Mads turned almost in tandem with Luc.

Behind her, Luc swore. Mads would have joined him if she could form words.

"Graynard?" Luc stepped up beside Mads, raising his sword a bit.

The Atelian ignored them, just aiming his smoking gun and firing again, and again. And then Mads heard the men behind them fleeing back down the passage.

Graynard calmly reloaded his gun, as if they had endless time, as if the scattering men wouldn't return with reinforcements. "Miss Capot. I see you thought I was joking." His voice was full of venom, but his face was expressionless.

Luc sighed. "Gray, drop the gun. I'll come with you. Just don't touch her."

Graynard leveled the gun at Mads. "Give me one reason not to shoot you." He ignored Luc completely.

"I did it," Mads snapped.

"What?" asked Luc, looking from her to Graynard. He wiped sweat from his brow, his eyes narrowing.

"I told Luc everything." Mads spoke louder this time. "Everything." She only hoped Graynard wouldn't ask Luc for specifics. This was a tightrope she had no desire to walk. But she didn't want to die. "Your plan, he knows what you were up to."

Luc's eyes were cold as he stepped in front of Mads. He was quaking visibly now, and he looked liable to die on them at any moment. "Gray. I'm . . . coming." He dropped his sword to the ground, and the motion made him sway. But he remained in Graynard's line of fire. "It's over, Gray. Drop the gun." He sounded drunk. "I'm coming."

Graynard lowered the weapon, glowering. "You're right. It is over. I've had it with you, and your stupid games, and your messes. Leave her, come with me now, and maybe I'll give you one more chance."

Don't go! thought Mads, staring at Luc's back, at the splotches of blood and dirt on his robe. Don't leave me alone here. If he went with Graynard, she knew she'd never see him again, and Graynard would disappear with the reward.

"Gray." Luc's voice sounded garbled, like it was being played backwards.

"Those guards will be back," cut in Mads. "With reinforcements. We can have a domestic later." She tensed, ready to run.

"Gray, drop th' gun," mumbled Luc, swaying in front of Mads.

Graynard finally dropped the gun, kicking it to the middle of the passage with a look of disdain. "Fine." He frowned at Luc, and he almost seemed concerned. "You been lost in the Hellscape? What happened?"

Mads looked from Luc, wobbling in front of her, to the gun, its metal gleam winking at her in the dim passage lights. Catch Luc or go for the gun . . . ? She put down her spear, and Graynard never looked in her direction.

"Feel—" Luc staggered forward. "Terrible." He sagged to his knees, his head drooping and his sword swinging dangerously out to the side.

Mads dove for the gun at the same moment, fingers grasping the grip just before Graynard's. She rolled to her feet and pulled the trigger with no hesitation.

The gun went off, Graynard recoiled into the wall with a thud.

Mads watched as blood blossomed dark on Graynard's protective suit sleeve. She ignored the voice in her head and backed toward Luc. She could hear his ragged gasping behind her, and she didn't know if he was dying or something else. But he was obviously not the threat now.

"Get out of here," said Mads, leveling the gun at Graynard's head. "I won't miss twice." She hadn't missed, not exactly, but he didn't need to know that. She couldn't really have missed at such close range.

"Wraithsuckled hellspawn, traitor!" Graynard spat in rage, gripping his wounded arm and trailing into far more violent Ateli curses. His gaze found Luc, behind her. "She tricked me! Luc, she betrayed us both! Unsouled, festering, toxic-veined b—"

Mads cocked the gun and cut him off. "Call me one more name in any language, and I swear I'll shoot."

Graynard stopped talking, but his good arm was slowly creeping toward the other side of his hazsuit.

Mads took a step toward him. "No. Don't touch anything else, or I'll blow your hand off. And then your ears. Maybe your leg. I'll shoot you as many places as I can and still keep you alive."

Mads heard Luc wheezing behind her. Would his heart stop beating from all the drugs mixing? She tried to ignore her concern, and focus only on Graynard's enraged face. If she was going to convince him, she needed to look as cruel as she sounded. But was she really bluffing? If that's what it takes to get home . . .?

A shout rang out in the tunnels behind them, quickly joined by the sound of tramping feet. Reinforcements.

Please, Graynard, run. Mads' finger slid to the trigger.

Graynard looked past her, to the corridor behind and the sounds of too many guards for them to stand against. He looked from Luc, to the gun, to Mads' unwavering hands.

