Thirty-Four
“Fateen-ji??”
The girl spun around, her long black braid swinging against her lab coat. “Your Majesty!”
A ghost smile flickered over Kai’s face. “Do you have a moment to assist us with something?”
“Of course.” Fateen tucked a portscreen into her coat pocket.
Kai moved toward the wall of the white corridor, allowing room for researchers and technicians to pass by. “We need access to some patient records. I realize they’re probably confidential, but…” Kai trailed off. There was no “but,” only a vague hope and a fair amount of confidence that his title was the only credential he needed.
But Fateen’s gaze darkened as they flickered between him and Torin. “Patient records?”
“A few weeks ago,” said Kai, “I came to check on Dr. Erland’s progress and Linh Cinder was here. The Lunar cyborg from—”
“I know who Linh Cinder is,” she said, her hardness fading as quickly as it had come.
“Right, of course.” He cleared his throat. “Well, at the time, the doctor told me she was there fixing a med-droid, but I was thinking about it, and I thought maybe she had actually been a…”
“A draft subject?”
“Yes.”
Fateen shrugged. “Actually, she was a volunteer. Come on, there should be a vacant lab you can use. I’m happy to pull up Linh Cinder’s records for you.”
He and Torin followed her, Kai wondering whether she would have been as accommodating had it been any other patient. Since the arrest, Linh Cinder had become a matter of public concern, and therefore her private records weren’t so private anymore.
“She was a volunteer? Really?”
“Yes. I was here the day she was brought in. They’d had to override her system to get her in here. I guess she put up quite a fight when they came for her.”
Kai frowned. “Why would a volunteer put up a fight?”
“I’m using volunteer in the official sense. I believe her legal guardian recommended her for the testing.” She swiped her wrist over an ID scanner, then ushered them into Lab 6D. The room smelled of bleach and peroxide and every surface glistened to a perfect shine. A counter along the far wall was set before a window overlooking a quarantine room. Kai grimaced, reminded of his father’s last days spent in a room not entirely unlike that one, although his had been equipped with blankets and pillows, his favorite music, a tranquil water fountain. The patients who came to these labs would not have received the same luxuries.
Fateen paced to the adjoining wall. “Screen, on,” she said, tapping something into her portscreen. “I do believe these records were a part of the investigation following her jailbreak, Your Majesty. Do you think the detectives may have missed something?”
He threaded his fingers through his hair. “No. I’m just trying to answer some of my own questions.”
The lab’s log-in screen faded, replaced with a patient profile. Her profile.
LINH CINDER, LICENSED MECHANIC
ID #0097917305
BORN 29 NOV 109 T.E.
RESIDENT OF NEW BEIJING, EASTERN COMMONWEALTH. WARD OF LINH ADRI.
CYBORG RATIO: 36.28%
“Is there something specific you’re looking for?” Fateen asked, sliding her fingers along the screen so that the profile trekked down into blood type (A), allergies (none), and medications (unknown).
Then the plague test. Kai stepped closer. “What’s this?”
“The doctor’s notes from when we injected her with the letumosis microbe solution. How much we gave her and, subsequently, how long it took her body to rid itself of the disease.”
At the end of the study, the simple words.
CONCLUSION: LETUMOSIS IMMUNITY CONFIRMED
“Immunity,” said Torin, coming to stand beside them. “Did we know about this?”
“Perhaps the detectives didn’t think it was relevant to their search? But it’s common knowledge here in the labs. Many of us have theorized it’s a result of her Lunar immune system. There’s a long-held theory that letumosis was brought here by migrating Lunars, who are unaffected carriers of the disease.”
Kai fidgeted with his shirt’s collar. How many Lunars would have had to come to Earth to create such a widespread epidemic? If this theory was correct, they could have a lot more fugitives on the planet than he’d realized. He groaned at the thought—the mere idea of having to deal with more Lunars made him want to beat his head against a wall.
“What does this mean?” asked Torin, pointing to a box at the bottom of the profile.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: FINALLY. I’VE FOUND HER.
The words gave Kai a chill, but he wasn’t sure why.
