“You think no one will believe me? You’ve spent your entire life proving me right.”
He pulls back, and laughs. “Face it, son. You were never going to die a hero. You were built to die a message. And by the time I’m done, your ashes will be the foundation of the new world. Polished. Controlled. Efficient. Everything you never were.”
I lift my head. My body’s failing. Blood streaming in rivers down my arms, pooling beneath my spine.
“I’m not your fucking son.”
His smile tightens. “No. You’re worse. You’re my biggest regret.”
The heavy steel door groans open. I hear him bark to his men,
“Give him another injection and bring him to the Ceremony Hall. I don’t have all damn night.” The door slams shut.
Footsteps approach and two men in black tactical gear enter.
“Fucking traitors,” I snarl. Or try to.
They grab the chains and drag me forward. My arms scream. My knees catch on the floor. Every jagged movement sends fire through my shoulder. Blood paints a slick path behind me.
I don’t know how I’m still bleeding.
How there’s still anything left to lose.
I try to lift my head. But the world won’t stay still. It rolls. Tilts. Fades in and out in flashes of light and memory and blood.
A needle stabs into my thigh, and liquid fire rushes through my veins. The adrenaline hits wrong. My heart seizes. My chest jerks like I’ve been defibrillated. Muscles twitch uncontrollably.
“FUUUUCK!” I roar as every nerve misfires at once.
They drag me through the double doors into the Ceremony Hall—the place where recruits kneel to take their oath and traitors are dragged to be judged and executed. One of the oldest Sovereign buildings in the South, built on the buried ruins of the original Vault back when the Section was nothing but a fucking hole in the ground.
Fucking fitting Sterling would drag me here. He’d want his new world to begin on the bones of the old one. The perfect stage. The perfect birthplace. The perfect place to kill me.
They throw me down, my knees crack against black marble polished so bright it reflects some twisted corpse back at me.
Takes me a second to realize the corpse is me.
My vision blurs at the edges, swimming, collapsing inward. The vaulted ceiling above dissolves into dark arches.
Dozens of excited voices echo through the chamber like they’re waiting for champagne to be popped. Because that’s what this is. A fucking coronation. His victory lap.
My funeral.
Hands grab me and a cold iron collar clamps around my throat. A lead chain is hooked onto it and yanked so hard my spine screams. My vision whites out. I nearly go under. But I force it back—bite down—drag myself up out of the dark rising to swallow me whole.
I will not give him the pleasure.
They haul me toward the platform. The spotlight bursts on—so bright it burns straight through my skull. The hall vanishes into a wash of blinding white.
Until my eyes adjust.
And I see them.
Rows of men in tailored suits, rings glinting, faces carved from stone. Men who trained with me, commanded me, pretended to shape me into something useful. Men who smiled at my back while sharpening knives behind it. Commander Mercer and Whitney. The North High Chancellor and his Commanders.
Mercer’s gaze flicks to mine for a fraction of a heartbeat. Something moves there—guilt? Pity?—but it dies before it can live.
Dalton died for you, you fucking bastard. Willing to try and put a bullet in me. Still trying to impress the father who put a kill order on him years ago.
