He replies with starships and companies, all drawn to the aftermath of the grenade. Titan doesn't give her units the chance to rot. New waves of Cockroaches flood the streets around me while the ones I killed begin their resurrections. Twisted torsos reunite with severed metal spines, limbs jolt and crack, wires reach for one another to pull their hosts upright. The human units stay dead--good. The rest resume their posts as if they'd never fallen. Once again, my combat suit lights up with dots of red, blue, and green.

I twist the spear between my hands, shuffling my feet through glass and rubble. Starships darken the sky; great cannons drop from their sides and aim their barrels at me, preparing light charges that would devastate the city three times over. This isn't the first time I've stared down certain death, but I know when I'm outmatched. With every new starship that blots the sky, my chances of escape dwindle.

Silver and gleaming, the Commander's ship descends the skyscrapers to hover over the hole in the ground. What a rare honor, so few high-ranking officials consider their missions important enough to show face. The Legion's laser sights and cannons hold me hostage as the silver ship outstretches landing gear and perches on the asphalt without a sound, graceful in comparison to its older brothers and sisters with their earthshaking rockets, vomiting fuel and smoke from age-old turbines; this one wraps itself in a thin layer of steam instead, emitted from the pistons on its ramp, which unlocks from a smooth underbelly to unveil a clean white cabin. The turbines never burn, only glow with light, alien and ethereal as the planet they come from. They cast an eerie orange sheen on the soldiers marching from the cabin, white scales turned amber, black helmets blinding with distasteful neon reflections.

Their entrance plays out like a psychedelic dream, each soldier in perfect sync with the one next to it. Lightning staffs copy one another activated and poised, and every single kind of firearm the Martians have is aimed at my head. Cannons and rifles all fill their muzzles with charges until the sun fades in comparison to their glare.

"I appreciate the show," I say. "It's impressive, but not enough to stop me." I stand tall among them and hold my spear out in front of me, the tip pointed at the silver starship. "Commander, come out here and show your face. Take your helmet off when you do, I want your men to see the coward I make of you when I drive this through your stomach."

The soldiers raise their weapons in unison, closing the gaps in their ranks.

"Oh, are you all afraid?" I ask them. "Poor King Eden, trapped and lonely against the might of Mars, and yet not one of you dares to take the first shot."

"Trust me," a voice says from the depths of the starship. "If our orders allowed it, you'd be dead by now."

The Commander appears at the back, covered in black metal scales. They converge at his neck beneath a dark pointed helmet, different and complex in design, with a red bar over his eyes and divots where his cheekbones would be. He drags a scarlet cape behind him and carries a black lightning spear. Grenades identical to the one I found pepper holsters filled with knives and light cartridges around his waist and legs. Gray officers surround him as he descends; they flank his sides with rifles held between their hands, the first two soldiers carrying restraints instead.

The Commander approaches with leisure, unbound to the others and their stiff unified march. I lean against my spear and abandon my fighting stance--from his gait, I know he only wishes to talk.

"Commander, what an honor," I note the numbers printed below his left collarbone; 342R no. 5. Ah, a hybrid unit, once human and now infused with metal, usually at the cost of humanity--as if the Elite had any to begin with.

"At first I questioned Titan's cease-fire," he says in that familiar masked monotone, thick Elite accent still present at the edges. "But now that I've had a look at you, I understand. Look alive, men, we're in the presence of royalty." He cranes his neck to look down at me, surrenders his staff to the officer beside him as if they were a servant. With a flick of his cape, he crosses his ankles and mocks a curtsey. "The pleasure is all mine."

"Stand up, your disrespect makes me sick."

He straightens. "This is the warlord of the Southern District, leader of the Aurelian Syndicate." He points at me and gestures to his men as if in presentation. Fingers twitch on triggers, feet shift inside boots, the soldiers stand both unmoving and restless at the mention of my title. "Her people could be hiding here. Kill them on sight, they'll be marked with sunray tattoos on their forearms."

