Some men kneel to evil for wealth and power; others kneel to shield those they love. Yet whatever the reason, the truth remains: if the price is anything less than your own life, then you are for sale.
—THEODORE REEVE, th 27PRESIDENT OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD
CHAPTER 51
On Friday morning, I eat breakfast while staring at my empty inbox on my Bond. There’s no cancellation notice from Professor Jerome or a disciplinary alert about the rock I nearly caved in his head with. The fact that he hasn’t reported me for assaulting him, or even threatened to, makes me wonder about him.
All my first-year professors were cut from the same cloth: polished, distant, quick to draw the line between teacher and student, authority and obedience. But Jerome, whoever he is, keeps one boot outside that mold, as if he wants to track mud straight through it. He’s not the kind of man Grandmaster University usually hires. He’s too relaxed with the rules, too comfortable prying into students’ business. There’s only one reason the board of directors would overlook all that and keep Jerome on staff.
He must be smart. Irreplaceably smart.
“Miss Waldsten.” My Pinkie’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “It is five minutes before seven.”
The omelette curdles on my tongue. I wash it down with a sip of water, push back my chair, and step onto the balcony, where the spring breeze cools the sweat gathering on my temples. The surrounding balconies are already crowded, low-citizen students clutching the railings, dreading to watch their classmates be executed. I knew things would change the moment I left Edmund’s entourage, but I hadn’t accounted for this. I hadn’t considered that I’d be forced to stand here again, stripped of privilege, returned to the daily,
hellish spectacle I used to be shielded from.
I step closer to the railing and look down at the Guillotine Yard below.
Four low-citizen students await their turn to die, their faces unfamiliar, but it makes no difference. They might as well be my sisters. They might as well be me.
I know exactly what I’m about to see, every scream scorched into memory, every blood-drenched image waiting like a stain I can’t scrub away.
Yet witnessing death feels harder today than it ever has.
The executioner guides the first student toward the guillotine, her sobs drifting through the yard like a thin, fraying thread. I reach for memories of my family to steady myself, but my mind offers nothing whole. It gives me only Dad, and the vast, lonely rooms of Waldsten Mansion left behind in his absence.
I remember long stretches of childhood spent waiting for him, sitting on the porch swing long after dark, asking Mom why he wasn’t home yet. “He’s working, dear,” she would say, as if that explained the silence that I kept begging him to fill with his saxophone. I hated the long nights and the empty chair at family dinner. I thought he worked too much. I thought he didn’t want to spend time with us. I wanted his place to be at home, beside us, not out in the world chasing responsibilities I couldn’t begin to imagine.
Now, standing above a gleaming blade meant for people like me, I finally understand what should’ve been obvious. Dad’s absence wasn’t neglect. It was love. It was the only kind of love a man like him could offer as he tried to stop the world from devouring its own children and calling it justice.
The guillotine waits below, gold and merciless, and in its reflection, I see myself over the past months: walking past it as if it weren’t there, more worried about my own safety than the headless bodies carried off these steps.
With trembling hands, I zoom in on the guillotine using the binocular feature in my Bond. For the first time, I don’t look away. I force myself to watch every execution, every drop of low-citizen blood spilled across the platform. I need the reality of our world burned into me in a way I can never deny or forget.
More than anything, I force myself to face the dark emotions coursing
through me. Fear and horror, yes.
But strongest of all, shame.
Before I leave my suite to meet Professor Jerome, I call Charlotte and tell her what happened between Edmund and me on the tram. After all the days she sat beside my hospital bed and comforted me when I couldn’t comfort myself, I owe her the truth. I swear up and down that I’m fine now. I tell her all I want is to get through this meeting, then hole up in her suite with her for the rest of the day.
We meet in the Green Dormitory parking garage at 8:45 a.m. I added Charlotte’s name to my hovercar’s biometric scanner, so when I arrive, she’s already inside, seated in the passenger seat, turning around every few seconds to search for me through the windows.
Despite every promise I made to her on the call, the way she’s looking at me suggests she didn’t believe any of it. I scoot into the driver’s seat, and before I can shut the door, she leans across the console and wraps her arms around me. Then she pulls back to study my face, clearly searching for the tears I drowned her in back at the hospital. I can tell she thinks I’m broken.
