,” the man in the chair said. “It still startles me from time to time.”
Marcellus now wasn’t sure whether the man was talking about the view out the window or his face.
“Welcome to the Bridge, Officer,” the man said, eyeing Marcellus’s crisp white uniform with a twinkle of approval.
“The Bridge?”
The man gestured around the vast room. “That’s what all of this used to be. Back when these hunks of metal could fly. They call me the Capitaine.” He winked his good eye. “It’s a little play on words. Now, to what do I owe the honor?”
Marcellus holstered his rayonette and forced himself to meet the man’s eye. “I was told you could help me.”
The Capitaine cocked his head. “You were, were you? And who told you that?”
Marcellus thought of the convict at the Policier Precinct that he’d bribed for information leading him here. And the promise of silence Marcellus had made in return. “I can’t say.”
“Of course, you can’t.” The Capitaine croaked out a laugh, and Marcellus couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was mocking him. “Help you with what, mon ami? I must warn you, though. If you’re looking for a mouchard, I don’t do deals with the Ministère.”
Marcellus shook his head. He was not looking for a snitch. “I need a microcam. Something untraceable and discreet.”
“I see.” The Capitaine leaned back in his seat. “And what would you want with an untraceable, discreet microcam?”
“I—” Marcellus started to say, but the Capitaine cut him off with another cackle.
“Let me guess, you can’t say, right?”
The man was definitely mocking him.
“I suppose you want to eavesdrop on someone,” the Capitaine went on, rising from his chair and walking over to a bank of metal cabinets. He pulled one open and riffled through a small bin. “A suspect, perhaps?”
Marcellus swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yes. A suspect,” and then, he quickly added, “believed to be working with the Vangarde.”
The Capitaine turned to flash him a thin smile. “Right.”
As the Capitaine continued to sift through his cabinet, Marcellus caught brief glimpses of a grand assortment of contraband: TéléComs, a pair of Policier cuffs, even a glinting rayonette. All the things the Ministère didn’t want the Third Estate to have. And every single one of them stolen, Marcellus had no doubt. If he were really here on a Ministère-sanctioned search, as he’d claimed to be, this place would be the mother lode.
“Here we are.” The Capitaine closed the cabinet, walked back to his chair, sat down, and held out his hand. In his leathered palm sat a tiny wafer-thin device, no bigger than a pea. A web of glimmering filaments threaded across its smooth surface.
Marcellus frowned down at it. “That doesn’t look like a microcam.”
“That’s because I don’t have a microcam.”
“What?”
“Fresh out, I’m afraid. This is the next best thing. An auditeur.”
An auditeur? Marcellus felt his hopes sink once again. He didn’t want a listening device. He wanted a cam. He wanted visual. He wanted no mistakes. Nothing left unseen.
“It’s a very advanced device,” the Capitaine said encouragingly. “Invisible to scans. It will connect directly to your TéléCom via regular communication channels. The signal will be encrypted to look like an AirLink. No one will ever discover it. Including your … suspect.” He flashed Marcellus another wry grin.
“But I want a microcam,” Marcellus said.
“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Marcellus let out a huff and dropped his gaze back down to the Capitaine’s open palm.
“You’re welcome to take your business elsewhere,” the Capitaine said. “But anyone will tell you—as I’m sure the person who sent you here already did—that I’m the most trustworthy shop in town. As well as the most”—he winked again at Marcellus—“discreet.”
Marcellus pondered his options. He could leave and try to find someone else who could sell him an illegal microcam, or he could attempt to plant this auditeur instead. It was, as the Capitaine said, the next best thing. If his grandfather conducted any business in his office, either in person or by AirLink, Marcellus would be able to hear it.
Plus, he was running out of time.
It had been a full day since his grandfather had stolen Mabelle’s microcam from Marcellus’s rooms. He’d, undoubtably, watched the footage by now.
And tonight was their weekly game of Regiments in the general’s study. It was the perfect moment for Marcellus to find a place to hide the device. Possibly the only moment. Because who knew when Marcellus would be invited back into his grandfather’s office … if ever?
