Текст книги "Scarlet"

Автор книги: Marissa Meyer

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 22 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 9 страниц]

Three

Scarlet pulled the bin of potatoes out from the lowest shelf, dropping it with a thud on the floor before lugging the crate of tomatoes on top. The onions and turnips went beside it. She’d have to make two trips out to the ship again and that made her angrier than anything. So much for a dignified exit.

She grabbed the handles of the lower bin and hoisted them up.

“Now what are you doing?” Gilles said from the doorway, a towel draped over one shoulder.

“Taking these back.”

Heaving a sigh, Gilles braced himself against the wall. “Scar—I didn’t mean all that out there.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“Look, I like your grandmother, and I like you. Yes, she overcharges and you can be a huge sting in my side and you’re both a little crazy sometimes—” He held up both hands defensively when he saw Scarlet’s hackles rising. “Hey, you’re the one who climbed up on the bar and started making speeches, so don’t try to say it’s not true.”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

“But when it comes right down to it, your grand-mère runs a good farm, and you still grow the best tomatoes in France year after year. I don’t want to cancel my account.”

Scarlet tilted the bin so that the shiny red globes rolled and thumped against one another.

“Put them back, Scar. I’ve already signed off on the delivery payment.”

He walked away before Scarlet could lose her temper again.

Blowing a red curl out of her face, Scarlet set the crates down and kicked the potatoes back to their spot beneath the shelves. She could hear the cooks chortling over the dining room drama. The story had already taken on a legendary air from the waitstaff’s telling of it. According to the cooks, the street fighter had broken a bottle over Roland’s head, knocking him unconscious and crushing a chair in the process. He would have taken out Gilles too, if Émilie hadn’t calmed him down with one of her pretty smiles.

With no interest in correcting the story, Scarlet dusted her hands on her jeans and paced back into the kitchen. A coldness hung in the air between her and the tavern staff as she made her way to the scanner beside the back door—Gilles was nowhere to be seen and Émilie’s giggles could be heard out in the dining room. Scarlet hoped she was only imagining the dropped glances. She wondered how fast the rumors would spread through town. Scarlet Benoit was defending the cyborg! The Lunar! She’s clearly split her rocket, just like her … just like …

She swiped her wrist beneath the ancient scanner. Out of habit, she inspected the delivery order that appeared on the screen, making sure Gilles hadn’t shorted her like he often tried and noting that he had, in fact, deducted three univs for the smashed tomatoes. 687U DEPOSITED TO VENDOR ACCOUNT: BENOIT FARMS AND GARDENS.

She left through the back door without saying good-bye to anyone.

Though still warm from the sunny afternoon, the shadows of the alley were refreshing compared with the sweltering kitchen and Scarlet let it cool her down while she reorganized the crates in the back of the ship. She was behind schedule. It would be late evening before she got home. She would have to get up extra early to go to the Toulouse police station, otherwise she would lose a whole day in which no one was doing anything to recover her grandmother.

Two weeks. Two whole weeks of her grandmother being out there, alone. Helpless. Forgotten. Maybe … maybe even dead. Maybe kidnapped and killed and left in a dark, wet ditch somewhere and why? Whywhywhy?

Frustrated tears steamed her eyes, but she blinked them back. Slamming the hatch, she rounded to the front of the ship, and froze.

The fighter was there, his back against the stone building. Watching her.

In her surprise, a hot tear leaked out. She swiped at it before it could crawl halfway down her cheek. She returned his stare, calculating if his stance was threatening or not. He stood a dozen steps from the nose of her ship and his expression seemed more hesitant than dangerous, but then, it hadn’t seemed dangerous when he’d nearly strangled Roland either.

“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said, his voice almost lost in the jumbled noise from the tavern.

She splayed her fingers on the back of the ship, annoyed at how her nerves were humming, like they couldn’t decide if she should be afraid of him or flattered.

“I’m better off than Roland,” she said. “His neck was already starting to bruise when I left.”

His eyes flashed toward the kitchen door. “He deserved worse.”

She would have smiled, but she didn’t have the energy after biting back all the anger and frustration of the afternoon. “I wish you hadn’t gotten involved at all. I had the situation under control.”

“Clearly.” He squinted at her like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “But I was worried you might draw that gun on him, and such a scene may not have helped your case. As far as not being crazy, that is.”

Hair prickled behind her neck. Scarlet’s hand instinctively went to her lower back, where a small pistol was warm against her skin. Her grandma had given it to her on her eleventh birthday with the paranoid warning: You just never know when a stranger will want to take you somewhere you don’t mean to go. She’d taught Scarlet to use it and Scarlet hadn’t left home without it since, no matter how ridiculous and unnecessary it seemed.

