Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,31

came down. The newcomer rolled left and was instantly back on his feet. He landed a kick right in the Vétéran’s stomach. The Vétéran collapsed. The newcomer went for a second blow, but it never connected because he was suddenly flung back as the droid grabbed him by the scruff of the neck like a dog. Dangling from its metal fist, the Nov wriggled and whipped his body, but it was no use. Hardly anyone broke free from the grasp of a droid. A split second later, the droid’s tazeur made contact with the newcomer’s neck. His whole body juddered and seized before the droid dropped him to the floor in a quivering, convulsing heap.

And that’s when Chatine saw it.

The cuff of the newcomer’s left shirt sleeve.

It, too, had been rolled up.

Just like Clovis’s. Just like the old man who had started the fight.

Chatine’s body stiffened.

He couldn’t be one of them. He’d only just arrived. It didn’t make any sense. The Vétérans were all ancient prisoners, with hair that fell at least to their chins. This man didn’t fit in.

“Prisoner 51616,” announced the droid, which still loomed over the newcomer. “This is your first warning. Any future altercations or breaches in protocol will earn you two days in solitary confinement.”

As Chatine watched the man hobble away, she was struck, once again, by that same twinge of recognition. His prominent brow and hooked nose seemed so familiar to her. But still, she couldn’t figure out how she knew him. The haze of the grippe was holding her brain and her memories hostage. Trying to recall this man’s face was like trying to swim through thick sludge.

Chatine followed the newcomer with her eyes, watching as he pulled off his exploit coat and hung it up. Her good sense told her to let it go. Stop obsessing over this. It was none of her business, and she was better off not getting involved anyway.

But another part of her—the part that had been tamped down, drowned out by the grippe, forgotten back on Laterre—wouldn’t allow her to let it go. It was the very part of Chatine that had helped her survive the streets of Vallonay.

It was the Fret rat in her.

She’d thought it was dead and incinerated. She’d thought it had been killed the moment that prisoner number had been tattooed into her arm. But now she could feel it rising back up, screaming through the thick fog, telling her there was something going on here. Something she had to figure out.

Chatine studied the new inmate as he joined the line of prisoners exiting the dispatch bunker and heading for the cantine. His long muscular limbs, broad shoulders, and square jaw tugged at the corners of her memory.

Where had she seen him before?

He turned his head to rub at the back of his neck, giving Chatine a perfect view of his face. And that’s when a flimsy memory pushed its way into her mind. She could suddenly see wisps of fog in the air. His large, menacing frame emerging from a wall of mist.

Montfer.

The Tourbay.

Mabelle.

He was one of Mabelle’s bodyguards. Chatine had seen the man when she’d accompanied Marcellus to Montfer to meet with his former governess, an escaped Vangarde prisoner. That was back when Chatine was still working as a spy for General Bonnefaçon. The decision that had eventually landed her on Bastille.

Chatine cursed the thick haze that was constantly swirling around her brain, keeping her thoughts blurry, keeping her stupide. She shut her eyes tight, trying to push her way through the fog—both the one in her memory and the one that was holding her mind hostage. Until the jagged, fragmented pieces of that day in Montfer finally started to take shape and fuse together.

Mabelle was Vangarde.

This man was one of her operatives. And he had just staged a fight to slip something into the pocket of another prisoner. Something he’d obviously brought from Laterre and smuggled onto Bastille.

Chatine had gotten it all wrong. She’d misread the signs from the start. The rolled-up sleeves, the long hair, the lack of eye contact and acknowledgement.

The Vétérans weren’t just some random group of old prisoners. They were the Vangarde. They’d infiltrated Bastille, getting jobs in the kitchen, and the Med Center, and the morgue. They’d been here for years, maybe even as far back as the Rebellion of 488.

And now, they were planning something.

- CHAPTER 9 - MARCELLUS

THE THREE ARTIFICIAL SOLS WERE setting in the TéléSky outside, and the last of their golden