Retracing their steps from the night before, Rora ran with everything she had.
As she hurried through the palace, she stopped many times to duck behind piles of bodies when soldiers stormed by in pursuit of cyborgs.
Eventually, she made it to the front doors and slipped quietly out.
The city was eerily quiet as she ran.
No one stood guard in front of the stables, so she hurried inside. The building was empty of animals and people. Only the empty cages—and the dragon—remained.
The dragon flashed its teeth in a snarl, clearly agitated. Shaking its head as though trying to shake off flies, it flicked its long tail back and forth. The bars of the cage rang as its scales smacked against it, again and again.
Swallowing, Rora tried not to think of what happened to her last hand.
Taking a deep breath, she strode toward the stall at the back of the room where the dragon’s cage was stashed.
Its claws appeared and retracted again and again as it watched her approach.
As she neared it, she realized the fireproof cage was locked with a massive chain and padlock. Looking around, she couldn’t see any keys nearby.
She spotted a pile of tools neatly packed in a massive box.
The circus crew’s tools.
Grabbing what appeared to be oversized crimping pliers, she hurried back to the dragon.
“H-hi,” she began as she approached. “It’s me again. Long time no see.”
The dragon’s lips peeled back in a snarl.
I shouldn’t have expected a warm welcome.
Slowly, she extended the pliers toward the padlock. Before she could get anywhere close to it, the dragon swiped its cyborg talons at her. It couldn’t fit its entire claw between the bars. But several talons swiped so close she could feel air whooshing past her hand. Heart racing, she jumped backward.
“Quit it! I’m trying to help.”
The dragon merely snarled.
Somewhere in the city beyond, bells rang.
Again, she approached the dragon. Only, as she came forward this time, she tried to soothe it as she once did in the caves. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. None of this is right. And I’m sorry for my part in it. But I want to help you now. We can help each other.”
The dragon looked rather inclined to swipe at her through the cage’s bars again. But it must have realized its own potential for escape. She latched the pliers onto the padlock and pressed as hard as she could, but nothing happened. The lock didn’t even have an indent. After several more tries, her human palm was slick with sweat.
Again, and again, she tried, but the damned lock was too big. Or she was just too small. Too insignificant, as always.
She’d made it to Covenant, but nothing came of it. Nothing at all. She hadn’t even had a chance to perform.
The emperor hadn’t been the person she’d thought he’d be—a nobleman and consumer of the arts, someone who wanted to change the Cyborg Prohibition Law. Instead, he was a mass murderer aspiring to complete some long-awaited genocide. All he wanted was to use the performers as part of his experiments to kill cyborgs.
She thought of everything she’d done, everything she’d sacrificed to get here. Leaving her parents, chopping off her hand, joining Cirque du Borge, traveling the Crescent Star System, performing, fighting for every inch during the competition, using Gwen, betraying her friends… It had all been for nothing. It had all been in search of a career, a dream that left her with the same ache in her chest as before.
Her parents had taught her that her value was in her performance, in being the best. But what good was being the best if it meant standing on the backs of those you loved?
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of the deaths of countless cyborgs in this asinine competition. She thought of the bodies she’d seen during the obstacle course of the first competition, of the performers toppling off the cliff during the second competition in pursuit of the dragon, and all those who had been shot by the pirates on Jinx during the final competition. So many dead.
She pushed the pliers until her human hand was raw, but she didn’t stop. They needed a distraction if she and her friends had any hope of escaping. A burning city would be more preoccupied with a loose dragon than a few escaping cyborgs.
The pliers clacked against the lock’s thick metal.
Gwen had been right. Rora was wrong, so very wrong. Achieving a dream wasn’t worth it if it meant hurting her friends. She had risked losing everyone she loved by trying to protect herself and her hand. Why couldn’t she see that before?
Rora’s cyborg hand whirred as she pressed harder and harder. Sparks skittered across her skin and down her clothes, singeing the edges of the fabric. Still, she didn’t stop. Somewhere in the distance, the dragon growled. Letting loose a cry, she pressed down on the pliers with everything she had. The pliers clacked together as the broken lock fell to the ground.
Before she could get out of the way, the dragon hurled itself into the cage door, and the door slammed into her chest. Flying across the stable, she crashed into the wall of a nearby stall. She fell to the ground, bouncing twice. Gasping, she couldn’t get more than a shallow breath.
As the room around her spun and her thoughts blurred, she finally managed to take a deep breath. She almost wished she hadn’t. Pain rocketed through her side. Slowly, she brought her hand up to her forehead.
When she held her hand before her face, it wasn’t the blood on her cyborg fingers that surprised her. It was her limp hand.
Once again, her cyborg hand was useless.
Only, this time, it wasn’t quite so devastating. She’d sacrificed everything—her friends, her relationship with Gwen—to get this new hand. Now, she sacrificed her hand to save her friends.
Heat pricked Rora’s cheeks. Even her legs felt warm.
Blinking, she looked around. The entire room was alight with bright orange flames as the dragon soared around the stable, wreaking havoc.
Sharp pain glanced across her chest as she forced herself to her feet.
There was a strange popping sound. Looking up, a piece of the ceiling crashed down, and she dived out of the way just in time.
The dragon clawed at the window too small for it to fly through with its cyborg talons. More sections of the walls fell away before it bellowed a deafening roar and flew off into the skies—toward the city.
Guilt mingled with the relief swelling in her chest.
What have I done?