"Fine," he snarled. "I hope you both rot in every hellscape there is, eternal shades suffering every torment!" He backed away, then turned and fled back the way he'd come.

Mads heaved a sigh of relief and lowered the gun, flicking the safety back on. She wanted to collapse and have a good cry. But she'd made her choice, and she had to be woman enough to face it.

Mads turned back to Luc. The feet in the tunnel were closer. She didn't have long, and she only had one gun. Almost at her feet, Luc was slumped against the bodies of the downed guards, his eyes closed, his chest hardly rising.

Mads could hear the shouts of men, and she prayed they were farther away than they sounded. She dropped to Luc's side, but didn't get too close, just in case. Again, she marveled at how long his eyelashes were. Not fair. Mads stared at them, at the dark line they cut against his pale face, the contrast they made with the blood and the mud on his chin.

He hardly twitched, the slow pulse in his neck was the only sign of life. So he wasn't dead. Not yet.

Mads looked back up the passage, toward the sounds of likely death or an impossible rescue. She leveled the gun at the doorway, wondering just how many bullets she had left, and if she could stomach using them.

An Andheran guard appeared, running breakneck down the hall toward them. Mads didn't think, she shot.

Her bullet clipped his shoulder, sending him reeling into the wall. He slumped, unconscious from the impact or just dazed. Mads winced at the gun's crack, at the smoke drifting toward her face. However many bullets she had, they couldn't last forever.

Mads knelt beside Luc again and reached for his sword. It was still in his hand, and Mads was relieved that he hadn't fallen on it. But he was gripping it too tightly for her. She tugged at his hand, warily, but Luc didn't look like he'd be jumping back up any time soon. 

She started to wonder if she'd really poisoned him, after all. Sick at the thought (which made zero sense), Mads finally managed to pry his fingers off the hilt. She tucked the sword in her belt and shifted the gun to her left hand. She would die fighting, in the end. Not what she'd ever pictured the end to be like. 

But she would die differently than her all the same.

Luc shifted beside her leg, and she flinched, but he just opened his eyes and blinked up at her. His green gaze was bleary, drugged, but his mouth lifted in a gruesome half smile. "Didn't think you'd it in you," he slurred, his voice thick and labored. "Plot. Twist."

Mads spared another glance at the slumped guard before responding. He still wasn't moving, so she glared down at Luc. "Your loss."

Luc's shoulder twitched in a poorly attempted shrug, and his expression was so calm, so lazy that he might have been drifting off to sleep instead of succumbing to a drugged haze. "Why, Angry?"

Mads blinked in surprise. "Why? Why not? You're a criminal. You're a hazard, and you deserve to be punished. I couldn't let you get away with this." Her voice shook. "I'm just surprised that I didn't figure it out sooner."

He cocked a brow. "Hmmm?"

Mads glanced nervously at the tunnel. She heard distant shouts, and some sort of thudding sound. But no one joined the lone guard bleeding on the floor maybe five meters away from them. His chest was rising and falling, she could see from here.

Mads crouched down, shifting the sword so she could rock back on her heels, able to see the room, but also to speak to Luc. "You're Jupiter Jive." It felt strange to say it aloud.

Luc's replay was so soft that Mads had to bend very close to hear him.

"Ding' ding' ding." His mouth lifted a little more, causing fresh blood to dribble down his chin. "Never 'ad someone drug me with a kiss. First . . . time."

Mads shook her head, feeling herself flush. "I thought this stuff was supposed to be quick?"

Luc sighed, his gaze straying past her, then back to her face. His pupils were dilated, his eyes glassy. "Not so simple— or painless. Wanted to tell you—" he flinched.

Mads scowled. "What?" She looked up at the passage, still bare but for the wounded guard and the bodies of his comrades. "Not a good time for confessions."

"Important." Luc's eyes flicked back open, just enough for her to see the green of them. "Here." He lifted a shaking hand to her cheek.

Mads flushed and gently pushed his hand away. Something dropped from his palm, and she picked it up.

It was a small painting, the length of her thumb, and the woman had a face she knew almost better than her own.

You can't run, Madeleine. She heard her mother's voice like a bolt in her head, and she dropped the picture, as if it burned her. It stared up at her from the tunnel dirt, her mother's brightly painted eyes holding more life than anything else in this starsforsaken pit.

"What is this?" Mads demanded, outraged, confused. This didn't make sense. Was she going to wake up now, find it was all a nightmare? Was she locked up in a white room somewhere, raving and imprisoned? Was she dead?

