Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,54

find …”

Roche.

Chatine’s eyes flew open. And suddenly, she was on the move. She sprinted back to her bunk and threw herself up the rungs of the rickety ladder. Reaching into the small tear in her mattress, she searched for the silver ring.

Marcellus’s ring.

As her hand clasped around it, she felt a surge of hope. A surge of energy. And more important, a surge of courage.

Azelle was right. He was warning her of something. Warning her all the way from Laterre. Which meant …

He hadn’t forgotten about her.

She slipped the ring into the pocket of her uniform and jumped back down to the floor. She was suddenly wide awake. More awake than she’d felt in over two weeks. She jabbed at her Skin, using its dull glow to navigate her way around the neighboring bunks. The commotion had now consumed the whole cell floor. Inmates were charging toward the bridges. Rayonette blasts whooshed past her, burying themselves into unsuspecting flesh.

Chatine dropped to her hands and knees, remembering an old trick her parents had taught her for maneuvering around during a riot. If the bashers are shooting high, you stay low.

Crawling through the pandemonium, Chatine headed for Roche’s bunk, which was on the other side of the cell block. But even on her hands and knees, it was arduous to move. She was forced to dodge crumpled bodies, trampling footsteps, and the glimmering, terrifying legs of the droids trying to keep order.

“Roche!” she called out as she reached his bunk. She climbed up to the second-level mattress and cringed when she saw the bed was empty. Had he already left? Was he out there in that anarchy?

Chatine pushed toward the cell’s inner railing and looked out over the gaping eleven-floor drop. In the low light of the Skins, she could see the winding stairwell in the center of the tower, linked by gangways to the prison cells on each floor. Every single one was crammed full of people shoving and stumbling toward the staircase, causing the PermaSteel grating under their feet to rattle in the gloom. Droids stood behind the railings of each floor, firing their rayonettes toward the stairs. Prisoners stumbled and fell as pulses buried into their flesh, but it only seemed to cause more chaos as the other inmates tried to maneuver around them.

Chatine felt a surge of frustration. How was she even supposed to get down there? What good was Marcellus’s warning if she couldn’t escape the tower?

A scream broke into her thoughts, and she looked out just in time to see a body being shoved over the edge of one of the gangways. Chatine gripped the railing as the inmate accelerated down, down, down, toward the bottom of the tower far below.

The thud echoed through the entire building, reaching her, even eleven floors up.

Chatine turned away, her heart galloping in her chest. She knew better than to peer over the railing and look. Her nightmares were already bad enough.

Trying to catch her breath, Chatine struggled to come up with a plan. This whole scene reminded her of that horrible riot in the Marsh after Nadette Epernay’s execution. The bedlam of bodies and droids and rayonette pulses whooshing past her ears. That had been the day she’d first met Roche. She’d been crawling around on the Marsh floor, and she’d ducked under a stall to find him hiding—

Her thoughts screeched to a halt.

She raced back to the bunk and dropped to her knees again, peering under the lowest mattress. She almost smiled from the relief that rushed through her.

There he was. Tucked into a tiny, shaking ball, with his head buried between his knees. The light from her Skin illuminated his soft, recently shaved head. It reminded her of the baby chicks that were sold in the Marsh.

“Roche” she whispered.

He looked up briefly but stiffened and snapped his gaze away the moment he recognized her in the darkness.

Chatine climbed into the cramped space and crouched in front of him. “Roche. Look at me. We need to get out of here.”

Roche’s jaw pulsed, but still he would not meet her eye.

“Roche, please.” Chatine pulled at his elbow. “You have to come with me. We have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

He yanked his arm away from her. “I’m not going anywhere with you! You’re the one who got me sent here in the first place, Chatine,” he spat the pronunciation of her real name.

She felt the familiar hollowness of shame spread through her. “I know. I know.