Текст книги "Scarlet"

Автор книги: Marissa Meyer

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 22 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 9 страниц]

Nine

“Argh, get it off, get it off!”

Cinder spun, steadying herself on the curved, slick concrete walls as she cast the flashlight behind her. Thorne was writhing and squirming in the cramped tunnel, swatting at his back and emitting an array of curses and unmanly shrieks.

She sent the beam of light to the ceiling and saw a thriving mass of cockroaches scuttling across it in all directions. She shuddered, but turned away and kept moving.

“It’s only a cockroach,” she called back to him. “It’s not going to kill you.”

“It’s in my uniform!”

“Would you keep quiet? There’s a manhole up ahead.”

“Please tell me we’ll be exiting through that manhole.”

She scoffed, more preoccupied with the map of the sewer system in her head than on her companion’s squeamishness. Even though the thought of a cockroach beneath her shirt did make her squirm, she figured it would still be preferable to walking through the ankle-deep sludge with one bare foot, and she wasn’t whining.

They passed beneath the manhole and Cinder detected the steady sound of water growing louder. “We’re almost to the combined main line,” she said, at first eager to reach it—it was hot as Mars in this cramped tunnel and her thighs were burning from the crouch-walk routine. But then a gut-turning stench wafted toward her, so strong she almost gagged.

No longer would it just be surface water runoff they were trekking through.

“Oh, aces,” said Thorne, groaning. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

Cinder wrinkled her nose and focused on taking shallow, burning breaths.

The smell grew nearly unbearable as they traipsed through the sludge and came to the sewer connection, finding themselves on the lip of a concrete wall.

Cinder’s imbedded flashlight searched the tunnel beneath them, darting up the slimy concrete walls. The main tunnel would be tall enough for them to stand in. The light bounced off a narrow metal grate that lined the far edge, stable enough for maintenance workers and covered in rat droppings. Between them and the grate, a river of sewage swelled and churned, at least two meters wide.

She fought off another bout of nausea as the pungent stink of the sewer clouded her nostrils, her throat, her lungs.

“Ready?” she said, inching forward.

“Wait—what are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

Thorne blinked at her, then down at the sewage he could barely make out in the darkness. “Don’t you have some tool in that fancy hand of yours that can get us across?”

Cinder glared, light-headed from her body’s instinctively short breaths. “Oh, wow, how could I have forgotten about my grappling hook?”

Spinning away, she gobbled down another rank breath and lowered herself into the muck. Something smooshed between her toes. The current pounded against her legs as she made her way across, the water up to her thighs. Writhing on the inside, Cinder crossed as quickly as she could, choking down her gag reflex. The weight of her metal foot keeping her grounded so the current didn’t knock her off balance and soon she was on the other side, pulling herself onto the grate. She flattened her back against the tunnel wall and peered back at the pretend captain.

He was staring at her legs with unbridled disgust.

Cinder looked down. The stark white jumper was now tinged greenish brown and clung, sopping, to her legs.

“Look,” she yelled, aiming the flashlight at Thorne, “you can either get over here or you can go back and serve the rest of your sentence in peace. But you have to make a decision now.”

After a stream of curses and spitting, Thorne inched his way into the sludge, holding his arms aloft. He was grimacing the whole time as he slinked his way to the grate and hauled himself up beside Cinder.

“This is what I get for complaining about the soap,” he muttered, pressing himself against the wall.

The grate was already digging into Cinder’s bare foot and she shifted her weight onto her cyborg leg. “All right, Cadet. Which way?”

“Captain.” He opened his eyes and peered down the tunnel in each direction, but beyond the pale light filtering in from the closest manhole, the sewers disappeared in blackness. Cinder adjusted the brightness of her flashlight, sending it darting over the frothy surface of the water and dripping concrete walls.

“It’s near the old Beihai Park,” Thorne said, scratching at his whiskered chin. “Which way is that?”

Cinder nodded and turned south.

Her internal clock told her they’d been walking for only twelve minutes, but it seemed like hours. The grate dug into her foot with each step. Her wet pants were plastered to her calves and sweat dripped down the back of her neck, sometimes tricking her into thinking it was a spider fallen down her jumpsuit and making her feel guilty for giving Thorne a hard time before. Though they didn’t see any rats, she could hear them scurrying away from her light, down countless tunnels that fanned out beneath the city.

Thorne talked to himself as they walked, working through his clogged memory. His ship was definitely near Beihai Park. In the industrial district. Not six blocks south of the maglev tracks … well, maybe eight blocks.

