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Chuckling, I turn to Fitchner. “So you’re Ares.”

“Man comes out of a coma and he’s a genius!” Fitchner barks. He claps his hands, but his eyes stay deadly serious. “Most call me Bronzie. Students call me Proctor. Some call me Rage Knight. The Sovereign calls me traitor. My son calls me shithead …”

“You’re a shithead,” Sevro chimes in.

“… My wife called me Fitchner. But the Golds made me Ares.”

Before now I would not know what that meant. He is Gold. How could the Golds do anything to him? But now I’ve peeked behind the curtain. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were from the start?”

“And put my life in the hands of a teenager’s acting ability?” he cackles. “I think not. If you were found out and they tortured you … bad news. I had alternate plans, other irons in the fire. You just happened to be my favorite. But we mustn’t be biased.”

“Who was your wife?” I ask, already suspecting the answer.

“Full or sho

rt?” he asks.

“Full.”

“I was liaising for a terraforming company on Triton,” he begins gruffly. “I didn’t have a glamorous job like you. No razors. No armor. Just construction management. Contract was leased by a Silver. I was running one of the last Lovelock Engines on their north pole when an eruption from one of that moon’s damn geysers caused an earthquake. Cracked the ice crust. Spilled the whole engine into the subterranean sea. Three thousand souls drowned.

“They fished me out of the sea and I spent the next months recovering in the arctic hospital. I was in the highColor wing. We had the good food. Better showers. Newer beds. But the lowColors had the window that looked at the northern lights. And she had the bed beside that window.”

He looks up at Sevro. “She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And she was pretty to look at too. She lost a leg in the accident. And they weren’t going to give her a new one. They could. It’s simple bionics. Not cost-effective, said the Coppers. Shittiest race ever made, I swear on …”

Sevro clears his throat. “Not again.”

Fitchner throws a piece of trash at Sevro and continues. “When I left, I took her with me. I’d saved up money enough to leave Triton. Couldn’t live in the Core. Too expensive. So I chose Mars. We lived just outside New Thebes for a year. We wanted a child more than anything. But our DNA wasn’t compatible. So we went to a Carver to see if we couldn’t make some magic. We did. Cost me almost everything I owned, but nine months later, this little Goblin squirmed out.”

Sevro waves from his perch as he examines the trash to see if it isn’t edible.

“Two years later, the Board of Quality Control busted the Carver for some work he did on some Obsidian gladiator and he ratted us out, fastlike, for a reduced sentence. They came to our home when I was away with Sevro. Found my wife, took her in for questioning. Their doctors saw her fallopian tubes had been modified so that it would be compatible to sire a Gold child. Then they disposed of her. Says so right in the records: ‘disposed’. Gassed her with achlys-9, put her in an oven, pumped her ash into the sea. They didn’t even give her a name, just a number. Not because she was a thief or a murderer or had violated any man’s or woman’s rights, but because she was a Red that dared love a Gold.

“It wasn’t like your wife, Darrow. I didn’t watch mine die. I didn’t see Golds come into my world and ruin it. Instead I felt the coldness of the system swallow the only thing I lived for. A Copper pressing buttons, filling out a spreadsheet. A Brown twisting a knob to release gas. They killed my wife. But they won’t ever think so. She’s not a memory in their mind. She’s a statistic. It’s as if she never existed. Some ghost I loved but no one else ever saw. That’s what Society does—spread the blame so there is no villain, so it’s futile to even begin to find a villain, to find justice. It’s just machinery. Processes. And it rumbles on, inexorable till a whole generation rises that will throw themselves on the gears.”

“What was her name?”

“Her name? Why does it matter?” he asks warily.

“Because I want to remember her.”

“Bryn,” Sevro says from above. “My mother’s name was Bryn. She was twenty-four when they killed her.”

“Bryn,” I repeat the word and see Fitcher rock slightly on his feet. A shortness of breath.

“So you’re half Red,” I say to Sevro.

Sevro nods. “Found out couple days ago. Weird as shit, righto?”

“Weird as shit. You’ll make a good Ruster.”

“I like to think I’m an endangered species.”

Dancer rolls a match through his fingers. “We all are.”

“You knew about Titus,” I say to Fitchner.

“But Dancer didn’t. Don’t blame him for that. I thought you’d be brothers at the Institute. A natural affection for your own race. But he went dark, and there was no way to reel him in. I met with him—jammer, ghostCloak—like I met with you. But his mind broke under the strain. I didn’t want to see you break.”