“They don’t seem too upset,” said Thorne. “Evidently they’ve never tasted prison food.”
Cinder came to stand beside Scarlet. “They won’t be there for long. The wedding is in two weeks, and then they’ll be released and sent back to Luna.”
Thorne hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “In that case, this seems like a pretty big waste of time and resources.”
“I disagree,” said Scarlet. “The people can’t keep living in fear. The government is trying to show that they’re doing something to keep the massacres from happening again. This way, they can feel like they have some sort of control over the situation.”
Cinder shook her head. “But what happens when Levana retaliates? The whole point of the marriage alliance was to hold her temper in check.”
“She won’t retaliate,” said Wolf. “I doubt she’ll even care.”
Scarlet glanced at the tattoo on his forearm. “After all the work she’s gone through to create you … them?”
“She wouldn’t jeopardize the alliance. Not for the operatives, who were only meant to serve one purpose to begin with—to launch that first attack and remind Earth that Lunars can be anyone, anywhere. To make them afraid of us.” He began to shuffle restlessly from foot to foot. “She’s done with us now.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Iko, “because now that they’ve discovered how to track the operatives, everyone expects the rest of the Union to follow suit.”
“How did they find them?” asked Cinder, adjusting her ponytail.
A sigh of air whooshed through the cooling system. “It turns out, Lunars have managed to reprogram a bunch of the med-droids stationed at plague quarantines all over the world. They’ve been harvesting ID chips from the deceased and shipping them off to these operatives to be reprogrammed and inserted into their bodies, so they could blend in with society. Once the government figured out the connection, they just had to follow the trail of the ID chips, and they were led straight to the packs’ operation bases.”
“Peony…” Cinder shifted closer to the netscreen. “That’s why the android wanted her chip. You’re telling me it would have ended up inside one of them?”
“Spoken with true derision for our canine friends,” said Thorne.
Cinder massaged her temple. “I’m sorry, Wolf. I don’t mean you.” She hesitated. “Except … I do, though. Anyone. She was my little sister. How many people have died from this disease, only to have their identities violated like this? Again, no offense.”
“It’s all right,” said Wolf. “You loved her. I would feel the same if someone wanted to erase Scarlet’s identity and give it to Levana’s army.”
Scarlet stiffened, heat rushing into her cheeks. He certainly wasn’t insinuating …
“Aaaaw,” squealed Iko. “Did Wolf just say that he loves Scarlet? That’s so cute!”
Scarlet cringed. “He did not—that wasn’t—” She balled her fists against her sides. “Can we get back to these soldiers that are being rounded up, please?”
“Is she blushing? She sounds like she’s blushing.”
“She’s blushing,” Thorne confirmed, shuffling the cards. “Actually, Wolf is also looking a little flustered—”
“Focus, please,” said Cinder, and Scarlet could have kissed her. “So they were taking ID chips from plague victims. Now what?”
The lights dimmed as Iko’s giddiness diminished. “Well, it won’t be happening anymore. All American androids assigned to the quarantines are being evaluated and reprogrammed as we speak, which will no doubt carry into the rest of the Union.”
On the screen, the last operative in Manhattan was being loaded into the armored hover. The door clanged and locked shut behind him.
“It does take care of one threat, at least,” said Scarlet, thinking of the pack that had kept her prisoner. That had killed her grandmother. “I hope Europe hunts them down too. I hope they kill them.”
“I hope they don’t think their job is done after this,” said Cinder. “Like Wolf said, the real war hasn’t even begun yet. Earth should be on high alert right now—preparing for anything.”
“And we should be making sure we’re ready to stop this wedding and put you on the throne,” added Scarlet, noting how Cinder flinched at the mention of becoming queen. “If we can pull this off, the war may never go any further than it already has.”
“I have a suggestion,” said Iko, replacing the news story of the Lunar operatives with an ongoing report for the upcoming wedding. “If we’re going to be sneaking into New Beijing Palace while Levana is there, why don’t we just assassinate her? Not to be all cold-wired murderer about it, but wouldn’t that solve a lot of our problems?”
“It’s not that easy,” said Cinder. “Remember who we’re talking about here. She can brainwash hundreds of people at once.”
“She can’t brainwash me,” said Iko. “Or you.”
Wolf shook his head. “It would take an army to get close enough. She’ll have countless guards and thaumaturges with her. Not to mention all the Earthens she could use as shields, or turn into weapons themselves.”
“Including Kai,” Cinder said.
The ship’s engine sputtered, causing the walls to quake. “You’re right. We can’t risk that.”
“No, but we can tell the world that she’s a fraud and a murderer.” Cinder planted her hands on her hips. “They already know she’s a monster. We just need to show them that no one is safe if she becomes empress.”
Five
“Screen four,” said Cress, squinting at the grid of icons. “High Jack to … D5.”
