Cress

BOOK

One

When she was just a child, the witch locked her away in a tower that had neither doors nor stairs.

One

Her satellite made one full orbit around planet Earth every sixteen hours. It was a prison that came with an endlessly breathtaking view—vast blue oceans and swirling clouds and sunrises that set half the world on fire.

When she was first imprisoned, she had loved nothing more than to stack her pillows on top of the desk that was built into the walls and drape her bed linens over the screens, making a small alcove for herself. She would pretend that she was not on a satellite at all, but in a podship en route to the blue planet. Soon she would land and step out onto real dirt, feel real sunshine, smell real oxygen.

She would stare at the continents for hours and hours, imagining what that must be like.

Her view of Luna, however, was always to be avoided. Some days her satellite passed so close that the moon took up the entire view and she could make out the enormous glinting domes on its surface and the sparkling cities where the Lunars lived. Where she, too, had lived. Years ago. Before she’d been banished.

As a child, Cress had hidden from the moon during those achingly long hours. Sometimes she would escape to the small washroom and distract herself by twisting elaborate braids into her hair. Or she would scramble beneath her desk and sing lullabies until she fell asleep. Or she would dream up a mother and a father, and imagine how they would play make-believe with her and read her adventure stories and brush her hair lovingly off her brow, until finally—finally—the moon would sink again behind the protective Earth, and she was safe.

Even now, Cress used those hours to crawl beneath her bed and nap or read or write songs in her head or work out complicated coding. She still did not like to look at the cities of Luna; she harbored a secret paranoia that if she could see the Lunars, surely they could look up beyond their artificial skies and see her.

For more than seven years, this had been her nightmare.

But now the silver horizon of Luna was creeping into the corner of her window, and Cress paid no attention. This time, her wall of invisi-screens was showing her a brand-new nightmare. Brutal words were splattered across the newsfeeds, photos and videos blurring in her vision as she scrolled from one feed to the next. She couldn’t read fast enough.

14 CITIES ATTACKED WORLDWIDE

2-HOUR MURDER SPREE RESULTS IN 16,000 EARTHEN DEATHS

LARGEST MASSACRE IN THIRD ERA

The net was littered with horrors. Victims dead in the streets with shredded abdomens and blood leaking into the gutters. Feral men-creatures with gore on their chins and beneath their fingernails and staining the fronts of their shirts. She scrolled through them all with one hand pressed over her mouth. Breathing became increasingly difficult as the truth of it all sank in.

This was her fault.

For months she had been cloaking those Lunar ships from Earthen detection, doing Mistress Sybil’s bidding without question, like the well-trained lackey she was.

Now she knew just what kind of monsters had been aboard those ships. Only now did she understand what Her Majesty had been planning all along, and it was far too late.

16,000 EARTHEN DEATHS

Earth had been taken unaware, and all because she hadn’t been brave enough to say no to Mistress’s demands. She had done her job and then turned a blind eye to it all.

She averted her gaze from the pictures of death and carnage, focusing on another news story that suggested more horrors to come.

Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth had put an end to the attacks by agreeing to marry Lunar Queen Levana.

Queen Levana was to become the Commonwealth’s new empress.

The shocked journalists of Earth were scrambling to determine their stance on this diplomatic yet controversial arrangement. Some were in outrage, proclaiming that the Commonwealth and the rest of the Earthen Union should be preparing for war, not a wedding. But others were hastily trying to justify the alliance. With a swirl of her fingers on the thin, transparent screen, Cress raised the audio of a man who was going on about the potential benefits. No more attacks or speculations on when an attack might come. Earth would come to understand the Lunar culture better. They would share technological advances. They would be allies.

And besides, Queen Levana only wanted to rule the Eastern Commonwealth. Surely she would leave the rest of the Earthen Union alone.

But Cress knew they would be fools to believe it. Queen Levana was going to become empress, then she would have Emperor Kaito murdered, claim the country for her own, and use it as a launching pad to assemble her army before invading the rest of the Union. She would not stop until the entire planet was under her control. This small attack, these sixteen thousand deaths … they were only the beginning.

Silencing the broadcast, Cress set her elbows on her desk and dug both hands into her hive of blonde hair. She was suddenly cold, despite the consistently maintained temperature inside the satellite. One of the screens behind her was reading aloud in a child’s voice that had been programmed during four months of insanity-inducing boredom when she was ten years old. The voice was too chipper for the material it quoted: a medical blog from the American Republic announcing the results of an autopsy performed on one of the Lunar soldiers.

