Scarlet (6 page)

Cinder was still learning how to use this “gift” and she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d managed to control Carswell Thorne, just as she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to persuade one of the jail guards to move her to a more convenient cell. All she knew was that she’d wanted to strangle this inmate when he wouldn’t stop talking, and her Lunar gift had surged at the base of her neck, spurred on by stress and nerves. She’d lost control of it for a moment and in that breath Thorne had done precisely what she’d wanted him to do.

He’d stopped talking and left her alone.

Her guilt had been instantaneous. She didn’t know what kind of effect it had on a person, all that brain manipulation. And, more than that, she didn’t want to be one of those Lunars who took advantage of her powers just because she could. She didn’t want to be Lunar at all.

She huffed, blowing a strand of hair away from her face, and ducked through the hole that had been created when she’d pried the urinal out of the wall.

He looked up as she came to a halt before him, arms akimbo. He was still dazed, and though she hated to admit it, he was actually rather attractive. If a girl happened to like that square-jaw, bright-blue-eyes, devilish-dimples kind of thing. Although he was in desperate need of a haircut and a good shave.

She took in a stabilizing breath. “I forced you to do what I wanted you to do, and I shouldn’t have. It was an abuse of power and I’m sorry.”

He blinked down at her metal hand and the screwdriver sticking out from one finger joint. “Are you the same girl who was just here?” he asked, his voice surprisingly clear, even with his heavy American accent. For some reason, she’d expected him to slur his words after the brain manipulation.

“Of course I am.”

“Oh.” His brow furrowed. “You seemed a lot prettier before.”

Bristling, Cinder considered retracting her apology, but instead crossed her arms over her chest. “Cadet Thorne, was it?”

“Captain Thorne.”

“Your records say you were a cadet when you deserted.”

He frowned, still puzzled, before he brightened and cocked a finger toward her. “Portscreen in the head?”

She bit the inside of her cheek.

“Well, if you wanted to be
technical
about it,” he said. “But I’m a captain now. I prefer the sound of it. Girls are much more impressed.”

Cinder, unimpressed, gestured toward the mechanical room on the other side of the wall. “I’ve decided you can come with me if we can make it to your ship. Just … try not to talk too much.”

He was off his cot before she finished speaking. “It was my irresistible charm that convinced you, wasn’t it?”

Sighing, she retreated through the hole, careful to step over the disconnected plumbing. “So this ship of yours. It
is
the stolen one, right? From the American military?”

“I don’t like to think of it as ‘stolen.’ They have no proof that I didn’t plan on giving it back.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He shrugged. “You have no proof either.”

She squinted back at him. “
Were
you planning on giving it back?”

“Maybe.”

An orange light blinked on in the corner of Cinder’s vision—her cyborg programming picking up on the lie.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “Is the ship traceable?”

“Of course not. Removed all the tracking equipment ages ago.”

“Good. Which reminds me.” Holding up her hand, she retracted the screwdriver and, after two attempts, released the stiletto knife. “We need to remove your ID chip.”

He drew half a step back.

“Don’t tell me you’re squeamish.”

“Of course not,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh, cuffing his left sleeve. “It’s just … is that thing sterilized?”

Cinder glowered.

“I mean—I’m sure you’re very hygienic and all, it’s just…” He trailed off, hesitated, and then held his hand out toward her. “Never mind. Just try not to hit anything important.”

Bending over his arm, Cinder angled the blade to his wrist as carefully and gently as she could. There was a faint scar there already, presumably from when he’d cut out another ID chip when he’d first been on the run from law enforcement.

His fingers twitched at the invasion, but otherwise he was still as stone. She extracted the bloodied ID chip and tossed it into a bundle of cords on the floor, before cutting a strip of cloth from his sleeve and letting him wrap it around the wound.

“Is it just me, or is this a big moment in our relationship?”

Cinder scoffed. Turning away, she pointed at a grate near the ceiling. It was surrounded by tethered wires that snaked out from the breaker panel and disappeared into dozens of holes along the walls. “Can you boost me up there?”

“What is it?” Thorne asked, already lacing his fingers together.

