Scarlet

Thirty-Seven

“What was that?” Thorne yelled as he peeled the podship off the street. Flying lower and much faster than regulations suggested, they fled over the patchwork of crops that surrounded the town of Rieux.

Cinder shook her head, still panting. “They were Lunar. He mentioned his queen.”

Thorne slammed his palm down on the podship’s control board, cursing. “I know Lunars are supposed to have some screws loose—no offense—but those men were psychotic. He practically gnawed off my arm! And this is my favorite jacket!”

Cinder glanced over at Thorne, but his injured shoulder was the one turned away from her. She could, however, make out a red welt where he’d pounded his forehead into hers in order to snap her from her delirium.

She pressed her cool metal fingers to her own forehead, which was starting to throb, and noticed a skein of text in her vision that she’d been too terrified and distracted to notice before.

WHERE ARE YOU???

“Iko’s panicking.”

Thorne swerved around an abandoned tractor. “I forgot about the police! Is my ship all right?”

“Hold on.” Sick to her stomach at the swerving, Cinder gripped her harness and called up a new comm.

ON OUR WAY. ARE THE POLICE STILL THERE?

Iko’s response was almost instantaneous.

NO, THEY STUCK A TRACKING DEVICE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SHIP AND LEFT. SOMETHING ABOUT A DISTURBANCE IN RIEUX. I’M LOOKING AT THE NETSCREENS NOW—CINDER, ARE YOU SEEING THIS?

She gulped, but didn’t answer. “The police are gone. They left a tracker.”

“Well, that’s predictable.” Thorne swooped down, catching the tip of a windmill on the landing gear. Cinder saw the Rampion only a few miles off, a large gray splotch amid the crops, barely discernible in the night.

IKO, OPEN THE PODSHIP DOCK.

By the time the pod dipped toward the Rampion, the dock was wide-open. Cinder squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself against the seat as Thorne dove toward it too fast, but he released the thrusters just in time and soon they were coming to a very rocky, sudden stop. The podship shuddered and died—Cinder had tumbled out of the side door before the lights faded.

“Iko! Where’s the tracker?”

“Stars, Cinder! Where have you been? What is going on out there?”

“No time—the tracker!”

“It’s under the starboard landing gear.”

“I’ll get it,” said Thorne, marching toward the wide-open doors. “Iko, seal the dock as soon as I’m out, then open the main hatch. Cinder, get that power cell installed!” He jumped down off the dock, and Cinder heard a squelch of mud when he landed. A moment later, the interlocking doors began to slide shut.

“Wait!”

The doors froze, leaving a space not larger than Cinder’s pounding head between them.

“What?” cried Iko. “I thought he was out! Did I crush him?”

“No, no, he’s fine. I just have to do something.”

Chewing on her lip, she knelt on one knee. Yanking her pant leg up, she unlatched the compartment to her prosthetic leg and found two small chips lodged in the mess of bundled wires. The direct communication chip glittering with its peculiar iridescence, and Peony’s ID chip, still caked with dried blood.

Those officers had tracked her through Peony’s chip, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if Levana’s minions had found her the same way.

“I’m so stupid,” she muttered, prying the chip loose. Her heart suddenly clamped up, but she did her best to ignore it as she brushed a quick kiss against the ID chip and threw it out into the field. It glinted once with moonlight before vanishing in the dark.

“All right. You can close the doors now.”

As the doors clanged shut, she threw herself toward the podship and pulled the power cell off the floorboard.

The engine room glowed with red emergency lights. Her retina display had already pulled up the plans by the time she slithered on her stomach to the ship’s exterior corner and unbolted the old power cell.

When she yanked it free, the whole ship went black.

She cursed to herself.

“Cinder!” came Thorne’s distraught scream from somewhere overhead.

Cinder flicked on her flashlight and tore off the protective packaging of the new cell, her breaths coming in short, panicked gasps. It didn’t take long for the engine room to grow stifling hot without the cooling system.

She plugged a cable into the cell’s outlet, then bolted it to the engine. Already she was forgetting how she’d ever managed to survive without the screwdriver in her new hand as she secured the cell to the wall. The overlaid blueprint on her vision zoomed in as she connected the delicate wires.

