THE HEAVY PERMASTEEL COLLAR CLAMPED around Chatine’s neck, and she felt herself being tugged forward. She shuffled her feet, following the inmate in front of her as they walked slowly and arduously out of the exploit complex.
Another day over.
Only ten thousand, one hundred and eighty-five to go.
She stumbled across the moon’s dusty amber-colored surface while the collar dragged at her throat, causing her to cough and wheeze.
Chatine wasn’t sure why they even needed these collars and the heavy PermaSteel chain hitching each prisoner together in a long miserable line. What was the point when there were droids stationed all along their route back to the prison building, ready to send ruthless volts of electricity through your body if you dared try to run?
The walk to and from the exploit complex was long and laborious. Chatine and the other prisoners moved like a single, lumbering snake, the great chain between them clanking and jangling in the cold Bastille air.
Chatine shivered as a gust of wind whistled through her exploit coat and spread across her skin. She glanced up and squinted against the light of the stars. They were mere pinpricks in the sky, but after twelve hours of darkness in the exploits, it took her eyes a moment to adjust.
The three Sols of the System Divine were still invisible to her on Bastille. The prison complex was positioned so far north on the moon’s surface, it was almost always night here. But the stars, they were everywhere. Like an infinite blanket of shimmering and dancing light across the sky. More stars than she could ever hope to count. More than she even thought existed.
“Look down, keep walking,” said a nearby droid.
Chatine trudged forward, relieved when she could finally make out the glittering lights of Bastille’s spaceport to her right. They were almost there.
Up ahead, the prison building loomed. Flanked by an impenetrable curtain wall, its six towers glowed like unwavering sentinels. Chatine’s gaze tracked across to the Trésor tower, where her own cell block was located. Up on its roof, she could just make out a long silver chute glinting in the starlight. Chatine shivered, thinking about the terrible machine that was attached to that chimney. The disintegrateur. And even though she warned herself not to, she couldn’t help but think about Anaïs, the girl from the exploit. Somewhere up there, in the dingy, cold morgue on the top floor of the tower, her body was waiting to be loaded into that machine, which blasted, froze, and turned everything to nothing. Chatine was grateful that at least today wasn’t a disintegration day. Even though the ice dust of the dead wasn’t supposed to have an odor, Chatine swore she could smell the stench as the frozen fragments billowed up the gleaming chimney into the dark skies above.
Chatine pulled her gaze from the roof as the heavy airlock of the dispatch bunker yawned open and the line of chained prisoners filed inside. The doors sealed shut, and one by one, they stepped into a narrow chamber where, amid a deafening cranking and squealing noise, the chains from their necks were removed. As soon as the metal collar was unfastened, Chatine felt like she could breathe again.
The dispatch bunker was a desolate room with nothing but a few benches, floors covered in Bastille dust, and rows of hooks for exploit coats. Chatine shrugged out of her own and was just about to hang it up when a loud clatter rang out, causing her to jump. She turned to see a man sprawled out on the floor. His head was smooth and shiny from the razor. Fresh off the voyageur.
“Watch your step, Nov,” a harsh voice spat, using the nickname new arrivals were given on Bastille.
Chatine turned around to see another man standing just behind her, glaring down at the prisoner on the floor. He’d evidently been the one to put him there. The standing man’s hair was long, falling to the middle of his back. Chatine’s gaze zeroed in on his left shirt sleeve, rolled with precision.
Another Vétéran. Like Roche’s bodyguard, Clovis.
“Sorry,” the newcomer muttered through clenched teeth. “Calm the fric down, all right?”
There was something eerily familiar about him. But as hard as she tried, Chatine couldn’t manage to place him in her memories.
“Everyone has to learn their place here,” the Vétéran growled, taking a few steps forward until he stood directly over the fallen inmate. “And right now, you are exactly where you belong. On the floor like the Nov scum that you are.”
A ripple of trepidation passed through Chatine. She’d never seen a Vétéran instigate a fight before. Most of them were too old. And while inmates like Clovis were intimidating, they mostly stayed out of trouble.
So what was this man doing?
The newcomer tried to stand, but the Vétéran immediately kicked him back down to the floor.
Chatine’s muscles coiled. This would not end well. Fights between inmates broke out often, and she’d learned quickly to be as far away from the scene as possible when they did. She tossed her coat onto the hook and backed away from the two men just as the newcomer let out a roar, launched to his feet, and barreled into the Vétéran.