“Fine,” Marcellus said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ten titan buttons he’d removed from one of his officer uniforms earlier. He spread them out on the console. But for the longest time, the Capitaine simply stared at them, his one sagging eye twitching as though he were computing something.
“I was told that would be enough,” Marcellus said nervously, remembering the convict’s instructions.
The Capitaine leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Seems you get told a lot of things, mon ami.” His gaze roved over Marcellus from head to toe. “Anyone ever tell you not to believe everything you’re told?”
“How much?” Marcellus asked briskly.
The Capitaine scanned the ten titan buttons. “Triple.”
Marcellus’s stomach lurched. “I don’t have triple.”
The Capitaine’s hand that was holding the device shifted out of reach. “Then it seems you don’t have an auditeur.”
Marcellus felt that familiar rush of anger. This criminal was trying to take advantage of him. Take advantage of the fact that he knew Marcellus not only needed this device, but needed it to be kept a secret.
But Marcellus was done being taken advantage of.
He stood up straighter. “How about I resist the urge to shut down this whole establishment right here and now, and we call it even?”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that.”
“You’re right,” Marcellus said hotly. “I won’t. Because you’re going to take the ten titan buttons and you’re going to keep your Sol-damn mouth shut. Because you’re not a mouchard who does deals with the Ministère, remember?”
Marcellus stepped forward and grabbed the auditeur, swiftly and decisively, from the Capitaine’s hand. Then, without another word, he turned and headed for the door, stomping noisily down the corridor and the stairs to the ground floor.
By the time Marcellus exited out of Fret 17, the Marsh was more crowded than ever. People shoved and jostled amongst the market stalls, and the walkways thrummed with energy and noise. The protest over the Patriarche’s wage cuts seemed to be reaching a pinnacle, and Marcellus couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking through the center of an unstable Sol on the brink of imploding.
At the center of the marketplace, a group of Third Estaters was congregated around the resurrected statue of Thibault Paresse, the founding Patriarche of Laterre, shouting and punching their fists into the air. Their synchronized, echoing chant reverberated through the Frets.
“Honest work for an honest wage! Honest work for an honest wage!”
Policier sergents tried desperately to keep the crowd contained, but Marcellus knew it was only a matter of minutes before another riot broke out. Today, however, he was grateful for the commotion. It would conceal what he had to do and keep the local authorities distracted.
After checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed, Marcellus ducked through the entrance of Fret 7. Once inside, memories began to swarm him. He suddenly saw her everywhere. Tending to his bleeding head in the hallway. Reading the message sewn into his father’s prison shirt. Vanishing around the corner the last night he’d seen her.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been back here since that night he’d watched Alouette run away from him. But now, with Mabelle’s words ringing in his ears, the hallway of Fret 7 felt different. Emptier somehow.
“Little Lark is no longer with the Vangarde.”
He’d stayed awake almost the entire night searching for her on his TéléCom. Scouring countless hours of security footage from the droids patrolling the Frets. Scanning a hundred thousand faces, looking for her face. But it was like trying to find a single drop of water in all of the Secana sea.
Alouette Taureau, it would seem, had turned back into a ghost.
With a sigh, he attempted to push her from his thoughts as he scurried toward the old collapsed stairwell at the end of the hall. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the balled-up piece of paper he’d scrawled a message on earlier this morning, informing the Vangarde that he was going to attempt to bug his grandfather’s office.
He squeezed the message in his palm before surreptitiously stuffing it between two broken slats in the staircase. Then, as he headed back down the long, dank corridor, he bent over and dragged his fingertip through the mud on the ground. When he reached the Fret’s entrance, he stopped and drew a large letter V on the wall.
The signal to the Vangarde that a new drop had been made.
Marcellus didn’t know who picked up or delivered the messages—perhaps more Fret rats like that boy he’d interrogated two weeks ago, who had been sent to Bastille for being a Vangarde courier. All Marcellus knew was that, by the time he returned tomorrow, a response would be waiting for him in the stairwell. At least, that’s what Mabelle had told him before he’d left the copper exploit yesterday morning, when she’d given him the instructions on how to make contact.
