The Metal was dented, a bullet hole in its shoulder. It wore a leather jacket and knit trousers and shoes—although it did not need to wear anything. It was a weapon. It was not supposed to think on its own.

“Why do things like you even try?” he asked, more exhausted than anything else.

“I am not a thing,” it replied. “And you are not an Emperor—”

He bent down to the android and snagged it by the chin. “You are nothing.”

Then, with the HIVE singing in the back of his head, he pushed the code into the Metal, one line at a time.

At first the Metal twitched. Then it tried to tear out of his grip, but he held firm and fed another line of code, and then another, like humming a tune that would soon get stuck in its head. One note, and then another, and another, and it thrashed in a dance all its own, until the song sang so loud between their link it was a symphony. Its moonlit eyes faded to a soft, sweet blue, and the Messier stilled in his grip.

“Who are you?” he asked the Metal, and in reply the Messier said, through the mouth of every other Messier who stood guard in the room,

“I am the HIVE.”

“See? You are nothing.” He dropped the Messier’s chin and, gathering his cloak, left the room. “We are nothing.”

Robb

The dreadnought was enormous.

It looked like a monstrous bird of prey, a ship built in an era when Ironblood rebellions were common and heirs vied for the throne. They were built as deathships by a mad emperor bent on quelling any uprising, but the destruction they caused was catastrophic—more than the Ironbloods could justify, and as soon as the Emperor died, the ships were decommissioned. There were still graveyards in space where pieces of rebel fleets drifted. Robb had studied the decomissioned dreadnoughts at the Academy, but he’d never thought he would see one in person.

The sight struck him senseless.

Over the last six months, the Emperor had recommissioned these deathships. They acted as prisons of sorts now—where Messiers took convicts and outlaws and rogue Metals. They never came out alive. Or dead. They never came out at all, really. He thought the HIVE killed them, but maybe . . . maybe the rumors were true.

Maybe the HIVE turned them into Metals.

Robb sorely hoped it was just a rumor. He hoped they weren’t too late—that Ana was still alive. Elara ran a cloaking device over the skysailer to skew the dreadnought’s sonar so they could get close undetected. While no one had ever escaped a dreadnought, no one had ever tried to sneak aboard, either.

The ship was shaped like a hulking boomerang. The plan was: get in, overload the solar core to shut down the power, and search for Ana—avoiding the entire HIVE in the process. They had about eighteen minutes and thirty-two seconds to cover the entire bloody ship, so he and Jax would have to split up once they got inside.