“We’re about a block away from the park,” Cinder said, pausing at a metal ladder. A spot of light drifted down toward them. “This goes up to West Yunxin.”

“Yunxin sounds familiar. Sort of.”

She pleaded for patience and started to climb.

The ladder rungs bit into her foot, but the air was blissfully fresh as she neared the top. The sound of the rushing water was replaced with the hum of maglev tracks. Reaching the manhole cover, Cinder paused to listen for signs of humanity, before pushing the cover off to the side.

A hover glided overhead.

Cinder ducked, heart racing. Daring to inch her head up, she spotted silent lights atop the white vehicle. It was an emergency hover. Visions of androids armed with brain-interface-overriding tasers sent a shudder through her, before the hover turned a corner and she saw a red cross on one side. It was a medical hover, not law enforcement. Cinder nearly collapsed from relief.

They were in the old warehouse district, near the plague quarantines. Medical hovers were to be expected.

She glanced both ways down the deserted street. Though it was still early, the day was already hot and whimsical mirages were rising from the pavement, having forgotten the drenching summer storm from two nights before.

“Clear.” She hauled herself up onto the road and sucked in a deep breath of the city’s humidity. Thorne followed, his uniform glaringly bright in the sun, except for the legs, which were still murky green and smelled of sewage. “Which way?”

Shielding his eyes with his forearm, Thorne squinted at the concrete buildings and rotated in a full circle. Faced north. Scratched his neck.

Cinder’s optimism crumbled. “Tell me you recognize something.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” he said, waving her away. “I just haven’t been here in a while.”

“Think faster. We aren’t exactly blending in with our surroundings out here.”

With a nod, Thorne started down the street. “This way.”

Five steps later he paused, pondered, turned around. “No, no, this way.”

“We’re dead.”

“No, I’ve got it now. It’s this way.”

“Don’t you have an address?”

“A captain always knows where his ship is. It’s like a psychic bond.”

“If only we had a captain here.”

He ignored her, marching down the street with spectacular confidence. Cinder followed three steps behind him, jumping at each sound—trash skidding across the road, a hover crossing an intersection two streets away. The sun glistened off the dusty warehouse windows.

Three empty blocks later, Thorne slowed his pace and peered up at the facade of each building they passed, rubbing his chin.

Cinder began desperately searching her brain for Plan B.

“There!” Thorne jotted across the street to a warehouse that was identical to every other warehouse, with giant rolling doors and years of colorful graffiti. Rounding the building’s corner, he tested the main door. “Locked.”

Spotting the ID scanner beside the door, Cinder cursed. “Figures.” Kneeling down, she pried the plastic face off the scanner. “I might be able to disable it. Do you think there’s an alarm?”

“There’d better be. I haven’t been paying rent all this time for my darling to sit in an unprotected warehouse.”

Cinder had just downloaded the programming manual for the scanner’s product number when the door beside them swung open and a plump man with a thin black goatee stepped out into the sunlight. Cinder froze.

“Carswell!” the man barked. “Just saw the news! I thought you might be showing up here.”

“Alak, how are you?” A grin broke across Thorne’s face. “Am I really on the news? How do I look?”

Without answering, Alak swerved his attention toward Cinder. His friendliness froze over, buried beneath a trace of discomfort. Gulping, Cinder shut the scanner’s panel and stood. Her netlink was already connecting to the newsfeed she’d abandoned during their escape, and sure enough, there was a stream of warnings flashing across her own picture, the one they’d taken when she’d been admitted into the prison. ESCAPED CONVICT. CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. IF SEEN, COMM THIS LINK IMMEDIATELY.

“Seen you on the news too,” Alak said, glancing at her steel foot.

“Alak, I’m here to pick up my ship. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”

As sympathetic wrinkles creased the corners of Alak’s mouth, he shook his head. “I can’t help you, Carswell. The feds watch me close enough as it is. Storing a stolen ship is one thing, I can always claim ignorance to that. But assisting a convicted felon … and assisting … one of them.” His nose wrinkled at Cinder, but he simultaneously took a step back as if afraid of her retaliation. “If they track you here and find out I helped, it’s more trouble than even I can risk. You’d better just hang low for a time. I won’t tell I saw you. But I won’t let you take your ship. Not now. Not until all this blows over. You understand, right?”

Thorne flushed with disbelief. “But—she’s my ship! I’m a paying customer! You can’t just keep her from me.”

