“Well, if you wanted to be technical about it,” he said. “But I’m a captain now. I prefer the sound of it. Girls are much more impressed.”
Cinder, unimpressed, gestured toward the mechanical room on the other side of the wall. “I’ve decided you can come with me if we can make it to your ship. Just … try not to talk too much.”
He was off his cot before she finished speaking. “It was my irresistible charm that convinced you, wasn’t it?”
Sighing, she retreated through the hole, careful to step over the disconnected plumbing. “So this ship of yours. It is the stolen one, right? From the American military?”
“I don’t like to think of it as ‘stolen.’ They have no proof that I didn’t plan on giving it back.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He shrugged. “You have no proof either.”
She squinted back at him. “Were you planning on giving it back?”
“Maybe.”
An orange light blinked on in the corner of Cinder’s vision—her cyborg programming picking up on the lie.
“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “Is the ship traceable?”
“Of course not. Removed all the tracking equipment ages ago.”
“Good. Which reminds me.” Holding up her hand, she retracted the screwdriver and, after two attempts, released the stiletto knife. “We need to remove your ID chip.”
He drew half a step back.
“Don’t tell me you’re squeamish.”
“Of course not,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh, cuffing his left sleeve. “It’s just … is that thing sterilized?”
Cinder glowered.
“I mean—I’m sure you’re very hygienic and all, it’s just…” He trailed off, hesitated, and then held his hand out toward her. “Never mind. Just try not to hit anything important.”
Bending over his arm, Cinder angled the blade to his wrist as carefully and gently as she could. There was a faint scar there already, presumably from when he’d cut out another ID chip when he’d first been on the run from law enforcement.
His fingers twitched at the invasion, but otherwise he was still as stone. She extracted the bloodied ID chip and tossed it into a bundle of cords on the floor, before cutting a strip of cloth from his sleeve and letting him wrap it around the wound.
“Is it just me, or is this a big moment in our relationship?”
Cinder scoffed. Turning away, she pointed at a grate near the ceiling. It was surrounded by tethered wires that snaked out from the breaker panel and disappeared into dozens of holes along the walls. “Can you boost me up there?”
“What is it?” Thorne asked, already lacing his fingers together.
“Air duct.” Cinder stepped onto his palms and ignored his grunt as he lifted her. She’d expected it, knowing that her metal leg made her a lot heavier than she looked.
With the added leverage, she had the grate removed in seconds. She set it quietly atop some overhead plumbing pipes, then pulled herself into the opening without hesitation.
She called up the blueprint of the jail’s interior structure to check the direction while she waited for Thorne to clamber up behind her. Switching on her built-in flashlight, Cinder started to crawl.
It was hot and clumsy work, with her left leg scraping against the aluminum every few inches. Twice she stopped to listen, thinking she heard footsteps somewhere below. Would there be an alarm when their escape was discovered? She was surprised there hadn’t been one yet. Thirty-two minutes. She’d left her cell thirty-two minutes ago.
The sweat dripping off her nose and the rapidness of her heartbeat made the time stretch on and on, as if the clock in her head had gotten stuck. Thorne’s presence was already filling her with doubts. This was going to be hard enough with just her—how was she going to sneak both of them out?
The thought passed through her skull, startling and clear.
She could brainwash him.
She could convince him that he wanted to tell her where the ship was and how to get to it, and then she could make him decide that he didn’t want to come with her after all. She could send him back. He would have no choice but to listen to her.
“Everything all right?”
Cinder released the air that had stuck in her throat.
No. She wouldn’t take advantage of him, or anyone. She’d gotten on just fine without any Lunar gift before, she would get on just fine now.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Just checking the blueprint. We’re almost there.”
“Blueprint?”
She ignored him. Minutes later she rounded a corner and saw a square of checkered light on the duct’s ceiling. A tinge of relief, of hope, fluttered inside her as she inched her head out over the grate and peered down.
She saw an expanse of concrete with a small puddle of standing water beneath her and, not six steps from that, another grate, this one larger and round.
A storm drain. Right where the blueprint said it would be.
The drop was a full story, but if they could make it without breaking any legs, this was almost going to be easy.
“Where are we?” Thorne whispered.
“Underground loading dock—where they bring in food and supplies.” As gracefully as she could, she climbed over the grate and maneuvered back around so that she and Thorne could both peer through the grid.
“We need to get down there, to that storm drain.”
Thorne frowned and pointed. “Isn’t that the exit ramp over there?”
She nodded without looking.
“Why aren’t we trying to get there?”
She peered up at him, the grate casting peculiar shadows across his face. “And just walk to your spaceship? In bright white prison uniforms?”
He frowned, but any response was silenced by the sound of voices. They ducked back.
“I didn’t see him dancing with her, my sister did,” said a woman. Her words were coupled with footsteps, then a rolling door being hoisted up on clunky rails. “Her dress was soaking wet and wrinkled as a garbage bag.”
“But why would the emperor dance with a cyborg?” said a man. “And then for her to go off and attack the Lunar queen like that … no way. Your sister was seeing things. I bet the girl was just some crazy person who wandered in off the streets. She was probably bitter over some cyborg injustice.”
The conversation was cut short by the rumbling of a delivery ship.
Cinder dared to peer through the grate again and saw a ship wheeling its way beneath them, backing up toward a recessed loading bay and stopping directly between Cinder and Thorne and the storm drain.
“Morning, Ryu-jūn,” said the man as the pilot descended from the ship. The rest of their greetings were drowned out by the hydraulics hissing on an adjustable platform.
Taking advantage of the noise, Cinder used her screwdriver to remove the grate. When she gave Thorne a nod, he carefully eased it up.
Sweat trickled down Cinder’s neck and her heart was palpitating so hard she thought it might bruise the inside of her rib cage. Lowering her head, she peered around the dock, checking for any other signs of life and spotted, not arm’s distance away on the concrete ceiling, a rotating camera.
She jerked back inside, pulse hissing in her ears. Luckily the camera had been facing the other direction, but still, there was no way they would both make it down undetected. Then there were the three workers unloading the delivery to deal with, and every moment gone was one more moment toward some guard discovering their empty cells.
She shut her eyes, imagining where the camera was, before snaking her arm out. Her hand floundered, flat against the ceiling—the camera was farther than it had seemed in that momentary glance—but then her fingers found it. She grasped the lens and squeezed. The plastic was crushed as easy as a plum in her titanium fist, making a satisfying crunching sound that seemed deafeningly loud.