Winter (61 page)

Jacin inhaled as the voice grew louder, until footsteps were right outside the door. But the footsteps and voices soon faded in the other direction.

Iko peeked around the base of the tank, but he held a finger to his lips. Cinder’s face appeared a second later, questioning.

Jacin gave a cursory glance to the rest of the lab. Each of the suspension tanks had a small tube that connected it to a row of holding containers. Though most of the tubes were clear, a few of them were tinted maroon with slow-flowing blood.

“What is this place?” Cinder whispered. Her face was twisted with horror. She was staring at the unconscious form of a child, maybe a few years old.

“They’re shells,” he said. “She keeps them here for an endless supply of blood, which is used in producing the antidote.”

When a shell was born and taken away, their families were told they were being killed as part of the infanticide laws. Years ago they had actually been kept in captivity—secluded dormitories where they were regarded as little more than useful prisoners. But one day those imprisoned shells had raised a riot and, unable to be controlled, managed to kill five thaumaturges and eight royal guards before they’d been subdued.

Since then they’d been considered both useful
and
dangerous, which had led to the decision to keep them in a permanent comatose state. They were no longer a threat and their blood could more easily be harvested for the platelets that were used for the letumosis antidote.

Few people knew the infanticide laws were fake and that their lost children were still alive, if barely.

Jacin had never been in this room before, though he’d known it existed. The reality was more appalling than he’d imagined. It occurred to him that if he’d succeeded in becoming a doctor and escaped his fate as a palace guard, he may have ended up in this same lab. Only, instead of healing people, he’d be using them.

Iko had gone back to the door. “I don’t hear anyone in the hallway.”

“Right. We should go.” Cinder brushed her fingertips over the tank of the young child, her eyes crinkled with sadness, but also—if Jacin knew anything about her—a touch of determination. He suspected she was already planning the moment when she would come back here, and see them all freed.

Sixty-Nine

The two people they’d heard in the hallway were nowhere to be seen. They soon found the door labeled
DISEASE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
, right where the diagram had told them it would be.

The lab was filled with designated stations—each one with a stool, a metal table, a series of organized vials and test tubes and petri dishes, a microscope, and a stand of drawers. Impeccably clean. The air tasted sterile and bleached. Holograph nodes hung on the walls, all turned off.

Two lab stations showed evidence of recent work—spotlights blaring on petri dishes and tools abandoned on the desks.

“Spread out,” said Cinder.

Iko took the cabinets on the far side of the room; Cinder started pawing through open shelving; Jacin started in on the nearest workstation, scanning the labeled drawers. In the top drawer he found an outdated portscreen, a label printer, a scanner, and a set of empty vials. The rest were full of syringes and petri dishes and microscope lenses, still in protective wrapping.

He moved on to the second station.

“Is this it?”

Jacin’s attention snapped to Iko, who was standing in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling cabinets with their doors thrown open, revealing row upon row and stack upon stack of small vials, each filled with a clear liquid.

Jacin joined her in front of the cabinets and lifted one vial from its tray. The label read
EU1 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA—“LETUMOSIS” STRAIN B—POLYVALENT VACCINE.
It was identical to the lid on the next vial, and the next.

Jacin’s gaze traveled over the hundreds of trays. “Let’s get a rolling cart from maintenance and fill it up with as many trays as we can. We probably won’t need all this for one sector, but I’d rather it be in our possession than Levana’s.”

“I’ll get the cart,” said Iko, rushing for the door.

Cinder ran a finger across a row of vials, listening to them clink in their trays. “This right here is half the reason Kai is going through with this,” she whispered, then clenched her jaw. “This could have saved Peony.”

“This is
going
to save Winter.” When he heard the cart in the hallway, Jacin started pulling trays off the shelves, and together they loaded the cart as high as they could, stacking tray upon tray of antidote. His pulse was racing. Every time he shut his eyes he could see her in that tank, clinging to survival. How long would the immersion protect her? How long did he have?

