Chapter Text
Holden was lying on the floor of his cell, bruised and bloodied, when Marco stepped into the brig.
“Ready to talk yet?” Marco asked.
Holden wheezed a weak laugh and sat up with a wince. “Never thought I’d hear that in real life. You’re like a cartoon villain.”
“The oppressors will always see those who resist as villains,” Marco said.
Holden shot him a dry look. “You and I both know this stopped being about resistance a long time ago.”
Marco shrugged. “Believe what you want. What I’m doing is for the good of the Belt; it always has been.” He pulled a crate up to the bars and sat. “You know why I’m here. Tell me where Drummer’s faction is hiding.”
Holden sighed and cracked his neck, taking his time to answer. Irritation sparked in Marco’s chest; the sensation of not being taken seriously itched at him.
“I can tell you the exact time and date that Sol will go supernova,” Holden said. “I can tell you how many stars there are in this galaxy, and how many of them have planets where life evolved. I can tell you how many were wiped out by the protomolecule. They kept records on that sort of thing.” He met eyes with Marco through the bars, expression empty in a way that almost seemed bored. “What I can’t tell you is what humanity’s up to.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Marco snapped. “You looked Klaes Ashford in the eye and told him how he was going to die.”
Holden winced. “That was an accident.”
“How do you accidentally tell someone how they’re going to die?”
“Well, it might have had something to do with my brain being hijacked by a 2-billion-year-old alien artifact that permanently altered the way I perceive time,” Holden snapped. “I’d like to see how well you’d keep it together after something like that.”
“Better than you, I imagine,” Marco mused. Satisfaction rose in his chest at the flicker of anger that crossed Holden’s face. “But my point stands. You told Ashford his future, so clearly you can. It’s not all stars and planets in that head of yours.”
Holden scowled and looked away. “Okay, fine. I know some things. But I still can’t give you what you want.”
Marco cocked his head. “Why not? Drummer doesn’t deserve your loyalty. What has she ever done for you?”
“Lots of things, but that’s not the point,” Holden insisted. “She’s not here, so I can’t tell you her future.”
Marco leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “Interesting. So it has to be face-to-face?”
Holden threw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t fucking know. Your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t mean to tell Ashford what I did, but he was the first person I had a proper conversation with after the station. I couldn’t stop myself; it just slipped out.”
“I believe you,” Marco said. Holden shot him an odd look. “It’s a tremendous responsibility, I imagine. It must take incredible willpower, not to blurt out the future of every person you see. To keep all those secrets.”
Holden squinted at him. “Don’t try to flatter me, I’m not that vain. Where are you going with this?”
“You can’t tell me where Drummer’s faction is, or where they will be, because they’re not here. I understand.” Marco spread his hands. “But I’m right here. Tell me my future.”
“What, no bargaining?” Holden scoffed. “You think I’m just going to give you that for free?”
“You’re not in much of a position to make demands,” Marco said. Holden shot him an incredulous look. “But alright. You tell me my future, and I’ll let Naomi live.”
Holden’s gaze went sharp. “Were you planning on killing her?”
“Shouldn’t you know already?”
“I don’t know everything.”
Marco sighed. “Yes, I was going to have her killed. She may be the mother of my son, but she’s defied me one too many times.” That was a slip-up, and Holden knew it, by the quirk of his lips; Marco scrambled to correct himself. “She spat on the future of the Belt, the freedom of our people. She’s so wrapped up with you Inners now, she’d let her own burn. So yes, if I saw her again, I was going to kill her.” He fixed Holden with a piercing gaze. “But if you tell me what the future holds, I’ll spare her life.”
“Even if I could tell you how this war ends, I wouldn’t,” Holden said. There was an earnestness to his expression that surprised Marco even more than the swiftness of his decision. “You don’t want to know your future, Marco. It would destroy you.”
“You must have seen your own,” Marco said. The tightening around Holden’s eyes was all the confirmation he needed. “Do you think yourself so much stronger than me?”
“No,” Holden said. “You’re a madman, but you’re not weak. You’ve been through things that would have broken lesser men.” Something in his expression shifted, brows drawing together; he cocked his head. “How old were you when your mother died?”
