The Great Dark.

She didn’t know what form it took—an AI, a person, a monster—but she had seen something terrible in the red of Di’s eyes as he slid the blade into her stomach.

Another gust of wind rushed through the street, picking up pieces of trash and dried leaves, and blew her hood off.

She and E0S passed an Iron Shrine, hollowed and burned out, like dozens of others in the kingdom. No one had found the arsonist yet, but the Emperor, and the Ironbloods on the Iron Council, blamed rogue Metals—just like they blamed rogue Metals for her assassination. In the wake of her death, the Emperor had HIVE’d so many more Metals than ever before, creating an army of thoughtless soldiers.

In response, Siege and her fleet had created sanctuaries: places where Metals, and those who supported them, could go to be safe.

Or, at least, safer.

The front doors of the Iron Shrine had been blown open, hanging charred on their hinges, the temple itself a gutted corpse, blackened and ash swept, and the holy tombs beneath it were desecrated. The building had stood for almost a thousand years, and even after the fire it still stood. Rogue Metals wouldn’t burn a shrine for nothing—ransack a tomb without taking anything out of it.

It didn’t make sense to Ana.

The HIVE was behind it, she was sure of it. The fires started soon after the Emperor took the throne, and every shrine was destroyed in the same way—the pattern was too exact. The HIVE was searching for something.

But what it was, she couldn’t figure out.

A small group of people huddled inside, around a low-burning flame in a trash can. A lively fiddle carried across the wind, filled with voices in holy songs. It reminded her of the tunes Wick used to play and Riggs sang off-key—when she would pull Di out of whatever boring medical book he had been engrossed in and they’d dance.

Or attempt to.

Metals weren’t very good at dancing.

Her ears perked at the familiar sound of footsteps—Messiers.

“Scatter!” a girl cried, and the group split in different directions, jumping out of the burned windows and between the crumbling walls.

She quickly pulled up the hood of her cloak and slipped into the shadowed stoop of a house, E0S ducking into her cloak. The patrol grew near, and she slipped her hand into her inner coat pocket, fingertips brushing against the small cubed memory core—Di’s—the size of a plum and cold to the touch.

She held her breath as the Messiers passed. Pristine blue uniforms, universal blue eyes, polished boots, and polished metal faces.

When they were gone, she slumped against the door, her breath rushing out of her lips in a puff of frost.

She tapped the comm-link clasped to her cloak and traveled on down the street toward her destination. “There’s a patrol in the slums tonight, but I’m almost at the coordinates.”

For a moment, there was only static in her earpiece, and then her captain said, “Of course there is. Probably there to arrest another Metal. Be cautious, darling. Robb, Jax, check in?”