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“Mustang…” There’s fear in Sevro’s voice. He’s out of breath. I hear boot steps on metal grating. “Mustang…Boneriders in Old Tokyo…trap.” There’s an explosion and the feed cuts to static.

Boneriders.

I hear blood in my ears.

I look over to Daxo. Billions are watching on live stream. I can’t leave. We need this vote now. Theodora will have to take point. She’ll dispatch units to aid Sevro.

Boneriders?

How could it be possible? They should still be imprisoned in Deepgrave. Has the prison been penetrated yet again?

Are they working with the Syndicate?

It makes no sense. It has to be a trick. Sevro must be mistaken.

If Sevro is not mistaken, this is exactly the sort of public venue where the Boneriders would like to make a splash. I look up and search the ceiling as if I’ll find a bomb hidden there. The Forum was checked a dozen times by Holiday and the Warden. It has to be clean. If Old Tokyo was a trap, then how did the Syndicate know I was coming? A mole? Did they count on me cracking the duke? I whisper for the Pegasus Legion units I have on standby north of Hyperion to come to the Citadel to join my Lionguard on the Field of Ares. Outside the Forum, Holiday goes on high alert.

Another hiccup escapes Dancer’s lips and he reaches up with a hand to scratch his throat. “Our Gold enemy profits when we are divided.” He clears his throat roughly. “…So today I seek an end to that—”

A great mucus-filled hiccup escapes his lips and his hands wrench into a cramped, infantile movement to paw at his chest. The Red senators beside him rustle in concern. But then another hiccups in their ranks. And another. Using the shoulders of the senators beneath him, Dancer pulls himself upright, his eyes confused and unfocused. “Today I seek to—”

Then comes the horror.

A clump of blood and lung tissue vomits out of Dancer’s mouth.

It bathes the togas of the senators beneath him in red pulp. Hands windmilling, he topples over onto their heads. They collapse under the weight and with shouts set him on the ground. Panic swirls around Dancer as he contorts violently on the stone, blood dribbling from his bodily orifices. His eyes bulge from his head and his hands paw the ground. Publius rushes to cradle his head. “Gas!” I shout, holding my breath. But the pathogen detectors do not wail. The room does not seal and vent. And my personal defense-ring around my wrist continues to blink silver, detecting no abnormalities.

I summon the Lionguards waiting underneath the Forum, but none reply on my internal com. None come through the interior doors.

I connect to Holiday. “Evacuation Protocol. The Wardens are likely compromised. Fire if they move to engage.”

“Already moving to West Door. Support. Lionguards unresponsive.”

Daxo rushes to me along with the Gold and Gray senators, and they form a wall around my person. Through their shoulders, I watch Dancer and his lieutenants die, helpless to stop it.

The Vox Populi shout in anger, in fear, calling for medici as the Yellow senators push through their ranks to come down the stairs. But then one stumbles and grips his chest before heaving his own blood onto the floor.

Amidst Vox Populi, the clutch of Dancer’s most stalwart moderate lieutenants reel, beset by the same violent malady. Blood pours from their convulsing bodies as their limbs flail in an atavistic dance and those around them are torn between helping and running, for fear that the pathogen is carried in their blood.

“Wardens, help them!” someone shouts.

But the Wardens above, around the rim of the Senate pit, do not rush to give aid. In their green cloaks, they watch without pity or connection, and then file out the doors. On the floor, Dancer’s spasms have subsided. His blood smears Publius’s face and hands. He pulls back from the Copper to look up at me with eyes wild and white as a dying horse’s. His mouth opens, a bloody, twisted maw. He mouths something to me, but his voice has been robbed from him and no sound comes out.

“He’s dead…” Publius whispers. “O’Faran is dead!”

The hope in me dies with him.

Then Publius cu Caraval stands in the chaos.

I know, as his lips curl back from his white teeth, as his eyes glimmer bright with long-hidden fervor, and his bloody finger extends in my direction, that he knew Dancer and I had come to terms. How?

“Murderer!” the Incorruptible wails. “Tyrant!”

“Tyrant!” the surviving Vox echo, pointing their fingers like blood-drenched scarecrows amidst the field of their dying compatriots. “Tyrant!”

We flee in force. Optimates cluster around me and we ascend the stairs away from the charnel house. My internal com swarms with dread.

“Citadel and Skyhall are under attack. Republic forces…”