“Each man for himself. You know how it is well as anyone.” Alak slid his gaze back toward Cinder, his fear easing more and more into revulsion. “Get on your way now, and I won’t comm the police. If they come around, I’ll tell them I haven’t seen you since you dropped off the ship last year. But if you stay here much longer, I’ll comm them myself, I swear I will.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Cinder heard a hover down the street. Her heart skipped at the sight of a white emergency hover—this one without the red cross on its side—but it disappeared down another street. She spun back toward Alak. “We don’t have anywhere else to go. We need that ship!”

He stepped back from her again, his body framed in the doorway. “Look here, little girl,” he said, his tone determined despite the way his attention kept swooping down to her metal hand. “I’m trying to help you out because Carswell’s been a good customer of mine, and I don’t rat out my customers. But it’s no favor to you. I wouldn’t blink twice before sending you off to rot. It’s the best your kind deserve. Now get away from my warehouse before I change my mind.”

Desperation welled inside Cinder. She clenched her fists as a surge of electricity lashed out, blinding her. White-hot pain flared up from the base of her neck, flooding her skull, but it was blessedly brief and left bright spots sparking in her vision.

Panting, she reeled back the burning energy, just in time to see Alak’s eyes roll back. He toppled forward, landing in Thorne’s arms.

Cinder staggered against the wall, dizzy. “Oh stars—is he dead?”

Thorne groaned from the weight. “No, but I think he’s having a heart attack!”

“It’s not a heart attack,” she murmured. “He’ll … he’ll be fine.” She said it as much to convince herself as him, having to believe these accidental flares of her Lunar gift weren’t dangerous, that she wasn’t becoming the terror to society that everyone believed her to be.

“Aces, he weighs a ton.”

Cinder grabbed Alak’s feet and together they dragged him into the building. An office to their left had two netscreens—one with a security feed showing the warehouse’s exterior, just as the door closed behind two white-clad fugitives and the unconscious man. The other screen showed a muted news anchor.

“He may be a selfish jerk, but he sure does have good taste in jewelry.” Thorne held up Alak’s hand by the thumb, fiddling with a silver-plated band around his wrist—a miniature portwatch.

“Would you focus?” Cinder hauled Thorne to his feet. Turning, she scanned the massive warehouse. It stretched out the full length of the city block, filled with dozens of spaceships, large and small, new and old. Cargo ships, podships, personal fliers, raceships, ferries, cruisers.

“Which one is it?”

“Hey, look, there was another jailbreak.”

Cinder glanced at the netscreen, which now showed the chairman of national security talking to a crowd of journalists. On the bottom of the screen scrolled the words: LUNAR ESCAPES FROM NEW BEIJING PRISON, CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

“This is great!” said Thorne, nearly knocking her over with a slap on her back. “They’re not going to worry about us if they have a Lunar to track down.”

Cinder dragged her attention away from the broadcast, just as his grin fell.

“Wait. You’re Lunar?”

“You’re a criminal mastermind?” Spinning on her heels, she stalked into the warehouse. “Where’s this ship?”

“Hold on there, little traitor. Breaking out of jail is one thing, but assisting a psychotic Lunar is a bit out of my league.”

Cinder rounded on him. “First, I’m not psychotic. And second, if it wasn’t for me, you would still be sitting in that jail cell ogling your portscreen, so you owe me. Besides, they’ve already got you pegged as my accomplice. You look like an idiot in that picture, by the way.”

Thorne followed her gesture to the screen. His own jail picture was blown up beside hers.

“I think I look pretty good…”

“Thorne. Captain. Please.”

He blinked at her, a touch of smugness wiped quickly away by a brisk nod. “Right. Let’s get out of here.”

Cinder sighed in relief, following Thorne as he marched into the maze of ships. “I hope it’s not one in the middle.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, pointing up. “The roof opens.”

Cinder glanced up at the seam in the middle of the ceiling. “That’s convenient.”

“And there she is.”

Cinder followed Thorne’s gesture. His ship was larger than she’d expected—much larger. A 214 Rampion, Class 11.3 cargo ship. Cinder pulled up her retina scanner and downloaded the ship’s blueprint, speechless at everything it could claim. The engine room and a fully stocked dock with two satellite podships took up the underbelly, while the main level housed the cargo bay, cockpit, galley kitchen, six crew quarters, and a shared washroom.

She rounded to the main entry hatch and saw that the seal of the American Republic had been hastily painted over with the silhouette of a lounging naked lady.

“Nice touch.”

“Thanks. Did it myself.”

