Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(40)

Phoenix materializes from the chute, glistening with beads of water and hovering above the muck. Its glowing red eyes lend an even more sinister ambience to the composting tank.

“What is that thing?” Cherno asks.

“It’s my mechadome.”

“What’s a mechadome?”

“A robot assistant.”

“It appears the furthest thing from helpful.”

“It was designed to clean up sewage.”

“Why would you have an assistant that—”

“I’ll explain later. We have to go, before this tank fills up and we drown in peels.”

Cherno turns and splashes around the perimeter until he finds a hatch. Using his considerable strength, he ratchets the lever open. A gasp of putrid air belches from the tank. Cherno shoves the door wider. Water flows out, taking me with it. I spill onto the floor of a huge underground warehouse. Heavy equipment and rows of similar composting tanks go on for as far as I can see. Water from the hatch washes into a grate in the floor. Cherno takes Ransom from me and heaves the technician’s limp body onto his shoulder.

Phoenix hovers at my side and reaches its claw hand to take mine. The scrolling words Follow me show in Phoenix’s red glare.

“My mechadome wants us to follow it.”

“Do you trust it?” Cherno asks.

“It will lead us out of here,” I reply.

It’s not what Cherno asked. The real answer is that I don’t trust Reykin, so by extension, I don’t trust Phoenix. He must believe that I’m his enemy. That breaks my heart. I choke back my desire to sob. As circumstances dictate, though, Reykin’s still the best shot we have of getting out of here, but only because Cherno and I have Ransom. Reykin won’t kill us until his brother’s safe. Even knowing this, my heart wants to follow Phoenix with its every ragged beat, even when my head knows my hope is misplaced.

My limping gait’s less pronounced than it was a few minutes ago. I allow the short bot to guide me away from the warehouse. We enter the mouth of an arching tunnel made of stone. Few zeroborns occupy this part of the Sword Palace. Instead it’s awash with automated security checkpoints, camera drones, and roaming maginots. Reykin must have infiltrated the Sword Palace systems, because doors unlock and slide open for us when we approach.

All the hairs on my nape rise when I hear the sharp tap of metal claws against the damp stone floor. A ferocious howl pierces the air of the tunnel, echoing. My breath catches. A maginot model I don’t recognize emerges from the shadows ahead. Steely blue eyes from the redesigned wolfhound home in on me. Nothing about it can be described as “cuddly.” It’s pure metal. The shape of its muzzle resembles the former model, but it’s not designed to look like a real animal. It’s hairless—a cold, robotic frame.

Its ears prick back. Spiky metal hackles rise on its neck and withers. The killing machine snaps its jaws open and closed a few times before it throws its steel nose in the air, sniffing our strange scents. It charges toward us.

Phoenix levels its cannon arm at the maginot’s shiny veneer and emits a powerful pulse from the barrel. It strikes the maginot and electrocutes it, scrambling its circuits. The gigantic wolfhound glitches several times before tumbling onto its side. Phoenix tugs me forward. We creep past the shorted-out maginot.

Other mechanical sentinels suffer the same fate when we encounter them in the winding passageways. The drone cameras are different, though. It’s like they don’t even see us. Reykin must be controlling them, too. I gave him access to Sword industrial systems when I uploaded his virus into my favorite maginot. He can hack into everything in this city now, maybe even all of Swords.

Distant thumps and whirls break the silence now and again the farther away we get from the Sword residences. Automated machines and mechanical drones go about their work, and the air grows damper and cooler with each step. The fabric of my tattered uniform dries, but my core temperature doesn’t improve all that much. I shiver and my teeth chatter.

To distract myself from how wretched I feel, I ask Cherno, “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” His scaly eyebrow arches. “You look like the god I knew, but you don’t act like her.”

“Who do you think I am?”

“You’re Roselle—Torturer of Men, Destroyer of Dragons, Harbinger of Death.”

I snort with derision. “I’m not that Roselle. I’m Roselle St. Sismode. Secondborn Sword—now a firstborn heir to a Fate that no longer exists. The fatedom died with my mother.”

“Your mother was unworthy of power, like you used to be. If you were still a narcissistic tyrant, I would annihilate you.”

“How do you know what I’m like? You don’t know me.”

He snorts, and smoke plumes from his nostrils. “I watched you kill yourself to stop Crow—saw you rise from the dead, curl up next to your enemy, and weep for his demise.”

I hold back fresh tears. “Hawthorne wasn’t my enemy. He was my best friend, and I killed him.”

“You did what had to be done. Our only regret should be that it didn’t work. You were too late to drown the monster in an abyss. Like you and me, Crow has many lives now.”

“Many lives, what does that even mean?”

“You drowned . . . and yet here you are asking me questions and denying that you’re a god.”