The older man staggered backward, taking the hit, and soon the two prisoners were on the floor together, wrestling for position, punches being thrown and ducked. Out of the corner of her eye, Chatine saw the nearest droid register the fight and start to make its way over. She turned, preparing to remove herself from the crime of proximity, when just then, something caught her eye. The two scrabbling prisoners were still on the ground. The Vétéran had grabbed a stray boot from nearby and was holding it high above his head, preparing to slam it down on the other man’s face.
But it was the newcomer—lying on his back—who Chatine was watching, transfixed. One of his hands was raised to protect his face from the blow, while the other was reaching toward the pocket of the Vétéran’s prison uniform. Chatine caught a glimpse of something small and white—like a tiny vial—before it was gone. Deposited into the pocket. The heavy boot came down. The newcomer rolled left and was instantly back on his feet. He landed a kick right in the Vétéran’s stomach. The Vétéran collapsed. The newcomer went for a second blow, but it never connected because he was suddenly flung back as the droid grabbed him by the scruff of the neck like a dog. Dangling from its metal fist, the Nov wriggled and whipped his body, but it was no use. Hardly anyone broke free from the grasp of a droid. A split second later, the droid’s tazeur made contact with the newcomer’s neck. His whole body juddered and seized before the droid dropped him to the floor in a quivering, convulsing heap.
And that’s when Chatine saw it.
The cuff of the newcomer’s left shirt sleeve.
It, too, had been rolled up.
Just like Clovis’s. Just like the old man who had started the fight.
Chatine’s body stiffened.
He couldn’t be one of them. He’d only just arrived. It didn’t make any sense. The Vétérans were all ancient prisoners, with hair that fell at least to their chins. This man didn’t fit in.
“Prisoner 51616,” announced the droid, which still loomed over the newcomer. “This is your first warning. Any future altercations or breaches in protocol will earn you two days in solitary confinement.”
As Chatine watched the man hobble away, she was struck, once again, by that same twinge of recognition. His prominent brow and hooked nose seemed so familiar to her. But still, she couldn’t figure out how she knew him. The haze of the grippe was holding her brain and her memories hostage. Trying to recall this man’s face was like trying to swim through thick sludge.
Chatine followed the newcomer with her eyes, watching as he pulled off his exploit coat and hung it up. Her good sense told her to let it go. Stop obsessing over this. It was none of her business, and she was better off not getting involved anyway.
But another part of her—the part that had been tamped down, drowned out by the grippe, forgotten back on Laterre—wouldn’t allow her to let it go. It was the very part of Chatine that had helped her survive the streets of Vallonay.
It was the Fret rat in her.
She’d thought it was dead and incinerated. She’d thought it had been killed the moment that prisoner number had been tattooed into her arm. But now she could feel it rising back up, screaming through the thick fog, telling her there was something going on here. Something she had to figure out.
Chatine studied the new inmate as he joined the line of prisoners exiting the dispatch bunker and heading for the cantine. His long muscular limbs, broad shoulders, and square jaw tugged at the corners of her memory.
Where had she seen him before?
He turned his head to rub at the back of his neck, giving Chatine a perfect view of his face. And that’s when a flimsy memory pushed its way into her mind. She could suddenly see wisps of fog in the air. His large, menacing frame emerging from a wall of mist.
Montfer.
The Tourbay.
Mabelle.
He was one of Mabelle’s bodyguards. Chatine had seen the man when she’d accompanied Marcellus to Montfer to meet with his former governess, an escaped Vangarde prisoner. That was back when Chatine was still working as a spy for General Bonnefaçon. The decision that had eventually landed her on Bastille.
Chatine cursed the thick haze that was constantly swirling around her brain, keeping her thoughts blurry, keeping her stupide. She shut her eyes tight, trying to push her way through the fog—both the one in her memory and the one that was holding her mind hostage. Until the jagged, fragmented pieces of that day in Montfer finally started to take shape and fuse together.
Mabelle was Vangarde.
This man was one of her operatives. And he had just staged a fight to slip something into the pocket of another prisoner. Something he’d obviously brought from Laterre and smuggled onto Bastille.
Chatine had gotten it all wrong. She’d misread the signs from the start. The rolled-up sleeves, the long hair, the lack of eye contact and acknowledgement.
The Vétérans weren’t just some random group of old prisoners. They were the Vangarde. They’d infiltrated Bastille, getting jobs in the kitchen, and the Med Center, and the morgue. They’d been here for years, maybe even as far back as the Rebellion of 488.
And now, they were planning something.