Some things arrive too early, others too late.
But when they’re right on time, it can only be fate.
—ALESSANDRA VISCONTI, LITTLE BOOK OF MOONLIT RHYMES
CHAPTER 52
Jerome’s voice still rings in my ears as I break for the lavatory. Vomit rises in my throat, hot as acid, and I can’t swallow it down. I burst through the hallway, around the corner, find the door Henry showed Charlotte earlier, and slam it shut behind me. I barely hit my knees in front of the toilet before the vomit erupts in wet, violent waves.
Between the convulsions, suspicion hits me in fractured images. Is Edmund doing this? Is he killing me? Wasn’t offering me Bliss and dissolving our formal agreement enough? Or was that the point all along?
Did he give me the choice to walk away, knowing I’d take it, so he could
finish me himself?
No. I can’t believe it.
My heart won’t let me.
Whoever is doing this, the way they’re attacking me now is subtle enough to go unnoticed. Nobody will ever suspect, because the crimes draining my civil credits are planted seamlessly in my record, backdated and timestamped, each one bringing the guillotine blade closer to my neck.
I check my Bond screen, shoulders heaving: 756.
I gag again as bile creeps up the raw edges of my throat. A few more minutes, and I’ll fall below the arrest threshold of one hundred civil credits.
Once I hit fifty, I’ll be sentenced to the guillotine.
I hunch over the open toilet, vomiting until my ribs feel bruised. The acidic taste lingers on my tongue as I stagger upright and collapse against the sink. I force myself to look at my sunken reflection, like a ghost’s face
framed in filthy hair, eyes red and swollen, vomit streaking down my chin.
Again, the thought that Edmund is behind this attack flares in my mind, and again I crush it. No. It isn’t him. After the way he touched me, kissed me, held me as if I were the only thing keeping the world from becoming a stranger to him, it couldn’t all have been a lie. I couldn’t have been so blinded by love that I missed the monster crouched behind his smile.
But it doesn’t change what’s happening.
I’m going to die.
My hands clamp around the sink, trembling, as if I can hold myself together by force alone. A low groan tears out of me, wracked with fear. I can almost hear the guillotine’s lever creaking, the blade preparing to fall. The weight is unbearable, as if my soul itself is screaming.
I swing my head back and forth, trying to beat down the panic, the choking terror of death. I reach for Dad’s advice, then for Mom’s encouragement, but it isn’t until I remember the last words I spoke to Hillaire that the noise in my head finally stops.
I won’t waste it.
I made that promise to her only yesterday. I swore I wouldn’t just survive; I’d live. But I see the truth now, clearer than ever, too late to escape: I never truly lived for anything at all. And now I’ll die for nothing, too.
My eyes level with the reflection in the mirror, and I see a coward staring back. A coward who never spoke up, never fought back; who shut her eyes while others like her were dragged to the guillotine or collared like pets by Blues; who stayed quiet and called it survival. Shame burns through me, deeper than any fear.
“I want another chance,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
Just one. To do it right this time. Please. To fate, to luck, to whatever might be listening—just one more. I swear I’ll live for something, even if it breaks me the way it’s breaking Dad and Mom, the way it’s broken so many others who never had to sink this low before they rose. I’ll suffer for it. I’ll crawl for it. Just stop the civil credits from falling. Just give me one more
chance to make it matter.
Please.
The toilet hisses behind me, the only response I get. No mercy or miracle, just the cold tick of numbers slipping away.
584.
I leave the lavatory at 304 civil credits. My body is calm, my stomach empty, my eyes clear for the first time in months. I stride down the corridor, so focused I feel as though I could see through walls. I’m going to find her.
Rosamund. I’ll challenge her before the Coppers arrest me. I’ll drag her down with me, so Charlotte won’t be left to suffer alone. I have nothing left to lose, only something to gain if I can reach her in time.
In the foyer, Henry stands in front of the door, blocking the only exit.
“Excuse me, Henry,” I say, already thinking about where I might get ahold of a saber. “I will no longer be meeting with Professor Jerome today.
Please inform him of my departure.”
“Already informed,” Jerome calls from behind me. He’s walking down the corridor in trousers and a crisp dress shirt, his boxers gone at last. “Henry tells me you’re getting clipped with a Section Twenty-Seven.”
I frown, still pushing past Henry toward the door. “A what?”
