A ten-year-old secondborn boy is brought forward. He’s a Sword, made from Pedar’s mold. Dark hair hangs in his face, and he has broad shoulders already. The young secondborn comes forward and stops in front of Pedar. Pedar leans down and whispers something in the boy’s ear. He nods, sizing me up. “Ready?” he asks.
“We’ll distract the Exos for you,” Pedar says. “You will be taken out the back way.” He makes no move toward me, maybe having learned his lesson from our previous encounter. Then he nods his head, and suddenly a fight breaks out on the dance floor below. People brawling and throwing punches. The noise and chaos is deafening. Everyone rushes to the railings to watch. Grisholm is enthralled.
“Thank you, Pedar,” I murmur. “All is forgiven.”
Christof Sword moves toward the back of the club, with me on his heels. We escape through a secret door in the wall and down some back stairs. My Halo stringers still follow me closely. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, Christof dismisses the guards on duty there. They turn and go, as if he’s the boss. He opens the door that leads outside.
I turn to the hovering black hardware behind us and rattle off the stinger code that Clifton gave me. “R0517 and R6492, return to the Halo Palace.” They hesitate. My heart beats hard in my chest. The boy beside me watches the heavily armed stingers with suspicion. Then, as if they finally recognize the command, they fly past us, out into the night sky, and disappear into the darkness.
With the machines gone, it feels as if a weight has been lifted from me. From the hollowed-out heel of my boot, I extract a black fingerless glove and a small piece of lead. I cover my moniker with them. The silver sword goes dark. I take out the looking-glass moniker and turn it on before slipping the bracelet onto my wrist. It reflects Christof’s moniker beside me. He watches everything I do.
“What’s your message, and who do I give it to?” he asks.
“Find Reykin Winterstrom,” I reply, and then describe him. “He’ll come to the Neon Bible. Tell him to cover for me. Tell him I will meet him back at the Halo Palace tonight.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“The boss says you need cover to blend in,” Christof mutters.
“I do,” I reply. I use the hood of my jacket, pulling it over my hair and as low on my forehead as I can.
“This way,” Christof says, taking my hand. It’s strange, being led around by a ten-year-old boy who acts like a thirty-year-old man. Not that I expected him to act like a child. He’s not firstborn.
“Are you Pedar’s son?” I ask as we maneuver through the frolicking crowd, which grows louder and bawdier by the minute. I try to keep my chin down.
“Might be,” he replies with a stoic expression, “but he ain’t sayin’, and I ain’t askin’. The one they says was my father is dead—killed by the Gates of Dawn . . . but I heard he was just someone who couldn’t pay what he owed.” I wonder about how Pedar operates. If someone fell into debt with the firstborn Sword, that person might have to do whatever was demanded of him to get out of it—maybe even marry and pretend his wife’s children are his. Christof bears such a resemblance to Pedar that I could see that.
We approach a street vendor selling holographic masks. They shine and blink on a hovering wire rack in the front of the pavilion. The vender takes one look at Christof, recognition dawns, and he quickly looks the other way, as if he’s afraid of the boy. I stare at the masks on display. Some mimic wildlife—elephants with long gray trunks made of light, swine with triangular ears and round snouts, wolves with long muzzles and sharp teeth. Others suggest eerie monsters with viper fangs, or mouthless beasts. Christof choses a black panther mask with black triangular ears, long whiskers, and yellow eyes. He hands it to me. “That’s you for sure,” he says. “A cat.”
Lifting it to my face, I pull the strap over my hair and tug my cowl down once more. Unable to help myself, I touch his cheek. “You take care, Christof.”
“You, too, St. Sismode.” Why he chooses to call me by my old last name, I don’t know, but I have no time to wonder. I set a brisk pace to the news hovervan before Franklin Star leaves without me.
The news van has a big, bold blue holographic iris surrounding a black pupil on its side. Every few seconds, the eyelid blinks and the iris changes color. Beside the eye, a sandy-haired secondborn paces, consulting his shooting star–shaped moniker. Crowds of people jostle past him on their way to different party venues. Sidling up to the secondborn, I murmur, “Franklin?”
A scared scowl crosses his face, and his glasses go askew when he jolts. He rearranges them on his nose. Grasping his heart, he tries to see me beyond the hologram of my mask. “Who sent you?” he whispers. His thin body leans closer to me.
“Balmora,” I reply.
He looks around, deciding whether we’re being watched. Finding no one, Franklin gestures to the side with his head, motioning to the hovervan’s sliding side panel. He ushers me inside and closes the door. In the dark, the smell of stale beer assaults me. My eyes adjust to the dimness. One side of the van is a command center. The other has metal racks bolted to the floor. Inside mesh bins, drone cameras lie charging, their green-spotted lens eyes seeming to stare into my soul. A workstation is next to the drones. It has a couple seats, folded away. I sit down on the dingy steel floor toward the rear of the vehicle.
Franklin gets into the driver’s seat. Over his shoulder he says, “If we get caught, I’d appreciate you saying that you stowed away in here without me knowing.”
“Sure, Franklin,” I agree.
“Keep your head down.” He starts the hovervan. With a low rumble and a sway of the hulking van, we’re off. Wires on hooks jumble around. Equipment I have no name for rubs against other equipment I have no name for. I lie on the cold, dingy floor and stare up. Moonlight glints through the dirty window.
We’re not stopped or checked as we exit the Trial Village. No one seems overly concerned that we’re leaving. Franklin attempts to make small talk, but beyond confirming that I want to go to Club Faraway, I ignore his questions. After a few minutes, he gives up and focuses on the route.
It’s not until this moment that I allow myself to unleash what I’ve stuffed down deep inside since agreeing to do this. Goose bumps prickle over my skin. Fear grabs me by the throat. This could be a setup. Even if it’s not, I’m not optimistic that I’ll make it out of this alive. I’m about to storm into a drug den and attempt to kidnap my firstborn brother, the heir to the deadliest Fate in the world. I could paint this as a selfless act—wax poetic about how noble it is to save Gabriel and reunite him with the love of his life—but that’s not why I’m doing it. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m terrified of Gabriel dying and forcing me to take his place. Othala will never forgive me. Not that I care, I tell myself, even as shame burns my cheeks.
But there’s more to it than that. If Gabriel dies, and I become firstborn, I’ll be something I’ve come to despise. If I’m required to take over, there are no guarantees that I won’t be worse than Gabriel. I’m significantly more vicious, and I know this about myself. If I became firstborn, any faction seeking to destroy me or attempting to wrestle away my power would be met with ruthless retaliation . . . just like my mother’s. Othala and I will never again be on the same side. The problem is, if I can’t maintain power, the odds of me descending into some nightmarish prison of Othala’s or Bowie’s or even Crow’s making is high. If Othala is aligned with Crow, I can include soul-crushing torture.