OUTSIDE THE PORTHOLE WINDOW, THE moon of Adalisa glowed, vast and bright and blue. Its giant craters were obscured by a constant cycle of lunar dust storms, making its surface look strangely distorted and out of focus. And right now, that’s pretty much how everything felt to Alouette. The whole universe was out of alignment. Nothing felt right anymore. Everything felt off-kilter, off balance, like one stiff breeze could knock it all down. The Sols, the stars, every planet and every moon.
Cerise had maneuvered the voyageur into Adalisa’s orbit, and they were now cowering behind the gigantic blue moon like the fugitives they were. She’d also sent out a series of microprobes as scouts, and the latest update reported that three more warships from the Albion Royal Space Fleet had joined the hunt. There were now half a dozen deadly crafts scouring the skies, searching for them. While back on Laterre, the general—who had undoubtedly learned of their escape by now—was certainly preparing his own ships to intercept them if they dared try to reenter Laterrian airspace.
In short, they were trapped.
And every minute that passed, every minute spent hiding behind this moon, brought Gabriel closer to death and the weapon closer to the general’s hands.
Alouette tore her gaze from the window and focused on Gabriel. He’d been asleep for a few hours now. His chest was rising and falling so peacefully, if it weren’t for the swatch of bandages on his stomach, it would be impossible to tell he was even injured. His face was calm, his expression serene.
Once Alouette had gotten the bleeding under control, they’d managed to move him here, to the infirmerie, where Alouette had found an assortment of rudimentary supplies. Nothing even close to what was required to perform any complex medical procedures. Apparently, whoever equipped this ship never anticipated its passengers getting shot by Albion guards. But Alouette had quickly managed to locate biosutures, bandages, and some médicaments which were, at least, helping Gabriel rest and keeping the infection at bay. But she knew they wouldn’t heal him. Everything she’d done to help him was just a temporary solution. If they couldn’t get him back to the Refuge …
No. She wouldn’t even let her thoughts go there.
Frustrated and fidgety, Alouette stood up and walked over to the monitor on the wall. She activated the microcams in the infirmerie, so she could see and hear Gabriel in case he woke up. Then she slipped through the door of the small cabin and navigated her way up to the flight bridge. It was dark apart from the flickering lights of the flight console, the blue glow of Adalisa through the curved windows, and the hologram flight map that still hovered above its pedestal in the center of the room. Her eyes skimmed across the twelve planets of the System Divine before finally settling on the ice-white sphere of Reichenstat.
For the first time in weeks, Alouette was glad that Hugo Taureau, the only father she’d ever known, had left. She was relieved he wouldn’t be on Laterre to witness everything that was about to happen.
She extended her hand toward the planet, until the tip of her index finger was submerged in the brilliant, bright light of the hologram.
I hope you’re okay, she whispered into the silence of her mind.
“Sols!” shouted a far-off voice, followed by a loud crash.
Startled, Alouette snapped her gaze to the viewing lounge, just off the bridge. The room appeared to be empty. But a moment later, she heard a bang, and then another slew of curse words. Curious, she followed the noise until she reached the ship’s small galley and pulled to a halt in the doorway.
Every cupboard and drawer had been opened. There were dishes, utensils, and boxes of food scattered everywhere. A metal tin lay on the floor, brown liquid splashed around it. And in the center of it all was Cerise, looking frenzied and agitated.
“What are you doing?” Alouette was almost too afraid to ask.
Cerise gave a sheepish little shrug. “Baking relaxes me.”
Alouette’s brow arched. The girl looked anything but relaxed.
“I just don’t know what to do with myself!” Cerise threw up her hands. “We’ve been hiding behind this moon for hours and those warships are still out there. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how to get around them so we can get the fric out of here, but I’ve got nothing. There’s no way out of here. We’re going to be stuck behind this blasted moon forever. Or at least until they find us or give up. But by then Gabriel will be dead and the general will have his weapon and he’ll send the update to the Skins and all of this will have been for nothing.” Cerise glanced around at the debris and sighed, her voice softening a little. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I came in here. I thought I’d make a gâteau. You know, for Gabriel when he wakes up. He said he’s never had gâteau before. But the ship doesn’t have all the ingredients and everything’s just … just …”
“A mess?” Alouette speculated.
