Cress by Marissa Meyer
Screaming, Cinder threw her arms into the air. “That’s kind of the whole idea! Don’t you? Isn’t that the entire reason you’re helping us?”
“Stars, no. I’m not crazy. I’m here because I saw an opportunity to get away from that thaumaturge without getting killed, and—” He cut himself off.
“And what?”
His jaw flexed.
“And what?”
“And it’s what Her Highness would have wanted me to do, although now she’s probably going to die for it.”
Cinder furrowed her brow. “What?”
“And now I’m stuck with you and some backward plan you have that’s going to get us all back to square one—right in the hands of Queen Levana.”
“Wha—but—Her Highness? What are you even talking about?”
“Princess Winter. Who do you think?”
“Princess…” Cinder drew a step away from him. “You mean, the queen’s stepdaughter?”
“Ooooooooooohhh,” said Iko.
“Yeah, the only princess we’ve got, if you haven’t noticed. Who did you think I was talking about?”
Cinder gulped. Her gaze flickered to the netscreen, where their original plan had long since been hidden beneath newsfeeds and that blasted clock. Jacin had never been told about their intentions of interrupting the wedding and announcing her identity to the world.
“Um. Nobody,” she stammered, scratching her wrist. “So, um … when you say you’re loyal to ‘your princess’ … you’re talking about her. Right?”
Jacin peered at her like he couldn’t figure out why he was wasting his time with such an idiot.
Cinder cleared her throat. “Right.”
“I should have let Sybil have you,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I thought maybe the princess would be proud if she heard about me turning against Sybil. That she would approve of my decision. But who am I kidding? She’ll never even know.”
“Do you … do you love her?”
He glared at her, disgusted. “Don’t try to push your swoony psychodrama on me. I’m sworn to protect her. Can’t very well do that from down here, can I?”
“Protect her from what? Levana?”
“Among other things.”
Cinder collapsed onto one of the storage crates, feeling like she’d just sprinted halfway across the desert. Her body was drained, her brain frazzled. Jacin didn’t care about her at all—he was loyal to the queen’s stepdaughter. She hadn’t even known the queen’s stepdaughter had people who were loyal to her.
“Help me,” she said, not hiding the pleading in her tone as she met Jacin’s gaze again. “I swear to you, I can stop Levana. I can get you back to Luna, where you can protect your princess, or do whatever you need to do. But I need help.”
“That much is pretty obvious. Are you going to let me in on this miracle plan of yours?”
She gulped. “Maybe. Eventually.”
He shook his head, looking like he wanted to laugh as he gestured out toward the streets of Farafrah. “You’re just desperate because the strongest ally you have right now is lying in a drug-induced coma.”
“Wolf is going to be fine,” Cinder said, with more conviction than she expected. Then she sighed. “I’m desperate because I need as many allies as I can get.”
Thirty-Six
They stopped again that night and Cress was given some bread, dried fruit, and water. She listened to the sounds of camp outside the van and tried to sleep, but it came only in fits.
They started early again the next morning.
She became less and less sure that Thorne would come for her. She kept seeing him embracing that other woman, and imagined that he was glad he no longer had to bother himself with the weak, naïve Lunar shell.
Even the fantasies that had consoled and comforted her for so many years aboard the satellite were growing feeble. She was not a warrior, brave and strong and ready to defend justice. She was not the most beautiful girl in the land, able to evoke empathy and respect from even the most hard-hearted villain. She was not even a damsel knowing that a hero would someday rescue her.
Instead, she spent the agonizing hours wondering whether she was to become a slave, a servant, a feast for cannibals, a human sacrifice, or whether she would be returned to Queen Levana and tortured for her betrayal.
Eventually, late in the second day of her entrapment, the vans stopped and the doors were thrown open. Cress cringed at the brightness and tried to scuffle away, but she was grabbed and hauled outside. She landed on her knees. Pain shot up her spine, but her captor ignored her whimpering as he tugged her to her feet and bound her wrists.
The pain soon faded, trounced by adrenaline and curiosity. They’d arrived at a new town, but even she could tell this one had never been as wealthy or populated as Kufra. Modest buildings the color of the desert stretched down a sand-spotted road. Walls of red clay, painted indigo and pink, had long been bleached in the sun, their roofs covered with broken tiles. A fenced area not far away held half a dozen camels and there were a few more wheeled, dirty vehicles stationed along the street, and—
She blinked the sun and sand from her eyes.
A spaceship sat in the center of town. A Rampion.
Her heart skipped with frenzied hope, but it was quickly smothered. Even from this distance she could see that the Rampion’s main hatch was painted black, not adorned with a lounging lady as had been reported when Thorne’s ship landed in France.
She whimpered, tearing her eyes away as her captors herded her into the nearest building. They entered a dark hallway. Only a small window in the front let in any light, and it had been caked with windblown sand over the years. There was a tiny desk set into a corner with a board of old-fashioned keys hanging on the wall. Cress was shuffled past it and taken to the end of the corridor.
The walls reeked with something pungent—not a bad scent, but too overpowering to be pleasant. Cress’s nose tickled.
