They arrived at an elevator bank and Cress punched in the override code.
“Well then,” she said, flashing a weary smile. “Good thing she’s not going to be empress.”
There seemed to be a mutual sigh as they crowded into the elevator. Cress’s nerves were sparking like a million electrodes. Sweat was soaking into the back of her expensive dress. She was frazzled from all the running and the stairs and the panic, but at least they had a brief moment to pause and breathe and prepare themselves for what came next. Cress couldn’t help sneaking a curious glance at the man draped over Wolf’s shoulder. The emperor.
Of all the times she’d imagined meeting him, after years of spying on him and his father, she’d never imagined their first meeting would be quite like this.
Wolf stiffened as the elevator began to slow. “There’s a lot of them out there.”
“We knew there would be,” said Cinder. “Thorne and the doctor had better be ready.”
Cress shifted back, happy to keep Cinder and Wolf between her and whatever awaited them in the hall.
Iko bent toward her. “That dress looks amazing on you,” she said. “Cinder, doesn’t she look amazing?”
Cinder sighed as the elevator came to a full stop. “Iko, after this we’re going to start working on occasion appropriateness.”
The doors slid open and dozens of palace guards in red and gold uniforms stood before them.
“And not an android among them,” Cinder muttered. “Kai and I are going to have a long talk about palace security.” She marched into the corridor. “You,” she ordered, without gesturing to anyone in particular as far as Cress could tell, “are now our personal guard. Form a barrier.”
Eight guards shuffled forward and, in robotic unison, formed a wall between them and their peers. Confusion flashed through the eyes of the others.
Cinder held her palm out and one of the guards set a gun into it, handle first.
She aimed it at Kai’s head, her expression the picture of cold neutrality. “If anyone thinks of getting in our way, your emperor is dead. Now, move.”
With their eight personal guards acting as a protective bubble around them, Cress found herself being herded along with the others toward the lab rooms. When they reached the sixth door, Cinder knocked, using the special rhythm they’d devised.
The door swung open a beat later. Thorne was flushed and scowling. He had his cane in one hand, a cloth bundle in the other, and his blindfold still on.
“Doctor’s not coming,” he said.
A hesitation, before Cinder said, “What do you mean he’s not coming?”
He gestured toward the back of the lab and they all pushed inside, leaving Cinder’s brainwashed puppets to linger, baffled, in the hallway. A window was set into the wall, showing a sterile quarantine room. The doctor was seated on top of a lab table, his head hanging down, his fingers fidgeting with his hat.
With a growl, Cinder marched up to the window and pounded on it with her fist.
The doctor lifted his head, messy gray hair sticking out in all directions.
Grabbing a microphone from the desk, Cinder pushed a b.u.t.ton and screamed, “We don’t have time for this! Get out here.”
The doctor only smiled, sadly.
“Cinder,” said Thorne, his tone heavy in a way Cress had rarely heard. “He has the plague.”
Cress’s stomach dropped, as Cinder reeled back from the window.
The doctor smoothed down his hair. “Has everyone made it back safely?” he asked, his voice coming through some speaker in the wall.
It took Cinder a moment, but then she stammered, “Yes. Everyone but you.”
A hand landed on Cress’s head. She gasped and recoiled, but Thorne was already wrapping his arm around her shoulders and squeezing her against him. “Just checking it was you,” he whispered.
She blinked up at his profile. The hours they’d spent apart suddenly felt like days, and she realized it could as easily have been him that was being left behind, instead of the doctor. She dug herself further into his embrace.
“I am sorry,” said Dr. Erland, the words crisply spoken, like he’d been waiting to say them. He looked more fragile than ever sitting on that lab table, his face carved with wrinkles. “Miss Linh. Mr. Wolf.” He sighed. “Crescent.”
Her eyes widened. No one had called her that since Sybil. How had he even known?
It was a common name on Luna. Perhaps it was a lucky guess.
“I’ve hurt you all in some way. Been at least partly responsible for some tragedy in your lives. I am sorry.”
