There isn't all that much to protect her from. The surviving rebels all pushed on into the depths of the palace with General White. The few survivors on Cole's side are too confused to shoot at someone who, after all, looks like a Rose Red, or at her companions. 

The palace is dark, quiet, and utterly deserted. Shadowed stairwells to the undercity yawn like open mouths. Muddy boot-prints, scorched bulletholes, and the occasional drop of fallen blood mark the rebels' passage. 

Honey can appreciate that the mission is easy, at least so far, but that doesn't mean he lets his guard down.

The signs left behind by the assault are chaotic, natural given what he imagines the fighting must have been like. Still, after seeing enough footprints, enough half-finished signs scrawled on walls, enough bullet holes, he builds a picture in his mind of the rebel forces making their way down, deeper, underneath the capitol, which he relays to his compatriots. "The rebels have continued the attack into the undercity."

Kit saunters over to look, and immediately spots what Honey's seen. "Good eye!" 

He gestures grandly at the stairs leading down into darkness.

"Shall we?" 

Briar stalks past them without a word and starts down the stairs. She moves silently into the darkness below with all the grace of a trained fighter. 

Honey follows equally wordless, and with less grace but not none.

The others fall in behind, and they descend into darkness.

Beneath the palace, a vast network of tunnels stretches out, with further stairs leading down still lower into the depths of the planet. The rebels' trail is easier to follow down here, as they seem to have met more resistance. Their path is marked by a trail of torn and bloody rebel corpses—and not a single royalist in sight.

Clearly, they encountered something beyond the calibre of Cole's usual forces. 

Ashes leans down to look closer at one of the bodies in the dim, reddish light from their cigarette. They quickly straighten up and turn away. 

It's the first time Honey's ever seen Ashes look disturbed. 

Honey files that away as something to maybe talk to Ashes about once they're back, but for now he continues briskly following Briar.

The bodies...are certainly more mangled than he'd expect, even for a slow corridor fight like this. They almost give him the feeling of being back in Cole's lab than being on the battlefield. That's another feeling to file away to deal with later.

Ivy looks up from where she's crouched over one of the other bodies. 

"There is a 92.7% chance they were killed in the last fifteen minutes." 

"We're close," Briar translates.

In a quieter tone not meant to be overheard, she whispers, "Cinders, my love, I'm coming." 

The trail is easy to follow now, even in the dim light: broad streaks of gore where bodies have been dragged, or have dragged themselves. 

Around the next corner, double doors hang open. The space beyond is dark, but it seems to open out into a large high-ceilinged chamber, a welcome change after the mazelike tunnels they've just come through. 

Somewhere in the darkness ahead, someone is crying. They're making no effort to stifle it, but their sobs are quiet in the way that happens when someone has been crying for so long that they have run out of breath to voice their sorrow. 

Honey is wary of the doors, and the darkness beyond them. It gives him the feeling of an ambush. That doesn’t seem likely to stop the others though, so he just keeps on his guard.

Kit trips over something, with a clang that echoes through the chamber. He swears violently in three different languages. 

"Mac, vales verga! Why didn't you warn me that was there?" 

"Because I don't give a shit. Put your goggles on, you bloody idiot." 

Mac walks forward confidently into the darkness, a tiny electric-blue dot glowing in each of his pupils. 

Kolya silently cracks a handful of glowsticks, handing one to Honey, and follows. 

Honey accepts, making sure to avoid casting much light onto Briar directly. It wouldn’t do to make the currently most vulnerable squadmate into a target.

The crew spread out around the room, glowsticks gradually illuminating the scene before them. 

More fallen rebels lie near the door: the rest of General White's surviving band. The General herself is among them, her eyepatch askew, her remaining eye still widened in rage or fear. Nearby, dismembered and broken, are the remains of King Cole's three famous cyborg bodyguards, in their black armour and iron pig masks. 

At the far end of the chamber, a massive, pale throne looms above the carnage, split down the centre as though it was struck by a giant's hammer. On its seat, looking very small against its vast bulk, is a still, shrivelled body, a gaping wound in his chest staining the floor with blood that looks black in the green light. 

Off to the side stands a shattered, empty lifepod, similar to the one in which they found Briar just yesterday. 

The sound of crying comes from a woman kneeling before the throne, her long pale hair obscuring both her face and that of the body she cradles in her arms. She's still recognisable as the woman they saw earlier on the camera feeds. Cinders. 

"Damn. Looks like we missed all the fun." 

Honey initially retains his military demeanor as he keeps watch over the scene, but he can feel his focus beginning to fray.

Was this what Briar was looking for? He doesn’t know how to answer, other than to watch.

"Cinders!" 

Heedless of the bodies strewn across the floor between them, Briar is at Cinders' side in moments.

Cinders looks up. Her face is marked by tear tracks and wrinkles alike, and for a long time she stares at Briar and says nothing. 

In her arms, eyes closed and wearing a peaceful expression, is the body of a woman identical to Briar, right down to the marks of IV insertions in her arms. Her white dress, although torn and stained with blood, was clearly once fine—not the sort of thing a cloned soldier would be given. 

"Fascinating," Ivy murmurs under her breath. She's taking notes at a blinding pace. 

"The likelihood of that being the original is 78.5%." 

This is definitely now beyond the scope of Honey’s training. A part of him wants to do, something, but he can’t figure out what, and it doesn’t seem like anything he could do would...help, if there is anything to be helped in this situation at all.

Better to just stay out of it. Instead, more to distract himself than anything else, he’ll begin poking around the corpses of the room. Ashes likes trophies, maybe he can find something they’d like?

The dead rebel soldiers have weapons, some of which are even intact. Many of them carry tokens or mementoes: a floral scarf, a folded sketch of a woman's face, a locket with a picture of two smiling children. One has a pouch of cigarettes, somehow still clean and dry.

Another carries a clearly handmade deck of cards; some of the face cards bear a strong resemblance to key figures in the Resistance. General White, identifiable by her eyepatch, is the Queen of Spades. General Belle is the Queen of Clubs, and her husband is the Jack. 

The king cards, rather than showing people, are artist's depictions of planets with strong rebel sympathies. They're labelled: Hamelin. Boisnoire. Ariel. Beaumont. Four subtly different marbles, captured in swirling colours of paint.