Despite her worries that the painting could make them more easily identified, she couldn’t help being faintly impressed. “It’s bigger than I expected.”

“There was a time when she housed a twelve-man crew,” Thorne said, petting her hull.

“Should be plenty of room for avoiding each other then.” Cinder paced beneath the hatch, waiting for Thorne to open it, but when she glanced back she found him lovingly rubbing his temple against the ship’s underside and cooing about how much he’d missed her.

Cinder was in the middle of rolling her eyes when an unfamiliar voice ricocheted through the warehouse. “Over here!”

Turning, she saw someone crouched over Alak’s body, haloed in a square of light. They wore the unmistakable uniform of the Eastern Commonwealth military.

Cinder swore. “Time to go. Now.”

Thorne ducked toward the hatch. “Rampion, code word: Captain is king. Open hatch.”

They waited, but nothing happened.

Cinder raised panicked eyebrows.

“Captain is king. Captain is king! Rampion, wake up. It’s Thorne, Captain Carswell Thorne. What the—”

Cinder shushed him. Beyond the ship’s hull, four men were making their way through the crowded warehouse, flashlights shining off the assorted landing gear.

“Maybe the power cell is dead,” said Cinder.

“How? It’s just been sitting here.”

“Did you leave the headlights on?” she snapped.

Thorne harrumphed and crouched against the ship. Footsteps grew louder.

“Or it could be the auto-control system,” Cinder mused, racking her brain. She’d never worked on anything larger than a podship before, but how different could they be? “Do you have the override key?”

He blinked at her. “Yeah, let me just pull it out of my prison-issued pocket and we’ll be on our way.”

Cinder glared, but was silent as an officer passed two aisles away.

“Stay here,” she whispered. “Keep trying to get in and take off as fast as possible.”

“Where are you going?”

Without answering, she slinked around the side of the ship, a blueprint already streaming to her retina display. She found the access hatch and pried it open as quietly as she could, before crawling up into the ship undercarriage, contorting her body to avoid the wires and cables that crammed the space. She pulled the hatch shut behind her with a dull click, and found herself encased in darkness. The second interior door was more difficult to break into, but between the flashlight and her screwdriver she was soon wriggling out of the insulating layer and into the engine room.

Her flashlight beam zipped across the massive engine. She found the computer motherboard on the blue lines overlaying her vision and squirmed toward it. Pulling the universal connector cable from her hand, she snapped it into the main computer terminal.

Her flashlight dimmed as her own power was diverted. Pale green text scrawled across her eyesight.

DIAGNOSING COMPUTER SYSTEM, MODEL 135 V 8.2

5% … 12% … 16% …

Ten

Thorne jumped at a clang overhead.

A man’s voice followed—“Hear that?”

Thorne crouched down between the ship’s landing feet and flattened himself against a metal beam. “Captain is king,” he whispered. “Captain is king, captain is ki—”

A subtle hum pulsed over his head. Pale running lights flickered on near the ship’s nose.

“Captain is—?”

Gears started to rattle before he could finish. The hatch opened, the ramp lowering onto the concrete. Heart leaping, Thorne dodged out beneath it, just in time to avoid being squashed.

“Over there!”

A flashlight beam fell over Thorne as he swung himself up onto the descending ramp. “Rampion, close hatch!”

The ship didn’t respond.

A gun fired. The bullet pinged off the ship’s overhead light. Thorne ducked behind one of the plastic crates that filled the cargo bay. “Rampion, close hatch!”

“I’m working on it!”

He froze, glancing up at the pipes and tubes that lined the ship’s ceiling. “Rampion?”

The following silence was punctuated by the clang of the ramp on the outside concrete, the thumping of booted feet, then the ramp creaked again and started to rise back up. A shower of bullets lodged into the plastic storage crates, pinging off the metal walls. Thorne covered his head and waited until the ramp was closed enough to block the bullets’ path before shoving himself away from the crate and running toward the cockpit.

The ship vibrated as the ramp slammed shut. A volley of bullets pinged against the hull.

Thorne scrambled toward the emergency lights that framed the cockpit, shoving aside unopened crates. His knee smacked something hard and he let out a string of curses as he collapsed into the pilot seat. The windows were dirty and all he could see in the dark warehouse were the faint lights of Alak’s office and the flashlight beams darting around the Rampion, searching for another way in.

“Rampion, ready for liftoff!”

The dash lit up with controls and screens—only the most important ones.

The same sterile feminine voice came over the ship’s speakers. “Thorne, I can’t set the automatic lift. You’re going to have to take off manually.”

