Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,221

deep breath. Behind her, she heard the infirmerie door open and footsteps echo on the polished floor. She glanced over her shoulder to see a woman in green scrubs retreating down the hallway. Alouette turned and darted through the open door just before it sealed shut.

Leaning against the wall, she took a moment to try to steady herself. The sound of heavy, labored breathing punctured the air. Alouette was certain it had to be coming from her, but when she finally turned around and her gaze fell upon the real source of the sound, something fierce and hot and panicked bubbled up in her chest.

Even though she knew what she had come here to do, even though she’d been mentally preparing herself from the moment she’d left the server room, she still hadn’t prepared herself for this. Nothing could have prepared her for this.

In the center of the room, a large machine puffed and wheezed. Lights flashed along its underside, and a tangle of tubes and wires snaked in and out of a long, cylindrical dome on top. And laying under the curved and clear plastique, still and silent as the dead, was Inspecteur Limier.

Except he wasn’t dead.

Not quite.

His eyes were closed. His skin was waxy and his head bandaged. Oxygen pumped into his lungs, moving his chest up and down. And the circuitry implanted into the left side of his face hummed and blinked. Just as it had done the night he’d tried to kill her. Just as it had done the moment before Alouette had fired that rayonette into the wet air of the Forest Verdure and watched the pulse bury itself into his temple before exploding in a shower of sparks.

“Okay, I’ve deactivated the security feed to that room.” Cerise jolted her out of her memories. “But it’s only a matter of time before someone notices the outage, so be quick.”

Steeling herself, Alouette scurried across the room toward a small console connected to the side of the plastique dome. “Search internal memory chip,” she whispered shakily. “Filter for files logged with detention facility and interrogation.”

The control panel emitted a soft beep as results started to populate the screen.

“It’s working,” she reported back to Cerise. “Lots of files are coming up.”

“Good. Let’s hope one of them is intact.”

Alouette stared down at Inspecteur Limier as the program rooted around in his damaged brain. She knew that by the time Sister Jacqui and Sister Denise had been transferred to the general’s facility, Inspecteur Limier had already been incapacitated. But Marcellus had been certain Limier knew where the facility was located.

Please, she thought desperately. Please tell us where they are.

As the screen continued to fill with search results, the circuitry implanted in the side of the inspecteur’s face gave a sharp, rapid flash and suddenly, a memory started to push its way to the surface of Alouette’s mind. As if that program were rooting around in her own brain as well. She suddenly recalled something Limier had said to her back in the Forest Verdure, minutes before he had tried to kill her and Alouette had turned him into this.

“If it isn’t little Madeline. Alive and well. I thought you were dead. Pity. It would have made all of this so much tidier.”

The words sent a shiver down Alouette’s spine. At the time, she hadn’t thought much of them. They were just the nonsensical babblings of a man possessed. But that was before she’d been to the blood bordel in Montfer. That was before she’d spoken to the madame. Before she’d learned that she was, indeed, supposed to be dead.

The Communiqué had confirmed it.

Madeline Villette had died in 490.

But how did Inspecteur Limier know that? Or more important, why did he even care? Madeline Villette had just been some random baby, born to a Third Estate servant, living in Montfer. While Limier had been a cyborg inspecteur working halfway across the planet.

But then, Alouette recalled the clue that had sent her on this desperate quest to begin with.

“You are a criminal,” Inspecteur Limier had said to Hugo. “And she is the daughter of a worthless blood whore. The Regime has no use for either of you.”

Something was tickling at the edges of Alouette’s consciousness. Something that made her legs feel wobbly and her scalp tingle.

Inspecteur Limier had clearly known her mother. He knew that she’d sold her blood. He knew that she’d had a daughter. And that she’d named her Madeline.

A daughter he thought was dead.

The control panel let out a