The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 43

"It's all part of the game, my goodman. Perception, deception, media!" He slaps his hand on his thigh, though his eyes don't share the mirth. "Give me the word and I can go public with your improved vitality. We'll schedule a press conference. Dress you in armor. My Violets are building you a proper suit of your own. They've been conspiring with Greens to give you a marvel of form and tech."

"You know I hate the cameras."

"Oh, stop whining. They're why we have half our allies. And why the Sovereign's scrambling like a spider on ice. Her coalition is ... stressed."

"We'll do it today, then," I say. I look out the window, remembering Roque's words. "I wanted a moment of peace, but ..." They join me in looking at the falling snow and the distant city beneath. "I suppose we've yet to earn that. Which brings me to why I called this meeting."

"I admit I've been curious," the Jackal says.

"He's been dying to know," Victra corrects.

I nod to Ragnar, who followed Victra and me into the room. He comes forward with two boxes from my s.h.i.+p. "I wanted to give you both gifts. Our alliance has had an ... interesting beginning. But I want you both to know how committed I am not only to it, but to each of you. I hope you take this to be a sign of my trust."

"Always trust a Stained bearing gifts." Victra chuckles, looking up at Ragnar. "Goryh.e.l.l, go over there. You're like a tree blocking out the light, Ragnar."

"Ragnar, wait outside," I say.

The Jackal doesn't even look at Ragnar. Physical power bores him.

Snapping her fingers so I bring my attention back to her, Victra unwraps her box to find a small crystal bottle I had Theodora commission from the Carvers on the Pax before the siege of Mars.

"Petrichor," I say as she opens the bottle. The room fills with the smell of stone before rain. She thanks me with a scarred hand on my forearm, holding the bottle close to her chest.

"No one remembers that sort of thing. Thank you, Darrow." She sits there for a moment before rising quickly and kissing me on the lips. I would have preferred the cheek.

"My turn." The Jackal unwraps his box with his lone hand. Tearing through the paper with a grin on his face. He opens the leather box beneath and is quiet for a long moment. "Darrow, you shouldn't-"

He's cut short as a high-pitched alarm screams out of the walls.

A Gray lurcher bursts into the room, weapon drawn. Four others accompany her. "Dominus, we have a breach in the lower level. We have to escort you to a safer room."

"Who?" the Jackal rasps. Victra and I draw our razors. The Gray is about to answer when the alarms are cut short and replaced by a rising humorless laughter over the speakers. It echoes through the room even as the lighting of the place blacks out. We hurry to the door. A small metal spider clinks onto the window. The gla.s.s melts. My vision and hearing vanish. Replaced by a swarming, high-pitched keening. I stumble, stunned by the flash grenade.

Dark shapes fly into the room. Blinking, I glimpse cacodemon masks. Eyes glowing red out of terrible visages. The Sons have come. They shoot the Grays and kick us to the ground. Ragnar storms in from the hall and catches three stunFist blasts to his chest. He goes down like a felled tree. One masked intruder bends over the Jackal. As my hearing returns, I make out that he's screaming for the code to the facility's mainframe. He shoves the muzzle of his scorcher into the Jackal's mouth till the Jackal gives it up.

"Some Gold," rasps a distorted voice.

Behind the mask, I know Sevro would love nothing more than to pull the trigger, and for a moment I think he's going to. But he waits for me as he's supposed to. And on cue, I rise sluggishly, shaking off the results of the flash grenade, and grab one of the intruder's weapons, taking it for myself. I fire at them. They fire at me. Each of us missing on purpose. Then they are gone, back out the window. The Grays lie dead on the ground. Victra bleeds from a shallow head wound and rises to her feet. The Jackal tries to stand, blood dripping from his nose.

Wordlessly, we try the doors to the room. They're locked. The Sons have control of the mainframe now. The Jackal leans his head against the door. Then he rears back and slams it into the metal again, again, again till blood pours down his face. I have to pull him away before he splits his skull. He laughs darkly for a moment before shaking himself.

"Twice," he sneers. "Twice they violate me." An animalistic shudder goes through his body. "I was breaking them. Another day. Maybe two and they would have cracked."

"Who?" Victra asks.

He doesn't answer. I press the question. "Who, Adrius? Who the h.e.l.l was that?"

