“Help us!” a Red woman whispers out of a bloody mouth. “Dominus…”
“Quiet,” I snap, glancing back at the door. Dozens of pairs of eyes stare out at me from behind the cages. Each prisoner pleading with me.
I creep closer to the Gold, and as I reach to touch the net, her eyes flash open in the low light. Goryhell. I almost fall down. She’s alive. Black engine oil has been slathered over her body, along with fouler-smelling things.
“Dominus…” a Brown hisses.
“Salve,” I say to the Gold in a Thessalonican drawl. “I’m here to help. My name is Castor au Janus.” She watches me without speaking, giving no sign that she even understands. “I’m going to help you out, but you have to be quiet and quick. The Ascomanni are still outside. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” she says. Hers is a rich Palatine accent. It startles me. The man was right. She’s from the Luna courts as well. What is she doing all the way out here?
“Stay very still,” I say. I stand beneath the net and slide my razor across the steel cable, cutting it from the ceiling. The girl falls into my arms. I expected her to lash out, but she stays still within the tight mesh. I see now how deeply the tacNet’s cut into her skin. TacNets, or birdcages, are fired from compressed fiber cartridges and designed for police forces to engulf and constrict around a prisoner to harmlessly subdue them. But if you toggle with the contraction restrictions, you can eviscerate a prisoner to death. I set the woman on the ground and cut the wires one by one until she’s able to crawl free. She lies there naked stretching her joints, teeth chattering with the pain.
I realize now that she’s young, maybe even younger than my twenty years. I feel an overwhelming urge to protect her. I cover her body with a plastic tool sheet.
“It is well,” I say. “You’re safe now.” I stand to go help the others.
“Stims,” she manages through her chattering teeth. “Need stims.”
I bend back down and produce a syringe from the dispenser on the right thigh of my EVO suit. It’s one of my last. She snatches it from my hand and stabs it into the bicep of the burned limb. Her body convulses as the drug rushes through her system. She sighs with pleasure. “More,” she demands. I glance at the other prisoners and produce my last two. She shocks me by injecting both at the same time. It’s too much for her body mass unless she’s built up a resistance to them, which inherently means something dangerous. There’s something wrong here.
Filled with a manic energy from the stims, she stumbles to her feet. I spring back to catch her from falling, but she steadies herself using the table.
“We must leave,” I say softly to the girl. “More Ascomanni are coming. We have to be gone before their ships dock. Help me with the others.” Nodding along, she finds her clothing in a pile on the floor near the door. Still covered in oil, she dons the pants and a green jacket, fumbling with the zipper because of the drugs in her system.
“Sander,” Cassius says in my ear as I bend to cut the Red woman from her cage with my razor. “What’s your status?”
“I found the Gold, Regulus.” I patch him to my visual feed.
“Copy.” He pauses, seeing the others. “Lysander…”
“Boy,” the Gold says from behind me. I turn. She’s less than an arm’s length away. “What docking tube are you using?”
“Two-B.”
“Two-B?” She nods more to herself than to me. “I’ll return it to you in four minutes. On my honor.”
“Return what?”
There’s a blur. I don’t even see her strike as the meat of her palm collides with the side of my temple. I stumble, and something, maybe her elbow or knee, slams into my opposite ear and I go down, seeing stars. There’s pressure on my hip, and I hear her footsteps going out the door. She’s four seconds gone before I realize what she took. My razor. The one Cassius gave me on my sixteenth birthday. The one that belonged to Karnus. Its custom Bellona hilt is covered by a plain metal shell, but to Cassius it is priceless. Dazed, I lunge after her into the hallway. My legs go like rubber and I almost fall.
The lowColors shout in fear, terrified that I’m going to abandon them. I lunge back toward their cages, but I don’t have anything to cut with. I can’t use my plasma pistol. The wire is too tight to their bodies. Panic threatens to grip me. I tug on the severed strands of the Red woman’s cage. “Lysander…” Cassius says. The lowColors are clamoring now, rolling around on the floor. “It’s too late.” I pull as hard as I can. The fiberwire of the net slices through my gloves and into my skin. Blood wells against the wire. “Lysander! You have to leave them.”
“No, I can help them….”
I groan as I pull with all my strength at the wire, using my legs as leverage. The wire cuts my fingers to the bone. And it doesn’t even fray. There’s a scream from the lowColors. I wheel around and see an Obsidian at the door. I grab my pistol and fire clumsily. The plasma bolt takes the Obsidian’s head off from the nose up. Another one fills the frame. I fire and he ducks back into the hall.
“Lysander, get out of there!” Cassius says.
A scream wells up inside, but doesn’t escape my lips. I stare down at the wailing lowColors, at the mothers and fathers I could have freed, their cries puncturing my fantasy of heroism and honor. They thrash on the floor screaming at me to save them, but I can’t. The Obsidian death warble echoes down the hall.
Fear has come.
I run like a coward. Back into the hall, firing around the corner blindly. The Obsidian’s chest melts inward as he swings his axe. I bend under it and slam into the far wall, where I use the impact to push off and struggle to my feet. The Obsidian’s chest is burned through to the liver, but he stumbles toward me—a tower of sinewy muscle and scrap armor and the pelts of dead animals. Aja and Cassius both told me never to come within arm’s reach of an Obsidian. They alone can break the reinforced bones of my kind. But there’s no other choice. He swings his axe again, and I charge inside the blow, hitting the inside of his axe arm with the point of my elbow, jamming the point into his brachial artery. His arm goes limp, but the force of the collision knocks me sideways. I use the momentum to flow left, and drive my right knee into the genicular artery on the inside of his leg. He roars in pain and charges straight into me, slamming me against the wall. It’s like the time I was kicked by one of Virginia’s stallions. The breath goes out of me. His right hand grabs my throat and lifts me up against the wall, straining to crush my trachea. Cartilage crackles. I lower my jaw against his grip, but the world’s going black. Bits of meat cling to his beard. The rancid smell of rotting teeth fills my nose. Twisting my body, I pull twice on the trigger of my pistol. The plasma enters under his rib cage at an angle and burns through his heart. His eyes go wide with shock and his body collapses, dead. I land and suck in air just in time to see the third Obsidian raging toward me down the hall.