The bones had been reinforced with calcium-rich biotissue, while the cartilage in major joints was infused with a saline solution for added flexibility and pliability. Orthodontic implants replaced the canine and incisor teeth with those mimicking the teeth of a wolf, and we see the same bone reinforcement around the jaw to allow for the strength to crush material such as bone and other tissue. Remapping of the central nervous system and extensive psychological tampering were responsible for the subject’s unyielding aggression and wolf-like tendencies. Dr. Edelstein has theorized that an advanced manipulation technique of the brain’s bioelectric waves may also have played a role in—

Mute feed.

The sweet ten-year-old’s voice was silenced, leaving the satellite humming with the sounds that had long ago been relegated to the back of Cress’s consciousness. The whirring of fans. The thrumming of the life support system. The gurgling of the water recycling tank.

Cress gathered the thick locks of hair at the nape of her neck and pulled the tail over her shoulder—it had a tendency to get caught up in the wheels of her chair when she wasn’t careful. The screens before her flickered and scrolled as more and more information came in from the Earthen feeds. News was coming out from Luna too, on their brave soldiers and hard-fought victory—crown-sanctioned drivel, naturally. Cress had stopped paying attention to Lunar news when she was twelve.

She mindlessly wrapped her ponytail around her left arm, spiraling it from elbow to wrist, unaware of the tangles clumping in her lap.

Oh, Cress, she murmured. What are we going to do?

Her ten-year-old self piped back, Please clarify your instructions, Big Sister.

Cress shut her eyes against the screen’s glare. I understand that Emperor Kai is only trying to stop a war, but he must know this won’t stop Her Majesty. She’s going to kill him if he goes through with this, and then where will Earth be? A headache pounded at her temples. I thought for certain Linh Cinder had told him at the ball, but what if I’m wrong? What if he still has no idea of the danger he’s in?

Spinning in her chair, she swiped her fingers across a muted newsfeed, punched in a code, and called up the hidden window that she checked a hundred times a day. The D-COMM window opened like a black hole, abandoned and silent, on top of her desk. Linh Cinder still had not tried to contact her. Perhaps her chip had been confiscated or destroyed. Perhaps Linh Cinder didn’t even have it anymore.

Huffing, Cress dismissed the link and, with a few hasty taps of her fingertips, cascaded a dozen different windows in its place. They were linked to a spider alert service that was constantly patrolling the net for any information related to the Lunar cyborg who had been taken into custody a week earlier. Linh Cinder. The girl who had escaped from New Beijing Prison. The girl who had been Cress’s only chance of telling Emperor Kaito the truth about Queen Levana’s intentions should he agree to the marriage alliance.

The major feed hadn’t been updated in eleven hours. In the hysteria of the Lunar invasion, Earth seemed to have forgotten about their most-wanted fugitive.

Big Sister?

Pulse hiccupping, Cress grasped the arms of her chair. Yes, Little Cress?

Mistress’s ship detected. Expected arrival in twenty-two seconds.

Cress catapulted from her chair at the word mistress, spoken even all those years ago with a tinge of dread.

Her movements were a precisely choreographed dance, one she had mastered after years of practice. In her mind, she became a second-era ballerina, skimming across a shadowy stage as Little Cress counted down the seconds.

00:21. Cress pressed her palm onto the mattress-deploy button.

00:20. She swiveled back to the screen, sending all feeds of Linh Cinder beneath a layer of Lunar crown propaganda.

00:19. The mattress landed with a thunk on the floor, the pillows and blankets wadded up just as she’d left them.

00:18. 17. 16. Her fingers danced across the screens, hiding Earthen newsfeeds and netgroups.

00:15. A turn, a quick search for two corners of her blanket.

00:14. A flick of her wrists, casting the blanket up like a wind-caught sail.

00:13. 12. 11. She smoothed and tugged her way to the opposite side of the bed, pivoting toward the screens on the other side of her living quarters.

00:10. 9. Earthen dramas, music recordings, second-era literature, all dismissed.

00:08. A swivel back toward the bed. A graceful turning down of the blanket.

00:07. Two pillows symmetrically stacked against the headboard. A flourish of her arm to pull out the hair that had gotten caught beneath the blanket.

