around the empty room, his gaze eventually snagging on a small tin box on a table next to the bed. Curious, he opened it and rifled through the assortment of stray wires, metal fasteners, and clips. He suddenly remembered the ripped pants and hooded coat Chatine had worn. The fabric had been held together with random pieces of metal like these.
This must be her room.
Guilt started to splinter its way through his mind. The same guilt that had plagued him ever since he’d first watched her arrest report. “Treason,” the TéléCom had said. Marcellus didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but regardless, he knew she was sent to that moon because of him. His grandfather’s suspicion of him is what had gotten her embroiled with the general in the first place. And her yearning to escape all of this—this squalor and misery—had turned her into just another piece in the general’s deadly game.
Marcellus was just about to close the lid of the box when he noticed something else lying at the bottom. Something that stood out amongst the rusted scraps of metal.
Digging his fingers inside, he pulled out the strangest looking object. It was hard and smooth and clearly made of plastique. It almost looked like …
An arm?
Yes, Marcellus was now certain it was. A little plastique arm complete with a hand and five tiny fingers, most likely once belonging to a doll.
What was Chatine doing with a detached doll arm?
Marcellus had no idea. He started to return it to the tin box, but something compelled him to stop. He wasn’t sure what that something was. A feeling of some sort. An intuition that this was important to her. Why else would she keep such a strange item locked in a box near her bed?
He tucked the tiny arm into the pocket of his uniform and lay back on the bed, his gaze fanning around the room. It was stuffy and dingy and, like the rest of the couchette, covered in a layer of grime. But there was something about it—something about her lingering presence here—that eased the clutch in his chest the slightest bit. Enough for his eyes to close and the darkness of the past few hours to consume him.
* * *
Marcellus wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when he heard the soft click of a door being opened and footsteps entering the room.
He sat bolt upright and lunged for his bedside lamp, only to remember that he wasn’t in his own bed. He was in Chatine Renard’s dirty, abandoned couchette.
He squinted groggily into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
There was no response. Just a faint squeak. Like someone sitting down in a nearby chair.
Marcellus reached for his rayonette, but it had been confiscated during his arrest. His heart pounded beneath his rib cage. Had Inspecteur Chacal found him so quickly?
The soft squeak came again, followed by what sounded like the tapping of fingers on a hard surface.
Marcellus pulled his TéléCom out of his pocket and unfolded it, using the light from the screen to illuminate the small bedroom.
It was empty. Apart from the vermin, of course.
“Good evening,” came a rich, smooth voice in Marcellus’s ear.
His grandfather’s voice.
Marcellus jumped out of bed and spun around, casting the light from his TéléCom every which way.
“I’m sorry I could not speak sooner. Another pressing matter detained me.”
And that’s when Marcellus realized that the voice wasn’t coming from this room. It was coming from his audio patch.
The auditeur. He’d planted it in his grandfather’s office just before they’d been summoned to the imperial appartements earlier tonight. After the horrific events of the evening, Marcellus had completely forgotten about the tiny listening device hidden in the Monarch piece of the Regiments game, streaming his grandfather’s most private conversations straight to Marcellus’s TéléCom.
For a moment, Marcellus’s grief and aching sense of defeat gave way to a flicker of pride. The general had no idea Marcellus was listening.
“That’s good to hear,” his grandfather was now saying. “The timing of your update couldn’t be better. A great enemy of Laterre has just been defeated. The Patriarche is thrilled and, more important, appeased. He believes the biggest threat to the Regime is dealt with. Which makes it the perfect moment for us to move forward with our plans. How long until the project is ready to initiate?”
Marcellus’s skin prickled with apprehension.
Project?
This was it. This had to be the weapon Mabelle had told him about.
There was a torturously long pause, during which Marcellus desperately wished he could hear