Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn had been right—the normalcy didn’t last. As soon as her back was turned she could have felt the eyes return to her, and without much strain she could hear the whispering. Indistinct and worrisome, anxieties she might very well have felt herself, manifesting around her on the lips of people who were meant to be cheering her on.

A screen overhead played the daily news. The volume was low, but the anchors spoke Casobani, so no one was listening so much as they were watching and reading the subtitles. A pair of minor singularities were set to open this morning, and Casoban’s remaining pilots were split to tackle them one-a-piece. That at least explained why most of the Casoban crew were gone now—shipped out in the middle of the night, most likely. Toussaint remained, which was odd, considering he was allegedly the commander. Perhaps he wasn’t anymore. He didn’t look particularly happy.

To be fair Besca didn’t appear to be doing much better. She looked utterly exhausted, which, she was. She hadn’t slept a wink, had spent all night online, searching desperately for anything that might help them.

By the grin that split her face when she saw Quinn, she must have been successful.

“Hey, hun!” she said, voice scratchy but her enthusiasm didn’t suffer for it. “Listen, hey. I’ve been reading all night on this—on Tormont. Not a lot of publicly available information on the Great Houses, even less is translated, but some of the folks here—never mind, not important. Look.”

She slapped her tablet down onto the table between them. On it were dueling records. The first two Quinn had seen; they were Roaki’s official duels as Blotklau’s pilot. Besca pointed to some lines beside the word Synchronir. They’d been highlighted manually.

“Know what that says? Sorry, dumb question, neither of us read Helburkan. It says, ‘Subject was not observed phasing.’ Remember how our info listed Roaki’s phasing time as ‘unknown’? I assumed that was just cause she was too new, and because neither of her duels reached the average phasing thresholds, so, you know, I figured she just phased average. But then I found these.”

Following the two duels were…more duels. Five. They were unregistered, unofficial in the sense that they hadn’t involved a dispute with another nation. In fact, they weren’t even duels with another Great House.

Roaki had fought five duels against her own family.

Besca’s hands flew to the same word. Synchronir. “These duels were all over the place. One was minutes long. Two reached the average threshold. Another went way past the average, slower than Ghaust’s. Way slower. And the last one…god, I’ve never seen anything like it before. She was connected for thirty minutes. And what does this say? ‘Subject was not observed phasing.’”

Besca’s grin grew teeth, she tapped the screen manically. “Quinn, I don’t think this is flubbed. I don’t think she’s slow, either. I don’t think she can phase at all. That’s why her duels are so fast. That’s why she’s so aggressive. She has to win before the other pilots phase because she can’t just stall ‘til she does too.” Her voice dropped low, conspiratorial. “Hun—I’ve seen how you’ve been practicing. I think, seriously, I think if you can just get yourself phased, you can do this. You can actually beat her.”

Something in Quinn’s chest thrummed excitedly.

Amygdala Circuit

The moon never reformed after Quinn shattered it. The water stilled, but the countless rippled-apart pieces remained with an inexplicable void between them. She could feel her words sinking into the lake, and if she peered down into it, might have for a moment noticed something odd—that it was not black. It was just a very, very dark blue.

Quinnlash’s hands balled into fists, but she turned away from Quinn’s gaze, contemplative, almost ashamed. Instead, she looked out at Hovvi, and for a long time she was silent.

“No” she said, and her hands were squeezed so tightly her shoulders shook. “No, she’s nothing like us! Not broken! Bad!”

With a sharp wince, Quinnlash curled. A hand flew to her head, clutching at a horn that had seemed to grow ever so slightly taller in those angry blinks. In the distance, a great shape loomed over Hovvi. Not a Savior, but much greater, much grander. It was the silhouette of a mountain.

“Stupid Helburkan mutt! Taker! she shouted, and pulled her hand away. Blood like ichor dribbled down her face. “We’re good! She’s evil! Good kills evil! Good kills evil and we’re gonna kill her! We’re gonna kill anyone who wants to take our friends away from us!”

Standing as tall as she could, the girl glared hard at Quinn. Quinnlash’s voice boomed within her, as if it rose up from the lake itself. “Now wake up! Wake up and protect my friends!”

And she was awake.

An alarm beeped softly somewhere far away. There was movement outside the bunk’s doors, and the sound of people.

Dahlia was beside her, back turned with her neck-plugs exposed. She seemed to still be asleep.

The realization hit Quinn—was given to her, without request: today was the day she would kill, or she would die.