And she’s right. I’m just not shattering across the floor anymore.
“Lore.” She squints at me, disbelief etched in her voice. “Why do you look so… okay?”
“Because I am,” I say as I power on the hovercar and lift out of the lot.
“And you’re half the reason why.”
Charlotte nods, still doubtful. Her eyes keep darting over my face, as if checking for hairline cracks. But when I swipe the control panel on the dashboard, and Big Band Beats drifts out of the speakers—a slow, honey- thick jazz croon—she softens. Her shoulders dip an inch, then another, before she settles into a quiet relief that echoes back into me.
She turns to the windshield, unscrews her coffee thermos, and takes a sip.
“So,” she says, calmer now. “Which professor are we seeing?”
“Jerome. Second-year Cloning Theory and Genetic Engineering. He’s gonna help me make up my lost Cloning Theory credit. I checked the university registry, but there’s nothing on him. Less than nothing. It almost makes me wonder if someone deliberately scrubbed his info.”
Charlotte lifts her head a fraction, the thermos pausing halfway to her lips.
“Yeah, because someone did scrub his info. Lore—he’s a Glass.”
“What?”
“A Glass. Jerome Glass. He’s Winston’s son.”
The words clash with the saxophone moaning through the speakers, each note curling boldly in my ears. When the meaning finally lands, it hits like a joke that’s been pulled back on a slingshot for months, snapping the punchline straight into my forehead.
But I’m not laughing. That brash, back-alley hustler in a professor’s coat built the Florence Engine. My Florence Engine. The one I relied on so much, I practically built my backbone out of it.
Charlotte keeps talking, oblivious to the explosion in my head. “Never met the guy, but the rumors about him could power half the damn energy grid. Word is, Jerome created the Florence Engine, and Winston loved it at first. Wanted to splash it across every city until Jerome let slip what he really
designed it for.”
“What’d he design it for?”
Charlotte lets out a half snort, half laugh. “He built it so couples could see what they feel while they have sex.”
The jazz purrs deeper through the speakers, the bassline rolling like warm breath against my ear as I cut sharply through a yellow light. I accelerate, flying past the speed limit, anything to outrun the humiliation ripping through me so hard I almost burst into laughter. But I’m not surprised. If a man like Jerome built the Florence Engine, it couldn’t have been for any other reason.
The saxophone drifts through the speakers, circling me like a lover’s mouth, until I flick off the radio. For once, I’m glad Charlotte doesn’t notice.
She wasn’t there when Edmund gave me the Florence Engine. She doesn’t know I use the device or how much I love it. That’s a relief. She’d never let me live it down.
“Winston flipped his lid,” Charlotte continues, turning the jazz back on as if she’s secretly in on the joke. “Launched a whole lawsuit to get ownership.
He hates that it exists.”
“I don’t see how Jerome can win against Winston,” I say.
Charlotte takes another gulp of coffee, distracted by the traffic drifting past on tiered streets. “Yeah. Nobody beats Winston Glass. He wants to change the name, too—Florence was Jerome’s mom, and that’s half the reason Winston was so pissed.” She brushes her lip with her thumb, her gaze slanting sideways at me. “Sorry you got stuck with Jerome, Lore. He’s… well, ‘muddy reputation’ barely covers it. Word is, he sleeps with half his students. The Orange ones, anyway. A real skirt-chaser.”
“Word is?” I cut in, glancing at her. “Who the hell is word is? How do you know all of this?”
Charlotte arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you read Tattletale?”
“Yeah, but not every day.”
“Well, you should. Whoever runs that feed could tell you the color of Phillipa Prew’s underwear. Nobody on campus knew who Jerome really was until Tattletale dug him up—real name, family mess, all of it. After that, because he’s Winston’s black sheep, Jerome became campus entertainment.
The Tattler says there are always lines out the door to get into his classes, or just to gawk at the show.”
That doesn’t add up. If everyone is scrambling for a spot in Jerome’s lecture room, why was there still one open for me?
