Eleven
“She has Scarlet,” said Cinder. “Quick—close the hatch! I’ll take the other pod, I’ll follow them—”
Her words faltered, her brain catching up.
She did not know how to fly a podship.
But she could figure it out. She could download some instructions and she could … she would have to …
“Your friend is dying.”
She spun around. She’d forgotten about the Lunar guard.
He was pressing a hand to his side, where Cinder’s projectile was still embedded, but his attention was on Wolf.
Wolf, who was unconscious and surrounded by blood.
“Oh, no. Oh, no.” She ejected the knife in her finger and started cutting the bloodstained fabric away from Wolf’s wounds. “Thorne. We need to get Thorne. Then we can go after Scarlet and I … I’ll bandage Wolf and—”
She glanced at the guard. “Shirt,” she said firmly, although the order was more to focus her own thoughts. In seconds, the guard’s hands were working at her command, removing the empty gun holster and pulling his own bloodied shirt over his head. She was glad to see a second undershirt as well—she had a feeling they were going to need every bit of “bandaging” she could find to stanch Wolf’s bleeding. Eventually they would have to get him to the medbay, but there was no way she could move him in this condition, especially not up that ladder.
She tried to ignore the niggling thought in her head that this was not enough. That not even the bandages in the medbay would be enough.
She grabbed the guard’s shirt and bunched it against Wolf’s chest. At least this bullet had missed his heart. She hoped the other one hadn’t hit anything vital either.
Her thoughts were hazy, repeating over and over in her head. They had to get Thorne. They had to go after Scarlet. They had to save Wolf.
She couldn’t do it all.
She couldn’t do any of it.
“Thorne—” Her voice broke. “Where’s Thorne?” Keeping one hand pressed onto Wolf’s wound, she reached for the guard with the other, grabbing his collar and pulling him toward her. “What did you do to Thorne?”
“Your friend who boarded the satellite,” he said, as much a statement as a question. There was regret in his face, but not enough. “He’s dead.”
She shrieked and slammed him into the wall. “You’re lying!”
He flinched, but didn’t try to protect himself, even though she’d already lost her focus. She could not keep him under her control so long as her thoughts were so divided, so long as this chaos and devastation reigned in her head.
“Mistress Sybil changed the satellite’s trajectory, removing it from orbit. It will burn up during entry. It probably already has. There’s nothing you can do.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Every part of her was trembling. “She wouldn’t have sacrificed her own programmer too.”
But there was no telltale orange light in her vision. He wasn’t lying.
The guard leaned his head back as his gaze skimmed Cinder from head to toe, as if examining an unusual specimen. “She would sacrifice anyone to get to you. The queen seems to believe you’re a threat.”
Cinder ground her teeth so hard she felt that her jaw would snap from the pressure. There it was—stated with such blatant simplicity.
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
They’d been after her.
“Your other shirt,” she whispered. She didn’t bother to control him this time, and he removed the undershirt without argument. Cinder grabbed it from him, spotting the end of her own projectile jutting from his skin, just below his ribs.
Looking away, she pressed the second shirt against the wound in Wolf’s back.
“Roll him onto his side.”
“What?”
“Get him on his side. It’ll open the airway, help him breathe.”
Cinder glowered at him, but a four-second net search confirmed the validity of his suggestion, and she eased Wolf onto his side as gently as she could, positioning his legs like the medical diagram in her brain told her to. The guard didn’t help, but he nodded approvingly when Cinder was done.
“Cinder?”
It was Iko, her voice small and restrained. The ship had become dark, running only on emergency lighting and default systems. Iko’s anxiety was clouding her ability to function as much as Cinder’s was.
“What are we going to do?”
Cinder struggled to breathe. A headache had burst open in her skull. The weight of everything pressed against her until it was almost too tempting to curl up over Wolf’s body and simply give up.
She couldn’t help them. She couldn’t save the world. She couldn’t save anyone.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”
“Finding someplace to hide would be a start,” said the guard, followed by a ripping sound as he tore a shred of material from the hem of his pants. He winced as he yanked out the projectile and tossed it down the corridor, before pressing the fabric against the wound. For the first time, she noticed that he still wore what looked like a large hunting knife sheathed on his belt. He looked up at her when she didn’t respond, his eyes sharp as ice picks. “Maybe someplace your friend can get help. As a thought.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. We just lost both of our pilots and I can’t fly … I don’t know how…”
“I can fly.”
“But Scarlet…”
“Look. Thaumaturge Mira will be contacting Luna and sending for reinforcements, and the queen’s fleet isn’t as far away as you might think. You’re about to have an army on your trail.”
“But—”
“But nothing. You can’t help that other girl. Consider her dead. But you might be able to help him.”
Cinder dropped her chin, curling in on herself as the warring decisions in her head threatened to tear her apart. He was being logical. She recognized that. But it was so hard to admit defeat. To give up on Scarlet. To make that sacrifice and have to live with it.
With every passing second, though, she was closer to losing Wolf too. She glanced down. Wolf’s face was scrunched in pain, his brow beaded with sweat.
“Ship,” said the guard, “calculate our location and relative trajectory over Earth. Where is the closest place we can get to? Someplace not too populated.”
There was a hesitation before Iko said, “Me?”
He squinted up at the ceiling. “Yeah. You.”
“Sorry, right. Calculating now.” The lights brightened. “Following a natural descent to Earth, we could be in central or north Africa in approximately seventeen minutes. A loose thousand-mile radius opens us up to the Mediterranean regions of Europe and the western portion of the Eastern Commonwealth.”
“He needs a hospital,” Cinder murmured, knowing as she said it that there wasn’t a hospital on Earth that wouldn’t know he was one of the queen’s wolf-hybrids as soon as he was admitted. And the risk she posed to take him there herself, and how recognizable the Rampion would be … where could they possibly go that would offer them sanctuary?
Nowhere was safe.
Beneath her, Wolf moaned. His chest rattled.
He needed a hospital, or … a doctor.
Africa. Dr. Erland.
She peered up at the guard and for the first time struggled through the sluggish mess inside her head to wonder why he was doing this. Why hadn’t he killed them all? Why was he helping them?
“You serve the queen,” she said. “How can I trust you?”
His lips twitched, like she’d made a joke, but his eyes were quick to harden again. “I serve my princess. No one else.”
The floor dropped out from beneath her. The princess. His princess.
He knew.
She waited a full breath for her lie detector to recognize his falsehood, but it didn’t. He was telling the truth.
“Africa,” she said. “Iko, take us to Africa—to where the first outbreak of letumosis occurred.”