Fateen shook her head. “Nobody knows. Dr. Erland entered it, but he gave no indication of what it meant. Probably it refers to her immunity—he finally found what he was looking for when she was brought in.” Her tone became bitter. “Though lots of good that did us when both of them decided to skip town.”
Fateen’s port pinged and she glanced down on it. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. It seems today’s draft subject has just arrived.”
Kai ripped his attention away from those haunting words. “The draft is still in effect?”
“Of course,” Fateen said with a smile, and Kai realized what a stupid question it was. Here he was, the emperor, and he had no idea what was going on in his own country. In his own research labs.
“With Dr. Erland gone, I just thought maybe it was over,” he explained.
“Dr. Erland may be a traitor, but there are still a lot of people here who believe in what we’re doing. We won’t quit until we’ve found a cure.”
“You’re doing great work here,” said Torin. “The crown appreciates all the advances that have been made already in these labs.”
Fateen tucked her port back into her pocket. “We’ve all lost someone to this disease.”
Kai’s tongue grew heavy. “Fateen-ji?, did Dr. Erland ever inform you that Queen Levana has developed an antidote?”
She blinked at him, confused. “Queen Levana?”
He glanced at Cinder’s chart, evidence of her immunity—and her Lunar biology. “A part of our marriage alliance will include the manufacturing and distribution of this antidote.”
Torin’s voice was terse. “Though His Majesty will require that this information remain confidential until the crown issues an official statement.”
“I see,” she said slowly, still watching Kai. “That would change everything.”
“It would.”
Her comm pinged again. Shaking off her surprise, Fateen bowed to Kai. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. If you would excuse me?”
“Of course.” Torin gestured toward the hall. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“My pleasure. Take all the time you need.”
She bowed and left the lab with her braid swinging. The moment the door closed behind her, Torin scowled at the emperor. “What reason did you have for giving her that information? Until the antidote is confirmed as both effective, harmless, and capable of reproduction, it’s foolhardy to spread such rumors.”
“I know,” said Kai. “It just seemed like she should know. She mentioned the draft and I realized how many people are still dying. Not just being killed by the disease, but being killed by us while we try to find a cure, and all the while an antidote is out there, just out of…” His eyes widened. Immunity confirmed. “Stars. The queen’s antidote!”
“Pardon me?”
“Cinder was here the day I gave the antidote to Dr. Erland. He must have given it to her, and she went straight to the quarantines, knowing that she was immune. She was taking it to her sister, trying to save her. But she must have been too late, so she gave the antidote to that little boy instead, Chang Sunto.” He shook his head, surprised at how light this realization made him. He found himself smiling. “Her guardian is wrong. Cinder didn’t take her sister’s ID chip because she was jealous or she wanted to steal her identity or anything like that. She took it because she loved her.”
“And you believe that cutting out a loved one’s ID chip is a healthy response?”
“Maybe she’d somehow figured out that the androids were harvesting them and giving them to Lunars. Or maybe she was just in shock. But I don’t think it was out of malice.”
He collapsed against the wall, feeling as if he’d just discovered an important clue in the mystery that was Linh Cinder. “We should let Fateen-ji? and the others know that Chang Sunto wasn’t a miraculous recovery. This confirms that the queen’s antidote is real, and maybe they can use that information in their research. It might be useful, or—”
His elbow bumped the netscreen and an image shimmered beside him. Kai jumped away as the holograph projected out of the screen, rotating within arm’s reach.
It was a girl, life-size, her different layers flickering and folding into one another. Skin and scar tissue melded with a steel hand and leg. Wires merged with her nervous system. Blue blood pumped through silicon heart chambers. All the inorganic tissue had a faint glow, as the holograph pinpointed what wasn’t natural about her so that even the untrained eye could comprehend.
Cyborg.
Kai backed away, feeling disoriented as he gaped at her. Even her eyes had that faint glow to them, along with the optic nerves that stretched to the back of her brain, where there was a metal plate fitted with ports and cables and wires and an access hatch that opened in the back of her skull.
