Cinder (21 page)

CINDER SLAMMED SHUT THE APARTMENT DOOR AND
marched into the living room. Adri was sitting stiff beside the hearth, glowering at Cinder as if she’d been waiting for her.

Cinder clenched her fists. “How dare you send for me like some common criminal? Didn’t you think that maybe I was in the middle of something?”

“How dare I treat you like a common cyborg, you mean?” Adri folded her hands in her lap. “You are a common cyborg, and one who is under my legal jurisdiction. It is my duty to ensure you don’t become a menace to society, and it seemed quite clear that you were abusing the privileges I’ve allowed you in the past.”

“What privileges?”

“I have always allowed you freedom, Cinder, to do as you like, to go where you like. But it’s come to my attention you do not respect the boundaries and responsibilities that come with that freedom.”

Cinder frowned and drew back. She’d had her own angry speech repeating in her head the entire hover ride home. She had not been expecting Adri to bite back with a speech of her own. “Is this because I didn’t respond to a few comms?”

Adri tucked her shoulders back. “What were you doing at the palace today, Cinder?”

Cinder’s heart skipped. “The palace?”

Adri raised a calm eyebrow.

“You’ve been tracking my ID.”

“You’ve made it necessary to take precautions.”

“I haven’t
done
anything.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Cinder’s internal warnings went off. Spiking adrenaline. She sucked down a breath. “I went to join the protests, all right? Is that a crime?”

“I was under the impression that you were in the basement, working, as you were supposed to be doing. To sneak out of the house without permission, without even informing me, to attend some gratuitous parade, and all the while Peony is—” Her voice hitched. Adri lowered her eyes, collected herself, but her voice was thicker when she spoke again. “Your records also show you took a hover ride today, to the outskirts of the city, the old warehouse district. It seems clear to me that you were attempting to run away.”

“Run away? No. There is…that’s where…” She hesitated. “There’s an old parts store down there. I was going for parts.”

“Is that so? And pray tell, where did you get the money for the hover?”

Biting her lip, Cinder sank her gaze to the floor.

“This is unacceptable,” said Adri. “I will not tolerate such behavior from you.”

Cinder heard shuffling in the hallway. Glancing around the door, she saw Pearl sneaking from her bedroom, drawn to her mother’s raised voice. She turned back to Adri.

“After everything that I’ve done for you,” continued Adri, “everything we’ve sacrificed, you have the gall to
steal
from me.”

Cinder frowned. “I didn’t steal from you.”

“No?” Adri’s knuckles whitened. “A few univs for a hover ride I could have overlooked, Cinder, but tell me, where did you obtain the 600 univs in order to pay for your—” Her eyes fell to Cinder’s boots, lips curling in a sneer. “—your new
limb
? Isn’t it true that that money was reserved for rent and food and household expenses?”

Cinder’s stomach clenched.

“I screened Iko’s memory. 600 univs in just one week, not to mention toying with the pearls that Garan gave me for our anniversary. It makes me sick to think what else you’ve been hiding from me.”

Cinder squeezed her trembling fists against her thighs, glad, for once, that she’d never told Iko about being Lunar. “It wasn’t—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Adri bunched her lips. “If you hadn’t been out dallying all day you would know that”—her voice rose, bolstered, as if anger alone could keep tears at bay—“that I now have a funeral to pay for. 600 univs would have bought my daughter a respectable plaque, and I intend to get that money back. We’ll be selling off some personal belongings in order to afford it, and you will be required to make up your fair share.”

Cinder gripped the doorjamb. She wanted to tell Adri that no fancy plaque would bring Peony back, but she didn’t have the strength. Shutting her eyes, she planted her brow against the cool wood frame.

“Don’t just stand there, pretending to understand what I can be going through. You are not part of this family. You aren’t even
human
anymore.”

“I am human,” said Cinder, quietly, the anger drained out of her. She just wanted Adri to stop talking so she could go to her room and be alone and think about Peony. The antidote. Their escape.

“No, Cinder. Humans cry.”

