“He’s no Gold,” the Jackal explains. “He doesn’t deserve a razor or a state death. He’ll go like his uncle. In any matter, I very much would like to begin the transition as the hand of justice. Plus, offing Darrow with Sevro’s gun is…more poetic, don’t you think, Octavia?”

“Very well. Is there anything else you would like?” the Sovereign asks tiredly.

“No. You’ve been most accommodating.” The Jackal takes Aja’s place beside me as the Sovereign transforms before our eyes. The exhaustion burning away from her face as she adopts the serene, matronly visage I remember telling me: “Obedience. Sacrifice. Prosperity,” time and time again from the HC in Lykos. Then, Octavia seemed a goddess so far beyond mortal ken that I would have given my life to please her, to make her proud of me. Now I’d give my life to end hers.

The Joy Knight nods to the Sovereign. A light glows softly above her, empowering the woman with the fury and warmth of the sun. It’s just a spotlight. The lamp deepens its glow. The Jackal brushes an errant strand from his fastidiously parted hair and smiles fondly at me.

The broadcast begins.

“Men and Women of the Society,” Octavia says. “This is your Sovereign. Since the dawn of man, our saga as a species has been one of tribal warfare. It has been one of trial, one of sacrifice, one of daring to defy nature’s natural limits. Then, after years of toiling in the dirt, we rose to the stars. We bound ourselves in duty. We set aside our own wants, our own hungers to embrace the Hierarchy of Color, not to oppress the many for the glory of the few, as Ares and this…terrorist would have you believe, but to secure the immortality of the human race on principles of order and prosperity. It was an immortality that was assured before this man tried to steal it from us.”

She points a long, elegant finger at me.

“This man, once a noble servant of you, of your families, should have been the brightest son of his Color. He was lifted up as a youth. Awarded merits of honor. But he chose vanity. To extend his own ego across the stars. To become a conqueror. He forgot his duty. He forgot the reason for order and has fallen into darkness, dragging the worlds with him.

“But we will not fall into that darkness. No. We will not bend to the forces of evil.” She touches her heart. “We…we are the Society. We are Gold, Silver, Copper, Blue, White, Orange, Green, Violet, Yellow, Gray, Brown, Pink, Obsidian, and Red. The bonds that bind us together are stronger than the forces that pull us apart. For seven hundred years, Gold has shepherded humanity, brought light where there was dark, plenty where there was famine. Today we bring peace where there is war. But to have peace, we must destroy outright this murderer who has brought war to each and every one of our homes.”

She turns to me with a callousness that reminds me of how she watched my duel with Cassius. How she would have let me die then sipped her wine and been about her dinner. I am a speck to her, even now. She’s thinking past this moment. Past the time where my blood cools on the floor and they drag me off to be dissected.

“Darrow of Lykos, by the power entrusted in me by the Compact, I hereby find you guilty of conspiracy to incite acts of terror.” I stare directly into the holoCam’s optic lens, knowing how many countless souls watch me now. How many countless eyes will watch me long after I have gone. “I find you guilty of mass murder upon the citizens of Mars.” I barely listen to her. My heart thunders in my chest. Rattling the fingers of my left hand. Pushing up into my throat. This is it. The end swarming toward me. “I find you guilty of murder.” This moment, this fragment of time is my life in summary. It is my shout into the void. “And I find you guilty of treason against your Society….”

But I want no shout.

Let that be for Roque. Let that be for the Golds. Give me something more. Something they cannot understand. Give me the rage of my people. The wrath of all people in bondage. As the Sovereign recites her sentence, as the Jackal waits to deliver it, as Mustang kneels on the ground, as Cassius watches me from among the Praetorians and Knights, waiting, and as Aja sees me look to the tall blond knight, she steps forward in trepidation because she knows something is wrong, I throw my head back and I howl.

I howl for my wife, for my father. For Ragnar and Quinn and Pax and Narol. For all the people I’ve lost. For all they would take.

I howl because I am a Helldiver of Lykos. I am the Reaper of Mars. And I have paid for access to this bunker with my flesh, all so I could come before Octavia, all so that I might either die with my friends or see our enemies brought to justice.

The Sovereign nods to the Jackal to execute the sentence. He presses the barrel to the back of my head and he squeezes the trigger. The gun kicks in his hand. Fire spits, scorching my scalp. Deafening sound ringing through my right ear. But I do not fall. No bullet carves through my head. Smoke swirls out of the barrel. And as the Jackal looks down at the gun, he knows.

“No…” He steps away from me, dropping the gun, trying to pull out his razor.

“Octavia…” Aja shouts, lunging forward.

But just then, in that beat of the heart, the Sovereign hears something behind the camera and turns to see a Praetorian guard with his head tilted, his pulseRifle thumping to the floor as a grisly red tongue protrudes from his mouth. Only it’s not a tongue. It’s Cassius’s bloody razor that entered through the back of the Praetorian’s skull and out between his teeth. It disappears back into the mouth. The three guards fall before the Sovereign can say a bloodydamn word. Cassius stands behind the slaughtered men, his head lowered, his razor red, his left hand holding the remote control to my restraints and Mustang’s.

“Bellona?” is all the Sovereign can say before he presses the button. Mustang’s steel vest unbuckles and falls to the ground. Mine follows suit. She dives for a dead Praetorian’s pulseRifle. Unshackled, I rise, jerking my arms free and pulling the knife hidden inside the metal vest. I lunge toward the Sovereign. Faster than she can blink, I jam the blade through her black jacket into the softness of her lower belly. She gasps. Eyes huge. Inches from mine. I smell the coffee on her breath. Feel the flutter of her eyelashes as I stab her six more times in the gut and on the last, rip the metal up toward her sternum. Hot blood pours over my knuckles and chest as she spills open.

“Octavia!” Aja’s charging me. Makes it halfway before Mustang, firing from her knees, shoots her in the armored side with the pulseRifle. The blast lifts Aja off her feet, slapping her across the room into the wooden conference table beside Sevro and Antonia’s bodies, nearly crushing Lysander. Seeing their Sovereign stumbling backward, gut ripped open, the Truth Knight and the Joy Knight both wheel on Cassius, pulling their razors from their hips, their shields thrumming to life. Unarmored, wearing only his blood-spattered prison greens, Cassius flashes forward, skewering the surprised Truth Knight through his eye socket up through the roof of his skull.