IT WAS ALMOST THE MIDDLE of the night when Marcellus finally made it back to the Grand Palais. He’d been wandering the streets of Ledôme for over an hour. Like a lost planet without an orbit, he didn’t know where to go. What to do. How to escape those gruesome images: Chatine being blasted into the air by an explosive, and Mabelle’s mangled body lying on that tower roof.
He staggered between the sculpted hedges and immaculate flowerbeds of the Palais gardens, before entering the Palais through the back terrace. He had just reached the base of the imperial staircase when his TéléCom dinged in his ear and he heard the familiar chime of a Universal Alert starting.
Confused, Marcellus unfolded his TéléCom and startled when he saw not his grandfather’s face on the screen, but Pascal Chaumont.
“Good evening, fellow Laterrians. I apologize for the late-night interruption, but this good news could not wait. Patriarche Lyon Paresse is pleased to announce that, as of this evening, Citizen Rousseau, prisoner of Bastille and former Vangarde leader, is dead.”
Marcellus angrily flicked the alert from his screen and returned his TéléCom to his pocket. Apparently, the Patriarche couldn’t even wait until morning to do the very thing the general advised him not to do.
He pounded up the steps of the imperial staircase and stalked down the corridors to the south wing. He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to lock the door. Shut the drapes. Shroud himself in darkness.
He rounded the corner and approached his rooms at the end of the hallway. But it wasn’t until he lifted his hand to the biometric lock that he noticed the door was already ajar.
Marcellus froze.
Had he forgotten to shut his door when he’d left?
Then Marcellus heard something inside. A scraping. A rustling. The squeak of furniture across polished floors, followed by a series of thuds and bangs. It sounded like a wild animal was scrounging around his rooms for scraps of food. He crept toward the open door and peered through the crack. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw the ragged, dust-covered coat he’d worn to meet with Mabelle at the copper exploit. The disguise was no longer tucked into the back of his closet, where he’d hidden it. It now lay exposed in the middle of the floor.
Like it had been dug up.
Uncovered.
Found.
And then came the voice.
“Keep looking. I know it’s in here somewhere.”
Every nerve inside Marcellus felt as if it were unraveling. That voice—harsh and gruff and, now thanks to his recent enhancements, disturbingly robotic—was the last voice Marcellus wanted to hear inside his rooms.
Standing up straighter, he shoved the door open and barged inside. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The state of the room brought Marcellus up short. Every drawer had been opened and emptied. His dressing room was completely torn apart. His bedsheets lay tangled on the ground. Even the paintings had been removed from the walls.
And just as he suspected, Inspecteur Chacal stood in the middle of the carnage, slapping his metal baton rhythmically against his palm, surveying the debris.
“Officer Bonnefaçon,” he said with a slight sneer, his circuitry flashing once. “Welcome back. Don’t worry. Just a routine search.”
“An unauthorized search,” Marcellus growled. “I order you to cease immediately or I will have you arrested for trespassing and disobeying orders from an officer of the Ministère.”
Marcellus heard a crash and looked over to see that one of Chacal’s deputies had overturned his bedside table and was now rifling through the contents of its small drawer. Furiously, he rushed toward the man. “What on Laterre—”
But he stopped when something hard was thrust into his stomach. He glanced down to see Chacal had extended his baton, blocking Marcellus’s path.
“I am not disobeying orders,” the inspecteur said in a chillingly calm tone. “I am following them.”
Marcellus seethed. “Well, whoever gave you those orders, as Commandeur-in-training, I outrank them.”
“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Officer Bonnefaçon.” Chacal’s voice hissed ominously on the last syllable of Marcellus’s name. “I have every right to search this room. I would share more details with you, but I’m afraid it’s above your clearance level.”
Marcellus recognized his own words echoed back at him. The same words he’d said to Chacal earlier today, when the inspecteur had cornered him outside of Fret 7.
“We found something,” a voice announced, causing both Chacal and Marcellus to dart into the bathroom, where a uniformed deputy was kneeling over a small gap in the floor. Marcellus’s childhood hiding spot. The loose tile had been pulled up and tossed aside. And lying at the base of the shallow nook, where only days ago there was nothing, there was now, indeed, something.
