The fall should have killed them.
Elara remembered the wind tearing at her skin, the screaming descent into the grey fog, and the terrified beat of her own heart. She remembered Ciro pulling the pin on the blue device at his belt. There had been a blast of concussive force—a pulse of reverse gravity that slammed into them like a solid wall, slowing their terminal velocity just seconds before impact.
Then, darkness.
...
"Wake up, Princess. Unless you plan to sleep through the apocalypse."
Elara gasped, her eyes snapping open. Pain flared in every muscle. She wasn't on the marble floors of the palace anymore. She was lying on a mountain of rusted metal, jagged scraps, and industrial waste.
The air tasted metallic and sour. The sky above was no longer blue, but a choking, swirling grey.
"Ciro?" she croaked, sitting up.
The Jester was sitting a few feet away, leaning against the husk of a destroyed tank. His colorful motley was torn, revealing black tactical armor underneath. His porcelain comedy mask was cracked down the middle, half of it missing.
For the first time, Elara saw his face.
He wasn't ugly, as the court rumors suggested. He was sharp-featured, with a jawline that could cut glass and a scar running from his left cheek to his jaw. He looked tired. Dangerous.
"You're alive," Elara whispered. She looked at her hands. They were scraped and bloody, but whole. "How?"
Ciro tossed the device he had used—now a burnt-out lump of metal—into the trash. "Old tech. A Gravity-Dampener. One-time use. Cost me three years of salary."
He tried to stand but winced, clutching his side. Fresh blood seeped through his fingers.
"You're hurt," Elara scrambled over the debris to him.
"Broken rib. Maybe two," Ciro grunted, waving her away. "Focus, Elara. Look around. Do you know where we are?"
Elara looked.
They were in a canyon. But the walls weren't made of rock. They were made of machines.
Colossal skeletons of iron giants, skyscrapers of crushed cars, and mountains of discarded tech stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a graveyard of metal.
"The Waste Sector," Elara realized, a chill running down her spine. "The garbage dump of the floating city."
"Correct," Ciro said, scanning the horizon with paranoid eyes. "And we are the freshest meat in the pile. The Scavengers will smell the blood soon."
He pulled a small, energy-bar wrapper from his pocket and threw it at her. "Eat. We move in five minutes."
"Move where? We have no water, no weapons, and you can barely walk!" Elara's panic began to rise. The adrenaline of the wedding was fading, replaced by the crushing reality of survival.
"I have a knife," Ciro said calmly. "And you have... that."
He pointed behind her.
Elara frowned and turned around.
Sticking out of the trash pile, half-buried under a rusted pipe, was something white.
It didn't belong here. Everything else was brown, orange, and black with rust. But this object was pristine, gleaming white ceramic.
It was a hand. A robotic hand? No, a glove. An armored gauntlet.
Elara felt a strange pull in her chest. A hum. Like a magnet drawing iron.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Ciro muttered, his hand tightening on his dagger. "But it's humming. Don't touch i—"
Before he could finish, Elara reached out. She didn't mean to. Her body moved on its own, possessed by a sudden, overwhelming instinct.
Her fingers brushed the cold white metal.
CLICK.
The gauntlet moved.
Like a mechanical spider, the fingers of the gauntlet snapped open. It lunged, latching onto Elara's right hand.
"Get it off!" Ciro shouted, lunging forward despite his injury.
"No, wait!" Elara gasped.
It didn't hurt. The metal felt liquid, shifting and resizing to fit her slender fingers perfectly. It clamped around her wrist with a soft hiss of escaping air. A blue gemstone embedded in the back of the hand flared to life.
A transparent blue screen appeared in the air in front of Elara's eyes.
[SYSTEM REBOOTING...] [USER BIOMETRICS DETECTED: ROYAL BLOODLINE.] [WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR ELARA.]
"Administrator?" Elara read the floating text, stunned. "What is this?"
[DEVICE: THE HAND OF A.R.E.S. (Automated Resource & Excavation System)] [STATUS: CRITICAL POWER. 5% CHARGE.] [DIRECTIVE: REBUILD.]
Ciro stopped, staring at the hologram floating in front of her face. The cynical assassin looked genuinely shocked.
"A Holo-Interface," Ciro breathed. "That's Old King technology. That's... Elara, that thing is worth more than the entire kingdom."
Elara looked at her hand. The white gauntlet looked sleek, deadly, and beautiful. It felt powerful.
[ALERT: HOSTILE LIFEFORMS DETECTED.] [DIRECTION: NORTH-EAST. DISTANCE: 50 METERS.]
The red warning flashed on her screen.
"Ciro," Elara said, her voice trembling but urgent. "The thing... the System says something is coming."
Ciro didn't question her. He spun around, raising his dagger.
From the fog, shadows emerged.
They were human, but barely. Their skin was covered in weeping sores from the radiation. They wore armor made of tires and stop signs. They held rusty spears and chains.
Scavengers. Six of them.
The leader, a massive man with half his face melted off, grinned, revealing rotten teeth. He looked at Elara's clean white dress. He looked at the gleaming gauntlet.
"Fresh bird fell from the sky, boys," the leader rasped, licking his lips. "And she brought us a shiny toy."
Ciro stepped in front of Elara. He swayed slightly, his broken ribs screaming, but his knife hand was steady.
"Stay behind me, Princess," Ciro growled low in his throat. "Close your eyes."
"No," Elara said.
She looked at the Scavengers. She felt the fear, yes. But beneath the fear, the Gauntlet hummed. It whispered to her.
Authorized.
She stepped up beside Ciro. She raised her right hand, pointing the white armored palm at the Scavengers.
"I am not a bird," Elara said, her green eyes glowing with the reflection of the blue interface.
[COMBAT MODE: ENGAGED.] [TARGET LOCKED.]