Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,216

understood what this building had really represented to them. And what it now represented to her.

It was a stronghold of the Regime. A symbol of corruption. It was where cruel weapons were developed, imperious cyborgs were created, and soldiers of injustice were trained.

“Nearly there,” Cerise said, her gaze swiveling between her contraption and the machine it was attached to. “Once the network bridge is online, I’ll be able to intercept the data being sent from the banquet’s security checkpoint.”

Alouette quickly swiped back to the view of the hallway outside the server room, passing over numerous grids and security feeds. But her finger slowed to a halt as something in one of the feeds caught her eye and her breath. Her chest squeezed as she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. She tapped twice on the feed, prompting it to fill the entire screen.

And suddenly it was as though she were back in the Terrain Perdu, every centimètre of her body frozen in the icy air. Marcellus’s words to her on the voyageur floated above her head like tiny flecks of snow.

“My grandfather has a detention facility hidden somewhere.…”

“There are only two people on the planet who know where it is.…”

“What’s wrong?” Cerise asked. “Is someone coming?”

Alouette’s mind was racing too fast to respond. But as soon as Cerise leaned over and saw the image that filled the TéléCom screen, she seemed to understand. She inhaled a sharp breath. “He must have made it through the surgery,” she said quietly. Pensively.

“Do you think … ?” Alouette couldn’t even whisper all the words. They felt too dangerous. Too laced with hazardous hope.

But Cerise plucked the question right out of Alouette’s mind. “That his memories have been restored?”

Alouette nodded, her throat constricting. Going dry. Turning to hot, desert sand.

“I think,” Cerise began, locking onto Alouette’s eyes with a fierceness and determination that made Alouette shiver, “… that there’s only one way to find out.”

All at once, Alouette understood. Cerise’s eyes were speaking so much louder than her words. Alouette thought briefly of her promise to Dr. Collins before he died. Her promise to find Jacqui and Denise. To find his daughter.

And she knew what Cerise was thinking. Because it was what they were both thinking.

This might be our only chance.

“Cerise,” Marcellus’s voice shattered the silence of the server room, causing Cerise’s and Alouette’s gazes to break apart. “Chatine and I are almost to the banquet. Is everything in place?”

Cerise blinked, as though shaking herself from a trance, and focused back on the panel in front of her. She tapped once on the screen and nodded approvingly. “Yes. The network bridge is online. Are you and Chatine ready?”

There was a long pause, in which Alouette’s heart instantly ratcheted up three notches. Finally, Marcellus replied, “Yes. We’re ready.”

Cerise took a deep breath and turned to Alouette as her lips formed a single, silent syllable. The most terrifying and hopeful syllable Alouette had ever known. Go.

- CHAPTER 65 - CHATINE

CHATINE COULD BARELY BREATHE. PARTLY because of her frazzled nerves, but mostly because of the dress. It was impossibly tight and clung to her body in the most awkward of places. The fabric fell all the way to the floor, some of it even dragging behind her. Cerise had called it a train. In the Frets, it would have been called a “mud trap.”

And she didn’t even want to get started on the shoes.

“Chatine and I are almost to the banquet. Is everything in place?” Marcellus whispered into his audio patch beside her. They were striding across a large courtyard, flanked on either side by the Palais’s administrative buildings. Finely dressed banquet guests swarmed around them. Even though he was walking right next to her, Chatine had to keep glancing at Marcellus out of the corner of her eye to make sure it was really him. With his sleek tuxedo, black hat, Sol-glasses, and the dark stubble shadowing his chin, he was barely recognizable. Both of them were. As much as Chatine hated to admit it, Cerise had done an excellent job disguising them.

“Yes, the network bridge is online,” Cerise replied in Chatine’s ear, causing her to wince. She still hadn’t gotten used to hearing voices in her head again. “Are you and Chatine ready?”

Marcellus glanced over at her, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. It was such a simple question. And yet, the answer made Chatine feel faint. Back in the Défecteur camp, when Marcellus had first laid out this plan, it