Amygdala Circuit

As she looked up at the sky, the unruly stars whirled, it seemed, in tandem with her own doubts. They tilted, unlocked from the great void, and followed her eye like they thought they might find an answer in it. When she sat up, they all winked out at once—though the night did not get any darker.

Quinnlash stared back at her, small face wrinkled in confusion, like Quinn had started speaking in Tohoken.

“Because…” she started, and stopped, and started again with more certainty. “Because that’s the way it is. That’s what we do. We’re a pilot. We…”

She paced back, stood up on the bench and looked out over the water. “We should be killing monsters. That’s what we’re made for. That’s our purpose,” she said. “But they won’t let us do that. Now they want us to do this and…and maybe we don’t have to like killing always, but some people…deserve it. Some people deserve to die. Takers. People like Roaki, people like them.”

She didn’t need to point it out. That cliff in the distance was still bare.

“They’re monsters. They’ll hurt us, they’ll hurt the people we love. And they’ll like it. Killing them…we’re doing the right thing. We’re helping. That’s why we should like it. If we don’t like killing monsters, then…what’s the point?”

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia didn’t hesitate. “Of course,” she said, nodding into Quinn’s shoulder. “I’ll stay right here all night. And tomorrow, I’ll walk with you all the way to the Savior.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. She would stay with Quinn, she’d stay with her as long as she could, as close to the start of the duel as possible.

Then she was taking the elevator up to the Aerie, and she was getting into Dragon.

She couldn’t tell that to Quinn, though. She couldn’t tell it to anyone, not even Besca. Getting up there would an ordeal all on its own, as would talking her way into the cockpit. But she was determined now, and more with every passing second, that she was not going to let Roaki kill Quinn. She was not going to lose her sister.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” she said. “Someone was awful to you—that’s not your fault. It isn’t. Everything she said to you, you just ignore it. Ignore it, because it was all nonsense. None of that is gonna happen—not to me, not to you.

“I won’t let it.”

---

---

Sleep came much more quickly to Quinn than she might have expected, as if it had been waiting for her. As soon as she shut her eye, it came for her, wrapped her in its gentle embrace, and then she sank.

The boat was still.

When Quinn opened her eye, the sky was dark, and this time the lake reflected the moon and not the sun. Its image was imperfect—a crescent where the one above was full—but a step closer to real than before. The water, however, was still pitch black.

Distantly, on the forested shore, she could see the umbral form of her Savior sat down, with its legs mostly submerged in the water. Beside it, the white, skull-faced deer lay resting.

“How dare she,” said Quinnlash, standing on the edge of the boat, peering angrily out at the water. There were no familiar shadows around. Tonight, it was just the two of them. “How dare she threaten us? Threaten our friends? A taker, Quinn, that’s what she is. A mangy dog, and a taker.

Quinnlash turned to her. For the briefest instant her hair seemed brighter, almost as white as the deer’s fur, but it must have been a trick of the moonlight, because in that same moment it was oaken again. She stared hard at Quinn, incensed—not at her, but incensed nonetheless.

“She doesn’t get to hurt us. She doesn’t get to kill us. And she does not get to say awful things about our family. Our real family,” she spat. Her eyes softened, barely, and just for a moment. Then they were sharp as knives again. “She dies tomorrow, not us.”

Amygdala Circuit

Besca caught it early, like she’d glimpsed Quinn’s mind the moment before she broke, and grabbed hold of her. She felt the tears on her shoulder, saw the looks of the few brass and the Board’s dumbstruck representatives. They pulled out their phones, dialed with unmasked and quickly-growing panic. Part of her was glad—they were about to tell the Board exactly what she had tried to tell them before, that this was a mistake. Part of her wished she could stick around to hear the shrill screams from the speakers, too.

The rest of her wanted to get Quinn away.

“Come on, come on, let’s go. I got you,” she whispered, walking her hastily to the exit. They made it out just as the sobs started, and Quinn’s jellied legs nearly brought them both to the dirt. Dahlia came to her other side, helped how she could.

“It’s alright,” she tried, but must have realized how shaky her voice was, and went quiet.

They got back into the pavilion and all eyes whirled on them. Besca let Dahlia guide Quinn to the small, sectioned-off bunks as Toussaint came running over.

“What the hell happened? Is she okay?”

“No she isn’t okay!” Besca snapped. “She’s fighting a deathmatch tomorrow, and she only drew her weapon for the first time last week!”

A look of shock came over Toussaint’s face, and Besca found it absolutely enraging. “Don’t you dare. This is your fault, Jaime.”