Luc sighed. "Took from Leroy. Saw her picture before, in your . . . shop."

Mads looked at the gun in her hand, at the cool metal. It felt real. It looked real. "What do you mean?" Her voice sounded far away.

Luc's shoulder twitched, the tiniest shrug. "Promised not to tell. But gonna die so, seems fair."

The fog in Mads' mind cleared at his words. "Wait, what? What do you mean you're going to die? Graynard said you'd be fine. And he dared to seem worried about you? The nerve!" Mads felt like crying, like screaming, like a million things and she just didn't have time to deal with all of this.

Luc's laugh gurgled and caught in the back of his throat. "Not your poison. Death penalty."

Mads blanched. "You're being dramatic – you're just a thief– and I still don't understand."

HIs eyes closed with a delicate butterfly-flutter of lashes. "So long, Ang . . . ry." Bloody drool gathered at the edge of his mouth.

Mads watched it drip down his face, and then she wiped it off with the edge of her robe and stood up. Her head was light, her stomach churning.

Death penalty? So she might as well have shot him, in the end.

Her mouth was too chalky. Poison, Luc said? Mads wondered if she'd feel the effects herself, and again, she regretted kissing him so, thoroughly.

Mads wiped off her mouth at the thought and spit on the ground. Gross. She shoved that memory aside and focused on the small portrait, resting like a coiled snake beside her foot.

Leroy. Luc could have only meant Commodore Frank Leroy. The mysterious and dangerous man from Helen's Point had a picture of Mads' mother; a picture Luc had apparently stolen. And there was no reason, no motive for Luc to lie about it.

As Mads glanced down at his prone form, the irony of the situation wasn't lost on her. "Did you plan this somehow?" she hissed, but his body remained limp. This time, it would seem, he was really out.

Commodore Leroy might know her mother; he might have something to do with her past. But Luc was the only person Mads knew who could find Helen's Point, and she'd just ensured his complete silence for at least a few hours. By the time he woke up, he'd be in the custody of the Galactic Peace Keepers, or she'd be dead.

Mads glanced up the hallway. She could still hear people moving, but she wasn't sure if they were taking really long to reach her, or if she was just on edge. It might have been a few minutes since Graynard had been in here. It might have been hours.

Mads looked around at all the limp bodies, then down at the sword in her belt and the gun in her hand. She wasn't going down without a fight, but she wasn't going to leave starsdamned Jupiter Jive.

Still, the odds weren't in her favor. Again.

Mads carefully picked up the painting, holding it with the tips of her fingers. There was a tiny inscription on the rim, and Mads had to squint to read it. To my dearest Francis, on our wedding day. And then the initials "L. C."

L. C. Lisette Capot. It doesn't make sense! Mads dropped the painting down her robes, to join the com and the map. Now wasn't the time to think about that. Frank Leroy could not be her father, Francis le Roux. Or could he? The similarity in their names struck Mads for the first time. Change "le Roux" to "Leroy" and you had the same name. Too many coincidences to be, well, coincidence.

Mads would have panicked about this, but just then, she heard the tramp of feet finally coming closer. She dropped down on her stomach, using Luc's body as a shield. If they'd just look over the bodies, keep going . . . Mads tucked herself closer to Luc, keeping the gun ready. She was grateful that Luc had insisted on switching clothes with the guards before they fled. Her sacrificial robes would have really stood out, despite how filthy they had been. And she was battered enough to pass for dead, right? Mads closed her eyes just enough to still see, holding her breath as a group of bone-armored Andherans finally rounded the corner.

To Mads, it looked like a whole army spilling out of the passage. Regardless of what the gun's magazine held, there weren't that many bullets. Mads forced herself to lie still. Luc's body was warm, but he didn't seem to be breathing anymore. Maybe the men really would look them over.

The com vibrated soundlessly against Mads' sternum. Terrible timing. She couldn't look at it. She felt like her heartbeat must be audible to everyone in the passage.

"Take left," barked a voice, just beyond her. "We'll head right. And be careful, they have guns."

Footsteps came closer, pausing by the corpse just to Mads' right. Mads felt like screaming, but she held her breath and pretended she was roasting coffee beans. She pictured the steps in her head, envisioning the perfection that only came with time and care. Just roasting coffee beans. Nothing to see here.

"Over here!" one of the men called, he was on her left, the direction Graynard had fled.

And then the wall  exploded in front of them. 

https://youtu.be/8bbTtPL1jRs