Morning Star: Book III of the Red Rising Trilogy (5 page)

“Thanks, Holi.”

“Here to help.”

Danto cups his hand. “Like this?” He hits my head.

“Little more curve to it.”

The centurion snaps his fingers. “Danto. Grimmus wants him in one piece. Back up and let the doc

take a look.” I breathe a sigh of relief at the reprieve.

The fat Yellow doctor ambles forward to inspect me with beady ocher eyes. The pale lights above

make the bald patch on his head shine like a pale, waxed apple. He runs his bioscope over my chest, watching the visual through little digital implants in his eyes. “Well, Doc?” the centurion asks.

“Remarkable,” the Yellow whispers after a moment. “Bone density and organs are quite healthy despite the low-caloric diet. Muscles have atrophied, as we’ve observed in laboratory settings, but not as poorly as natural Aureate tissue.”

“You’re saying he’s better than Gold?” the centurion asks.

“I did not say that,” the doctor snaps.

“Relax. There’s no cameras, Doc. This is a processing room. What’s the verdict?”

“It can travel.”

“It?” I manage in a low, unearthly growl from behind my muzzle.

The doctor recoils, surprised I can speak.

“And long-term sedation? Got three weeks to Luna at this orbit.”

“That will be fine.” The doctor gives me a frightened look. “But I would up the dose by ten milligrams per day, Captain, just to be safe.
It
has an abnormally strong circulatory system.”

“Right.” The captain nods to the female Gray. “You’re up, Holi. Put him to bed. Then let’s get the cart and roll out. You’re square, Doc. Head back to your safe little espresso-and-silk world now. We’ll take care of—”

Pop.
The front half of the centurion’s forehead comes off. Something metal hits the wall. I stare at the centurion, mind not processing why his face is gone.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Like knuckle joints. Red mist geysers into the air from the heads of the nearest dragoons. Spraying my face. I duck my head away. Behind them, the nutcracker-jawed woman walks casually through their ranks, shooting them point-blank in the backs of their heads. The rest pull their rifles up, scrambling, unable to even utter curses before a second Gray double-taps five of them from his place at the door with an old-fashioned gunpowder slug shooter. Silencer on the barrel so it’s cool and quiet. Obsidians are the first to hit the floor, leaking red.

“Clear,” the woman says.

“Plus two,” the man replies. He shoots the Yellow doctor as he crawls to the door trying to escape, then puts a boot on Danto’s chest. The Gray stares up at him, bleeding from under the jaw.

“Trigg…”

“Ares sends his regards, motherfucker.” The Gray shoots Danto just under the brim of his tactical

helmet, between the eyes, and spins the slug shooter in his hand, blowing smoke from the end before sheathing it in a leg holster. “Clear.”

My lips work against my muzzle, struggling to form a coherent thought. “Who…are you…” The

Gray woman nudges a body out of her way.

“Name’s Holiday ti Nakamura. That’s Trigg, my baby brother.” She raises a scar-notched eyebrow.

Her wide face is blasted by freckles. Nose smashed flat. Eyes dark gray and narrow. “Question is, who are you?”

“Who am I?” I mumble.

“We came for the Reaper. But if that’s you, I think we should get our money back.” She winks suddenly. “I’m joking, sir.”

“Holiday, cut it.” Trigg pushes her aside protectively. “Can’t you see he’s shell-shocked?” Trigg approaches carefully, hands out, voice soothing. “You’re prime, sir. We’re here to rescue you.” His words are thicker, less polished than Holiday’s. I flinch as he takes another step. Search his hands for a weapon. He’s going to hurt me. “Just gonna unlock you. That’s all. You want that, yeah?”

It’s a lie. A Jackal trick. He’s got the
XIII
tattoo. These are Praetorians, not Sons. Liars. Killers.

“
I won’t unlock you if you don’t want me to.”

