Chapter 94 THE REVERSED NEEDLE
Chapter 94 THE REVERSED NEEDLE
The white beam of light felt freezing cold, yet it made the air smell like burnt hair.
"Seraphina, no!" I screamed, pushing my body up from the iron deck.
My little sister floated in the middle of the glowing light, her small feet dangling inches above the floating bones. The two massive golden gears spinning where her eyes used to be gave a loud, heavy CLANG with every turn. The red light from the ceiling eye painted her pale face a deep, bloody color. She looked so small, yet the voice coming out of her mouth sounded like a mountain cracking in half.
They are using her corpse, the realization hit my chest like a jagged piece of glass. They turned my sweet little bird into the mouth of their monster.
A hot, greasy wave of hatred flooded my mind, thicker and meaner than before. The Emperor was still laughing in the corner, his bloody face full of a mad, wild victory. The dead clone lay twisted on the railing, still leaking gray oil. They had broken every single piece of my life, and now they were making my sister's dead body attack the only parent we had left.
"I will butcher you for this," I whispered, my eyes locking onto the Emperor. "I will tear your throat out and feed it to the fish."
The iron mother didn't try to run from the needle pointing at her head. The red cables making up her arms groaned as she stepped in front of me, her rusted steel face shielding my body from the white beam.
"Run, Aria," my mother’s mechanical roar shook the deck. "Take the core and climb! The loom has her mind now!"
"I am not leaving you!" I yelled.
Before I could drag myself toward her, Seraphina’s hand dropped. The long silver needle shot out of her fingertips like a bolt of white lightning.
SHHH-CRUNCH.
The silver needle didn't pierce my mother’s steel face. It hit the massive black iron axe lying on the deck, the magic instantly melting the heavy weapon into a puddle of bubbling gray liquid. The force of the blast threw the iron mother backward, her red wire body slamming into the broken steam wagon with a loud, clattering crash.
"Yes! Push the thread!" the Emperor shrieked, jumping to his feet among the bones. He pointed his finger at me, his blue eyes wide and bloodshot. "Kill the maid, Seraphina! Clear the deck so the network can lock!"
The giant gears in Seraphina’s face spun faster. She raised her hand again, the silver needle growing longer, aiming straight for my chest.
I have to stop the engine, I told myself. I can't fight my sister, but I can kill the man who turned the key.
I didn't lunge at Seraphina. I turned my body toward the Emperor. I opened the black hole inside my belly all the way, letting the purple fire of the World-Eater explode out of my skin. My single black wing snapped out behind me, driving me across the iron deck like a dark bullet.
"What are you doing?" the Emperor gasped, his crazy grin vanishing as he saw me coming.
He tried to scramble back into the bone pile, but he was too slow. I reached out with my right arm, the sharp, purple bone claw, and locked my skeletal fingers around his gold throat plate. I slammed his heavy body down onto the iron deck, my claw digging deep into the gold metal until his skin began to bleed beneath the armor.
"You think your crown makes you safe?" I hissed, staring directly into his terrified blue eyes. "You think your magic wires make you a god? You are just a cowardly little boy playing with knives."
"Aria, wait!" he choked out, his hands clawing at my purple bone fingers. "If you kill me, the master stitch drops! The sea will swallow the island! Your mother will drown in the mud!"
"Good," I growled. "Then we will all burn together."
I raised my left hand, the human fingers dripping with hot red blood and black smoke, ready to drive my fist straight through his nose
Suddenly, a cold, sharp wire wrapped around my wrist.
I snapped my head around. It wasn't the clone, and it wasn't Vance.
Arthur, the rebel leader, had pulled my bone claw out of his ruined hand. He was standing on his knees behind me, his face covered in gray ash and dark grease, a wild,
manic look in his eyes. He wasn't trying to save the Emperor. He had a small, sharp copper screwdriver clutched in his teeth, and his left hand was holding the broken pieces of the silver remote box.
"The Council... always gets the scraps, girl," Arthur whispered, a bloody smile breaking through his gray whiskers.
Before I could swing my wing to hit him, Arthur drove the copper screwdriver straight into the red glass sphere tucked into my belt, the needle-monster's detonator.
CRACK.
The sphere didn't just split. It shattered into a thousand tiny pieces of red glass right against my ribs.
A massive, blinding shockwave of purple and red fire exploded outward from my waist. The blast didn't throw us away; it ripped the iron deck completely in half, the front of the warship tilting sharply into the dark, bubbling slime below.
The Emperor slipped out of my grip, his body sliding down the sloping iron floor toward the edge of the bone mountain. I reached out to grab him, but a heavy red cable wrapped around my waist, pulling me backward.
The iron mother had caught me. She held me tight against her rusted steel chest as the entire cavern began to tilt.
High above, the massive black iron eye gave one final, deafening screech. The red clock-light in its pupil snapped out, replaced by a sudden, freezing flood of black seawater that broke through the silver magic ceiling like a wall of solid rock.
The ocean was falling on top of us.
Through the rushing sheet of water, I looked toward the floating beam of light. Seraphina wasn't floating anymore. The white light had vanished, and her small body was dropping straight down into the wide, black mouth of the bone trench.
But she wasn't alone.
The clone with the split waist had crawled back up onto the railing. Her silver needle-fingers were locked around Seraphina’s ankle, pulling my sister’s cold body down into the dark with her, her silver eyes glowing bright through the falling ocean.