The first guard lunged forward, swinging his baton at her head. Shadera ducked, the movement sending knives of pain through her broken ribs. The second guard jammed his shock baton into her side before she could recover, and she could’ve sworn in that moment her soul fled her body.

Electricity surged through her, muscles seizing, teeth clamping down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood. The current was liquid fire in her veins, burning through nerve endings down to the bone. She collapsed to the floor, body jerking involuntarily as she swallowed back a scream. Through watering eyes, she saw the third guard pointing his gun at the other prisoners, forcing them back against the wall.

“I said get up,” the first guard hissed, striking her with the butt of his rifle.

The blow caught her temple and her vision exploded into white stars, ears ringing as if someone had detonated a bomb inside her skull. Blood trickled warm down the side of her face. Shadera turned her head slowly, cheek scraping against the floor, and let her lips spread into a bloody grin.

She wouldn’t give them what they wanted, she would never obey Veyra orders.

Gloved hands grabbed her shoulders, dragging her upright and setting her on her feet as she jerked against their hold. Their grip on her body tightened as they began to haul her toward the door. Shadera kicked wildly, grunting against the pain. She wouldn’t go without a fight.

The guards shoved her through the doorway, her broken body slamming against the metal bars as they manhandled her into the corridor. The impact sent fresh agony through her collarbone, and a cry finally escaped from between her lips.

Shadera had trained for this, had trained to be tortured, to withstand beatings. She’d die before she gave any of her secrets to the Heart.

Behind Shadera, the other prisoners began to scream, their voices growing louder as she snarled at the guards. Her knee met the groin of the first officer and he buckled over as a second round of electricity seized every muscle in her body, and this time a scream tore from her lungs.

“Leave her alone!”

“Get your hands off her!”

The protests spread like wildfire. Every cell they dragged her past erupted in screams and shouts, hands reaching through bars, faces twisted with rage and desperation. The guards grasp on her arms deepened, fingers digging into flesh already mottled with bruises.

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the guards shouted, firing one bullet toward the ceiling as they halted and looked around the cells in warning.

For one second the prison fell quiet, the bullets’ echo the only sound. Then, out of the quiet a woman’s voice, thin but determined, began to sing. The melody was old, but Shadera recognized it immediately and panic shot up to her throat.

No, no. Her eyes frantically searched the cells for its origin. This would cause chaos, would cause a massacre. Her sight locked on the woman. The same woman with the ruined eye from her cell.

Prisoner 3421.

She did not stop singing as she held Shadera’s stare.

Did not stumble over the words.

She nodded once to Shadera, placing her hand over her heart and began to sing louder.

“Silence!” the guard yelled, twisting toward her and aiming his rifle. Still she sang as a red dot found the center of her forehead.

Shadera saw it, the moment the woman accepted her fate. The moment her shoulders fell back and she took one last stand against the Heart, pushing her chin up in defiance.

“No!” Shadera screamed, lunging toward the gun. “Stop—”

The shot rang out as the other two guards yanked her back. For one terrifying moment, Shadera went wholly numb as she watched the woman’s body crumple to the ground. Blood poured from the bullet hole between her brows in three lines as the prison seemed to hold its breath.

Shadera’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession as she dragged her eyes from the woman’s lifeless body to find all the prisoners’ eyes locked on her, hands over their hearts, chins held high.

No.

An explosion of song reverberated off the walls of the prison, every person singing. Every prisoner echoing her defiance. Every head dipping toward Shadera in recognition. Men and women, young and old, their voices blending into a chorus that filled every corner of their cages and spilling out into the corridor beyond.

It was the song of defiance, of hope in the midst of despair, of unity in the face of oppression. It was the national anthem of the old world. The song that had been outlawed when New Found Haven rose.

It was more than a song, it was a battle cry.

More guards flooded into the prison at the sound, guns drawn and circling around Shadera, barrels trained on the innocent.

“I said silence!” the guard snarled again as they spread down the narrow corridor.

The prisoners ignored him, their voices rising higher, the forbidden anthem pouring from their throats as their fists began to bang on the bars, their feet stomping in rhythm with their voices. Each defiant, each scared, each steady.

Shadera stood frozen in the center of the swarm of guards as the song flowed over her skin. Her heart swelled, guilt and fear filling the muscle. Tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes at the disturbing beauty of this moment.

She could feel the weight of their courage, the way they were choosing to defy the Heart knowing it would only bring them death. They were brave in a way she’d never been. She’d never fought for anything other than herself. But these people, these strangers, were giving up any chance of survival, all for a doomed rebellion. All because Shadera had pulled a trigger. All because she had dared to execute the Heart’s heir.

She had never witnessed such bravery.

Something snapped in her then as she watched the guard next to her tighten his finger on the trigger. She shot forward despite the agony aching through every inch of her body, desperate to stop the slaughter she knew was coming. She grabbed the neck of the rifle just as he pressed fully down on the trigger, yanking the gun upward. But she was too late.

She was too late.

The sound cracked in the confined space, and a prisoner in the cell in front of them fell, blood blooming across his chest like a macabre flower.

The singing faltered, a momentary hitch of horror, but then it resumed, louder and more defiant than before. The guard snapped toward Shadera as she twisted the gun from his hands faster than she had ever moved. She fell to a knee, pushing the butt of it into her shoulder and open fired on the guards. Veyra dropped one after another.

A baton crashed into her cheekbone and she felt it crack, her head snapping back. She forced her eyes to focus as she pointed the rifle upward and sent a bullet into the soft flesh under the guard’s chin and out of the top of his head. Hands clasped around her neck as the guard’s body hit the ground, and she clawed to keep her grip on the gun as it was snatched from her fingers.

Bullets were flying from every officer’s gun into cells, tearing through flesh and bone with sickening ease as she was dragged from the floor by her throat. Bodies crumpled around her, voices silenced forever, but still the anthem rang out. A clarion call to the fallen.

Shadera would never forget them.

A scream, a wordless howl of anguish and rage, unleashed itself from her lungs as she kicked and screamed against the Veyra’s hold.

“Kill me! Kill me instead,” she shrieked, the words tearing from the depths of her body. “I’m the one you want. They did nothing wrong!”

Shadera threw back her head, her skull crushing against the mask of the guard holding her, and it fell from his face. He scrambled toward it, freeing her of his hold as her boots connected with the blood slicked floor. She lunged for another guard.