Cerise collapsed against the counter. “Yes. Exactly.”
Alouette had never seen Cerise look so daunted. So weighed down. She was usually the buoyant one of the group. But apparently, everyone had a limit, and Cerise had reached hers.
“It’s a nice gesture,” Alouette offered. “I’m sure Gabriel will love it.”
Her heart ached at the unspoken implication of her words.
If he wakes up.
Cerise gritted her teeth. “Yeah, well, he’s a total pain in my rump, and if I have to listen to him call me ‘Sparkles’ one more time I might throw myself out the escape hatch of the ship. But …” Her voice trailed off as her eyes misted. “But everyone deserves the chance to try gâteau.”
Alouette cracked the tiniest of smiles. She’d never really taken the time to get to know Cerise. But as the slender, obsidian-haired girl stood there, with a hurricane of baking equipment scattered around her and tears pricking her eyes, Alouette couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of affection for her.
“Come on.” Alouette walked over and nudged Cerise with her elbow. “I’ll help you clean this up.” She grabbed a sponge from the sink and began to wipe down the counter. For a long time, Cerise just watched her, like Alouette was performing some unfamiliar ritual from another planet.
“I actually find cleaning to be pretty calming.” Alouette wrung out the sponge. “I used to scrub the floors in the Refuge. That was one of my chores.”
“The Refuge,” Cerise repeated. “That’s where you lived? With the Vangarde, right?”
Alouette drew in a shaky breath. Her first instinct was to clam up, conceal the truth, keep the sisters’ secrets. But when she looked into Cerise’s eyes, she knew she could trust her. Over the past few days, she, Cerise, Gabriel, and Marcellus had become a group. A team. And for the first time since Alouette had left the Refuge, she’d felt like she was part of something again. Part of a family. She may not have known her real family—and she might never find the answers she was looking for about her mother—but she knew that the word “family” could be as wide and as all-encompassing as the universe itself. The sisters had taught her that.
“Yes,” Alouette finally said. “I lived with them for twelve years. They pretty much raised me. I just didn’t know who they really were until recently. I called them sisters.”
“And that’s how you know Dr. Collins’s daughter?” Cerise confirmed. “Denise?”
Alouette nodded and ran her sponge across the countertop, feeling a deep ache pulse through her as she thought of Dr. Collins’s head slumped against the contrôleur of the aerocab. And the promise she’d made to him mere hours before he’d died.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
“She’s one of the only sisters left,” Alouette said. “I have to find out where the general is keeping them, but I don’t even know where to start looking.”
Cerise leaned forward on the counter. “Well, who else might know where the general’s detention facility is?”
Alouette shrugged. “Marcellus said, besides the general, only Inspecteur Limier knows. I guess he was the general’s primary interrogator. But according to Marcellus, Inspecteur Limier’s condition is—”
“Unknown,” Cerise said with a nod. “Yeah. The last I heard, he was going into surgery. Subdural hematoma. Blood clot in the brain. It didn’t sound good. Apparently, his cyborg circuitry was pretty fried.”
Alouette scrubbed harder against the countertop, trying to keep the guilt from creeping in. Was it possible that their only lead to Jacqui and Denise’s whereabouts was lost because of her finger on the trigger?
“Do you …” Cerise started to ask something, but stopped herself, clearly wrestling with the right words. “Did Denise ever talk to you about …” She huffed and finally finished her sentence in a rush, as though afraid if she didn’t say it quickly, the words would float away from her. “Did she ever say anything about her decision to become a cyborg?”
Alouette’s hand abruptly stopped on the countertop. She certainly wasn’t expecting Cerise to ask about that. “No. Hardly any of the sisters talked about their lives before the Refuge.”
Cerise nodded, looking disappointed. “It’s just … I can’t stop thinking about what Dr. Collins said. How she joined the program so willingly. Why would she do that? What was she thinking?”