I lean back in my seat, eyes on the congested aerial lanes ahead. Created for sex or not, the humiliation I feel over how much I love the Florence Engine fades quickly. I’m not going to toss the device aside just because the man who built it can’t keep his pants zipped. It still works. It still grounds me. It’s still mine, no matter what Jerome intended it for.
So I’m going to keep it.
Because some things don’t have to be what they were made for. Some things can be what you make them.
When I park the hovercar at the corner of Genesis Street, the Moonshine Mile glitters down the block like a cloud of spun sugar. The street should be beautiful—usually it is—but today it feels like a graveyard of dead memories. I force myself to look away. Ahead, the Genetic Engineering Facility looms, its iron gates bleached pale in the sunlight. There are no memories here, only the punishment I signed up for.
Jerome’s office is on the seventh floor. I check the facility map in the lobby and discover it’s even larger than my suite. The genetic engineering professors live up here, sealed away in luxury apartments with private workrooms attached for tutoring sessions. It must be convenient for Jerome: teach his students in one room, bed them in another.
Charlotte and I ride the elevator in tense silence, then step into a sconce-lit corridor that smells faintly of ozone and lab disinfectant. When we reach
Jerome’s door and ring the bell, no one answers at first. I lean in and catch muffled voices inside: a man’s voice, calm and polite, and a woman’s, desperate and grief-stricken.
Finally, the door unlatches, and a handsome Pinkie greets us on the threshold. Charlotte and I lock eyes, silently agreeing on how human the robot looks. Its rose-colored suit is tailored to a frame that could bench-press a hovercar. Its face is sculpted with sharp, knife-edged features: broad jaw, severe yet regal cheekbones, and startling moss-green eyes that are too close in shade to Dad’s for comfort. Black hair sweeps into a deep side part, glossy and slick with pomade.
The Pinkie regards me with a polite expression, then bows with mechanical grace. “Good day, Miss Waldsten. I am Henry.”
I remember Jerome mentioned Henry in his email, specifying that the Pinkie hates smoking. But robots don’t hate anything. That’s the whole point.
My eyes dart to the badge on its lapel, which reads Model Seven.
I frown, even more confused. There is no Pinkie Model Seven, which means the robot is unreleased, a prototype still crawling out of the lab. If this is what the next generation looks like, I pray it never goes public.
Henry lingers on my face, its moss-colored eyes creasing with what looks like amusement, and a chill needles down my spine. I’ve never once been afraid of artificial intelligence, not even when Charlotte and I trusted an autonomous hovercar to take us down a cliff road in a blizzard. But right now, I am.
Henry shifts aside enough to reveal a foyer adorned with weapons, one of which looks unmistakably like a flamethrower. At the room’s center stands a fifth-year Orange student, her cheeks red and blotchy, as if she’s been crying.
She twists a strand of dark hair in her fingers, trying to stay composed, but the moment she sees Charlotte and me, the facade shatters.
“Henry, please,” she says, her hands curling fretfully in her sleeves. “Just tell Jerome I came by. Tell him I’m sorry, and that I—”
“Miss Shelley,” Henry interrupts softly. “Professor Jerome has expressly instructed me not to admit you. Your tutoring arrangement is concluded.
There is no further reason for you to visit this suite.”
An airy sob escapes from her throat; she pushes it back so forcefully I feel a burn in my own chest. Only yesterday, I wore that same look, clinging to the hope that maybe I hadn’t lost Edmund yet.
“Don’t make me leave, Henry,” Miss Shelley begs. “Not until I speak with
him. Please. I love him.”
For a moment, Henry’s polite mask falters, as if even its circuits are recoiling. Then the robot pulls a handkerchief from its breast pocket and places it in Miss Shelley’s hands.
“I wish you a restful summer,” Henry says as it guides her to the exit.
“Good day.”
Henry closes the door behind her and hesitates, with its back still turned. I watch the robot pull a small pink object from its pocket, which looks suspiciously like a pill, and place it carefully on its tongue before swallowing it dry. Then the Pinkie pivots to us, and its polite smile slides back into place.
“Apologies for the delay, Miss Waldsten, and—?” Henry pauses, studying Charlotte.
“Charlotte Deering,” she says breezily. “I’m just here for Lore. Oh, and
where’s the pot?”
Henry tilts its head. “Pardon?”