Cress gulped, feeling a twinge of regret in the base of her stomach. The doctor still wore a bruise on his jaw from where she’d hit him.
“I have made some important discoveries,” said the doctor. “How much time can you spare?”
Cinder’s hand tightened around the microphone. “Jacin’s ETA is in six minutes.”
“That will have to suffice.” The sorrow on the old man’s face hardened. “Is His Majesty with you?”
“He’s unconscious,” said Cinder.
His eyebrows lifted, almost imperceptibly. “I see. Would you be so kind as to pa.s.s on a message to him?” Before Cinder could respond, the doctor pulled on his hat and inhaled a deep breath. “This plague is not a random tragedy. It is biological warfare.”
“What?” Cinder planted her hands on the desk. “What do you mean?”
“The Lunar crown has been using antibodies found in the blood of the ungifted to manufacture an antidote for at least sixteen years, and perhaps much longer. But sixteen years ago, letumosis didn’t even exist, unless it, too, had been manufactured in a Lunar laboratory. Lunars wanted to weaken Earth, and to create a dependency on their antidote.” He patted his chest, as if looking for something in his pocket, but then seemed to realize it was missing. “Right. I’ve indicated my findings on the portscreen that is now in Mr. Thorne’s possession. Please give it to His Majesty when he is recovered. Earth should know that this war did not start with the recent attacks. This war has been going on beneath our noses for over a decade, and I do fear Earth is losing.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Cinder leaned down into the microphone. “We’re not going to lose.”
“I believe you, Miss Linh.” The doctor’s breath shuddered. “Now, would … would Cress come closer, please?”
Cress stiffened. She pressed against Thorne’s side as the others all looked at her, and it was only his gentle nudge that unstuck her feet. She crept toward the window that divided them from the quarantine room.
Only now, as she came to stand before the microphone, did she realize it was a one-way window. She could see the doctor, but on the other side he was probably looking at a reflection of himself.
Cinder cleared her throat, not taking her curious gaze off Cress. “She’s here.”
A pathetic smile tried to climb up the doctor’s lips, but failed.
“Crescent. My Crescent Moon.”
“How do you know my full name?” she asked, too confused to recognize the harshness of her tone.
But the doctor did not seem fazed, even as his lips began to tremble. “Because I named you.”
She shivered, clawing her hands into the folds of her skirt.
“I want you to know that it nearly killed me when I lost you, and I have thought of you every day.” His gaze hovered somewhere near the base of the window. “I always wanted to be a father. Even as a young man. But I was recruited into the crown’s team of scientists immediately following my education—such an honor, you know. My career became everything, and there was no time for a family. I was already in my forties when I married, my wife another scientist whom I had known for many years and never thought I liked very much until she decided that she liked me. She was not much younger than me, and the years pa.s.sed, and I had given up hope … until, one day, she was pregnant.”
A chill slipped down Cress’s spine. It felt like listening to an old, sad tale, one that she was removed from. One that she felt she knew the ending to, but denial kept a distance between her and the doctor’s words.
“We did all the right things. We decorated a nursery. We planned a celebration. And sometimes at night, she would sing an old lullaby, one that I’d forgotten over the years, and we decided to call you our little Crescent Moon.” His voice broke on the last word and he slumped over, scratching at his hat.
Cress gulped. The window, the sterile room, the man with a dark blue rash, all began to blur in front of her.
“Then you were born, and you were a sh.e.l.l.” His words slurred. “And Sybil came, and I begged—I begged her not to take you, but there was nothing … she wouldn’t … and I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead, and all along you were … if I’d known, Crescent. If I’d known, I never would have left. I would have found a way to save you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.” He hid his face as sobs racked his body.
Pressing her lips together, Cress shook her head, wanting to deny it all, but how could she when he knew her name, and she had his eyes, and—
A tear slipped past her eyelashes, rolling hot down her cheek.
Her father was alive.
Her father was dying.
