e takes it like an entitled child who spends too much time indoors. Violently.
NIGHT LILIES RESPOND WELL to a gentle touch. They do not abide rough handling. That’s when their necrotic spines come out to play. I had them made that way as my last in a long line of redundant defenses, all of which have either been deactivated or removed, except my bloodydamn flowers. Precisely because it is more in line with something Atalantia would have lying around than Virginia au Augustus.
The clone flinches as several sets of glistening needles burst from the flower to pierce his thumb. He screams at the sudden, blinding pain. The shaded toxins of the lily trickle slowly down the tip of his thumb, spreading toward his hand. He falls backward, staggered by the intensity of the poison. I feel the agony as well. It seeps from my right index finger up my arm straight to my spinal column. I almost throw up, but I must move. I throw my body forward off the chair to the floor near the clone’s datapad. He dropped it the second after the needles went in. The flower’s spines have retracted. I pick it up very gently. Flower in one hand, pad in the other, I crawl to the puzzle wall trying to turn off the psychoSpike without getting another dose of the spreading poison. The third puzzle at the bottom on the left is a transponder to the escape door. This puzzle had to be on the door for it to open and not hidden in Lilath’s creepy suite. If I press my hand to the wall when the puzzle is present, the door will slide up, and I can escape. If I can just get to it.
The door to the hall explodes inward as Lilath responds to her Emperor’s cries. She’s carrying two hatchets. She runs toward me. I find the right function on the datapad and return sensation to my legs. I scramble upward and lunge to touch the wall behind the pictures without disturbing the flower in my hands.
A jarring force hits my back. It almost feels like a punch compared with the searing pain in my index finger. The necrotic poison is spreading for the hand. If it gets to the torso, I’m dead. But by the wrist I’ll be in such agony I won’t be able to move. I slam my other hand into the wall. The wall shoots straight upward to reveal a metal chute at waist height. I duck and drop the flower just as Lilath tries to chop my head off from behind. I try to spin-kick her legs, but she steps over the kick and delivers a slash downward. I catch it on my left forearm. The bone breaks so abruptly that it pierces the skin. I stumble back into the wall beside the chute and reach for the flower with my poisoned hand. Lilath is brutal and effective. She chops me in the left shoulder, takes off my right ear, then buries a crushing blow in the right side of my ribcage. The bones break, and something inside me ruptures. I crumple downward just close enough to the flower. Lilath glances back at her Emperor, knowing I’m mortally wounded, but unable to detect why he’s screaming. Almost blind with pain, I fumble for the flower with my poisoned hand. Another dose of poison goes through two more of my fingers. My vision pulses and I hurl the flower up at Lilath’s face. It’s the only part of her not covered with armor.
I don’t see where it hits her. I just hear her screaming. She stumbles away, almost dropping her hatchet. Something clanks on the wall behind where I stand. It’s connected to me. I reach backward and find metal. I pull on it till I feel pressure release in my back. It’s one of Lilath’s hatchets. I look at her, and I stumble from the pain and loss of blood as I wind up to throw it at her. She’s hunched beside the clone. There’s a ripping sound. And she stands up with a shudder. It was her nose the needles got. And she didn’t take any chances with how much of her nose she cut off. She turns back to me and pulls another hatchet from the sheath on her thigh to join the bloody one she already has.
I throw my hatchet at her.
She doesn’t bother dodging. It just sparks off her armor. I lose faith in the fight and I dive into the escape hole to plunge downward. The ride is a minute almost straight down through darkness. The tunnels go almost as deep as the Dragonmaw bunker. The tube levels off and deposits me on a soft landing pad, in a small room. It is one of the Citadel’s secondary fallback bunkers. There are four tubes that can access it. I pull a lever to close all four.
They might have found everything else in my office, but not this. I’m going to pass out from blood loss soon. I rush past the weapons cases to the medical station. Arm broken, I clumsily grab the laser saw first. The blue line of energy comes to life. Without hesitating, I slice off my index finger at the bottom joint. The pain of the amputation and cauterization are meager compared with that of the lily’s toxins. I leave the gouge where my ear used to be weeping blood. The flow has already diminished, and will stop soon from coagulation. I take off the middle finger at the top joint, and just the tip of the ring finger. I discard the laser cutter and reach for the cauterizing gun. No time for anything pretty. Even with it my internal organs will likely keep bleeding in a rupture. I moan over the medical table in pain as the gun melts closed the wound on my right side. Then I seal the other ones I can reach.