“The toilet. I need it.”
The Pinkie raises its sculpted brow, looking so perfectly baffled that I elbow Charlotte in the ribs. She elbows me right back. “What? It’s a Pinkie.
What does it care?” She flicks her hand toward Henry. “Go on, handsome.
Point the way.”
Henry extends its arm and glides down a side corridor with Charlotte in tow. The robot returns alone, scanning my face with an unsettling, too-deep stare, as if it’s searching through every locked box in my mind. I rub gooseflesh from my arms, hating the way the Pinkie makes me feel.
Henry guides me down a narrow, overheated corridor lined with sharpshooting trophies and ushers me through a set of double doors into Jerome’s so-called office. The air is thick and muggy, reeking of energy drinks and the slow burn of bodies pressed too close for too long. Every surface is occupied: students slump on couches, slide down the walls, or droop half-conscious over tablets. Everyone looks wrung out and irritated, as if they’ve been waiting since last semester. Some probably have.
And dead center, in the middle of it all, is Jerome Glass.
He’s bare-chested, wearing a brocade robe that reveals the waistband of his orange boxers. A Sono-Chamber crackles around him, its nanobots casting a halo of light across his skin. The device is a high-end focus shield designed to eliminate distractions. We see Jerome, but he can’t see us. We hear him, but he can’t hear our sighs, complaints, or curses.
Inside his bubble, he flips through streams of helix maps and edited cell lines, drifting across the wall display. Every few seconds, he shifts—pacing, mumbling, tugging at his hair—then perches on the corner of his desk, pops the tab on an energy drink, and drains it without a care for the human swamp rotting outside.
It’s obscene… this line, this heat, this waste of time.
I lean against the wall and ask myself whether I’m truly up for this, whether I can endure a whole year of bi-weekly lectures and private tutoring sessions with this man. Or whether, at some point, I’ll wish I’d aimed that rock a little better.
Deep down, I know the truth. No matter how bad this is, there’s a worse option waiting, because no other professor will accept me. If I walk out now, I go right back to first-year Cloning Theory, with a room full of fresh hatchlings who think they know pain.
So I stand there, sweat dripping down my neck, irritation mounting, until something rustles in my peripheral vision. Students start to retreat, pulling away from a corner near the far wall, where a monkey crouches on the floor, its tail flicking over a fresh pile of feces. The smell drifts over the sweat and stale coffee, making the heat feel twice as oppressive.
People groan as they recoil from the stench and move closer into my corner. That’s when I see Rosamund.
She’s sprawled out like royalty on a couch beside her pet, sweat beading along her hairline, her silk dress clinging damply to her skin. She looks as miserable as the rest of us. I didn’t realize she had a tutor, but it makes sense that she chose Jerome. Dad says the Prews have been clawing at Winston’s coattails for decades, willing to do anything for a taste of him… or, in Rosamund’s case, of his son.
Rosamund lifts her water, takes a drink, then, like a spider sensing a heartbeat trembling through its web, her eyes snap up and lock onto mine.
“Hoppola,” she murmurs, the word slipping out on a smile as wet as her hairline. She leans back against the couch and studies me, her eyes filled with the same poison she poured down my throat before the Cloning Theory exam.
I know she’s trying to drag me back to the fear and the pain of that moment.
Instead, a realization dawns on me, so clear and impossible to outrun that I don’t even try: Rosamund and I can’t keep butting heads like this forever.
Sooner or later, one of us will snap, and when that happens, the space between us will close for good. Even if she’s Edmund’s twin sister. Even if,
once, before Bliss rotted her brain, she might’ve been someone decent. None of that matters because there’s no room for both of us here.
I don’t know when our collision will happen, whether today or tomorrow, only that it’s already been set in motion. So, I stand my ground with an unflinching stare. For the first time, there’s no rage simmering inside me or hate rising in my throat. Rosamund can’t break what’s already been destroyed. I don’t have a saber to swing, but I’m not afraid of her anymore.
If the moment is now, let her come.
Rosamund’s smile twitches, tightening into a thin, dark line. Her eyes scan my body, then lift again as if measuring how much it will take to crush me properly this time. She stands from the couch in a smooth motion, silk
whispering around her thighs.
