Inside, the Compound was in chaos. The power flickered, and in the unsteady light, August saw the corpses littering the hall, most of them in green-and-gray fatigues.
An FTF was slumped on the ground, his back against the training-hall doors, and August’s chest lurched when he recognized warm brown eyes in an open face. Colin was bleeding, he couldn’t tell where, but when he stepped closer, the boy’s head drifted up, and he actually smiled.
“They’re safe,” he said. “I got the doors closed before”—he coughed—“before it saw—before they saw . . .”
He trailed off, eyes drifting shut, and August went to check for a pulse, but Soro’s hand was already on his shoulder, urging him up. They had to keep moving. Every second was a life, and he straightened just as a voice reached him from the lobby.
A voice that reminded him of fevers and cold steel and falling.
But it wasn’t just the Malchai’s voice. It was the single word he said.
“Ilsa.”
August turned to Soro. “Get to the command center,” he said, “hit the intercom and start playing.”
Understanding lit the Sunai’s eyes, and they took off toward the stairs as August sprinted for the lobby, and his sister, and Sloan.
“You got blood on my clothes,” said Kate as she took in the room, trying to carve a mental path.
The Malchai looked down at her shirt. “Hmm, I wonder who that was.” She smiled, flashing teeth. “You know what I keep asking myself?”
Kate cheated a step to the side, within reach of the sofa. “Why your hair isn’t as good as mine?”
Alice’s red eyes narrowed. “What it will feel like to take your life.” The Malchai crouched, setting the detonator upright on the floor. “There’s a beauty in it, don’t you think? A kind of poetry. What happens when the effect kills the cause?” She straightened. “I’ve spent the last six months watching Sloan kill you. Wondering if I would enjoy it half as much. I think I will.”
Kate’s grip tightened on the spike as the shadow in her head longed to be let in, to be let out. “Are you done?”
Alice pouted. “Not one for talking, are you? All right, then.”
She lunged, so fast she seemed to blur, to disappear, but Kate was already moving, too, cutting sideways. She got one foot up on the couch and pushed off, driving her spike down into the blurring shape beneath her.
An instant too late.
The weapon scraped against the floor and Kate rolled and came up, twisting just in time to block Alice’s shoe as it slammed into her front. Pain exploded down her arm as the blow connected, and the spike went skidding across the floor.
Kate gasped and drew the second spike as she tried to swerve out of the Malchai’s path, but Alice was already there. Nails raked across Kate’s face, fine lines of blood welling on her cheek.
Alice smiled at the red on her fingers. “You don’t honestly think you’re a match for me,” she said, flicking the blood away. “I am you but better, Kate. You don’t stand a chance.”
Kate shifted her grip on the spike. “You’re probably right.”
She ran a hand through her hair, pushing the bangs out of her face, the silver cracks on full display. Alice’s eyes flickered with surprise, then suspicion, and it was Kate’s turn to smile.
“So it’s a good thing,” she said, “that I’m not entirely myself anymore.”
Ever since that moment in Prosperity, she’d wanted to fight, to hurt, to kill, and she’d resisted, and resisted, and resisted, had run from the shadow, knowing it was only a matter of time before it caught her.
And now, at last, she could stop running.
All she had to do was let the darkness in.
All she had to do was let the monster out.
And so she did.
Kate’s resistance crumbled, and the world went quiet as the shadow stole over her.
There was no fear here.
There was nothing but this room.
This moment.
The iron singing in her hands.
The monster in her way.
Alice’s eyes narrowed, as if she could see the change in Kate.
“What are you?” she snarled.
And Kate laughed. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Let’s find out.”
August reached the lobby just in time to see Sloan slam Ilsa back into the far wall, a knife tumbling from her fingers. Her hair was matted with sweat, the collar of her shirt torn, exposing a swathe of stars along her shoulder.
Sloan kicked the knife away and leaned in close.
“What’s that?” he hissed. “I can’t hear you.”
“Sloan!” shouted August, and the monster sighed and let Ilsa drop to the ground.
“August,” crooned the Malchai. “It’s been so long.”
The last time he’d faced Sloan, August had been starving, feverish—edging toward mortal. Strung up in a warehouse and beaten to the point of turning.
But he had changed.
He was still changing.
Sloan swept a hand over the chaos. “Have you met my pet?”
The Compound was a battlefield. Soldiers wrestled on the blood-slick floor, trapped in their violent spell.
Hurry, Soro, he thought.
Many of the soldiers were still alive, but they were killing one another, and there, in the center of the lobby, still as the eye of a storm, stood the Chaos Eater, its head tipped back and its arms wide, as if to receive them all.
As August watched, he felt it again, that horrible, hollow space, like hunger, in his chest. He forced his gaze back to Sloan.
“Still holding on to that human shell, I see.” The Malchai clicked his tongue. “Leo would have faced me in his true form, monster-to-monster, one-on-one.”
“I’m not Leo,” said August. “And it’s not one-on-one.”
Ilsa was on her feet, and the air around her had gone ice cold. He had seen his sister lost, and kind, and dreaming, but he had never seen her angry.
Until now.
She had the knife in her hand, and he had the bow in his, and Sloan must have sensed the scales tipping, because he took a single step back but was blocked by the body of a fallen cadet and, in that instant of imbalance, August and Ilsa struck.
Sloan had to choose. And he chose August. But as the Malchai knocked away the bow, Ilsa moved behind him with a dancer’s grace and slid her knife along the back of his knees. The Malchai snarled and staggered, one leg threatening to fold, but August caught him by the collar.
Sloan slashed at August’s eyes and leaped back, but Ilsa was there. She kicked out his other leg, and his knees hit the floor. She brought her knife to Sloan’s throat as August fetched up his fallen bow.
The Malchai bared his teeth. “Tell me, August, where is Katherine? Surely you didn’t leave her with Alice.”
“Shut up.”
Sloan laughed. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”
Surprise flickered across Ilsa’s face, and her grip must have loosened, because Sloan lunged to his feet in a last, desperate attempt at freedom. Ilsa’s knife carved a shallow line along his throat, and August stepped into the Malchai’s path.
“You’re wrong,” snarled August, driving the steel bow straight up into Sloan’s heart.
The Malchai swayed on his feet, but unlike Leo, August hadn’t missed, and a moment later Sloan fell, his red eyes widening for an instant before their light went out.
It stands
at the center
of a sun
burning
brighter
and brighter