I thought I would face a dire choice. To save Sevro and my friends, or to save myself. Now I realize, there is no choice. If I don’t get out, I will die, and so will the fleet in orbit. I have to get out.
I take three shots of stims to stay awake, then pump blood from the med station’s supply into myself as I sit woozily in front of the communications terminal. It is located beside the ejection chute. The terminal is already in Black Cathedral protocol. Someone else must’ve called it. Kavax? Holiday?
The hidden network immediately connects me to the bridge of the Reynard, Kavax’s flagship. He turns to see me on his displays. Sophocles tilts his head toward the camera. “Kavax. I am in the small chapel.” The man’s eyes widen. Flashes from battle wash over his face. “I have internal bleeding in the kidneys and likely the liver. Left arm is broken, right hand losing function. Sevro, Clown, and Pebble are also prisoners in the Sunhall. How many clergy in the building?”
“Four, but they are in Moonhall and connecting tunnels are compromised.”
“I won’t be able to go to them,” I say looking down at my wound.
“Do you know where the prisoners are located?”
“No.”
“Can you find out?” he asks.
“Giving you access to internal cameras still connected to the systems,” I say. “Kavax, make the call. I’ll go back for them if you think I can make it.” He and his techs sort the feeds for a few moments to find the ones I sent. As they do I examine the defense systems I had installed in the Citadel. Nearly all of them are dark. Lilath and the clone peeled my fortress apart well. Oddly, the escape and transit systems are the only systems running. Likely so the clone and the Boneriders could move about behind the scenes while they pulled the strings of their puppet government. Kavax is done appraising the information I sent.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Let me see your wounds.”
I turn them toward the camera. “Eject,” he says. “We have teams on the ground, ready to move at exit.” Eject. My heart wants to be the person who risks it for Sevro in the face of certain death. My head can’t decide. But in this situation, the person on his end of the line is the boss. Kavax has operational control. I look emptily at the ejection tube.
Is this what it comes down to? Leaving the best of my friends in the clutches of a ghost from my past? I suppose so. Sevro was right. I am not Mustang any longer. I am the Sovereign.
I crank open the ejection hatch, crying out from the pain as I use my broken arm. I feel very selfish as I crawl through the aperture into a small padded compartment large enough to fit ten.
I close the hatch behind me and the lights in the compartment and in the concrete tunnel glow. Electricity channels through the two metal rails on either side of the tunnel, and the compartment shoots forward.
It carries me away from not only Sevro, Clown, and Pebble. It carries me away from the place Daxo died and the people who killed him. It takes me away from ten years of work in a place I had always feared. I had dreamed of one day leaving the Citadel of Light behind, perhaps ousted from office in a hard-fought election against a worthy successor, or after my relevance had worn out. I once hoped it would be Dancer who took it on next. Never did I imagine my last time leaving the Citadel would be like this. As the compartment races along the forty-kilometer tunnel, I make myself a promise that this will be the second-to-last time I leave the Citadel. I will return to finish this, and then I will never see this place again.
It feels like a dream when the compartment slows to a stop. The hatch pops open above my head and I emerge. Large men in armor stand waiting for me. But then their rifles rise, and I see the Vox upside-down pyramid on their armor.
I stand there with my hands in the air, feeling myself fading.
Gunfire comes from the hall, and before the men can turn around, the wall behind them erupts. High-powered rounds mow them down in seconds. A team of heavily armed Lionguard and Pegasus Legion soldiers burst in from the hall hunched over their weapons. The battered helmet of a Pegasus centurion retracts to reveal Holiday ti Nakamura.
“Lie down, ma’am,” she barks. Two of her men expand a peculiar stretcher with two large pods on each end. Holiday forces me down onto it. I make no arguments. I can barely walk. “Reynard, this is Gray Rock. I have Gold Horse. We are on the move.” The stretcher locks me in place. I see what the pods are for when an intense pulseField throbs between them with a thrmmmm.
Two soldiers carry the stretcher as Holiday leads the squad out of the room. Gunfire echoes through the halls. Gunship engines roar outside as we ascend the bunker via the stairs. Dozens of Vox legionnaires lie dead. More of Holiday’s lurcher squads join us. They look like a troop of evil gargoyles as they push from the bunker in force out into the light of day.