Scarlet (5 page)

“Find what? What are you talking about?”

“She’s gone,” he whispered. “She’s not coming back. She won’t ever know and I … I have to find it. I have to know why.”

The smell of cognac swirled through the air and Scarlet’s heart hardened. She didn’t know how he’d found out about his mother’s disappearance, but for him to just assume all hope was lost, so easily, so quickly, and to think he would be entitled to a single thing that belonged to her, after he’d abandoned them both. To go so many years without a single comm, only to show up drunk and start tearing through her grandmother’s things—

Scarlet had the sudden urge to call the police, except she was mad at
them
too.

“Get out! Get out of our house!”

Unfazed, he started to pile the mishmash of clothes back into the box.

Face burning, Scarlet rounded the bed and grabbed his arm, trying to yank him to his feet. “Stop it!”

He hissed and fell back onto the old wooden floorboards. He scurried away from her as he would from a rabid dog, clutching his arm. His gaze was stark madness.

Scarlet drew back, surprised, before planting clenched fists on her hips. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

He didn’t answer, just kept nursing the arm against his chest.

Setting her jaw, Scarlet stomped toward him and grabbed his wrist. He yelped and tried to pull away, but she held firm, shoving his sleeve up to his elbow. Scarlet gasped and let go, but the arm continued to hang in midair, like he’d forgotten to retract it.

The skin was covered in burn marks. Each one a perfect circle and placed in a neat, perfect row. Row upon row upon row, circling his forearm from wrist to elbow, some shining with wrinkled scar tissue, others blackened and blistering. And on his wrist, a scab where his ID chip had once been implanted.

Her stomach turned.

Back against the wall, her father buried his face in the mattress, away from Scarlet, away from the burns.

“Who did this to you?”

His arm fell, curling against his stomach. He said nothing.

Scarlet pushed herself off the wall and ran to the bathroom in the hallway. She returned a moment later with a tube of ointment and a roll of bandages. Her father hadn’t moved.

“They made me,” he whispered, his hysteria fading.

Scarlet eased his arm away from his stomach and began to dress the wound, as tenderly as she could despite her shaking hands. “Who made you do what?”

“I couldn’t get away,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “They asked so many questions and I didn’t know. I didn’t know what they wanted. I tried to answer them, but I didn’t know…”

Scarlet glanced up from her work as her father tilted his head toward her and stared blankly across the tousled blankets. Tears had pooled in his eyes. Her father—crying. It was almost more shocking than the burns. Her chest clamped and she froze, the bandage wrapped halfway up his forearm. She realized that she did not know this sad, broken man. This was only a shell of her father, her charismatic and selfish and worthless father.

Where anger and hatred had flared before, there was now an aching sense of pity.

What possibly could have caused this?

“They gave me the poker,” he continued, his eyes wide and distant.

“They
gave
you—? Why—?”

“And they brought me to her. And I realized, she was the one with the answers. She was the one with the information. They wanted something from
her.
But she just watched … she just watched me do it, and she cried … but they asked her the same questions, and she still wouldn’t answer them. She wouldn’t answer them.” His voice hiccupped, his face flushing with sudden anger. “She let them do this to me.”

Struggling to gulp, Scarlet finished off the wrapping and leaned against the mattress, her legs beginning to tremble. “Grand-mère? You saw her?”

His attention flashed back to her, crazed again. “They had me for a week and then they just let me go. They could tell she didn’t care about me. She wouldn’t give in for
me.
”

Without warning, he pushed forward and clambered toward Scarlet on his knees, grasping her arms. She tried to shrink away but he held her firm, his fingernails digging into her skin. “What is it, Scar? What’s so important? More important than her own son?”

“Dad, you have to calm down. You have to tell me where she is.” Her thoughts stammered. “Where is she? Who has her?
Why?
”

Her father’s eyes searched her, panicked and shimmering. Slowly, he shook his head and dropped his attention to the floor. “She’s hiding something,” he mumbled. “I want to know what it is. What is she hiding, Scar? Where is it?”

