The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 7

"You weren't here for me," I say, eyeing their weapons. "You were hunting."

She turns to me. "I'll explain later, but we have to go."

"What did you do?" I ask as one of the Reds pulls out a plasma-Torch and cuts a hole in the wall, opening the room up to the stink of the city. Moist air rushes in and lights flood the room as a small drops.h.i.+p descends, opening its side hatches parallel to the improvised door.

"Darrow, there's no time."

I grab her. "Evey, why are you here?"

Her eyes flash with triumph. "Adrius au Augustus has murdered fifteen of our brothers and sisters. I was sent to capture or kill him. I chose the latter. In twenty seconds, he'll be ash."

I rip one of the Reds' datapads off his arm and prime my concealed gravBoots. Evey shouts at me. The boots whine mournfully as they lift me into the air. I rip back the way we came, rupturing through the door instead of opening it, flying down the hallway like a bat out of h.e.l.l. I smash past a dancer, careen over two Orange customers, and turn a razor-tight right angle down over the railing toward the Jackal's table as he finishes his liquor. His Stained marks me, as do the Grays. Too slow.

On the screens, over the bombings, the static crackles and a blood-red helm burns.

"Reap what you sow," Ares's voice growls from a dozen speakers.

The table melts under the Jackal's hand. Consumed by the bomb Evey planted. The Stained throws the Jackal away from the table like a doll and curls his t.i.tanic body around the mushrooming energy. His mouth moves in a death whisper, "Skirnir al fal njir."

9.

THE DARKNESS.

The energy blossoms outward from the Stained liquid to the eye, evaporating his body and spreading over the floor like spilled mercury before darkening, slipping back to the origin, sucking men and chairs and bottles toward it like a black hole before detonating with a deep, nightmare roar. I snag the Jackal up by his jacket and fly through the wall, slamming shoulder first as, behind us, gla.s.s, wood, metal, eardrums, and men rupture.

My boots fail. We fly across the street and slam into the building opposite, cracking concrete and falling to the ground as the Lost Wee Den shrinks inward like a grape becoming a raisin becoming dust. She exhales a death rattle of fire and ash before sagging to ruin.

Beneath me, the Jackal's unconscious, his legs badly burned. I vomit as I try to stand, my skeleton creaking like the trunk of a young tree after its first hard winter wind. I stumble up only to fall back to the ground, emptying my stomach a second time. Pain in my skull. Nose dripping blood. Ears trickling with it. Eyeb.a.l.l.s throbbing from the explosion. Shoulder dislocated. I gain my knees, wedge my shoulder against the wall and roll the joint back in, quivering out breath as it pops into place. The feeling of needles tickles my fingers. I wipe the sick off my hands and wobble finally to my feet. I pick up the Jackal and squint into the smoke.

I hear nothing but the wailing of stereocilia. Like screaming sparrows in my inner ear, throbbing. I shake away the lights that dance across my vision. Smoke swallows me. People flow past, water around a rock, rus.h.i.+ng to help those trapped. They'll find only death, only ash. Sonic booms puncture the night. The Jackal's support teams roar down from the city above. And as they land to take him out of this h.e.l.l, the sparrows in my ears fade, devoured by the crackling of flames and the crying of the wounded.

I stand in front of an abandoned factory, four hundred kilometers from the Citadel, deep in the Old Industrial Sector. Newer factories have been built atop this one, burying it beneath a fresh skin of industry like a deep blackhead. Grime skins the place. Carnivorous moss. Rust-filled water. I'd have thought it a dead end if I didn't know my quarry so well.

The datapad I took from the Red survived the explosion. I left the Jackal for his support teams and slipped farther down the street, where I stole a Gray police craft. After wiping the datapad's tracking device, I hacked into the datapad coordinates history.

I knock hard on the locked door to the factory's main level. Nothing. They must be s.h.i.+tting themselves. So I kneel on the ground, hands behind my head, and wait. After a few minutes, the door creaks open. Darkness inside. Then several figures slip forward. They bind my hands, cover my head with a bag, and push me into the factory.

After taking me down an old hydraulic elevator, they guide me steadily toward the sound of music. Brahms's Piano Concerto no. 2. Computers hum. Welding torches flare bright enough to glow through the bag's fabric.

"Here, get off him, you brutes," snaps a familiar voice.

"Careful, clown," rumbles some Red.

"Babble at me all you want, you rusty baboon, he's worth more than ten thousand of you inbred rough-"

"Dalo, get out," Evey says softly. "Now."

Boots thud away. "Can I stop pretending now?" I ask.

"By all means," Mickey says.

I snap the cuffs they used to bind my wrists behind my back, and strip off the bag that covers my head. The concrete and metal laboratory is clean, quiet but for the soothing music. A faint haze floats in the air from Mickey's water pipe in the corner. I tower over him and Evey. She can't contain herself.

