Glass Sword (31 page)

“We have to go through here to get to command,” she says, jerking her head at the door. “There are two magnetron guards inside. Be ready.”

Cal quietly clears his throat, dangling the key in front of her. “Oh,” she grumbles, flushing, and takes it from his hand. With a scowl, she jams it into the corresponding slot on the switch. “Tell me when.”

“Gareth,” Cal begins, but he’s already stepped forward, bracing himself against the metal door. Nanny takes his side, still disguised as Captain Iral. They both know what they must do.

The others are not so sure. Ketha looks on the edge of tears, her hands twitching up and down her arms, as if she’s afraid she’s lost a limb. Farley reaches out, only to be batted away. My heart sinks when I realize I don’t know how to comfort Ketha. Does she need a hug or a slap?

“Watch our backs,” I bark at her, electing what I hope is the happy medium. She shivers, glaring at me. Her braid has come undone, and she tugs at the strands of dark hair. Slowly, she nods, turning on the spot to watch the empty corridor behind us. Her sniffles echo off the tile.

“No more,” she murmurs. But she holds her ground. Darmian and Nix take her side, more in a show of solidarity than strength. At least they’ll make a very good wall when the guards realize what’s happening up here.
Which should be soon.

Cal knows the urgency as well as I do. “Now,” he says, and flattens
himself against the wall with the rest of us.

The key turns. I feel the electricity jump in the switch and flood the door’s mechanism. It flies open, screeching back into the wall to reveal a cavernous cell block. In stark contrast to the white tile corridors, the cells are gray, cold, and dirty. Water drips somewhere, and the air is sickly damp. Four levels of cells reach down into the gloom, one stacked on top of the other, with no landings or stairs connecting the sets. Four cameras, one in each corner of the ceiling, watch over all. I shut them off with ease. The only light is a harsh, flickering yellow, though the small skylight above has gone blue, betraying the rising sun. Standing beneath it, on a single catwalk made of gleaming, reflective metal, are two magnetrons in gray uniforms. Both of them spin at the sound of approach.

“What are you—?” the first says, taking a single step toward us. He has Samos colors on his uniform. He freezes at the sight of Nanny, standing at Gareth’s shoulder. “Captain Iral, sir.” With a wave of his hand, the Samos magnetron officer raises flat sheets of metal from the block floor, constructing a new section of catwalk before our eyes. It connects to his, allowing Gareth and Nanny to walk forward.

“Fresh blood?” The other officer chuckles, nodding at Gareth with a sly grin. “What legion are you out of?”

Nanny cuts in before Gareth can answer. “Open the cells. It’s time for a walk.”

To our chagrin, the officers exchanged confused glances. “We just walked them yesterday, they’re not due for—”

“Orders are orders, and I have mine,” Nanny replies. She raises Iral’s key, dangling it in open threat. “Open the cells.”

“So it’s true? The king’s back again?” Samos asks, shaking his head. “No wonder everyone’s in an uproar back at command. Got to look sharp for the crown, I guess, especially with his mother still skulking around.”

“She’s a strange one, the queen,” the other says, scratching his chin. “Don’t know what she does in the Well, don’t want to know either.”

“The
cells
,” Nanny repeats, her voice hard.

“All right, sir,” the first magnetron grumbles. He elbows the other and they turn together, facing the dozens of cells rising from floor to ceiling. Many are empty, but some hold shadows languishing under the crush of Silent Stone. Newblood prisoners, about to be let loose.

More catwalk clangs into place, the sound like a giant hammer beating a wall of aluminum. They line the cells, creating walkways around the perimeter of the block, while more sheets twist and fold into steps to connect the levels. For a moment, I’m seized by a sense of wonder. I’ve only seen magnetrons in battle, using their abilities to kill and destroy. Never to create. It’s not hard to imagine them designing airjets and luxurious transports, curving jagged iron into smooth arcs of razor-thin beauty. Or even the metal dresses Evangeline was so fond of. Even now, I admit they were magnificent, though the girl wearing them was a monster. But when the bars of every cell yawn open, causing the people inside to stir, I forget all my wonder and amazement. These magnetrons are jailers, killers, forcing innocent people to suffer and die behind bars for whatever feeble reason Maven gives them. They are following orders, yes, but
choosing
to follow them all the same.

“Come on, out you go.”

“On your feet, time to take the dogs for a walk.”

The magnetron officers move in rapid succession, trotting to the first set of cells. They bodily drag newbloods from their cots, tossing the ones who can’t get up fast enough out onto the catwalk. A little girl lands dangerously close to the edge, almost falling. She looks so much like Gisa I take a step forward, and Kilorn has to yank me back. “Not yet,” he growls in my ear.