Cinder sank back, wrapping her arms protectively around herself.

“Go ahead. Shed a tear for your little sister. I seem to be all dried up this evening, so why don’t you share the burden?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” Adri barked. “What isn’t fair is that
you
are still alive while
she
is not. That is not fair! You should have died in that accident. They should have let you die and left my family alone!”

Cinder stomped her foot. “Stop blaming me! I didn’t ask to live. I didn’t ask to be adopted. I didn’t ask to be made cyborg. None of this is my fault! And Peony isn’t my fault either, and neither is Garan. I didn’t start this plague, I didn’t—”

She stopped herself as Dr. Erland’s words crashed down on her. Lunars had brought the plague to Earth. Lunars were at fault. Lunars.

“Did you just short-circuit?”

Cinder shook off the thought and threw a silent glare at Pearl before swinging back toward Adri. “I can get the money back,” she said. “Enough to buy Peony the most beautiful plaque—or a real tombstone even.”

“It is too late for that. You have proven that you have no part in this family. You have proven that you cannot be trusted.” Adri smoothed her skirt over her knees. “As punishment for your thievery and for attempting to run away this afternoon, I have decided you will not be allowed to attend the annual ball.”

Cinder bit back a wry laugh. Did Adri think she was a fool?

“Until further notice,” Adri continued, “you will go only so far as the basement during the week and to your booth at the festival so you can begin repaying me for the money you stole.”

Cinder dug her fingers into her thighs, too incensed to argue. Every fiber, every nerve, every wire was trembling.

“And you will leave your foot with me.”

She started. “Excuse me?”

“I think it a fair solution. After all, you bought it with my money, therefore it is mine to do with as I please. In some cultures they would cut off your hand, Cinder. Consider yourself fortunate.”

“But it’s my foot!”

“And you will have to do without it until you can find a cheaper replacement.” She glowered at Cinder’s feet. Her lip curled with disgust. “You are
not
human, Cinder. It’s about time you realized that.”

Jaw working, Cinder struggled to form an argument. But legally, the money had been Adri’s. Legally,
Cinder
belonged to Adri. She had no rights, no belongings. She was nothing but a cyborg.

“You may go now,” said Adri, casting her eyes toward the empty mantel. “Just be sure to leave your foot in the hallway before going to bed tonight.”

Fists clenching, Cinder drew back into the hallway. Pearl plastered herself to the wall, eyeing Cinder with disgust. Her cheeks were flushed with recent tears.

“Wait—one more thing, Cinder.”

She froze.

“You will find I’ve already begun selling off some unnecessary items. I’ve left some faulty parts in your room that were deemed worthless. Perhaps you can find something to do with them.”

When it was clear that Adri was finished, Cinder stormed down the hall without looking back. Anger sloshed through her. She wanted to rampage through the house, destroying everything, but a quiet voice in her head calmed her. Adri wanted that. Adri wanted an excuse to have her arrested, to be rid of her once and for all.

She just needed time. Another week, two at the most, and the car would be ready.

Then she really would be a runaway cyborg, but this time, Adri wouldn’t be able to track her.

She stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door, falling against it with a hot, shaking breath. She squeezed her eyes. One more week.
One more week.

When her breath had begun to settle and the warnings in her vision disappeared, Cinder opened her eyes. Her room was as messy as ever, old tools and parts scattered across the grease-stained blankets that made up her bed, but her eyes immediately landed on a new addition to the mess.

Her gut plummeted.

She knelt over the pile of worthless parts that Adri had left for her to find. A beat-up tread punctured with pebbles and debris. An ancient fan with a crooked blade. Two aluminum arms—one that still had Peony’s velvet ribbon tied around the wrist.

Clenching her jaw, she started sorting through the pieces. Carefully. One by one. Her fingers trembled over every mangled screw. Every bit of melted plastic. She shook her head, silently pleading. Pleading.

Finally she found what she was searching for.

With a dry, grateful sob, she crumpled over her knees, squeezing Iko’s worthless personality chip against her chest.