“Ghost charges. Fictional sins. They pile up on your Bond until a Copper carts you off to the slammer. Any guesses who’s playing god today?”
“No.”
“What’s your counter at now?”
I check my Bond. “209.”
Jerome snorts and looks at Henry. “Dead. Bring me the other one.”
Henry continues blocking the door. “This candidate is sufficient, Professor,” the robot says calmly, almost as if it’s speaking on someone else’s behalf. “Miss Waldsten and her family have already cleared the background inspection. And the footage of Mr. Blackwell’s locker room attack may prove—”
Jerome cuts Henry off with a snap of his fingers, then steps back and studies me with a sigh. Gradually, his expression hardens, narrowing into something so precise it feels like he’s turning out my pockets, sifting through every hidden shame I have left. Then his shoulders drop, and he rubs the cut on his temple—the one from my rock—with another sigh.
“Fine. But for the record, Henry, I wanted the other one. If this all goes to hell, it’s your bag of bodies.”
Jerome rummages in his trouser pocket, muttering, then strides back down the hallway and disappears into his office.
“The other one for what?” I ask, shifting impatiently. Every second they waste, Rosamund slips further out of reach.
Henry finally steps away from the door and holds one of its mechanical hands aloft. “Miss Waldsten, if you would kindly wait.”
“Why?” My voice cracks when I see my civil credits: 123.
“You will want to hear what the Professor has to say.” Henry’s gaze fixes on mine, unyielding.
From inside the office, I hear the mechanical whir of a biometric scanner.
Jerome’s voice rings out, loud and exasperated. “What the hell’s the password?”
“Seven-one-three-seven-eight-nine-seven-three-seven-seven,” Henry
recites.
“Too many sevens.”
“Yes, sir. I did mention that when you created the password.”
Jerome grunts, then I hear a lock disengage and a door open. A moment later, he reappears with a small, black velvet box. He shoves it toward me, eyebrow cocked.
I’m too distracted by my civil credit score to take the box: 87.
I’m below the arrest threshold now, which means the Coppers are on their way.
“Go on, sweetheart. Take it.” Jerome pushes the box closer. “Or are you waiting for me to drop down on one knee?”
My heart hammers at the implication. If he means what I think— I grab the box, flip open the lid, and there it is, cold, glittering, and blue:
an Aegis.
A gasp rips out of me.
“Put it on before the Coppers blow a hole in my door,” Jerome says.
“Then we’ll talk.”
I push the Aegis onto my thumb without giving myself time to think. The scanner pricks my skin, verifying my identity as it syncs with my Blood Ring. Heat blooms under my nail and surges through my hand, arm, and shoulder, spreading through my entire body. I squeeze my eyes shut against the rush. For a moment, I feel painfully and dangerously awake, like stepping
into sunlight after years in the dark.
What the hell is this thing?
I open my eyes as the Aegis syncs with my Bond. My credits, now at 53, begin to increase.
87…134…198… Higher. Faster. I stop watching when the number clears 300. My mind narrows around the terrifying truth that I was three credits away from handcuffs. Three credits away from the guillotine. Three credits away from losing Dad, Mom, Hillaire, Vivian, and Charlotte forever. Now, against all reason, against all mercy, I have it: a second chance, bought at a price I know will come due any moment.
I turn to Jerome, staring at the Aegis on his own thumb. “Whose Aegis is this? Which Blue?”
“No names,” he says, already heading back into his office. “That’s the deal. Now quit gawking and get inside. It’s freezing out here.”
He guides me back into the sweltering room and sits halfway on the edge of his desk, a massive block of wood and bronze so absurdly large it looks stolen from a courthouse.
I look back to find Henry has remained in the foyer.
Jerome watches me for a moment, arms crossed, his expression jumping between annoyance and appraisal. “First things first, Waldsten—you’re not special. You heard what I said to Henry. I didn’t even want you for this assignment. You’re being offered this deal because you meet three conditions: you’re a student, you cleared your background check, and there’s a viral video of you carving up a Blue. That’s it. So don’t start thinking you’re the apple of my eye. We’ve got plenty of students on the books.”
He pauses, and his gaze narrows, as if he’s weighing something behind his crooked grin. Then he jerks his chin at me. “Come here, Waldsten.”
Questions boil up, but only one escapes. “Why?”
“So I can properly introduce myself.”