Seven years later and she was quite sure not a single person had ever noticed the gun concealed under her usual red hoodie. Until now.

“How did you know?”

He shrugged, or what would have been a shrug if the movement hadn’t been so tense and jerky. “I saw the handle when you climbed up on the counter.”

Scarlet lifted the back of her sweatshirt just enough to loosen the pistol from her waistband. She tried to take in a calming breath, but the air was filled with the onion and garbage stink of the alley.

“Thanks for your concern, but I’m just fine. I have to go—behind on the deliveries … behind on everything.” She stepped toward the pilot’s door.

“Do you have any more tomatoes?”

She paused.

The fighter shrank back further into the shadows, looking sheepish. “I’m still a little hungry,” he muttered.

Scarlet imagined she could smell the tomato flesh on the wall behind her.

“I can pay,” he quickly added.

She shook her head. “No, that’s all right. We have plenty.” She shuffled backward, keeping her eyes on him, and reopened the hatch. She grabbed a tomato and a bundle of crooked carrots. “Here, these are good raw too,” she said, tossing them to him.

He caught them with ease, the tomato disappearing in his large fist and his other hand gripping the carrots by their lacy, leafy stems. He surveyed them from every angle. “What are they?”

A surprised laugh tumbled out of her. “They’re carrots. Are you serious?”

Again, he seemed embarrassingly aware of having said something unusual. His shoulders hunched in a vain attempt to make himself seem smaller. “Thank you.”

“Your mom never made you eat your vegetables, did she?”

Their gazes clashed and the awkwardness was immediate. Something shattered inside the tavern, making Scarlet jump. It was followed by the roar of laughter.

“Never mind. They’re good, you’ll like them.” She shut the hatch and rounded to the door again, whisking her ID across the ship’s scanner. The door opened, forming a wall between them, and the floodlights blinked on. They accentuated the bruise around the fighter’s eye, making it seem darker than before. He flinched back like a criminal in a spotlight.

“I was wondering if you could use a farmhand?” he said, the words slurred in his rush to get them out.

Scarlet paused, suddenly understanding why he’d waited for her, why he’d stalled so long. She scanned his broad shoulders, bulky arms. He was built for manual labor. “You’re looking for work?”

He started to smile, a look that was dangerously mischievous. “The money’s good at the fights, but it doesn’t make for much of a career. I thought maybe you could pay me in food.”

She laughed. “After seeing the evidence of your appetite in there, I think I’d lose my shirt with a deal like that.” She flushed the second she’d said it—no doubt he was now imagining her with her shirt off. Yet, to her shock, his face remained serenely neutral, and she hurried to fill the space before his reactions caught up. “What’s your name, anyway?”

That awkward shrug again. “They call me Wolf at the fights.”

“Wolf?” How … predatory.”

He nodded, entirely serious.

Scarlet swallowed a grin. “You might want to leave the street fighter bit off your resume.”

He scratched at his elbow, where the strange tattoo could barely be seen in the dark, and she thought maybe she’d embarrassed him. Perhaps Wolf was a beloved nickname.

“Well, they call me Scarlet. Yes, like the hair, what a clever observation.”

His expression softened. “What hair?”

Scarlet settled her arm on top of the door, resting her chin. “Good one.”

For a moment he seemed almost pleased with himself and Scarlet found herself warming to this stranger, this anomaly. This soft-spoken street fighter.

A warning tingled in the back of her head—she was wasting time. Her grandmother was out there. Alone. Frightened. Dead in a ditch.

Scarlet tightened her grip on the door frame. “I’m really sorry, but we have a full staff already. I don’t need any more farmhands.”

The glint faded from his eyes and in an instant he was looking uncomfortable again. Flustered. “I understand. Thank you for the food.” He kicked at the stem of a dead firework on the pavement—a remnant from last night’s peace celebrations.

“You should head to Toulouse, or even Paris. There are more jobs in the cities, and people around here don’t take too kindly to strangers, as you may have noticed.”

He tilted his head so that his emerald eyes glowed even brighter in the wash of the ship’s floodlights, looking almost amused. “Thanks for the tip.”

Turning, Scarlet sank into the pilot’s seat.

Wolf shifted toward the wall as she started the engine. “If you change your mind about needing a hand, I can be found at the abandoned Morel house most nights. I may not be great with people, but I think I’d do well on a farm.” Amusement touched the corners of his lips. “Animals love me.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Scarlet said, beaming with fake encouragement. She shut the door before muttering, “What farm animals don’t love a wolf?”

