you not be, looking like that—then the next obvious question is, whose funeral did I attend in 490?”
The small room began to spin.
Dead.
She was supposed to be dead. There had been a funeral. For her?
Alouette barely had time to register the madame’s words before she heard a soft click of the door opening behind her. She turned around but Clodie was already there. Already upon her. By the time Alouette felt the pinch at her neck, it was too late. Dizziness instantly overtook her, and she fell straight into clouds.
- CHAPTER 14 - MARCELLUS
“ARRIVAL ON BASTILLE IN SEVENTEEN minutes.” The voice of Capitaine Apolline Moreau blasted into Marcellus’s audio patch, making him feel as though the combatteurs were soaring through the next room, as opposed to thousands of kilomètres away en route to Bastille.
Marcellus tried to inhale, but it felt like he was drowning on dry land. He hadn’t been able to take a proper breath since it was announced that Citizen Rousseau was dead. And then, not dead. He felt helpless. Out of control. He didn’t know what the Vangarde were up to on Bastille, but he knew, that in seventeen minutes, they would be in for a very big surprise. And Marcellus had no way to warn them.
“Seventeen minutes?” the Patriarche barked. “Can’t those blasted things move any faster?”
Marcellus saw his grandfather flinch. “These are state-of-the-art crafts,” the general explained defensively. “Bastille is more than a hundred thousand kilomètres from the spacecraft carrier. It takes time to get there.”
The Patriarche harrumphed. “Well, meanwhile, the Vangarde are getting away with Citizen Rousseau!”
Marcellus retreated back to his corner, tucking himself next to the table that held the giant lit-up model of the System Divine. It was the only place in the room that felt relatively safe right now.
The general turned to Rolland. “Have you located the source of the hack yet?”
The technicien was currently sitting in the midst of what looked like the wreckage of a tornado. Monitors had been stripped from the walls, plastique panels had been yanked from consoles, and wires and motherboards hung in twisted loops. Rolland had torn apart the entire left side of the warden’s office, trying to figure out what was corrupting the morgue security feeds. Meanwhile, the archived footage of “dead” Citizen Rousseau was still playing on a loop on the center monitor, and all around it were views from other parts of the prison compound: the spaceport, the cantine, the cell blocks, the dispatch bunker, even the washrooms.
They all looked normal. But it was now impossible to tell if any of them had been looped as well.
“Negative,” Rolland replied, the circuitry in her cheek and forehead humming calmly. “I can’t isolate the breach. There is no evidence of any tampering.”
“We already checked the integrity of the security systems after the two Vangarde operatives were arrested,” the warden reminded the general. “Nothing had been compromised.”
“Well, they’re managing to hack that morgue feed somehow!” the general thundered to Rolland. “And Sols know how many others. Find out how!”
Rolland nodded and disappeared back into her tangle of wires.
“What are the droids reporting?” the general asked Warden Gallant.
The small, stocky man wiped sweat from his brow. “No unusual activity reported. And there are currently droids stationed all over the spaceport. If the Vangarde try to land a ship on Bastille—”
“Who says they’ll use the spaceport?” the general snapped. “Our own ships can land on almost any flat surface. They could be on the far side of the moon for all we know.”
The warden’s lips puckered like a fish. He clearly hadn’t thought of that.
“Continue to search everywhere,” the general commanded. “I want droids covering every square centimètre of that moon. Tell them to fire on anyone and any ships on sight. Lethal mode only.”
The warden nodded and returned to his desk to relay the orders into his TéléCom.
“Arrival on Bastille in fourteen minutes,” Capitaine Moreau reported.
“Tell them to speed up!” The Patriarche stepped forward but soon retreated after a sharp but mollifying look from his advisor.
“Rolland,” the general said suddenly, as though an idea had just occurred to him. “Don’t the satellite feeds for Bastille run through a different network? Which means it’s likely they wouldn’t be compromised by the same hack?”
Rolland nodded and the general was immediately in motion, his fingers flying across the screen of his TéléCom. A moment later, one of the monitors on the wall filled with a grainy, distorted view of the prison compound from space. As the general zoomed in,