Cress (12 page)

She glanced at the guard. “Shirt,” she said firmly, although the order was more to focus her own thoughts. In seconds, the guard’s hands were working at her command, removing the empty gun holster and pulling his own bloodied shirt over his head. She was glad to see a second undershirt as well—she had a feeling they were going to need every bit of “bandaging” she could find to stanch Wolf’s bleeding. Eventually they would have to get him to the medbay, but there was no way she could move him in this condition, especially not up that ladder.

She tried to ignore the niggling thought in her head that this was not enough. That not even the bandages in the medbay would be enough.

She grabbed the guard’s shirt and bunched it against Wolf’s chest. At least this bullet had missed his heart. She hoped the other one hadn’t hit anything vital either.

Her thoughts were hazy, repeating over and over in her head. They had to get Thorne. They had to go after Scarlet. They had to save Wolf.

She couldn’t do it all.

She couldn’t do any of it.

“Thorne—” Her voice broke. “Where’s Thorne?” Keeping one hand pressed onto Wolf’s wound, she reached for the guard with the other, grabbing his collar and pulling him toward her. “What did you do to Thorne?”

“Your friend who boarded the satellite,” he said, as much a statement as a question. There was regret in his face, but not enough. “He’s dead.”

She shrieked and slammed him into the wall. “You’re lying!”

He flinched, but didn’t try to protect himself, even though she’d already lost her focus. She could not keep him under her control so long as her thoughts were so divided, so long as this chaos and devastation reigned in her head.

“Mistress Sybil changed the satellite’s trajectory, removing it from orbit. It will burn up during entry. It probably already has. There’s nothing you can do.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Every part of her was trembling. “She wouldn’t have sacrificed her own programmer too.”

But there was no telltale orange light in her vision. He wasn’t lying.

The guard leaned his head back as his gaze skimmed Cinder from head to toe, as if examining an unusual specimen. “She would sacrifice anyone to get to you. The queen seems to believe you’re a threat.”

Cinder ground her teeth so hard she felt that her jaw would snap from the pressure. There it was—stated with such blatant simplicity.

This was her fault. This was all her fault.

They’d been after
her.

“Your other shirt,” she whispered. She didn’t bother to control him this time, and he removed the undershirt without argument. Cinder grabbed it from him, spotting the end of her own projectile jutting from his skin, just below his ribs.

Looking away, she pressed the second shirt against the wound in Wolf’s back.

“Roll him onto his side.”

“What?”

“Get him on his side. It’ll open the airway, help him breathe.”

Cinder glowered at him, but a four-second net search confirmed the validity of his suggestion, and she eased Wolf onto his side as gently as she could, positioning his legs like the medical diagram in her brain told her to. The guard didn’t help, but he nodded approvingly when Cinder was done.

“Cinder?”

It was Iko, her voice small and restrained. The ship had become dark, running only on emergency lighting and default systems. Iko’s anxiety was clouding her ability to function as much as Cinder’s was.

“What are we going to do?”

Cinder struggled to breathe. A headache had burst open in her skull. The weight of everything pressed against her until it was almost too tempting to curl up over Wolf’s body and simply give up.

She couldn’t help them. She couldn’t save the world. She couldn’t save anyone.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

“Finding someplace to hide would be a start,” said the guard, followed by a ripping sound as he tore a shred of material from the hem of his pants. He winced as he yanked out the projectile and tossed it down the corridor, before pressing the fabric against the wound. For the first time, she noticed that he still wore what looked like a large hunting knife sheathed on his belt. He looked up at her when she didn’t respond, his eyes sharp as ice picks. “Maybe someplace your friend can get help. As a thought.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. We just lost both of our pilots and I can’t fly … I don’t know how…”

“I can fly.”