A microcam.
Marcellus could tell from its crude design and shape that it was the same one his grandfather had stolen from that very spot. Mabelle’s microcam.
A chill worked its way down Marcellus’s spine as Inspecteur Chacal reached into the floor and pinched the tiny object between two gloved fingers. He held it up to the light, examining it. “And what is this, Officer?”
“I have no idea how that got there,” Marcellus said and, even though it was the truth, his voice still wavered.
The inspecteur raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing Marcellus. He stalked into the bedroom and tapped on the wall monitor. “Well, let’s find out, shall we?”
Marcellus stood back, dread coating his stomach. Something was going on here. Something that made the back of Marcellus’s neck prickle with sweat.
The screen blinked to life as it connected to the small device, and a moment later, an image appeared. An image Marcellus was certain he’d never seen before. It appeared to be captured from within the warden’s office, the room Marcellus had just left. Except now it was dark and empty. As though this footage had been taken at night. The image panned around the room, closing in on various objects: the warden’s desk, the monitors on the wall, the control panel. Then, the image shifted, replaced by what looked to be three-dimensional blueprints of some kind. The complicated schematics rotated and zoomed out, until Marcellus started to recognize the shapes and patterns of the design.
And the blood froze to ice in his veins.
Bastille.
These were blueprints for the prison. Marcellus could see the whole compound now. The towers, the spaceport, the zyttrium exploits—all of it cracked open and displayed in great detail.
Inspecteur Chacal tapped on the screen to pause the playback. “Marcellus Bonnefaçon, you are under arrest for collusion with the Vangarde in the attempted break-out of Citizen Rousseau.”
“What?” Marcellus barely had time to sputter out the word before one of the deputies was on him, grabbing his wrists and pinning them behind his back. Marcellus struggled, but the second deputy was there in an instant, restraining him and swiping Marcellus’s rayonette from its holster. “Chacal! I had nothing to do with that!”
But the inspecteur ignored Marcellus’s protests, jabbing a finger at the frozen blueprint on the screen. “This evidence suggests otherwise. And I, personally, am witness to the fact that you disobeyed direct orders and met secretly with two Vangarde operatives in the Policier Precinct, shortly after they were arrested for attempting to break into the office of the Warden of Bastille. The very office documented on this microcam.” He shoved the device under Marcellus’s nose.
“Chacal!” Marcellus wrestled uselessly against his captors. “This is a mistake. I…”
Then, like lightning hitting a conductor, realization struck, and the words died on Marcellus’s tongue.
Of course. How could he have been so blind. So stupide?
This was no mistake. This was intentional. Very intentional. His grandfather had put that microcam there. Exactly where he’d found it the other day. Except obviously, it didn’t still have the incriminating footage that Mabelle had captured seventeen years ago. The general couldn’t risk that getting out. Which is why he’d replaced it with something that incriminated Marcellus instead.
Because, as always, the general had been three moves ahead of Marcellus the whole time.
He knew. He knew from the moment he’d watched that footage that Marcellus had been in contact with the Vangarde and was probably now working with them. He just couldn’t prove it. So, the general had to do what he did best.
Frame.
Marcellus glared at Inspecteur Chacal, who was clearly in on this. “So, this is how you got your promotion?” Marcellus asked in amazement. “You became his new lackey? Willing to go along with anything in order to get ahead?”
The newly implanted circuitry across Chacal’s face flickered, confirming everything Marcellus needed to know.
“Take him in,” the inspecteur growled.
The two deputies shoved hard at Marcellus’s back, compelling him forward. Moving him closer to the fate that was awaiting him at the Policier Precinct. At the prisoner transport center. And finally, on the moon.
“Just like your father …”
In his mind, like a flash of lightning, Marcellus suddenly saw his father’s body, wracked and frozen and decimated. Julien Bonnefaçon had been framed for the murder of six hundred exploit workers. He’d been sent to Bastille and had died there, many grueling and freezing years later.
