seventeen years ago. The general couldn’t risk that getting out. Which is why he’d replaced it with something that incriminated Marcellus instead.
Because, as always, the general had been three moves ahead of Marcellus the whole time.
He knew. He knew from the moment he’d watched that footage that Marcellus had been in contact with the Vangarde and was probably now working with them. He just couldn’t prove it. So, the general had to do what he did best.
Frame.
Marcellus glared at Inspecteur Chacal, who was clearly in on this. “So, this is how you got your promotion?” Marcellus asked in amazement. “You became his new lackey? Willing to go along with anything in order to get ahead?”
The newly implanted circuitry across Chacal’s face flickered, confirming everything Marcellus needed to know.
“Take him in,” the inspecteur growled.
The two deputies shoved hard at Marcellus’s back, compelling him forward. Moving him closer to the fate that was awaiting him at the Policier Precinct. At the prisoner transport center. And finally, on the moon.
“Just like your father …”
In his mind, like a flash of lightning, Marcellus suddenly saw his father’s body, wracked and frozen and decimated. Julien Bonnefaçon had been framed for the murder of six hundred exploit workers. He’d been sent to Bastille and had died there, many grueling and freezing years later.
And now, so would Marcellus.
From the day he was born, he had been destined to walk this path.
Destined to follow in the footsteps of a traitor.
As the deputies led him down the hallway of the south wing, down the imperial staircase, and through the Grand Foyer, Marcellus’s whole body was numb. All he could feel was the failure. The defeat.
General Bonnefaçon had won. Again. Just like he always did. In every game. Every maneuver. Every challenge. Every battle. He was the planet’s greatest military strategist. And Marcellus was nothing.
Now his grandfather was going to get away with all of it. He was going to develop this deadly weapon and take control of the Regime, and there was no one left to stop him. Citizen Rousseau was dead. Mabelle was dead. His grandfather had killed them both.
They stepped outside, into the warm night air of Ledôme, where Marcellus could see a Policier patroleur waiting in the forecourt. As the deputies led him toward the vehicle, Marcellus felt a shiver in his bones. It was as though he could feel someone watching him. He pulled to a stop and glanced back, into the night. No one was there, but Marcellus’s gaze was instantly drawn upward. To a large window with a single light illuminated inside. Standing in the center of the frame, like a First World portrait, was General Bonnefaçon. He glared down at Marcellus, his expression made of pure PermaSteel, his eyes made of fire.
Marcellus’s gaze locked into his grandfather’s, and in one brief, burning moment, everything was exchanged. Every horrible insult the general had ever thrown at him. And every heated reply Marcellus had never had the courage to throw back. Every doubt and every tense silence.
An eighteen-year-old schism opened up in the short distance that now stood between them.
The deputies shoved at his back, urging him to keep walking, but just then something detonated inside of Marcellus. Something deep and dark and determined.
A roar ripped out of him, shocking everyone, including himself. He threw off the two deputies holding on to his arms with such force that both of them were flung to the ground.
“Get up you imbeciles!” Chacal shouted from somewhere behind him. “Stop him!”
But Marcellus was already on the move. He sprinted across the forecourt, heading for the docking station just behind the patroleur. A second later, he heard something sizzle past his left ear. His gaze whipped to the side and he saw it.
The warping, the twisting, the blurring of the air around him.
Rayonette pulses.
Marcellus gasped and ran faster. He was now halfway across the forecourt, the docking station in sight.
“Don’t let him get away!” Chacal shouted.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two more pulses tore through the air, one after the other. Marcellus took cover behind a sculpture of a partially dressed woman that stood guard in the center of the forecourt. The first pulse ricocheted off her chest, causing the marble to crack and splinter, before shooting upward toward the TéléSky.
The second pulse glanced Marcellus’s right shoulder. He bit back a scream that bubbled up in his throat and kept running, even though it felt as if his whole arm and shoulder had been ripped through by a jagged knife.
“You filthy déchet lover,”