Let that be for Roque. Let that be for the Golds. Give me something more. Something they cannot
understand. Give me the rage of my people. The wrath of all people in bondage. As the Sovereign recites her sentence, as the Jackal waits to deliver it, as Mustang kneels on the ground, as Cassius watches me from among the Praetorians and Knights, waiting, and as Aja sees me look to the tall blond knight, she steps forward in trepidation because she knows something is wrong, I throw my head back and I howl.
I howl for my wife, for my father. For Ragnar and Quinn and Pax and Narol. For all the people I’ve lost. For all they would take.
I howl because I am a Helldiver of Lykos. I am the Reaper of Mars. And I have paid for access to
this bunker with my flesh, all so I could come before Octavia, all so that I might either die with my friends or see our enemies brought to justice.
The Sovereign nods to the Jackal to execute the sentence. He presses the barrel to the back of my
head and he squeezes the trigger. The gun kicks in his hand. Fire spits, scorching my scalp. Deafening sound ringing through my right ear. But I do not fall. No bullet carves through my head. Smoke swirls out of the barrel. And as the Jackal looks down at the gun, he knows.
“No…” He steps away from me, dropping the gun, trying to pull out his razor.
“Octavia…” Aja shouts, lunging forward.
But just then, in that beat of the heart, the Sovereign hears something behind the camera and turns to see a Praetorian guard with his head tilted, his pulseRifle thumping to the floor as a grisly red tongue protrudes from his mouth. Only it’s not a tongue. It’s Cassius’s bloody razor that entered through the back of the Praetorian’s skull and out between his teeth. It disappears back into the mouth. The three guards fall before the Sovereign can say a bloodydamn word. Cassius stands behind the slaughtered
men, his head lowered, his razor red, his left hand holding the remote control to my restraints and Mustang’s.
“Bellona?” is all the Sovereign can say before he presses the button. Mustang’s steel vest unbuckles and falls to the ground. Mine follows suit. She dives for a dead Praetorian’s pulseRifle. Unshackled, I rise, jerking my arms free and pulling the knife hidden inside the metal vest. I lunge toward the Sovereign. Faster than she can blink, I jam the blade through her black jacket into the softness of her lower belly. She gasps. Eyes huge. Inches from mine. I smell the coffee on her breath. Feel the flutter of her eyelashes as I stab her six more times in the gut and on the last, rip the metal up toward her sternum. Hot blood pours over my knuckles and chest as she spills open.
“Octavia!” Aja’s charging me. Makes it halfway before Mustang, firing from her knees, shoots her
in the armored side with the pulseRifle. The blast lifts Aja off her feet, slapping her across the room into the wooden conference table beside Sevro and Antonia’s bodies, nearly crushing Lysander.
Seeing their Sovereign stumbling backward, gut ripped open, the Truth Knight and the Joy Knight both wheel on Cassius, pulling their razors from their hips, their shields thrumming to life.
Unarmored, wearing only his blood-spattered prison greens, Cassius flashes forward, skewering the
surprised Truth Knight through his eye socket up through the roof of his skull.
The Jackal pulls my razor from his hip and slashes at me. I sidestep, coming at him. He swings again, screaming in rage, but I catch his arm and head butt him in the face before sweeping his legs and tackling him to the floor. I take my razor and stake his left arm to the floor so that he has no free hand. He screams. His spit spattering my face. Thrashing at me with his legs. I drop a knee into his forehead and leave him stunned and pinned to the floor.
“Darrow!” Cassius calls to me as he duels the Joy Knight. “Behind!”
Behind me, Aja’s rising from the shattered remains of the table. Eyes wide with rage. I run from her to help Cassius and Mustang, knowing she’d kill me in seconds with my right hand gone. Blood
darkens Cassius’s green jumpsuit. His left leg has been slashed badly by the better-armored Joy Knight, who is using his weight and the pulsing aegis shield on his left arm to overwhelm Cassius.
Mustang grabs two razors from the dead Praetorian and tosses one to me. I catch it on the run with my left hand. Toggle the hilt. Razor leaps to killing length. Cassius takes another slash to the leg and stumbles over a body, going down, blocking the second strike with the pulseFist, ruining the weapon.
The Joy Knight’s back is to me. He feels me coming, but it’s too late. Silently, I jump through the air and swing a huge looping strike down at him from behind, left arm slowing as it meets the throbbing resistance of the pulseShield centimeters from the armor, then jerking as it cleaves into his sky-blue plate and through muscle and bone. Carrying from left shoulder to the right pelvis, parting his body at a diagonal. His body drips to the ground.