She was pushed up a staircase, so thin that she had to follow behind Jina, with Niels behind her. An eerie silence haunted the sand-colored walls. The stench was stronger up here and a shiver raced down her spine, making goose bumps bloom across her arms. Her fear had bundled itself up in a cluster of nerves at the base of her spine.
By the time they reached the last door in the hallway and Jina raised her fist to knock, Cress was shaking so hard she almost couldn’t stand. She was surprised to find herself longing for the security of the van.
Jina had to knock twice before they heard footsteps and the creak of the door. Niels kept Cress tucked securely behind Jina, and all she could see were the cuffs of a man’s brown trousers and worn white shoes with fraying laces.
“Jina,” said a man—sounding like he’d just woken from a nap. “I heard a rumor out of Kufra that you were on your way.”
“I’ve brought you another subject. Found her wandering in the desert.”
A hesitation. Then the man said, without question, “A shell.”
His certainty made Cress squirm. If he had not had to ask, that meant he could sense her. Or, rather, couldn’t sense her. She remembered Sybil complaining that she could not sense Cress’s thoughts—how much more difficult it was to train and command a person like her, as if it were all Cress’s doing.
This man was Lunar.
She flinched away, wanting to curl up until she was no larger than a grain of sand, until she blew away into the desert and disappeared.
But she could not disappear. Instead, as Jina stepped aside, she found herself face-to-face with a man well into his years.
She started. They were face-to-face—he was barely taller than her.
Behind a pair of thin wired spectacles, his blue eyes widened, looking remarkably lively despite the wrinkles that folded and creased around them. He was balding, with tufts of untamed gray hair that stuck out above his ears. A bizarre déjà vu struck her, as if she’d seen him before, but that was impossible.
He whipped off his spectacles and rubbed
“Definitely a shell,” the old man murmured, “and a phantom, it seems.”
Cress’s heart pounded a rough, erratic rhythm against her rib cage.
“I’m asking 32,000 univs for her.”
The man blinked at Jina like he’d forgotten she was there. He stood a bit straighter and made a great fuss about removing his spectacles again, to clean them this time.
Cress dug her fingernails into her palm to distract herself from her panic. She stared past the man. A single window was covered in blinds, and there was dust swirling in and out of a beam of sunlight that knifed through them. There was a closed door, presumably a closet, a desk, a bed, and a pile of rumpled blankets in the corner. The blankets were clotted with blood.
A chill raced across her skin.
Then she spotted the netscreen.
A netscreen. She could comm for help. She could contact the last hotel, in Kufra. She could tell Thorne—
“I will give you 25,000.” The man’s tone had solidified while he cleaned his glasses, and was now all business.
Jina snorted. “I will not hesitate to take this girl to the police and have her deported. I’ll collect my citizen’s reward from them.”
“A mere 1,500 univs? You would sacrifice so much on your pride, Jina?”
“My pride, and to know that one less Lunar is walking around on my planet.” She said this with a sneer, and for the first time it occurred to Cress that Jina might truly hate her—for no other reason than her ancestry. “I’ll let her go for 30,000, Doctor. I know you’re paying as much for shells these days.”
Doctor? Cress gulped. This man in no way resembled the finely polished men and women in the net dramas, with their crisp white coats and advanced technology. Somehow, the title served to make her more wary, as visions of scalpels and syringes flashed through her mind.
He sighed. “Ah, 27,000.”
Jina tilted her head back, peering down her nose. “Deal.”
The doctor took her hand, but he seemed to have drawn back into himself. He couldn’t look at Cress full-on, as if he were ashamed that she had witnessed the transaction.
Defiance jolted down Cress’s spine.
He should be ashamed. They should all be ashamed.
And she would not let herself become mere baggage to be bartered for. Mistress Sybil had taken advantage of her for too long. She wouldn’t let it happen again.
Before these thoughts could become anything more than rebellious anger, she was shoved into the room. Jina shut the door, enclosing them all in the hot, dusty space that smelled of stale chemicals. “Make the transfer quick,” she said, folding her arms. “I have other business to tend to in Kufra.”
The doctor grunted and opened the closet. There were no clothes inside, but rather a miniature science lab, with mystery machines and scanners and a stand of metal drawers that clanked when he opened them. He pulled out a needle and syringe and made quick work of removing its packaging.
Cress backed away, arms pulling against her bindings, but Niels stopped her.
“Yes, yes, let me get a blood sample from her, then I’ll make the transfer.”
“Why?” Jina said, stepping between them. “So you can determine something’s wrong with her and compromise our deal?”
The doctor harrumphed. “I have no intention of compromising anything, Jina. I merely thought she would be more complicit while you’re here, allowing me to more safely extract a sample.”
Cress’s gaze darted around the room. A weapon. An escape. A hint of mercy in the eyes of her captor.
Nothing. There was nothing.
“Fine,” Jina said. “Niels, hold her so the doctor can do what he needs to do.”