Her father was here, in front of her, almost in arm’s reach. But he would be left here to die, and she would never see him again.
Cool metal brushed against her wrist, and Cress jumped.
“I’m so sorry,” Cinder said, retracting her hand. “But we have to leave. Dr. Erland…”
“I know, y-yes, I know.” He swiped hastily to clear his face. When he lifted his head, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes gla.s.sy. He looked as weak and frail as a broken bird. “I’m s-so sorry this is how … oh, please be careful. Please be safe. My Crescent Moon. I love you. I do love you.”
Her lungs hiccupped, as more tears dripped off her jaw, dotting her silk skirt. She opened her mouth, but no words came. I love you. I love you too. Words that had been so easy in daydreams, and now seemed impossible.
She believed him, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t know if she loved him back.
“Cress,” said Cinder, tightening her grip. “I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
She nodded dumbly.
“Good … good-bye,” she said, the only word that would come, as she was dragged away from the window.
On the other side of the gla.s.s, the doctor sobbed. He did not look up again, but he raised a shaking hand in farewell. The tips of his fingers were shriveled and blue.
Fifty-Four
They abandoned their entourage of guards in the elevator on the top floor. No one cared that it would be too easy to deduce where they were heading. Hopefully by the time anyone snapped out of Cinder’s brainwashing, they’d be long gone.
The research wing’s emergency service elevator was kept on its own, in an alcove tucked away from the rest of the wing. It was their final obstacle, and Cress had taken care to ensure it would be functioning properly when they arrived. She stumbled ahead of them to punch in the code, emotionally drained. It felt as if her brain were churning through sludge and it took her a moment to remember the code at all.
The elevator opened and they crowded inside.
No one spoke—whether out of respect for Dr. Erland, or out of a tenuous hope that they were so close, so very close …
The doors opened onto the rooftop. Dusk was climbing over the city, glistening off the palace windows and coating the landing pad in purple shadows.
And the Rampion was there, its ramp lowered toward them.
Cress laughed—an abrupt, delirious laugh that felt like it was being ripped out of her throat.
Iko let out a victorious whoop and ran for the ramp, screaming, “We did it!”
Thorne’s grip tightened on Cress’s arm. “He’s here?”
“He’s here,” she whispered back.
Wolf alone slowed down, baring his teeth. Kai was still draped over his shoulder.
“Jacin—ready for takeoff—now!” Cinder yelled toward the ship. “We’re—” Her words fell short and she slowed, then stopped altogether. Cress gasped and locked her hands around Thorne’s arm, holding him back.
A figure appeared at the top of the cargo bay ramp. Her white coat and long sleeves made her look like a ghost haunting their ship, blocking their way to freedom.
Cress’s instincts screamed at her to run, to hide, to get as far away from Mistress Sybil as she could.
But when she glanced behind her she saw that the thaumaturge wasn’t alone. Half a dozen Lunar guards had crowded in behind them, blocking off their path to the elevator. The elevator that wouldn’t have worked anyway—she’d programmed it to shut down once they reached the rooftop so that no one could follow them. It wouldn’t work again until the timer she’d set on the security mainframe ticked down and the system rebooted itself.
Which meant they had no place to run. No place to hide. They were forty steps from their ship, and they were trapped.
Cinder’s momentary elation evaporated as she looked up at the thaumaturge. She should have sensed her immediately, her and the guards, before she’d even stepped off the elevator, but she’d been so distracted with the sensation of success. She’d gotten c.o.c.ky, and now they were surrounded.
“What a lovely reunion,” said Sybil, her sleeves snapping in the rooftop wind. “Had I known you were all going to come to me, I wouldn’t have wasted half as much energy attempting to find you.”
Cinder tried to keep her focus on Sybil as she took stock of her allies. Wolf was slightly in front of her, snarling as he set Kai on the ground. Though he wasn’t showing any pain, she could see a small spot of blood on Wolf’s dress shirt—his st.i.tches must have come undone, reopening the wound.