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I take her to Fig. Volga hunches over her body, feeling for the woman’s pulse. She puts her ear to her heart. Flicks her nose. Pulls up her eyelids. Slaps her. “She is dead.”

“Yeah, good thing you checked.”

“Nothing is obvious with Fig.” Before I can say anything, Volga takes a knife she must have found in the wreckage and sticks it into Fig’s eye.

“What are you doing? Stop that.” I say, shoving at her. Volga looks offended.

“Quicksilver put a huge bounty on Fig,” she says, going back to her grisly work. “She stole something from him. But the contract is Amani. It requires ocular proof.” She digs out the eyeball and sets to work on the other. “Have you seen the orb she had or the bag?” I shake my head. “Her pistol?”

I don’t reply.

Sickened, I leave the ship and stand outside, touching the small gash Fig’s metal squid thing opened under my nostril when it went into my nose. Quicksilver was hunting Fig. Why? Is it in the bag, the case? Or inside me? Would Volga cut it out of me if she knew I had it? Does she even know it exists?

A dangerous customer. That’s what Fig called Volga. She wasn’t lying. Just because Volga helped me escape doesn’t mean she’s a friend. All those letters were just a way for her to pass the time. She’s a right savage when there’s money lying on the ground, or in someone’s eye sockets.

Volga soon joins me with Fig’s bag over her shoulder, carrying Fig’s black orb. “It is just business,” she says, not understanding my mood. “She was already dead.”

I don’t say anything as she tries to open the case. Finding the effort futile, she finds a pistol on one of the bodies and shoots the orb. The metal is left without a scratch. Volga frowns. But an unusual ringing fills the air, morphing over time until it seems the orb whispers to me.

“What’s in there?” I ask.

“I do not know. Maybe what she stole. It might be very valuable.”

Dozens are dead around us, and she’s after something valuable. I have to get away from her. I have to get away from this crash, from these people. I have to get back to Liam.

There’s a high-pitched humming sound in my head that I can’t shake. Not the whispering of the orb. Something else. At first I thought it was hearing damage. I dig a finger in my ear to clear it. If anything, the humming grows louder. It’s not coming from my head. It’s coming from the forest.

“You hear that?” I ask. Volga shakes her head. “You’re supposed to have predator ears. You don’t hear that at all?”

She pries at the case with her knife. “Maybe you hit your head?”

I wander toward the treeline. The sound is coming from the forest. Volga calls after me, and jogs to keep up as I start to follow it.

The humming grows louder the deeper I go, and I can see a faint rippling in the air. Sort of like hot air above a stove. There’s broken branches now. Trees shattered high above our heads. A ripWing must have crashed here. Entering a shadowy thicket, where the trees have exploded from impact, I find a fallen tree trunk with a pair of gre

en metal feet sticking out from under it. The humming is so loud I have to plug my ears.

“Fig?” a woman calls. The humming dies. “Took you long enough. Been calling for half a gory hour.”

On the other side of the tree, Victra lies on her back pushing at the tree trunk with both hands. It’s trapped both her legs under it. Had it fallen just a quarter meter higher, it would have crushed the baby in her belly.

The trapped Gold glares up at us from under a mess of short golden hair. Her eyes flash with anger. I jump back in fright so hard I smash into Volga and fall to the ground. When I scramble up, Victra is laughing.

“Just my gory luck. Sevro’s right. Cockroaches will inherit the worlds.”

“Julii!” Volga exclaims.

“It’s Barca! Gods, can no one get it right? It makes him so sensitive. Where’s Fig? Where are my men?”

I grab a tree branch from the ground as if I’m going to hit her on the head with it. Then I see Victra’s pulseFist a ways off in the snow. I rush to it and insert my hand into the huge metal glove. Vwoooooon. It powers on and I point it at her head. The energy it holds shakes my arm. Gods, its heavy.

“Go on, little girl. Vox, Syndicate, Atalantia, those freaks. Everyone wants a piece of me. Take a bite. See if you don’t choke.”

“Lyria, don’t,” Volga says, stepping in my path. “You can’t shoot her.”

“Move.”

“This is not you.”