Jerome extends his hand, his Blood Ring tilted toward me, waiting. I hesitate, then step forward and scan my ring against his. Instead of the standard civilian file that appears on my Bond screen when I’m introduced to new people, I see a classified dossier.
INTERNAL PERSONNEL DOSSIER: Agency: Office of Civil Integrity (Brasscoat Division)
IDENTITY CONFIRMATION:
Name: Jerome W. Glass Signature: Glass, J.W.
Image: A headshot of him, younger but with the same grin
and the same eyes that don’t match it at all.
The text goes on for pages, but almost all the information is redacted.
Slowly, I lift my eyes from the screen to Jerome. “You’re… a Brasscoat?”
He flashes the same wide grin from the file, harmless until it’s not.
“Congratulations, Waldsten. You’ve just been drafted.”
I settle into stillness for a long moment, seeing Jerome as I should’ve from the start: his height, his strength, the easy, disarming confidence tucked neatly behind a professor’s coat.
It makes perfect sense why he became a Brasscoat. Like Winston, Jerome has spent his life trying to scrub away the stain of Frederick Glass, who was Winston’s father and Jerome’s grandfather. Frederick was more than a rabble-rouser; he was one of the architects of the Heretic ideology, among the first to stand on a pulpit and convince desperate low-citizens that tearing down the energy shield was a fair price for a shot at a better world.
Frederick fueled every violent impulse within the Heretic ranks, transforming anger into a cult of righteous cruelty. Although he ultimately became a martyr, beheaded like a hero to his followers, by then the seeds were too deeply planted to dig out. Frederick turned discontent into dogma, and dogma into slaughter. It’s his words the Heretics still shout before they bomb a government building or poison a city water supply: Without the freedom to, I choose freedom from.
Now, Winston tries to wash away Frederick’s sins by creating miracles the Civilized World can’t live without. And Jerome is doing it his way, as a Brasscoat hunting down his grandfather’s disciples one by one, feeding them to the guillotine so no one ever dares call him Frederick’s grandson.
Jerome still puts me on edge. He’s still a trainwreck, somehow rattling forward, but I’m looking at the crossroads ahead differently now, as a chance to do something that actually matters.
I offer my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Glass.”
Jerome bristles at the name, then smooths it over with a handshake. “Let me put this to you straight, Waldsten. I don’t do blackmail. If you don’t like my offer and decide to walk out of this room for good, you keep the Aegis
until the Section Twenty-Seven hit ends. When it’s over, I take the Aegis back, and you walk away three hundred civil credits richer.” He leans in and taps the Aegis on my thumb. “I’m looking for someone dedicated, not someone who said yes because they’re scared of getting whacked. Got me?”
I nod.
He walks around the desk, opens a drawer, and pulls out an energy drink.
The label—Ascend—flashes as he cracks open the lid. It’s the same energy drink students chug during all-night study sessions before exams. You’re only supposed to have two a day, but judging by the pile of empty cans on Jerome’s desk, this one is at least his fourth. His heart must be begging for mercy.
“It’s worth mentioning right out of the gate,” Jerome says, taking a long sip, “that the job I’m offering doesn’t officially start until next year. If you accept, you don’t breathe a word of this to anyone but your parents. Slip once, and I’ll bury you where the secret should’ve stayed. Do you know what classified means, Waldsten?”
“Yes,” I say, though alarm bells ring in my head. Charlotte. My sisters. I can’t explain away an Aegis with a flip of my hair.
“And we’re not doing any of that flowery formal-agreement shit, either,” he adds, waving the can. “You say yes, you work for us, and that’s it. If you flake or screw me, the Aegis deactivates. Then I come by to collect it.”
“I understand.”
“Top. Now, strap in. This is where the wires cross.” Jerome slams the can onto the desk with a dull thud. “We’ve got an entire network of Heretics operating in the shadow of our asses, right here on campus. Most are smart enough not to meet face-to-face. Instead, they hole up in an encrypted VR forum they call The Flamingo Club. They only log in during the academic year. Once summer hits, they ghost.”
“Next year, when you’re back from break, you’ll go in, poke around, and help me ID as many of these bastards as you can. Interested?”
I put on the most nonchalant expression I can manage as I weigh his offer.