He remembered her guardian saying that Cinder was unable to cry, but he’d never thought … never expected this. Her eyes, her brain …
He looked away and dragged a palm down his face. This was an invasion, a terrible kind of voyeurism, and the sudden guilt made him wish he could erase the sight from his mind forever. “Screen, off.”
A silence engulfed them, and he wondered if Torin felt the same guilt he did, or if he’d even been caught by the same morbid curiosity.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?”
“Fine.” He gulped. “We knew she was cyborg. None of this should be a surprise. I just hadn’t expected it to be so much.”
Torin slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry. I know I haven’t always been fair where Linh Cinder was concerned. From the moment I saw you talking to her at the ball, I’ve been worried she would be an unnecessary distraction to you, and you were already dealing with so much. But it’s obvious that you did have legitimate feelings for her, and I’m sorry for all that’s happened since then.”
Kai shrugged uncomfortably. “The problem with that is that even I don’t know if I had legitimate feelings for her, or if it was always just a trick.”
“Your Majesty. The Lunar gift has limitations. If Linh Cinder had been forcing these feelings onto you, then you wouldn’t still be feeling them.”
Starting, Kai met Torin’s gaze. “I don’t…” He gulped, heat climbing up his neck. “It’s that obvious?”
“Well, as Queen Levana likes to point out, you are still young and not yet adept at disguising your emotions like the rest of us.” Torin smiled, a teasing look that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “To be frank, I feel that it is one of your better qualities.”
Kai rolled his eyes. “Ironically, I think that might be why I liked Cinder so much in the first place.”
“That she couldn’t disguise her emotions?”
“That she didn’t try. At least, that’s how it seemed.” Kai leaned back against the exam table, feeling the sterile paper crinkle beneath his fingers. “Sometimes it just seems like everyone around me is pretending. The Lunars are the worst. Levana and her entourage … Everything about them is so fake. I mean, I’m engaged to Levana, and I still don’t even know what she really looks like. But it isn’t just them. It’s the other Union leaders, even my own cabinet members. Everyone is trying to impress everyone else. Trying to make themselves out to be smarter or more confident than they actually are.”
He raked his hand through his hair. “And then there was Cinder. This completely normal girl, working this completely mundane job. She was always covered in dirt or grease and she was so brilliant when she was fixing things. And she joked about stuff with me, like she was talking to a normal guy, not a prince. Everything about her seemed so genuine. At least, that’s what I’d thought. But then it turned out she was just like everyone else.”
Torin paced to the window overlooking the quarantine room. “And yet you’re still trying to find reasons to believe in her.”
It was true. This whole escapade had been sparked by Torin’s accusations that Kai didn’t know anything about Cinder. That even now, knowing that she was cyborg, knowing that she was Lunar, he still wanted to believe that not everything about her had been based on some complicated deception.
And in coming here, he had learned some things.
He’d learned that she was immune to letumosis, that maybe all Lunars were.
He’d learned that those brown eyes that kept infiltrating his dreams had been man-made, or had at least been tampered with.
He’d learned that her guardian had sold her body off for testing, and that she hadn’t hated her sister, and that the cyborg draft was still in effect. Still ordering cyborgs to the labs every day. Still sacrificing them in order to find an antidote that Queen Levana already had.
“Why cyborgs?” he murmured. “Why do we only use cyborgs for the draft?”
Torin sighed. “All due respect, Your Majesty. Do you really think this is the best issue to be concerning yourself with right now? With the wedding, the alliance, the war…”
“Yes, I do. It’s a valid question. How did our society decide that their lives are worth less? I’m responsible for everything that happens in this government—everything. And when something affects the citizens like this…”
The thought struck him like a bullet.
They weren’t citizens. Or, they were, but it was more complicated than that, had been since the Cyborg Protection Act had been instated by his grandfather decades ago. The act came after a series of devastating cyborg crimes had caused widespread hatred and led to catastrophic riots in every major city in the Commonwealth. The protests may have been prompted by the violent spree, but they were a result of generations of growing disdain. For years people had been complaining about the rising population of cyborgs, many of whom received their surgeries at the hands of taxpayers.
