Scarlet

Twenty-Eight

Kai paced the length of his office from door to desk, desk to door. Two days had passed since Levana had issued her ultimatum: Find the cyborg girl, or she would attack.

Time was running out and every hour filled Kai with growing dread. He hadn’t slept for over forty-eight hours. With the exception of five press conferences in which he still had nothing new to report, he hadn’t left his office in that time either.

Still, no sign of Linh Cinder.

No sign of Dr. Erland.

Like they’d simply vanished.

“Gah!” He pulled his hands back through his hair until his scalp stung. “Lunars.”

The speaker on his desk hummed. “Royal android Nainsi has requested entrance.”

Kai released his hair with a deflated groan. Nainsi had been good to him the past few days, bringing vast amounts of tea and saying nothing when she took the still-full-but-now-cold cups back out hours later. She encouraged him to eat and reminded him when a press conference was coming up or that he’d neglected to return the Australian Governor-General’s comms. If it weren’t for the title, “Royal android Nainsi,” he almost would have expected a human to walk through the doors every time she was summoned.

He wondered if his father had felt the same way toward his android assistants. Or maybe Kai was just delirious.

Shooing away the unhelpful thoughts, he rounded to the back of his desk. “Yes, enter.”

The door opened and Nainsi’s treads rolled across the carpet. She was not carrying the tray of snacks he’d expected.

“Your Majesty, a woman by the name of Linh Adri and her daughter, Linh Pearl, have requested an immediate appointment. Linh-jiĕ says she has important information on the Lunar fugitive. I encouraged her to contact Chairman Huy but she insisted she speak with you directly. I scanned her ID and she appears to be who she claims. I wasn’t sure if I should turn her away.”

“That’s fine. Thank you, Nainsi. Send her in.”

Nainsi rolled back out. Kai glanced down at his shirt and buttoned the collar, but determined there was nothing he could do about the wrinkles.

A moment later, two strangers entered his office. The first was a middle-aged woman with hair just beginning to gray, and the other was a teenage girl with thick hair that hung straight down her back. Kai frowned as the two bowed deeply before him, and it wasn’t until the girl attempted a shy grin that he felt like an idiot for his exhaustion-muddled brain not picking up on their names when Nainsi had first announced them. Linh Adri. Linh Pearl.

They were not entirely strangers. He’d seen the girl twice before, once at Cinder’s booth at the market, then again at the ball. This was Cinder’s stepsister.

And the woman.

The woman.

His blood curdled with the memory of her, made worse by the almost bashful, girlish look she was giving him now. He had seen her at the ball too. When she’d been about to strike Cinder for daring to attend in the first place.

“Your Majesty,” said Nainsi, returning behind them. “May I introduce Linh Adri-jiĕ and her daughter, Linh Pearl-mèi.”

They each bowed again.

“Yes, hello,” said Kai. “You are—”

“I was the legal guardian of Linh Cinder,” said Adri. “Please forgive the intrusion, Your Imperial Majesty. I understand you are quite busy.”

He cleared his throat, wishing now he’d left the collar alone. It was already strangling him. “Please, sit down,” he said, gesturing to the sitting area around the holographic fire. “That will be all, Nainsi. Thank you.”

Kai moved to claim the chair, determined not to sit beside either of the women. They in turn perched straight-backed on the sofa so as not to crumple the bows on their kimono-style dresses, and folded their hands demurely atop their laps. The resemblance between the two was remarkable—and of course, nothing at all like Cinder, whose skin had been always sun darkened, whose hair was straighter and finer, and who had carried an understated confidence with her even when she was shy and stammering.

Kai caught himself before he could smile at the memory of Cinder, shy and stammering.

“I’m afraid we were not formally introduced when our paths crossed at the ball last week, Linh-jiĕ.”

“Oh, Your Imperial Majesty is too kind. Adri, please. Truth be told, I am attempting to distance myself from the ward who now carries my husband’s name. And you will, I am sure, remember my lovely daughter.”

He turned his attention to Pearl. “Yes, we met at the market. You had some packages you wished Cinder to store for you.”

He was glad the girl flushed, and he hoped she was remembering how rude she’d been that day.

“We also met at the ball, Your Majesty,” said Pearl. “We discussed my poor sister—my real sister—who recently fell ill and passed away from the same disease that claimed your illustrious father.”

“Yes, I recall. My condolences on your loss.”

He waited for the expected return of sympathy, but it did not come. The mother was too busy examining the office’s lacquered woodwork; the daughter was too busy examining Kai with faux timidity.

He tapped his fingers against the chair’s arm. “My android tells me you have information to impart? Regarding Linh Cinder?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Adri drew her attention back to him. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, but I do have some information that I think could be helpful in your search for my ward. As a concerned citizen, I of course want to do anything I can to assist with the search, and ensure she is apprehended before she can do further damage.”

“Of course you do. But forgive me, Linh-jiĕ, I was under the impression you’d already been contacted and questioned by the authorities as a part of the investigation?”

“Oh yes, we both spoke at length with some very nice men,” said Adri, “but since then, something new has come to my attention.”

Kai settled his elbows on his knees.

“Your Majesty, I trust you are familiar with the recorded footage from the quarantines, about two weeks ago, in which a girl attacked two med-droids?”

He nodded. “Of course. The girl who spoke to Chang Sunto, the boy who recovered from the plague.”

“Well, at the time I was very distracted, having just lost my youngest daughter, but since then I’ve taken a closer look at the video and I’m convinced that the girl is Cinder.”

