And right now, the bolt was as heavy and unrelenting as PermaSteel.
He should never have mentioned her name.
“Of course, sir,” Marcellus said, rising from his chair. “I’ll go now, on my way to the Marsh.” He swallowed as he walked to the door, glancing back long enough to say, “And I’m sorry.”
The general’s head whipped up and his gaze landed on Marcellus. It was cold and dark. “For what?”
But Marcellus didn’t answer. He just left.
- CHAPTER 4 -
CHATINE
“ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO Ascension points. Fourteen tokens.”
The computerized voice of the leveler echoed off the decrepit walls of the Vallonay Med Center morgue as Chatine scanned the Skin of the first body. It was a woman, possibly late thirties, probably a fabrique worker. She had clearly died of rot, from the looks of her blackened stump of a leg. Rot was the most common cause of death in the Frets. Médicaments were in such short supply in Vallonay that even the smallest cuts or nicks could eventually fester and turn black. And once the rot invaded your bloodstream, there was really no hope.
The leveler emitted a beep, alerting Chatine that the points and tokens had been successfully lifted from the woman’s profile account, and she moved on, ducking under the gurney to avoid the motion sensors that activated the morgue security microcams. Chatine had performed this morbid task enough times to know exactly where they were stationed. All thirty-seven of them.
Holding her breath as she passed by what was left of the poor woman’s leg, Chatine glanced up at the rows and rows of cavs that stretched out before her—all of them waiting to be frozen and ground to dust. This was going to take forever. There were so many bodies, some had been placed two to a gurney. Chatine spotted a man who was missing all ten of his toes and knew right away that it was the work of the Délabré, her father’s gang. This was someone who clearly hadn’t paid his debts. All the bodies were in varying states of decay—rotting flesh, sores around the mouth, sunken eyes—even though Chatine knew they’d only been dead less than a day.
Ascension points and tokens were normally emptied from accounts within thirty hours of death—the time it usually took for the Ministère to register the death and for the profile to be wiped from the Communiqué. Chatine’s father had discovered years ago that those points and largs could be lifted beforehand and “redistributed” to the highest bidder, and so the unpleasant task of retrieving them had fallen to Chatine.
She just really wished the Med Center workers would close the eyes before bringing the cavs in here. This job would be so much easier if the dead weren’t staring back at her, begging her to save them.
Chatine moved on to the next corpse—a younger woman, a girl—and placed the leveler flush against the inside of her arm, directly over her darkened Skin. The device rapidly flashed as it analyzed the data.
“Fifty-two Ascension points, four hundred twelve tokens.”
Chatine blinked at the amount and studied the girl, careful to avoid her open, unseeing eyes. She was thin—like almost everyone in the Third Estate—but her feet and ankles were puffy and swollen, as though all the fat on her body had drained downward. Her arms and legs were covered in bluish-purple splotches, and rough scales enveloped her neck as though attempting to strangle her.
Chatine pressed her lips together to keep from being sick. She recognized the symptoms. She’d seen the same ones on the girls standing outside the blood bordels.
The girl on the gurney had low Ascension points, which probably meant that, like Chatine, she had ignored her job assignment and vowed to make her own way in the world. She’d chosen to defy the Ministère’s “honest work for an honest chance” propaganda. But instead of stealing and pulling cons like Chatine, she’d decided to sell the nutrients in her blood. Chatine could understand the reasoning behind the decision. Extra largs meant extra food. Extra food meant you and your family could live to see another day. Unfortunately, however, most girls—like this one—took it too far. Sold too much to the blood bordels. Got addicted to the feel of all those extra tokens in their profile account.
Dishonest work for a dishonest death.
Chatine felt a shiver ripple through her, and she glanced away from the girl’s young face. Mercifully, the leveler beeped just then, and she moved on to the next cav.
Chatine ran a hand down the side of her coat, feeling the weight of her stolen trinkets lining her pockets. That was all she needed to assure herself that she would never end up like that girl, lying in this run-down building while vultures stole her precious largs.
The next cav was a man, much older than the previous two corpses. The skin around his eyes had wrinkled and sagged years ago. His long dark hair and beard were streaked with silver. And his fingertips were blackened and calloused. An exploit worker perhaps? Someone who had spent practically his entire life underground, mining precious metals and minerals to send to the fabriques for processing?
His clothing was tattered and caked with a fine dust. Chatine had to pull up the sleeve of his shirt in order to access his Skin. She hated when she had to actually touch the bodies.
She placed the leveler against the Skin and waited, turning her face to the wall so she wouldn’t have to look at him. The leveler seemed to be taking an unusually long time, and Chatine glanced back to make sure it was making proper contact with his Skin. Then it let out a series of soft, rapid beeps.
“Error message. Zero points. Zero tokens.”
Chatine jumped back, nearly dropping the leveler. She told herself not to look. She urged herself to just keep going, move on, finish this job and be done with it, but she couldn’t help it. Her gaze was pulled back toward the man.
Toward the prisoner.
He had to be. Only those arrested and sent to the moon had their accounts completely emptied. And it was only now that she took note of the color of his ripped and tattered clothes. Bastille blue. This man had died on the moon. He’d died a convict.
But what was he doing here?
Plenty of prisoners died on the moon, which was why it had its own Med Center and morgue. The bodies were normally disposed of there. Everyone knew life sentences were short on Bastille. Living conditions were even worse there than they were in the Frets.
Keeping close to the edge of the gurney, she skirted around to the man’s other side.
Don’t do it, she told herself, but her hands seemed to move on their own. She had to see it with her own eyes. She had to know for sure.
Chatine slowly peeled back the man’s other sleeve, sucking in a sharp breath when the neat row of metallic silver bumps came into view.
His prisoner tattoo.
A lifelong brand. Even those who did their time, who survived the harsh conditions of Bastille, were forever marked.
Chatine suddenly felt a longing to touch the markings. To feel the raised surface under her fingertips. To imagine what it must feel like to have those metallic bumps seared into your flesh. Was it similar to having the Skin implanted? But of course, Chatine couldn’t remember that. Just like everyone else in the Third Estate, she’d been a small child when the médecins had implanted the Skin into her left arm and the connected audio chip into her ear.
With shaking hands, she slowly reached out. Her fingertip had barely brushed the surface of the first bump when she heard the doors of the morgue hiss open and footsteps echo down the corridor.