“My fault?” he spat, incredulous. “You’re the one who insisted RISC couldn’t afford to pay restitutions for Magnifique! You’re the one who told me to find another way to keep our countries from splitting!”

“Which I expected you could do without getting duped by your own people! Or do you think Casoban plans to pass up on Eusero after we get trounced here? I’d think you did this on purpose if I didn’t know you were an idiot!”

Toussaint’s face screwed up in fury, but Besca only stepped closer.

“I want you to send a message to your PM, Jaime. I want you to tell him that if he gets what he wants, and Casoban partners with Eusero, and RISC leaves here without Quinnlash Loughvein, that we’re not allies anymore.” She leaned down, so close she could feel his breath shallow. “I want you to ask him if this deal is worth every Savior you’ve got—because I promise you Dahlia isn’t gonna be satisfied until she’s mulched every last one of them. And neither will I.”

---

---

Dahlia had squared Quinn, sitting with her on one of the bunks. She hugged the girl tightly, mind racing. She should have been like this—broken, sobbing, dreading the fact that she was about to lose Quinn to something so absurd.

But instead she was angry. Afraid, but also furious. Indignant. No, no she would not lose Quinn. She couldn’t. Besca had been so adamant about the consequences of interfering but faced with the alternative, she was prepared to cut down every pilot and Savior on Illun if it meant keeping her sister safe.

“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s okay. Quinn. It’s okay—I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Look at me,” she gently nudged the girl’s face up. “Whatever happens tomorrow, I’m not letting her kill you. I…I might have been too slow at Hovvi. I won’t be this time.”

Amygdala Circuit

There was movement instantly, and the screeching of chairs being thrown back as every person in the Parlay collectively stood from their meals. No one said anything—only the barest gasp from Dahlia—as Quinn’s hand came to rest on the glass, and she hissed her threat through it.

For a moment nothing happened. Roaki had clutched the table tight when Quinn lunged, and her eyes had gone wide, but she’d not flinched, or reacted. Herr Donner seemed pleased in his unemotive way, cocking a brow at Besca. He cleared his throat to say something, perhaps the ease the tension, or condescend, or likely both.

Then Roaki stood and threw her table over, splattering what was left of her meal against the divide before she lunged forward and slammed her own hand to the glass, right against Quinn’s, with a dense warble. The impassive stare had left her. She grinned madly, her wide eyes held all the composure of a rabid animal.

That fire in Quinn’s veins flared at an alien stoking. A strong and sickeningly pure urge to Fight was thrust upon her. Fight, Quinn. Kill her now rightnowrightnow and it would not let up as long as their eyes met.

“Do it! Come on!” she shouted, forehead pressed to the glass, staring up at her. “I’m gonna kill you—I’m gonna rip you apart, do you hear me? Slowly. Piece by piece. I’m gonna make them listen to you die” Her fingers curled against the glass, like she was trying to claw into it. Blood mixed crudely with the drool on her lips. “And then I am gonna come for them. I’m gonna start with that one, right there, and I’m just gonna keep going.”

This dog needs to be put down came a cry from within her. They all do.

Herr Donner grimaced, marched over. He took hold of Roaki by the collar and pulled her away from the glass. She made motions to shake him off, but even she didn’t think to strike someone like him.

“I believe the meal is over,” he said, and began to lead her away.

“I’ll kill every last one of them!” Roaki roared, still pulling, still fighting to get back to the glass, to Quinn. “And you know what’s sad? You won’t even be alive to thank me—!”

The door shut, and as the rest of the Helburkans began to clean up, Herr Donner’s words seemed to be true. The meal was over.

Dahlia hurried over to Quinn, Besca not far behind.

“I—I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Me neither. House Tormont has a reputation for brutality but good god, that’s not normal.” She stroked a hand through Quinn’s hair, brow furrowing at how tense she seemed.”"Hey, hun. Don’t let her get to you. She might be loud, but she’s almost as new to this as you are.”

Dahlia took Quinn’s hand, the one she’d nearly smashed into the glass. “I should’ve stepped in. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Amygdala Circuit

Roaki blinked at her, and for a brief, triumphant moment she seemed almost confused by Quinn’s sudden turn towards courage. It was clear she’d expected a glass child, already cracked, to shatter at the first few harsh words. As much as she proclaimed to dislike the ceremony, Roaki was still Helburkan, and intimidation was still their strategy.

Then the moment passed. There was a flame behind Roaki’s eyes that stilled, momentarily, and as Quinn stared at her, there was…well, it wasn’t respect, in the same way she hadn’t been amused before. It was interest, again.

