Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,239

A screen. It was his grandfather’s TéléCom, obviously having been dropped in the scuffle. And the TéléReversion program was still running. Still controlling all those people outside. Compelling them to fight. To kill.

Something exploded in Marcellus’s chest. A mixture of hope and desperation and fire. He jumped to his feet and darted forward, his fingers grasping desperately for the device, but he was halted by a splinter of pain that suddenly shot down his spine as his grandfather’s fist slammed into his back. The TéléCom slipped from his hand. The room spun. Marcellus swayed dizzily and felt himself starting to go down again. Another fist came flying at his face. Marcellus staggered backward from the blow, blood spurting from his nose.

When his vision finally cleared, his stomach clenched at the sight of the general reaching toward the holster on his belt, pulling out his own rayonette, and taking aim at Marcellus’s head.

“Fortunately for me, you and I don’t have the same problem. I can pull the trigger.”

The general’s finger squeezed. Marcellus shut his eyes. He didn’t want the last thing he ever saw in this life to be his grandfather. Instead, he thought of his father. He thought of Alouette. And Cerise. And Gabriel. And of course, Chatine.

He hoped they were safe.

Even though he knew they were not.

No one was safe anymore.

And he was all alone.

A hush fell over the room. Over the entire Palais. Marcellus was certain the silence was proof that it had already happened. That he was already dead. But a moment later, his eyelids fluttered open and he saw that the general was no longer standing in front of him with his rayonette raised. He was standing on the balcony, staring out at the Imperial Lawn. In his hands, he held his TéléCom again, and he was jabbing mercilessly at the screen.

And that’s when Marcellus realized what the silence really was.

The fighting had stopped.

The Imperial Lawn had fallen deathly quiet. Like someone had pushed pause on a broadcast.

Marcellus rushed out to the balcony to see the miracle for himself, and just as he suspected, the banquet guests were all just standing there, motionless in their ripped and bloodied dresses and tuxedos. They were wearied soldiers who had just woken from a deadly trance and were now staring in bewilderment at the aftermath of a battle they never chose to fight.

The silence was broken by a commotion and people yelling. Marcellus’s gaze snapped toward the stage in the center of the lawn to see a flutter of activity and the flash of the Patriarche’s recognizable auburn hair as his guards ushered him across the grass, up the stone steps, and into the safety of the Palais.

“Sols!” the general swore, prodding relentlessly at his TéléCom. On the screen, Marcellus could see the TéléReversion program was still running. But no one was fighting.

What happened?

He stared out at the carnage on the Imperial Lawn. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Some still stirring. Some not moving at all. So much blood. So much death. And for what? The general had failed. The Patriarche still lived.

One man in a ripped blue tuxedo was standing dazedly over a fallen officer. But he wasn’t looking down at his victim. He was looking at his Skin, which Marcellus suddenly noticed was completely black.

Marcellus cast his eyes farther across the lawn and saw more Third Estaters doing the same. Peering down at a darkened void implanted in their arms. One woman tapped hastily on the screen, another tried to speak into her Skin, but nothing happened.

It was as though they were no longer Skins at all.

They were just empty shackles, connected to nothing.

With a roar of frustration, the general’s head snapped up from his TéléCom and focused on something in the distance. Something far away from the Palais gardens. Confused, Marcellus tried to follow his gaze, but before he could make sense of what he was looking at, his grandfather spun around and stalked toward the door to the hallway. It was as though Marcellus was suddenly invisible. Their previous altercation forgotten. The general was on a new mission now. One that apparently only he understood.

But Marcellus had not forgotten.

Ducking down, he reached under the chaise for his fallen rayonette and hoisted it into the air, taking aim at his grandfather once more.

“Arrête,” he said in a low, ominous tone.

The general turned around and, upon seeing the weapon back in Marcellus’s hand, let out a deep groan, as though Marcellus had turned from a minor threat to