War strategies? Classified communications? Evidence for blackmail? Whatever it was, Kai clearly thought it would help, and he’d trusted Cinder to save it.
“No pressure or anything,” she muttered, gripping a flashlight between her teeth so she could see inside the android. She grabbed a pair of pliers and coerced the wires from one side of its cranium to the other. Its configuration was similar to Iko’s, so Cinder felt a familiarity with its parts, knew exactly where to find all the important connections. She checked that the wire connectors were sound, that the battery held power, that no important pieces were missing, and everything seemed fine. She cleaned out the noise translator and adjusted the internal fan, but Nainsi the android remained a lifeless statue of plastic and aluminum.
“All dressed up with nowhere to go,” said Iko from the doorway.
Cinder spit out the flashlight with a laugh and glanced down at her oil-stained cargo pants. “Yeah, right. All I need is a tiara.”
“I was talking about me.”
She spun her chair around. Iko had draped a strand of Adri’s pearls around her bulbous head and smeared cherry lipstick beneath her sensor in a horrible imitation of lips.
Cinder laughed. “Wow. That’s a great color on you.”
“Do you think?” Iko wheeled her way into the room and paused before Cinder’s desk, trying to catch her reflection in the netscreen. “I was imagining going to the ball and dancing with the prince.”
Cinder rubbed her jaw with one hand and mindlessly tapped the table with the other. “Funny. I’ve found myself imagining that exact thing lately.”
“I knew you liked him. You pretend to be immune to his charms, but I could see the way you looked at him at the market.” Iko rubbed at the lipstick, smearing it across her blank white chin.
“Yeah, well.” Cinder pinched her metal fingers with the pliers’ nose. “We all have our weaknesses.”
“I know,” said Iko. “Mine is shoes.”
Cinder tossed the tool onto her desk. Something like guilt was beginning to grow in her when Iko was around. She knew she should tell Iko about being Lunar, that Iko more than anyone would understand what it was like to be different and unwanted. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. By the way, Iko, it turns out I’m Lunar. You don’t mind, do you?
“What are you doing down here?” she asked instead.
“Just seeing if you need help. I’m supposed to be dusting the air vents, but Adri was in the bath.”
“So?”
“I could hear her crying.”
Cinder blinked. “Oh.”
“It was making me feel useless.”
“I see.”
Iko was not a normal servant android, but she did retain one prominent trait—uselessness was the worst emotion they knew.
“Well, sure, you can help,” Cinder said, rubbing her hands together. “Just don’t let her catch you with those pearls.”
Iko lifted the beaded necklace up with her prongs, and Cinder noticed she was wearing the ribbon Peony had given her. She pulled back, as if she’d been stung. “How about some light?”
The blue sensor brightened, shedding a spotlight into Nainsi’s interior.
Cinder twisted up her lips. “Do you think it could have a virus?”
“Maybe her programming was overwhelmed by Prince Kai’s uncanny hotness.”
Cinder flinched. “Can we please not talk about the prince?”
“I don’t think that will be possible. You’re working on his android, after all. Just think about the things she knows, the things she’s seen and—” Iko’s voice sputtered. “Do you think she’s seen him in the nude?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Cinder yanked off her gloves and tossed them onto the table. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Well stop.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Cinder pushed her chair back from the worktable and swung both legs up to rest on top of it. “It has to be a software issue.”
She sneered to herself. Software issues usually came down to reinstallation, but that would turn the android into a blank slate. She didn’t know if Kai was concerned with the android’s personality chip, which had probably developed into something quite complicated after twenty years of service, but she did know Kai was concerned with something in this android’s hard drive, and she didn’t want to risk wiping whatever it was.
The only way to determine what was wrong and if a reboot was necessary was to check the android’s internal diagnostics, and that required plugging in. Cinder hated plugging in. Connecting her own wiring with a foreign object had always felt hazardous, like if she wasn’t careful, her own software could be overridden.
Chastising herself for being squeamish, she reached for the panel in the back of her head. Her fingernail caught the small latch and it swung open.
“What’s that?”
Cinder stared at Iko’s outstretched prong. “What’s what?”