Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,136

contraptions with snaking tubes and thrumming pumps. They were met by two more scientists, who were introduced as Dr. Ward, an angular woman with sunken cheeks, and Dr. Collins, an older man with silver hair and a beard. The two scientists helped everyone into white lab coats.

“I was just telling the general during our last correspondence,” Lady Alexander said as she buttoned the coat over her elegant purple jacket, “that the project is nearly ready.”

Dr. Cromwell beamed again as he smoothed back another strand of escaped hair. “Oh yes. We’re just completing our final round of tests.” He turned to Marcellus. “Would you care for a demonstration?”

Marcellus looked to Alouette and Cerise who both nodded subtly. “Yes, yes. That’s why we’re here. To witness the … uh … product.”

Dr. Cromwell beckoned them to follow him through another doorway into a room that contained nothing but an enormous cube in the center, constructed completely of transparent plastique.

“Is that the weapon?” Gabriel whispered, sounding slightly disappointed. Cerise immediately shushed him.

“Would anyone care for tea before we begin?” asked Dr. Cromwell.

Once again, they all shook their heads.

“Very well. Bring up the subjects, please!” Dr. Cromwell called out.

Subjects?

There was silence for a few moments, followed by a faint humming sound coming from the cube. Marcellus’s mind whirred with questions that he dared not ask. Then he watched in stunned silence as two trapdoors suddenly snapped open in the bare floor of the plastique cell. More humming noises and rumbling followed, before two circular platforms emerged from the gaps in the floor. On each of the platforms stood a man—barefoot, dirty, and disheveled, as though he’d spent the last few months locked in a cage. The rumbling stopped, and the two burly men faced each other in the center of the cube. They had shaved heads and wore nothing but flimsy green jumpsuits that strained over their big frames.

“What are they doing?” Alouette asked in a harsh whisper.

Marcellus glanced over at her. In her eyes, where, only a short while ago, he’d seen wonder and curiosity as they’d coasted toward Albion, he now saw a dark shadow descending.

She knew, just as he did, that something was about to happen.

Something very, very wrong.

“I don’t know,” he whispered back, and he could hear the tremor in his own voice.

“Remember, start very slowly,” Dr. Cromwell said to Dr. Ward, who was prodding at a device in her hand that looked a lot like a TéléCom.

All three scientists and Lady Alexander had their gazes locked on the giant cube. Inside, the two men began pacing slowly around the plastique cell, eyeing each other with a mix of wariness and anticipation.

“What kind of a demonstration is this?” Cerise whispered.

But again, Marcellus couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what they were about to witness.

“Increase to point five volts,” Cromwell said in an eerily steady tone.

Marcellus’s gaze snapped to the scientist for a moment before returning to the cube. The two men inside began to circle faster around each other. The taller one rotated his large shoulders. The other man blew out short, angry puffs of air. They were still glaring hard at each other.

“Up to one point five,” Dr. Cromwell instructed. “And introduce the trigger.”

Suddenly, the men stopped pacing and charged toward each other, their chests clashing like a pair of giant rocks. Marcellus felt Alouette flinch beside him, and his own stomach lurched.

What was going on? What were they—?

Thwaacckkkk!!

Marcellus leapt backward as something red and glittering splattered across the clear plastique wall in front of him. Blinking hard, he tried to process what had just happened. The shorter man was holding his face as a spurt of blood sprayed from his mouth like a fountain in the Palais gardens. The other man was a few mètres away shaking out his fist, crimson droplets falling down like rain from his knuckles.

Marcellus opened his mouth to say something—anything—to stop whatever in the name of the Sols was happening. But Dr. Cromwell spoke first, his voice cold and clinical. “Push it up to two point five, please.”

Dr. Ward slid her finger across the surface of the device, and it was as if an invisible explosion detonated inside the huge plastique cube. The two men descended on each other like a pair of wild, untrammeled beasts. The shorter man led with a series of thudding, heaving punches to the other man’s gut. But then his opponent managed to right himself and responded with a furious round of brutish kicks and wild punches