Rage flared up like a bonfire in Marco’s chest. He shot to his feet and slammed a hand against the bars. “Who the fuck told you that!?”
“I’m the Prophet,” Holden said. “No one needs to tell me anything.” His empty eyes made Marco’s skin crawl.
“Quit playing games,” he snapped. “Tell me how I win this war.”
“So arrogant,” Holden said, his tone soft and unconcerned. It felt less like an accusation and more like an observation. The shift in demeanor was jarring, and it left Marco on edge. “You ask to know the future, and yet you already think you know how it ends.”
“I will win this war,” Marco snarled, hackles rising. “The only question is how. So quit stalling and tell me!”
Holden smiled, and suddenly Marco wasn’t sure it was still Holden at all.
“I could tell you everything you want and more,” he said. “I could tell you how you die, exactly how much time you have left. I could tell you where all your enemies are hiding. I could tell you who you can trust and who will betray you. None of it would make a difference in the end.”
“You’re lying,” Marco said, with more certainty than he felt. “If I know, I can change things. I could end this war in weeks instead of years.”
“The war will end when it ends,” said the Prophet, dark eyes full of secrets. “Your story will always end the same way, Marco Inaros. Once, you had many paths before you. Now, only one. No knowledge can save you from your fate.”
Dread crawled up Marco’s throat like bile.
“You’re lying,” he choked out. “It’s not over yet. There must be something I can change.”
The Prophet smiled, and it was a sharp, cruel thing. “There is nothing. The choices you made have led you down this path, and now you must see it through to the end.”
Marco shook his head, backing away on trembling legs. “No. I won’t.”
“You have no choice.”
“There has to be something I can do,” he insisted. Panic spiraled up through his chest, curling its tendrils around his lungs and squeezing. He raked his hands through his hair. “This can’t be it. This can’t be how it ends.”
The Prophet hummed, closing his eyes and swaying from side to side. “The past is the past is the past. It changes as easily as the future, if you only knew how.”
Marco didn’t have the slightest clue what that meant, but he grasped at the threads anyway, desperate for options.
“Tell me how,” he pleaded, clinging to the bars. “I’ll learn. I’ll fix things.”
The Prophet’s eyes snapped open, deathly cold and black as night.
“You have no right,” he snarled. Marco flinched and stumbled back. The temperature in the room seemed to drop sharply, all sound draining away as if lost to the vacuum of space. He didn’t dare speak, unable to shake the feeling that if he did, the air would be stolen from his lungs, pulled away by the Prophet’s impossible gravity, a black hole in the shape of a man. Those eyes bore into his soul, frigid and merciless and impossibly old, slicing open the very core of him and laying it bare for the universe to see. Something in the deepest recesses of Marco’s brain screamed at him to run, to get as far away from this inhuman thing as possible.
Then Holden’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
For a moment, Marco just stood there, frozen, his heart racing a mile a minute. Slowly, the room warmed again, the sounds of the Pella’s systems trickling back into the air around them. Then Holden groaned and sat up, clutching his head.
“I told you you didn’t want to know,” he said. And just like that, he was human again, like nothing had happened. Like Marco hadn’t just glimpsed something great and terrible behind his eyes. Like the ancient gods and kings of dead civilizations hadn’t looked into the depths of his soul and found him lacking.
“What are you?” Marco whispered.
Holden gave an exhausted smile. “I’m cursed.”
It was more than a curse, Marco thought. It was an omen. A death sentence. It was dead gods whispering in his ears, telling him things humans were never meant to know.
“I should have left you on that rock,” he breathed. He didn’t think he could speak any louder if he wanted to. He turned and reached for the panel to open the door, hands shaking.
“Marco,” Holden said. Marco froze. “A word of advice? Run some system checks. I’d rather not have this ship explode while I’m on it.”
Marco stared at him, weighing whether it was a trick.
I could tell you exactly how much time you have left, the Prophet had said. The words sent a shiver up his spine. Marco stepped out into the hall, the door hissing shut behind him.
He’d ask his head engineer to run some checks. Just in case.