Screams of terror echo throughout the colosseum’s corridors. I’m surrounded by no fewer than a dozen Zeros. Fast and ferocious, these once ordinary people pounce on the scattering spectators fleeing the Secondborn Trials. Switchblade-sharp claws extend from the monsters’ fingertips. The flesh of their victims rips. Blood, slick and gory, blooms in patches of red everywhere I look. I tug against the cuffs on my wrists. Hawthorne clamps his hand on my nape and squeezes until I wince. A warning that he can snap my neck in seconds if I resist. I stop struggling and stumble to keep in step with my captors.
Through the chaos of the ensuing massacre, I study the Zeros. On the back of these predators’ hands, zero-shaped monikers suck in light like black holes. Silver beams extend from their left eyes. They move as an otherworldly pack, in an intricate choreography, without fatigue or missteps. Like one machine, they slaughter with precision everything that moves, everything that isn’t one of them or part of Census. All except me. I shudder. They must be communicating, but in a language that only they understand.
None of the other marauding Zeros approach the team surrounding me. Instead the monsters busily butcher everything with a pulse. Unafflicted firstborns and the secondborn competitors attempt to escape from the floating colosseum and are immediately pursued.
My training and experience as a soldier keeps me from being sick. I can’t help anyone!
Another shove compels me forward. We pass a gondola station that leads to the training field below. Blood and carnage litter the platforms. Some firstborns jump to their deaths rather than be caught by the Zeros. The hairs on my nape stand on end.
“Why are you killing firstborns?” I growl at Agent Crow.
“Why not?” he replies in a blasé tone, reaching to brush wisps of my hair from my face as we walk. I recoil from his touch. “They won’t do well in our new society, Roselle. We’re doing them a favor.” His mouth curves up, exposing the steel teeth that stand in stark contrast to his supple lips. The black disc adhered to his temple blinks with eerie blue light. It must be how he manipulates the silver-eyed cyborgs. Their obedience to him seems absolute. He doesn’t have to say a word. He somehow just thinks, and they respond.
He’s depraved.
The inky tattoos near his temples and on his throat are deceptive. Although hundreds of the so-called kill tallies are visibly etched into his skin, they only represent a fraction of the deaths he’s caused. His skin would need be covered from head to toe in order for it to accurately represent all the people whose slaughter he brought about tonight.
Agent Crow guides us to a staging area where a nondescript medical-supply airship awaits with its ramp down. The Census agent enters the front of the ship, while I’m shoved up the open ramp by the killers behind me. Inside the tail, I find that the airship doesn’t have any cargo, nor any seats. The monster that was Hawthorne flings me to the metal floor. Sitting up, I push myself to the wall, lean back against it, and draw my knees up to my chest and rest my forearms on them.
I’m not sure how smart these Zeros are when they’re in Black-O mode or whatever it was that Agent Crow called it back when we were on the Sword balcony. The woman who’d cuffed me made the mistake of securing my arms in front of me. If I can reach a sword, I’ll have no problem cutting them off. But there aren’t any swords. No weapons of any kind here in the cargo hold. It’s just me and the Zeros.
The airship door closes, sealing us in. My throat tightens. Dim lights come on, but it’s still dark. The Zeros’ eyes glow like small moons in the night sky. Gore mottles their mouths, their clothes, and their fingers. The steel claws seem to have retracted into their fingertips, but I know they’re there.
The vessel rumbles and lurches upward. The Zeros don’t move. They don’t talk. They gaze straight ahead. They seem barely alive. Hawthorne sits across from me and several bodies over. He isn’t smeared in carnage like the others. I don’t think he was in the fight at the Silver Halo, which means Agent Crow wants to use Hawthorne some other way. More than likely against me.
My wrists tremble on my knees. Or maybe it’s my knees trembling. Or maybe it’s both. I thread my fingers together, but the trembling doesn’t stop. Panic seizes me. It’s hard to breathe. I feel dizzy. Sweat soaks the back of my white sparring outfit. Wisps of damp hair cling to my cheek.
I have to wait for several minutes in the grip of the panic attack. When it finally subsides and my breath isn’t coming out in hacking pants, I try to get up, and all the creatures look at me at once. They’re ghosts; the real people are gone, and these demons are what’s left. It’s like I knocked back a shot glass full of pure adrenaline. My stomach roils with fear. I press myself against the wall and rise. Carefully, I walk between the Zeros until I’m across from the ghoulish Hawthorne.
I kneel in front of him. He stares, but it’s as if he isn’t really seeing me. “Hawthorne.” I try a normal tone, but it comes out in a breathless whisper. “Remember when we first met? It was in Swords, when the airships fell from the sky. Remember?” My voice quivers. Tears spill down my cheeks. “You tried to help me, and I hit you in the nose?”
He doesn’t even blink.
I sit down and cross my legs. “You rescued me when I was Crow’s prisoner in Census. You were so brave. Nobody in my family lifted a finger to help me. It was you.” I touch his hand, wanting so badly for him to hold me.
Suddenly he focuses. He pounces, wraps his hand around my throat, and squeezes. My face burns hot. My windpipe feels crushed. I hold up my hands to him, palms out, in surrender. He lets go.
I cough and sputter and gulp breaths, gasping when I finally get my voice back. “Okay, so no touching.” I wipe tears from my cheeks with my sleeve. My fingertips glide over my ravaged neck. “I know you’re in there somewhere, Hawthorne. We’re a half-written poem, you and me. Wherever you are—whatever basement in your mind they’ve got you trapped in—I’ll find you. I won’t leave you down there alone.”
As if it’s just the two of us here, I remind Hawthorne of everything we’ve shared together. Every stolen moment when we were secondborns. Every kiss. Every caress. My throat aches, but still I talk.
Hawthorne stares straight ahead. No reaction. No indication that he hears me or understands me. Hours pass with no sign of recognition. The pain of it is too much. It’s too real. It threatens to bury me. I hold my head in my hands and give in, sobbing quietly.
The cargo ship begins to descend. The touchdown is smooth. Wiping my face with the back of my sleeve, I try to pull myself together. The tail opens. Humid air rushes in. The sky is still dark, but tall lamps loom above us, like those that line the secondborn military Bases in Swords, throwing stark white light on everything.
Hawthorne stands in unison with the other mind-controlled monsters. He grabs my arm and roughly hauls me out of the hold. Agent Crow waits on the hoverpad. The black beacon on the side of his head blinks blue. Around us palm trees sway in a salty breeze. Balmy air blows loose strands of my hair.
“Pleasant trip?” Agent Crow asks. He smiles, baring his wretched steel teeth.
Normally I try to have something scathingly sarcastic to say back to him, just so that he remembers he hasn’t beaten me. This time I don’t. This time he has destroyed me, reached inside me and torn my heart out, and I know this is only the beginning.