He shakes his head. “Servers crashed because thirty million people were trying to access the holoNet at the same time in the middle of the night. Servers couldn’t handle the traffic. Golds pulled the plug after that. So what I’m sayin’ is if you march down to the Hive and tell the lowColors there you’re alive, we can take this moon.”
“Easy as that?” Victra asks skeptically.
“That’s right. There’s round about twenty-five million lowColors here crawling over one another,
fighting for square meters, protein packages, Syndicate smack, whatever. Reaper shows his mug, all that goes to vapor. All that fighting. All that scrappin’. They want a leader, and if the Reaper of Mars decides to come back from the dead here…you won’t have an army, you’ll have a tide at your heels.
You register? This will change the war.”
He sends chills down my spine. But Victra’s skeptical, and Sevro’s quiet. Hurt.
“Do you know what a squad of Society Legionnaires can do to a mob of rabble?” Victra asks. “The
weapons you’ve seen are geared to taking out men in armor. PulseFists. Razors. When they use coilguns or rattlers on mobs, a single man can fire a thousand rounds a minute. It sounds like paper tearing. Human body doesn’t even know that sound is supposed to be frightening. They can superheat the water in your cellular structure with microwaves. And those are just Gray anti-mob squads. What if they unleash the Obsidian? What if Golds themselves come in their armor? What if they shut off your air? Your water?”
“What if we shut off theirs?” Rollo asks.
I frown. “Can you do that?”
“Give me a reason to.” He looks at Victra, and by the bite in his voice, I know he knows exactly what her last name is. “They might be soldiers, domina. Might be able to put enough metal in my body that I bleed out. But before I was nine, I could strip down a gravBoot and piece it together in under four minutes. Now I’m thirty-eight and I can murder the lot of ’em ten ways till Sunday with a screwdriver and an electrical kit. And I’m sick and tired of not seeing my family. Of being stepped on and charged for oxygen, for water, for living.” He leans forward, eyes glassy. “And there’s twenty-five million of me on the other side of that door.”
Victra rolls her eyes at the bravado. “You’re a welder with delusions of grandeur.”
Rollo steps forward and knocks a set of wrenches off a table. They clatter on the ground, startling Clown and Holiday, who look up from the datapad. Rollo stares up indignantly at Victra. She’s easily a foot taller than him, but he doesn’t break his gaze. “I’m an engineer. Not a welder.”
“Enough!” Sevro snarls. “This isn’t a bloodydamn debate. Quicksilver will get us off this rock. Or I’ll start taking off his fingers. Then blow the bombs….”
“Sevro…” Ragnar says.
“I am Ares!” Sevro snarls. “Not you.” He shoves a finger up into Ragnar ’s chest and then points at
me. “And not you. Finish packing the bloodydamn gear. Now.”
He storms from the room, leaving us in awkward silence.
“I will not abandon these men,” Ragnar says. “They have helped us. They are our people.”
“Ares is cracked,” Rollo says to the room. “Off his mind. You need—”
I wheel on the small man, picking him up with one hand and pinning him against the ceiling. “Don’t you say a damn thing about him.” Rollo apologizes, and I set him back on the ground. I make sure all the Howlers are listening. “Everyone stay put. I’ll be right back.”
—
I catch Sevro before he enters Quicksilver ’s cell in a gutted old garage that the Sons use to house generators now. Sevro and the guards turn when they hear me coming. “Don’t trust me alone with him?” he sneers. “Nice.”
“We need to talk.”
“Sure. After he does.” Sevro pushes open the door. Cursing, I follow. The room’s a forlorn shade
of rust. Machines older than some of the gear in Lykos. One rattles behind the thick Silver, coughing out the electricity that powers the lights bathing the man in a circle of light, and blinding him to anything beyond it. Quicksilver sits with his shoulders back in the metal chair in the center of the room. Arms bound behind his back. His turquoise robe is bloody and rumpled. Bulldog eyes patient
and measuring. Wide forehead’s covered in a thick sheen of sweat and grease.
“Who are you?” he hisses in irritation instead of fear. The door slams shut behind us. The man seems rather irritated with his predicament. Not disrespectful or angry, but professionally peeved at the meek measure of our hospitality and the inconvenience we’ve thrust upon him. He’s not able to distinguish our faces due to the light blaring into his eyes. “Syndicate teethmen? Moon Lord dustmakers?” When we say nothing, he swallows. “Adrius, is that you?”
Chills creep down my spine. We say nothing. Only now, as he begins to suspect that we’re the Jackal’s men does Quicksilver seem truly afraid. If we had time, we could use that fear, but we need information fast.
“We need off this rock,” Sevro says gruffly. “You’re gonna make that happen, boyo. Or I pull off
your fingers one by one.”
“Boyo?” Quicksilver murmurs.