00:06. 5. A glissade across the floor, dipping and spinning, gathering up every discarded sock and hair tie and sending them into the renewal chute.

00:04. 3. A sweep of the desks, collecting her only bowl, her only spoon, her only glass, and a handful of stylus pens, and depositing them into the pantry cabinet.

00:02. A final pirouette to scan her work.

00:01. A pleased exhalation, culminating in a graceful bow.

Mistress has arrived, said Little Cress. She is requesting an extension of the docking clamp.

The stage, the shadows, the music, all fell away from Cress’s thoughts, though a practiced smile remained on her lips. Of course, she chirped, swanning toward the main boarding ramp. There were two ramps on her satellite, but only one had ever been used. She wasn’t even sure if the opposite entrance functioned. Each wide metal door opened up to a docking hatch and, beyond that, space.

Except for when there was a podship anchored there. Mistress’s podship.

Cress tapped in the command. A diagram on the screen showed the clamp extending, and she heard the thump as the ship attached. The walls jolted around her.

She had the next moments memorized, could have counted the heartbeats between each familiar sound. The whir of the small spacecraft’s engines powering down. The clang of the hatch attaching and sealing around the podship. The vacuum as oxygen was pushed into the space. The beep confirming that travel between the two modules was safe. The opening of the spacecraft. Steps echoing on the walkway. The whoosh of the satellite entrance.

There had been a time when Cress had hoped for warmth and kindness from her mistress. That perhaps Sybil would look at her and say, My dear, sweet Crescent, you have earned the trust and respect of Her Majesty, the Queen. You are welcome to return with me to Luna and be accepted as one of us.

That time had long since passed, but Cress’s practiced smile held firm even in the face of Mistress Sybil’s coldness. Good day, Mistress.

Sybil sniffed. The embroidered sleeves of her white jacket fluttered around the large case she carried, filled with her usual provisions: food and fresh water for Cress’s confinement and, of course, the medical kit. So you’ve found her, have you?

Cress winced around her frozen grin. Found her, Mistress?

"If it is a good day, then you must have finally completed the simple task I’ve given you. Is that it, Crescent? Have you found the cyborg?"

Cress lowered her gaze and dug her fingernails into her palms. No, Mistress. I haven’t found her.

I see. So it isn’t a good day after all, is it?

I only meant … Your company is always… She trailed off. Forcing her hands to unclench, she dared to meet Mistress Sybil’s glare. I was just reading the news, Mistress. I thought perhaps we were pleased about Her Majesty’s engagement.

Sybil dropped the case onto the crisply made bed. We will be satisfied once Earth is under Lunar control. Until then, there is work to be done, and you should not be wasting your time reading news and gossip.

Sybil neared the monitor that held the secret window with the D-COMM feed and the evidence of Cress’s betrayal to the Lunar crown, and Cress stiffened. But Sybil reached past it to a screen displaying a vid of Emperor Kaito speaking in front of the Eastern Commonwealth flag. With a touch, the screen cleared, revealing the metal wall and a tangle of heating tubes behind it.

Cress slowly released her breath.

"I certainly hope you’ve found something."

She stood taller. Linh Cinder was spotted in the European Federation, in a small town in southern France, at approximately 18:00 local ti—

I’m well aware of all that. And then she went to Paris and killed a thaumaturge and some useless special operatives. Anything else, Crescent?

Cress swallowed and began winding her hair around both wrists in a looping figure eight. At 17:48, in Rieux, France, the clerk of a ship-and-vehicle parts store updated the store inventory, removing one power cell that would be compatible with a 214 Rampion, Class 11.3, but not notating any sort of payment. I thought perhaps Linh Cinder stole … or maybe glamoured… She hesitated. Sybil liked to keep up the pretense that the cyborg was a shell, even though they both knew it wasn’t true. Unlike Cress, who was a true shell, Linh Cinder had the Lunar gift. It may have been buried or hidden somehow, but it had certainly made itself known at the Commonwealth’s annual ball.

A power cell? Sybil said, passing over Cress’s hesitation.

It converts compressed hydrogen into energy in order to propel—

I know what it is, Sybil snapped. You’re telling me that the only progress you’ve made is finding evidence that she’s making repairs to her ship? That it’s going to become even more difficult to track her down, a task that you couldn’t even manage when they were on Earth?

