Chapter 33 · The Voices of Six Cities

Kellan drowned in other people's lives.

A woman screamed somewhere beneath a red sky. A boy counted ceiling bolts in a shelter while his father whispered that the walls would hold. An old man tasted blood and copper, then forgot why he was standing. Thousands of memories collided inside Kellan's skull, each one arriving with a pulse of terror.

He tried to breathe.

His lungs moved, but the breath belonged to someone else. A hundred thousand chests expanded with him. A million hearts struck his ribs from the inside.

COMMANDER.

The word rolled through him in layers. Some voices were mechanical, some human, some too young to understand what they were saying.

COMMANDER.

WHERE DO WE RUN?

COMMANDER, THE SKY IS BURNING.

MY MOTHER IS GONE.

PLEASE TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.

Kellan's knees buckled.

The command chamber blurred around him. Dead warframes stood beyond the fractured observation glass, their rifles lowered, their armor dim beneath the storm's green flashes. Far above the city, the Northern Compact fleet hung in the gas giant's boiling clouds, its formation broken and blind.