Alouette shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Would you ever choose to be a cyborg?” Cerise pressed, and there was something about the look in her eyes that made Alouette certain this was not just an idle question. As though Cerise’s life depended on Alouette’s answer.
Her grip around the sponge tightened. “No. I don’t think I would.”
Something cold and chilling flashed over Cerise’s face. For a moment, it looked like she’d fallen into some kind of trance. And when she spoke next, her words were flat and distant. “My operation was supposed to be yesterday.”
Alouette blinked, certain she’d misheard her. “What operation?”
Still Cerise didn’t look at her. She kept her gaze straight ahead. “My cyborg operation.”
The sponge fell from Alouette’s hand. “You mean, to become a cyborg?”
“Papa signed me up for the program a few years ago, as soon as he started to notice that I had a knack with devices and networks. Of course, he had conveniently chosen not to have the procedure done on himself, which never seemed fair. But he expects me to become a technicien, and maybe even a directeur of a lab one day.”
“Will you still be able to hack?”
“Oh, I’ll be able to. I’ll be the best hacker in the world. I just … you know … won’t want to.” Cerise let out a bitter laugh. “How’s that for irony?”
Alouette immediately understood. Cyborgs were programmed to be obedient. Wired for precision and loyalty. The operation would make Cerise even more talented than she already was, but it would steal away every thread of her rebellious spirit. Essentially the very thing that made Cerise … Cerise.
“That’s what you meant when you said, ‘superficial is the safest thing to be,’ ” Alouette realized.
“Yeah. I figured that if I could fool my father into thinking I wasn’t as smart as he thought, maybe he’d change his mind about the surgery. But I’m pretty sure he sees right through me.” She let out a heavy sigh. “What do you think prompted Denise to take out her circuitry?”
“I don’t know,” Alouette repeated.
Cerise shook her head, like she was trying to jolt herself awake. “Well, anyway, that’s the other reason I left Ledôme to track down Marcellus. I wanted to tell the Vangarde about the message I found, but also … I was running away.”
“From the operation?”
Cerise nodded. “I couldn’t stand to think of myself as one of them. A cyborg programmed to serve the Regime I despise. I was foolish enough to think I could change the planet. I thought I was destined for better things. Bigger things.”
“Maybe you are.”
But Cerise only chuckled. “Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just stupide. Papa always said I was too idealistic for my own good.” She glanced around the messy kitchen. “Maybe that’s true. I just wanted to help. I fancied myself a sympathizeur.”
“You are a sympathizeur. And the world needs more of them.”
Cerise scoffed. “Yeah, but what does that even mean? Nothing. Gabriel was right. My life is a joke. I don’t really do much besides sit around in my fancy manoir, trying to track down some elusive kill switch that probably doesn’t even exist. It probably is just a stupide conspiracy theory that I’ve wasted far too much of my life trying to prove right.”
“No one has proven it wrong,” Alouette pointed out.
Cerise scoffed. “I don’t know. Maybe the kill switch is just a metaphor for everything that’s wrong with me. Maybe I just want so badly to believe that there’s this mythical fantasy solution to the world’s problems, and if I just look hard enough, I’ll find it. Meanwhile, I’ve never done anything that might actually make a difference.”
“Cerise!” Alouette said incredulously. “Look outside the window. You’re on a voyageur, hiding behind an Albion moon. You traveled to an enemy planet, came face-to-face with the System Divine’s most formidable soldiers, and you lived to tell about it. If that’s not doing something, I don’t know what it is.”
For a moment, Cerise looked hopeful. Like she truly wanted to believe Alouette. Like she wanted to be the same person who had boarded this voyageur only a week ago. Confident. Optimistic. Bubbly. But a moment later, her gaze went glassy, and Alouette could swear she saw the hope seep right out of her. Then, in a vacant, haunted tone, Cerise said, “And yet we’re probably still all going to die out here.”
Alouette felt the threat of Cerise’s words sink into her. Like they were creating their own gravity, pulling her to the ground. Was she right? Would they never find a way home?
“Sometimes,” Alouette began, feeling her confidence falter, “it’s our intentions that mean more than the results.” It was the kind of thing Sister Jacqui would say, and it made her long for her favorite sister more than ever.
