On the afternoon before Ana’s coronation, citizens crowded the square in front of the palace. Siege said that at the last coronation, people celebrated for weeks after. Tents lined the broad square, food stalls and festival games, the heavy scent of ale making everyone punch-drunk by the smell alone. Di hiked his knapsack higher on his shoulder and moved his way through the crowd, slowly, cautious not to attract attention.
It had taken longer than expected to get to the palace, between repairing the Dossier at the waystation near Iliad, unloading the Valerio men, acquiring fake IDs, booking legal passage to the Iron Palace, going through security screenings, never mind the dizzying ride to the moon. . . .
Too much time had been wasted. They could not afford any more.
He stepped lightly through the crowded square, this body much more agile than the one before, though he missed being taller. Evening light filtered through the willow trees lining the square, creating swirls of shadows across the cobblestones. Citizens from every corner of the worlds were stuffed into the expansive square, along with vendors selling hot pots and kebabs and sweet ales.
In his knapsack, E0S hummed against his back, the little can opener calming his nerves, and somewhere far, far above him, the Dossier drifted around Eros in silent orbit, waiting. The ship was too far to reach him if trouble broke out, but just remembering that it was there helped.
A little.
Nervously, he pulled at the collar of a coat he had borrowed from Jax’s wardrobe. It was the only one that seemed to fit reasonably well.
“I should be down there with you,” the captain said, her voice resounding in his head like an echo. She had patched herself into his receptor. It was—what was the word?
Intrusive.
“I should be helping you get her—”
I am fine, Captain, he stressed. Besides, I have the can opener—
E0S bleeped angrily, earning Di an alarmed look from a passing family, and he quickly moved on.
And you have seven bounties on your head, he finished, bumping his knapsack again to keep the bot quiet. We will be safe. No one can recognize me.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the captain murmured, because he did not look like D09, and they were all afraid that Ana would not believe him.
He squatted beside the willows, assessing the entrance of the palace. Six Messiers stood guard. Seeing a face like the one he used to have, with a placid blue gaze, made his skin crawl.
Now he realized why Ana had always been so terrified of the possibility of his being HIVEd.
Goddess, he hoped to die before ever being submitted to the HIVE.
Captain, I am in position, he said, taking off his knapsack.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Do we have a better plan?
“Of course we do! I was gonna—”
That does not involve coming in, guns blazing, and getting everyone killed?
“I was going to do it at night,” she said defensively, and sighed. “Fine. Once you’re inside, Riggs’ll go park the skysailer at the docks for you—and Di?”
Hmm?
“Be careful.”
Of course.
Di untied the top of the knapsack, and E0S came whirring out, bleeping happily.
“Shh!” he hushed the bot. “Remember, all you have to do is unlock that side gate, okay?”
It bobbed in a nod.
“Okay, now if you get into trouble—” But it was already whizzing away over the palace wall. “I cannot help you,” he finished dejectedly.
I am upgrading E0S when we get back, he told Siege.
“What’s wrong with it?”
It is not the brightest bulb in the light socket.
The captain howled with laughter, and he found his lips twitching up into a smile. There was a strange feeling in his throat, but he bit his cheek to keep from laughing.
As a Metal, he had been absent of feelings. But over the last few days he had come to understand a few. Anger, hatred, sadness, annoyance, longing. Siege had to explain that one, the pit he felt in his chest, traveling down and down and down into a metaphorical dark hole. It made him antsy and restless. He still did not need to sleep in this body, so all he did was pace, and try to work out the movement of his new limbs, and . . .
Think.
He had a lot of time to think.
Sitting against the trunk of a willow, he took a tie from around his wrist—another borrowed thing from Jax—and pulled his red hair back into a ponytail, waiting for E0S to unlock the side gate. He watched the crowd, soaking in the sound of the music and the sweet smell of the hot pots and kebabs, until an uproar on the other side of the square drew his attention.
At first it sounded like a cheer, some sort of rabble-rousing for the new Empress, but as he got to his feet again, he caught a few words in the chaos—traitor, rogue, Metal.
Alarmed, he abandoned his empty knapsack by the willow and shoved through the crowd toward the noise.
Siege, there is a Metal here, I believe, he sent through the comm-link, squeezing past onlookers standing on their tiptoes to see over the people gathered around whatever was happening.
“Now, Di, don’t do anything rash—”
He broke out into the center of the chaos.
A Metal lay sprawled on the ground, a knife embedded in its leg. Its white eyes flickered, searching the crowd. It was not HIVE’d. “I apologize for my inconvenience,” it tried to say over the crowd. “I am not here to harm—”
“Traitor!” someone cried, throwing a handful of trash.
It smacked the Metal in the face, stickiness oozing down its chin. Other people threw pieces of rotten fruit, dirt from beneath the willow trees, sticks from the kebabs sold at the stands. They pinged off the Metal’s dented body, and the Metal did not even care.
Di could only watch.
“Got some nerve coming here!” someone at Di’s elbow shouted.
A woman spit at it. “Go back where you came from!”
Di glanced around to see if anyone was coming to stop this, but the Messiers stood calmly at their posts, and the people outside the mob simply looked away. As though if they did not see the violence, they would not be a part of it. But he saw them. He saw all the people who averted their eyes and walked past, and all the ones crowded into the circle, spitting and hissing at a Metal who could not defend itself.