He gaped at the controls. “Why is my ship talking back to me?”

“It’s me, you idiot!”

He cocked his ear toward the speaker. “Cinder?”

“Listen, the auto-control system has a bug. The power cell is on the fritz too. I think it can make it, but you’re going to have to take off without computer assistance.”

The words, too dry in the computer’s tone, were punctuated by another round of bullets against the ship’s closed hatch.

Thorne gulped. “Without computer assistance? Are you sure?”

A short silence was followed by the voice again, and Thorne thought he could detect Cinder’s screeching despite its monotone. “You do know how to fly, right?”

“Uh.” Thorne scanned the controls before him. “Yes?”

He squared his shoulders and reached for the controller that was attached to the ceiling. A moment later, a slash of sunlight cut across the warehouse as the roof opened down the middle.

Something pounded against the ship’s side.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” Thorne jabbed the ignition.

The lights across the dash dimmed as the engine thrummed to life.

“Here we go.”

Another crash echoed from outside the hatch. He jogged a few switches, engaging hover mode, and eased the ship off the ground. She rose up smoothly, the magnets beneath the city pushing the ship easily as a dandelion seed, and Thorne exhaled a long breath.

Then the ship warbled and began to tilt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t do that!” Thorne’s pulse raced as he leveled the ship.

“The power cell is going to die. You have to engage the backup thrusters.”

“Engage the backup wha—oh, never mind, I found them.”

The engine flared again. With the sudden jolt of power, the ship lurched to the opposite side and Thorne heard a crunch as she rammed into the next ship. The Rampion shuddered and started to slip back toward the ground. Another rainfall of bullets beat against the starboard side. A drop of sweat slid down Thorne’s back.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Stop distracting me!” he yelled, gripping the controls and righting the ship. Overcompensated. The ship tilted too far to the right.

“We’re going to die.”

“This isn’t as easy as it looks!” Thorne leveled her out again. “I usually have an automated stabilizer to take care of this!”

To his surprise, no sarcastic comment was spat back at him.

A moment later, another panel lit up. MAGNETIC CONDUCTORS STABILIZING. POWER OUTPUT: 37/63 … 38/62 … 42/58 …

The ship settled calmly beneath him, once again trembling in midair. “Right! Like that!”

Thorne’s knuckles whitened on the controls as he arched the ship’s nose up toward the open roof. The engine’s purr became a roar as the ship soared upward. He heard the last ricochet of bullets and then they fell away as the ship broke free of the warehouse and was flooded with the light from the yellow sun.

“Come on, darling,” he murmured, squeezing his eyes shut as, without resistance, without wavering, the ship left the protective magnetic field of the city behind, drew on the full power of her thrusters, and speared through the wispy clouds that lingered in the morning sky. The towering skyscrapers of downtown New Beijing dropped away and then it was only him and the sky and the endless landscape of space.

Thorne’s fingers stayed clamped like iron shackles around the controls until the ship had erupted from Earth’s atmosphere. Light-headed, he adjusted the thruster output as the ship slipped into natural orbit before prying his hands away from the controls.

He slumped, shaking, back in the chair. It took him a long time to speak, waiting for his heartbeat to slow to a manageable pace. “Good work, cyborg girl,” he said. “If you were hoping for a permanent position on my crew, you’re hired.”

The speakers were silent.

“I don’t mean a lowly position, either. First mate is available. Well, I mean, pretty much every position is available. Mechanic … cook … a pilot would be nice so I don’t have to go through that again.” He waited. “Cinder? Are you there?”

When still there was no response, he pushed himself out of his chair and stumbled out of the cockpit, past the cargo bay, and into the corridor that split off to the crew’s quarters. His legs were weak as he reached for the hatch that led into the ship’s lower level. He clomped down the ladder into the tiny hall between the engine room and the podship dock. The screen beside the engine room didn’t offer any warnings of space vacuums or unsafe compressions. It also didn’t say anything about a living girl inside.

Thorne tapped the unlock icon on the screen and twisted the door’s manual bolt, then shoved the door open.

The engine was loud and hot and smelled like melted rubber.

“Hello?” he called into the dark. “Cyborg girl? Are you in here?”

If she responded, the words were lost in the engine’s thrumming. Thorne gulped. “Lights, on?”

A red emergency light brightened above the doorway, casting gloomy shadows over the enormous revolving engine and the masses of cords and coils that sprawled out beneath it.

Thorne squinted, spotting something almost white.

