Cress (36 page)

She scowled into the darkness. A bead of sweat lobbed its way off her nose.

When solid darkness had crept into her closet and, despite the discomfort and stiff muscles, Cress found herself dozing off, she snapped herself awake and determined that she had hidden long enough. The old man wasn’t searching for her, which seemed absurd, knowing how much he’d paid for her. Shouldn’t he have been a little more concerned?

Or maybe all he’d really wanted was her blood. It was a peculiar coincidence, given how Mistress Sybil had saved so many non-gifted infants from death because she’d seen some value in their blood too.

She tried not to let her suspicions and paranoia dig any deeper. Whatever the old man wanted, she couldn’t stay in this closet forever.

Tilting one foot off the shelf, she nudged open the closet door. It squeaked, a sound that was drum-shatteringly loud, and she froze with one leg extended.

Waiting. Listening.

When nothing happened, she prodded the door open a bit more and shimmied to the edge of the shelf. She lowered herself as gently as she could down to the floor.

The floorboards groaned. She halted again, heartbeat thundering.

Waited. Listened.

Dizzy and parched, Cress made her way to the corridor. It was empty. She crept to the next door. Again, it was unlocked, but the room looked exactly like the one she’d just left. Abandoned and empty.

Her skin was crawling, every sense heightened as she shut the door and moved on to the next.

In the third room, the blinds were closed, but the light from the corridor fell on a netscreen hanging in the darkness. She barely stifled a gasp. Trembling with anticipation, she shut the door behind her.

Then her attention landed on the bed and she pressed a hand over her mouth.

A man was lying there. Sleeping, she realized, as she waited for her heartbeat to stop thudding so painfully against her ribs. She dared not move until she could be certain that the rise-and-fall pattern of his chest was steady and deep. She hadn’t woken him.

She glanced at the netscreen again, weighing the risks.

She could slip into the corridor again and keep searching. There were two doors on this floor she hadn’t yet opened … but they were both back toward the old man’s room. Or she could go downstairs and try her luck there.

But every step she took on the old floorboards could alert someone to her presence, and she had no guarantee that any of the other doors would be unlocked, or that they would have netscreens.

The minutes ticked by as she stood with one hand on the doorknob, the other over her mouth, trapped by indecision. The man never stirred, never so much as twitched.

Finally she forced herself to take a step toward the netscreen. Her gaze darted to the sleeping form again and again, making sure that his breathing didn’t change.

“Netscreen,” she whispered. “On.”

The screen flickered and she began repeating, “Netscreen, mute, netscreen, mute, netscre—” But her command was unnecessary. As the netscreen brightened, she found herself staring at a map of Earth, not a net drama or newsfeed. Four locations had been marked. New Beijing. Paris. Rieux, France. A tiny oasis town in the northwest corner of Nile Province in the African Union.

A sense of coincidence stirred in her, but her brain was already skimming too far ahead to dwell on it. Within moments, she had sent the map away and called up a comm link. She hesitated. The only time she’d ever sent a comm was when she talked to Cinder, using a link that couldn’t be traced or monitored. She knew intimately how much access Queen Levana had to Earth’s net and all those comms that Earthens mistakenly believed were private.

But she couldn’t dwell on that. What interest would Queen Levana have in a single comm link established between two small towns in north Africa? She was, no doubt, far too preoccupied with her plans for intergalactic dominance.

“Netscreen,” she whispered, “show hotels in Kufra.”

Her awkward pronunciation brought up a list of seven possible Kufras. She selected the one with the least distance from her current location and was then faced with the names of a dozen lodging options, their ads and contact information flashing on the sidebar. She scowled, reading each carefully. None of their names sounded familiar. “Show in map.” The city of Kufra spilled out across the screen, a satellite-taken photograph that, after a moment of squinting at the brown-tinted roads, began to breach the gaps in her memory. Then she spotted a courtyard outside one of the hotels and, after zooming into the photo, recognized a lemon tree standing against one wall. She dared to smile and tapped on the hotel’s contact information.

“Establish comm link.”