“Air duct.” Cinder stepped onto his palms and ignored his grunt as he lifted her. She’d expected it, knowing that her metal leg made her a lot heavier than she looked.

With the added leverage, she had the grate removed in seconds. She set it quietly atop some overhead plumbing pipes, then pulled herself into the opening without hesitation.

She called up the blueprint of the jail’s interior structure to check the direction while she waited for Thorne to clamber up behind her. Switching on her built-in flashlight, Cinder started to crawl.

It was hot and clumsy work, with her left leg scraping against the aluminum every few inches. Twice she stopped to listen, thinking she heard footsteps somewhere below. Would there be an alarm when their escape was discovered? She was surprised there hadn’t been one yet. Thirty-two minutes. She’d left her cell thirty-two minutes ago.

The sweat dripping off her nose and the rapidness of her heartbeat made the time stretch on and on, as if the clock in her head had gotten stuck. Thorne’s presence was already filling her with doubts. This was going to be hard enough with just her—how was she going to sneak both of them out?

The thought passed through her skull, startling and clear.

She could brainwash him.

She could convince him that he wanted to tell her where the ship was and how to get to it, and then she could make him decide that he didn’t want to come with her after all. She could send him back. He would have no choice but to listen to her.

“Everything all right?”

Cinder released the air that had stuck in her throat.

No. She wouldn’t take advantage of him, or anyone. She’d gotten on just fine without any Lunar gift before, she would get on just fine now.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Just checking the blueprint. We’re almost there.”

“Blueprint?”

She ignored him. Minutes later she rounded a corner and saw a square of checkered light on the duct’s ceiling. A tinge of relief, of hope, fluttered inside her as she inched her head out over the grate and peered down.

She saw an expanse of concrete with a small puddle of standing water beneath her and, not six steps from that, another grate, this one larger and round.

A storm drain. Right where the blueprint said it would be.

The drop was a full story, but if they could make it without breaking any legs, this was almost going to be easy.

“Where are we?” Thorne whispered.

“Underground loading dock—where they bring in food and supplies.” As gracefully as she could, she climbed over the grate and maneuvered back around so that she and Thorne could both peer through the grid.

“We need to get down there, to that storm drain.”

Thorne frowned and pointed. “Isn’t that the exit ramp over there?”

She nodded without looking.

“Why aren’t we trying to get
there
?”

She peered up at him, the grate casting peculiar shadows across his face. “And just walk to your spaceship? In bright white prison uniforms?”

He frowned, but any response was silenced by the sound of voices. They ducked back.

“I didn’t see him dancing with her, my sister did,” said a woman. Her words were coupled with footsteps, then a rolling door being hoisted up on clunky rails. “Her dress was soaking wet and wrinkled as a garbage bag.”

“But why would the emperor dance with a cyborg?” said a man. “And then for her to go off and attack the Lunar queen like that … no way. Your sister was seeing things. I bet the girl was just some crazy person who wandered in off the streets. She was probably bitter over some cyborg injustice.”

The conversation was cut short by the rumbling of a delivery ship.

Cinder dared to peer through the grate again and saw a ship wheeling its way beneath them, backing up toward a recessed loading bay and stopping directly between Cinder and Thorne and the storm drain.

“Morning, Ryu-j
ū
n,” said the man as the pilot descended from the ship. The rest of their greetings were drowned out by the hydraulics hissing on an adjustable platform.

Taking advantage of the noise, Cinder used her screwdriver to remove the grate. When she gave Thorne a nod, he carefully eased it up.

Sweat trickled down Cinder’s neck and her heart was palpitating so hard she thought it might bruise the inside of her rib cage. Lowering her head, she peered around the dock, checking for any other signs of life and spotted, not arm’s distance away on the concrete ceiling, a rotating camera.

She jerked back inside, pulse hissing in her ears. Luckily the camera had been facing the other direction, but still, there was no way they would both make it down undetected. Then there were the three workers unloading the delivery to deal with, and every moment gone was one more moment toward some guard discovering their empty cells.