Iko had brought a heavy drop cloth from the maintenance closet too, and they draped it over the cart, tucking it around the edges of the trays to stabilize them for their journey.

They were pushing the cart toward the door when they heard the ding of the elevator. They froze. Jacin planted his hands across the covered vials to keep them from clinking.

“You don’t seem to understand the predicament we’re in,” said a sharp feminine voice. “We need those guards returned to active duty immediately. I don’t care if they’re fully healed or not.”

“Thaumaturge,” Cinder whispered. Her eyes were closed, her face tense with concentration. “And two … I’m going to guess, servants maybe? Or lab technicians? And one other. Really weak energy. Possibly a guard.”

“No offense taken,” Jacin muttered.

“These orders have come from the queen herself, and we have no time to waste,” continued the thaumaturge. “Stop making excuses and do your jobs.”

Not trusting his own body if there was a thaumaturge nearby, Jacin drew his gun and pushed it into Cinder’s hand.

She looked confused at first, but comprehension came fast. Her grip tightened.

Footsteps approached and Jacin wondered if the thaumaturge had already sensed
them
, frozen and waiting inside this laboratory. Maybe she thought they were just researchers.

That ruse would be up as soon as she saw them. If she walked past this lab. Or if she was
coming
to this lab.

But, no, a door opened down the hallway. He didn’t hear it shut again, and there were no other exits. To get to either the stairs or the elevator, they’d have to go back the way they’d come.

“Maybe we can wait it out?” suggested Iko. “They have to leave eventually.”

He scowled.
Eventually
wasn’t soon enough.

“I’ll take control of the guard and the other two,” said Cinder, knuckles whitening. “I’ll kill the thaumaturge, and wait until you’re all clear before I follow you.”

“You’ll raise a lot of alarms,” said Jacin.

Her gaze turned icy. “I’ve already raised a lot of alarms.”

“I’ll go,” said Iko. Her chin was up, her face resolute. “They can’t control me. I’ll draw them off and find a place to hide until you come back. You have to get this antidote to Her Highness.”

“Iko, no, we should stay together—”

Iko cupped Cinder’s face. Her fingers still weren’t functioning, so the touch looked awkward, like being petted by an oversize doll. “Like I said, I’d do anything to keep you safe. Besides, if anything happens to me, I know you can fix it.”

Iko winked, then marched bravely out into the hallway. Jacin shut the door after her.

They heard Iko’s measured footsteps beating down the hallway, then a pause.

“Oh, hello,” came her cheery voice, followed by the sound of a chair screeching across the floor. “Oops, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“What are—” The thaumaturge’s voice cut out, then turned vile. “A
shell
?”

“Close,” said Iko. “In case you don’t recognize me, I happen to be good friends with Princess Selene. I’m willing to guess you’ve heard of—”

“Apprehend her.”

“I guess you have.”

There was a rush of footsteps, a crash of furniture, two gunshots that made Cinder flinch. “Stop her!” screamed the thaumaturge, farther away now.

A door slammed shut.

“That sounded like the stairwell,” said Jacin.

Cinder’s jaw was tight, her muscles taut, but she drew in a shaking breath and squared her shoulders. “We’d better get out of here before they come back.”

Seventy

Cress was relieved to find that she and Thorne were not the only crazily clothed guests milling around the palace gates hours before the royal coronation. The entire city had come to partake in the festivities, as if Artemisians had nothing at all to fear from a possible insurgence or the crazed claims of a cyborg girl.

The palace’s main entrance was surrounded by an imposing wall topped with sharp finials. The main gate was open, revealing a lush courtyard. The walkway was lined with an assortment of sculptures depicting mythical beasts and half-dressed moon gods and goddesses.

No one gave Cress or Thorne a second glance as they strolled through the open gates, joining the crowd of gathered aristocrats who were drinking from jeweled flasks and promenading between the statues. Between Cress’s frilly orange skirt and Thorne’s light-up bow tie, they fit right in.

Trying to avoid eye contact with the other guests, Cress let her gaze travel up the gilded arched doors of the palace. Like the gates, they were swung wide open, inviting the queen’s guests to enter, although palace guards did stand on either side.

