“Her Highness is here?” Cal bites out. For a second, I’m afraid he’s forgotten himself. “Still?” he adds, the afterthought of a lie. But suspicion flares in the captain all the same. I see it like an explosion in his eyes.
Blessed Nanny laughs aloud, her forced chuckle cold and detached. “Mother has always done as she likes, you know this,” she says to Cal, scolding him. “But I am here on other business, Captain. No need to bother her.”
The captain offers up an obliging smile. It pulls at his face like a sneer, twisting his fine features into something ugly. “Very well, sir.”
Kilorn taps my arm, his touch urgent. He sees what I see. The captain no longer believes us. Turning, I take Cameron by the elbow, and squeeze. Her next signal. Under my touch, her muscles tighten. She’s pouring everything she has into blocking Eagrie’s ability, to keep him from seeing what’s coming. Confusion crosses his face, but he shakes it off, trying to focus on us. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him.
“And what have you come here to do?” Iral presses on, still wearing his pointed, demon grin. He takes one languid step toward us. It will be his last. “Remove your helmets, if you please.”
“No,” I tell him.
With an easy breath, I take hold of the cameras pointed down at all of us. As Iral opens his mouth to shout, I exhale, and the cameras explode into a twist of sparks like fireworks. The lights go next, flashing on and off, plunging us into pitch-black and striking brightness in succession. We are prepared for this. The soldiers of Corros are not.
Flame races along the tile, casting strange, dancing light across the white. It bars every door, jumping up to the ceiling, effectively locking the soldiers in with us and the flickering darkness. The Osanos soldier, a nymph, hastily leaches moisture from the air, but not enough to combat Cal’s crackling fire. A stoneskin rushes at me, his flesh turning to rock before my eyes, but he hits the wall known as Nix Marsten. Darmian joins in, and the two invulnerable newbloods set to taking the soldier apart. The others fare just as well. Ketha obliterates the Provos telky, planting an explosion in his heart that rips him from the inside out. The Haven soldier does her best to combat my darkness, using her ability to collapse the shadows, pooling them into a black mist that suddenly erupts with blinding, brilliant light. Even our helmets do nothing to stop the glare, and I have to shut my eyes. When I open them, the Haven is on the ground, with a deep gash in her neck. She coughs silver blood onto the tile, and my brother stands over her, knife in hand. Behind him, Eagrie drops to his knees, clutching his head and screaming.
“I can’t see!” he weeps, tearing at his own eyes. Blood joins his painful tears. “I can’t see anything, what’s happening?! What is this?! What are you?!” he shouts to no one.
Cameron is the first to pull off her helmet. She has never killed a man before, not even in her escape. I see it all over her face, in the horror twisting through her. But she doesn’t let go. Out of bravery or malice, I can’t say. Her silence takes hold, until the man on the ground stops crying, stops clawing, stops breathing. He dies with his eyes wide open, staring at nothing, blind and deaf in his last moments. It must feel like being buried alive.
It’s over in a minute or so. Twelve Silver soldiers dead on the tile, some burned, some electrocuted, some shot, some with their heads bashed in. Ketha’s kills are the messiest. An entire wall is splattered with her handiwork, and she pants noisily, trying not to look at what she’s done. Her explosive ability is gruesome at best.
Only Lory is wounded, having taken on the magnetron with Gareth. She got a shard of metal in the arm, but nothing too bad. Farley is the first to her side, and pulls out the makeshift blade, letting it clatter to the floor. Lory doesn’t so much as grunt in pain.
“We forgot bandages,” Farley mutters, putting one hand over the bleeding cut.
“You forgot bandages,” Ada replies, pulling a small swatch of white fabric from inside her suit. She expertly ties it around Lory’s arm. It stains in an instant.
Kilorn chuckles to himself, the only one to enjoy a joke at a time like this. To my relief, he looks perfectly all right, focusing on reloading his gun. The barrel smokes, and there are at least two bodies riddled with his bullets. Anyone else would think him unaffected, but I know better. Despite the laughter, Kilorn finds no joy in this bloody work.
Neither does Cal. He bends over the dead Captain Iral, gingerly taking the black key from his neck. I won’t kill them, he told me once, before we stormed the Security Center of Harbor Bay. He broke his own promise, and it’s wounded him more deeply than any battle.
“Nanny,” he mutters, unable to look away from Iral. With shaking fingers, he closes the captain’s eyes forever. Behind him, Nanny focuses on Iral’s face, staring at him. It only takes a moment before her features match his own, and I breathe a small sigh of relief. Even a fake Maven is nearly too much for me to bear.
A hiss of static crackles at Iral’s belt. His radio—the command center attempting contact. “Captain Iral! Captain, what’s going on down there? We lost visual.”
“Just a malfunction,” Nanny replies with Iral’s voice. “Might spread, might not.”
“Received, Captain.”
Cameron tears her eyes away from the dead Eagrie. She lays a hand on the red door.
“This way,” she says, almost inaudible over the drip of blood and the sighs of the dying.
I feel the prison’s command center like a nerve, pulsing, controlling all the cameras in the facility. It pulls at me, dragging me through the sharp turns of its hallways. The corridors are white tile, just like the entrance, but not so clean. If I look closely, I can see blood between the tiles, turned brown by time. Someone tried to wash away whatever happened, but they weren’t thorough enough. Red blood is so hard to clean up. I see the queen in this, in whatever nightmares she’s concocted deep in the bowels of Corros.
She’s here somewhere, continuing her frightening work. She might even be coming for us now, alerted to a disturbance. I hope she is. I hope she turns the corner right now, so I can kill her.
But instead of Queen Elara, we round the bend to find another door with a large D on it and no lock. Cameron runs to it, her knife in hand, and gets to work prying at the switch panel. It comes loose in a second, and her fingers plunge into the wiring.
“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.