in the distance. She thought of that glimmering silver chimney shooting up into the sky from the roof of the Trésor tower.
The roof.
“This way!” she bellowed to Roche, scrambling ahead of him.
“Halt!” More rayonette pulses exploded into the dead bodies around them as the droid charged through the morgue.
“The disintegrateur?” Roche cried out as they drew closer to the large hulking machine. “Are you—” But he must have suddenly come to the same conclusion as Chatine, because he started crawling faster. “Yes,” he whispered eagerly.
Roche was ahead of her now, and he immediately clambered up on a conveyor belt that led into the big, metallic chamber. He had to shuffle on his elbows to pass through the small opening and into the belly of the machine. Chatine had seen a disintegrateur back on Vallonay. It had given her the creeps there, and it certainly wasn’t any more comforting here.
But now it was their only way out.
Chatine scrabbled up on the conveyor belt and was about to climb inside after Roche when the bouncing glow of her Skin suddenly snagged on something. Somebody. And a tiny cry crawled out from the back of her throat.
A few mètres away, on a rickety, rusting gurney, with a skull half caved in like a mutilated monster, was Anaïs.
The dark room spun. Chatine swore she was going to pass out. She felt the air around her head twist and bend.
“Chatine!”
A voice shot out from the opening of the disintegrateur and yanked her out of her stupor. She felt the air around her twist again as another pulse from the droid’s rayonette missed her face by a centimètre. Glancing back, she saw the basher was right behind her, reaching for her. She shrieked and clambered up the conveyer belt just as its metal claws grasped at her ankle. She gave a forceful kick and broke free before launching herself through the small opening of the machine.
Inside, the chamber was dark and cramped, and Chatine could barely lift her head.
“Roche?” she called out, trying to maneuver the light of her Skin.
She could see him just up ahead, furiously patting, slamming, and kicking at the walls around him. “Where’s the fric-ing chimney?”
Just then, the whole chamber began to shudder around them with the force of a mighty storm. Chatine peered over her shoulder and her stomach heaved at the sight of a single beam of orange light slicing through the darkness.
“The basher!” she cried. “It’s trying to get in.”
“There’s no way it can fit,” Roche said.
But it soon became apparent that it wouldn’t have to. Because a second later, the deafening sound of ripping metal exploded in Chatine’s ears. The floor rumbled beneath them like the whole moon was breaking apart.
“We have to get out of here!” Chatine patted desperately at the walls and ceiling of the chamber.
“I know! But I can’t find the opening for the chimney. It must be sealed off.”
Chatine’s stomach heaved again. This time in defeat. Had she been wrong? Had the Vangarde gotten to the roof another way? They were trapped. The droid would tear this metal tomb apart to get to them. There was nothing else to do.
Chatine reached into the pocket of her uniform, drawing out Marcellus’s ring, remembering the first time she’d ever seen it. It was in a place much like this. And much like now, it seemed to serve as the only ray of light in the darkness.
The chamber continued to shriek and judder as the droid ripped through the metal.
Please, she whispered to the Sols, sliding the ring onto her finger. Please help us.
Back on Laterre, Chatine had never been the praying type. But then again, she’d never tried to escape a prison on the moon before.
People change.
“Look!”
Chatine opened her eyes to see Roche staring upward, shining the light of his Skin at a narrow panel above their heads. With a loud scrape, he pushed it aside, and that’s when Chatine saw it.
A single rope dangling down from the chimney.
Amazed, she peered at the ring on her finger, and then back up at the rope.
At salvation.
With one final, earsplitting screech, the disintegrateur split apart. Orange light flooded the chamber. Roche grabbed onto the rope and began to climb, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the chute. The droid heaved away a giant piece of the machine and aimed its rayonette inside. Chatine shimmied forward, latched onto the end of the rope, and heaved herself up. Three pulses were fired off, each one grazing the fabric of her