Chatine glanced around the crowded morgue, searching for a place to hide. But there was nothing. No curtains, no closets, no supply cabinets. And anywhere she tried to go would certainly trigger the microcams.
The footsteps grew louder.
Chatine’s pulse raced. If she was caught in here stealing from the dead, she’d most certainly end up with a prisoner tattoo of her own.
She had only one option.
She hopped onto the neighboring gurney, scooted the blood-bordel girl aside, and lay down next to her, hiding the leveler inside the sleeve of her coat. Her skin crawled and bile rose in her throat as she felt the girl’s cold, scaly flesh brush up against the back of her hand. She kept her eyes open, staring at the ceiling as she held her body perfectly still, trying to emulate the frozen expression of terror that was on all these faces.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two men enter the morgue. One was dressed in green scrubs. A médecin, judging from the cyborg circuitry implanted in his face. The other was wearing a crisp, bright white military uniform with silvery titan buttons, marking him an officer of the Ministère.
What is a member of the Second Estate doing in a Third Estate morgue?
“My records state that he died of frostbite,” the médecin stated with an emptiness in his voice that mirrored the eyes of the cavs. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be,” the second man replied flatly. “This loss is a gift to Laterre.”
Chatine fought to keep the surprise from her face. Who is he talking about?
She held her breath as the two men walked down the row of gurneys, stopping at the one just next to Chatine. The prisoner.
“Were you close to your father?” the médecin asked.
“No,” the other man replied, and Chatine thought his voice sounded vaguely familiar. “I never even knew him.”
His father? Chatine thought. This man—this officer—has a father who was in prison? She didn’t think Second Estaters were even sent to Bastille. They were hardly ever convicted of crimes. She was desperate to turn her head, flick her gaze to the side for just a moment. She wanted so badly to find out who this officer was.
“I’ll leave you alone with him,” the médecin said, and then Chatine heard the clacking of footsteps receding back down the hallway.
The man in uniform walked around the gurney, standing between Chatine and the prisoner. Chatine saw the twinkle of something shiny on his finger. A ring. Definitely valuable. Maybe even titan. She contemplated leaping up from the gurney now and using the element of surprise to swipe the ring and run. But she worried about the aftermath. The motion-sensor microcams had most definitely been activated as soon as this man entered the morgue. She simply couldn’t risk getting caught. Not when she was this close to freedom.
The man stood motionless next to the body, staring down at it. She could see his hands curl into fists, as though he were angry about something. Then, a moment later, his hands relaxed and Chatine heard him speak.
“Why did you do it?”
There was something soft and fragile in his voice. Broken, even. Chatine was almost certain he was speaking to the dead prisoner. But before she could begin to fathom why, out of the corner of her vision, she saw the man touch the fabric of the prisoner’s sleeve. The one Chatine had peeled back to reveal his prisoner tattoo.
“What is this?” he asked, and it wasn’t until right then, seeing the shirt from this awkward angle, that Chatine noticed what had evidently caught the man’s eye.
There was something stitched into the inside of the prisoner’s shirt.
Could that be what I think it is? Chatine wondered.
The man quickly grabbed something from a nearby tray and started to cut away at the convict’s shirt.
Chatine flicked her eyes to the side, trying to take in as much information as she could in a single glance, but it wasn’t enough. She still couldn’t make out what was stitched into the fabric.
Careful not to make the gurney creak, Chatine slowly turned her head a millimètre to the right, letting her gaze fall upon the man gripping the tattered shirt in his hands. She had to fight back the gasp that sprang up in her throat.
She recognized him.
How could she not?
Nearly everyone on Laterre would recognize him. That shiny dark hair with just a hint of a curl; those sharp, handsome features; that tall, slender build. In her shock, Chatine must have completely forgotten about the leveler shoved into the sleeve of her coat, because suddenly she heard a loud crash as the device slipped off the gurney and fell to the floor.
- CHAPTER 5 -
MARCELLUS
HISS.
The doors of the morgue sealed shut and Marcellus was finally alone with his father. A man he’d never met. Never spoken to. Barely even remembered.
His hands trembled. He tried to remind himself that the man on this gurney meant nothing more to him than any of the other lifeless faces in the room. He swallowed hard and cast his gaze downward.
At the infamous traitor, Julien Bonnefaçon.
Marcellus studied the deep, jagged lines of his face, his cracked purple lips, the vacant dead stare of his hazel eyes.
And yet, Marcellus felt nothing.
Or, at least, that’s what he told himself. He had to feel nothing. Feeling anything at all would only confirm the suspicions that Marcellus was sure everyone had about him.
That had always been his punishment for his father’s crime, ever since he was a little boy. When you’re born the son of a traitor, you are forever a suspect. Forever guilty of a possible future crime. Forever your father’s son.
Marcellus had spent his entire life fighting against those suspicions, trying to prove to everyone in the Ministère—everyone on Laterre—that he wasn’t anything like his father, and he would never betray his planet, his estate, his family.
So why were his hands still shaking?
A body. Not a person.
Just as his grandfather had said.
He balled his hands into fists, willing them to stop trembling. As Marcellus gazed into his father’s open, unseeing eyes, he felt at once frustration, shame, revulsion, and most of all, anger.
This was the man who’d abandoned Marcellus when he was just a baby. This was the man who’d chosen to join the Vangarde, an unruly group of known terrorists, instead of being a father. When Julien had betrayed his family, Marcellus’s mother had died soon after of a broken heart and his grandfather had had to raise him as his own. But most important, this was the man single-handedly responsible for the biggest tragedy of the Rebellion of 488: the bombing of the copper exploit that killed six hundred people. Poor people. Innocent people.
What kind of man does that? What kind of man brings such shame on his family?
The man laid out on the gurney in front of him.
That kind of man.
Marcellus thought back to the first time he’d seen the footage. He remembered it so clearly: The insanity in his father’s eyes as he was captured and loaded into a voyageur bound for Bastille. The babble spewing from his lips as they took him away. They were the rantings of a madman. A fanatic. A terrorist.
That was seventeen years ago, and ever since then, Marcellus had been trained to hate this man, to despise him and loathe everything he stood for. But now, standing here, in front of his frail, frostbitten body, Marcellus felt something else tugging at him.