The drop was a full story, but if they could make it without breaking any legs, this was almost going to be easy.
“Where are we?” Thorne whispered.
“Underground loading dock—where they bring in food and supplies.” As gracefully as she could, she climbed over the grate and maneuvered back around so that she and Thorne could both peer through the grid.
“We need to get down there, to that storm drain.”
Thorne frowned and pointed. “Isn’t that the exit ramp over there?”
She nodded without looking.
“Why aren’t we trying to get there?”
She peered up at him, the grate casting peculiar shadows across his face. “And just walk to your spaceship? In bright white prison uniforms?”
He frowned, but any response was silenced by the sound of voices. They ducked back.
“I didn’t see him dancing with her, my sister did,” said a woman. Her words were coupled with footsteps, then a rolling door being hoisted up on clunky rails. “Her dress was soaking wet and wrinkled as a garbage bag.”
“But why would the emperor dance with a cyborg?” said a man. “And then for her to go off and attack the Lunar queen like that … no way. Your sister was seeing things. I bet the girl was just some crazy person who wandered in off the streets. She was probably bitter over some cyborg injustice.”
The conversation was cut short by the rumbling of a delivery ship.
Cinder dared to peer through the grate again and saw a ship wheeling its way beneath them, backing up toward a recessed loading bay and stopping directly between Cinder and Thorne and the storm drain.
“Morning, Ryu-jūn,” said the man as the pilot descended from the ship. The rest of their greetings were drowned out by the hydraulics hissing on an adjustable platform.
Taking advantage of the noise, Cinder used her screwdriver to remove the grate. When she gave Thorne a nod, he carefully eased it up.
Sweat trickled down Cinder’s neck and her heart was palpitating so hard she thought it might bruise the inside of her rib cage. Lowering her head, she peered around the dock, checking for any other signs of life and spotted, not arm’s distance away on the concrete ceiling, a rotating camera.
She jerked back inside, pulse hissing in her ears. Luckily the camera had been facing the other direction, but still, there was no way they would both make it down undetected. Then there were the three workers unloading the delivery to deal with, and every moment gone was one more moment toward some guard discovering their empty cells.
She shut her eyes, imagining where the camera was, before snaking her arm out. Her hand floundered, flat against the ceiling—the camera was farther than it had seemed in that momentary glance—but then her fingers found it. She grasped the lens and squeezed. The plastic was crushed as easy as a plum in her titanium fist, making a satisfying crunching sound that seemed deafeningly loud.
She listened, relieved as the same sounds of shuffling and chatting continued below.
Their time was up. It wouldn’t be more than a minute now before someone realized a camera had been disabled.
Raising her head, she nodded at Thorne and pulled herself forward over the opening.
She dropped onto the roof of the delivery ship and it clanged and shuddered beneath her. Thorne followed, landing with a muffled grunt.
The talking silenced.
Cinder spun around as three figures emerged from the loading bay, their faces contorted in confusion.
They spotted her and Thorne standing atop the ship and froze. Cinder could see them taking in the white uniforms. Her cyborg hand.
One of the men reached for the portscreen on his belt.
Clenching her jaw, Cinder held her hand out to him, thinking only of how he could not get to his port, could not send out an alarm. Thinking of his hand petrified in space just centimeters from his belt.
At her will, his hand stalled and hung motionless.
His eyes filled with terror.
“Don’t move,” said Cinder, her voice hoarse, guilt already clawing at her throat. She knew she was every bit as panicked as the three people standing before her, and yet the fear on their faces was unmistakable.
The burning sensation returned, starting at the top of her neck and spreading down through her spine, her shoulders and hips, stinging where it met her prostheses. It wasn’t painful or sudden like it had been when Dr. Erland had first unlocked her Lunar gift. Rather, it was almost comforting—almost pleasant.
She could sense the three people standing on the platform, the bioelectricity rolling off them in waves, crackling in the air, ready to be controlled.
Turn around.
In unison, the three workers turned around, their bodies stiff and awkward.
Close your eyes. Cover your ears. She hesitated before adding, Hum.
Instantly, the buzz of three people humming filled what had become a silent delivery dock. She hoped it would be enough to keep them from hearing the grate open in the concrete floor. Her only hope was that they would assume she and Thorne had left through the dock exit or smuggled themselves aboard a delivery ship.
Thorne was staring, slack jawed, when Cinder turned back to him. “What are they doing?”
“Obeying,” she said heavily, hating herself for making the command. Hating the hums that filled her ears. Hating this gift that was too unnatural, too powerful, too unfair.
But the thought to release her control over them never crossed her mind.
“Come on,” she said, half jumping, half sliding off the ship. She crawled beneath it and found the grate between the landing wheels. Though her hands were shaking, she managed to twist the grate a quarter turn and pull it up.
A shallow pool of standing water glistened up at her in the darkness.
The fall wasn’t far, but her bare feet landing in the oily water made her queasy. Thorne was beside her in a second, replacing the grate over the hole.
There was a round concrete tunnel set into the wall, barely reaching Cinder’s stomach and filled with the stench of garbage and mildew. Wrinkling her nose, Cinder crouched and crawled into it.
Seven
The cluster of icons on Emperor Kai’s netscreen was growing denser by the hour, not only because there were so many things for the new emperor to read and sign, but because he wasn’t putting much effort into reading or signing any of them. With fingers buried in his hair, he gazed blankly at the inset netscreen panel currently elevated out of his desk and watched the icons multiply with a growing sense of dread.
He should have been sleeping, but after countless hours of staring at the shadows above his bed, he’d finally given up and decided to come here instead and attempt to do something productive. He was dying for a distraction. Any distraction.
Anything to chase away the thoughts that kept rotating around in his brain.
So much for those good intentions.
Taking in a measured breath, Kai glanced up at the empty office. It was supposed to be his father’s office, but the room struck Kai as far too extravagant to be a place for work. Three ornate tasseled lanterns were lined up on a red-and-gold ceiling, hand-painted with elegant dragons. A holographic fireplace was set into the wall to his left. A sitting area with carved cypress furniture surrounded a miniature bar in the far corner. Silent videos of Kai’s mother shimmered from picture frames by the door, sometimes paired with flashes of Kai growing up, and sometimes all three of them together.