Kai’s brow drew together, already replaying the video in his mind. The girl was never clearly seen—the recording was grainy and shaky and only showed glimpses of her back. “Really,” he mused, trying not to sound speculative. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s difficult to tell on the video itself, and I would not know for sure, except I was having Cinder’s ID tracked that day, as she’d been behaving suspiciously for some time. I know she was near the quarantines that day. Before, I’d thought she was merely attempting to run away from her household duties, but I now see that the little aberration had a much more sinister motive in mind.”

His eyebrows rose. “Aberration?”

Adri’s cheeks tinted pink. “Even that is too kind for her, Your Majesty. Are you aware that she can’t even cry?”

Kai sat back. After a moment he found that, rather than being disgusted as Adri clearly expected, he was left merely curious. “Really? Is that normal for … for cyborgs?”

“I wouldn’t know, Your Majesty. She is the first and hopefully the last cyborg I’ll ever have the misfortune of knowing. I can’t understand why we make cyborgs in the first place. They’re dangerous and proud creatures, parading around like they think they’re better than everyone else. Like they deserve special treatment for their … eccentricities. They’re nothing but a drain on our hardworking society.”

Collar beginning to itch, Kai cleared his throat. “I see. You said something earlier about evidence that Cinder had been near the quarantines? And … done something sinister?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. If you’d be so kind as to refer to my ID page, you’ll see I’ve uploaded a video that is rather incriminating.”

Kai unlatched his portscreen from his belt, thinking about the footage from the quarantines as he searched for Adri’s page. The video was at the top—a low-quality image tagged with the symbol of the Commonwealth’s law enforcement androids. “What is this?”

“When Cinder wouldn’t respond to my comms that day, and I was sure she was fleeing the country, I enacted my right to have her forcibly retrieved. This is the footage from when they found her.”

Holding his breath, Kai played the video. It was shot from a hovercar, peering down on a dusty street surrounded by abandoned warehouses. And there was Cinder, panting and angry. She raised a clenched fist toward the android. “I didn’t steal it! It belongs to her family, not to you or anyone else!”

The camera shook as the hover landed and the android approached her.

Scowling, Cinder took half a step back. “I haven’t done anything wrong. That med-droid was attacking me. It was self-defense.”

Kai watched, shoulders tense, as the android rambled on in its monotone voice about the rights of her legal guardian and the Cyborg Protection Act, until finally Cinder assented to come with them and the video ended.

It took a mere four seconds for Kai to pull up the footage of the girl attacking the quarantine med-droid, and his grip tightened around the device as he fit the puzzle pieces together. He found himself feeling like a fool, for the hundredth time that week.

It made sense that it was Cinder. Of course it was Cinder. He had given the antidote just hours before to Dr. Erland, right in front of her. Erland must have passed it to her, and she then gave it to Chang Sunto. And though the cameras had never got a good shot of her, the hasty ponytail and baggy cargo pants matched perfectly.

Gulping, he shut off the video and reattached the port to his belt. “What was she talking about, that she didn’t steal? What belongs to her family?”

Adri set her mouth in a firm line, deep wrinkles cutting into her upper lip. “Something that did indeed belong with her family—with those who would have given proper respect to the deceased. And Cinder mutilated that which was once most precious to me in order to get it.”

“She what?”

“I believe she stole my daughter’s ID chip, not minutes after her death.” Adri placed a hand on the swath of silk over her abdomen. “It churns my stomach to think of, but I know I should have expected it. Cinder was always jealous of both my girls, and so spiteful. Although I could not have imagined her sinking to such a low before, now that I know her true nature, I cannot be surprised by it. She deserves to be found and punished for what she’s done.”

Kai drew away from the venom in her tone, and couldn’t connect her accusations to his own memories of Cinder. He thought of their paths crossing in the elevator, of her eyes filling with sadness as she spoke of her dying sister. How she’d asked if Kai would save a dance for her in case she miraculously survived.

Or was every memory he had of Cinder truly nothing more than a Lunar trick? What did he know about her, really?

“Are you sure?”

“The reports claimed that the weapon used against the androids was a scalpel, and it all happened just moments after I received the comm telling me that my daughter … my daughter…” Her jaw trembled, her knuckles whitening in her lap. “And I can just see her trying to take Peony’s identity in that inhuman head of hers.” She grimaced. “It chills me to think, but it is precisely something she would have done.”

“And you think she could still have the ID chip with her?”

“That, Your Majesty, I cannot say. But it is a possibility.”

With a nod, Kai stood. Adri and Pearl gawked up at him, mute, before bolting to their own feet.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Linh-jiĕ. I’ll have a tracker set up for the ID immediately. If she has the chip, we will find her.”

Even as he spoke, he found himself pleading to the stars that Linh Adri was wrong. That Cinder had not taken the ID chip. But that was a stupid wish, an immature wish. He had to find her, and he only had one more day to do it. He had no desire to find out what Levana would do if he failed.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Adri. “I only want to know that my daughter’s memory won’t be tarnished because I was once so generous as to allow that awful girl into my family.”

“Thank you,” he started, not sure what he was thanking her for, but it seemed the right thing to say. “If we have any further questions, I’ll have someone contact you.”

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” Adri said with a bow. “I only wish to do well by my country, and see this horrid girl brought to justice.”

Kai listed his head. “You do realize that once she’s found, Queen Levana intends to have her executed, don’t you?”

Adri folded her hands prettily before her. “I am sure the law is there for a reason, Your Majesty.”

Pursing his lips, Kai stepped away from the sitting area and led them toward the door.

After two more bows apiece, Pearl glided out of the room with lashes fluttering at Kai until her neck could no longer crane toward him, but Adri paused in the doorway. Bowed one more time. “It was such an honor, Your Majesty.”

He smiled tautly back.

“I do wonder—not that this matters one little bit, but only as a matter of curiosity—should this lead to any discoveries in the investigation … might I be able to expect any sort of reward for my assistance?”