Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(37)

I lick the blood off my lip and smile. “Can’t wait,” I reply confidently, but inside I’m quaking with fear.

Kipson Crow places a gentle arm around Fake Flannigan’s shoulders and leads her away from the balcony. She casts a look over her shoulder at me before she exits the ballroom.

Sad eyes. She has very sad eyes.

Cherno, still unconscious, gets dragged away by a few well-built cyborg soldiers. Several more force me to move, too. At the junction that leads to my former wing of the estate, a mechadome with a black metal veneer idles in the shadow of the wide hallway. Its red eyes glow from an iron head fitted atop a nearly neckless Class 5Z Mechanized Sanitation Unit. I’m dragged past the squat bot and stumble into an adjacent corridor.

At the top of my lungs I yell, “Census is dead! It’s just Crow! Only Crow! Ransom, the Sword Palace! Ransom, the Sword Palace! Phoenix, relay my message!”





Chapter 8

Phoenix to Flame

I moan and try to lift my cheek from a pool of my own vomit.

“I didn’t hit you that hard,” Kipson Crow taunts, standing over me. “Aren’t you supposed to be a prodigious fighter, Roselle?”

I spit blood onto the stone floor of a square, dim cell in the Sword Palace detention center. “Aren’t you supposed to be killing Census agents in Virtues with Fake Flannigan?” I ask, to buy myself some time. I lift my face. It’s not Agent Crow’s body that I glare at through my swollen, half-closed eyelids. The soldier who struck me looks nothing like Kipson. He has a goatish face—creepy eyes that angle in odd directions, an elongated jaw with an underbite, and garishly crooked teeth. His torso is brutish, and his fists are bludgeoning tools.

“Oh, I am with her. We’re just now arriving in Virtues. It’s only that I have a theory, and I’m curious to see if it bears out.”

I shudder at his ability to be two places at once. “I have a theory, too.” I wince, resting my hand on my broken ribs. “My theory is that you’re insane.” I take a shallow breath before I add, “I don’t need to test it any further. You’ve already proven it.”

“Why do you try to be funny, Roselle?” the soldier asks me in the exact timbre of Agent Crow’s voice. He’s not looking at me, though, I don’t think. It’s hard to tell with his cockeyed leer, but I think he’s looking at the golden glow of the fusionblade in his brutal grip. “Why don’t you ever beg me for your life?”

“Because that would give you power.” I manage to pull myself up to my knees and sit back on my heels.

“But I already have all the power, Roselle.”

“Maybe so, but I didn’t give it to you.”

“Ah, and there it is. The reason of reasons. Are you ready now?”

“For what?” I ask, before gnashing my teeth in pain and hanging my head.

“To die.”

“Yes,” I reply.

The soldier frowns. “You take all the fun out of everything.” With a clumsy thrust of his fusionblade, the soldier stabs the searing point of energy through my chest, piercing my heart. The sizzling scent of burned flesh assails my nostrils. I gasp in pain and collapse. His scuffed boots move away as everything grows dark.



I blink a couple of times. The heavy ache in my chest tempts me to clutch at it. My fingers glide over charred, crusty fabric. The self-healing material of my uniform has failed, unable, it would seem, to stand up to burns from a fusionblade. I cough and taste blood—old blood. The bitter flavor makes me retch, which hurts my chest. The skin is tender and burned over my heart. My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the darkness. I try to sit up, but I’m wooden. I smell bad—extremely bad. It’s a mixture of vomit, blood, and urine. I groan.

A chair leg scrapes against the floor near the wall of the cell. The sound of slow, bootheeled steps and the high-pitched whine of metal chair legs dragging across the floor trigger goose bumps to rise on my flesh.

“You’re alive.” It’s Agent Crow 2.0’s voice—the one I haven’t killed yet, the pretty, younger one—but the sound comes from the goatish soldier with the cockeyed stare and mangled teeth. The goon sets his chair right next to me. He takes a seat, rests his forearms on his knees, and stares down at me.

“So are you,” I reply in a gravelly voice.

“How is that possible?” he asks. “I killed you yesterday.”

“I remember.”

“Look what you’ve done to yourself,” he says.

I smell like death.

“What’ve I done?” I slur.

“You’ve remade yourself.”

“So have you.”

“Not like you.” Jealousy simmers in his tone. “I created a new body—grew it in an accelerator, remapped it. You did none of those things. You regenerated.”

My mind whirls. I try to rise. He doesn’t attempt to stop me. My legs shake like a newborn colt’s. I slump against the wall and rest my cheek on its cool surface. “What now?” I ask.

His eyes dart in a couple of directions. “Now we see how many ways you can die . . . and come back.”

I brace myself with my elbow and swallow past the growing lump in my throat.

The creepy creature rises from his seat and lurches toward me. The fervent expression on his face turns my stomach. I stretch my hand out to ward him off and scream, “Stay away from me!”