Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(84)

Her stomach twisted. She knew that phrase, echoed to her again and again in the Tsarina. The malware. But this Metal had a memory core. It wasn’t hollow like the ones on the Tsarina. It was HIVE’d. So how had the malware taken over?

“You should have burned,” it repeated in Wylan’s voice, and attacked again. “With us.”

Gripping the tray tightly, she slammed it against the side of its face. The android stumbled sideways, its neck cracked open, hissing with broken fuses. It snapped its head back and turned to face her.

She held the metal tray out like a shield.

The Messier punched through it, hand reaching for her neck.

With a scream, she let go of the tray and scurried back toward the door. It threw the tray—she stumbled—and the tray flew across the room, shattering through one of the windows.

“You should have burned,” it kept repeating, her brothers’ voices. “You should have burned.”

“I did!” she cried. “Can’t you see it? I burned with the rest of this damned place!”

She pressed her back against the melted door.

The Messier fisted its hand and threw a punch. She ducked.

It slammed its fist through the melted door, and with a fierce groan it gave, sending both of them out into the hallway. Ash and dust kicked up in a cloud. She scrambled to her feet, gasping and coughing, but she couldn’t get a deep enough breath. Her head swam.

The Messier got to its feet. Sparks spewed from broken wires in its neck, igniting the dust around them like lightning in a thundercloud.

Oh, how she wished she had her pistol.

The Metal reached out to snag her, but she slipped through its hand and darted away as fast as her dress would let her.

Everything was burned and gray, black scorch marks licking up the sides of the marble, around white outlines of people, she realized, only their skeletons remaining, furniture turned to cinders, tapestries half melted, singed Armorov crests papering the ground.

She had to find someone—anyone. She needed to tell the Grand Duchess or—or Robb!

She tripped on a piece of debris—a charred piece of furniture—but she pushed herself back up and kept running, hoping to find—

A door, sealed shut.

A dead end.

It was a dead end.

She slammed her hands against the sealed door it with a cry of rage.

“You should have burned, Ana. You should have burned with us,” her brothers’ voices taunted.

This was her nightmare, but real. It was the aftermath, the moment just before waking up, when the fire still scorched her skin, when she could still taste the ash, cough from the smoke. Fear rose in the back of her throat.

And from down the corridor, the Metal with red eyes slowly approached. As if it had all the time in the world.

Knowing she couldn’t escape.

Maybe Erik had been right. Di would be alive if she had died in the fire. So would Barger, and Wick, and she wouldn’t have ruined anyone’s lives—

Don’t start thinking that, she urged herself.

The Metal’s footsteps were close now. How would it kill her? Punch a hand through her sternum and rip out her heart, like Di ripped out memory cores? Then let it take her heart. It hurt when she didn’t need it to, it mourned and made her careless.

What she wouldn’t give for a different kind of heart.

Think.

She beat her fists against the sealed door again—and felt it give. Just a bit. Ash flaked out between seams. Seams? It wasn’t melted shut—not like the other door. It’d been opened recently. The keypad—dark beside every other door—glowed red.

The power was still on—why would the power still be on in the abandoned wing of the palace if no one came in here? Unless someone did come into the North Tower. Goddess’s spark—she’d walked right into a trap. Of all the stupid things Siege had told her not to do, one should’ve been Don’t compulsively follow the voices of your dead brothers.

Her ears perked at the sound of broken fuses in the Metal’s neck. Spitting sparks. Hissing. It was a foot away—maybe two.

She hadn’t survived mine raids on Cerces and exploding ships and foul-breathed mercenaries to be taken out by a murderous red-eyed Metal here. Who would be left to remember her family? Who would be left to remember Di?

Then the Metal lunged.

She might have been born of Ironbloods, but she was a child of distant starships and buried treasure, and if a Metal thought it could kill her that easily, it was mistaken.

She sidestepped, spinning away as the android brushed past her, slamming its hand into the sealed door.

Before it could pry its hand out, she grabbed a handful of the broken, exposed wires in its neck and pulled.

The Messier jerked, trying to reach for her, but she wrapped the wires around her hand and wrenched them out. Sparks hissed from its neck, burning the tips of her fingers, but she didn’t let go until the lights in its eyes dimmed and it toppled to the floor.

“That was for Di,” she rasped, and sank down to her knees beside it.

She wasn’t sure she could stand at the moment. That had been too close. A Messier with the malware, here. After everything that had happened, she knew—the malware had been here the night the tower burned.

But Ana remembered that evening now—there were no Metals. Her mother had tucked her in to sleep while her father read her and Tobias a bedtime story. Before he could finish, he was called away . . . but not by Mercer Valerio.