He turned to rustle through a drawer of old cotton shirts that had clearly already been riffled through. He was sweating now, his hair damp around his ears.

Scarlet used the bed frame to hoist herself onto the mattress. “Dad, please.” She tried to sound soothing, though her heart was thumping so hard it hurt. “Where
is
she?”

“Don’t know.” He dug his fingernails into the space between the molding and the wall. “I was at a bar in Paris. They must have drugged my drink, because next I woke up in a dark room. It smelled damp, musty.” He sniffed. “They drugged me when they let me go too. One minute I was in that dark room, then I was here. I woke up in the cornfield.”

With a shudder, Scarlet pulled her hands through her hair until the curls knotted up around them. They’d brought him
here,
to the same place they’d kidnapped her grandmother. Why? Did these people know that Scarlet was his only family—did they think she would be the best person to take care of him?

That didn’t make any sense. Clearly they weren’t worried about her dad’s well-being. So what else? Was leaving him here a message to her? A threat?

“You must remember something,” she said, her voice taking on a tinge of desperation. “Something about the room, or something someone said? Did you get a good look at them? Could you describe one of them to a profiler?
Anything?
”

“Was drugged,” he said, quickly, but then his brow drew together as he struggled to think. He made to touch his burn marks, but then let his hand fall into his lap. “Wouldn’t let me see them.”

Scarlet barely resisted the urge to shake him and scream that he had to think harder. “Did they blindfold you?”

“No.” He squinted. “I was afraid to look.”

Frustrated tears were beginning to sting her eyes and Scarlet tilted her head back, gulping down patient breaths. Her worst fears, those sneaking, horrible suspicions, were true.

Her grandmother had been kidnapped. Not just kidnapped, but kidnapped by cruel, brutal people. Were they harming her as they’d harmed her son? What would they do to her? What did they want?

Ransom?

But why hadn’t they asked Scarlet for anything yet? And why had they taken her father too, but then let him go? It didn’t make sense.

Terror clouded her thoughts as all the possible horrors streamed through her imagination. Torture and burning and dark rooms …

“What did you mean, when you said they made you? What did they make you do?”

“Burn myself,” he whispered. “Handed me the poker.”

“But how—”

“So many questions. I don’t know. I never knew my father. She doesn’t talk about him. I don’t know what she does here in her big ancient house. What happened on the moon. Don’t know what she’s hiding—she’s hiding
something.
” He pulled weakly at the blankets on the bed, glancing halfheartedly beneath the sheets.

“You’re talking nonsense,” Scarlet said, her voice breaking. “You have to think harder. You have to remember
something.
”

A long, long silence. Outside, the chickens were clucking again, their scaly feet scratching across the gravel.

“Tattoo.”

She frowned. “What?”

He placed a finger over one of the burns, on the inside flesh of his arm, just below his elbow. “The one who handed me the poker had a tattoo. Here. Letters and numbers.”

Her vision prickled with bright lights and Scarlet gripped the rumpled quilt, for a moment feeling like she could faint.

Letters and numbers.

“Are you sure?”

“L … S…” He shook his head. “I can’t remember. There was more.”

Her mouth ran dry, hatred overtaking the dizziness. She knew that tattoo.

He’d pretended to be kind. Pretended he only needed honest work.

When—days? hours?—before, he’d tortured her father. Kept her grandmother prisoner.

And she’d almost trusted him. The tomato, the carrots … she’d thought she was helping him. Stars above, she’d
flirted
with him, and all the while, he knew. She recalled those moments of peculiar amusement, the glint in his eyes, and her stomach twisted. He’d been laughing at her.

Ears ringing, she peered down at her dad, who was turning out the pockets of a pair of pants that probably hadn’t fit her grandmother in twenty years.

She stood. The blood rushed to her head, but she ignored it. Marching to the corner of the room, she grabbed her grandma’s portscreen from where her father had tossed it onto the floorboards.

“Here,” she said, throwing the port onto the bed. “I’m going to the Morel farm. If I’m not home in three hours, comm the police.”

