Cress

by Marissa Meyer

He watched the whirling ceiling fan that did nothing to dispel the desert heat and wondered why, after all these years, his hallucinations had chosen this time to torture him.

  This shell girl did not really have his wife’s freckles or blonde hair. This shell girl did not have his unfortunate height or his own blue eyes. This shell girl was not his daughter, returned from the dead to haunt him. The illusion was all in his mind.

  Perhaps it was fitting. He’d done so many horrible things. The recent attack against Earth was only the culmination of years of his own efforts. It was through his own research that Queen Channary had begun developing her army of wolf hybrids, and through his experiments that Levana was able to see it to its bloody finale.

  And then there were all those he’d hurt to find Selene and end Levana’s reign. All those he’d murdered to find Linh Cinder.

  He’d been too optimistic to think he could repay those debts now. He’d tried hard to duplicate the antidote Levana had given to Emperor Kaito. He’d had to try, and for his pains—more sacrifices. More blood samples. More experiments, though now he was forced to find true volunteers, when the traffickers couldn’t bring him new blood on their own.

  He had discovered, back in New Beijing when he’d studied the antidote brought by Queen Levana, that Lunar shells held the secret. The same genetic mutation that made them immune to the Lunar tampering of bioelectricity could be used to create antibodies that would fight off and defeat the disease.

  And so he’d begun gathering shells and their blood and their DNA. Using them, just as he’d used the young men who would become mindless soldiers for the queen. Just as he’d used the cyborgs who were too often unwilling candidates of the letumosis experimentation.

  Of course his brain would do this to him. Of course his insanity would reach such a depth that the hallucinations would return to him the only thing he had ever cared for, and they would twist reality so that she became just another one of his victims.

  Just another person bought and discarded.

  Just another blood sample.

  Just another lab rat who hated him.

  His little Crescent Moon.

  Over his head, his portscreen dinged on his laboratory shelf.

  It took more energy than he thought he had to pull himself to his feet, groaning as he used the age-polished bedpost for leverage.

  He took his time, avoiding the truth, partly because he didn’t know what he wanted the truth to be. A hallucination he could deal with. He could write it off and continue with his work.

  But if it was her …

  He could not lose her one more time.

  He passed the open closet and pushed aside the window blinds, glancing out onto the street. He could see the curve of the ship two streets away, reflecting the sunlight as dusk set in. He should get this over with before Cinder came to check on her Wolf friend. He had not had any subjects sold to him since she’d been here, and he did not think she would understand. She had such a tough time understanding the sacrifices that had to be made for the good of all. She, who should understand better than anyone.

  Sighing, he paced back to the small lab setup and the girl’s blood sample. He picked up the portscreen and clicked on the report generated from the test. He felt woozy as he scanned the data culled from her DNA.

  Lunar.

  Shell.

  HEIGHT, FULLY GROWN: 153.48 CENTIMETERS

  MARTIN-SCHULTZ SCALE IRIS PIGMENTATION: 3

  MELANIN PRODUCTION: 28/100, WITH LOCALIZED CONCENTRATED MELANIN TO FACE / EPHELIS

  Her physical statistics were followed by a list of potential diseases and genetic weaknesses, with suggestions for treatments and preventions.

  It did not tell him what he needed to know until he steeled himself and linked her chart to his own, a chart that he had practically memorized for as many times as he had taken his own blood for experimentation.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed while the computer ran through the charts, comparing and contrasting more than 40,000 genes.

  He found himself hoping that the hallucination was true and she was not his daughter. That his daughter had been killed by Sybil Mira, as he’d been led to believe so many years ago.

  Because if it was her, she would despise him.

  And he would agree with her.

  She was gone already, he was sure. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but he doubted she would stay close. He had already lost that little ghost. Twice, now.

  The portscreen finished running the comparison.

  Match found.

  Paternity confirmed.

  He took off his spectacles and set them on the desk and exhaled a long, trembling breath.

  His Crescent Moon was alive.

  Thirty-Eight

  Cress held her breath and listened—listened so hard it was giving her a headache—but all she heard was silence. Her left leg was beginning to cramp from being curled into such an awkward position, but she dared not move for fear she would bump something and alert the old man to her location.

  She hadn’t run from the hotel. Though she’d been tempted, she’d known that Jina and the others could still be out there, and running into them would put her right back where she’d started. Instead, she’d ducked into the third room down the long, slender corridor, surprised to find the door unlocked and the room abandoned. It had the same setup as the doctor’s room: bed, closet, desk, but to her chagrin it was missing a netscreen. If she hadn’t been so desperate to find a hiding spot, she would have wept.

  She’d ended up in the closet. It was empty, with a bar for hanging clothes situated below a single shelf. Cress had used all her strength to clamber up onto that shelf, propelling up the closet’s side walls with both feet, before squeezing her way into the tiny alcove. She’d used her toes to pull the door shut. For once, she was glad of her small size, and she figured that if he found her she’d at least have the leverage from being so high up. She wished she would have thought to grab some sort of weapon.

  But her hope was that there would be no need for it. She suspected that when he woke up, he would think she’d run out into the town and he would go searching for her, which should give her ample time to get back to that netscreen and contact Thorne at their last hotel.

  She had lain there for hours, waiting and listening. Though it was uncomfortable, it kind of reminded her of sleeping beneath the bed in the satellite during those long hours when Luna could be seen through her windows. She’d always felt safe then, and the memory brought a strange sense of protection, even now.

  After a while, she began to wonder whether she’d killed the man. The guilt that sparked in her chest made her angry. She had nothing to feel guilty about. She’d been defending herself, and he was a Lunar-trafficking monster.

  Not long after she’d had this thought, she heard shuffling, so quiet it could have been a mouse in the walls. It was followed by a couple of thumps and a groan. Her body seized up again, her right shoulder aching from the way she was lying on it.

  This had been a mistake. She should have run when she’d had the chance. Or she should have used the time that he was unconscious to tap into his netscreen. In hindsight, she’d had plenty of time, but now it was too late and he was awake and he would find her and—

  She squeezed her eyes shut until white specks flickered in the darkness.

  Her plan had not failed yet. He could still go outside in search of her. He could still leave the building.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  Breathing in and breathing out. Filling herself with hot, stifling air. Her pulse skipped at every sound, every muffled scrape, every wooden thump, trying to create a picture in her mind of what was happening in the room at the end of the hall.

  He never left his room. He didn’t come to look for her at all.

  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 discom
fort 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.