Within seconds she found herself staring at the same clerk who had checked in her and Thorne, with Jina’s help. She nearly collapsed with relief.

“Thank you for comming—”

“Shh!” Cress waved her arms, silencing the woman, and glanced at the man on the bed. He twitched, but only briefly.

“Sorry,” she whispered. The woman leaned closer toward the screen to hear her. “My friend is sleeping. I need to speak with a guest at your hotel. His name is Carswell Tho—Smith. I believe he’s in room eight?”

She was glad when the woman’s voice dropped low. “One moment.” She tapped something offscreen.

Cress jumped at a ping, but the man slept on. An alert appeared in the corner of the netscreen.

[97] NEW ALERTS REGARDING SEARCH “LINH CINDER.”

She blinked.
Linh Cinder?

“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist, snapping Cress’s attention back to her. “Mr. Smith left the hotel yesterday evening after causing a commotion with some of our other guests.” Her eyes had become suspicious and she scanned the dark room with increased curiosity. “In fact, we’re currently undergoing an investigation, as some witnesses believe he may have been a wanted—”

Cress canceled the link. Her nerves were writhing beneath her skin and her lungs felt too small to take in all the air they needed.

Thorne wasn’t there. He’d had to run and now she had no idea how to find him and he was being hunted and he would be captured and she would never see him again.

The screen pinged again. The alerts on Linh Cinder had increased by two.

Linh Cinder. New Beijing. Paris. Rieux, France.

The sequence began to click.

Baffled, Cress pulled up the alerts. They were the same news stories she’d been wading through for weeks aboard the satellite. Criticisms and speculations and conspiracy theories and very little evidence. Still no confirmed sightings. Still no arrests made and not even a mention of Captain Thorne, despite what the hotel clerk had said.

And then her attention caught on a headline and her legs nearly buckled. She splayed her fingers on top of the desk to keep standing.

LUNAR ACCOMPLICE DMITRI ERLAND STILL EVADING AUTHORITIES

Dmitri Erland.

The Lunar doctor who had been on the letumosis research team. The doctor who had helped Cinder escape from prison. The doctor who was, perhaps, the second most-wanted fugitive on Earth, even more so than Thorne.

She knew it was him even before she’d pulled up his picture. This was why the old man had struck her as familiar. She
had
seen him before.

But … wasn’t he supposed to be on their side?

She was so engrossed with her unanswered questions that she didn’t hear the subtle creaking of the bed until a hand grabbed her.

Thirty-Nine

Cress squeaked as she was spun around. She found herself staring into a face that was both handsome and murderous, his eyes glowing in the light of the netscreen.

“Who are you?”

Her instinct was to scream, but she smothered it, choking off the noise until it was little more than a whimper. “I-I’m sorry for intruding,” she said. “I needed a netscreen. M-my friend is in danger and I needed to send a comm and—I’m so sorry, I promise I didn’t steal anything. P-please don’t call for the doctor. Please.”

He seemed to have stopped listening to her, instead sending his steely gaze around the room. He released her arm, but remained tense and defensive. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he had bandages around his torso that covered him almost as much as a shirt would have. “Where are we? What happened?” His words were staggered and slurred.

He grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut, and when he opened them again it seemed that he couldn’t quite focus on anything.

That’s when Cress’s attention caught on something more terrifying than his faded scars and intimidating muscles.

He had a tattoo on his arm. It was too dark to read it, but Cress knew instantly what it was. She’d seen them in countless videos and photographs and documentaries hastily cobbled together. He was a Lunar special operative. One of the queen’s mutants.

Visions of men digging their claws into their victims’ chests, locking their jaws around exposed throats, howling at the moon, curled and crawled through her head.

This time, she couldn’t temper the instinct. She screamed.

He grabbed her and forced her jaw shut with his enormous hands. She sobbed, trembling. She was about to die. Her body would pose no more resistance to him than a twig.

He snarled and she could make out the sharp points of his teeth.

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” he said, his breath hot on her face. “You turned me into this, and I will kill you before I become another experiment. Do you understand me?”

