Winter

Twenty-Two

Cinder was used to sensing Wolf’s energy—tireless and agitated and steaming off him like heat waves over pavement. But it was a new thing coming from Thorne, who was normally unshakable. As they ran down an endless staircase, deeper and deeper into Luna’s underground, Thorne’s energy was every bit as palpable as Wolf’s. Angry, terrified, burdened with guilt. Cinder wished she could turn off her Lunar gift so she wouldn’t have to deal with her companions’ tirade of emotions in addition to her own.

They’d lost Cress. Levana knew of Kai’s betrayal. Already their group was fragmented and her plan was falling to pieces.

The steps leveled off into a long, narrow corridor lined with robed statues, each holding a glowing orb that cast swells of light onto the arched ceiling. The floor was fitted with thousands of tiny black and gold tiles, creating a pattern that swirled and ebbed like the Milky Way. It would have been a marvel to behold if they had the time to appreciate it, but Cinder’s thoughts were too tumultuous. Listening for sounds of pursuit. Picturing Cress’s face, determined in spite of her fear. Trying to plan their next move, and what they would do if the maglevs failed—for Levana must know where they were heading.

At the end of the corridor they came to another spiraling staircase carved from dark, polished wood. The rails and steps were undulating and uneven, and it took Cinder two flights—gripping the rails to keep from falling headfirst in her hurry—to realize the staircase was carved to resemble an enormous octopus that was allowing them passage on its looping tentacles.

So beautiful. So strange. Everything made with such striking craftsmanship and detail. And all this in just some tunnels hundreds of feet beneath the moon’s surface. She couldn’t imagine how stunning the palace itself must be.

They reached another set of double doors inset with an artfully rendered map showing the entirety of the maglev system.

“This is the platform,” said Iko, the only one of them not panting.

“I’ll go out first,” said Cinder. “If anyone is out there, I’ll use a glamour to make them see us as members of Levana’s court. Any thaumaturges we kill on sight. Everyone else we ignore.”

“What about guards?” said Iko.

“Guards are easy to control. Let me deal with them.” She adjusted the scratchy gloves Kai had given her, then opened her thoughts, prepared to detect the bioelectricity off anyone who might have been on the platform. She pressed her palm against the doors. At her touch, they divided into four sections that spiraled into the walls. Cinder stepped onto the platform.

Empty.

She couldn’t imagine it would be that way for long.

Three shimmering white shuttles waited on the rails. They ran for the first one. Cinder let the others climb in first, ready to call up a glamour at the first sign of someone approaching, but the platform remained silent. Wolf grabbed Cinder and dragged her in with them.

“How do we work this thing?” Iko cried, pounding at the control screen. The shuttle remained open and motionless. “Shut door! Move! Get us out of here!”

“It won’t work for you,” said Wolf, leaning past Iko to press all five fingertips against the screen. It lit up and the doors glided shut.

It was a false sense of protection, but Cinder couldn’t help a breath of relief.

A tranquil voice filled the shuttle. “Welcome, Alpha Ze’ev Kesley, Lunar Special Operative Number 962. Where shall I take you?”

He glanced at Cinder.

She stared at the screen, sifting through the possibilities. Giving directions to RM-9 was a sure way of leading Levana straight to them. She pulled up the map of Luna on her retina display, trying to strategize the best route, one that would lead Levana off their track.

“WS-1,” said Thorne. He was slumped on the floor between the two upholstered benches, his hands draped over his knees, his head against the wall. Between the disheartened expression and collapsed posture, he was almost unrecognizable. But at his voice, the shuttle rose up on the magnetic force beneath the rails and started racing away from Artemisia.

“Waste salvage?” Iko said.

Thorne shrugged. “I thought it would be good to have a Plan B in case something like this happened.”

After a short silence, in which Iko’s internal workings hummed, she said, “And Plan B is to go to the waste salvage sector?”

Thorne looked up. His voice was neutral as he explained, “It’s a short trip from Artemisia, so we won’t be giving Levana too much time to regroup and send people after us before we get out of this shuttle. And it’s one of the most connected sectors on Luna, given that everyone has waste. There are fifteen maglev tunnels branching out from that one platform. We can go on foot for a ways, throw them off our course, then start doub—”

“Don’t say it,” said Cinder. “We don’t know if we’ll be recorded in here.”

Thorne shut his mouth and nodded.

Cinder knew he’d been about to say they could start doubling back toward RM-9. She focused in on sector WS-1 on the map in her head, and Thorne was right. It was a smart plan. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it herself. “Good call, Thorne.”

He shrugged again, without enthusiasm. “Criminal mastermind, remember?”

Cinder sagged onto the bench beside Wolf, allowing her body a brief respite from the pumping adrenaline. “The system recognized you.”

“Every Lunar citizen is in the database. I’ve only been missing for a couple of months—I figured they wouldn’t have had my identity removed yet.”

“Do you think they’ll notice if a special operative who’s supposed to be on Earth suddenly shows up again?”

“I don’t know. But as long as we’re traveling by shuttle, using my identity will draw less attention than yours. And without Cress here to break into it…”

Thorne flinched and pressed his forehead into the shuttle wall. They sat in silence for a long time, the lack of Cress’s presence filling up the hollow spaces around them.

Only in her absence did Cinder realize how much they’d been relying on Cress. She could have sneaked them through the maglev system without having to input any identities. And Cress had been confident that, once they arrived in RM-9, she could disable any surveillance equipment that might give them away. Plus there was the all-important matter of infiltrating Luna’s broadcasting system to share Cinder’s message with Luna’s citizens.

But knowing how much Cress’s loss impacted their objectives was nothing compared to the horror Cinder felt. Cress would be tortured for information on their whereabouts and then almost certainly killed.

“She’s a shell,” Cinder said. “They can’t detect her bioelectricity. As long as she stays hidden, she’ll be—”

“Don’t,” said Thorne.

Cinder stared at his whitened knuckles and struggled for something meaningful to say. Her grand plan of revolution and change had just begun and already she felt like a failure. This seemed worse than failing the people of Luna, though. She’d failed the people she cared about most in the universe.

Finally, she whispered, “I’m so sorry, Thorne.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”