Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,156

really focus. Feel the breath coming, deep and strong, into your lungs. Yes. Now feel the air leave. Every molecule evaporating out of you.”

Gabriel peeked one eye open. “When do we start, you know, fighting?” He comically kicked the air.

Alouette shook her head and held a finger to her lips. Gabriel grunted and shut his eyes again.

“The first sequence is called Sols Ascending,” Alouette said. “Open your eyes and follow me.” She bent deeply at the knees and raised her arms slowly and gracefully into the air, her palms facing up. Gabriel’s face was taut with concentration as he attempted to imitate her.

“Good. Try to relax,” she told him. “Keep your muscles loose and your mind strong. Let’s try the second sequence. It’s called Ghostly Stars.”

Alouette took three fluid steps forward, circling her arms in an alternating pattern in front of her. She could feel the reassuring clink of her devotion beads as she moved.

Behind her, there was a soft scuffle and then, “Sols!”

Turning back, she saw Gabriel tripping awkwardly over his own feet as his hands tangled around each other. She tried not to laugh as she walked toward him. “Here, let’s get the arm sequence down first, then we’ll work on the steps.”

She spun him around and stood behind him. “Relax,” she said, guiding his arms. “Keep your shoulders away from your ears. Keep your gaze straight ahead. Move the left hand up first like you’re waving at a friend, and now follow with your right. The same easy—”

“What are you doing?”

Alouette jumped at the sound of the voice coming from the back door of the house. She and Gabriel both turned at once to see Marcellus standing there, watching them with an unreadable expression.

Alouette’s hands fell from Gabriel’s shoulders. “We were just … I was teaching Gabriel how to fight.”

“Okay, that might be a tad inaccurate,” Gabriel said, flustered. “Obviously I know how to fight. She was just showing me—”

“I think you should both come inside.”

“What happened?” Alouette asked, her stomach twisting at the gravity she could now hear in Marcellus’s tone.

“The Red Scar have sent another message to the Ministère.”

- CHAPTER 44 - MARCELLUS

AT FIRST, THE TÉLÉCOM SHOWED nothing but darkness. A darkness that seemed to penetrate deep into Marcellus’s bones. Cerise, Alouette, and Gabriel were gathered around him in Dr. Collins’s kitchen, their gazes fixed on the screen. No one had breathed since he’d pressed play on the footage.

Then the darkness was speared by a glowing beam of light that flashed and bobbed, cutting through the void.

In his audio patch, Marcellus could hear muffled footsteps. The creak of a door opening. A scrape of metal. All the while the beam of what had to be a flashlight continued to sweep and bounce across the screen.

“Droids are cleared,” a breathless voice crackled and wheezed, like it was being transmitted from elsewhere through some kind of communication device.

“Copy that,” another voice responded. This one was crisp and clear. And even with just those two words, Marcellus recognized the voice and a chill whispered down his spine.

Maximilienne.

The footsteps grew louder, more hurried, as the flashlight beam dipped and juddered violently. They were on the move. Running.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

The high-pitched sound of rayonette pulses pierced Marcellus’s ears. Light arched across the screen, white and blinding, and then there was the unmistakable thud of bodies falling. The flashlight beam fell to the ground, and Marcellus heard Alouette suck in a breath beside him. The crumpled forms of three Policier sergents filled the screen, each with a smoking black hole in the center of their forehead.

Not paralyzed, Marcellus realized instantly.

The Red Scar had gotten ahold of rayonettes. And they had set them to kill.

“This way,” Maximilienne whispered, and once again, they were on the move.

A few seconds later, the footsteps were replaced by a barrage of furious clanging and something that sounded like drilling, followed by the squeal and bang of a door being thrown open. The beam of light whizzed around before landing on something silver and gleaming that was sitting in the center of a small, bare room.

Marcellus’s stomach twisted painfully as the flashlight landed on two slim pillars of PermaSteel.

“What in the name of the Sols is that?” Cerise gasped.

But no one responded.

Marcellus turned to Alouette. The grim, haunted look on her face told him that she knew. She also recognized it. She, too, remembered the screams. The smell. Nadette’s brilliant hair glinting under the blue light of the laser.

The TéléCom screen flooded with light, revealing the jutting,