Four

The captivity of Carswell Thorne had gotten off to a rocky start, what with the catastrophic soap rebellion and all. But since being transferred to solitary, he’d become the personification of a well-mannered gentleman, and after six months of such commendable behavior, he’d persuaded the only female guard on rotation to lend him a portscreen.

He was quite sure this would not have succeeded if the guard wasn’t convinced he was an idiot, incapable of doing anything other than counting the days and searching for naughty pictures of ladies he’d known and imagined.

And she was right, of course. Thorne was mystified by technology and couldn’t have done anything useful with the tablet even if he had had a step-by-step instruction manual on “How to Escape from Jail Using a Portscreen.” He’d been unsuccessful in accessing his comms, connecting to newsfeeds, or scouting out any information on New Beijing Prison and the surrounding city.

But he sure did appreciate the suggestively naughty, if heavily filtered, pictures.

He was scrolling through his portfolio on the 228th day of his captivity, wondering if Señora Santiago was still married to that onion-smelling man, when an awful screeching disrupted the cell’s peacefulness.

He peered upward, squinting at the smooth, glossy white ceiling.

The sound ceased and was followed by shuffling. A couple thuds. More grinding.

Thorne folded his legs atop his cot and waited while the noise grew louder and closer, hiccupped and continued. It took him some time to place this new strange noise, but after much listening and pondering he was convinced it was the sound of a motorized drill.

Maybe one of the other prisoners was remodeling.

The sound stopped, though the memory of it lingered, vibrating off the walls. Thorne glanced around. His cell was a perfect cube with smooth, shiny white wall panels on all six sides. It contained his all-white cot, a urinal that slid in and out of the wall with the press of a button, and him in his white uniform.

If someone was remodeling, he hoped his cell would be next.

The sound started again, more grating this time, and then a long screw punctured through the ceiling and clattered to the center of the cell’s floor. Three more dropped after it.

Thorne craned his head as one of the screws rolled beneath his cot.

A moment later, a square tile fell from the ceiling with a bang, followed by two dangling legs and a startled cry. The legs wore a white cotton jumpsuit that matched Thorne’s, but unlike his own plain white shoes, the feet attached to those legs were bare.

One wore skin.

The other a plating of reflective metal.

With a grunt, the girl released her hold on the ceiling and fell into a crouch in the middle of the cell.

Resting his elbows on his knees, Thorne tilted forward, trying to get a better look at her without moving from his safe position against the wall. She had a slight build and tanned skin and straight brown hair. Like her left foot, her left hand was made of metal.

Stabilizing herself, the girl stood and brushed off her jumpsuit.

“I’m sorry,” Thorne said.

She spun toward him, eyes wild.

“It seems that you’ve stumbled into the wrong jail cell. Do you need directions to get back to yours?”

She blinked.

Thorne smiled.

The girl frowned.

Her irritation made her prettier, and Thorne cupped his chin, studying her. He’d never met a cyborg before, much less flirted with one, but there was a first time for everything.

“These cells aren’t supposed to be occupied,” she said.

“Special circumstances.”

She surveyed him for a long moment, her brows knitting together. “Murder?”

His grin grew. “Thank you, but no. I started a riot on the yard.” He adjusted his collar, before adding, “We were protesting the soap.”

Her confusion grew, and Thorne noticed that she was still in her defensive stance.

“The soap,” he said again, wondering if she’d heard him. “It’s too drying.”

She said nothing.

“I have sensitive skin.”

Her mouth opened and he expected sympathy, but all that came out was a disinterested “Huh.”

Drawing herself up, she kicked the fallen ceiling tile out from beneath her feet, then proceeded to turn in a full circle, surveying the cell. Her lip curled in annoyance. “Stupid,” she muttered, nearing the wall to Thorne’s left and placing a palm against it. “One room off.”

Her eyelashes suddenly fluttered as if dust were stuck in them. Growling, she smacked her palm against her temple a few times.

“You’re escaping.”

“Not at this very moment,” she said through her teeth, roughly shaking her head. “But, yes, that is the general idea.” Her face lit up when she spotted the port in his lap. “What model portscreen is that?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He held it up for her. “I’m putting together a portfolio of the women I’ve loved.”

Pushing herself from the wall, she snatched the portscreen away and flipped it over. A tip of her cyborg finger opened, revealing a small screwdriver. It wasn’t long before she’d undone the plate on the underside of the port.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your vid-cable.”

“What for?”

“Mine’s on the fritz.”

She pulled a yellow wire from the screen and dropped it back into Thorne’s lap, then sank cross-legged to the floor. Thorne watched, mystified, as she tossed her hair to one side and unlatched a panel at the base of her skull. A moment later her fingers emerged with a wire similar to the one she’d just stolen from him, but with one blackened end. The girl’s face contorted in concentration while she installed the new cable.

