Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,223

the Secana Sea. The soundtrack whooshed and roared as the vehicle—a cruiseur, perhaps?—drew closer to something in the distance. It almost looked like an island.

There was an island somewhere on Laterre? But Alouette had always been taught the planet consisted of a single landmass. She lunged for the control panel again and reversed the footage on high speed, mesmerized as Limier’s memory tracked all the way back to Vallonay. Over the docklands. Into the Frets. And back to a cruiseur station just outside the Policier Precinct.

Jabbing her hand down, Alouette stopped the footage and scrubbed it forward a few seconds. On the monitor, in juddering, splintered pieces, Alouette watched the inspecteur board the cruiseur and, in his gruff, monotonous tone, articulate a long string of coordinates.

Her breath shuddered in her chest.

He was giving the cruiseur a destination.

A location.

Hastily, she pulled out the TéléCom Cerise had loaned her and recited the coordinates into the screen. Sure enough, a single orange dot appeared off the northwest coast of Laterre’s great landmass. An island. A secret island. Where her beloved sisters awaited.

Relief flooded through Alouette. It was beautiful and intoxicating and distracting. So distracting, she didn’t even see the hand reaching out from the bed beside her until it wrapped around her wrist. She screamed and scrambled backward, shaking herself from Limier’s grasp. When she looked back at the inspecteur, she saw that his eyes were open—one a dark brown, the other a vibrant cybernetic orange. And they were both looking at her.

Alouette rushed back toward the door and scurried into the hallway. She tried to keep her pace slow, natural, all the while glancing over her shoulder for the inspecteur. “Cerise,” she whispered breathlessly into her audio patch as she turned the corner and exited the door to the cyborg labs. “I’ve got it. I’ve got the coordinates. I know where they are.”

There was no response. And it was only then that Alouette realized she’d hadn’t heard anything from Cerise in a while. Her footsteps slowed.

“Cerise?” she asked quietly.

Still nothing.

Alouette’s hackles rose. Something was wrong.

She quickened her pace, trying desperately to remember the path she’d taken from server room 12, but the hallways were long and daunting, and they all looked the same. She had no idea if she was getting closer or farther away.

“Alouette?”

The voice was like a song in her ears. “Cerise! Are you okay? What happened? I can’t find my way back. I—”

“Don’t come back.”

Alouette skidded to a halt. “What?”

“Don’t come back here.” Cerise’s voice was harsh and cold. It sent a chill through Alouette. “Get out of the Ministère. Now. And whatever you do, don’t try to rescue me.”

“I—I don’t understand. What happened?”

“Just promise me you won’t try to rescue me.”

“Cerise,” Alouette tried, something hot clawing at her throat.

“Promise me,” she repeated. Her tone was unlike Alouette had ever heard it. Desperation mixed with something akin to anger.

“Okay,” she finally said in a broken whisper. “I promise. But will you please just tell me—”

“Vive La Vangarde,” Cerise said quietly. And then there was nothing but silence.

“Cerise?” Alouette whispered into her audio patch, but the line had gone dead.

Terrified and winded, she glanced around the empty hallway, as though she expected the answer to this impossible situation to appear through the nearest door. Leave the Ministère? Without Cerise?

No, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t just—

Heavy footsteps reverberated through the empty hallway. It sounded like an invading army. Alouette readied herself to run until she heard a deep, angry voice bellow, “She’s in server room 12. I want guards stationed all down this hallway. She is not getting away.”

Quietly, Alouette followed the sound of the voice, tiptoeing toward the nearest corner. When she poked her head around the edge, she saw a man in a black tuxedo standing outside the same closed door that she had broken into earlier. The man was flanked by two guards in Ministère uniforms and a female cyborg in a white lab coat.

Alouette’s gut twisted, and she had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from crying out. She had to do something. Cause a diversion. Distract them. Lead them away from that door. She could not let Cerise go down for this. But before she could even begin to formulate a plan, the door to the server room swept open and Alouette heard Cerise’s bright and chipper voice call out, “Papa! Bonsoir! How have you been? You look well. That tux is simply divine on you. How is the banquet going?”

Papa?

Alouette squinted down the