No longer the seductress Rose from the tavern, she throws herself into me like a little girl greeting a long-lost uncle. Her hands linger on my waist as she eventually pulls back and stares up into my Gold eyes with her pink ones. Despite her giggling, she's all sensuality and beauty, with willowy arms and a slow, intimate smile that echoes none of the grief killing nearly two hundred people should mark her with. The winged girl has become a carrion bird and she doesn't seem to have noticed. I wonder if she'd smile so broadly if she had to kill all those people with a knife. How easy we make ma.s.s murder.

"I could recognize you anywhere," she says. "When I saw you at the table ... my heart skipped a beat. Especially in that ridiculous Obsidian makeup. Darrow, what's wrong?"

She yelps when I pick her up by the front of her jacket and shove her against the wall.

"You just killed two hundred people." I shake my head, sore and heavy with the weight of what's happened. "How could you, Evey?" I shake her, seeing again the crew of my s.h.i.+p venting into s.p.a.ce. Seeing all the dead I've left in my path. Feeling Julian's pulse fade to nothing.

"Darrow, darling-" Mickey tries.

"Shut up, Mickey."

"Yes. All right."

"Reds. Pinks. LowColors. Your own people. Like they were nothing." My hands tremble.

"I was following orders, Darrow," she says. "Adrius has been investigating us. He had to be taken out."

So with all his scheming, he'd been noticed. Tears brim in Evey's eyes. I don't recoil from them. Who gives a s.h.i.+t about how she feels after what she's just done? But I release her, letting her slide pathetically down the wall, hoping she might show some glimmer of regret that would make me think those tears are for the people she killed and not for herself, not because she's scared of me.

"This isn't how I wanted it to be," she says, wiping her eyes. "When you saw me again."

I stare down at her, confused. "What happened to you?"

"She had a different teacher than you," Mickey says. "I took her wings off and Harmony gave her claws."

I turn to Mickey. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

"It would take a year to explain." He crosses his arms and examines me. "But let us first say, you've been missed, my darling prince. Second, please do not link my morality to that lost soul. I agree. Evey is a little monster." He glares past me at Evey as she stands. "Maybe now you'll see yourself for what you are." His sneer fades, quick eyes scanning me toe to head. "Third, you look divine, my boy. Absolutely divine."

His eyes dance over my face. His mouth opens, closes, tripping over itself it has so much to say. Sharp of face, oily of hair, he slides forward like a blade on ice. All angles. Skin wrapped around slender bones. Was he so thin when last I saw him? Or does he simply not have his cosmetics? No. His blinks are slow. Languid. He's tired. Older. And seemingly beaten down. A queer air of vulnerability in the way his shoulders hunch and his eyes dart around, as if expecting to be hit at any moment.

"I asked you a question, Mickey," I say.

"I can't think about the forest! I'm still examining the tree! It's astounding how your body flourished. Simply astounding, my darling. You've actually grown larger. How fare your pain receptors? Did the hair follicles ever grow irritated as I was concerned? What about the muscle contraction; do you find it above the average of your peers? Pupil dilation fast enough? All I heard for months was talk of you on the HC. They could not show the Inst.i.tute, of course. But there were videos leaked on the holoNet. Such videos-you killing a Peerless Scarred. Taking some strange fortress in the sky, like a champion of old!"

Even they swallow the myths of the Conquerors, the n.o.ble champions of old. He grips my shoulder desperately, his hand weaker than I remember. "Tell me about your life. What the Academy is like. Tell me everything. Are you still lovers with that delectable Virginia au Augustus?" He frowns suddenly. "Oh, of course you're not. She's with-"

"Mickey." I grip him. "Calm down."

He laughs so hard he coughs, turning from me to wipe his eyes. "Just good to see a friendly face. They don't allow me kind company these days. None at all. Monstrous, really."

"Shut up, Mickey," Evey snaps.

His eyes slip to Evey, who now stands far from my reach, fingering the burner holstered on her hip as though it would protect her from me.

"Why are you on Luna? What is going on?" I ask. "Have you joined the Sons?"

"Much has happened," Mickey murmurs. "I'm not here by-"

"He works for us, now, Darrow," Evey interrupts coldly. "Whether he likes it or not. We took his little skin den apart. Used the funds he made from selling flesh to buy transport here and equip an army. We're striking back, Darrow. Finally."

"One Pink terrorist and a handful of Reds playing with guns," I say without looking at her. "Is that your army?"

"We drew blood from the Golds today, Darrow. If you don't respect me, respect that. I killed the son of Mars's ArchGovernor. What have you done that makes you think you can come here and spit on what we've done?"

"You didn't kill him," I say.

She looks blankly at me. "Don't be ridiculous."