A job like this will demand more than snooping. The Flamingo Club members are all students; the moment I enter that forum, they’ll want proof I belong. They’ll want to see me bleed the way they do, and I’ll have to pretend. That means reshaping my entire life into a lie, which, if I’m honest, doesn’t scare me as much as it should. I can lie. I can sell whatever bullshit the Heretics need to hear.
What worries me is the margin for error. One slip, one wrong word, and I’ll be exposed as a Brasscoat informant, landing on the target list of every Heretic in the Civilized World. Worse, I won’t see them coming, but they’ll know exactly where to find me.
I know I don’t have to accept this job. I could refuse the deal, walk out of this sweltering hot room, and go back to my old life, the one where I only
existed to survive.
Or I could do something more.
“I assume there’s a failsafe,” I say. “Some way to keep me from getting tagged as an actual Heretic?”
“Of course.” Jerome snorts. “Our director already signed off on this op.
You, and the handful of other eyes and ears we’ve planted, are documented in black and white. Official assets. You won’t be legally tied to the Heretics.
“But publicly?” He tilts his head and smirks. “Publicly, you’ll have to smell like one of them. That’s the fun part. It helps that you’ve already killed a Blue—good for street cred. Still, they’ll test you, Waldsten. In the forum, sure, but maybe face-to-face, too. You’ll have to pass.”
My stomach twists.
“Don’t worry.” Jerome lifts the can in a mock toast. “I’ll be right there, sweetheart. Teaching you how to fake it. How to lie down and screw the
Heretics like you mean it.”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
He wipes a bead of energy drink from his mouth, laughing under his breath. “That was quick. Sure you don’t wanna think about it first? I can give
you six minutes.”
“I’m sure,” I say.
And I mean it.
Even if Blues are the true enemy, Heretics aren’t far behind. Taking out one of their nests—especially one that’s likely coordinating attacks that kill twice as many innocent low-citizens as corrupt Blues—would be a start, a first step toward changing things the way Dad does.
“I want to get to work now,” I add. “While I’m home for the summer.”
Jerome’s eyes narrow, then he grins. “You asking for my number, Waldsten?”
I cross my arms, already immune to the jabs. “Yes. So get used to my
voice. I’ll have questions.”
“Got one now?”
“A few. How’d you find out about this forum? The Flamingo Club?”
“A Heretic spilled it during an interrogation. A sixth-year called Weathers.”
Immediately, I know he’s talking about Eve Weathers, our former Grandmaster. I see her in my mind, dragged out of Green Dormitory in her pajamas, her lip split open, yet her head still held high.
“It was luck, really,” Jerome goes on. “She wasn’t even on our radar. The
Coppers were investigating her first.”
“For what?”
“For being a Vulgar.”
He says it like an inside joke, a throwback to my fight with Edmund in the rain. But I’m not laughing because that’s not me. Loving someone outside your blood color is one thing, but being a Vulgar is something else entirely.
“By the way,” Jerome says. “I hope it goes without saying that you’re gonna need to steer clear of Blues until this op is over. You don’t join their entourages. You don’t talk to them. Hell, you don’t even crack a smile their way. One wrong look at your Blue boyfriend and the Heretics will know you’re not one of them.”
I touch the Aegis on my thumb, a restless weight settling in my chest. It feels like a big commitment, though I can’t quite say why. My relationship with Edmund is over, as broken as the wire daffodil I threw at him.
“I have an Aegis,” I point out. “Won’t that alone give me away? The Heretics will know I’m not one of them.”
“Only if they know you have it.” Jerome takes my hand, his fingers closing over my thumb as he squeezes the Aegis until it glows blue. Then he slides the Aegis beneath my Blood Ring, where it settles with a soft click.
“Where’d it go?” I ask. “In my Blood Ring?”
“Kind of. Don’t fiddle with it or take it off to show anyone. If you do, I’ll know.” He sips from his energy drink. “It’s an Aegis designed for informants.
Anyone who connects to your Bond—Heretics, Coppers, whoever—will see a fake home screen. They won’t know you have an Aegis or how many civil credits you’re sitting on. Which is a lot, by the way, so don’t get tempted to start helping poor bastards in need. You’ll raise suspicion.”
Jerome checks the clock as if he’s got somewhere else to be. “Any other questions?”
“Just one. Who are the other students? The ones going into the Flamingo Club with me?”
“Better if you don’t know. If the Heretics crack you, we don’t want the
whole operation unraveling around you.”
I nod. Fair enough.