“But Scarlet…”

“Look. Thaumaturge Mira will be contacting Luna and sending for reinforcements, and the queen’s fleet isn’t as far away as you might think. You’re about to have an army on your trail.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You can’t help that other girl. Consider her dead. But you might be able to help
him.
”

Cinder dropped her chin, curling in on herself as the warring decisions in her head threatened to tear her apart. He was being logical. She recognized that. But it was so hard to admit defeat. To give up on Scarlet. To make that sacrifice and have to live with it.

With every passing second, though, she was closer to losing Wolf too. She glanced down. Wolf’s face was scrunched in pain, his brow beaded with sweat.

“Ship,” said the guard, “calculate our location and relative trajectory over Earth. Where is the closest place we can get to? Someplace not too populated.”

There was a hesitation before Iko said, “Me?”

He squinted up at the ceiling. “Yeah.
You.
”

“Sorry, right. Calculating now.” The lights brightened. “Following a natural descent to Earth, we could be in central or north Africa in approximately seventeen minutes. A loose thousand-mile radius opens us up to the Mediterranean regions of Europe and the western portion of the Eastern Commonwealth.”

“He needs a hospital,” Cinder murmured, knowing as she said it that there wasn’t a hospital on Earth that wouldn’t know he was one of the queen’s wolf-hybrids as soon as he was admitted. And the risk she posed to take him there herself, and how recognizable the Rampion would be … where could they possibly go that would offer them sanctuary?

Nowhere was safe.

Beneath her, Wolf moaned. His chest rattled.

He needed a hospital, or … a doctor.

Africa. Dr. Erland.

She peered up at the guard and for the first time struggled through the sluggish mess inside her head to wonder why he was doing this. Why hadn’t he killed them all? Why was he helping them?

“You serve the queen,” she said. “How can I trust you?”

His lips twitched, like she’d made a joke, but his eyes were quick to harden again. “I serve my princess. No one else.”

The floor dropped out from beneath her. The princess. His princess.

He knew.

She waited a full breath for her lie detector to recognize his falsehood, but it didn’t. He was telling the truth.

“Africa,” she said. “Iko, take us to Africa—to where the first outbreak of letumosis occurred.”

Twelve

The fall was slow at first, gradual, as the pull of the satellite’s orbit was overpowered by the pull of Earth’s gravity.

Thorne hiked up his pant leg, using his toe to pry off his left boot. The knife he’d stashed there clattered onto the floor and he grabbed for it, awkwardly trying to angle the blade toward the blanket that was knotted around his wrists.

The girl murmured around her gag and shifted toward him. Her binds were much more secure and complex than his own. The thaumaturge had only bothered to have Thorne tie his hands in front of him, but this girl had binds all down her legs, in addition to having her wrists fastened behind her and the gag over her mouth.

With no leverage to press the knife against his own binds, he nodded at the girl. “Can you turn around?”

She flopped and rolled onto her side, pushing off the wall with her feet to turn herself so her hands were toward him. Thorne hunkered over her and sawed at the sheet that was cutting into her arms. By the time he’d hacked it off, there were deep red lines carved into her skin.

She ripped the gag off her mouth, leaving it to hang around her neck. A knot of her frayed hair caught in the fabric. “My feet!”

“Can you untie my hands?”

She said nothing as she snatched the knife from him. Her hands were shaking as she angled the blade toward the binds around her knees, and Thorne thought maybe it was best for her to practice on herself anyway.

Sawing through the sheet, she looked like a madwoman—her brow wrinkled in concentration, her hair knotted, her complexion damp and blotchy, red lines drawn into her cheeks from the gag. But the adrenaline had her working quickly and soon she was kicking away the material.

“My hands,” Thorne said again, but she was already grasping for the sink and pulling herself up on trembling legs.

“I’m sorry—the entry procedures!” she said, stumbling out into the main room.

Thorne grabbed the knife and clambered to his feet as the satellite took a sudden turn. He slipped, stumbling into the shower door. They were falling faster as Earth’s gravity claimed them.

Using the wall for balance, Thorne rushed into the main room. The girl had fallen too, and was now scrambling to get over the bed.