Cyborgs were too smart, people had complained. They were cheating the average man out of his wages.
Cyborgs were too skilled. They were taking jobs away from hardworking, average citizens.
Cyborgs were too strong. They shouldn’t be allowed to compete in sporting events with regular people. It gave them an unfair advantage.
And then one small group of cyborgs had gone on a spree of violence and theft and destruction, demonstrating just how dangerous they could be.
If doctors and scientists were going to continue to perform these operations, people argued, there needed to be restrictions placed on their kind. They needed to be controlled.
Kai had studied it all when he was fourteen years old. He had agreed with the laws. He’d been convinced, as his grandfather before him had been, that they were so obviously right. Cyborgs required special laws and provisions, for the safety of everyone.
Didn’t they?
Until this moment, he didn’t think he’d given the question a second thought.
Realizing that he’d been staring at an empty lab table with his knuckles pressed against his forehead, he turned around and stood a little straighter. Torin was watching him with that ever-present wise expression that so often drove him crazy, waiting patiently for Kai to form his thoughts.
“Is it possible the laws are wrong?” he said, peculiarly nervous, like he was speaking blasphemy against his family and his country’s age-old traditions. “About cyborgs?”
Torin peered at him for a long time, giving no hint to what he thought of Kai’s question, until finally he sighed. “The Cyborg Protection Act was written up with good intentions. The people saw a need to control the growing cyborg population, and the violence has never again reached the level it was at that time.”
Kai’s shoulders sloped. Torin was probably right. His grandfather had probably been right. And yet …
“And yet,” said Torin, “I believe it is the mark of a great leader to question the decisions that came before him. Perhaps, once we’ve solved some of our more immediate problems, we can readdress this.”
More immediate problems.
“I don’t disagree with you, Torin. But there’s a draft subject in this very research wing, at this very moment. I’m sure this seems like an immediate problem to him … or her.”
“Your Majesty, you cannot solve every problem in a week. You need to give yourself time—”
“You agree that it’s a problem then?”
Torin frowned. “Thousands of citizens are dying from this disease. Would you discontinue the draft and the research opportunities it provides on the basis that the Lunars are going to solve this for us?”
“No, of course not. But using cyborgs, and only cyborgs … it seems wrong. Doesn’t it?”
“Because of Linh Cinder?”
“No! Because of everyone. Because whatever science has made them, they were once human too. And I don’t believe—I can’t believe that they’re all monsters. Whose idea was the draft anyway? Where did it come from?”
Torin glanced toward the netscreen, looking strangely conflicted. “If I recall, it was Dmitri Erland’s idea. We had many meetings about it. Your father wasn’t sure at first, but Dr. Erland convinced us that it was for the best of the Commonwealth. Cyborgs are easy to register, easy to track, and with their legal restrictions—”
“Easy to take advantage of.”
“No, Your Majesty. Easy to convince both them and the people that they are the best candidates for the testing.”
“Because they aren’t human?”
He could see that Torin was growing frustrated. “Because their bodies have already been aided by science. Because now it’s their turn to give back—for the good of everyone.”
“They should have a choice.”
“They had a choice when they accepted the surgical alterations. Everyone is well aware what the laws are regarding cyborg rights.”
Kai thrust his finger toward the blackened netscreen. “Cinder became a cyborg when she was eleven, after a freak hover accident. You think an eleven-year-old had a choice about anything?”
“Her parents—” Torin paused.
According to the file, Cinder’s parents had died in that same hover accident. They didn’t know who had approved her cyborg surgery.
Torin set his mouth into a straight, displeased line. “She is an unusual circumstance.”
“Maybe so, but it still doesn’t feel right.” Kai paced to the quarantine window, rubbing a knot in his neck. “I’m putting an end to it. Today.”
“Are you sure this is the message you want to send to the people? That we’re giving up on an antidote?”
“We’re not giving up. I’m not giving up. But we can’t force people into this. We’ll raise the grant money for volunteers. We’ll increase our awareness programs, encourage people to volunteer themselves if they choose to. But as of now, the draft is over.”