“S’not up to you,” she said, as dryly as she might describe the weather. “You all think it is, but it’s not. Not anymore.”

Her gaze drifted to where Quinn’s had lingered a moment before. To Dahlia. Her tongue clicked, lip curling over a bloody canine. The older pilot was still watching Quinn, and with every moment that passed, it seemed to aggravate Roaki more.

Her voice turned from dry to cold. “Got family?” she asked. “Friends? That your little buddy, over there?”

Amygdala Circuit

Something within Quinn raged at her withering anger. So close, it was there at the surface, tingling in her fingers like it meant to ball them into a fist for her. It tells her she was right, that she should hate this girl, this Helburkan dog who would dismiss her so easily. Roaki Tormont didn't know who she was speaking to, if she did she would have thrown herself to the ground and begged Quinn for mercy. Too late. Too late for that.

But it sank again, perhaps on its own, or perhaps the grief pushed it down.

Roaki continued to eat, a glint in her eye at the mention of Hovvi’s destruction. It wasn’t amusement, per se, but there was definite interest. She hadn’t bitten the hook, but she’d nibbled the bait.

“That blows,” she said. “People made it sound like you guys were untouchable. Guess not. Wonder what they’ll do once you’re dead, if, y’know, another one pops up.”

She dropped the meat back down onto her plate and took up a mug of something dark and frothy. Holding it to her lips and throwing her head back, she didn’t stop drinking until it was gone. From the grimace that followed, it must not have tasted particularly good.

“That how you lost your eye? One of the little fuckers get you?”

Amygdala Circuit

Eyes fell upon the two pilots, in their corner tables, and briefly the Parlay quieted. Besca watched, tight-lipped and intent, but stayed where she was. Dahlia’s leg bounced anxiously, and like Quinn she hadn’t touched her meal, either—something that had not gone unnoticed by the Helburkans. Whether this was to be taken as a grievous offense, or a sign that their message was having its exact intended effect, was unclear.

Roaki seemed annoyed by the silence. She held her fork like a dagger, slammed it down onto the meat hard enough for the metal to screech and the table to shake. The Helburkan side quickly resumed their own meals, and though she shot murderous glances to the Runans who continued staring, she eventually returned to her food.

“Hate this shit, hate waiting,” she grumbled, and having skewered the entire cut of boar through, she lifted it up and bit out a chunk. “Do it back home, too. Waste of fuckin’ time. Why the fuck do they want us to eat together? Look at you, you’re already scared shitless, so, what? Am I supposed to scare the shit back into you? Stupid.”

She barely looked at Quinn then, gray eyes focused down on her plate. Her cut was rare, almost bright red, but she managed to chew through it like wax. Blood and juice dribbled down her chin, stained her shirt. She didn’t seem to care.

“So why the fuck is Runa here? Didn’t you guys just get mulched?”

Amygdala Circuit

---

---

Aerie Station was split for the first few days.

On one side, engineering, the analysts, even medical, were utterly ablaze with confusion and excitement. The nascent, eerie rumors that had begun to surround Quinn since her first connection began burgeoning into a local mythos. From her astounding phasing speed, to the inexplicable refusal of her Savior’s eye—and it’s eye only—to heal, to now her pulling a weapon that every last soul on board was intimately and frightfully familiar with.

Coincidence was a strange and unwelcome guest that most who worked in Savior programs refused to entertain. Theories abounded that could have found comfortable homes in movies and chip-novels, and Besca made a concerted effort to quash them, and, failing that, to keep them away from Quinn.

On the other side was Dahlia.

The girl’s immediate reaction to Quinn’s drawing was to race back to the dorms and violently hurl sake-saffron into the toilet. By the time Quinn was finished with her medical evaluation and made it back to the dorms, her sister had migrated from the bathroom to a door she’d managed to keep shut for nearly two weeks: Safie’s room. There, she barricaded herself in blankets that muffled her sobbing.

“I can’t, she’d said in the moments she had the will to speak. “I can’t—it can’t be real. It can’t.”

It was days before she was able to look Quinn in the eyes. She apologized profusely, promised it wasn’t her and that this didn’t change the way she felt about her. But there was an air of unease about her after that, and every time the unnamed Savior came up, Dahlia would wilt, her fingers would twitch, and she’d find the earliest excuse to leave the conversation.

Eventually, one night, Quinn cornered her gently and finally got a straight-forward answer from her.