“Maybe,” Cerise replied glumly. “But my intentions are not going to save Gabriel’s life. And I’m sorry to say, neither are yours.”
Alouette was at a loss for words. She wanted so badly to comfort Cerise. To comfort herself. To tell them both it would all be okay. Gabriel would live. They would find a way to evade the Albion warships and they would get home in time to stop the general. But she couldn’t say any of those things.
For the first time in her life, she felt words fail her.
Like the world was forgetting them all over again.
She glanced down at a smudge of egg yolk starting to harden on the counter. And suddenly, all she could focus on was that stain. She bent down, grabbed the fallen sponge from the floor, and attacked the stain with the strength and devotion of a soldier taking on an insurgent army. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her knuckles ached. Until she felt Cerise’s gentle hand land on hers.
“Hey,” Cerise whispered, carefully prying the sponge from Alouette’s grip. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do that. I’ll finish cleaning.”
Alouette started to protest. “But I—”
“I know.” Cerise’s smile was warm and fleeting and unexpected. “But it’s my mess. I should be the one to clean it up.”
Alouette needed to walk. To pace. To move. She was used to being in confined spaces. The Refuge wasn’t much bigger than this ship. But she’d never, in her entire life, felt more trapped than she did right now.
“Are you okay?” a voice asked. She looked up to see Marcellus sitting at one of the tables in the viewing lounge with Dr. Collins’s canister positioned on the chair next to him, like he was afraid to let it out of his sight.
She tried for a deep breath. “I’m …” She still couldn’t find the words.
But it turned out, she didn’t need them. “I know.” Marcellus exhaled. “Me too.”
Alouette had never seen him look so drained. So defeated. The events of the last few days had left his face gaunt and his vibrant hazel eyes hollow and haunted.
“I’m going out of my mind,” he said. “I hate just sitting here while Gabriel gets worse and my grandfather gets closer to his weapon. As soon as Dr. Cromwell delivers the TéléReversion program and the general updates the Skins, that will be it. He’ll activate his Third Estate army, and he’ll take control of the Regime. And meanwhile, we’re just sitting here, waiting for the fric-ing Albion Royal Space Fleet to find us.”
Alouette glanced at the glowing, cratered moon that loomed just outside the window and wondered if the pull of it wasn’t driving them all a little mad.
With a sigh, Marcellus dragged a hand roughly through his already disheveled hair. “I’ve been trying to distract myself with this, but clearly it’s not working.” He gestured to the table and Alouette caught sight of a familiar red spine. The Vangarde’s compendium of reports was open in front of him.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You can read that? Have you been practicing the Forgotten Word?”
Marcellus shrugged. “It’s still difficult. But I had to communicate with the Vangarde, so, yeah, I’ve been practicing. I was surprised, actually, at how quickly it came back to me. Once I stopped fighting it. It’s like, for seven years, I was pressing against a door, trying to keep everything locked inside. Then, once I let go, the memories just rushed out.” He caught Alouette’s gaze and flashed her a half smile. “But it was you who first reminded me how to open it.”
Alouette felt for the metal tag dangling from her neck, remembering how earnestly he’d struggled to read its engraving back in the Forest Verdure, when they’d sat around a fire that Marcellus had built. When the world felt full of possibility. Not heartache.
“I’m still pretty rusty though,” Marcellus said. “Certain words and letter combinations trip me up. Like, is this how you spell your mother’s name? L-I-S-O-L-E?”
Alouette tilted her head toward the book and saw that Marcellus was reading the report about her mother getting fired from the Palais. She nodded. “Yes. That’s—” But the words evaporated on her tongue when her gaze snagged on the date scrawled at the top of the page.
Month 7, Day 4, 488.
She could have sworn the reports about her mother were all written in Month 6. Around the same time that the Rebellion of 488 ended.
“Let me see that,” Alouette said hastily, turning the book toward her. Her eyes skimmed over the dense handwriting, butterflies taking flight in her stomach as she quickly realized that this was not the same report. This was a different report which mentioned her mother’s name. Written more than a month later. Alouette had been so convinced she’d read all there was to read about her mother. And then the voyageur had been overtaken by the Trafalgar warship, and the book had been pushed to the back corners of her mind. She hadn’t looked at it since.
