Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,28

Marcellus couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking through the center of an unstable Sol on the brink of imploding.

At the center of the marketplace, a group of Third Estaters was congregated around the resurrected statue of Thibault Paresse, the founding Patriarche of Laterre, shouting and punching their fists into the air. Their synchronized, echoing chant reverberated through the Frets.

“Honest work for an honest wage! Honest work for an honest wage!”

Policier sergents tried desperately to keep the crowd contained, but Marcellus knew it was only a matter of minutes before another riot broke out. Today, however, he was grateful for the commotion. It would conceal what he had to do and keep the local authorities distracted.

After checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed, Marcellus ducked through the entrance of Fret 7. Once inside, memories began to swarm him. He suddenly saw her everywhere. Tending to his bleeding head in the hallway. Reading the message sewn into his father’s prison shirt. Vanishing around the corner the last night he’d seen her.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been back here since that night he’d watched Alouette run away from him. But now, with Mabelle’s words ringing in his ears, the hallway of Fret 7 felt different. Emptier somehow.

“Little Lark is no longer with the Vangarde.”

He’d stayed awake almost the entire night searching for her on his TéléCom. Scouring countless hours of security footage from the droids patrolling the Frets. Scanning a hundred thousand faces, looking for her face. But it was like trying to find a single drop of water in all of the Secana sea.

Alouette Taureau, it would seem, had turned back into a ghost.

With a sigh, he attempted to push her from his thoughts as he scurried toward the old collapsed stairwell at the end of the hall. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the balled-up piece of paper he’d scrawled a message on earlier this morning, informing the Vangarde that he was going to attempt to bug his grandfather’s office.

He squeezed the message in his palm before surreptitiously stuffing it between two broken slats in the staircase. Then, as he headed back down the long, dank corridor, he bent over and dragged his fingertip through the mud on the ground. When he reached the Fret’s entrance, he stopped and drew a large letter V on the wall.

The signal to the Vangarde that a new drop had been made.

Marcellus didn’t know who picked up or delivered the messages—perhaps more Fret rats like that boy he’d interrogated two weeks ago, who had been sent to Bastille for being a Vangarde courier. All Marcellus knew was that, by the time he returned tomorrow, a response would be waiting for him in the stairwell. At least, that’s what Mabelle had told him before he’d left the copper exploit yesterday morning, when she’d given him the instructions on how to make contact.

Exiting the Fret, he could hear the commotion building in the Marsh. Becoming more volatile. More violent. Soon, the droids would start firing into the crowd. Bodies would fall limp. More arrests would be made. More prisoners sent to Bastille to mine the zyttrium required to make more Skins. More chains for the Third Estate. It was a vicious cycle that Marcellus knew had to change.

But his grandfather was not the one to do it. He was not the better solution. If there was anything Marcellus was certain of, it was that.

“Is this really where you’re supposed to be?”

Marcellus froze at the sound of the voice. The icy, cold, inflectionless tone. He closed his eyes, praying that the voice was talking to someone else—a rioter escaped from the marketplace, perhaps. But then the footsteps approached from behind him. Their stiff, rhythmic cadence snapped through the damp air. A tingle shot down Marcellus’s spine. He spun around and his gaze landed on a pair of shiny black boots as they emerged from the Fret hallway and came toe to toe with Marcellus’s own.

His pulse spiked. Had he been followed?

Marcellus took a deep breath and looked unwaveringly into the eyes of the man who stood now a mere whisper away from him.

If you could even still call him a man.

The newly implanted circuitry in the left side of the cyborg’s face blinked furiously as a look of satisfaction passed over his harsh features.

Marcellus kept his gaze steady and tried to infuse nonchalance into his words. “Inspecteur Chacal. How good to see you.”

The inspecteur glared back at him. “Officer Bonnefaçon. What are you doing