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Blinded by dust and smoke, I hug my bike and close my eye. Debris pings off the metal chassis like hailstones and bites at my legs and face. The air is hot and ghastly. I want to sob in terror. I focus my Mind’s Eye, and it all quiets.
I weave around a man-sized chunk of starShell, almost in slow motion. Nothing hurts me. Nothing exists but the mind.
Then I burst out of the smoke.
A wash of clean air as I tear out the other side of the cloud to see a heavy shuttle unlike any other ever built hovering a meter above the ground. Alexandar drives into it, his bike smashing and sparking as it hits the ramp and careens into the cargo bay. I goose the thruster and nearly fall off my bike as Drusilla’s slams into me from the left and locks together with mine, driving me off course. A ragged chunk of metal impales her through the chest. I crank my bike left and skid sideways, dragging hers into the transport. I feel myself sailing through the air. I collide with something unmovable. My shoulder is pulled from its socket. The engines rumble beneath. I feel us rising. And I lie there feeling very calm and present, because standing over me, roaring for retreat, is the Reaper himself.
THE AIR HEAVES WITH SHOCKWAVES as the shuttle shoots through the aerial gate in the storm wall, and back to the safety of Heliopolis’s shield. Remains of bikes litter the shuttle’s cargo bay. Drusilla, one of Alexandar’s cousins, shakes on the floor, a piece of metal through her chest. The medici swarm over her. A second Gold groans at my boots. Lean and caked in so much desert chalk it shudders off him as he coughs. I search him for weapons. His face is mangled and melted on one side.
“Get us to the Star,” I shout at our pilot.
Thraxa jerks a tarpaulin off the back of a crashed bike to reveal a body. She yanks on the man’s dark blond hair so I can see his face. “Look what the pup dragged in!” She spits on his unconscious face and puts all her substantial weight and strength behind her knee to break his sword arm, then she breaks the right for good measure, before manhandling him into more secure cuffs. “We’re going to have some fun, impaler.”
I heave a bike out of the way to reveal the last body. Alexandar. He’s nearly unrecognizable. His ears and several fingers have been cut away and large strips of skin eaten off. I throw myself over him and check his pulse. It is faint. When I tear open his coat, I find two exit wounds in his chest. “Alexandar!” I say, shaking him. “Alexandar!”
His eyes crack open and he manages a smile. His teeth are missing, I realize in horror. His hands pull dumbly at something as he pushes a chalky pelt into my hand. “Told you…I’d bring it back.”
Blood bubbles out his mouth and his eyes roll back.
“Faster!” I shout at the pilot.
I cradle Alexandar in my arms and jump out the back of the transport before it even makes its emergency landing. The medici are waiting for us, but their gurney will be too slow. I sprint past them carrying the man, scattering deckhands, not stopping until I lay him down in the medBay. He’s barely breathing. Rhonna rushes into the room behind me, her eyes wild. “Alexandar!” She pushes to his side as the medici prep him for transport to the surgery ward. “Alexandar…” Her eyes search the horror of his face. His missing ears, the strips of stolen flesh, the toothless mouth as his lips part to murmur something. “What did they do to him!” she screams. “What did they do? Alexandar.”
The medici pull her away and rush with him toward the surgery ward. I follow. A chief medicus pushes at me, her feet sliding on the floor.
“Sir!”
“We’re going with him,” I snarl.
“Then you’re going to contaminate the room and terrify my surgeons,” the medicus says. “Wait here.”
“Do not let that boy die,” I say to her. “Do you understand me?”
“We’ll do what is medically possible, sir.”
Rhonna and I are left in the silence of the intake room listening to machines beep. A ragged breath escapes her and her skeleton seems to fold in on itself as she hunches in a corner. She was furious when I left her behind to get Alexandar, but she’s still in no shape for combat. I thought deep down that this had to be some trick. Some trap of the Fear Knight’s. It seemed impossible to hope yet I took the risk. And now that Alexandar is alive, somehow despite everything, he may yet be taken. It all seems so unfair.
“Fear butchered him,” Rhonna says, too numb to cry. “He cut him to pieces.”
“Do you have coagulant?” I ask a medical officer. The officer disappears through a door and comes back with an injector. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Rhonna.
“Don’t,” she says as I reach the door. “Just don’t.”
I make no promises as I leave.
* * *
—
I stalk through the brig. Saud and Carthii prisoners idle about in their cells to either side. Soldiers mill outside an open high-security cell. They press to the walls, clearing the way when they see me charging with a full head of steam.
“Darrow…” Thraxa warns, blocking the door into the cell and holding up her hands.
“Move.”
“I know how you feel. If it were up to me, I’d beat him to death with a teakettle. But we need information from him.” I take a step close enough to her that I can see the clogged pores of her broad nose.
“Move.”