And now, so would Marcellus.
From the day he was born, he had been destined to walk this path.
Destined to follow in the footsteps of a traitor.
As the deputies led him down the hallway of the south wing, down the imperial staircase, and through the Grand Foyer, Marcellus’s whole body was numb. All he could feel was the failure. The defeat.
General Bonnefaçon had won. Again. Just like he always did. In every game. Every maneuver. Every challenge. Every battle. He was the planet’s greatest military strategist. And Marcellus was nothing.
Now his grandfather was going to get away with all of it. He was going to develop this deadly weapon and take control of the Regime, and there was no one left to stop him. Citizen Rousseau was dead. Mabelle was dead. His grandfather had killed them both.
They stepped outside, into the warm night air of Ledôme, where Marcellus could see a Policier patroleur waiting in the forecourt. As the deputies led him toward the vehicle, Marcellus felt a shiver in his bones. It was as though he could feel someone watching him. He pulled to a stop and glanced back, into the night. No one was there, but Marcellus’s gaze was instantly drawn upward. To a large window with a single light illuminated inside. Standing in the center of the frame, like a First World portrait, was General Bonnefaçon. He glared down at Marcellus, his expression made of pure PermaSteel, his eyes made of fire.
Marcellus’s gaze locked into his grandfather’s, and in one brief, burning moment, everything was exchanged. Every horrible insult the general had ever thrown at him. And every heated reply Marcellus had never had the courage to throw back. Every doubt and every tense silence.
An eighteen-year-old schism opened up in the short distance that now stood between them.
The deputies shoved at his back, urging him to keep walking, but just then something detonated inside of Marcellus. Something deep and dark and determined.
A roar ripped out of him, shocking everyone, including himself. He threw off the two deputies holding on to his arms with such force that both of them were flung to the ground.
“Get up you imbeciles!” Chacal shouted from somewhere behind him. “Stop him!”
But Marcellus was already on the move. He sprinted across the forecourt, heading for the docking station just behind the patroleur. A second later, he heard something sizzle past his left ear. His gaze whipped to the side and he saw it.
The warping, the twisting, the blurring of the air around him.
Rayonette pulses.
Marcellus gasped and ran faster. He was now halfway across the forecourt, the docking station in sight.
“Don’t let him get away!” Chacal shouted.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two more pulses tore through the air, one after the other. Marcellus took cover behind a sculpture of a partially dressed woman that stood guard in the center of the forecourt. The first pulse ricocheted off her chest, causing the marble to crack and splinter, before shooting upward toward the TéléSky.
The second pulse glanced Marcellus’s right shoulder. He bit back a scream that bubbled up in his throat and kept running, even though it felt as if his whole arm and shoulder had been ripped through by a jagged knife.
“You filthy déchet lover,” the inspecteur growled at him. “You will pay for this.”
Footsteps echoed across the flagstones. Three more pulses surged through the air. Marcellus dove behind the idling patroleur and scrambled toward the docking station where his moto gleamed and hovered, like it was eagerly awaiting his arrival. As he mounted the bike and disengaged the lock, he could feel numbness spreading to his fingers. The paralyzeur was working its way through his nerves, shutting down all feeling, all sensation. He shook out his right hand, trying to bring some of the sensation back. But it was a lost cause. The paralyzeur would take hours to wear off. He was going to have to somehow drive this moto one-handed.
Revving the engine, Marcellus took one final glance up at the window. General Bonnefaçon still stood there, watching him with an almost amused expression. And, for a moment, Marcellus swore he could hear his grandfather’s thoughts as clearly as if the general were whispering them right into his ear.
“Always so hasty to act, aren’t you, Marcellus?”
The moto roared beneath him, anxious to take him far away from this place. From that steely gaze. From those words that Marcellus feared were all too true.
Just as Chacal and his deputies came barreling around the patroleur with their rayonettes raised, Marcellus lifted his feet and sped out of the gates, out of Ledôme, and into the night. He refused to turn around. Refused to glance behind him. Even though he was certain he was never coming back.