Not yet.
My hands clench, itching to let loose on the two officers as they get closer and closer to the door. They haven’t seen us yet, but they certainly will.

Cal is the first to remove his helmet. Samos stops short, as if shot. He blinks once, not believing his eyes. Before he can react, his feet leave the ground, and he hurtles toward the ceiling. The other follows suit as his tenuous hold on gravity releases. Gareth bounces them both, smacking them against the concrete ceiling with sickening, final crunches of bone.

We flood into the cell block, moving as one, as fast as we can. I reach the fallen girl first, hauling her to her feet. She wheezes, her small body shivering. But the pressure of Silent Stone has fallen away, and some color returns to her pale, clammy cheeks.

I remove my own mask.

“The lightning girl,” she murmurs, touching my face. It breaks my heart.

Part of me wants to pick her up and run, to take her away from all this. But our task is far from over, and I cannot leave. Even for the little girl. So I put her down on shaky legs, and pull my hand gently from her grasp.

“Follow us as best you can. Fight as best you can!” I shout to the block. I make sure to lean over the edge of the catwalk, so everyone can hear and see me. Far below, the few prisoners still alive in the low cells have already begun the climb up the metal steps. “We are leaving this prison tonight, together, and alive!”

By now, I should know better than to lie. But a lie is what they need to carry on, and if my deceit saves even one of them, it is worth the cost to my soul.

B
lind cameras can protect
us for only so long—and that time has apparently run out. It starts with explosions back in the corridor. I hear Ketha screaming with every blast, frightened by what she’s done and what she continues to do to flesh and bone. Each ragged cry shocks through the cell block, stilling the already slow newbloods.

“Keep moving!” Farley barks. Her manic energy is gone, replaced by stern authority. “Follow Ada, follow Ada!” She herds them like sheep, bodily pulling many of them up the stairs. Shade is more helpful, jumping the oldest and sickest up from the lowest levels, though it disorients most of them. Kilorn keeps them from stumbling off the catwalk, his long limbs coming in handy.

Ada waves her arms, directing the newbloods to the door next to her. It has a big, black
C
on it. “With me,” she shouts. Her eyes flicker over everything and everyone, counting. I have to push many of them toward her, though they’re inexplicably drawn to me. At least the little girl gets the message. She toddles over to Ada and clings to her leg, trying to hide from the noise. Everything echoes horribly in the block,
transformed into beast-like howls by the concrete walls and metal plating. Gunshots ring out next, followed by Nix’s unmistakable laughter. But he won’t be laughing long, if this assault keeps up.

Now comes the part I dread the most, the part I fought hardest against. But Cal was clear—
we must split up
. Cover more ground, free more prisoners, and, most important, get them out safely. So I move through the throng of newbloods, fighting the tide, with Cameron next to me. She tosses the key over her shoulder, and Kilorn catches it deftly. He watches us go, not daring to blink. This might be the last time he ever sees me, and we both know it.

Cal follows behind me. I feel his warmth from yards away. He burns the catwalk behind us, letting it melt, cutting us off from the others. When we reach the opposite door, the one marked “COMMAND,” Cameron gets to work on the switch panel. I can do nothing but stare, glancing between Kilorn and my brother, memorizing their faces. Ketha, Nix, and Darmian run back into the block, sprinting from the onslaught they can no longer hold back. Bullets follow, pinging off metal and Nix’s flesh. Again, the world slows, and I wish it would stop entirely. I wish Jon were here, to tell me what to do, to tell me I made the right choices. To tell me who dies.

A hot, almost scalding hand takes my cheek, forcibly turning me away from the rest. “Focus,” Cal says, glaring into my eyes. “Mare, you’re going to have to forget them right now. Trust what you’re doing.”

I can barely nod. I can barely speak. “Yes.”

Behind us, the cell block empties. Ahead, the switch sparks. The door slides open.

Cal pushes us both through, and I land hard on another tile floor. My body reacts before my mind can, and lightning sparks to life all
around me. It shatters my thoughts of Kilorn and Shade, until all that remains are the command center across the hall and what I must do.

Just like Cameron said, it’s a triangular room of impenetrable, rippled diamondglass, filled with control panels, monitoring screens, six bustling soldiers, and the same metal doors as the cells. Three in all, one set in each wall. I run to the first, expecting it to open, expecting the command soldiers inside to rise to the occasion. To my surprise, they keep to their chairs and stations, watching me with wide, fearful eyes. I bang one fist on the door, enjoying the pain that shoots through my hand. “Open up!” I scream, like that can do anything. Instead, the soldier closest to me flinches, jumping back from the wall. He too has a captain’s badge.