Without waiting for the animated jester to cartwheel to his new space, she shifted her attention to the next game. “Screen five. Claim rubies and daggers. Discard crowns.”
The screen sparkled, but she had already moved on.
“Screen six.” She paused, chewing on the tips of her hair. Twelve rows of numbers filled up the screen, some slots left blank, some tinted with colors and patterns. After her brain twisted around an equation she wasn’t sure she could have done a second time, the puzzle lit up before her, the solution as clear as a moonrise over Earth. “3A, insert yellow 4. 7B is black 16. 9G is black 20.” The grid melted away, replaced with a second era singer swooning into a microphone, the audience swelling with applause.
“Congratulations, Big Sister,” said Little Cress. “You won!”
Cress’s victory was short-lived. She rolled onto her side and reassessed the first game. Seeing the move that Little Cress had made since her last turn squelched her pride. She’d backed herself into a corner. “Screen one,” she murmured, swooping her hair over one shoulder and mindlessly knotting the dampened ends around her fingers. Five knots later and her victory on screen six was forgotten. Little Cress was going to win this one.
She sighed and made the best move she could, but it was immediately followed by Little Cress’s king moving to the center of the holographic labyrinth and claiming the golden chalice. A laughing jester appeared, gobbling down the rest of the game board.
Cress groaned and pulled her hair off her neck, waiting for whatever task her younger self would randomly select for her.
“I won!” said Little Cress, once the holograph had disappeared back into the screen. The other games automatically locked themselves. “You now owe me ten minutes of country-western line dancing, as guided by the following video, followed by thirty jump-squats. Let’s begin!”
Cress rolled her eyes, wishing she hadn’t been quite so perky when she’d recorded the voice. But she did as she was told, sliding off the bed as a mustached man in a large hat appeared on the screens, thumbs hooked into his belt loops.
A couple years ago, upon realizing that her living accommodations offered few opportunities to be active, Cress had gone on a fitness kick. She’d installed all the games with a program that chose from a variety of fitness activities, which she would be required to perform from every time she lost. Though she’d often regretted the program, it did help keep her from becoming cemented to her chair, and she kind of enjoyed the dancing and yoga routines. Although she was not looking forward to those jump-squats.
Just as the twang of a guitar announced the start of the dance, a loud chime delayed the inevitable. Thumbs locked into her pretend-belt loops, Cress glanced around at the screens.
“Little Cress, what—”
“We have received a direct communication link request from Unknown User: Mechanic.”
Her insides spun as if she’d just done a backflip.
Mechanic.
With a cry, she half stumbled, half fell toward the smallest screen, hastily tapped in the fitness-routine override code, checked the firewall and privacy settings, and saw it. A D-COMM request, and the most innocent of questions.
ACCEPT?
Mouth dry, Cress smoothed both palms over her hair. “Yes! Accept!”
The window faded away, replaced with blackness, and then—
And then—
There he was.
Carswell Thorne.
He was tilted back in a chair, the heels of his boots propped up in front of the screen. Three people stood close behind him, but all Cress could see were the blue eyes staring back at her, directly back at her, beginning to fill with the same breathless awe she felt.
The same wonder.
The same enchantment.
Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn’t be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too.
Heat crept up into her cheeks. Her hands began to shake.
“Aces,” Carswell Thorne murmured. Dropping his feet to the ground, he leaned forward to inspect her closer. “Is that all hair?”
The bond snapped, the fantasy of one perfect true-love moment disintegrating around her.
Sudden, overwhelming panic clawed up Cress’s throat. With a squeak, she ducked out of view of the camera and scrambled beneath the desk. Her back struck the wall with a thud that rattled her teeth. She crouched there, skin burning hot and pulse thundering as she took in the room before her—the room that he was now seeing too, with the rumpled bedcovers and the mustached man on all the screens telling her to grab her imaginary partner and swing them around.
“Wha—where’d she go?” Thorne’s voice came to her through the screen.
“Honestly, Thorne.” A girl. Linh Cinder? “Do you ever think before you speak?”
“What? What did I say?”
“‘Is that all hair?’”
“Did you see it? It was like a cross between a magpie nest and ball of yarn after it’s been mauled by a cheetah.”
A beat. Then, “A cheetah?”
“It was the first big cat that came to mind.”
Cress hurriedly tried to finger-comb the tangles around her ears. Her hair hadn’t been cut since she’d been put into the satellite and now hung past her knees, but Sybil didn’t bring sharp objects into the satellite and Cress had long ago stopped worrying about keeping it neatly braided. After all, who was going to see her?
Oh, to have styled her hair that morning. To have worn the dress that didn’t have a hole in the collar. Had she even brushed her teeth since she’d eaten breakfast? She couldn’t remember, and now she was sure that she had bits of spinach from her freeze-dried eggs Florentine stuck between them.
“Here, let me speak to her.”
Shuffling from the screen.