“Fric!” Monsieur Renard swore. “Now I have to start over.”
“Good.” Madame Renard spat out the word. “Maybe this time you’ll magically find the missing hundred you still owe me from the last job.” Then she reeled back on Chatine. “Guillaume told me new bodies were delivered to the morgue this morning. Cavs ripe for the picking. You better get your dirty face over there before their profile accounts are emptied.”
Chatine shivered at the thought of going to the morgue again. She hated everything about that place. The ghostly quiet hallways. The smell of rotting flesh. But mostly, she hated the cavs themselves. Those empty, unseeing eyes always seemed to be staring right into Chatine’s soul.
She wanted to argue. She wanted to refuse to go, but she knew better than to disobey her mother. Her father may have been the leader of the most formidable gang in the Frets, but Madame Renard was definitely the master of the house.
Chatine clenched her fists tight and stalked into her bedroom, closing the door behind her and collapsing against it. She shut her eyes and took a moment to try to restore her angry, ragged breathing to normal.
Keep it together, she told herself. You’re almost out of here.
She touched the small lump under the collar of her jacket—the gold Sol medallion—and could practically taste the freedom on her tongue.
It tasted nothing like chou bread.
“Hey,” a soft voice interrupted her thoughts, and Chatine opened her eyes to see her older sister, Azelle, lying on the bed they shared, staring at the small screen embedded in the inside of her left arm.
“Why aren’t you at work?” Chatine asked.
“Night shift,” Azelle replied without looking up.
Unlike Chatine, Azelle never missed a day of work at her Ministère-assigned job. She worked in the TéléSkin fabrique, processing the zyttrium metal that arrived by the shipload from Bastille and manufacturing it into new Skins to be implanted in the arms of the thousands of children born each year. When Azelle wasn’t dutifully logging hours at the fabrique, she could usually be found here, in the couchette.
Chatine was supposed to work in the fabriques too. The textile fabrique. At least that’s what her Skin told her. But she rarely listened to anything her Skin had to say. She was convinced the Ministère had those things rigged, which was why she’d rigged hers right back. She’d paid a pretty larg to have her Skin hacked so that her profile said Théo Renard and so that the Ministère could no longer track her whereabouts or send her reminders to check in at work each morning. But there were certain notifications—like Universal Alerts, curfew warnings, and the reminder for her monthly Vitamin D injection—that she simply couldn’t deactivate.
“Where you been?” Azelle asked.
“In the Marsh,” Chatine replied, opening a tin box next to their bed and riffling around until she found a stray piece of steel wire. She bent down and hastily threaded the metal through the fabric of her pants, stitching the tear back together. It wasn’t her finest patch-up job, but she couldn’t be bothered to care at this point.
“I was just AirLinking with Noemie down the hall,” Azelle said, her light gray eyes never leaving her arm. “She said there’s a woman in her fabrique who’s trying to organize a protest for more wages.”
Chatine snorted. She didn’t have time for murmurings of protests. They never worked. The last major rebellion was in 488, seventeen years earlier, instigated by the Vangarde, a group led by a woman who called herself Citizen Rousseau. Thousands of Third Estaters lost their lives for that woman, who was now locked away on Bastille. And for what? What did they have to show for it?
Nothing but a pile of ashes.
There were always rumors of unrest floating around the city of Vallonay. Hopeful fools trying to rally supporters, just as Citizen Rousseau had done back in 488.
“I don’t know why anyone would be stupide enough to protest,” Azelle said.
Chatine moved to the foot of their bed and popped up the metal floor grate, pulling out the wool sac that she kept hidden underneath. She wasn’t worried about Azelle noticing. The Ascension was starting in a few hours. The girl would be glued to her Skin for the rest of the morning.
“If you’re caught, you’ll be immediately flown off to Bastille and the Ministère will delete all your Ascension points,” Azelle went on. “I can’t think of anything more horrible than that!”
Chatine fought the urge to argue that she could think of punishments much worse than losing Ascension points. The last thing she needed right now was a fight with Azelle over the credibility of the all-powerful Ministère. Her sister lived and died by their laws and broadcasts. In Azelle’s eyes, the Second Estate—and the Ministère especially—were as powerful as Sols.
In Chatine’s eyes, the Second Estate were nothing but gullible marks to steal from.
She reached into the sac and started transferring items to her pockets. As she did, she took a mental inventory of each object in her collection, making sure nothing had disappeared in the night. In a family of thieves and con artists, you could never be too safe with your secret possessions.
Some of the First World relics she knew the names and purposes of—like watch, pencil, and Sol-glasses. But for others, she’d had to resort to her own interpretations. Like the bound pile of papers with scribblings of the Forgotten Word on them. Or the thin black rectangle with the metal backing that Chatine thought looked like an external Skin.
Chatine stuffed the last of the items into her pockets. She put the empty sac back into the hole in the floor and replaced the grate. After patting down the pockets of her long black coat and making sure none of her clothing looked suspiciously bulky, she headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” In her shock, Azelle actually looked up. “The Ascension is starting at 14.30! Don’t you want to watch it with me? What if they call your name?”
“They’re not going to call my name,” Chatine replied. If there was anything on this wretched, Sol-less planet she could be sure of, it was that they would never call her name.
“But they could!” Azelle said. “Everyone is equal in the eyes of the Ascension. Anyone can be chosen. That’s the beauty of it. Your luck could change just that fast. Honest work for an honest chance.”
Chatine’s sister was parroting the party line of the Ministère word for word. It was the reason Azelle checked in at the Skin fabrique two minutes early every day. The reason she worked until her hands were raw and her feet grew blisters. Azelle was the only one in the family who played by the rules, because she was the only one who bought into the “honest work for an honest chance” philosophy that the Ministère tried to brainwash into everyone from birth. Chatine knew the truth, though. The only chances you got around here were the ones you took for yourself.
“I think I have a good shot this year,” Azelle continued, returning her attention to her Skin. “I’ve been checking in every day, watching all the Ministère broadcasts, and logging all my hours. I even put in overtime at the fabrique the last few months. I have almost twenty-five hundred points stored up.” Azelle gasped and gestured excitedly toward her arm. “Oh my Sols, look! They’re showing footage of Marcellus Bonnefaçon! I saw him in the Marsh the other day. He’s just as dreamy in person as he is on the Skin.”