"Terrorists. Came for captured Sons," he says impatiently. "One was the Pink b.i.t.c.h who tried to kill us on Luna, Darrow. It wasn't Pliny after all. It was the Sons. Another was one of Ares's right hands. They call her Harmony. A Violet was with them. Making them an army of carved soldiers."

"You had captured Sons of Ares here? When were you going to tell us this?" Victra snarls, standing from checking for the pulse of a dead Gray.

"I wasn't. Not until I knew who Ares was."

"What else are you keeping from us?" I say. "This is a partners.h.i.+p." I kick over a table. "Why the goryh.e.l.l do you have me if not to protect you from things like this?"

"My fault," he says. "My fault." He swallows the blood in his mouth and walks toward the empty window bank, gripping my shoulder as he pa.s.ses. Wind howls in. "You did protect me. Yet again. Thank you."

I scowl and brood in fine actorly fas.h.i.+on.

"They couldn't have been Reds," I say bitterly. "Couldn't have been Sons. Sons never would have, could have done that. Not to me. Not to Ragnar." I help the Stained from the floor. "They were too organized. They had gravBoots."

"You underestimate them, my friend," the Jackal says. "They can pull triggers too. And they would have pulled them with their muzzles against our heads if you hadn't stopped them."

"How the goryd.a.m.n did they get past your security?" Victra asks. "Were there tracking devices? Signal jammers? GravBoot signatures?"

"I don't know," the Jackal says.

Because the Sons held on to my hull wearing ghostCloaks, like little barnacles.

"Who else has come and gone?" I ask.

He looks around as I hoped he might. He calls up his men on a com at his desk. After a moment, he looks back up to us. "Sun-hwa," he whispers. "Her men are dead and she's gone like the wind. She survived the last attack too." Then he laughs. "She betrayed me." And when he sees the money transferred to Sun-hwa's accounts, he'll find all the corroborating evidence he needs to pin the blame on his chief of security. Only thing is, Sun-hwa is loyal as a dog and dead as a doornail in the cargo hold of the shuttle that now tears away from the Jackal's winter citadel carrying Fitchner, Sevro, and my once-captured friends.

I come beside the Jackal as Victra tries the door again. Together we watch the s.h.i.+p disappear beyond the mountains. And I say in a low, menacing voice, "We will kill the rats, together. I promise. All of them."

"After the Sovereign," he says, patting my back. "After the Sovereign."

46.

BROTHERHOOD.

I hug Dancer so hard his back cracks. He taps me in panic. I apologize and separate, feeling large as a Telema.n.u.s next to him. Outside the garage-turned-makes.h.i.+ft-office, the Sons of Ares warehouse rattles with industry. They brought me in through the side door and had me wait for Dancer among old engines and rusted aerlons.

Dancer pulls back from me and looks up, rusty eyes glittering with tears. Startling to think that I once considered him a handsome man. He's in his forties; old for a Red. Hair shot with gray. Face creased by age and hards.h.i.+p. His right arm still hangs limp. His foot still drags. And his smile still stretches wide enough, baring uneven, imperfect teeth.

"My boy," he says, gripping my shoulder with his left hand. It's stronger than all the rest of him put together. He smells like tobacco. Nails are yellow. "My b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n beautiful little b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a boy. You look so b.l.o.o.d.y grand!" He laughs and laughs again, shaking his head. "There are no words. I'm sorry I couldn't reach you. Sorry I let Harmony use you like that. There are so many things, Darrow."

"Stop." I clap the back of his neck. "We're brothers. No need for apologies. We're bound by blood and past. But please, please don't let it happen again." He nods. "How is my family, do you know?"

"Alive," he says. "Still in the mines. I know. I know. But that's the safest place for them with this war abound. No one wants to blow up Mars's industry. Register?"

He waves me to a seat. "Don't know many Golds, but that Sevro's a nasty little s.h.i.+t. When I delivered his father's instructions to him out on the Rim, I thought he was going to cut me from gob to pucker." He lights a burner, winks at me. "Never met anyone like him."

"He's loyal as they come," I say. "Like you."

"No! I mean he can swear better than any b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n Red."

"Sevro swears?" I smile. "Guess you get used to it. Though he does like saying 'b.l.o.o.d.y' a h.e.l.l of a lot now."