I’m sorry, Mistress. I’m trying. It’s just—

I’m not interested in your excuses. All these years I’ve persuaded Her Majesty to let you live, under the premise that you had something valuable to offer, something even more valuable than blood. Was I wrong to protect you, Crescent?

She bit her lip, withholding a reminder of all she’d done for Her Majesty during her imprisonment. Designing countless spy systems for keeping watch on Earth’s leaders, hacking the communication links between diplomats, and jamming satellite signals to allow the queen’s soldiers to invade Earth undetected, so that now the blood of sixteen thousand Earthens was on her hands. It made no difference. Sybil cared only about Cress’s failures, and not finding Linh Cinder was Cress’s biggest failure to date.

I’m sorry, Mistress. I’ll try harder.

Sybil’s eyes narrowed. I’ll be very displeased if you don’t find me that girl, and soon.

Held by Sybil’s gaze, she felt like a moth pinned to an examination board. Yes, Mistress.

Good. Reaching forward, Sybil petted her cheek. It felt almost like a mother’s approval, but not quite. Then she turned away and released the locking mechanisms on the case. Now then, she said, retrieving a hypodermic needle from the medical kit. Your arm.

Two

Wolf pushed himself off the crate, hurtling toward her. Cinder braced herself against the instinctive panic. The anticipation of one more hit tightened every muscle, despite the fact that he was still going easy on her.

She squeezed her eyes shut moments before impact and focused.

Pain shot through her head like a chisel into her brain. She gritted her teeth against it, attempting to numb herself to the waves of nausea that followed.

The impact didn’t come.

Stop. Closing. Your. Eyes.

Jaws still clenched, she forced one eye open and then the other. Wolf stood before her, his right hand in mid-swing toward her ear. His body was still as stone—because she was holding him there. His energy was hot and palpable and just out of reach, the strength of her own Lunar gift keeping him at bay.

It’s easier to have them closed, she hissed back. Even those few words put a strain on her mind, and Wolf’s fingers twitched. He was struggling against the confines of her control.

Then his gaze flickered past her, as a thump between her shoulder blades sent Cinder tumbling forward. Her forehead collided with Wolf’s chest. His body released just in time for him to steady her.

Behind her, Thorne chuckled. It also makes it easier for people to sneak up on you.

Cinder spun around and shoved Thorne away. This isn’t a game!

Thorne is right, said Wolf. She could hear his exhaustion, though she wasn’t sure whether it came from the constant melee or, more likely, his frustration at having to train such an amateur. When you close your eyes, it makes you vulnerable. You have to learn to use the gift while still being aware of your surroundings, while still being active within them.

Active?

Wolf stretched his neck to either side, eliciting a few pops, before shaking it out. Yes, active. We could be facing dozens of soldiers at a time. With any luck, you’ll be able to control nine or ten—although that’s optimistic at this point.

She crinkled her nose at him.

Which means you’ll be vulnerable to countless more. You should be able to control me while still being fully present, both mentally and physically. He took a step back, pawing at his messy hair. If even Thorne can sneak up on you, we’re in trouble.

Thorne cuffed his sleeves. Never underestimate the stealth of a criminal mastermind.

Scarlet started laughing from where she sat cross-legged on a plastic storage crate, enjoying a bowl of oatmeal. ‘Criminal mastermind’? We’ve been trying to figure out how to infiltrate the royal wedding for the past week, and so far your biggest contribution has been determining which of the palace rooftops is the most spacious so your precious ship doesn’t get scratched in the landing.

A few light panels brightened along the ceiling. I fully agree with Captain Thorne’s priorities, said Iko, speaking through the ship’s built-in speakers. As this may be my big net debut, I’d like to be looking my best, thank you very much.

Well said, gorgeous. Thorne winked up toward the speakers, even though Iko’s sensors weren’t sensitive enough to pick up on it. "And I would like the rest of you to note Iko’s proper use of Captain when addressing me. You could all stand to learn a thing or two from her."

Scarlet laughed again, Wolf raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, and the cargo bay’s temperature clicked up a couple degrees as Iko blushed from the flattery.

But Cinder ignored them all, downing a glass of lukewarm water while Wolf’s admonishments spun through her head. She knew he was right. Though controlling Wolf strained every ability she had, controlling Earthens like Thorne and Scarlet usually came as easy to her as replacing a dead android sensor.