Dazed, her father reached out and grasped the port. “I thought the Morels were dead.”

“Are you listening to me? I want you to lock all the doors, and don’t leave. Three hours and then comm the police. Do you understand?”

Again he succumbed to that frightened, child-like expression. “Don’t go out there, Scar. Don’t you get it? They used me as bait for her and you’ll be next. They’ll come for you too.”

Clenching her jaw, Scarlet zipped up her hoodie to her chin. “I intend to find them first.”

Six

CARSWELL THORNE

ID
#0082688359

BORN
22
MAY
106
T.E.
, AMERICAN REPUBLIC

FF
437
MEDIA HITS, REVERSE CHRON

POSTED
12
JAN
126
T.E.
:
EX–AR AIR FORCE CADET, CARSWELL THORNE, HAS BEEN CONVICTED AND SENTENCED TO A SIX-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE AT THE END OF A SPEEDY TWO-WEEK TRIAL …

Green text trekked across Cinder’s vision, documenting the crimes of one Carswell Thorne, who had already led a very productive life of lawbreaking despite having just turned twenty a few months ago: one count military desertion, two counts international theft, one count attempted theft, six counts handling of stolen goods, and one count theft of government property.

That last conviction hardly seemed to do the crime justice. He’d stolen a spaceship from the American Republic’s military.

Hence, the spaceship that he was so proud of.

Though he was currently serving a six-year sentence in the Eastern Commonwealth for attempted theft of a second-era jade necklace, he was also wanted in Australia and, of course, his own America, and would be standing trial and no doubt serving time in both countries for the harm he’d done there as well.

Cinder slumped against a breaker panel, wishing she hadn’t checked. Escaping from prison herself was bad enough, but assisting the escape of this criminal—a
real
criminal—and doing it in a stolen spaceship?

Swallowing hard, she peered back through the opening she’d made between the mechanical room and the prisoner’s cell. Carswell Thorne still sat on his cot with his elbows propped on his knees, thumbs twiddling.

She wiped her damp palm on her bleached-white jumper. This was not about Carswell Thorne. This was about Queen Levana and Emperor Kai and
Princess Selene.
The innocent child Levana had tried to murder thirteen years ago, but who had been rescued and smuggled down to Earth. Who remained the most-wanted person in the world. Who just happened to be Cinder herself.

She’d known for less than twenty-four hours. Dr. Erland, who had known for
weeks,
decided to inform her that he’d run DNA tests proving her bloodline only after Queen Levana had recognized her at the annual ball and threatened to attack Earth if Cinder wasn’t thrown into jail for being an illegal Lunar emigrant.

So Dr. Erland had sneaked into her prison cell and given her a new foot (hers had fallen off on the palace steps), a state-of-the-art cyborg hand with fancy gadgets that she was still getting used to, and the biggest shock of her life. He’d then told her to escape and come meet him in Africa, like that would be no more difficult than installing a new processor on a Gard3.9.

This order, simultaneously so simple and so impossible, had given her something to focus on other than her newfound identity. Good thing too because when she dwelled on that, her entire body had a tendency to seize up, leaving her useless, and this was a bad time to be suffering from indecision. Regardless of what she would do when she got out, she was sure of one thing:
not
escaping meant certain death when Queen Levana came to claim her.

She peered back at the inmate again. If she had a close destination in mind, and a working spaceship at that, it could be the key to her escape.

He was still twiddling his thumbs, still obeying her command—
just leave me alone.
The words had been fire in her mouth when she’d said them, while her blood had boiled and her skin had burned. The sensation of overheating was a side effect of her new Lunar gift—powers that Dr. Erland had managed to unlock after a device implanted on her spine had kept her from using them for so many years. Although it still seemed like magic to her, it was really a genetic trait Lunars were born with that allowed them to control and manipulate the bioelectricity of other living creatures. They could trick people into seeing things that weren’t real or experiencing made-up emotions. They could brainwash people into doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Without argument. Without resistance.