Vixus hisses in pain. “Level 23, cell 2187. It would be wise not to kill me. You might put me in her cell. Escape. I will tell you the proper path, Darrow.” The muscles and veins under the skin of his neck slither and rise like snakes under sand. No body fat to him. “Two backstabbing Praetorians won’t get you far. There’s an army in this mountain. Legions in the city, in orbit. Thirty Peerless Scarred. Boneriders in southern Attica.” He nods to the small jackal skull on the lapel of his uniform. “You remember them?”
“We don’t need him,” Trigg snaps, fingering his gun’s trigger.
“Oh?” Vixus chuckles, confidence returning as he sees my weakness. “And what are you going to do against an Olympic Knight, tinpot? Oh, wait. There are two here, aren’t there?”
Holiday just snorts. “Same thing you’d do, goldilocks. Run.”
“Level 23,” I tell Trigg.
Trigg punches the gravLift controls, diverting us from their escape route. He pulls up a map on his datapad and studies it briefly with Holiday. “Cell 2187 is…here. There will be a code. Cameras.”
“Too far from evac.” Holiday’s mouth tightens. “If we go that way, we’re cooked.”
“Victra is my friend,” I say. And I thought she was dead, but somehow she survived her sister’s gunshots. “I won’t leave her.”
“There’s not a choice,” Holiday says.
“There’s always a choice.” The words sound feeble, even to me.
“Look at yourself, man. You’re a husk!”
“Back off him, Holi,” Trigg says.
“That Gold bitch isn’t one of us! I won’t die for her.”
But Victra would have died for me. In the darkness, I thought of her. The childish joy in her eyes when I gave her the bottle of petrichor in the Jackal’s study. “I didn’t know. Darrow, I didn’t know,” was the last thing she said to me after Roque betrayed us. Death around, bullets in her back, and all she wanted was me to think well of her in the end.
“I won’t leave my friend behind,” I repeat dogmatically.
“I’ll follow you,” Trigg drawls. “Whatever you say, Reaper. I’m your man.”
“Trigg,” Holiday whispers. “Ares said—”
“Ares hasn’t turned the tide.” Trigg nods to me. “He can. We go where he goes.”
“And if we miss our window?”
“Then we make a new one.”
Holiday’s eyes go glassy and she works her large jaw. I know that look. She doesn’t see her brother as I do. He’s no lurcher, no killer. To her he’s the boy she grew with.
“All right. I’m in,” she says reluctantly.
“What about the Peerless?” Trigg asks.
“He puts the code in and he lives,” I say. “Shoot him if tries anything.”
—
We exit the elevator at level 23. I wear my hood again, having Holiday guide me along as Vixus walks ahead as if escorting us to a cell, Trigg ready with his gun close behind. The halls are quiet. Our footsteps echo. I can’t see past the hood.
“This is it,” Vixus says when we reach the door.
“Put in the code, asshole,” Holiday orders.
He does and the door hisses open. Noise roars out around us. Horrible static from hidden speakers. The cell is freezing, everything bleached white. The ceiling flaring with light so bright I can’t even look directly at it. The cell’s emaciated occupant lies in the corner, legs curled up in a fetal position, spine to me. Back painted with old burns and striped with lash marks from beatings. The mess of white-blond hair over her eyes is all that shields the woman from the blazing light. I wouldn’t know who she was except for the two bullet scars at the top of her spine between the shoulder blades.
“Victra!” I shout over the noise. She can’t hear me. “Victra!” I shout again, just as the noise dies, replaced over the speakers by the sound of a heartbeat. They’re torturing her with sound, light. Sensation. The exact opposite of my own abuse. Able to hear me now, she whips her head my direction. Gold eyes peering ferally out from the tangle of hair. I don’t even know if she recognizes me. The boldness with which Victra wore her nakedness before is gone. She covers herself, vulnerable. Terrified.
“Get her on her feet,” Holiday says, pushing Vixus to his belly. “We gotta go.”
“She’s paralyzed….” Trigg says. “Isn’t she?”
“Shit. We’ll carry her, then.”`
Trigg moves quickly toward Victra. I slam a hand back into his chest, stopping him. Even like this, she could rip his arms from his body. Knowing the terror I felt when I was pulled from my hole, I move slowly toward her. My own fear retreating to the back of my mind, replaced by anger at what her own sister has done to her. At knowing this is my fault.
“Victra, it’s me. It’s Darrow.” She makes no sign of having heard me. I crouch down beside her. “We’re going to get you out of here. Can we lift—”
She lunges at me. Throwing herself forward with her arms. “Take off your face,” she screams, “Take off your face.” She convulses as Holiday rushes forward and jams a thumper into the small of her back. The electricity isn’t enough.
“Go down!” Holiday shouts. Victra hits her in the center of her duroplastic armor chestpiece, launching the Gray meters back into the wall. Trigg fires two tranquilizers into her thigh from his ambi-rifle, a multipurpose carbine. They put her down quick. But still she pants on the ground, watching me through a slitted eye till she falls unconscious.
“Holiday…” I begin.
“I’m Golden.” Holiday grunts, lifting herself up. The chest piece has a fist-sized dent in the center. “Pixie can hit,” Holiday says, admiring the dent. “This armor is supposed to handle rail rounds.”
“Julii genetics,” Trigg mutters. He hoists Victra up on his shoulders and follows Holiday back out into the hall as she snaps at me to hurry after them. We leave Vixus belly-down in the cell. Alive, as I promised.
“We’ll find you,” he says, sitting up as I go to shut the door. “You know we will. Tell little Sevro we’re coming. One Barca down. One to go.”
“What did you say?” I ask.
I step suddenly back into the cell and his eyes light with fear. The same fear Lea must have felt those many years ago when I hid in the dark while Antonia and Vixus tortured her to lure me out. He laughed as her blood soaked into the moss. And as my friends died in the garden. He would have me spare him now so he could kill again later. Evil feeds on mercy.
My razor slithers into a slingBlade.
“Please,” he begs now, thin lips trembling so that I see the boy in him too as he realizes he made a mistake. Someone somewhere still loves him. Remembers him as a mischievous child or asleep in a crib. If only he had stayed that child. If only we all had. “Have a heart. Darrow, you’re no murderer. You’re no Titus.”
The heartbeat sound of the room deepens. White light silhouetting him.
He wants pity.
My pity was lost in the darkness.
The heroes of Red songs have mercy, honor. They let men live, as I let the Jackal live, so they can remain untarnished by sin. Let the villain be the evil one. Let him wear black and try to stab me as I turn my back, so I can wheel about and kill him, giving satisfaction without guilt. But this is no song. This is war.
“Darrow…”
“I need you to send a message to the Jackal.”
I slash open Vixus’s throat. And as he slumps to the ground pulsing out his life, I know he is afraid because nothing waits for him on the other side. He gurgles. Whimpers before he dies. And I feel nothing.
Beyond the heartbeat of the room, alarm sirens begin to wail.
“Shit,” Holiday says. “I told you we didn’t have time.”
“We’re fine,” Trigg says.
We’re together in the elevator. Victra on the floor. Trigg, helping her into his black rain gear to give her a semblance of decency. My knuckles are white. Vixus’s blood trickles over the inscribed image of children playing in the tunnels. It drips over my parents and stains Eo’s hair red before I wipe it from the blade with my prisoner jumpsuit. I forgot how easy it is to take a life.
“Live for yourself, die alone,” Trigg says quietly. “You think with all those brains, they’d have sense enough not to be such assholes.” He looks over at me, brushing hair from flinty eyes. “Sorry to be a prick, sir. Y’know, if he was a friend…”