widened. “You have to tell us! You heard the Patriarche! You know what the general is planning. We have to stop him. You have to help us.”
A shadow of regret seemed to pass over the woman’s scarred features. “It’s no use. Even if I told you where it was, there’s no way you could ever get access to it.”
“Oh, I’ll get access,” Cerise said confidently.
Brigitte shook her head and let out a sigh. “No, you won’t.”
“How do you know?” Cerise sounded mildly offended. “I happen to be an expert hacker.”
“Because the kill switch is guarded by a very special technology. A unique DNA lock. To be opened only by someone who possesses a direct ancestral link to the Paresse line. It’s completely unhackable.”
Marcellus could feel the room turn very cold. Colder, dare he say, than even the Terrain Perdu outside. “What are you talking about?”
Brigitte turned to him. “I’m talking about a vault so secure that only the Patriarche or his descendants can ever get inside.”
Marcellus squeezed his temples. This couldn’t be real. This woman was delusional. Insane. If there was a kill switch for the Skins, wouldn’t he have been told about it?
“Maman?” a voice broke into Marcellus’s thoughts. It was Etienne. He was staring incredulously at Brigitte, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. “How do you know all of this? How do you know about this DNA lock?”
Brigitte flashed a weak smile that caused her scars—the ghosts of her vanquished circuitries—to glint and stretch. “Because, chéri, I invented it.”
- CHAPTER 61 - CHATINE
CHATINE WAS AWARE OF THE muffled voices around her, but for a full minute, all she could hear was the sound of her own heavy, uneven breaths. And the hazy echoes of her disbelief hanging in the air.
A switch that disables the Skins?
An Ascension banquet for fifty winners?
A weapon that will give the general command of the entire Third Estate?
She glanced down again at the inside of her left arm, at the long, rectangular scar where her Skin used to be. Where this weapon would have been if Brigitte hadn’t removed it. And now she understood why the Défecteurs didn’t trust any of the Ministère technology, especially not the Skins.
“I knew it! I knew it was real!” a screeching voice yanked Chatine out of her reverie and back into the treatment center. She turned to see who had spoken. It was the girl Marcellus had introduced earlier as Cerise.
“I don’t understand.” Marcellus was holding his head in his hands like he was afraid his brain might explode. “There’s a kill switch for the Skins hidden behind a DNA-locked vault?”
“Yes,” said Brigitte, and Chatine swung her gaze back to Etienne’s mother. “It’s called the Forteresse. It was the last project I worked on before I left the Ministère.”
“That was the special assignment you refuse to talk about?” Etienne sounded stunned and almost disgusted. “You built a lock that protects the Skins?”
Brigitte lowered her eyes. “I’m not proud of it. That’s why I left. And I vowed to spend the rest of my life removing as many of those evil devices as I could.”
“So, this Forteresse,” Cerise said, sounding somewhat hopeful. “If you built it, then you must know how to break into it. A backdoor? A loophole? If we can access it, we can shut down the Skins before the general can—”
Brigitte shook her head. “There is no backdoor. There is no loophole.”
Cerise frowned. “But every good hacker puts in a backdoor.”
“Not cyborgs,” Brigitte said solemnly. “It goes against their programming. By the time we realized what we’d done, it was too late. The Forteresse—and the kill switch for the Skins—was locked to anyone who wasn’t a Paresse descendant. Even us.”
“Us?” Cerise repeated. “You were working with someone?”
Brigitte nodded. “There were two of us on the project. We left together. Her name was—”
“Vanessa,” Alouette said quietly, and Chatine could swear she saw the girl shiver.
Brigitte’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you know?”
“She goes by Denise now.” Alouette kneaded her hands in her lap. “She … She was one of the women who raised me.”
“You were raised by the Sisterhood?” Brigitte asked.
“How do you know about the Sisterhood?” Marcellus shot back.
“I told you.” Brigitte flashed him a smile. “We have some of the same friends.”
“Yes. They raised me.” Alouette nodded, but in her eyes, Chatine saw a hint of grief.
“Vanessa—or Denise as you call her—was a dear friend,” Brigitte explained. “We were placed on the Forteresse assignment together because of our mutual expertise in