No. No, he killed the guards. He’s here to help. He has to be here to help. I give Trigg a wary nod and he slips behind me. I don’t trust him
.
I half expect a needle. A twist. But all I feel is release as my risk is rewarded. The cuffs unlock. My shoulder joints crack and, moaning, I pull my hands in front of my body for the first time in nine months. The pain causes them to shake. The nails have grown

long and vile. But these hands are mine again. I charge to my feet to escape, and collapse to the floor.

“Whoa…whoa,” Holiday says, hefting me back into the chair. “Easy there, hero. You’ve got mad

muscle atrophy. Gonna need an oil change.”

Trigg comes back around to stand in front of me, smiling lopsided, face open and boyish, not nearly as intimidating as his sister, despite the two gold teardrop tattoos that leak from his right eye.

He has the look of a loyal hound. Gently he removes the muzzle from my face, then remembers something with a start. “I’ve got something for you, sir.”

“Not now, Trigg.” Holiday eyes the door. “Ain’t got the seconds.”

“He needs it,” Trigg says under his breath, but waits till Holiday gives him a nod before he pulls a leather bundle from his tortoise pack. He extends it to me. “It’s yours, sir. Take it.” He senses my apprehension. “Hey, I didn’t lie about unlocking you, did I?”

“No…”

I put my hands out and he sets the leather bundle in them. Fingers trembling, I pull back the string holding the bundle together and feel the power before I even see the deadly shimmer. My hands almost drop the bundle, as frightened of it as my eyes were of the light.

It is my razor. The one given to me by Mustang. The one I’ve lost twice now. Once to Karnus, then

again at my Triumph to the Jackal. It is white and smooth as a child’s first tooth. My hands slide over the cold metal and its salt-stained calf-leather grip. Touch wakening melancholy memories of strength long faded and warmth long forgotten. The smell of hazelnut drifts back to me, transporting me to Lorn’s practice rooms, where he would teach me as his favorite granddaughter learned to bake in the adjacent kitchen.

The razor slithers through the air, so beautiful, so deceitful in its promise of power. The blade would tell me I’m a god, as it has told generations of men who came before me, but I now know the

lie in that. The terrible price it’s made men pay for pride.

It scares me to hold it again.

And it rasps like a pitviper ’s mating call as it forms into a curved slingBlade. It was blank and smooth when last I saw it, but it ripples now with images etched into the white metal. I tilt the blade so I can better see the form etched just above the hilt. I stare dumbly. Eo looks back at me. An image of her etched into the metal. The artist caught her not on the scaffold, not in the moment that will forever define her to others, but intimately, as the girl I loved. She’s crouched, hair messy about her shoulders, picking a haemanthus from the ground, looking up, just about to smile. And above Eo is

my father kissing my mother at the door of our home. And toward the tip of the blade, Leanna, Loran, and I chasing Kieran down a tunnel, wearing Octobernacht masks. It is my childhood.

Whoever made this art knows me.

“The Golds carve their deeds into their swords. The
grand, violent
shit they’ve done. But Ares thought you’d prefer to see the people you love,” Holiday says quietly from behind Trigg. She glances back to the door.

“Ares is dead.” I search their faces, seeing the deceit there. Seeing the wickedness in their eyes.

“The Jackal sent you. It’s a trick. A trap. To lead you to the Sons’ base.” My hand tightens around the razor ’s grip. “To use me. You’re lying.”

Holiday steps back from me, wary of the blade in my hand. But Trigg is ripped apart by the

accusation. “Lying? To
you
? We’d die for you, sir. We’d have died for Persephone…Eo.” He struggles to find the words, and I get a sense he’s used to letting his sister do the talking. “There’s an army waiting for you outside these walls—does that register? An army waiting for its…its
soul
to come back to it.” He leans forward imploringly as Holiday looks back to the door. “We’re from South Pacifica, the ass end of Earth. I thought I’d die there guarding grain silos. But I’m here. On Mars. And our only job is to get you home….”

“I’ve met better liars than you,” I sneer.

“Screw this.” Holiday reaches for her datapad.

