“Aja, no!” Lysander yells.

“Quinn!” I shout.

In a flash, Aja lunges forward, quicker than any cat ever born. She grabs Quinn’s hair. Frantically, Quinn brings her razor around to fend the giant woman off. But she’s too slow. Aja slams her head into the ground with her left hand. Punches her temple. Armored fist on bone. Four times before I can even blink. Quinn’s legs kick and twitch and she curls inward like a dying spider, contorting from seizures. Aja backs away, watching me with a smile.

19

Stork

They know I am rash. This is bait. She is the hook. They’ll take Lysander if I bite and attack Aja. They’ll use the split second my razor is away from him to stun or kill me. I hear the weapons primed behind me, so I keep the razor to the little boy’s throat. Tears distort my vision as I float there impotently. I shake my head as the agony wells. I can’t leave her. Reversing my boots, I return to pick her from the ground. But before I can reach her, another Gold flashes past me, descending from above, this one without armor, to scoop her from the ground and bear her aloft.

The Jackal.

I shoot up and away, through the rain into the bay doors and land inside the stork. My boots clank on the metal deck and I kneel, shoving Lysander forward into the bay toward Sevro. The boy sprawls to his knees. Several dozen dripping Augustan stand gawping at me. They turn their eyes to the boy. The Jackal follows, clutching Quinn awkwardly with one arm.

Our ship rises and the doors hiss closed behind us, sealing away the cacophony of wind and engine roar. Roque pushes through the others and stares at me, then his eyes go to the Jackal and Quinn, strength slipping from him with each second. The Jackal sets Quinn gently on the ground and kicks off the ill-fitting gravBoots he borrowed from one of the Howlers.

Roque’s mouth works. No sound comes out. “Is she …,” he murmurs finally.

“Are there any Yellows on board?” the Jackal asks me. I look to Harpy.

I point Harpy toward the main cabins. “Find Mustang. Ask her.”

She sprints off.

“The medkit,” the Jackal snaps, feeling Quinn’s pulse. He checks her pupils. No one moves. “Now!” Roque stumbles up to find it. Pebble rips it off the wall and tosses him the kit. He brings it back to the Jackal. Mind turned to static, I stare down at Quinn as another seizure racks her body and an inhuman sound rattles from her nose and mouth. Roque’s face is bloodless beside me. His hands reach helplessly for the girl he loves, as though his will alone can mend what was broken; but inside he knows he is powerless. He sinks to his knees.

The Jackal opens the medkit and rifles through its contents.

His single hand moves confidently over the devices inside till they find a silver bar no larger than my index finger. He snatches it and activates the device. It hums softly, emitting a faint blue light.

“I need someone’s datapad. Mine was fried in the EMP.” No one moves. “The girl will die. A gorydamn datapad. Now.”

I hand him mine. He doesn’t look up at me, though he pauses a second when he sees my distinctive hands.

“Thank you for the rescue, Reaper,” he says hastily.

“Thank your sister.”

Lysander rises and comes to my side. He watches quietly, no tears in his eyes. Pebble and Clown sit on their heels. No one touches Roque, though they glance at him, hands clutched on knees or razors, whispering whatever prayers to luck Golds whisper.

The Jackal moves the silver magnetic resonance imager over Quinn’s head, watching the hologram on my datapad. He curses.

“What is it?” Roque asks.

The Jackal hesitates. “Her brain is swelling. If we can’t control the pressure, we have a problem.” He fumbles with the medical equipment and unwinds a machine with a transparent cord. “That pressure will deprive the brain of proper blood flow. It will starve itself as the vessels tighten under the swelling.”

“Is she going to die?” I ask.

“Not from swelling,” the Jackal says. “Not if I can drain the fluid and release the pressure as it builds. But we’ll need to get her head tilted so the blood can flow through the neck veins. Keep blood pressure steady. Get her a supply of O2.” He looks up, so thin and wet I’d think him a Red instead of a Gold were it not for the dusty hair. “Pebble, isn’t it? Find her oxygen. A breathing mask will do so long as it doesn’t cover her face past her forehead.”

Pebble slips away.

A fresh seizure contorts Quinn’s body. I look on helplessly and set my hand on Roque’s shoulder. He flinches against the touch at first.

Harpy slides back into the room. “No slagging Yellows.”

“Shit,” Clown swears. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” He kicks the wall.

The Jackal pauses, glances at Roque, then acts. He points to Clown, Harpy, and several Housemembers. “I need someone for each of her arms and her head. She’s going to keep seizing, and for some reason, I suspect this is going to be a bumpy ride. We’re going to move her out of this damn bay and hold her down for the surgery.” He pulls her hair back into a ponytail, asks me to hold it, and pulls a small ionizer from the medkit. He squeezes it with his teeth over his hand, wincing as it destroys bacteria and dry skin follicles. “Clown, get her hair—all of it.”

The Jackal stands and tosses the ionizer to Clown, who bends and is about to scan it over Quinn’s golden hair when Roque takes it from his grasp. He hovers over Quinn, unable to move.

“What’s her name?” the Jackal asks Roque.

“Quinn.”

“Talk to her. Tell her a story.”

Trembling slightly, Roque sniffs and speaks quietly to Quinn. “Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love.…” He toggles the ionizer and moves his hand. It is intimate. Like he’s bathing her. Just the two of them in some far-off place. Long before she told stories by the campfires of the Institute. Long before the horror.

I smell hair burning as the Jackal stands and comes to me.

“What happened down there?” he asks. “Was it a pulseFist?”

I look at him in surprise. “You didn’t see? Aja used her hands.”

“Goryhell.” His jaw tightens. Dull eyes taking in the scene. “How did we come to this?”

“Octavia was set on this path all along,” I say quietly. “Before we even came to Mars, she intended to give the Bellona the ArchGovernorship. The gala was a trap.”