Exiting the Fret, he could hear the commotion building in the Marsh. Becoming more volatile. More violent. Soon, the droids would start firing into the crowd. Bodies would fall limp. More arrests would be made. More prisoners sent to Bastille to mine the zyttrium required to make more Skins. More chains for the Third Estate. It was a vicious cycle that Marcellus knew had to change.
But his grandfather was not the one to do it. He was not the better solution. If there was anything Marcellus was certain of, it was that.
“Is this really where you’re supposed to be?”
Marcellus froze at the sound of the voice. The icy, cold, inflectionless tone. He closed his eyes, praying that the voice was talking to someone else—a rioter escaped from the marketplace, perhaps. But then the footsteps approached from behind him. Their stiff, rhythmic cadence snapped through the damp air. A tingle shot down Marcellus’s spine. He spun around and his gaze landed on a pair of shiny black boots as they emerged from the Fret hallway and came toe to toe with Marcellus’s own.
His pulse spiked. Had he been followed?
Marcellus took a deep breath and looked unwaveringly into the eyes of the man who stood now a mere whisper away from him.
If you could even still call him a man.
The newly implanted circuitry in the left side of the cyborg’s face blinked furiously as a look of satisfaction passed over his harsh features.
Marcellus kept his gaze steady and tried to infuse nonchalance into his words. “Inspecteur Chacal. How good to see you.”
The inspecteur glared back at him. “Officer Bonnefaçon. What are you doing here? My TéléCom says you’re supposed to be at the TéléSkin fabrique right now, interrogating the déchets.”
Marcellus tried not to cringe at the inspecteur’s use of that vulgar word for the Third Estates. Déchets. Garbage. Scum.
“I’m on a special assignment,” Marcellus replied, fighting to keep his voice steady. Chacal had already snitched on him to his grandfather once. He had to assume he would do it again. “Confidential. It’s not logged.”
The inspecteur’s gaze raked up and down Marcellus, his circuitry flashing with suspicion. The auditeur in Marcellus’s pocket suddenly felt like a boulder.
The inspecteur couldn’t search him, could he? He didn’t have the authority.
Marcellus heard the crisp smack, smack, smack of Chacal’s infamous metal baton slapping against his palm as he considered the validity of Marcellus’s claim. The weapon glinted ominously in the afternoon light.
“And I’m running behind,” Marcellus continued, anxious to get as far away from Chacal as possible, “so I better get back to it.”
He began to push his way past the inspecteur, but Chacal flicked his baton in front of him, blocking his path. Chacal’s one orange eye bore into him.
Marcellus knew the inspecteur could use that eye to seek the truth, to pick up on Marcellus’s heart rate and body heat. A human lie detector. But he was certain Chacal was also using it as a method of intimidation. Chacal had always been predatory, with a taste for terrorization. But after his recent promotion from sergent to inspecteur—and subsequent cyborg operation—the power had immediately gone to his cybernetically enhanced brain.
“What kind of special assignment?” Chacal asked.
Marcellus allowed a small smile to cross his lips. “I would share more details with you, Inspecteur, but I’m afraid it’s above your clearance level.”
The insult registered on the man’s face, and Marcellus could see the fury flash in his one human eye.
“Shall I AirLink in a quick confirmation to the general that you are indeed supposed to be here? And not in the Fabrique District as my TéléCom says?” Chacal asked.
Marcellus could hear his heart thudding in his ears, but somehow, he managed to keep his panic concealed. “If you must,” he replied casually. “And while you’re at it, perhaps you could also explain to him why the newly appointed inspecteur of the Vallonay Policier Precinct has abandoned his sergents in the midst of a potential riot.”
The embedded circuits in Chacal’s face flashed once more, but this time, Marcellus could read the difference in their frenetic flickering. This time, it wasn’t anger or suspicion that played out on the cyborg’s face. It was fear. Followed by subtle resignation.
Chacal slowly raised his baton, allowing Marcellus to pass. “Good luck on your assignment,” he muttered, refusing to meet Marcellus’s eye.
“Merci,” Marcellus replied jovially, giving the inspecteur an undeserved salute. “And Vive Laterre.”
“Vive Laterre,” Chacal repeated, barely audible through his clenched teeth.