“I’ll say this, though.” He looks me up and down, still assessing, still doubtful. “You came out on top. The other recent hires didn’t get Aegises.
They’re getting free academic credits to compensate for the study time they’ll lose working for us. Not you, though. You’ll come here next year, tutor with me, and sit through every lecture. If the Heretics don’t break your head, maybe I will.”
“Fine by me,” I say, because I agree I came out on top. “I’ll see you next year, Professor. In the meantime, I’ll need your number.”
Jerome transfers the information with a swipe of his Blood Ring, then adds, “I don’t think you’ve got it in you to pull this off, Waldsten. That’s obvious. But if you do, it’d be damned good. If we gut this nest, beak to tail, we’ll both walk away with Meritorious Service Crests.”
I stare at him, and the hope in his eyes mirrors the sudden, fiery rush in my chest. He’s talking about a medal for classified acts of service, the kind no one knows the details of but that everyone respects. A future in politics like Dad’s wouldn’t be out of reach for me, then. The door would swing open
by itself.
“I won’t waste it,” I say.
Then I turn and walk out, my steps fueled by the first hungry, all- consuming taste of purpose.
In the foyer, Henry sits in a chair, eyes open but vacant, frozen in that unsettling half-life they call standby mode. I move past the robot, eager to get out the door and feel the Aegis on my skin in the open air. But something stops me, pulling at the part of me that still believes in gratitude, even toward a machine that can’t feel it.
“Thank you, Henry,” I say softly. “For helping Charlotte and me, and for stopping Rosamund.”
Henry’s eyes flutter, seeming slightly more alive. “My pleasure, Miss Waldsten.”
I smile, then reach for the door when the robot speaks again.
“It would not be the first time.”
I frown, confused, until Henry lets out a low, clear whistle of only four notes, yet they’re etched into my memory like a brand. It’s The Last Walk, the song played at executions and death duels. They’re the same notes someone whistled on the Roaring Rails Express platform, warning me that Vincent Lee was planning to gut me in front of an audience.
“It was you? On the platform?”
Henry smiles faintly. “The Professor and I happened to be passing by.”
“But why?”
“Because I am programmed to help humans.”
Henry leans back into the chair, its eyes closing in a perfect imitation of rest. Then the robot slips a hand into its jacket pocket and pulls out a yoyo— matte black, larger than the toys sold in stores—and loops the metal strap around its index finger.
With a flick, Henry drops the yoyo. The string spins down to the floor, then climbs smoothly back into the robot’s palm. Each rise and fall syncs oddly with the slow swell of its chest, the artificial breath Pinkies are programmed to imitate, often making us forget they’re just parts and wires.
On the third pull, Henry’s mouth curls into a small, satisfied smile.
“Goodbye, Henry,” I whisper.
“Goodbye, Miss Waldsten,” the robot says, the yoyo still rolling in patient circles.
I turn and slip out the door, my shock cooling as I step into the hall. But the moment I activate my Bond and pull up the home screen, it all rushes back.
Where Edmund’s entourage badge once sat, the Aegis badge gleams instead. The name of the Blue who owns it is redacted, hidden behind layers of clearance I’ll never see, but the permissions are visible, scrolling down my feed in stark, impossible lines: Access to ninety-five percent of campus grounds, up from the old seventy percent. Exemption from the behavior laws that keep low-citizens obedient in public, including formal speech and introductions. And my civil credits aren’t just topped off; they’ve exploded into a number so large it exposes the fraud behind it all.
Two million. Enough to live on, to pay my debts and those of countless others, for the rest of my life.
Those advantages alone feel like a miracle. But when I scroll further and see the note about my weapons restriction, my chest clenches so hard it
shudders. The crossed-out saber on my record—the punishment that made me stand there while Irene and Rosamund ripped out my spine and beat me with it—is gone.
I can carry a saber now. I can fight. I can win.
My hands tremble, my vision swimming as my pulse kicks in, dragging me forward with unstoppable force. I skip the elevators and break into a run, my feet slamming against the stairs so loudly they echo. I’m vaulting ten steps at a time, swinging around the rails, breathless as laughter tears from me.
I burst through the doors of the Genetic Engineering Facility and into the sunshine, shouting something wordless into the street. Students, Pinkies, professors all stop and stare, but I don’t care. I don’t have to.
Not anymore.
My blood might be green, but my power is blue.