Sinking to his hands and knees, he crawled toward her. “Cyborg girl?”

She didn’t move.

As Thorne came closer, he saw that she was on her back, dark hair sprawled across her face. Her robotic hand was plugged into the port of an exposed computer panel.

“Hey, you,” he said, hovering over her. He peeled up her eyelids, but her gaze was dark and empty. Craning down, Thorne placed an ear against her chest, but if there was a heartbeat it was drowned out by the roaring engine.

“Come on,” he growled, reaching for her hand and working the connector out of the port. The nearest computer panel went dark.

“Auto-control system disconnected,” lilted a robotic voice overhead, startling Thorne. “Engaging default system procedures.”

“Good plan,” he muttered, grabbing her ankles. Thorne dragged her slowly into the hallway and propped her up against the corridor wall. Whatever her cyborg parts were made of, it was a lot heavier than flesh and bone.

He pressed an ear to her chest again. This time he was met with a faint beat.

“Wake up,” he said, shaking her. Cinder’s head slumped forward.

Sitting back on his heels, Thorne screwed up his lips. The girl was horribly pale and filthy from their trek through the sewers, but in the hallway’s brightness he could tell she was breathing, if barely. “What, do you have a power button or something?”

His attention fell on her metal hand with the cord and plug still dangling from her knuckle. Grabbing her hand, he peered at it from every angle. He remembered a flashlight, a screwdriver, and a knife in three of the fingers, but he wasn’t yet sure what her pointer finger was hiding. If it was a power button, he couldn’t see any way of getting at it.

The connector cable though …

“Right!” Thorne jumped up, nearly toppling into the wall. He jabbed at the screen that opened the door to the podship dock. White lights flared overhead as he entered.

He grasped Cinder’s wrists and tugged her into the dock, dropping her in between the two small satellite ships that sat like toadstools among a mess of cables and service tools.

Panting, he reeled the podship’s charging cord out of the wall, then froze, staring at the girl’s cable, at the ship’s cable, at the girl.… He cursed again and dropped them both. Two males. Even he could tell that they wouldn’t connect.

Knocking his knuckles against his temple, Thorne forced himself to think, think, think.

Another idea flashed and he squinted down at the girl. She seemed to be growing paler still, but maybe that was a trick of the lighting.

“Oh…,” he said, a new idea dropping into his brain. “Oh, boy. You don’t think … oh, that’s disgusting.”

Shoving away his squeamishness, he gently pulled the girl toward him so that she collapsed over one arm. With his free hand, he searched around her tangled hair until he discovered the tiny latch just above her neck.

He looked away as he opened it, before daring to peer inside from the corner of his eye.

A jumble of wires and computer chips and switches that made absolutely no sense to Thorne filled a shallow compartment in the back of her skull. He let out a breath, glad that the control panel completely hid any brain tissue from sight. At its base, he spotted what appeared to be a small outlet, the same size as the plugs.

“Ouch,” Thorne muttered, reaching for the podship cable again and hoping that he wasn’t about to make a huge mistake.

He wiggled the plug of the recharging cord into her control panel. It snapped into place.

He swallowed a breath.

Nothing happened.

Sitting back, Thorne held Cinder at arm’s length. He pushed her hair back from her face and waited.

Twelve heartbeats later, something hummed inside her skull. It grew louder, and then fell silent altogether.

Thorne gulped.

The girl’s left shoulder jerked out of Thorne’s grip. He dropped her onto the floor, letting her head lull to one side. Her leg flailed, nearly catching Thorne in the groin, and he shoved himself away from her, planting his back against the podship’s landing treads.

The girl sucked in a quick breath—held it for a couple seconds, then released it with a groan.

“Cinder? Are you alive?”

A series of milder spasms worked their way out of her robotic limbs, then she scrunched up her whole face as if biting into a lemon. Eyelids twitching, she managed to squint up at him.

“Cinder?”

She eased herself up to sitting. Her jaw and tongue worked silently for a moment and when she spoke, the words were heavily slurred. “Auto-control defaults … almost drained my power system.”

“I think it did drain your power system.”

She frowned and seemed momentarily uncertain, before reaching for the cord still plugged into her brain. Yanking it out, she slammed the panel shut. “You opened my control panel?” she said, her words a little clearer with anger behind them.

He scowled. “I didn’t want to.”

Her expression was sour as she peered at him—not entirely angry, but not grateful either. They stared at each other for a long time, as the engine hummed across the hallway and a light in the corner started to go out, flickering at random intervals.