"Don't waste your time," I say. "I'm alone."

He lowers his voice and crosses his arms behind his back, then stalks closer to me. "Indeed. Rumors say that you've been missing, The Minister presumed you dead."

"He tends to jump to conclusions."

He stops inches away from me, the smell of whiskey and shoe polish dense on his clothes. I put my shoulders back and set my head high, the two of us confronting one another with the disillusion that we are equals. "Why don't you come with me," he says. "You can tell him yourself about your--" he stops, dips his helmet to look me up and down. "Well-being."

"As a prisoner? I'd rather your men open fire. Besides, I know a liar when I see one. As soon as I set foot on that ship I'll never see the light of day, and all hope of saving my son will be gone."

"So, that was your boy. How sweet that you wish to save him." He takes the restraints from the officer to his right and undoes them both. "Or perhaps, he is of a certain use to you."

My jaw tightens, I concentrate on keeping my focus on him instead of the nasty restraints, rimmed with brutal needles designed to pierce the wrists and seize the nerves. "Choose your next words very carefully," I say.

"Your absence from the throne sparked impressive controversy. Not even we could ignore the chatter among the tribes. Had you truly left to train your son?"

"That doesn't concern you."

"Or did the great King Eden, famous for her resistance to Corruption, finally take self-infection too far?"

"That's a lie."

"You fell ill, then abandoned your kingdom with your son to cover up her shame."

"I'm not sick."

"Your scars say otherwise."

The yellow marks on my shoulders sink a little deeper, residual ink from my mutation itches beneath my combat suit. I ignore them. "My scars mean nothing, we all carry them. I can give you some if you want. Corruption would look good on a Martian; I'd like to see you bloat beneath that fancy suit."

"I'm sure you would." He hides the restraints behind his back and stands at ease. "About your boy, no man is cruel enough to keep a mother from her son."

"I know where this is going. If I stay, you kill the two of us; if I come, you reunite us?"

"Your son's security is guaranteed along with a comfortable life on Mars. Whether or not you'd like to be a part of it is up to your surrender."

"So you'll kill us both but on a different planet."

"I did hear once that you were paranoid," he says.

"I wouldn't call facts paranoia."

"King, take the deal. You have no other choice."

"No."

"The Minister only wishes to speak with you. After all you've done against my people, your arrest is a kindness."

"Then why go to all these lengths?"

If his red eyes could narrow and glare, they would. "On the ground, hands behind your head."

"This isn't an arrest, it's an execution."

Demonic and mechanical, he abandons his monotone and shouts through his helmet. "On the ground, now."

I take up my spear and send electricity down the metal, sparks popping and snapping against my hands.

"If you attack, you'll never see your son again," he says.

"I'll take my chances."

"King, you know you need to surrender."

"Let me kill you first and then I'll think about it--"

A spear shines out the corner of my eye, I catch it before it connects with my ribs, lightning searing my hands. A gray officer stares above the glow and comes to know his mistake far too late. My boot strikes his stomach before he can reach for his gun, his armor smacks the broken concrete as I send him reeling as a beetle stuck on its back. The lightning spear punctures his chest and burns him away, a corpse cooked inside the armor. He writhes for a moment and falls still, bits of smoke curling from the slits between his scales.

And so, our conversation ends.

The Commander rises, blackened spear recovered from his servant, and thrust into my stomach before I can take up my own to face him. My insides twist, my legs bend beneath me and succumb to pins and needles, fire tears through my veins and dull the edges of my vision. I scream until the sound scrapes my throat, my cries lost in the storm of soldiers coming to wrestle me to the ground. Paralyzed by the lightning, I have nowhere to go. The Commander shoves the spear deep into the wound and lowers me to the ground. Spit falls from my mouth to evaporate on the metal staff. I scramble for my footing but slam one hand to the asphalt, legs useless, my lower body numb. I claw the spear in an effort to pull it away, sucking stale gasps into shocked lungs pressed to a ribcage still broken.