“Everyone out,” she says.
Every head turns toward her. A few students exchange glances, caught between fear and confusion. None of them are Blues, but they all know Rosamund is. Worse, they see her hand resting on the saber hilt in her scabbard. One by one, the students shuffle out, coughing into their sleeves to block the stench of feces.
Now it’s just the two of us. And Jerome, inside his Sono-Chamber, still oblivious as he swipes through data, beads of energy drink dribbling down his chin.
Rosamund turns on me with a slow, stretching smile. “I know my brother
kicked you out of his entourage.”
“We both agreed,” I reply.
The corner of her mouth curves, beautiful if you don’t know what it hides.
“So, you’re on your own now?”
“My own is enough.”
We drift sideways, circling each other at the edge of the room. My shoulder brushes the wall, and Rosamund slides closer to the door.
“So, you’re willing, then?” she says.
“My restriction doesn’t include fists.”
Cold amusement lights her eyes. She places her palm on her saber’s hilt tenderly, like a lover’s hand on a pulse point. “No fists. No blades either… unless you force me.”
I grit my teeth. “Then what exactly is this, Rosamund?”
She lowers her shoulder, and the monkey scrambles up her silk dress, twining its tail around her throat. Then her gaze jumps past me toward the
reeking pile of feces in the corner. When she looks back, her voice drops into her chest. “I’m going to kill you, Miss Waldsten. But only after I’ve finished humiliating you.”
She points a finger at the feces on the floor. “Eat it.”
The room around me seems to shrink. For a second, I’m sure I misheard.
But Rosamund’s smile says I didn’t.
A dry, broken laugh escapes me. Then my vision collapses to a single point: her throat. My boots grind into the sticky floor as I lunge, every muscle straining to bury her where she stands. Her saber hisses free, drawn so fast that the graphene blade sparks. I’m unarmed, and my left leg is still stiff, but I don’t care. My body barrels toward her anyway, the same way Charles charged me, only this time I’m him. No blade. No plan. Just fists, fury, and
the stench of shit I’ll never swallow.
“Lore—!”
Charlotte’s voice cuts through as she steps through the doorway. One glance at me charging at Rosamund like a rabid animal, and she recoils in horror. “What the f—”
She never finishes. Rosamund whirls and flings the monkey claws-first at Charlotte’s face. Green blood spatters across the open door. Charlotte screams as the monkey slashes her skin, then pries the creature off and hurls it at the couch.
Rosamund seizes the moment. She springs at Charlotte, her silk dress ripping at the thigh as she wrenches Charlotte back, hooks an arm around her neck, and presses the tip of her saber against the delicate hollow of Charlotte’s throat.
I slam to a halt, my pulse hammering so loudly it swallows every other sound.
Charlotte’s eyes blaze with more fury than fear as she thrashes against Rosamund’s chokehold. Blood drips down her cheek from deep, vicious scratches.
I stretch my hand toward Charlotte, feeling utterly helpless, until Henry steps through the door. The calm in the robot’s voice is infuriating—even more infuriating than Jerome, who’s still sipping his energy drink and flipping through helix data in the Sono-Chamber, blind and deaf to the war he’s hosting.
“Miss Prew, I must insist you release Miss Deering immediately,” Henry says. “This is not—”
“Silence, Pinkie,” Rosamund snarls. “Touch me, and I’ll have you decommissioned.”
She bares her teeth at me, like a cornered animal that loves the corner. Her saber dips until it kisses Charlotte’s skin, and a single drop of blood slides down her neck.
“Stop,” I choke. My eyes lock with Charlotte’s, pleading. She’s shaking so hard her boots slip on the floor. “Rosamund, please. Let her go.”
Rosamund’s voice hardens in challenge. “Want to save her? Then eat shit.”
The foul smell creeps into my nose, filling my mouth until my stomach clenches and roils.
“Don’t you dare, Lore,” Charlotte gasps, her breath hitching on a sob. I know she means it. She’d rather die than watch me crawl. But this isn’t how I’ll fight Rosamund. If I lose Charlotte, I lose everything.
I shove every thought aside but her as I step toward the corner. If I let myself think, I won’t be able to do it.