Gulping, she punched the restart code into the mainframe. The engine hummed, grew louder, and soon purred like a contented cat. The red lights flickered back on, and were just as quickly replaced with bright whites.

“Iko?”

The response was almost instantaneous. “What just happened? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

Exhaling, Cinder dropped to her stomach and wriggled back toward the door. She grasped the ladder rungs that led to the ship’s main level, calling out, “Ready for takeoff!”

No sooner had the words left than the combustors flared beneath her and the ship lurched up off the ground. Cinder screamed and grasped the ladder, clinging tight to it as the Rampion hovered momentarily before shooting up into the sky, away from the destruction happening in Michelle Benoit’s beautiful hometown.

When they’d entered orbit again, Cinder found Thorne in the cockpit, slumped in his chair with both arms draped toward the floor.

“We should clean our wounds,” she said, seeing the dark spot of blood on his shoulder.

Thorne nodded without facing her. “Yeah, I definitely don’t want to catch whatever he had.”

Her right leg shaking under her own weight, Cinder made her way awkwardly into the medbay, grateful she’d had the forethought to clear the crates away from it, and found an assortment of bandages and ointments.

“Nice takeoff back there,” she said when she joined Thorne in the cockpit. “Captain.”

He grunted, sulking as Cinder used her imbedded knife to cut open his sticky sleeve.

“How does it feel?” she asked, examining the bite marks on his arm.

“Like I was bit by a feral dog.”

“Are you light-headed? Woozy? You lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m fine,” he said, glowering. “Pretty upset about my jacket.”

“It could have been a lot worse.” She ripped off a long band of medical tape. “I could have used you as a human shield, like that officer.” Her voice hiccupped on the last word. A headache was coming on, starting in her desert-dry eyes, as she wrapped a bandage around Thorne’s arm and taped it.

“What happened?”

She shook her head and peered down at the gash in her palm. “I don’t know,” she said, awkwardly wrapping the tape around it too.

“Cinder.”

“I didn’t mean to.” She slumped back in her own chair. She felt sick, remembering the dead, blank stare of the woman as she put herself between Cinder and that man. “I just panicked, and the next thing I knew, she was there, in front of me. I didn’t even think—I didn’t try—it just happened.” She shoved herself out of the chair and marched out into the cargo bay, needing room. To breathe, to move, to think. “This is exactly what I was talking about! Having this gift. It’s turning me into a monster! Just like those men. Just like Levana.”

She rubbed her temples, biting back her next confession.

Maybe it wasn’t just being Lunar. Maybe it ran in her blood. Maybe she was just like her aunt … just like her mother, who had been no better.

“Or maybe,” Thorne said, “it was an accident, and you’re still learning.”

“An accident!” She spun around. “I killed a woman!”

Thorne held up a finger. “No. That blood-sucking, howling wolf-man killed her. Cinder, you were scared. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“He was coming after me, and I just used her.”

“And you think he would have left the rest of us alone once he had you?”

Cinder clamped her jaw shut, stomach still churning.

“I get that you feel like it was your fault, but let’s try to put some of the blame where it belongs here.”

Cinder frowned at Thorne, but she was seeing that man again, with his haunting blue eyes and sick smile.

“They have Michelle Benoit.” She shuddered. “And that’s my fault too. They’re looking for me.”

“Now what are you rambling on about?”

“He knew that’s why we came to Rieux, but he said they’d already found her. The ‘old lady, ’ he said. But they only came after her because they’re trying to find me!”

Thorne pulled a palm down his face. “Cinder, you’re being delusional. Michelle Benoit housed Princess Selene. If they tracked her down, that’s why. It has nothing to do with you.”

She gulped, her entire body shaking. “She might still be alive. We have to try and find her.”

“Since neither of you will tell me anything,” said Iko, her voice taut, “I’ll just have to guess. Were you by chance attacked by men who fought like starved wild animals?”

Thorne and Cinder traded glances. Cinder noticed that the cargo bay had grown abnormally warm during her tirade.

“Good guess,” said Thorne.

“They’re talking about it all over the newsfeeds,” said Iko. “It’s not just in France. It’s happening all over the world, every country in the Union. Earth is under attack!”