Rain cleaved the forest like an accusation. It fell in sheets, battered needles off the pines and turned the ground into a dark, sucking thing that pulled at boots and skin. A capsule lay half-buried in mud, its hull ripped open like a chest. Lightning licked the sky; under it, a man moved. He tasted iron and fire and something sweeter—perfume, expensive and sickly, the kind they'd used to buy silence in the Capital Ring. His fingers scrabbled for purchase on wet rotted bark. Blood had already dried into the fabric of his sleeve, and where it wasn't dried it steamed in the cold rain. He coughed. Water, or smoke, or both; it didn't matter. The world narrowed to pain and the noise of pursuit: rubber on leaf, the metallic whisper of drones, a human voice barked once, twice—needles of light slicing the trees. He pushed himself forward. The capsule had been small, the emergency hatch jammed. He remembered fire like a mouth. He remembered the Citadel—white halls and people with clipped smiles, the way they'd taught him to make himself a blade and then showed him to those who could use it. He remembered being sold, the slow transaction of favors and loyalties in rooms with glass floors and thin carpets. Then the revolution—broken promises that smelled of oil and politics—and the night they carved him out and left him as an example. Memory and present smashed together. A