“Don’t!” he commands, holding out a hand to still his fellow officers.

Overhead, a siren screams to life.

“If that’s the way they want it,” Cal mutters, moving to the other door.

A slam makes me jump, and I turn to see great granite blocks slide into place, replacing the metal door we just came through. Cameron smirks at the control panel, even patting it fondly. “That should buy us a few minutes.” She gets to her feet, knees cracking. Her face sours at the sight of the command center. “Bleeding fools are scared,” she growls, and makes a very rude hand gesture more suited to the alleys of the Stilts. “Can we reach them through the glass?”

In reply, I turn my gaze on the monitoring screens. They explode in rapid succession, showering the soldiers in a spray of sparks and broken glass. The siren screeches to a low whine, then cuts out. Every piece of metal inside the command room jumps with electricity, frying like eggs in a pan, making the soldiers cluster in the center of the room. One
of them collapses, clutching his head in a gesture I now recognize. His body rocks in time with Cameron’s clenching fist, fighting wave after wave of suffocating ability. Blood drips from his ears, nose, and mouth. It isn’t long before he chokes on it.

“Cameron!” Cal barks, but she pretends not to hear him.

“Julian Jacos!” I shout, banging on the glass again. “Sara Skonos! Where are they?”

Another soldier drops, howling.

“Cameron!”

She shows no signs of stopping. Not that she should. These people imprisoned her, tortured her, starved her, and would have killed her. Revenge is her right.

My own lightning intensifies, bouncing inside the glass box, forcing the soldiers to cower from its purple-white wrath. Each bolt crackles and spits, blasting closer and closer to their flesh.

“Mare,
stop it
—” Cal continues shouting, but I barely hear him.

“Julian Jacos! Sara Sko—”

The captain, now scrambling across the floor, throws himself at the wall in front of me. “Block G!” he screams, slapping his palm on the glass a few inches from my face. “They’re in Block G! Through that door!”

“That’s it, come on!” Cal growls. Inside the command module, the captain’s eyes flicker to his fallen prince.

Cameron laughs, high and clear. “You want to leave them alive? Do you know what they’ve done to us? To everyone here, your Silvers included?”

“Please,
please
, we were following orders,
the king’s orders
—” the captain pleads, ducking to avoid another arc of lightning. Behind him, Cameron’s second victim curls into himself, succumbing to her silence.
Tears cling to his lashes in crystal drops. “Your Highness, I beg for mercy,
your
mercy—”

I think of the little girl in the cells. Her eyes were bloodshot, and I could feel her ribs through her clothes. I think of Gisa and her broken hand. The bled baby in Templyn. Innocent children. I think of everything that’s happened to me since this fateful summer, when a dead fisherman began all this trouble.
No, it wasn’t his fault. It was theirs. Their laws, their conscription, their doom for every single one of us. They did this. They have brought this ending upon themselves.
Even now, when it is Cameron and me destroying them, they beg for
Cal’s
mercy. They beg to a Silver king, and spit upon Red queens.

I see the prince through the rippled glass. It distorts his face, and he looks so much like Maven. “Mare,” Cal whispers, if only to himself.

But his whispers cannot stop me now. I feel something new inside myself, familiar but strange. A power that comes not from blood but choice. From who I have become, and not what I was born as. I turn from Cal’s warped image. I know I look just as twisted.

I bare my teeth in a snarl.

“Lightning has no mercy.”

Once, I watched my brothers burn ants with a bit of glass. This is similar—and worse.

While the individually sealed cell blocks make it difficult, almost impossible, for prisoners to escape, they also make it that much harder for the guards to communicate with each other. Confusion is as effective as lightning or flame. Guards are loath to leave their posts, especially with rumors of the king around, and we find four buzzing magnetrons arguing in Block G.

“You heard the siren, something’s wrong—”

“Probably a drill, showing off for the little king—”

“I can’t get command on the radio.”

“You heard them before, cameras are malfunctioning, the radios are going too. Might be the queen messing around again, bloody witch.”

I spear a bolt through one of them to get their attention. “Wrong witch.”

Before the metal catwalk can drop beneath me, I grab onto the bars to the left of the door, holding fast. Cal goes to the right, and the bars turn red beneath his flaming touch, melting straight through. Cameron stays in the doorway, a light sheen of sweat across her brow, but she shows no signs of slowing down. One of the magnetrons topples from his retracting perch, clutching his head as he falls three levels to the concrete floor. It knocks him out cold. Two left.

A hailstorm of jagged metal screams at me, each piece a tiny dagger meant to kill. Before they can, I let go, sliding down the bars, until my feet hit the slight ledge of the cell below. “Cal, a little help!” I shout, dodging another blast. I answer it with my own, but the magnetron dips, stepping into what should be midair. Instead, his metal moves with him, allowing him to seemingly run through the open atrium.