“We need to get to the other podship and disconnect,” said Thorne. “You need to untie me!”

She shook her head and pressed herself against the wall where the smallest of the screens was embedded, the screen that the thaumaturge had meddled with before. Strings of hair were sticking to her face.

“She’ll have a security block on the ship and I know the satellite better and—oh, no, no, no!” she screamed, her fingers flying over the screen. “She changed the access code!”

“What are you doing?”

“The entry procedures—the ablative coating should hold while we’re passing through the atmosphere, but if I don’t set the parachute to release, the whole thing will disintegrate on impact!”

The satellite shifted again and they both stumbled. Thorne fell onto the mattress and the knife skittered out of his grip, bouncing off the end of the bed, while the girl tripped and landed on one knee. The walls around them began to tremble with the friction of Earth’s atmosphere. The blackness that had clouded the small windows was replaced with a burning white light. The outer coating was burning off, protecting them from the atmosphere’s heat.

Unlike the Rampion, this satellite was designed for only one descent toward Earth.

“All right.” Forgetting about his binds, Thorne swung himself over to the other side of the bed and hauled the girl back to her feet. “Get that parachute working.” She was still wobbly as he spun them toward the screen and dropped his arms over her, forming a cocoon around her body. She was even shorter than he’d realized, the top of her head not even reaching his collarbone.

Her fingers jabbed at the screen as Thorne widened his stance and locked his knees, bracing himself as much as he could while the satellite shook and rocked around them. He hunched over her, trying to hold his balance and keep her steady while codes and commands flickered and scrolled across the screen. His attention flicked to the nearest window, still fiery white. As soon as the satellite had fallen far enough into Earth’s atmosphere, the auto-gravity would shut off and they would be as secure as dice in a gambler’s fist.

“I’m in!” she shouted.

Thorne curled the toes of his one shoeless foot into the carpet. He heard a crash behind him and dared to glance back. One of the screens had fallen off the desk. He gulped. Anything not bolted down was about to turn into projectiles. “How long will it take to—”

“Done!”

Thorne whipped her around and thrust them both toward the mattress. “Under the bed!” He stumbled and fell, dragging her down with him. The cabinets swung open overhead and Thorne flinched as a rain of canned goods and dishes clattered around them. He hunkered over the girl, deflecting them away from her. “Quick!”

She scurried forward, out of the ring of his arms, and pulled herself into the shadows. She backed against the wall as far as she could, both hands pushing against the bed frame to lock her body in place.

Thorne kicked off from the carpet and grabbed the nearest post to pull himself forward.

The shaking stopped, replaced with a smooth, fast descent. The brightness from the windows faded to a sunshine blue. Thorne’s stomach swooped and he felt like he was being sucked into a vacuum.

He heard her scream. Pain and brightness exploded in his head, and then the world went black.

BOOK

Two

The witch snipped off her golden hair and cast her out into a great desert.

Thirteen

Cress would not have believed that she had the strength to drag Carswell Thorne beneath the bed and secure his unconscious body against the wall if the proof wasn’t in her arms. All the while, cords and screens and plugs and dishes and food jostled and banged around them. The walls of the satellite groaned and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to imagine the heat and friction melting through the bolts and seams, trying not to guess at how stable this untested satellite could be. Trying not to think about plunging toward the Earth—its mountains and oceans and glaciers and forests and the impact that a satellite thrown from space would have when it crashed into the planet and shattered into billions of tiny pieces.

She was doing a poor job of not imagining it all.

The fall lasted forever, while her small world disintegrated.

She’d failed. The parachute should have opened already. She should have felt it release, felt the snap back as it caught their descent and lowered them gently to Earth. But their fall was only faster and faster, as the satellite’s air grew warmer. Either she’d done something wrong or the parachute hatch was faulty, or perhaps there was no parachute at all and the command was from false programming. After all, Sybil had commissioned this satellite. Surely she’d never intended to let Cress land safely on the blue planet.