"It's a fine word. Rolls off the tongue. Done some research." He puffs up his chest. "Been with us since the first ancestors, you know. The first Golds, the ones with normal eyes and gold uniforms, took most of the early recruits from the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from the Irish isles after the radiation from London turned the isles into a wasteland. The Golds took the highly skilled migratory workforce and recruited them to be the first Pioneers. Their slang just stuck around, jumbled up a bit. History's fascinating, isn't she?"

"Harmony's been making up her own history," I say.

"That's right. I'm dead!" He shakes his head and lights another burner, flicking the other onto the floor. I pick it up and put it in the wastebasket. "She went her own way about a year after you left. We discovered several Senators were going to be vacationing on the Gorgon Sea. So we showed up to bug their villa to see if we couldn't get any secrets. We didn't. Just lots of ... depraved s.h.i.+t. And that was that, we thought. But not for Harmony. On the last night, she walked in and killed the Senators and their guests. Then she left us."

"So there was never a lurcher squad that raided your headquarters?"

He shakes his head. "They came because of her. Killed about forty Sons. But she'd already left for Luna. Ares saved us. Came in hard with a mixed pack of Obsidians and Grays. Laid waste to those lurchers, then slipped away before reinforcements came. It's lucky he killed them all. No way they wouldn't know he was a Gold after that. Had our first face-to-face that day. Man's b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n scary."

"Not the word I'd choose." Though maybe it's accurate considering how well he fooled me. "It doesn't bother you that he's a Gold?"

"It doesn't bother him that we're Reds. Ares would die for the cause, Darrow. s.h.i.+t. He started it. You know why he did?"

I shake my head.

"It's his story." Dancer traces the pitviper bites on his neck. "A man has the right to tell his own story. But his isn't a happy one. Sad as yours. Sad as mine. Strip a man of what he loves, and what is left? Just hate. Just anger. But he was the first to know there could be something more. He found me. He found you. Who the b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n are we to question him?"

The door opens suddenly. We both turn and Mickey limps in. He looks half dead, thin as a reed, paler than before. Without a word, he hobbles over to me and kisses me full on the mouth, his affection desperate and true. Then he starts weeping like a child. Dancer and I don't know what to do, so I just wrap my arms around him and let him cry. He whispers "Thank you" to me a dozen times.

What did they do to him? Never mind. I know the things the Grays are trained in to get information. He says he told them nothing. Still, I have to discover what the Jackal learned from this. What deductions he's made from finding Mickey's lab.

I look over Mickey's head to see Fitchner standing there, smiling sadly. After a long moment, Mickey pulls back. "I tried to warn you, when you came to us on Luna," he says apologetically. "Wanted to say to run. But she would have killed me if I said any more. I was afraid you would believe her over me."

"I would have believed you, Mickey."

"You would have?" He sniffles. "I knew you'd come for me. I said my darling boy was too kind to forget about Mickey, but she spat on me. Said I was a slaver." He hangs his head, sniffing and so vulnerable, drained and nearly mad from what must have been done to him in the Jackal's torture chambers. "She was right. I am. I am wicked. I hurt the girls and boys. I sold them even when I loved them. Of course she was right. Why would you come? Why would you do anything for wicked little Mickey?"

"Because you're my friend." I bring his hands to my lips, kissing them gently as he looks up at me with hopeful eyes. "Weird as you are, wicked as you were. I know you want to be better. You want to live for more. We all do. And there's not a place they could take one of my friends that I would ever abandon them."

It feels good to speak the truth.

"Thank you, my prince," he says quietly. He draws himself up after that, strong enough to turn and walk out of the office. Fitchner closes the door.

"Well, that was emotional."

I nod. This is the man I'd rather be. Not constantly on guard. Not lying through my teeth. I suppose I didn't even know how much affection I felt for Mickey till now. It's not because he helped make me. It's that he's always loved me so much. Even if it was a strange sort of love, it was real. And I do believe he wants to be a man he thinks I would respect. Just like I want to be a man Eo and Mustang would respect. And that's the good sort of love.

"We need to talk, Fitchner," I say. We didn't have a chance earlier. Sevro came to me with Dancer's plan-call a meeting, attach the Sons to my s.h.i.+p, let them infiltrate the building. All I did was suggest Sun-hwa as the scapegoat, and let them know Victra was not to be harmed.

"I'll leave you two to it," Dancer says, pus.h.i.+ng back his metal chair.