She shut her eyes, imagining where the camera was, before snaking her arm out. Her hand floundered, flat against the ceiling—the camera was farther than it had seemed in that momentary glance—but then her fingers found it. She grasped the lens and squeezed. The plastic was crushed as easy as a plum in her titanium fist, making a satisfying crunching sound that seemed deafeningly loud.

She listened, relieved as the same sounds of shuffling and chatting continued below.

Their time was up. It wouldn’t be more than a minute now before someone realized a camera had been disabled.

Raising her head, she nodded at Thorne and pulled herself forward over the opening.

She dropped onto the roof of the delivery ship and it clanged and shuddered beneath her. Thorne followed, landing with a muffled grunt.

The talking silenced.

Cinder spun around as three figures emerged from the loading bay, their faces contorted in confusion.

They spotted her and Thorne standing atop the ship and froze. Cinder could see them taking in the white uniforms. Her cyborg hand.

One of the men reached for the portscreen on his belt.

Clenching her jaw, Cinder held her hand out to him, thinking only of how he could not get to his port, could not send out an alarm. Thinking of his hand petrified in space just centimeters from his belt.

At her will, his hand stalled and hung motionless.

His eyes filled with terror.

“Don’t move,” said Cinder, her voice hoarse, guilt already clawing at her throat. She knew she was every bit as panicked as the three people standing before her, and yet the fear on their faces was unmistakable.

The burning sensation returned, starting at the top of her neck and spreading down through her spine, her shoulders and hips, stinging where it met her prostheses. It wasn’t painful or sudden like it had been when Dr. Erland had first unlocked her Lunar gift. Rather, it was almost comforting—almost pleasant.

She could sense the three people standing on the platform, the bioelectricity rolling off them in waves, crackling in the air, ready to be controlled.

Turn around.

In unison, the three workers turned around, their bodies stiff and awkward.

Close your eyes. Cover your ears.
She hesitated before adding,
Hum.

Instantly, the buzz of three people humming filled what had become a silent delivery dock. She hoped it would be enough to keep them from hearing the grate open in the concrete floor. Her only hope was that they would assume she and Thorne had left through the dock exit or smuggled themselves aboard a delivery ship.

Thorne was staring, slack jawed, when Cinder turned back to him. “What are they doing?”

“Obeying,” she said heavily, hating herself for making the command. Hating the hums that filled her ears. Hating this gift that was too unnatural, too powerful, too unfair.

But the thought to release her control over them never crossed her mind.

“Come on,” she said, half jumping, half sliding off the ship. She crawled beneath it and found the grate between the landing wheels. Though her hands were shaking, she managed to twist the grate a quarter turn and pull it up.

A shallow pool of standing water glistened up at her in the darkness.

The fall wasn’t far, but her bare feet landing in the oily water made her queasy. Thorne was beside her in a second, replacing the grate over the hole.

There was a round concrete tunnel set into the wall, barely reaching Cinder’s stomach and filled with the stench of garbage and mildew. Wrinkling her nose, Cinder crouched and crawled into it.

Seven

The cluster of icons on Emperor Kai’s netscreen was growing denser by the hour, not only because there were so many things for the new emperor to read and sign, but because he wasn’t putting much effort into reading or signing any of them. With fingers buried in his hair, he gazed blankly at the inset netscreen panel currently elevated out of his desk and watched the icons multiply with a growing sense of dread.

He should have been sleeping, but after countless hours of staring at the shadows above his bed, he’d finally given up and decided to come here instead and attempt to do something productive. He was dying for a distraction. Any distraction.

Anything to chase away the thoughts that kept rotating around in his brain.

So much for those good intentions.

Taking in a measured breath, Kai glanced up at the empty office. It was supposed to be his father’s office, but the room struck Kai as far too extravagant to be a place for work. Three ornate tasseled lanterns were lined up on a red-and-gold ceiling, hand-painted with elegant dragons. A holographic fireplace was set into the wall to his left. A sitting area with carved cypress furniture surrounded a miniature bar in the far corner. Silent videos of Kai’s mother shimmered from picture frames by the door, sometimes paired with flashes of Kai growing up, and sometimes all three of them together.