He had all the stairs coated with pitch, and when Cinderella went running down the stairs, her left slipper got stuck there.

CINDER SAT INSIDE HER BOOTH, CHIN CUPPED IN BOTH
palms, watching the huge netscreen across the crowded street. She couldn’t hear the reporter’s commentary over the chaos, but she didn’t need to—he was reporting on the festival that she was stuck in the middle of. The reporter seemed to be having a lot more fun than she was, gesturing wildly at passing food vendors and jugglers, contortionists on miniature parade floats and the tail end of a passing lucky dragon kite. Cinder could tell from the hubbub that the reporter was in the square just a block away from her, where most of the events took place throughout the day. It was a lot more festive than the street of vendor booths, but at least she was in the shade.

The day
would
have been busy compared to market days—lots of potential customers had sought prices on broken portscreens and android parts—but she had been forced to turn them all away. She would be taking no more customers in New Beijing. She would not have been there at all if Adri hadn’t forced her to come, dropping her off while she and Pearl went shopping for last-minute ball accessories. She suspected that Adri really just wanted to watch as everyone gawked at the limping, one-footed girl.

She couldn’t tell her stepmother that Linh Cinder, renowned mechanic, was closed for business.

Because she couldn’t tell Adri that she was leaving.

She sighed, blowing a misplaced lock of hair out of her face. The heat was miserable. The humidity clung to Cinder’s skin, pasting her shirt to her back. Along with the budding clouds on the horizon, it promised rain, and lots of it.

Not ideal driving conditions.

But that wouldn’t stop her. Twelve hours from now, she would be miles outside of the city, putting as much distance between herself and New Beijing as she could. She had gone down to the garage every night that week after Adri and Pearl were in bed, hopping along on homemade crutches so she could work on the car. Last night, for the first time, the engine had roared to life.

Well, more like sputtered to life and spewed out noxious fumes from the exhaust that made her cough like mad. She had used nearly half of the plague-research money Erland had wired her on a big tank of gasoline that, if she were lucky, would carry her at least into the next province. It would be a bumpy ride. It would be a stinky ride.

But she would be free.

No—
they
would be free. Her and Iko’s personality chip and Peony’s ID chip. They were going to escape together, like she’d always said they would.

Though she knew she could never bring Peony back, she hoped that someday she would at least find another body for Iko. Some other android shell, perhaps—maybe even an escort with their tauntingly ideal feminine shapes. She thought Iko would like that.

The netscreen changed, showing the other favorite news story of the week. Chang Sunto, miracle child. Plague survivor. He’d been interviewed countless times about his unbelievable recovery, and every time it sparked a little glow in Cinder’s silicon heart.

Footage of her mad dash from the quarantines had been played repeatedly on the screens too, but the recording never showed her face, and Adri had been too distracted—by the ball and the funeral that Cinder had not been invited to attend—to realize the mystery girl was living under her own roof. Or perhaps Adri just paid her such little attention that she wouldn’t have recognized her anyway.

Rumors abounded about the girl and Chang Sunto’s miraculous recovery, and while some had talked of an antidote, no one was coming clean. The boy was now under the surveillance of the palace research team, which meant that Dr. Erland had a new guinea pig to play with. She hoped it would be enough, given that her role as research volunteer was over. She hadn’t had the heart to tell the doctor that yet, though, and the guilt clawed at her upon seeing a new monetary deposit every morning. Dr. Erland had made good on his promises—he’d set up an account ID-linked so that only Cinder could access it, not Adri, and had made almost daily payments from the research and development fund. So far he’d asked for nothing in return. His only comms had been to tell her he was still making use of her blood samples and to remind her not to return to the palace until the queen was gone.

Cinder frowned, scratching her cheek. Dr. Erland had never had the chance to explain to her why she was so special when he was also immune. Her curiosity lingered in the back of her thoughts, but not as strongly as her determination to run away. Some mysteries would have to remain unsolved.

