Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,10

and shaky misspelled words. Now the small nook under the tile held the microcam he’d found two weeks ago, hidden in the painting in Mabelle’s old room. Proof that his grandfather was guilty in the bombing of that copper exploit seventeen years ago.

His heart started to pound again in his chest as he glared at the tile.

What had his grandfather really been doing in his rooms? Looking for Marcellus, as he’d said? Or looking for something else?

Slowly, tentatively, Marcellus walked over to the toilette, crouched down, and used his fingernails to peel up the loose floor tile. He almost didn’t have to look. He almost knew what he would find before he saw it.

Nothing.

He found nothing.

Because the microcam was gone.

- CHAPTER 3 - CHATINE

CHATINE RENARD HAD KNOWN DARKNESS all her life. From the moment she was born eighteen years ago, it had surrounded her, clinging to her like a cloak. But nothing compared to the darkness that lurked two hundred mètres below the surface of Bastille. This was a darkness like Chatine had never known. It was a living, breathing thing. A murkiness that seeped into her bones and coated her lungs.

This was the kind of darkness that brought the dead back to life.

The droid closed the metal cage with a bang that reverberated down Chatine’s spine. The lift started to descend, slow and painful and creaking, into the ground. With every centimètre they lowered, Chatine’s teeth chattered harder. Not because of the temperature. It was mercifully warmer down here than on the surface of the moon. But if Chatine had learned anything since arriving on Bastille, it was that the cold wasn’t the only thing here that could make you shiver.

The lift wrenched to a stop and the door of the cage creaked open, revealing a warren of gloomy passageways that extended out from the main shaft. Two more bashers stood watch, their bright orange eyes cutting through the darkness. No human guards dared set foot on this wretched moon. The prison was manned entirely by droids while some overpaid warden supervised from his plush, cushy office back in Ledôme.

“Single-file line,” one of them droned. “Look down. No talking. No running.”

Chatine almost snorted aloud at the warning. Running? Seriously? Where would they even run to? The craggy walls and looming ceilings of the exploit tunnels snaked and dipped, burrowed and crisscrossed through the Bastille rock, going nowhere. Always ending in cold, dark nothingness.

And even if it weren’t for the dead-end tunnels, Chatine was barely capable of crawling out of her bunk each morning, let alone running. Her body had never felt so useless and heavy and beaten. Her head was almost always pounding, her mouth was constantly dirt dry, every centimètre of her ached, and no matter how tired she was at the end of her twelve-hour shift down here in the darkness, she could never ever seem to get enough sleep.

The inmates called the condition the “grippe.” Chatine could certainly understand why. It felt like every organ in her body—including her mind—had been placed in a merciless vise. It was the result of the thinner air on Bastille. Chatine had heard that it could take up to six months for your body to adapt to the climate.

She had been here two weeks.

The inmates formed a line and began to shuffle into the tunnel. Beside them, the droids paced, their heavy metal footsteps clanking, the rayonettes embedded in their arms glowing menacingly in the dim light. After grabbing a headlamp and a pick, Chatine followed the procession into the tunnel. With each collective step they took, the walls and ceilings rumbled ominously around them.

Chatine hated the crackles and pops that came from above, rippling through the ground and threatening to bring two hundred mètres of hard rock crashing down on top of her. She’d heard stories of prisoners dying in the zyttrium exploits. They were some of the first stories told to newcomers on Bastille.

She paused, glanced up, and cringed as a scattering of loose dust and debris rained down on her face.

“Prisoner 51562,” one of the droids boomed, “look down and keep walking.”

Chatine lowered her gaze and scuffled forward. They seemed to be walking forever today. Much farther than Chatine had ever ventured into the tunnels. The light from the headlamp clipped onto her helmet was a poor contender for the murky depths of the exploit. And the farther away they got from the main shaft, the darker the tunnel became.

Chatine pushed back the sleeve of her prison