To my chagrin, Cal ignores me, and pries away the melted bar of the cell. His back spikes with flame, protecting himself from any weapon the other magnetron can throw at him. I can barely see him through the twists of fire, but I see enough. He’s horribly angry, and it’s no mystery why. He hates me for killing those Silvers—for doing what he can’t. I never thought I’d see the day when Cal, the soldier, the warrior, would fear to act. Now he focuses on opening as many cells as he can, ignoring my pleas for help, forcing me to fight alone.

“Cameron, drop him!” I yell, glancing up at my unlikely ally.

“With pleasure,” she snarls, extending a hand to the magnetron
attacking me. He stumbles, but doesn’t fall.
She’s weakening.

I scramble along the cells, toes almost slipping, fingers straining with every passing second. I’m a runner, not a climber, and I almost can’t fight this way.
Almost.
A sharp, diamond-shaped razor grazes my cheek, opening a wound across my face. Another cuts my palm. When I grab the next bar, my grip is weak, slipping through my own blood. I fall the last six or seven feet, landing hard in the bowels of the block. For a second, I can’t breathe, and I open my eyes to see a gigantic spike whistling at my head. I roll, dodging the killing blow. Another and another rain down, and I have to zigzag across the floor to stay alive. “Cal!” I shout again, more angry than afraid.

The next spike melts before it reaches me, but the iron globs splatter too close, burning across my back. A scream escapes me as the fabric of my suit melts into my scars. It’s nearly the worst pain I’ve ever felt, second only to the sounder and the excruciating coma that followed. My knees slam into the ground, sending jolts of agony up my legs.

Pain, it seems, is another one of my triggers.

The skylight high above us shatters, and a bolt of lightning explodes down to me. For a split second, it’s like a purple tree has grown up from the sublevel, branching and veining through the open atrium of Block G. It catches one of the magnetrons, and she doesn’t even have time to scream. The other, the last guard, is all but finished, reduced to cowering on his last sheet of metal, curled up against Cameron’s hammering will.

“Julian!” I shout once the air clears. “Sara!”

Cal jumps down at the other end of the floor, his hands cupped around his mouth. He refuses to look at me, searching the cells instead. “Uncle Julian!” he roars.

“I’ll just wait up here,” Cameron says, watching us from the open
doorway at the top level. Her legs dangle. She even has the gall to whistle, eyeing the last magnetron as he moans.

Block G is just as dank as the newblood D, and, thanks to me, half-destroyed. A hole smokes in the center of the floor, the only remnants of my massive bolt. From what I can see, the bottom cells are almost pitch-black, but they’re all full. A few prisoners have stumbled to their bars, coming to look at the commotion.
How many faces will I recognize?
But they’re too drawn, too gaunt, their skin almost blue with fear, hunger, and cold. I doubt I’d recognize even Cal after a few weeks down here. I expected more for the Silvers, but I guess political prisoners are just as dangerous as secret, mutated ones.

“Here,” a voice croaks.

I nearly trip over a magnetron body, running even though the burns on my back protest with every step. Cal meets me there, his hands on fire, ready to melt the bars, to save his uncle, to make amends for some of his sins.

The man in the cell looks weak, as old and frail as his beloved books. His skin has gone white, his remaining hair thin, and the lines on his face have multiplied and deepened. I think he’s even missing teeth. But there’s no mistaking his familiar brown eyes and the spark of intelligence still burning deep inside.
Julian.

I can’t get to him fast enough, and hover almost too close to the melting metal.
Julian. Julian. Julian. My teacher, my friend.
The first bar buckles and Cal wrenches it away, creating a space big enough for me to slip through. I barely notice the suffocating pressure of Silent Stone and focus instead on pulling Julian to his feet. He feels brittle, as if his bones might snap, and for a moment, I wonder if he’ll get out of this alive. Then his grip on me tightens and his brow furrows in concentration.

“Bring me to that guard,” he growls, betraying some of his old
spirit. “And get Sara out.”

“Of course. We’re here for her too.” I put his arm over my shoulder, helping him walk. Though he’s much taller than me, he feels shockingly light. “We’re here for everyone.”

When we get him outside the cell, Julian stumbles, but keeps his footing. “Cal,” he mutters, reaching for his nephew. He takes his face in his hands and studies the exiled prince like he would an old book. “Things were done, weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were,” Cal growls. He doesn’t look my way.

The cells changed what Julian looks like, but not who he is. He nods in understanding, looking very solemn. It comforts Cal in no small way. “Such thoughts have no place here and now. But after.”