Behind me, Charlotte’s voice cuts through the buzzing in my skull, screaming for me to stop. But I keep moving. One step. Two. Then I crouch by the mess, the sour smell burning my throat before I even open my mouth.
Dad’s voice climbs from memory, low and cautionary: If you think strong people with power are dangerous, honey, just wait until you see what weak people with power are capable of.
I gag twice before I manage to swallow the first bite of feces. My stomach bucks so hard my ribs ache. A useless curse squeezes out as I reach for more, but my hand stops when I hear movement near the door.
I turn to see Henry lunging forward in a blur of rose-colored cloth, and Rosamund—too intoxicated by the sight of me on my knees—doesn’t notice the robot until its fingers clamp around her wrist. Rosamund’s scream pierces the air as the saber drops and clatters to the floor. The sound feels like my last chain snapping loose.
Charlotte breaks from Rosamund’s chokehold and stumbles into the wall, green blood smeared across her jaw. Her voice erupts with rage. “YOU BITCH. I’LL KILL YOU FOR THIS.”
Henry positions itself between the two girls, its sculpted graphene alloy body a wall of graceful strength. “Miss Prew,” the robot says, still restraining Rosamund with a wristlock. “Disengage immediately. Noncompliance shall result in removal by force.”
Rosamund thrashes so wildly that runs appear in the fitted silk bodice of her dress. I remain kneeling, my stomach clenched around poison, the taste of filth burning all the way down. Then, suddenly, Rosamund’s shoulders draw inward. She lifts her head, her eyes blazing with hatred, and her lips silently form the words: It’s finished. I’m going to kill you now.
And like a curse made real, an alert blinks on my Bond screen. My civil credits start ticking down in real time, a slow, relentless bleed for crimes I didn’t commit: 200 for assault on a Blue, 50 for subversion of academic hierarchy, 15 for defamation, 10 for malicious misinformation. One after another, the civil credits drop faster than my pulse can keep up.
I force myself upright and lock eyes with Rosamund through the haze.
“How are you doing this?”
She goes limp in Henry’s grip, panting heavily. “Doing what?”
“Cutting my credits.”
Henry tilts its head, studying me, and a flicker of what looks like fear sparks behind the robot’s eyes. Then it moves quickly, dragging Rosamund out of the room in a hold she can’t break.
The moment Rosamund is gone, Charlotte closes the gap between us and throws her arms around my waist so roughly that my body folds.
“Why the hell did you do it, Lore?” she cries. “Why?”
I hug her back, only half-aware as my hands ghost up her waist, my mind still stuck on the falling civil credits. She smells of sweat, blood, and every good thing I have left.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Lore. I should’ve—I’ll kill Rosamund for this.”
I stare over Charlotte’s shoulder at my Bond screen as the civil credits keep falling: 1,346… 1,298… 1,247… Behind us, the light of the Sono-Chamber dims and vanishes. Jerome finally turns, an energy drink leaking down his wrist from a crumpled can, his chest still bare beneath the brocade robe. He surveys the scene: Charlotte’s clawed cheek, me gagging as if I might vomit, and the sour stench of monkey feces hanging in the heat.
His voice drops in disgust. “What the fuck?”
Charlotte snaps upright and wipes blood from her chin with the back of her wrist. “Excuse me, Professor. Miss Prew attacked us. Henry removed her.”
Henry appears again in the doorway and bows, a gesture so graceful it almost seems mocking. Jerome exchanges a glance with the robot, then
waves a hand at Charlotte.
“Henry will take you to a medic.”
“No.” Her eyes flash darkly. “I will not leave my friend.”
“It’s either a medic or wait outside my door. Pick fast, sweetheart.”
Henry moves forward like a closing gate. Charlotte breathes heavily through her nose, then shoots me a look that says, I’m not finished. As she follows Henry out the door, my attention returns to my Bond screen.
992… 923… 887… “Waldsten?” Jerome says, watching my vacant stare as if he’s studying a bug in a jar.
I don’t respond because a suspicion has crept into my mind, howling as if something is dying in my heart: the last words I spat at Edmund, the secret I
cut him open to insult him with.
You really are a beast.
Now, the beast is going to kill me for it.