The Commander shoves his armored gloves around my neck and puts me down. My head meets the concrete slats. The impact turns the sky from hazy blue to deep purple. He presses his knee into my body and holds me still, immobilized by the electricity, and drags the spear from my insides. Blood gushes from the wound and for a moment, my senses fade.

I awaken on my knees bathed in sweat, arms tied together behind my back. The wound in my abdomen closes but the spear left burns too extensive for my mutation to heal. My head aches, I wince and drag my gaze to the Commander who towers above me, a light gun pointed at my forehead. He clicks his tongue.

"Now this is upsetting. Look at what's become of you, too weak to put up a fight."

A deep cough wracks my chest. Two soldiers hold me down on my knees and shove their guns into my sides, the muzzles sharp and cold through the rips in my suit. I resist them, the burns on my stomach pulling at the edges with every twist of my torso, threatening to reopen the fresh invisible stitches with every punch I attempt to make through my cuffs. Needles scrape inside my wrists, the sensation strange against dead nerves as I search for weakness in the metal bands.

I hang my head low and spit mucus and blood on his boots, where it spatters across the shiny toes. "I'm not sick," I say with a rasp. "It's just been a long day."

A click. Then, a loud pop. Something hits my sternum, blue feathers stick out the center of my armor, the needle long enough to burrow straight through the bone. The cold sedative floods my veins. Goosebumps rise on my arms as it reaches to my fingertips and sets a heavy weight on my eyelids, but it affects me little more than a weak glass of wine. My curls fall and hide my face as I stare at the feathers and wait for the sedative to fade, still searching for weaknesses in my cuffs. My right thumb twitches, freed from the paralysis of the needles, and the metal pressed against it starts to give.

"I knew that wouldn't work," the Commander says. He crouches and blows through his mask; I imagine his whiskey breath rustling the hairs on the back of my neck. "Do you know what this is?"

He dangles a black syringe between my eyes.

I glare from the bottom of my brows and shake my head. "Is that supposed to scare me? I'm no beast, you can't sedate me like any other animal." My thumb eases the needles inside the metal restraints. They crunch against the bone until they bend away, painful, but worth the reward--the brace slides over my knuckle.

"This isn't a sedative." He uncaps the needle and flicks the tip, then tests the plunger. A bead of black liquid pools at the top. "Titan won't let me know what it does for sure but I'm willing to find out. After observing its prototype in trial subjects, however, I do think you should be afraid."

Something squirms inside of me, the syringe an unwelcome sight. A memory seeps into the back of my mind, cold and incomplete, from a childhood I'm not sure belongs to me. My nerves fire with the familiarity of burning veins and wicked hot serum, but no visions come to match or explain the sensation. An ongoing problem I haven't the motivation to explore; for an Ancient, the past is better left behind, and I've done a pretty good job of it.

He takes hold of my jaw and wrenches my head to the side, neck exposed and vulnerable, then sets the needle against a bulging vein.

My breath quickens, teeth clenched until my jaw stings. "I thought you had orders not to kill me," I say.

"There are methods of execution that keep the body alive. Titan made sure of that."

I twist my hands inside the restraints, forgetting the consequences of the bindings. Blood trickles down my wrists as I bend my fingers into unnatural shapes, scraping the skin off my knuckles just to pull them free.

"But the Minister wants to talk--"

"He does, but accidents do happen. Keeping you secure takes precedence."

"What about my boy--"

The syringe interrupts me. He jabs it into my neck, brushing the plunger with his thumb just to tease me. The needle breaks through my veins. Bile floods my throat and covers my airways; it takes all my concentration not to vomit. The Commander pauses, dips his head, and sighs.

"I offered you the chance to reunite, but you declined."

He grabs the side of my head to keep me still, disgusting fingers tangled in my hair, as he sends the poison down my neck--but I don't let him get very far. The plunger sinks an inch into the barrel. My thumb slips, the restraints break. With a bloodied hand I snatch a grenade off his belt and detonate it in the center of us all.

WC: 2567