Her heart hammered.

It felt like she and Jacin had only just escaped.

She had been inside the palace a handful of times in her youth to perform different programming tasks for Sybil. She had been so eager to please back then.
Can you track the arrivals and departures between Sectors TS-5 and GM-2? Can you create a program that will alert us to specific phrases picked up from the recorders in the holograph nodes? Can you track the ships that come and go from the ports and ensure their destinations match the itineraries in our files?

With each success, Cress had grown more confident.
I think so. I will try. Yes, Mistress, I can do that.

That had been back when Cress still harbored hopes of one day being welcome here, before her imprisonment aboard the satellite. She should have known better when Sybil refused to ever bring her through this breathtaking main entrance, instead smuggling her in through the underground tunnels as something shameful and secret.

At least this time she was entering the palace beside an ally and a friend. If there was anyone in the galaxy she trusted, it was Thorne.

As if hearing her thoughts, Thorne pressed a hand against her lower back.

“Pretend you belong here,” he murmured against her ear, “and everyone else will believe it.”

Pretend you belong here.

She let out a slow breath and tried to mimic Thorne’s swagger. Pretending. She was good at pretending.

Today, she was Lunar aristocracy. She was a guest of Her Royal Majesty. She was on the arm of the most handsome man she had ever known—a man who didn’t even have to use a glamour. But most important …

“I am a criminal mastermind,” she murmured, “and I’m here to take down this regime.”

Thorne grinned at her. “That’s my line.”

“I know,” she said. “I stole it.”

Thorne chuckled and strategically placed them behind a group of Lunars, close enough that they would appear part of the group, and they glided up the white stone stairs. The doors loomed larger and larger as they stepped into the palace’s shadow. The chatter of the courtyard was replaced with the echo of stone floors and the resounding laughter of people with nothing to fear.

She and Thorne were inside the palace. As far as she could tell, the guards hadn’t even looked at them.

Cress released her breath, but it snagged again as she took in the extravagance.

More aristocrats loitered in droves in the grand entrance, picking at trays of food that floated in the basins of crystal-blue pools. Everywhere were gilded columns and marble statues and flower arrangements that stood twice as tall as she was. Most breathtaking of all was a statue at the center of the hall depicting the ancient moon goddess, Artemis. It towered three stories tall and showed the goddess wearing a thorny crown atop her head and holding an arched bow, the arrow pointing toward the sky.

“Good day,” said a man, stepping forward to greet them. Thorne’s fingers dug into Cress’s back.

The man wore the uniform of a high-ranking servant, though his dreadlocked hair was dyed in variegated green—pale foam green at the roots and deep emerald at the tips. Though Cress was on guard, waiting for suspicion or disgust, the man’s face was pure joviality. Perhaps servants, like the guards, were chosen for having little talent with their gift, and he wasn’t able to sense that Cress was nothing but a shell.

She could hope.

“We are glad you have come to enjoy the festivities on this most celebrated day,” the man said. “Please enjoy the comforts our generous queen has laid out for her guests.” He gestured to his left. “In this wing you are free to enjoy our menagerie, full of exotic albino animals, or listen to an assortment of musical performances that will be taking place in our grand theater throughout the day.” He lifted his right arm. “This way there is an assortment of game rooms should you care to test the providence of luck, as well as our renowned companionship rooms—
not
that the gentleman is in need of further companionship. Of course, a variety of refreshments are available throughout the palace. The coronation ceremony will begin at sunrise and we ask that all guests begin to make their way to the great hall at half before. For the safety of all our guests, there will be no continued access to the corridors once the coronation has begun. If you require anything to make your day more pleasurable, please let me or another courtier know.”

With a tilt of his head, he walked off to welcome another guest.

“What do you suppose he meant by ‘companionship rooms’?” Thorne asked.

When Cress shot him a glare, he stood straighter and ran a finger in between his throat and his shirt collar. “Not that I’m tempted to … or … this way, right?”