“What is it?” Marcellus asked.
“It’s another report. About my mother.”
“Read it aloud!” he urged.
Alouette nodded and bent her head over the page.
Month 7, Day 4, 488
Operative: Mabelle Dubois
Location: The Frets, Vallonay
I found Lisole today in one of the dingiest, darkest hallways of Fret 10. Her couchette was leaking and cold, littered with cockroaches and dirty puddles. The sparkle had gone from her eyes. Her beautiful dark curls had been shorn off.
Even some of her teeth were missing.
“I borrowed money from the wrong people,” she said, covering her still swollen mouth with one hand and waving me inside with the other.
She insisted I sit in the one rickety chair in the room, while she leaned against the filthy, cracked window.
I couldn’t conceal my sadness and concern as I peered around the couchette.
“They wouldn’t give me a work assignment.” She glanced down and smoothed her hand over her belly, now a gentle curve under her ragged dress. “Not like this, anyway.”
In a rush of words, I said all I’d come to say. I told her who we were. Our mission. I told her about our safe hideaway, concealed from the rest of the planet.
“You can live there. You and your baby will be safe in our protection. Guided by our love. The sisters will take care of you both.”
But she shook her head. She refused. She told me she didn’t want to get tangled up in any more trouble.
Our name, soiled from the recent failed rebellion, clearly terrified her.
I tried to explain that we were innocent in that horrific bombing that killed those exploit workers one month ago. I tried to tell her that we were framed. We are not the terrorists the Ministe`re has painted us to be. I don’t know whether or not she believed me.
“I just want to find a quiet life,” she said. “A life away from everyone and everything. Just the two of us.” She stroked her belly again.
I warned her the world wasn’t safe for her or her child. I told her she could never have the quiet life she wanted. Trouble would follow her wherever she went. That seemed to stir something inside of her. She gazed out the broken window, looking distant and haunted and hopeless. She must have realized that I was right. That we were her and her child’s only chance. Because she gave the tiniest, most fragile of nods.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll come.”
I told her to take a day to settle her affairs. I promised to return tomorrow to take her to safety. But just in case anything should happen to me, I gave her instructions on how to signal us.
I know that she has made the right choice. For her own sake and the sake of the child. We can protect them. We must protect them.
An electricity thrummed through Alouette. “She was pregnant,” she said quietly, her mind struggling to make all the pieces fit. “She must have been pregnant before she left the Palais.”
Using her finger to mark her place in the book, Alouette hastily flipped back through the pages until she reached the first set of reports. Her gaze slid over the handwritten words, stopping only a little below the top of the page. She quietly reread the lines aloud. “I rushed into the hallway to find Lisole fighting with a handsome auburn-haired Palais guard. Her eyes were puffy and red. Her hair was a mess, and across her cheek, I saw an angry red mark. I knew, immediately, that she’d been struck.”
“Do you think … ,” Marcellus began, clearly coming to the same conclusion as Alouette.
Alouette thought about her mother’s titan box, still tucked away in her couchette. About those intertwined locks of hair. One dark and curly, the other a luminous shade of auburn.
“Did she try to tell him?” Alouette wondered aloud as she turned back to her marked page. “Did she tell him about the baby, and he wanted nothing to do with it, so he had her arrested? Made up some story about her stealing from the Palais?” Perhaps that was what Mabelle had meant before, when she wrote that she feared Lisole had “gotten herself in too deep.”
“Look,” Marcellus said. He had flipped forward a few pages and was now pointing at a new report, dated the very next day. “Her name appears here too.”
Month 7, Day 5, 488
Operative: Mabelle Dubois
Location: The Frets, Vallonay
Today, I knocked on the door of her couchette, but all I heard were cold, empty echoes and the skittering feet of vermin. I waited. I knocked again. I called her name. But still, there was only silence behind the door.
Finally, a neighbor peeked out from the next couchette and told me that Lisole had left yesterday.