With a pleased sigh, she shut the panel and tossed the old cable next to Thorne. “Thanks.”

He grimaced, shrinking away from the wire. “You have a portscreen in your head?”

“Something like that.” The girl stood and ran a hand over the wall again. “Ah, that’s much better. Now how do I…” Trailing off, she pushed the button in the corner. A glossy white panel slid up into the wall, ejecting the urinal with smooth precision. Her fingers fished into the gap left between the fixture and the wall, searching.

Inching away from the neglected cable on his cot, Thorne cleared his mind of the image of her opening a plate in her skull, once again calling up the personification of a gentleman, and attempted to make small talk while she worked. He asked what she was in for and complimented the fine workmanship of her metal extremities, but she ignored him, making him briefly question if he’d been separated from the female population for so long that he could be losing his charm.

But that seemed unlikely.

A few minutes later, the girl seemed to find what she was looking for, and Thorne heard the motorized-drill sound again.

“When they locked you up,” Thorne said, “didn’t they consider that this prison might have some security weaknesses?”

“It didn’t at the time. This hand is kind of a new addition.” She paused and stared hard at one corner of the alcove, as if trying to see through the wall.

Maybe she had X-ray vision. Now that he could find some good uses for.

“Let me guess,” Thorne said. “Breaking and entering?”

After a long silence of examining the retracting mechanism, the girl wrinkled her nose. “Two counts of treason, if you must know. And resisting arrest, and unlawful use of bioelectricity. Oh, and illegal immigration, but honestly, I think that’s a little excessive.”

He squinted at the back of her head, a twitch developing in his left eye. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

The screwdriver in her finger began to spin again. Thorne waited until there was a lull in the grinding. “What’s your name?”

“Cinder,” she said, followed by another swell of noise.

When it died down: “I’m Captain Carswell Thorne. But usually people just call me—”

More grinding.

“Thorne. Or Captain. Or Captain Thorne.”

Without responding, she wriggled her hand back into the alcove. It seemed like she was trying to twist something, but it must not have budged, as a second later she sat back and huffed with frustration.

“I can see that you’re in need of an accomplice,” Thorne said, straightening his jumpsuit. “And lucky for you, I happen to be a criminal mastermind.”

She glowered at him. “Go away.”

“That’s a difficult request in this situation.”

She sighed and dusted the flecks of white plastic from her screwdriver.

“What are you going to do when you get out?” he asked.

She turned back to the wall. The grinding persisted for a while before she paused to roll her neck, working out a crick. “The most direct route out of the city is north.”

“Oh, my naive little convict. Don’t you think that’s what they’ll be expecting you to do?”

She jabbed the screwdriver into the alcove. “Would you please stop distracting me?”

“I’m just saying we might be able to help each other.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I have a ship.”

Her gaze darted to him for only a beat—a look of warning.

“A spaceship.”

“A spaceship,” she drawled.

“She could have us halfway to the stars in less than two minutes, and she’s just outside the city limits. Easy to get to. What do you say?”

“I say if you don’t stop talking and let me work, we won’t be getting halfway to anywhere.”

“Point taken,” Thorne said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You just think it over in that pretty head of yours.”

She tensed, but kept working.

“Now that I’m thinking of it, there used to be an excellent dim sum bar just a block away too. They had mini pork buns that were to die for. Rich and succulent.” He pinched his fingers together, salivating over the memory.

Face scrunching up, Cinder started to massage the back of her neck.

“Maybe if we have time we could stop in and pick up a snack for the road. I could use a treat after suffering through the tasteless junk they call food in this place.” He licked his lips, but when he refocused on the girl, the pain on her features had tightened. Sweat was beading on her brow.

“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her. “Do you need a back rub?”

She swatted him away. “Please,” she said, hands braced between them. She struggled to draw in a shuddering breath.

As Thorne stared, her image wavered, like heat rising off maglev tracks. He stumbled back. His heartbeat quickened. A tingle filled his brain and raced down his nerves.

She was … beautiful.

No, divine.

No, perfect.

His pulse thumped, thoughts of worship and devotion swimming through his head. Thoughts of surrender. Thoughts of compliance.

“Please,” she said again, hiding behind her metal hand. Her tone was desperate as she slumped against the wall. “Just stop talking. Just … leave me alone.”

“All right.” Confusion reigned—cyborg, prison mate, goddess. “Of course. Anything you like.” Eyes watering, he stumbled backward and sank blindly down to his cot.