Tears began to work their way out of her lashes. Her jaw was aching where he held her, but she was more afraid of what would happen when he let go. Did he think she worked for the doctor? Could it be that he was just one more victim sold off to the old man? He was Lunar, so they had that much in common. If she could convince him that they were allies, maybe she could get away long enough to run. But could these monsters even be reasoned with?

“
Do you understand me?
”

Her lashes fluttered, and the door behind him opened.

His moves were fast and fluid and Cress’s head spun as the man turned and pulled her in front of him, plastering her against his chest. He stumbled, as if the sudden movement had made him dizzy, but caught himself as light spilled into the room. A silhouette stood in the doorway—not the old man, but a guard. A Lunar guard.

Cress’s eyes widened with recognition.
Sybil’s
guard. The pilot in Sybil’s podship, who could have saved her but didn’t.

The wolf operative hissed. Cress would have collapsed if his grip hadn’t been so firm.

Sybil had found her. Sybil was here.

Her tears began to spill over. She was trapped. She was dead.

“Take one step and I’ll snap her neck!”

The guard said nothing. Cress wasn’t sure he’d even heard the threat. His eyebrows were raised as he surveyed the scene, and he seemed to recognize her. But rather than look victorious, he seemed merely stunned.

“What have—Scarlet?” The words were almost incomprehensible beneath a growl. “Where’s Scarlet?”

“Aren’t you that hacker?” said the guard, still staring at Cress.

The operative’s grip tightened. “You have five seconds to tell me where she is, or this girl is dead, and you’re next.”

“I’m not with them,” Cress choked. “He-he doesn’t care about me.”

The guard raised his hands in a placating gesture. Cress wondered where Mistress Sybil was.

When the operative’s hold didn’t loosen, it occurred to her that both of these men worked for the Lunar queen. Why would they be threatening each other?

“Just relax,” said the guard. “Let me get Cinder or the doctor. They can explain.”

The operative flinched. “Cinder?”

“She’s out in the ship.” His gaze dipped again to Cress. “Where did you come from?”

She gulped, her head ringing with the same question the operative had posed.

Cinder?

“What is going on here?”

She shuddered at the doctor’s voice, stronger than it had been during his negotiations with Jina. Then footsteps. The guard stepped aside to let the doctor into the room, still dark but for the corridor light. Cress couldn’t help but feel a sting of pride to see that she’d left a mark on his jaw.

Though lots of good her newfound courage had done her in the end.

The doctor froze and took in the scene. “Oh, stars,” he muttered. “Of all the bad timings…”

Though the sight of him reignited Cress’s hatred, she also remembered that this was not just some cruel old man who traded for Lunar slaves. This was the man who had helped Cinder escape.

Her head spun.

“Let her go,” said the doctor, speaking gently. “We are not your enemies. That girl is not your enemy. Please, allow me to explain.”

Wolf pulled an arm away from her, dragging a hand down his face. He swayed for a moment before recovering his balance. “I’ve been here before,” he muttered. “Cinder … Africa?”

Loud thumping on the distant staircase intruded on his confusion. Then there was yelling and Cress thought she heard her name, and the voice—

“Cress!”

She cried out, forgetting about the vise-like grip around her, except that it kept her from launching herself toward him. “Captain!”

“CRESS!”

The doctor and the guard both spun around as the footsteps barreled down the hall and they all watched as Captain Thorne, blindfolded, ran right past the door.

“
Captain!
I’m in here!”

The footsteps stopped and reversed and he ran back until his cane smacked the door frame. He froze, panting, one hand braced on the jamb. He had a furious bruise across one side of his face, though it was largely hidden by the bandanna. “Cress? Are you all right?”

Her relief didn’t last. “Captain! To your left there’s a Lunar guard and on your right is a doctor who’s running tests on Lunars and I’m being held by one of Levana’s wolf hybrids and
please be careful
!”

Thorne took a step back into the hallway and pulled a gun from his waistband. He spent a moment swiveling the barrel of the gun in each direction, but nobody moved to attack him.