Chapter 12
Eleven
Since Gus’s ultimate objective was to get caught by the people hunting her, she decided it was worth the effort to make the climb back up to the government district rather than leaving the tree via one of the other decks.
Since going up was always harder and more time consuming than a descent, Gus was out of breath and sweating slightly by the time she reached deck nineteen.
During the climb, her cloak had managed to acquire its own collection of bark, dirt, and leaves, leaving her looking like something dragged backwards through a briar patch as she crossed the sheer drop of the station’s spine.
Gus resisted the urge to tidy up her appearance as she stepped off her branch and back onto deck nineteen. Already aware of what was waiting for her there.
“So it begins,” Gus murmured, pulling her cloak closer to her body before making sure her hood was properly raised. The mistakes made with Ryan would not be repeated.
Gus eyed the trees for the presences she sensed hiding among them. “You might as well come out. I know you’re there.”
Once again, her siblings had underestimated her.
They didn’t even possess the decency to aim the knife for her back.
They went for a full frontal attack. That was how little respect they held for her and her abilities.
That was saying something considering the amount of Gus’s ki currently saturating the very park they stood in.
Accumulated over years of tending these gardens.
It wasn’t just insulting. It was breathtakingly arrogant.
Then again, arrogance had always been her siblings’ defining trait.
“We hadn’t thought you possessed the level of capability to realize you were being followed.”
It took a second for Gus to pinpoint the speaker’s location.
“I didn’t think it would be you,” Gus said, feeling oddly wistful as she stared at the man partially obscured by the pocket of shadows cast by a pair of trees. She’d always considered Mars to be the quiet, unassuming sort. Kind of like her but more accepted. Not the sort to prey on his siblings.
Gus scanned him carefully, wondering if she’d somehow gotten this wrong.
But nope. That was definitely Mars. No one else had hair like his. Black at the roots before fading into pure white at the tips.
It hadn’t always been that way. Gus remembered a time when his hair was only one color. Of late, however, it seemed like that white climbed a little higher into his locks every time they met. As if something was leaching the color from his edges.
Mars wasn’t as muscular as some of their siblings. Pallas, for instance, would seem like a tank in comparison. But he was imposing enough to be considered a threat by most.
Not Gus. But others.
Losing interest in Mars, Gus cut her eyes to his partner. “You, on the other hand…”
It didn’t surprise her at all to find that Cleo was the other traitor. The woman had always given off that feeling. Like she was biding her time until a better offer came along.
Given her lack of morals and inability to process emotions like loyalty or regret, it wasn’t a far jump to betrayal.
Gus was just surprised it hadn’t come earlier.
Cleo met her gaze calmly, her expression as tranquil and undisturbed as a still pool of water. Nary a ripple of emotion or thought. Just a living statue, untouched by the feelings infecting the rest of them.
Like Mars, her sister was someone who stood out.
Appearance-wise anyway. The unnatural yellow of her eyes paired with the patch of scales that had been grafted onto her cheek would draw questions no matter where she went.
The kind of questions the forty-three would be loath to answer.
For that reason, Cleo, and those of the forty three who like her were unable to blend, spent the majority of their lives largely in isolation.
They drifted on the fringes of society. Never fully part of it.
“Are those to be your last words?” Cleo asked in a voice as robotic and emotionally detached as the rest of her.
“What would you prefer? Should I beg and plead? Would you spare my life if I did?”
“Perhaps.”
Gus scoffed lightly. “Liar.”
Now that they’d reached this point, there was only one way forward.
Death.
Hers or theirs.
If that was the case, Gus preferred to keep her pride. Such as it was.
Cleo drifted forward, the ferns at her feet seeming to cling briefly to the cloth of her pants before their leaves bent and then ripped. “You only have yourself to blame for this.”
“How so?” Gus asked, looking back and forth between the two.
Mars’s expression was placid as he acted the part of a bystander.
“We may have been able to overlook your status as the master’s favored pet, but you’re weak. And that’s something I just can’t abide,” Cleo announced.
Gus gave her an incredulous look. “You’re jealous of the attention I received from Esara? Is that what you’re saying?”