By now, she should have been able to do both.

Let’s go again, she said, tightening her ponytail.

Wolf slipped his attention back to her. Maybe you should take a break.

I won’t get a break when I’m being chased down by the queen’s soldiers, will I? She rolled her shoulders, trying to re-energize herself. The pain in her head had dulled, but the back of her T-shirt was damp with sweat and every muscle was trembling from the effort of sparring with Wolf for the past two hours.

Wolf rubbed his temple. Let’s hope you never have to face off against the queen’s real soldiers. I think we stand a chance going up against her thaumaturges and special operatives, but the advanced soldiers are different. More like animals than humans, and they don’t react well to brain manipulation.

Because so many people do? said Scarlet, scraping her spoon against the bowl.

His glance flickered toward her, something in his eyes softening. It was a look Cinder had seen a hundred times since he and Scarlet had joined the crew of the Rampion, and yet seeing it still made her feel like she was intruding on something intimate.

I mean they’re unpredictable, even under the control of a thaumaturge. He returned his focus to Cinder. Or any other Lunar. The genetic tampering they undergo to become soldiers affects their brains as much as their bodies. They’re sporadic, wild … dangerous.

Thorne leaned against Scarlet’s storage crate, fake-whispering to her, "He does realize that he’s an ex–street fighter who still goes by ‘Wolf,’ right?"

Cinder bit the inside of her cheek, smothering a laugh. All the more reason for me to be as prepared as possible. I’d like to avoid another close call like we had in Paris.

You’re not the only one. Wolf started to sway on the balls of his feet again. Cinder had once thought this indicated he was ready for another sparring match, but she’d lately begun to think that’s just how he was—always moving, always restless.

Which reminds me, she said, I’d like to get some more of those tranquilizer darts, whenever we land again. The fewer soldiers we have to fight or brainwash, the better.

Tranquilizer darts, got it, said Iko. I’ve also taken the liberty of programming this handy countdown clock. T minus fifteen days, nine hours until the royal wedding. The netscreen on the wall flickered to life, displaying an enormous digital clock counting down by the tenth of a second.

Three seconds of staring at that clock made Cinder sick with anxiety. She tore her gaze away, scanning the rest of the netscreen and their ongoing master plan for putting a stop to the wedding between Kai and Queen Levana. A list of needed supplies was jotted down the left side of the screen—weapons, tools, disguises, and now tranquilizer darts.

In the middle of the screen was a blueprint of New Beijing Palace.

On the right, a ridiculously long preparation checklist, none of which had yet to be checked off, though they’d been planning and plotting for days.

Number one on the list was to prepare Cinder for when she would inevitably come face-to-face with Queen Levana and her court again. Though Wolf hadn’t said it outright, she knew her Lunar gift wasn’t improving fast enough. Cinder was beginning to think that item could take years to reach satisfactory completion, and they had only two more weeks.

The rough plan was to cause a distraction on the day of the wedding that would allow them to sneak into the palace during the ceremony and announce to the world that Cinder was truly the lost Princess Selene. Then, with all the world’s media watching, Cinder would demand that Levana relinquish the crown to her, ending both the wedding and her rule in one fell swoop.

Everything that was supposed to follow the wedding blurred in Cinder’s mind. She kept imagining the reactions of the Lunar people when they discovered that their lost princess was not only cyborg, but also entirely ignorant of their world, culture, traditions, and politics. The only thing that kept her chest from being crushed by the weight of it all was the knowledge that, no matter what, she couldn’t possibly be any worse of a ruler than Levana.

She hoped they would see it that way too.

The glass of water sloshed in her stomach. For the thousandth time, a fantasy crept into her thoughts of crawling beneath the covers of her crew-issued bunk bed and hiding until all the world forgot there had ever been a Lunar princess in the first place.

Instead, she turned away from the screen and shook out her muscles. All right, I’m ready to try again, she said, settling into the fighting stance that Wolf had taught her.

But Wolf was now sitting beside Scarlet and polishing off her oatmeal. Mouth full, he dipped his eyes to the floor and swallowed. Push-ups.

Cinder dropped her arms. What?

He gestured at her with the spoon. Fighting isn’t the only type of physical exertion. We can build your upper body strength and train your mind at the same time. Just try to stay aware of your surroundings. Focus.