"No, I want you to stay," I say. "I've too many secrets from too many people. I won't have any more between the three of us."

"Learn to count, s.h.i.+thead," Sevro says, coming around a rusted engine block. The cheap metal door to the outside slams behind him. Smells like autumn even in Agea's oil-stained manufacturing district. He hops onto the rusted cha.s.sis of an old fighter and sits with his legs dangling. "Hey, look, it's all p.r.i.c.ks for once. Let's tell s.e.xist jokes."

Chuckling, I turn to Fitchner. "So you're Ares."

"Man comes out of a coma and he's a genius!" Fitchner barks. He claps his hands, but his eyes stay deadly serious. "Most call me Bronzie. Students call me Proctor. Some call me Rage Knight. The Sovereign calls me traitor. My son calls me s.h.i.+thead...."

"You are a s.h.i.+thead," Sevro chimes in.

"... My wife called me Fitchner. But the Golds made me Ares."

Before now I would not know what that meant. He is Gold. How could the Golds do anything to him? But now I've peeked behind the curtain. "Why didn't you tell me who you were from the start?"

"And put my life in the hands of a teenager's acting ability?" he cackles. "I think not. If you were found out and they tortured you ... bad news. I had alternate plans, other irons in the fire. You just happened to be my favorite. But we mustn't be biased."

"Who was your wife?" I ask, already suspecting the answer.

"Full or short story?" he asks.

"Full."

"I was liaising for a terraforming company on Triton," he begins gruffly. "I didn't have a glamorous job like you. No razors. No armor. Just construction management. Contract was leased by a Silver. I was running one of the last Lovelock Engines on their north pole when an eruption from one of that moon's d.a.m.n geysers caused an earthquake. Cracked the ice crust. Spilled the whole engine into the subterranean sea. Three thousand souls drowned.

"They fished me out of the sea and I spent the next months recovering in the arctic hospital. I was in the highColor wing. We had the good food. Better showers. Newer beds. But the lowColors had the window that looked at the northern lights. And she had the bed beside that window."

He looks up at Sevro. "She was the most beautiful woman I've ever met. And she was pretty to look at too. She lost a leg in the accident. And they weren't going to give her a new one. They could. It's simple bionics. Not cost-effective, said the Coppers. s.h.i.+ttiest Color ever made, I swear on-"

Sevro clears his throat. "We know."

Fitchner throws a piece of trash at Sevro and continues. "When I left, I took her with me. I'd saved up money enough to leave Triton. Couldn't live in the Core. Too expensive. So I chose Mars. We lived just outside New Thebes for a year. We wanted a child more than anything. But our DNA wasn't compatible. So we went to a Carver to see if we couldn't make some magic. We did. Cost me almost everything I owned, but nine months later, this little Goblin squirmed out."

Sevro waves from his perch as he examines the trash to see if it isn't edible.

"Two years later, the Board of Quality Control busted the Carver for some work he did on some Obsidian gladiator and he ratted us out, fastlike, for a reduced sentence. They came to our home when I was away with Sevro. Found my wife, took her in for questioning. Their doctors saw her fallopian tubes had been modified so that she would be compatible to sire a Gold child. Then they disposed of her. Says so right in the records: 'disposed.' Ga.s.sed her with achlys-9, put her in an oven, pumped her ash into the sea. They didn't even give her a name, just a number. Not because she was a thief or a murderer or had violated any man's or woman's rights, but because she was a Red who dared love a Gold. My selfish love killed her.

"It wasn't like your wife, Darrow. I didn't watch mine die. I didn't see Golds come into my world and ruin it. Instead I felt the coldness of the system swallow the only thing I lived for. A Copper pressing b.u.t.tons, filling out a spreadsheet. A Brown twisting a k.n.o.b to release gas. They killed my wife. But they won't ever think so. She's not a memory in their mind. She's a statistic. It's as if she never existed. Some ghost I loved but no one else ever saw. That's what Society does-spread the blame so there is no villain, so it's futile to even begin to find a villain, to find justice. It's just machinery. Processes. And it rumbles on, inexorable till a whole generation rises that will throw themselves on the gears."

"What was her name?"

"Her name? Why does it matter?" he asks warily.

"Because I want to remember her."

"Bryn," Sevro says from above. "My mother's name was Bryn. She was twenty-two when they killed her." Only a year older than I am now.