“And you’re a Red.”
“I was born in the house you stood outside. It was sixteen years before I saw I sky. So yes. I’m a Red.”
“I see.” She hesitates. “And my father killed your wife.”
“Yes. He ordered Eo’s death.”
“When you sang the song to me in the cave … all this was going through your mind? This place, the carving, the plan, was all inside you, all in your memory. This whole other world. This whole other … person.” She shakes her head, not wanting me to answer that. “Then what happened? Eo’s husband was hanged. You were hanged. How did you escape?”
“Do you know why they hanged me?”
She waits for me to explain.
“When a Red is hanged for crimes of treason, the body may not be buried. It is to decay and rot in front of all as a reminder of what comes of dissent.” I jab a thumb at my chest. “I buried my wife, so they hanged me too. Only, my uncle fed me haemanthus oil. It slows the heart to make you appear dead. He cut me down after. Gave me to the Sons.”
“And they …” She holds up the holoCube, her face pale in its glow. “… did this to you.”
“I was paler than a Blue. A head shorter than Sevro. Weaker than a Gray. Knew less of the world than a Pink learning arts in the Garden. So they took what was best in me, in my people, and melded it to what was best in yours.”
“But … it’s impossible. The Board of Quality Control has tests,” she says, breaking her cool line of inquiry. “Lie detectors, DNA analysis, background checks.” She laughs in realization. “That’s why you came from the Family Andromedus—born to Gold parents who fled debt to try and strike it rich asteroid mining.”
“Their ship was lost as they returned after their mines had been bought by Quicksilver.”
“So Sons of Ares destroyed their ship, altered the records, and purchased the mines so they could write your story.”
“Perhaps.” I hadn’t put much thought to how Dancer did it. “My friends are resourceful.”
“How did you even survive the carving?” she mutters. “It’s against physiology. What the Carver did to you … no one could survive that. The Sigils are connected to the central nervous system. And the implant in your frontal lobe can’t be removed without rendering you catatonic.”
“My Carver was a unique talent. He managed to find a way to remove two implants, though another Carver did the second.”
“Two. There’s two of you. Sevro?” she guesses. “Is that why you’ve always been so close?”
“No. It was Titus.”
“Titus? The butcher? You were in league with him?”
“Never. I didn’t know who he was until after I defeated you. Ares thought we would work together …”
“But Titus was a monster.”
“The Golds made him that way.”
“And that excuses what he did?”
“Don’t act like you know what he went through,” I snap.
“I know, Darrow. I don’t avert my eyes. I know the policies. I know the conditions your people suffer, but that doesn’t excuse the murders, the rapes, the torture he committed.”
“It’s what we suffer every day. Titus did what he did out of hate. Out of a misguided hope of revenge. In another life, I could have been him.”
Mustang searches my eyes. “And why weren’t you in this life?”
“My wife.” I look up at her. “And you.”
“Don’t say that.” Voice thick with regret. She takes a step back, shaking her head. “You don’t have the right to say that.”
“Why not? You always wondered what ran beneath the surface of me. Know the deep current.”
“Darrow …”
“Titus had pain. But that’s all he had. I had something more. Eo’s dream of a world where our children could be free. But I would have lost it if I never met you.” I take a step forward. “You kept me from becoming a monster. Can’t you see?” I gesture, trying to encompass my desperation. “I was surrounded by the people who had enslaved mine for hundreds of years. I thought all Golds cruel, selfish murderers. I would have caved to revenge. But then you came … and you showed me there was kindness in them. Roque, Sevro, Quinn, Pax, the Howlers proved it too.”
“Proved what exactly?” she asks.
“That this isn’t about my people against yours. You aren’t Gold. We aren’t Red. We’re people, Mustang. Each of us can change. Each of us can be what we like. For hundreds of years they’ve tried to tell us otherwise. They’ve tried to break us. But they can’t. You are that proof. You are not your father’s daughter. I see the love in you. I see the joy, the kindness, the impatience, the flaws. They’re in me. They were in my wife. They’re in all of us because we are human. Your father would have us forget that. Society would have us live by its rules.”
I take another step toward her.
“You told me I gave you hope that we could live for more after we won the Institute our way. Then you said I turned my back on that idea when I accepted your father’s patronage and went to the Academy. But I never turned my back. Not for one moment.” Another step.
“You’ll destroy my family, Darrow.”
“It is possible.”
“They are my family!” she shouts, face collapsing into grief. “My father hanged your wife. He hanged her. How can you even look at me?” She shudders out a breath. “What do you want, Darrow? Tell me. Do you want me to help you kill them? Do you want me to help you destroy my people?”
“I don’t want that.”
“You don’t know what you want.”
“I don’t want genocide.”
“You do!” she says. “And why not? After what we’ve done to your people. After what my father did to you.” She unbuttons another catch on her jacket as if it will help her breathe through this. The gun shakes in her hand. Finger tenses on the trigger. “How can I live with this? If I don’t pull the trigger, millions will die.”
“If you pull it, you accept that billions should live as slaves. Imagine all those unborn. If it is not me, someone else will rise. Ten years from now. Fifty. A thousand. We will break the chains, no matter the cost. You cannot stop us. We are the tide. All you can do is pray it is not someone like Titus who rises in my place.”
She levels the scorcher at my right eyeball.
“Pull the trigger, and you die.” Ragnar speaks like the darkness itself.
“Ragnar, no!” I snap. I can’t even see him in the shadows of the tunnel. “Stop! Do not hurt her.” He must not have pursued the tracking signal as I told him to. How long has he listened?
“Stay back.” Mustang shuffles sideways so her back is to the wall. “Does he know too? Do you know what he is, Ragnar?”
“The Reaper trusts me.”
Mustang tosses her light on the ground and pulls free her razor.
“He isn’t here to kill you, Mustang.”
“What else does a Stained do?”
I hold my hands up. “Ragnar isn’t going to do anything. Are you, Ragnar?”
No answer. I swallow hard. Everything is unwinding. “Ragnar, listen to me …”
“You must not die, Reaper. You are too important for the People. Lady Augustus, you have ten breaths left.”
“Ragnar, please!” I beg. “Trust me. Please.”
Nine.
“I trusted you at the river, my brother. You are not always right. That is the cost of mortality.” The voice comes from above. Somewhere near the ceiling of the mine this time. He’s not wrong. He put his trust in me during our siege of Agea, and I led them into a trap. Luck preserved me.
Laughing bitterly, Mustang coils her muscles to strike. “See, Darrow? You start this war, it’ll be beasts like him who finish it and take their revenge.”
Seven.
“This isn’t about revenge!” I try to calm myself. “It’s about justice. It’s about love against an empire built on greed, on cruelty. Remember the Institute. We freed those we were meant to take as slaves. We put our trust in them. That is the lesson. Trust.”