“Those things, they killed my friends, my dad. They destroyed my home,” she’d said, and every word seemed to break her further. “And now I don’t just have to watch them kill again—I have to want them to. I have to hope for it. And I do. Quinn, there isn’t anything in this world more important to me right now than you winning this—and I hate it.”

There hadn’t been time for much else. Quinn had been running herself into the ground; eat, sim, sleep. Eat, sim, sleep. Her sessions drew crowds from every department onboard, but the one who followed her closest was Besca. If she had been shaken by the cannon’s presence, she didn’t show it. She showed nothing that week but fretful support. She prepped Quinn’s meals, regulated her sleep schedule, monitored her sims. There wasn’t enough time for the tech team to put together a reliable model of Blotklau for her to train against, but she seemed to spend most of her time familiarizing herself with her weapon anyway.

As for her opponent, the dossier Quinn received was barebones. There wasn’t even a picture.

Designation: Blotklau
Weapons: Twin Axes
Pilot: Roaki Tormont
Age: 15
Phasing Speed: N/A

Footage was scarce as well. Blotklau was an old and storied Savior in Helburke, but Roaki only had two duels to her name as its pilot. One had occurred three months ago, the same day she’d become a pilot, and the second was last week, where she had been paired with another Helburkan Savior against the Casobani pair of Enavant and Spectre. Her partner had been felled early, and yet, despite being outnumbered, Roaki had managed to kill both of her opponents. Enavant rarely fought duels, but Spectre had a rather impressive record.

Most of the crew who watched that duel found their appetites withered. Blotklau didn’t fight like a person. She didn’t fight like a Modir. She fought like an animal. Sprinting, pouncing, howling; she ripped and tore and when her axes were buried too deeply in the other Saviors’ flesh she bit and ripped and spit hunks of ichor-drenched flesh and modium.

In both duels her opponents had been utterly mulched. All that remained were the heads—the sole sign that she obeyed some law of humanity. Killing pilots was the standard in duels, but destroying Saviors? It wasn’t forbidden, but it was heavily discouraged, and often led to compensation that outweighed whatever victory had been achieved in the first place.

The fog of focus surrounding Quinn’s mind was thick, but when she looked at that footage, when she thought about facing Blotklau, there were spikes. A seething. A hunger. They never sank deep, but they never stopped, either.

Too soon, Quinn’s week was over.

---

---

They never saw whatever stretch of land had prompted the duel. Aerie Station hovered over Casoban, and its elevator took Quinn, her Savior, and a retinue of crew and soldiers down wide, reaching plain of hills, halved by a jagged spine of mountains. On the very outskirts, behind a topographical bulwark, was the Parlay: a building nestled between the two camps, within which both parties were expected to meet to discuss terms and observe the duels together. Most often, it was used as a means for the pilots to interact before the battle began.

They arrived with a day to spare, and by the time they had set up their own camp is was afternoon. Helburke’s own station was gone, off to monitor its homeland until the business was done. Its camp was small, and comprised of only a few squat, utilitarian shacks, while RISC set up its array of stations under the umbrella of a single, sectioned pavilion supplied by Casoban.

Behind Helburke’s camp, Blotklau stood. Dark, gangly, menacing. They had positioned it to stare directly at the Runans, head tilted, jaw slacked hungrily. Its body still glistened with ichor.

Only a handful of Casobani remained. Toussaint was among them—a short, balding man perhaps ten years Besca’s senior. He wore a monocle over one eye, the other was cybernetic in a much more pronounced way than Dahlia’s.

Besca met him at the door to their camp, and it took every fiber of her being not to grab him by his collar and slam her forehead into his nose. He started to speak, and she looked him sharply.

“Shut the fuck up, she said, after making sure Quinn wasn’t close enough to hear her swear. “Just shut the fuck up.”

Dahlia rode down with Quinn, and though she didn’t look up at the unnamed Savior, she had softened more. She stood close to her, held her hand tightly when Blotklau came into view. She whispered, “It’s going to be okay,” and didn’t know if it was meant for Quinn or herself.

Inside the pavilion, Besca was waiting for them. “Get settled in best you can. Helburke’s invited us to dinner in the Parlay. Tradition. Just the duelists and the brass, and you, Deelie, if you want. We should go, I think. Chance to gather any last-minute information.”

It didn’t seem like there was much of an option.

As noon waned into evening, the small group of RISC’s command departed for the Parlay. Music carried on the sunset sky, low and foreboding. Thick strings and heavy drums. It came from the Helburkan camp.

“What is that?” someone asked.

Besca’s lips pursed, but Dahlia answered.

