THE ESCAPE
Remy dove.
The light missed her by inches, slamming into the wall behind her. The ancient metal buckled, melted, screamed. A hole opened — not into the tree, not into the prison, but into something else. Darkness. Cold. The empty space between the prison and the surface.
The voice screamed in her head.
“Run! Through the hole! It’s the only way!”
She didn’t think. She ran.
The hole was jagged, the edges still glowing from the impact. She climbed through, her hands burning on the hot metal, her feet finding purchase on broken struts.
Behind her, Cassian howled.
“You cannot escape me! I am everywhere! I am the prison! I am the tree! I am the ground beneath your feet!”
Remy didn’t look back.
She climbed.
The passage was tight, barely wide enough for her shoulders. The walls pressed against her from all sides. The darkness was absolute — no light, no sound, no sense of direction.
“Keep going,” the voice urged. “The surface is close. I can feel it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can feel the stars. The real stars. Not the painted ones in the prison sky. The stars above Mars.”
Remy crawled faster.
Her knees bled. Her palms were raw. Her lungs burned with the effort of breathing air that wasn’t air.
Then she saw it.
A light. Not golden. Not white. Red. The red of the Martian sky at twilight.
The surface.
She crawled toward it.
THE SURFACE
She emerged from a crack in the ground, in a place she didn’t recognize.
The sky was red. The stars were bright. The air was thin and cold, but it was real — not the manufactured atmosphere of the domes, not the recycled oxygen of the Deep Warrens. The raw air of Mars, filtered through a respirator she wasn’t wearing.
She gasped.
Her lungs seized.
She fell to her knees.
“Breathe slowly,” the voice said. “Small breaths. Let your body adjust.”
She breathed.
The world swam.
When her vision cleared, she looked around.
She was in a crater — a wide, shallow bowl of red dust and broken rock. In the distance, she could see the lights of Erebus Mons, glowing like a wound on the horizon.
But something was wrong.
The lights were flickering. Dying. Reappearing.
“The hunters,” the voice said. “They have taken the city. The oligarchs have made their move.”
Remy’s heart pounded. “Juno.”
“She is still alive. I can feel her. She is in the Memory Den, holding off the hunters with a handful of survivors.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the memory fragment connects me to all who carry pieces of the weapon. Juno has a fragment. She has always had it. She was planted with it as a child, just like you. Just like your mother.”
Remy’s world tilted.
“Juno is a carrier?”
“She is the backup. The failsafe. The one who would wake if you fell.”
“She never told me.”
“She did not know. The fragment was dormant. But when you entered the prison, it woke. She knows now. And she is fighting.”
Remy stood.
Her legs shook. Her hands trembled. But she stood.
“I need to get to her.”
“The city is crawling with hunters. You will not make it on your own.”
“Then I’ll find a way.”
She started walking.