She glowered for five full seconds before dropping to the ground.

She’d counted to eleven when she heard Thorne push himself away from the crate. You know, when I was a kid, I was tricked into thinking that princesses wore tiaras and hosted tea parties. Now that I’ve met a real princess, I must say, I’m kind of disappointed.

She didn’t know if he meant it as an insult, but these days the word princess set every one of Cinder’s nerves on edge.

Exhaling sharply, she did just as Wolf had instructed. She focused—easily picking up on Thorne’s energy as he passed by her on his way toward the cockpit.

She was lowering into the fourteenth push-up when she forced his feet to stall beneath him.

Wha—

Cinder pushed up and swung one leg forward in a half circle. Her ankle collided with the back of Thorne’s calves. He cried out and fell, landing on his backside with a grunt.

Beaming, Cinder glanced up at Wolf for approval, but both he and Scarlet were too busy laughing. She could even see the sharp points of Wolf’s canine teeth that he was usually so careful to keep hidden.

Cinder stood and offered Thorne a hand. Even he was smiling, though it was coupled with a grimace as he rubbed his hip.

You can help me pick out a tiara when we’re done saving the world.

Three

The satellite shuddered as Sybil’s podship disconnected from the docking clamp, and Cress was left alone again in the galaxy. Despite how Cress yearned for companionship, it was always a relief when Sybil left her, and this time even more than usual. Normally her mistress only visited every three or four weeks, just often enough to safely take another blood sample, but this was the third time she’d come since the wolf-hybrid attacks. Cress couldn’t remember her mistress ever seeming so anxious. Queen Levana must have been growing desperate to find the cyborg girl.

Mistress’s ship has detached, said Little Cress. Shall we play a game?

If Cress hadn’t been so flustered from yet another visit, she would have smiled, as she usually did when Little Cress asked this question. It was a reminder that she wasn’t entirely without companionship.

Cress had learned, years ago, that the word satellite came from a Latin word meaning a companion, or a minion, or a sycophant. All three interpretations had struck her as ironic, given her solitude, until she’d programmed Little Cress. Then she understood.

Her satellite kept her company. Her satellite did her bidding. Her satellite never questioned her or disagreed or had any pesky thoughts of her own.

Maybe we can play a game later, she said. We’d better check the files first.

Certainly, Big Sister.

It was the expected response. The programmed response.

Cress often wondered if that’s what it would be like to be truly Lunar—to have that sort of control over another human being. She would fantasize about programming Mistress Sybil as easily as she’d programmed her satellite’s voice. How the game would change then, if her mistress was to follow her orders for once, rather than the other way around.

All screens on.

Cress stood before her panorama of invisi-screens, some large, others small, some set on top of the built-in desk, others bracketed to the satellite walls and angled for optimal viewing no matter where she was in the circular room.

Clear all feeds.

The screens went blank, allowing her to see through them to the satellite’s unadorned walls.

Display compiled folders: Linh Cinder; 214 Rampion, Class 11.3; Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth. And… She paused, enjoying the rush of anticipation that passed through her. Carswell Thorne.

Four screens filled up with the information Cress had been collecting. She sat down to review the documents she’d all but memorized.

On the morning of 29 August, Linh Cinder and Carswell Thorne escaped from New Beijing Prison. Four hours later, Sybil had given Cress her orders—find them. The command, Cress later discovered, came from Queen Levana herself.

Scrounging up information on Linh Cinder had taken her only three minutes—but then, almost all the information she’d found was fake. A fake Earthen identity written up for a girl who was Lunar. Cress didn’t even know how long Linh Cinder had been on Earth. She’d simply popped into existence five years ago, when she was (supposedly) eleven years old. Her biography had family and school records prior to the hover accident that had killed her parents and resulted in her cyborg operation, but that was all false. One had to follow Linh Cinder’s ancestry back only two generations before they hit a dead-end. The records had been written to deceive.

Cress glanced at the folder still downloading information on Emperor Kaito. His file was immeasurably longer than the others, as every moment of his life had been recorded and filed away—from net fangroups to official government documentation. Information was being added all the time, and it had exploded since the announcement of his engagement to the Lunar queen. None of it was helpful. Cress closed the feed.

