“How old?” he said, setting the syringe down on the counter. “I would pay double for a sample from him.”
At Erland’s sudden eagerness, the boy took a step back. “Seven,” he said. “But he’s sick.”
“With what? I have pain killers, blood thinners, antibiotics—”
“He has the plague, sir. Do you have medicine for that?”
Dr. Erland frowned. “Letumosis? No, no. That isn’t possible. Tell me his symptoms. We’ll figure out what he really has.”
The boy looked annoyed at being told he was wrong, but not without a tinge of hope. “Yesterday afternoon he started getting a bad rash, with bruises all over his arms, like he’d been in a brawl. Except he hadn’t. When he woke up this morning he was hot to the touch, but he kept saying he was freezing, even in this heat. When our mother checked, the skin under his fingernails had gone bluish, just like the plague.”
Erland held up a hand. “You say he got the spots yesterday, and his fingers were already turning blue this morning?”
The boy nodded. “Also, right before I came here, all those spots were blistering up, like blood blisters.” He cringed.
Alarm stirred inside the doctor as his mind searched for an explanation. The first symptoms did sound like letumosis, but he’d never heard of it moving through its four stages so quickly. And the rash becoming blood blisters … he’d never seen that before.
He didn’t want to think of the possibility, and yet it was also something he’d been waiting for years to happen. Something he’d been expecting. Something he’d been dreading.
If what this boy said was true, if his brother did have letumosis, then it could mean that the disease was mutating.
And if even a Lunar was showing symptoms …
Erland grabbed his hat off the desk and pulled it on over his balding head. “Take me to him.”
Eight
Cress hardly felt the hot water beating on her head. Outside her washroom, a second-era opera blared from every screen. With the woman’s powerful voice in her ears, swooning over the incessant shower, Cress was the star, the damsel, the center of that universe. She sang along at full volume, pausing only to prepare herself for the crescendo.
She didn’t have the full translation memorized, but the emotions behind the words were clear.
Heartbreak. Tragedy. Love.
Chills covered her skin, sharply contrasted against the steam. She pressed a hand to her chest, drowning.
Pain. Loneliness. Love.
It always came back to love. More than freedom, more than acceptance—love. True love, like they sang about in the second era. The kind that filled up a person’s soul. The kind that lent itself to dramatic gestures and sacrifices. The kind that was irresistible and all-encompassing.
The woman’s voice rose in intensity with the violins and cellos, a climax sung up into the shower’s downpour. Cress held the note as long as she could, enjoying the way the song rolled over her, filling her with its power.
She ran out of breath first, suddenly dizzy. Panting, she fell against the shower wall.
The crescendo died down into a simple, longing finale, just as the water sputtered out. All of Cress’s showers were timed, to ensure her water reserves wouldn’t run out before Mistress Sybil’s next supply visit.
Cress sank down and wrapped her arms around her knees. Realizing there were tears on her cheeks, she covered her face and laughed.
She was being ridiculously melodramatic, but it was well deserved.
Because today was the day. She’d been following the Rampion’s path closely since they’d agreed to rescue her nearly fourteen hours before, and they had not deviated from their course. The Rampion would be crossing through her satellite’s trajectory in approximately one Earthen hour and fifteen minutes.
She would have freedom, and friendships, and purpose. And she would be with him.
In the next room, the operatic solo began again, quiet and slow and tinged with longing.
“Thank you,” Cress whispered to the imaginary audience that was going mad with applause. She imagined lifting a bouquet of red roses and smelling them, even though she had no idea what roses smelled like.
With that thought, the fantasy disintegrated.
Sighing, she picked herself off the shower floor before the tips of her hair could get sucked down the drain.
Her hair weighed heavy on her scalp. It was easy to ignore when she was caught up in such a powerful solo, but now the weight of it threatened to make her topple over, and a dull headache was already creeping up from the base of her skull.
This was not the day for headaches.
She held up the ends of her hair with one hand, taking some pressure off her head, and spent a few minutes ringing it out, handful by soaking handful. Emerging from the shower, she grabbed her towel, a ratty gray thing she’d had for years, worn to holes in the corners.
“Volume, down!” she yelled out to the main room. The opera faded into the background. A few last droplets from the showerhead dribbled onto the floor.
Cress heard a chime.
She pulled her hair through her fists again, gathering another handful of water and shaking it out in the shower before wrapping herself in the towel. The weight of her hair still tugged at her, but was feeling manageable again.
In the main room, all but the single D-COMM screen were showing the theater footage. The shot was a close-up of the woman’s face, thick with makeup and penciled eyebrows, a lion’s mane of fire-red hair topped with a gold crown.
The D-COMM screen held a new message.
FROM USER: MECHANIC. ETA 68 MINUTES.
Cress was buoyed by giddiness. It was happening. They were really coming to rescue her.
She dropped the towel to the floor and grabbed the wrinkled dress she’d been wearing before—the dress that was a little too small and a little too short because Sybil had brought it for Cress when she was only thirteen, but that was worn to the perfect softness. It was Cress’s favorite dress, not that it had a lot of competition.
She pulled it over her head, then rushed back into the bathroom to begin the long process of combing out her wet tangles. She wanted to look presentable, after all.
No, she wanted to look irresistible, but there was no use dwelling on that. She had no makeup, no jewelry, no perfume, no properly fitting clothes, and only the most basic essentials for daily hygiene. She was as pale as the moon and her hair would dry frizzy no matter how she coddled it. After a moment of staring at herself in the mirror, she decided to braid it, her best hope for keeping it tamed.
She had just divided it into three sections at the nape of her neck when Little Cress’s voice squeaked. “Big Sister?”
Cress froze. She met her own wide-eyed gaze in the mirror. “Yes?”
“Mistress’s ship detected. Expected arrival in twenty-two seconds.”
“No, no, no, not today,” she hissed.
Releasing her wet strands of hair, she rushed out into the main room. For once, her few belongings weren’t strewn across the floor and tabletops, because they were all packed neatly inside a pulled-out drawer that sat on top of her bed. Dresses, socks, and undergarments neatly folded alongside hair combs and barrettes and what food packs she still had from Sybil’s last visit. She’d even nestled her favorite pillow and blanket on top.
All evidence that she was running away.