I stare back, angry.

"But how ... The bomb ...," she says. "You're lying."

"I got him out in time."

"Why?"

"Because my mission is complicated. I need him. Where is Dancer? Who is in charge here? Mickey-"

"I am," says another voice from my past, one with an accent like my wife's, except this voice is poisoned and bitter with anger. I turn to see Harmony at the door. Half her face still blasted with that terrible scar. The other half is cold and cruel, older than I remember.

"Harmony," I say mildly. The years have done nothing to warm us to each other. "It's good to see you. I need to debrief. There's so much to say." I can't even think where to begin. Then I notice the glance she gives Evey. "Harmony, where is Dancer?"

"Dancer is dead, Darrow."

Later, Harmony sits with me in front of Mickey's desk in an office of cheap, angular furniture and jars filled with hybrid organs floating in preservative gas. Mickey sits behind the desk, fidgeting with that old platonic puzzlecube of his. He sees me looking at it and he winks. He's gotten better. Evey leans against a barrel of chemicals. I sit, utterly lost. Dancer had a plan for me. He had a plan for all this. He's not supposed to be dead. He can't be.

"It was Dancer's last wish for Mickey to carve us a new army. One that will rival the Golds in speed and strength. We've taken our greatest men and women and put them to the carving. They cannot survive a Gold procedure like the one you endured, but some manage to brave this new program." She waves out the gla.s.s where a hundred coffinlike tubes splay across the floor. Inside each, Reds of a new breed. "Soon we'll have a hundred soldiers who can cut Gold deeper than any before."

As if a hundred would be enough to fight the Gold war machine. My Howlers and I could likely shred any unit these terrorists put together. And we're not even the deadliest Golds.

She gestures with a new arm, having lost the one of flesh and bone to an Obsidian, when raiding an armory for weapons. It's a limb of metal now. Fluid and strong, with illegal blackmarket sockets for weaponry. Good workmans.h.i.+p, but nothing compared with Mickey's carving. Of course she'd never let him work on her.

"So Mickey is a prisoner?" I ask.

"Slave, more like," Mickey grunts with a small smile. "They don't even give me wine."

"Shut up, Mickey," Evey snaps.

"Evey." Harmony fixes the young woman with a tolerant stare before regarding Mickey. "Remember what we talked about, eh? Mind your tongue."

Mickey flinches, eyes darting down to her left hand. There is an empty holster on her belt. Something Mickey is scared of. Harmony is behaving for me.

"You afraid he's going to say how you beat him?"

She shrugs, dismissing my judgment. "Mickey sold girls and boys. Can't enslave a slaver. Far as I see it, he's b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n lucky not to have a bullet in his brain. Could hire a Carver to give him horns and wings and a tail so he'd look like the monster he is. But I haven't. Have I, Mickey?"

"No."

"No?"

"No, domina."

The word makes me recoil in disgust.

"Dancer always respected him," I say. "I respect him, despite all his ... eccentricities."

"He bought people. Sold them," Evey says.

"We've all sinned," I say. "Especially you, now."

"Told you he'd be b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n holier than thou. Acting like he doesn't compromise his morality day in, day out. Finding excuses for wicked b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like our Mickey here." Harmony smirks to Evey, sharing a private joke. "That sort of att.i.tude is all fine up there, Darrow. But you'll learn we don't compromise here anymore. That's the past."

"Then Dancer is truly dead."

"Dancer was a good man." She's silent for too short a moment for it to count as respectful. "But good men tend to die first. Half a year back, he hired a Gray mercenary team to hit a communications hub so we could steal data. I said we should kill them once the job was done. Dancer said ... what was it again?... 'We aren't devils.' But after the Gray captain collected his pay, he p.i.s.sed off to the local Society Police headquarters and offered them Dancer's location. b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n lurcher squad put Dancer and two hundred Sons in the dirt in two minutes. Never again. If they kill one of us, we kill a hundred of them. And we don't trust Grays. We don't pay Violets. They've lived off our toil for ages. We only trust Reds."

Evey s.h.i.+fts uncomfortably.

"There was another Red at the Inst.i.tute," I say after a moment. "t.i.tus. Was he one of yours?" I glance toward Mickey.

"Don't look at me," Mickey says.

"How did you know t.i.tus was a Red?" Harmony asks quickly. "Did he tell you?"

"He ... let it slip. Small mannerisms. No one else noticed."

"Then you found each other?" she asks, not smiling, but sighing free a weight she's long carried. "He was a good lad. I'm sure you became friends?"

"He never discovered me. Did you carve him, Mickey?"

With Harmony's blessing, he answers. "No, darling. You were my first. My only." He winks. "I consulted on his carving. But an a.s.sociate of mine did his procedure based on the successes you and I pioneered."