Page 6 of Broken Triad

Now those stars are where the Scorp Org-Ships are descending from in a mass that will wipe out this world.

“Princess Bitch has an extra set of scanning cards in case she loses her—” Rachel is interrupted by the wailing sirens. “I bet she left them in her rush. They could be in her chambers.” She’s lost in thought for a long moment. Her mind must be working overtime, and I want her to tell her to give up, to hide, that Scorp come towards signs of life and that our only hope is to make ourselves small and silent.

“Alright. Summer, meet me in the armory. Anyone else?”

“I’m coming.” It’s Katerina, Brianna’s athletics instructor.

“Okay. See you at the armory. Anyone else?”

I look up at her, but say nothing. Even if Paulus left guns, it won’t be enough to stop Scorp, not for long.

The only way to survive a Scorp attack is to hide. That’s what my father told me. That sometimes, deep in the mines, he hears them chitter, that they live there and no one cares, that the only thing you can do when you hear those sounds is stay perfectly still, barely breathing, and wait for them to pass.

Summer, Rachel and Katarina walk out of the main hall deeper into the estate with purpose in their steps. I can’t just sit here in the panic and horror of the room. I need to get out and see what’s happening.

I pull myself up, and leave through the outer door of the main hall. As if they are sheep, the rest of the servants follow me, except Toa, who just keeps sweeping the same length of the hall, over and over, her mind broken.

I walk into the courtyard. The front gates are thick metal portcullises, and stone walls ring the estate, designed half to keep out thieves and half for bragging rights. I take the steps that lead up to the wall garden, where Paulus liked to take his lunches, looking out at the city.

He would tell me that one day he’d have estates in the city, and that I’d be serving a true Lord. He thought with enough money he could buy titles owned only by birth. That if he spent enough money, he could ascend from his common birth—and, failing that, he kept his daughter tightly locked up, waiting for some out-of-luck nobleman to marry her off to.

I can still hear his voice as I walk through the garden, the beautiful flowers reaching to the sun, thick green grass under my feet. Paulus would sit back against his white chair, his belly pressed against the fine silks he always wore. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To serve a real Lord?”

“Yes,” I replied, and he grinned, the smirk erasing as his wife returned. She gave me a cold look, and I let it slide off me, just like Paulus’ leers.

Now I stand at the walls, staring out at the Royal City which will soon fall. The palace itself is an ugly thing, when compared to the Aurelian architecture it grew out of it. It has five added spires ascending to the heaven, one on each corner, with the tallest spire in the dead center of the palace and climbing up above the clouds.

It’s no coincidence that it’s always surrounded by thick, white clouds. The King shrouds it in man-made weather.

That’s real power, something Paulus could never understand, the power to do things in plain sight without anyone realizing. I heard another servant mention how she wondered why it was always cloudy, and another chimed in, that clouds naturally form around the tallest structures. I didn’t correct them. They had such loyalty to the royal family that any word against them would make me their enemy.

One moonlit night, when I sat in the garden, a streak of lightning hit the very top of the tower, and for an instant, I caught a glance of the hidden dome at the zenith, the true seat of power for the royal family who abandoned us.

The Royal City is smoking, and the Scorp have not yet come. The city descended into chaos, panicked people rushing to get food and weapons. The most brutal men, the kind who bruised Katarina’s face, abuse the disorder.

There’s thick black smoke coming from the industrial sector of the city as a fire rages, and so for too long, I don’t see the smaller haze of dirt and dust coming towards us. Still in a daze, I don’t catch sight of the truck careening towards us until they’ve crested the first hills towards our estate, the truck’s wheels losing grip on the earth as they power at full speed forward. Four men inside are holding onto their seats with white-knuckled determination.

I can’t make out much about them, except their hungry, dead eyes, the way they’re staring straight at our front gate as they crest each hilltop.

They’re men like the ones that bruised Katarina’s face.

My lips draw back as hatred washes through me. Scorp, we can’t stand up against.

But men? Men, we can handle, if we show them we’re not easy meat.

I start to turn, to get a knife from the kitchen, when the rifle shot cracks out from the north tower of Brianna’s room. The other servants gasp, and one screams weakly before her cry chokes off. The bullet hits the dirt in front of the truck, but it accelerates forward, untouched.

“Stop! They’re going to save us!” Letty’s shrill voice bleats out.

The rifle cracks out, again and again, like Paulus beating a servant with his whip, the hard blows relentless. I look up at the tower to see who’s behind the trigger.

It’s Rachel. She managed to find weapons in the armory. Her expression is grim, her matted, sweaty blonde curls framing her striking beauty, intense as a bird of prey as she looks down the sights of the rifle that rests out of the same window she used to watch sunrises from. She fires, over and over, and I turn back to look at the truck as the windshield shatters and it careens sideways, flipping over and crumpling as it smokes in a ditch. A bleeding man stumbles out of the wreckage, pulling himself up, and he limps towards us with a wicked, curved knife in his hand.

That knife wasn’t for saving us.

It falls to the ground as the rifle cracks out once more, and he falls, never to rise.

Someone is sobbing. They’re seeing the violent reality of the blaring klaxons and smoking city plainly in front of us, the reality of chaos as people panic and become animals. It was easier to handle it hiding in the grand hall, surrounded by fake jewels and gaudy art, where it could still seem like some far off nightmare that wouldn’t touch us if we just hoped or prayed enough.

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