Dancer pulls up some of the holos, so I see blurry images of what look like large prisons in the desert and forest. They zoom in on lowColors disembarking transports at gunpoint and filing into the concrete structures. It switches to a view of rubble-strewn streets. Men with masks and Red armbands firing over the smoking remains of city trams. A Gold lands among them. The image cuts out.

“We been hitting them hard as we can,” Sevro says. “Gotten some hardcore business done. Stole a dozen ships, two destroyers. Demolished the Thermic Command Center…”

“And now they’re rebuilding it,” Dancer says.

“Then we’ll destroy it again,” Sevro snaps.

“When we can’t even hold a city?”

“These Reds are not warriors.” Ragnar interrupts the two. “They can fly ships. Shoot guns. Lay bombs. Fight Grays. But when a Gold arrives, they melt away.”

A deep silence follows his words. The Sons of Ares are guerilla fighters. Saboteurs. Spies. But in this war, Lorn’s words haunt me. “How do sheep kill a lion? By drowning him in blood.”

“Every civilian death on Mars is blamed on us,” Theodora says eventually. “We kill two in a bombing of a munitions manufacturing plant, they say we killed a thousand. Every strike or demonstration, Society agents infiltrate the crowd masquerading as demonstrators to shoot at Gray officers or detonate suicide vests. Those images are dispersed to the media circus. And when the cameras are off, Grays break into homes and make sympathizers disappear. MidColors. LowColor. Doesn’t matter. They contain the dissent. In the north, like Sevro said, it’s open rebellion.”

“A faction called Red Legion is massacring every highColor they find,” Dancer says darkly. “Old friend of ours has joined their leadership. Harmony.”

“Fitting.”

“She’s poisoned them against us. They won’t take our orders, and we’ve stopped sending them weapons. We’re losing our moral high ground.”

“The man with voice and violence controls the world,” I murmur.

“Arcos?” Theodora asks. I nod. “If only he were here.”

“I’m not sure he’d help us.”

“Lamentably, it seems as if voice doesn’t exist without violence,” the Pink says. She folds a leg over the other. “The greatest weapon a rebellion has is its spiritus. The spirit of change. That little seed that finds a hope in the mind and flourishes and spreads. But the ability to plant that idea, and even the idea itself has been taken from us. The message stolen. We are voiceless.”

When she speaks, the others listen. Not to humor her like Golds would, but as if her position was nearly equal to Dancer’s.

“None of this makes any sense,” I say. “What sparked open war? The Jackal didn’t publicize killing Fitchner. He would have wanted it quiet as he purged the Sons. What was the catalyst? And also, you say we’re voiceless. But Fitchner had a communication network that could broadcast to the mines, to anywhere. He pushed Eo’s death to the masses. Made her the face of the Rising. Did the Jackal take it out?” I look around at their concerned faces. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“You didn’t tell him already?” Sevro asks. “The hell were you doing when I was gone, picking your asses?”

“Darrow wanted to be with his family,” Dancer says sharply. He turns to me with a sigh. “Much of our digital network was destroyed during the Jackal’s purges in the month after Ares was killed and you were captured. Sevro was able to warn us before the Jackal’s men hit our base in Agea. We went to ground, saved materiel, but lost massive amounts of manpower. Thousands of Sons. Trained operators. The next three months we spent trying to find you. We hijacked a transport going to Luna, but you weren’t on it. We searched the prisons. Issued bribes. But you’d disappeared, like you never existed. And then the Jackal executed you on the steps of the citadel in Agea.”

“I know all this.”

“Well, what you don’t know is what Sevro did next.”

I look to my friend. “What did you do?”

“What I had to.” He takes control of the hologram and wipes Jupiter away, replacing it with me. Sixteen years old. Scrawny and pale and naked on a table as Mickey stands over me with his buzzsaw. A chill trickles down my spine. But it’s not even my spine. Not really. It belongs to these people. To the revolution. I feel…used as I realize what he’s done.

“You released it.”

“Damn right,” Sevro says nastily, and I feel all their eyes settling on me, now understanding why my blade is painted on the roofs of Tinos’s refugees. They all know I was once a Red. They know one of their own conquered Mars in an Iron Rain.

I started the war.

“I released your Carving to every mine. To every holoSite. To every millimeter of this bloodydamn Society. The Golds thought they could kill you off. That they could beat you and make your death mean nothing. I’ll be damned if I’d let that happen.” He thumps his hand on a table. “Damned if I’d let you disappear facelessly into the machine like my mother. There’s not a Red on Mars that doesn’t know your name, Reap. Not a single person in the digital world who doesn’t know that a Red rose to become a prince of the Golds, to conquer Mars. I made you a myth. And now that you’re back from the dead, you’re not just a martyr. You’re the bloodydamn messiah the Reds have been waiting for their entire lives.”

I sit with my legs dangling off the edge of the hangar, watching the city beneath teem with life. The clamor of a thousand hushed voices rises to me like a sea of leaves brushing together. The refugees know I’m alive. SlingBlades have been painted on walls. On roofs. The desperate silent cry of a lost people. For six years I’ve wanted to be back among them. But looking down, seeing their plight, remembering Kieran’s words, I feel myself drowning in their hope.

They expect too much.

They don’t understand that we can’t win this war. Ares even knew we could never go toe-to-toe with Gold. So how am I supposed to lift them up? To show them the way?

I’m afraid, not just that I can’t give them what they want. But that by releasing the truth, Sevro’s burned the boat behind us. There’s no going back for us.

So what does that mean for my family? For my friends and these people? I felt so overwhelmed by these questions, by Sevro’s use of my Carving, that I stormed out without a word. It was petulant.