She pulled her toolbox toward her on the table, fishing through it for no other reason than to keep her hands busy. The boredom of the past five days had led her to meticulously organize every last bolt and screw. Now she’d taken to counting, creating a digital inventory in her brain.

A child appeared across her worktable, silky black hair pulled up in pigtails. “Excuse me,” she said, pushing a portscreen onto the table. “Can you fix this?”

Cinder cast her bored eyes from the child to the port. It was small enough to fit into her palm and covered with a sparkling pink shell. Sighing, she picked up the port and flipped it over in her hands. She pressed the power button but only gobbledygook filled the screen. Twisting her lips, she smacked the corner of the screen twice on the table. The girl jumped back.

Cinder tried the power button again. The welcome screen beamed up at her.

“Give that a shot,” she said, tossing it back to the kid, who stumbled to catch it. The girl’s eyes brightened. She flashed a grin with two missing teeth before scurrying into the crowd.

Cinder hunched over, settling her chin down on her forearms and wishing for the thousandth time that Iko wasn’t trapped inside a tiny scrap of metal. They would be poking fun at the vendors with their damp, rosy faces, fanning themselves beneath the canopies of their booths. They would talk about all the places they were going to go and see—the Taj Mahal, the Mediterranean Sea, the transatlantic maglev railway. Iko would want to go shopping in Paris.

When a shudder ran through her, Cinder buried her face in her elbow. How long would she have to carry their ghosts around with her?

“Are you all right?”

She jumped and raised her eyes. Kai was leaning against the corner of the booth, one arm propped on the door’s steel track, the other hidden behind him. He was wearing his disguise again, the gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, but even in the sweltering heat, he managed to look perfectly composed. His hair just tousled, the bright sun behind him—Cinder’s heart started to expand before she clamped it back down.

She didn’t bother to get up, but she did mindlessly tug her pant leg down to cover as many of the wires as possible, once again grateful for the thin tablecloth. “Your Highness.”

“Now, I don’t want to tell you how to run your business or anything,” he said, “but have you considered actually charging people for your services?”

Her wires seemed to be struggling to connect in her brain for a moment before she remembered the little girl from moments before. She cleared her throat and glanced around. The girl was sitting on the sidewalk with her dress stretched over her knees, humming to the music that streamed up from the tiny speakers. Shoppers mulled about, swinging bags against their hips and snacking on tea-boiled eggs. The shopkeepers were busy sweating. No one was paying them any attention.

“I don’t want to tell you how to be a prince, but shouldn’t you have some bodyguards or something?”

“Bodyguards? Who would want to harm a charming guy like me?”

When she glared up at him, he smiled and flashed his wrist at her. “Trust me, they know exactly where I am at all times, but I try not to think about it.”

She picked a flat-head screwdriver from the toolbox and started twirling it over her fingers, anything to keep her hands preoccupied. “So what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know. Preparing for a coronation or something?”

“Believe it or not, I seem to be having technical difficulties again.” He unhooked the portscreen from his belt and peered down. “You see, I figured it’s probably too much to hope that New Beijing’s most renowned mechanic is having trouble with
her
port, so I figured there must be something wrong with mine.” Screwing up his lips, he whapped the corner of his portscreen on the table, then checked the screen again with a heavy sigh. “Nope, nothing. Maybe she’s been ignoring my comms on purpose.”

“Maybe she’s been busy?”

“Oh, yes, you look completely overwhelmed.”

Cinder rolled her eyes.

“Here, I brought you something.” Kai put the portscreen away and pulled his hand out from behind him, producing a long, flat box wrapped in gold foil and a white ribbon. The paper was gorgeous, the wrapping job less so.

Cinder dropped the screwdriver with a clatter. “What’s that for?”

A flash of hurt crossed his face. “What? I can’t buy you a gift?” he asked, in a tone that nearly stopped the electric pulses in her wiring.

“No. Not after I’ve ignored six of your comms in the last week. Are you dense?”

“So you did get them!”

She propped her elbows on the table, sinking her chin into both palms. “Of course I got them.”

“So why are you ignoring me? Did I do something?”