“Good riddance,” he snarled. “I didn’t want some baby screaming and wailing all night.”
I asked if he knew where she’d gone, but he shook his head and shoved the door closed in my face.
It was then I realized that she never intended to come with me. She only agreed so that I would leave her alone. Our name—and every falsehood that has been tangled up with it—has become our downfall.
Obviously, we must look for her. We must never stop searching. She is my friend. We were once as close as sisters. I care for her. And obviously, I care for the welfare of the child. The baby will be like a daughter to me. To all of us.
Wherever she has gone, we will attempt to bring her back to Vallonay. But I fear, deep in my heart, that we may never find someone who doesn’t want to be found.
When Alouette glanced up from the page again, she had tears in her eyes. She now understood why Principale Francine had given her this specific book. It was the beginning of a story. The story of how Alouette had found her way to the Refuge twelve years ago.
“Mabelle,” she whispered wistfully. “She was my mother’s friend. She … saved me.”
And suddenly, the rest of the story unfurled before her like a long-buried path emerging from the mist. “She invited my mother to live in the Refuge. She gave her instructions on how to signal the sisters. At first, my mother was too scared to come, convinced she would be better off on her own than hiding out with a group of rebels. But she must have eventually changed her mind and given those instructions to Hugo before she died. She must have come to realize that the Refuge was the safest place for me, despite it being the base for the Vangarde.” Alouette’s mouth quirked into a tiny smile as she touched the string of devotion beads around her neck. “And she was right.”
Marcellus winced, his jawline taut against the memory of his former governess and the horrible way she’d died. “So I guess, in a way, Mabelle saved us both.”
She glanced up at him, and when their eyes locked, Alouette felt something inexplicable pass between them. An understanding. A kinship. A connection that she knew would never be broken. No matter how many warships arrived to search for them. No matter what the future held.
“I … ,” she began to say, but she didn’t quite know how to finish. And it didn’t seem to matter anyway, because a moment later, Alouette heard a soft groaning sound coming from the ship’s internal speakers. Her gaze shot toward the nearest monitor on the wall. Gabriel was no longer sleeping soundly. He was now thrashing violently on the bed.
Alouette was on the move in an instant, sprinting to the infirmerie with Marcellus close behind her.
The sheets of Gabriel’s bed were a tangled mess, and he was clearly in pain. His face and arms were covered in sweat.
“Are the médicaments wearing off?” Cerise asked, appearing in the doorway.
Alouette shook her head. “They should be good for another few hours.” She reached over and felt his forehead. It was hot and clammy. Her mind whirred.
Infection? This fast?
“What’s wrong with him?” Cerise’s small, broken voice made her sound like a child.
Alouette sighed and looked up into Cerise’s eyes. They were rimmed with fear. “It’s the cluster bullet. All those tiny pieces of shrapnel create prime breeding grounds for infection.”
“Can’t you do something for him?” Marcellus asked.
“I can give him more médicaments, but it will only help for so long. He needs surgery.”
Cerise’s gaze bounced to the glowing blue moon outside the porthole window of the infirmerie and then back again, obviously coming to the same conclusion as Alouette.
They were running of time.
Gabriel thrashed again, his hand flying up and nearly smacking Cerise in the face. She let out a sad little laugh, “Well, I suppose I had that coming.”
“Marcellus. Help me.” Alouette held Gabriel’s right arm down and Marcellus rushed forward to grab his other arm. But instead of pinning it to the bed, he was just standing there, staring at the inside of Gabriel’s left wrist.
“What’s wrong?” Alouette glanced over to see that Gabriel’s Skin was alight. Marcellus pushed up the fabric of his sleeve, revealing the whole of the screen. And that’s when Alouette saw it. That’s when they all saw it.
Flashing in the center of Gabriel’s Skin was a curious orange rectangle that seemed to be gradually filling with color.
“What is that?” Alouette asked, although she had a gut-wrenching feeling she already knew.
Cerise tapped on the screen to link the Skin with the ship’s internal speakers. The implanted device connected just in time for them to hear the eerie robotic voice announce, “Operating system upgrade complete. Your Skin has been updated.”