“No!” The word was ripped out of Cress as she stumbled away. Her shoulder collided with Niels and she started to fall backward, but then he was gripping her by the elbow and hauling her against him. Her legs had become soggy and useless beneath her. “No—please. Leave me alone!” She pleaded at the doctor and saw such a mixture of emotion on his lined face that she fell silent.
His eyebrows were bunched together, and his mouth tightly pursed. He kept rapidly blinking behind his glasses, like trying to clear away an eyelash, until his gaze fell away from her altogether. There was pity in him. She knew it—she knew this was sympathy he was trying to disguise.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please let me go. I’m just a shell, and I’m stranded here on Earth, and I haven’t done anything to anyone, and I’m nobody. I’m nobody. Please, just let me go.”
He did not meet her eyes again, even as he stepped forward. She tensed, trying to back away, but Niels held her firm. The doctor’s touch felt papery, but his grip was strong as he took her wrist in one hand.
“Try to relax,” he murmured.
She flinched as the needle dug into her flesh, the same spot where Sybil had taken blood a hundred times. She bit hard on the inside of her cheek, refusing to so much as whimper.
“That was all. Not so awful, was it?” His tone was eerily soft, like he was trying to comfort her.
She felt like a bird who’d had her wings clipped and been thrown into a cage—another filthy, rotting cage.
She’d been in a cage all her life. Somehow, she’d never expected to find one just as awful on Earth.
Earth, she reminded herself as the doctor plodded back across the groaning floorboards. She was on Earth. Not trapped in a satellite in space. There was a way out of this. Freedom was just out that window, or just down those stairs. She would not be a prisoner again.
The doctor fit the syringe full of her blood into a machine and flipped on a portscreen.
“There now, I will transfer over the funds, and you can be on your way.”
“You’re using a secure connection?” Jina asked, taking a step forward as the doctor tapped in some sort of code word. Cress squinted, watching where his fingers landed, in case she would later need it. It could save time not having to hack it.
“Trust me, Jina, I have more reason than you to keep my transactions hidden from prying eyes.” He studied something on the screen, before saying, more solemnly, “Thank you for bringing her.”
Jina scowled at his balding head. “I hope you’re killing all these Lunars when you’re done with them. We have enough problems with the plague. We don’t need them too.”
His blue eyes flashed and Cress detected a hint of disdain for Jina, but he covered it over with another benign look. “The payment has been transferred. If you would untie the girl before you go.”
Cress kept still as the bindings were taken off her wrists. She whipped her hands away as soon as they were gone and scurried against the nearest wall.
“Lovely doing business with you again,” Jina said. The doctor merely grunted. He was watching Cress from the corner of his eye, trying to stare at her without being obvious.
And then the door closed and Jina and Niels were gone. Cress listened to their feet clopping down the hallway, the only noise in the building.
The doctor rubbed his palms down the front of his shirt, like cleansing them of Jina’s presence. Cress didn’t think he could feel half as filthy as she did, but she stayed as still as the wall, glaring.
“Yes, well,” he said. “It is more awkward with shells, you know. Not so easy to explain.”
She snarled. “You mean, not so easy to brainwash.”
He tilted his head, and the odd look had returned. The one that made her feel like a science experiment under a microscope. “You know that I’m Lunar.”
She didn’t answer.
“I understand you’re frightened. I can’t imagine what sort of mistreatment Jina and her hooligans put you through. But I am not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m doing great things here, things that will change the world, and you can help me.” He paused. “W
She didn’t answer.
When he moved closer, his hands extended in a show of peace, Cress shoved all her fear down into her gut and used the wall to launch herself at him.
A roar clawed up from her throat and she swung her elbow, as hard as she could, landing a solid hit against his jaw. She heard the snap of his teeth, felt the shock in her bones, and then he was falling backward and landing so hard on the wooden floor that the entire building shook around them.
She didn’t check to see if he was unconscious, or if she’d given him a heart attack, or if he was in any shape to get up and follow her.
She wrenched open the door and ran.
Thirty-Seven
Dr. Erland woke up on the floor of a hot, dusty hotel room, unable for a moment to remember where he was.
This was not the laboratories beside New Beijing Palace, where he’d watched cyborg after cyborg break into red and purple rashes. Where he’d seen the life drain out of their eyes, and cursed the sacrifice of another life, while plotting the next step in his hunt for the only cyborg that mattered.
This was not the labs of Luna, where he’d studied and researched with a singular drive for recognition. Where he’d seen monsters born at the end of his surgical tools. Where he’d watched the brainwaves of young men take on the chaotic, savage patterns of wild animals.
He was not Dr. Dmitri Erland, as he’d been in New Beijing.
He was not Dr. Sage Darnel, as he’d been on Luna.
Or perhaps he was—he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember … didn’t care.
His thoughts kept turning away from himself and his two hateful identities, and swarming back to his wife’s heart-shaped face and honey-blonde hair that became frizzy whenever the ecology department was injecting new humidity into Luna’s controlled atmosphere.
His thoughts were on a screaming baby, four days old and confirmed a shell, as his wife dropped her into the hands of Thaumaturge Mira, with all the coldness and disgust she would have shown a rodent.
The last time he’d seen his little Crescent Moon.