Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(97)

The girl pulled Rasovant out of the way and slammed Di against the back of his chair with inhuman force.

So close, it seemed as though her face was a fraction too still, her skin too pale, too smooth—like his. She was like him. “Ana,” she said, “was always a sacrifice.”

He jerked against his restraints. She smiled.

The Adviser stood from his stool, his old joints popping. “Submit him, Mellifare. We could use the body.”

Panic clawed up Di’s throat. “Father!” he cried, the name ripping from his throat, foreign and familiar all at once, as the Adviser left the lab. “Father—wait—please wait—”

“Quiet!” the girl snapped, and in her voice screeched the HIVE’s song—scratching, clawing, loud enough to rattle his insides.

He winced against it, against her, the pain so sharp in his head he could barely think. It was everywhere, screeching. And it was—it was coming from her.

He looked up at her, frightened, seeing his end closer than he ever had on the Tsarina. Her eyes were red like coals, like fire, like suns about to burst. No beginning and no end.

Nothing at all.

“You are the HIVE,” he whispered.

She grinned wider. “Oh, my brother, I will let you in on a secret not even Father knows.” Then she pressed her lips against his ear, and said in a language of hums and whispers—

“I have come from the edges. I have come from the end.”

No, no, no, no—this was not how it was supposed to go. This was not—

The girl forced her hand against his forehead. He tried to twist out of her grip, but the handcuffs held tight. The screeching song of the HIVE grew louder—so loud it rattled his insides like an earthquake. He squeezed his eyes closed.

The HIVE broke the barriers that shielded him and sank its red talons into his code. It felt like his last moment on the Tsarina, the malware sinking into his processors like fangs, seeping its venom into the roots of his system, and pouring its data into his circuits.

But there was a last frantic plea in him, and as the HIVE tore against his code, he saw the breaks between it, as he had in the Tsarina, and it felt like clear blue sky.

He went without a second thought.

The girl gave a cry as he pushed back, threading between her coding like streams of water in a raging fire. The HIVE here was much stronger than the piece of it on the Tsarina, but he did not have to do much.

Into the clear airwaves of the kingdom he sent out one final push through the comms barriers and found the Dossier like a ray of sunshine in endless dark. It was home.

Save Ana, please. You must save—

The red coding tore against him, scraping memories, moments, clean.

“Di? Di! What’s going on?” Siege cried, frantic. He already missed her voice. He just wanted to go home. “Di!”

I am sor—

The girl gripped his hair tightly. “You are mine,” she snarled, and the red of the HIVE sank deep into his memory core, scrambling him, freezing him—and then it broke him, and she forced herself inside.

He thrashed, pulling at his handcuffs. The breach was a pain he had never felt before. It was not real, like from a blade or paper cut. It was deeper. Like everything inside him that made him unique was being sorted by zeroes and ones.

Tearing him. Shredding him.

It went fast, spearing, separating, picking out left from right, programs from memories from stashed protocols. Deleting them. His self from his functions. He was losing himself, piece by piece, gobbled away. His entire life disassembling.

Dying.

The memories burned, hotter and hotter. Searing away. Ana once said that when you died, your life flashed before your eyes. Was this his life? His existence?

No—he refused. He would not die.

“Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Tsarina. Nevaeh. Di. Cerces.” He forced his eyes open, staring at the girl whose smile was hungry and whose gaze was a pit of despair. He repeated the words. He knew them. He knew them so well, saying them to try and keep something. Anything.

“Brother, stop fighting. Did I not say I would fix you?”

“Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Tsarina. Nevaeh. Di. Cerces,” he recited, memorizing them, the curve of their sounds. But they slipped away like sand through his fingers.

Again.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Tsarina. Nevaeh. Di. Cerces.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Nevaeh. Di. Cerces.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Nevaeh. Di.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Jax. Robb. Di.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Robb. Di.

Ana. Dossier. Siege. Di.

Ana. Dossier. Siege.

Ana. Dossier—

Ana.

Ana

A . . .

. . .





V


Iron Heart





Ana


Dawn was fast approaching.

Ana stood out on the balcony, looking over the moon garden. The Iron Shrine, where she would be crowned, looked ominous against the coming light. The moonlilies in the garden closed up, one by one, as pink bled across the sky, eating away the night.

She had seen so many sunrises in the seven years she had just been Ana. Too many for her liking, to be honest. She would watch them with Di from the cockpit, sipping warm tea as she sat on his lap.

“Far above the crown of stars,” Ana had once recited. She had been fourteen, and she had finally seen someone die—it had been an accident, but the face of the man haunted her every time she closed her eyes. Di sat up for hours with her when she couldn’t sleep, watching the screens in the cockpit shift and change. “Do you believe in the story? That a single girl could drive the Dark away?”