Carswell Thorne’s folder had required a bit more legwork. It took Cress forty-four minutes to hack into the government records of the American Republic’s military database and five other agencies that had had dealings with him, compiling trial transcripts and articles, military records and education reports, licenses and income statements and a timeline that began with his certificate of birth and continued through numerous accolades and awards won while he was growing up, through his acceptance into the American Republic military at age seventeen. The timeline blinked out after his nineteenth birthday, when he removed his identity chip, stole a spaceship, and deserted the military. The day he’d gone rogue.

It started up again eighteen months later, on the day he was found and arrested in the Eastern Commonwealth.

In addition to all the official reports, there was a fair amount of swooning and gossiping from the many fangroups that had sprouted in the wake of Carswell Thorne’s new celebrity status. Not nearly as many as Emperor Kai had, of course, but it seemed that plenty of Earthen girls were taken with the idea of this handsome rake on the run from the law. Cress wasn’t bothered by it. She knew that they all had the wrong idea about him.

At the top of his file was a three-dimensional holograph scanned in from his military graduation. Cress preferred it to the infamous prison photo that had become so popular, the one in which he was winking at the camera, because in the holograph he was wearing a freshly pressed uniform with shining silver buttons and a confident, one-sided grin.

Seeing that smile, Cress melted.

Every. Time.

Hello again, Mr. Thorne, she whispered to the holograph. Then, with a giddy sigh, she turned to the only remaining folder.

The 214 Rampion, Class 11.3. The military cargoship Thorne had stolen. Cress knew everything about the ship—from its floor plan to its maintenance schedule (both the ideal and the actual).

Everything.

Including its location.

Tapping an icon in the folder’s top bar, she replaced Carswell Thorne’s holograph with one of a galactic positioning grid. Earth shimmered into existence, the jagged edges of its continents as familiar to her as Little Cress’s programming. After all, she had spent half her life watching the planet from 26,071 kilometers away.

Encircling the planet flickered thousands of tiny dots that indicated every ship and satellite from here to Mars. A glance told Cress that she could look out her Earth-side window right then and spot an unsuspecting Commonwealth scouting ship passing by her nondescript satellite. There was a time when she would have been tempted to hail them, but what would be the point?

No Earthen would ever trust a Lunar, much less rescue one.

So Cress ignored the ship, humming to herself as she cleared away all the tiny markers on the holograph until only the Rampion’s ID remained. A single yellow dot, disproportionate in the holograph so that she could analyze it in the context of the planet below.

It hovered 12,414 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean.

She called up the ID of her own orbiting satellite. If one were to attach a string from her satellite to the center of the Earth, it would cut right through the coast of Japan Province.

Nowhere near each other. They never were. It was a huge orbiting field, after all.

Finding the coordinates of the Rampion had been one of the greatest challenges of Cress’s hacking career. Even then, it had taken her only three hours and fifty-one minutes to do it, and all the while her pulse and adrenaline had been singing.

She had to find them first.

She had to find them first.

Because she had to protect them.

In the end, it had been a question of mathematics and deduction. Using the satellite network to ping signals off all the ships orbiting Earth. Discarding those with trackers, as she knew that the Rampion had been stripped. Discarding those that were clearly too big or too small.

That left mostly Lunar ships, and all of those were, of course, already under her dominion. She’d been disrupting their signals and confusing radar waves for years. There were many Earthens who believed Lunar ships were invisible because of a Lunar mind trick. If only they’d known that it was actually a worthless shell causing them so much trouble.

In the end, only three ships were orbiting Earth that fit the criteria, and two of them (no doubt illegal pirating ships) wasted no time in landing on Earth once they realized there was a massive space search going on that they were about to be caught in the middle of. Cress, out of curiosity, had later scanned Earthen police records in their proximity and found that both ships had been discovered upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Silly criminals.

That left only one. The Rampion. And aboard it, Linh Cinder and Carswell Thorne.

Within twelve minutes of pinpointing their location, Cress scrambled every signal that posed any risk of finding them using the same method. Like magic, the 214 Rampion, Class 11.3, had vanished into space.

Then, nerves frazzled from the mental strain, she’d collapsed onto her unmade bed and beamed deliriously at the ceiling. She’d done it. She had made them invisible.

A chirp resounded from one of the screens, pulling Cress’s attention away from the floating dot that represented the Rampion. Cress spun toward it, flinching when a strand of hair caught in the chair’s wheels. She yanked it out with one hand and nudged the screen out of hibernation with the other. A flick of her fingers and the window was enlarged.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES OF THE THIRD ERA

Not another one, she muttered.