And oh, oh, was there an anger growing inside him. It bubbled, frothed, like a firestorm, burning so hot underneath his skin he thought he would explode.
“Murderer!” one called, before a hundred voices echoed, “Murderer! Murderer!” like it was the Metal’s name.
“You are mistaken. I am only here to honor the Empress,” the android tried to reason, but it was useless. It was reaching down to pull the knife out of its leg when another man with dark hair elbowed his way out of the crowd, flicking open a lighter.
“Maybe we should honor her by burning you!”
The temper inside Di turned his thoughts white-hot. The next he knew, he had the man by the hand and was twisting his arm behind his back. There was a crack.
The man gave a cry, dropping the lighter.
Di caught it, flicking the flame on, holding so tight to the man’s broken arm, twisting so terribly that bone protruded from the skin. And he thought how easy it was to break them. Humans. How simple.
“Mercy,” the man babbled, the whites of his eyes matching the bone Di had easily broken.
Di held the lighter closer to the man, until it singed his hair. “This will be a mercy—”
“Sir,” a metallic voice cut through his ire, and he blinked, coming back to his senses. He faltered, as the human in his grip whimpered, the smell in the air matching the stain seeping onto his trousers.
“Mercy,” the black-haired man sobbed.
Di let go.
Around him the crowd retreated as far as they could, many of them with looks of wide-eyed terror. Someone pulled out a holo-pad, then another person, and another, until he could feel the streams of newsfeeds lacing across him, around him, sending communications upward and outward across the galaxy.
Until he caught sight of a girl. Flaxen hair. Purple dress. He recognized her instantly—the servant from Astoria, the one who’d been with Rasovant. She held his gaze and grinned.
“Monster,” she called.
Someone else echoed. “Monster!”
“Monster!” The word rippled like a rock in the ocean.
“Di?” Siege asked. “Di, what’s happ—”
The man whimpered on the ground, the bone protruding, and Di could not recall how he had hurt him. He could only remember a white-hot rage.
The feeling in his chest squeezed, twisted, turning sour and bitter and horrible. Everything was too much—the smells of sweet ales and kebabs, the shadows through the willows, all the voices grating, ill-harmonized sounds that formed around flaps of fleshy lips—words.
I cannot do this.
Not here. Not in this body.
Monster, the humans screamed. Monster, said the newsfeeds.
There were so many glitches, too many sensations—he could not adapt. He hated his train of thought. The tangents. The opinions. The bias. And the pain. He did not like the pain. Like daggers raking through the wires of his mind. It all needed to stop—this second. Now. Now. Now.
Monster—
NOW.
A rushing, electrical charge spread out from his center, to his outer extremities, pulsing like a wave. He felt every holo-pad, every newsfeed, every comm-link like kite strings reaching into the sky—every word, every syllable, every letter—
M O N S T E R
—and destroyed each one.
A holo-pad burst in a woman’s hand; then another exploded, another, and another, rippling out like a wave, with Di at the epicenter.
The crowd shrieked, dropping their electronics as the charges pulsed through them, singeing their skin, blackening their fingertips. They quickly forgot him, the word they repeated sinking beneath the swelling chaos.
Di turned back to the Metal and plucked the knife out of its leg. “Can you stand?”
The Metal nodded. “You are not human.”
“No,” Di agreed, but he was no longer a Metal anymore, either. He did not know what he was. “With them distracted, you can escape. Quickly.”
The Metal nodded and limped off into the frantic crowd.
Di took one last look at the broken-armed man crying on the ground, wanting to help him, to splint the bone and—
He tore himself away, as far from anyone who had seen his monstrousness as he could. Another holo-pad exploded near him, and a woman shrieked. He couldn’t stop it. The trail of electricity followed, rippling out around him in a wave.
Against the wall, the Messiers stood, dull-eyed and dormant, as if they’d been knocked offline.
A short, high beep sparked across his comm-link. E0S.
Trying to ignore the destruction he had caused, he pushed through the crowd until he reached the service door E0S had unlocked, leading into a side garden.
E0S let him inside—and suddenly jolted with a staticky, buzzing bleep as it got near.
“Give me a moment,” he told the bot, and closed his eyes, pressing his back against the door to keep himself upright. His knees had gone numb again, his head thick. There had to be a manual for this body somewhere.
He was tense, his thoughts jagged as he tried to smooth them out, calm them. The sizzling, electric feeling inside him slowly ebbed, crashing back into some unknown system he did not know how to access.
E0S bleeped again, shaking off the jolt.
“Sorry,” he told it. “There is a learning curve—”
“Sir, you’re not supposed to have a bot here,” came a voice from the garden, causing him to scramble to his feet. An Ironblooded man stood from a stone bench, frowning underneath his brown mustache. “Say, did you just come from the square?”
Di gave the man a once-over before deciding, “I need your clothes.”
“Excuse me? You aren’t supposed to be here. Guards! G—”
Di slammed his fist into the man’s face. He crumpled backward into the azalea bushes.
Captain, we are inside the palace, he thought loudly, shaking his sore hand. And I found a better suit.
“Good. I got disconnected from you for a moment—and the live feeds from the square went down. What happened?” she asked, sounding somewhat annoyed.
I must have hit the wrong button.
“Funny.”
E0S agreed.
As he changed into the aristocrat’s clothes, he added sarcasm to his list of glitches, beginning to wonder if they were glitches at all.