Winter (The Lunar Chronicles 4)

They reached another set of double doors inset with an artfully rendered map showing the entirety of the maglev system.

“This is the platform,” said Iko, the only one of them not panting.

“I’ll go out first,” said Cinder. “If anyone is out there, I’ll use a glamour to make them see us as members of Levana’s court. Any thaumaturges we kill on sight. Everyone else we ignore.”

“What about guards?” said Iko.

“Guards are easy to control. Let me deal with them.” She adjusted the scratchy gloves Kai had given her, then opened her thoughts, prepared to detect the bioelectricity off anyone who might have been on the platform. She pressed her palm against the doors. At her touch, they divided into four sections that spiraled into the walls. Cinder stepped onto the platform.

Empty.

She couldn’t imagine it would be that way for long.

Three shimmering white shuttles waited on the rails. They ran for the first one. Cinder let the others climb in first, ready to call up a glamour at the first sign of someone approaching, but the platform remained silent. Wolf grabbed Cinder and dragged her in with them.

“How do we work this thing?” Iko cried, pounding at the control screen. The shuttle remained open and motionless. “Shut door! Move! Get us out of here!”

“It won’t work for you,” said Wolf, leaning past Iko to press all five fingertips against the screen. It lit up and the doors glided shut.

It was a false sense of protection, but Cinder couldn’t help a breath of relief.

A tranquil voice filled the shuttle. “Welcome, Alpha Ze’ev Kesley, Lunar Special Operative Number 962. Where shall I take you?”

He glanced at Cinder.

She stared at the screen, sifting through the possibilities. Giving directions to RM-9 was a sure way of leading Levana straight to them. She pulled up the map of Luna on her retina display, trying to strategize the best route, one that would lead Levana off their track.

“WS-1,” said Thorne. He was slumped on the floor between the two upholstered benches, his hands draped over his knees, his head against the wall. Between the disheartened expression and collapsed posture, he was almost unrecognizable. But at his voice, the shuttle rose up on the magnetic force beneath the rails and started racing away from Artemisia.

“Waste salvage?” Iko said.

Thorne shrugged. “I thought it would be good to have a Plan B in case something like this happened.”

After a short silence, in which Iko’s internal workings hummed, she said, “And Plan B is to go to the waste salvage sector?”

Thorne looked up. His voice was neutral as he explained, “It’s a short trip from Artemisia, so we won’t be giving Levana too much time to regroup and send people after us before we get out of this shuttle. And it’s one of the most connected sectors on Luna, given that everyone has waste. There are fifteen maglev tunnels branching out from that one platform. We can go on foot for a ways, throw them off our course, then start doub—”

“Don’t say it,” said Cinder. “We don’t know if we’ll be recorded in here.”

Thorne shut his mouth and nodded.

Cinder knew he’d been about to say they could start doubling back toward RM-9. She focused in on sector WS-1 on the map in her head, and Thorne was right. It was a smart plan. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it herself. “Good call, Thorne.”

He shrugged again, without enthusiasm. “Criminal mastermind, remember?”

Cinder sagged onto the bench beside Wolf, allowing her body a brief respite from the pumping adrenaline. “The system recognized you.”

“Every Lunar citizen is in the database. I’ve only been missing for a couple of months—I figured they wouldn’t have had my identity removed yet.”

“Do you think they’ll notice if a special operative who’s supposed to be on Earth suddenly shows up again?”

“I don’t know. But as long as we’re traveling by shuttle, using my identity will draw less attention than yours. And without Cress here to break into it…”

Thorne flinched and pressed his forehead into the shuttle wall. They sat in silence for a long time, the lack of Cress’s presence filling up the hollow spaces around them.

Only in her absence did Cinder realize how much they’d been relying on Cress. She could have sneaked them through the maglev system without having to input any identities. And Cress had been confident that, once they arrived in RM-9, she could disable any surveillance equipment that might give them away. Plus there was the all-important matter of infiltrating Luna’s broadcasting system to share Cinder’s message with Luna’s citizens.

But knowing how much Cress’s loss impacted their objectives was nothing compared to the horror Cinder felt. Cress would be tortured for information on their whereabouts and then almost certainly killed.

“She’s a shell,” Cinder said. “They can’t detect her bioelectricity. As long as she stays hidden, she’ll be—”

“Don’t,” said Thorne.

Cinder stared at his whitened knuckles and struggled for something meaningful to say. Her grand plan of revolution and change had just begun and already she felt like a failure. This seemed worse than failing the people of Luna, though. She’d failed the people she cared about most in the universe.

Finally, she whispered, “I’m so sorry, Thorne.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

Twenty-Three

Jacin was extra broody as Winter led him into the elevator.

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” he grumbled, eyeing Winter suspiciously.

“You have a bad feeling about everything,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder. It was a playful gesture, one that always made her giddy to have returned. This time, it was not returned. She frowned. “I forgot something down in the ports. It will only take a moment.”

She fluttered her lashes at him.

He scowled and looked away. He was in guard mode. Uniform. Posture. Inability to hold eye contact for more than half a second.

Guard Jacin was not her favorite Jacin, but she knew it was only a disguise, and one that was forced upon him.

She was itching to tell him the truth from the instant they’d left the ports. She was stricken with anxiety over the fate of the girl she’d ushered into that crate. Was she still in hiding? Did she try to run and rejoin her friends? Had she been found? Captured? Killed?

This girl was an ally of Linh Cinder’s, and perhaps a friend of her Scarlet’s as well. Fear for her life turned Winter into a pacing, fidgety mess for the two hours that she’d forced herself to wait in her chambers, so as not to draw attention to her return to the docks. Her awareness of the palace surveillance system kept her from telling the secret to even Jacin. It had been a difficult secret to retain.

But if she’d been acting odd, even Jacin didn’t ask her about it. No doubt the day’s excitement was plenty reason enough for her agitation.

“What was it?” Jacin asked.

Winter peeled her focus from the descending indicator above the elevator door. “Pardon?”

“What did you forget in the ports?”

“Oh. You’ll see.”

“Princess—”