The conspiracy theorists had been slobbering over themselves ever since the cyborg girl had disappeared. Some said that Linh Cinder was working for the Commonwealth government, or Queen Levana, or that she was in cahoots with a secret society determined to overthrow one government or another, or that she was the missing Lunar princess, or that she knew where the Lunar princess was, or that she was somehow tied to the spread of letumosis, or that she had seduced Emperor Kaito and was now pregnant with a Lunar-Earthen-cyborg thing.

There were almost as many rumors surrounding Carswell Thorne. They included theories on the real reason that he was in prison, such as plotting to kill the last emperor, or how he’d been working with Linh Cinder for years prior to her arrest, or how he was connected to an underground network that had infiltrated the prison system years ago in preparation for the day when he would require their assistance. This newest theory was suggesting that Carswell Thorne was, in fact, an undercover Lunar thaumaturge meant to assist Linh Cinder with her escape so that Luna would have an excuse for starting the war.

Essentially, nobody knew anything.

Except for Cress, who knew the truth of Carswell Thorne’s crimes, his trial, and his escape—at least, the elements of the escape she’d been able to piece together using prison surveillance video and the statements from the on-duty guards.

In fact, Cress was convinced that she knew more about Carswell Thorne than anyone else alive. In a life in which newness and novelty were so rare, he had become a fixture of fascination to her. At first, she was disgusted by him and his apparent greed and recklessness. When he’d deserted the military, he’d left half a dozen cadets and two commanding officers stranded on an island in the Caribbean. He had stolen a collection of second-era goddess sculptures from a private collector in the Eastern Commonwealth and a set of Venezuelan dream dolls on loan to a museum in Australia to potentially never be seen in public again. There were additional claims of an unsuccessful robbery of a young widow from the Commonwealth who owned an extensive collection of antique jewelry.

Cress had continued to dig, entranced by his path of self-destruction. Like watching an asteroid collision, she couldn’t look away.

But then, strange anomalies had begun to creep up in her research.

Age eight. The city of Los Angeles spent four days in panic after a rare Sumatran tiger escaped from the zoo. Video surveillance of the cage showed the young Carswell Thorne, there on a field trip with his class, opening the cage. He later told the authorities that the tiger had looked sad locked up like that, and that he didn’t regret it. Luckily, no one, including the tiger, had been hurt.

Age eleven. A police report was filed by his parents claiming they’d been robbed—overnight, a second-era diamond necklace had gone missing from his mother’s jewelry chest. The necklace was traced to a net sales listing, where it had recently sold for 40,000 univs to a buyer in Brazil. The seller was, of course, Carswell himself, who had not yet had a chance to send off the necklace, and was forced to return the payment, along with an official apology. That apology, made public record to prevent other teens from getting the same idea, claimed that he was only trying to raise money for a local charity offering android assistance to the elderly.

Age thirteen. Carswell Thorne was given a weeklong school suspension after fighting with three boys in his grade, a fight he had lost according to the school’s med-droid report. His statement proclaimed that one of the boys had stolen a portscreen from a girl named Kate Fallow. Carswell had been trying to get it back.

One situation after another was brought to Cress’s attention. Theft, violence, trespassing, school suspensions, police reprimands. Yet Carswell Thorne, when given a chance to explain, always had a reason. A good reason. A heart-stopping, pulse-racing, awe-inspiring reason.

Like the sun rising over Earth’s horizon, her perception began to change. Carswell Thorne wasn’t a heartless scoundrel at all. If anyone bothered to get to know him, they would see that he was compassionate and chivalrous.

He was exactly the kind of hero Cress had been dreaming about her entire life.

With that discovery, thoughts of Carswell Thorne began to infiltrate her every waking moment. She dreamed of deep soul connections and passionate kisses and daring escapades. She was certain that he simply had to meet her, just once, and he would feel the same way. It would be like those epic love affairs that exploded into existence and burned white hot for all eternity. The type of love that time and distance and even death couldn’t separate.

Because if there was one thing Cress knew about heroes, it was that they could not resist a damsel in distress.

And she was nothing if not in distress.

Four

Scarlet pressed a cotton pad to the corner of Wolf’s mouth, shaking her head. "She may not get in many hits, but when she does, she makes them