She’d always known her siblings were crazy but not this level of crazy. If she could have, she would have gladly let Cleo take her place. Being Esara’s pet wasn’t worthy of envy. It had been a burden. An invisible yoke, ripping away pieces of Gus’s soul one after another.
To hear someone wishing that it was them was surreal.
And insulting. Don’t forget insulting.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Pityrodia Augustensis,” Mars said impatiently.
Under her hood, where he couldn’t see, Gus widened her eyes. “What else am I supposed to think after a statement like that?”
Cleo glanced at Mars. “She’s stalling. Get on with it.”
Gus almost snorted out loud. Of course she was. Did Cleo actually think Gus was looking forward to this?
Hardly.
Not for the reasons Cleo probably assumed, though.
Gus wasn’t waiting for salvation. For someone to swoop in and rescue her from her dastardly siblings. She’d learned early that no one was coming. Not for her anyway. She was on her own. Just like always.
No, she had much different reasons for dragging out this encounter.
First and foremost was that she was recording their conversation for when Ryan and Kira came after her later.
A little insurance package on her part.
And in the event that the worst should happen and she didn’t survive, it made her ridiculously happy to know that a copy of this entire conversation would be forwarded to their message drops by one of her lieutenants.
Cleo and Mars’s attempt to frame her would not work. They would fail. They had failed. All because they classified her as weak.
Gus liked the sound of that. They’d get what they had coming. One way or another. Even if she had to use someone else’s hand to exact the retribution that should have been hers.
Mars’s eyes took on an otherworldly white glow that announced the presence of the nasty little ability Esara had fused into his very bones.
Something that snipped away at his life’s essence a little more with each use.
“On account of our history, we’re willing to give you a chance.
Hand over the Tuann and the child and we will let you go. ”
“Again, with the lying,” Gus hissed.
That was the second time. She wouldn’t let there be another.
‘We’re not, actually,” Cleo announced. “All you have to do is tell us where you’ve hidden them and we’ll let you leave Titan. Alive.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
They must, to make an offer like that. She knew very well what was waiting for her as soon as she exited Titan’s air space.
Belladonna and whatever small armada they controlled would launch a missile to destroy her ship. Forget making it to her next destination; she’d be dead before she got even a day out from the station.
“Sometimes,” Cleo admitted.
“Do you really hate me this much?” Gus demanded with a look at Mars.
It had been a long time since the forty-three held the power to hurt her, but she’d be lying if she said this didn’t sting.
Cleo and Mars seemed to have forgotten just who it was who’d opened their cages that fateful night so long ago. Not to mention who’d risked their life to distract Esara long enough for someone to get the ship codes needed for escape.
Ryan and Pallas may have done the heavy lifting, but Gus had risked just as much.
And this was their thanks.
“Hate?” Cleo’s voice held the faint echo of surprise as she shook her head. “No. I’m not capable of such things anymore. You know that. You were there the night the capacity for emotion was stripped from me.”
Gus’s hood hid her tiny flinch. The part she’d played in Cleo’s transformation was something that would always haunt her. Perhaps more than anything else she’d witnessed at Esara’s side.
She sometimes still had nightmares about what the Osiri had done to Cleo. He’d taken a sweet, timid girl and turned her into an emotionless machine who drained the life from those around her by her simple presence.
Cleo had eventually gotten better about controlling that aspect of her ability, but she’d never returned to the girl she’d once been.
And, for that, Gus would always be sorry.
“The forty-three don’t hold grudges for what happened in the camps,” Gus forced herself to say.
That was their rule. One of the first they made upon escape. A way of breaking with the past to forge a new future.
“Did I say anything about blame?” Cleo asked.
Oddly enough, she hadn’t.
“Your answer, Hermit,” Cleo demanded. “Will you turn over the male and the child?”
“You know I won’t.”
Gus had never deceived herself into believing she was the honorable sort.
Her morals had always been questionable, and her sense of right and wrong almost nonexistent.
She’d never be the sort to jump onto a burning skiff to rescue a pair of children or put herself between a monster and its intended victim.
Her desire to live was too strong and her sense of empathy too weak.
But even she had lines she wouldn’t cross. Handing Caius and Anandra over wasn’t going to happen.