“No. Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut, massaging her temple. She’d thought the hard part was over. She would disappear, and he would go on with his life. She would spend the rest of her life watching as Prince, no,
Emperor
Kai gave speeches and passed bills. As he went on diplomatic missions around the world. As he shook hands and kissed babies. She would watch him marry. She would watch as his wife gave him children—because the whole world would watch it happen.

But he would forget about her. Which is what needed to happen.

How naive of her to think it could be so simple.

“No? Yes?”

She fumbled, thinking it
should
have been easy to blame her silence on Adri, her cruel stepmother who had refused to let her leave the house, but it was not that easy. She couldn’t risk giving him hope. She couldn’t risk anything that might change her mind.

“It’s just that I…”

She drew back, knowing she should tell him. He thought she was a mere mechanic, and he was, perhaps, willing to cross
that
social divide. But to be both cyborg and Lunar? To be hated and despised by every culture in the galaxy? He would understand in a moment why he needed to forget her.

More than that, he probably
would
forget her just as quickly.

Her metal fingers jerked. Her right hand was burning hot beneath the cotton.

Pull off the gloves and show him.

She mindlessly reached for the hem, fingering the grease-stained material.

But she couldn’t. He didn’t know. She didn’t want him to know.

“Because you kept going on and on about the stupid ball,” she said, cringing at her own words.

He dropped a cursory glance to the gold box in his hands. The tension melted until his arms dropped to his sides. “Stars, Cinder, if I’d known you were going to embargo me for asking you on a date, I wouldn’t have dared.”

She cast her gaze skyward, wishing he’d been at least a little annoyed with her response.

“All right, you don’t want to go to the ball. Got it. I won’t mention it again.”

She fidgeted with the fingertips of her gloves. “Thanks.”

He set the box down on the table.

She shifted uncomfortably, unable to reach for it. “Don’t you have something important to be doing? Like, running a country?”

“Probably.” Leaning forward, he flattened one hand on the desk and leaned over, straining to see into Cinder’s lap. Her heart jolted and she scooted herself closer to the table, thrusting her foot as far out of his line of sight as possible.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. Why?”

“You’re usually the prime example of royal etiquette, but you didn’t even stand up. And I was so prepared to be the gentleman and urge you to sit back down again.”

“So sorry to steal
that
proud moment from you,” she said, sinking lower in her seat. “But I’ve been here since dawn and I’m tired.”

“Since dawn! What time is it now?” He reached for his portscreen.

“13:04.”

He paused with his hand on the gadget at his waist. “Well. It’s time for a break then, right?” He beamed. “Might I have the honor of treating you to lunch?”

Panic sparked in the back of her head and she sat up straight. “Of course not.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m working. I can’t just leave.”

He raised an eyebrow at the piles of neatly organized screws on the table. “Working on what?”

“For your information, I’m expecting a big parts order to come in and someone has to be here to receive it.” She was proud that the lie sounded so believable.

“Where’s your android?”

Her breath snagged. “She’s…not here.”

Kai took a step back from the table and made a show of looking around. “Ask one of the other shopkeepers to look after your booth.”

“Absolutely not. I pay money to rent this booth. I’m not just going to abandon it because some
prince
shows up.”

Kai inched toward the table again. “Come on. I can’t take you to the…
B
-word; I can’t take you to lunch. Short of my unplugging the processor on one of my androids, this could be the last time we ever see each other.”

“Believe it or not, I’d actually kind of resolved myself to that fact already.”

Kai rested his elbows on the table, ducking so that the hood concealed his eyes from her. His fingers found a screw, began twisting it between them. “Will you be watching the coronation, at least?”

She hesitated before shrugging. “Of course I will.”

With a nod, he used the tip of the screw to scratch beneath his thumbnail, though Cinder couldn’t see any dirt beneath it. “I’m supposed to make an announcement tonight. Not at the coronation but at the ball. About the peace negotiations we’ve been having the past week. It won’t be recorded because of Levana’s ridiculous no-cameras policy, but I wanted you to know.”