“It’s a funeral dirge,” she said, cold memory in her eyes. “They play it at every duel. It’s for us.”

The Parlay was low and round, and had only one entrance on either side, guarded by their respective soldiers. Inside, the massive room was split right down the middle by a pane of glass, and on either end were a mirrored arrangement of tables. Some were distant, others were pressed right up to the divide. There were slots on the far walls, each with a door on either side through which things could be passed only if both were open.

On Helburke’s side, there were already people there. A dozen or so, all dressed in sharp, militaristic uniforms of toughened leather and dark cloth. On their shoulders were patches bearing the insignia of House Tormont—a wolf in a woodprint style, biting the end of its own tail like a lupine ouroboros—save for the most prominent figure.

He was a man nearing middle years, with a face made of hard lines and deep shadows. His eyes rested in pits beneath a stern brow, and he seemed to have the measure of every last one of the Runans before they’d taken three steps inside. He wore the same dark, militaristic uniform, only without the patch. In its place was the Helburkan flag—a star rising from the belly of a mountain.

This man Quinn would know from her debriefing as Karle Donner, one of the Crown’s officials. For Helburke, while the decision to demand a duel was often left at the discretion the Great Houses, international diplomacy necessitated royal representation. The House could have or lose its honor, but nothing happened beyond the eyes and ears of the Crown. When it came to negotiations, the lords could make their suggestions, could write their terms—but it was Karle Donner who did the talking.

“Commander Darroh,” he said. Though the glass could likely have taken the brunt of an explosion without issue, it didn’t stifle is voice in the slightest. They might as well have been talking outside. “It’s been some time.”

“Not long enough, Herr Donner,” she said, and with a nod her group dispersed to the tables. “Don’t suppose you asked us here to break bread and talk peace?”

Herr Donner didn’t seem capable of smiling, but his lips twitched as if they meant to try. “Peace is an illusion, commander. We asked you here for Henkersmahl, as honor compels. You are free to eat, and you are free to speak—but this is a night for acceptance.”

She huffed, glad she hadn’t ruined her palette with a smoke. “You know, all the doom and gloom of someone serving you a ‘last meal’ sorta wears off once you’ve had two or three.”

“For you,” he said, and his stony gaze flicked to Quinn. “Perhaps your new duelist will feel differently.”

Besca scowled. They walked away from the glass, and the door on Helburke’s side opened up. A handful of soldiers entered carrying a pair of massive trays, which they laid down upon a table and uncovered. Steam flooded the air, and the smell of cooked meat permeated both sides of the Parlay. Roasted boar browned and glistening with honey glaze, laid upon a bed of vinegared greens and thickly sliced potatoes.

They began to carve servings off onto plates, which went one at a time to the Helburkan side, and then to the Runan’s through the slots. There was a time Besca would have refused, or had the food tested for poisons, but over time she’d come to understand Helburkan traditions. The truth was, there wasn’t a single place on Illun they were less likely to die than at a Henkersmahl before a duel. Sabotage was dishonorable, and weak, and as such had no place here. The meal was a blunt message free of nuance—‘we’ll send you to your maker with a full stomach.’

As the last of the plates were sent out, and Quinn settled at a table by the glass, Helburke’s door opened again. This time only one figure entered.

She was a silhouette in the light, slight and short, and moving slowly, almost limping. The door shut behind her, revealed her to be a girl who couldn’t have been Quinn’s age. She looked odd, eerie. Her skin was blanch-white, as if all the color had been bled out of her, and the same was true of her hair, which fell wild and messy down to the small of her back. Even her eyes were a soft, dun silver. The left side of her face bore erratic gray marring, almost like burn-scars, but inexplicably different.

She was dressed plainly; a dark shirt with short sleeves, a jacket tied ‘round her waist that trailed to her ankles. The bottom layer of a pilot’s suit stuck up from her collar, worn underneath as if to be ready at a moment’s notice.

Her left arm was gone below the shoulder. Her left leg was missing at the knee, where a roughshod, wooden prosthetic kept her upright.

No one seemed to notice her, or those who did, didn’t seem to care. Nor did she. Her eyes found Quinn instantly, and Quinn’s eye hers.

Taking a plate, she walked unevenly, unused to the wooden leg, and sat down at the table directly across from Quinn’s at the divide. She made no move to eat, only stared hard at her, like it was her the Helburkans had cooked and served as a last meal.

A sneer split her lips, flashing too-sharp teeth.

“So,” said Roaki Tormont. “I guess you're next.”