Trigg tries to stop her. “Ares said it was only for emergencies. If they hack the signal…”

“Look at him. This is an emergency.” Holiday strips her datapad and tosses it to me. A call is going through to another device. Blinking blue on the display, waiting for the other side to answer. As I turn it in my hand, a hologram of a spiked sunburst helmet suddenly blossoms into the air, small as my

clenched fist. Red eyes glow out balefully from the helmet.

“Fitchner?”

“Guess again, shithead,”
the voice warbles.

It can’t be.

“Sevro?” I almost whimper the word.

“Oy, boyo, you look like you slithered out of a skeleton’s rickety cooch.”

“You’re alive…,” I say as the holographic helmet slithers away to reveal my hatchet-faced friend.

He smiles with those hacksaw teeth. Image flickering.

“Ain’t no Pixie in the worlds that can kill me.”
He cackles.
“Now it’s time you come home, Reap. But
I can’t come to you. You gotta come to me. You register?”

“How?” I wipe the tears from my eyes.

“Trust my Sons. Can you do that?”

I look at the brother and sister and nod. “The Jackal…he has my family.”

“That cannibalistic bitch ain’t got shit. I got your family. Grabbed them from Lykos after you got
snagged. Your mother’s waiting to see you.”
I start crying again. The relief too much to bear.

“But you gotta sack up, boyo. And you gotta move.”
He looks sideways at someone.
“Gimme back
to Holiday.”
I do.
“Make it clean if you can. Escalate if you can’t. Register?”

“Register.”

“Break the chains.”

“Break the chains,” the Grays echo as his image flickers out.

“Look past our Color,” Holiday says to me. She reaches a tattooed hand down. I stare at the Gray

Sigils etched into her flesh, then look up to search her freckled, bluff face. One of her eyes is bionic, and does not blink like the other. Eo’s words sound so different from her mouth. Yet I think it’s the moment my soul comes back to me. Not my mind. I still feel the cracks in it. The slithering, doubting darkness. But my hope. I clutch her smaller hand desperately.

“Break the chains,” I echo hoarsely. “You’ll have to carry me.” I look at my worthless legs. “Can’t stand.”

“That’s why we brought you a little cocktail.” Holiday pulls up a syringe.

“What is it?” I ask.

Trigg just laughs. “Your oil change. Seriously, friend, you really don’t want to know.” He grins.

“Shit will animate a corpse.”

“Give it to me,” I say, holding out my wrist.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Trigg warns.

“He’s a big boy.” Holiday comes closer.

“Sir…” Trigg hands me one of his gloves. “Between your teeth.”

A little less confident, I bite down on the salt-stained leather and nod to Holiday. She lunges past my wrist to jam the syringe straight into my heart. Metal punctures meat as the payload releases.

“Holy shit!” I try to scream, but it comes out as a gurgle. Fire cavorts through my veins, my heart a piston. I look down, expecting to see it galloping out of my bloodydamn chest. I feel every muscle.

Every cell of my body exploding, pulsing with kinetic energy. I dry-heave. I fall, clawing at my chest.

Panting. Spitting bile. Punching the floor. The Grays scramble back from my twisting body. I strike out at the chair, half ripping it from its bolted place in the floor. I let out a stream of curses that’d make Sevro blush. Then I tremble and look up at them. “What…was…
that
?”

Holiday tries not to laugh. “Mamma calls it snakebite. Only gonna last thirty minutes with your metabolism.”

“Your mamma made that?”

Trigg shrugs. “We’re from Earth.”

They escort me like a prisoner through the halls. Hood on my head. Hands behind my back in unlocked manacles. Brother on my left, sister on my right, both supporting me. The snakebite lets me walk, but not well. My body, jacked with drugs as it is, still feels slack as wet clothes. I can barely feel my busted toe or feeble legs. My thin prisoner ’s shoes scrape the floor. My head swims, but there’s a hyper speed to my brain now. It’s focused mania. I chew my tongue to keep from whispering, and to

remind myself that I am not in the darkness like before. My body is shuffling down a concrete hall. It is walking toward freedom. Toward my family, toward Sevro.