Fifty-Three
She was glad that Wolf seemed to have memorized the palace blueprint better than she had, because with all this running up and down stairwells, around corners, and down countless corridors, Cress was completely lost. Wolf, however, hadn’t shown a moment’s hesitation as they ran down the abandoned halls.
“Perfect timing,” Wolf muttered under his breath as they swung around another corner. He grabbed Cress’s elbow and yanked her back before she could collide with Cinder and Iko and the unconscious man hanging between them.
“Well, hello there, strangers,” said Iko.
Wolf nodded, first at Cinder, then the unconscious emperor. “I thought that might be his cologne. Need help?”
Neither Cinder nor Iko objected when he stooped down and swung Kai over one shoulder.
If Cress hadn’t been panicked and flustered and running on eight quarts of throbbing adrenaline, she would have been much more impressed.
“Labs are this way,” Cinder said, taking the lead. Cress picked up her skirt and hurried after her. “Any surprises?”
“Not so far,” Cress answered. “You?”
Cinder shook her head as they darted across the sky bridge into the research wing. “Not really. Just a lot of … this.”
A palace guard appeared in front of them, gripping his gun. “Stop ri—!”
The word became a strangled gasp as his face went blank. His hands fell slack at his sides, the gun dropping to the floor.
Cress gasped, but Cinder pulled her around his dazed form without breaking pace.
“Wow,” said Cress between her panting. “Good thing you’ve been practicing, right?”
“I wish that were the reason it’s so easy,” she said, shaking her head as they rounded another corner. “With Wolf, at least there was some struggle. Some effort involved. But with Earthens … it’s too easy.” She gulped. “If she becomes empress, Earth doesn’t stand a chance.”
They arrived at an elevator bank and Cress punched in the override code.
“Well then,” she said, flashing a weary smile. “Good thing she’s not going to be empress.”
There seemed to be a mutual sigh as they crowded into the elevator. Cress’s nerves were sparking like a million electrodes. Sweat was soaking into the back of her expensive dress. She was frazzled from all the running and the stairs and the panic, but at least they had a brief moment to pause and breathe and prepare themselves for what came next. Cress couldn’t help sneaking a curious glance at the man draped over Wolf’s shoulder. The emperor.
Of all the times she’d imagined meeting him, after years of spying on him and his father, she’d never imagined their first meeting would be quite like this.
Wolf stiffened as the elevator began to slow. “There’s a lot of them out there.”
“We knew there would be,” said Cinder. “Thorne and the doctor had better be ready.”
Cress shifted back, happy to keep Cinder and Wolf between her and whatever awaited them in the hall.
Iko bent toward her. “That dress looks amazing on you,” she said. “Cinder, doesn’t she look amazing?”
Cinder sighed as the elevator came to a full stop. “Iko, after this we’re going to start working on occasion appropriateness.”
The doors slid open and dozens of palace guards in red and gold uniforms stood before them.
“And not an android among them,” Cinder muttered. “Kai and I are going to have a long talk about palace security.” She marched into the corridor. “You,” she ordered, without gesturing to anyone in particular as far as Cress could tell, “are now our personal guard. Form a barrier.”
Eight guards shuffled forward and, in robotic unison, formed a wall between them and their peers. Confusion flashed through the eyes of the others.
Cinder held her palm out and one of the guards set a gun into it, handle first.
She aimed it at Kai’s head, her expression the picture of cold neutrality. “If anyone thinks of getting in our way, your emperor is dead. Now, move.”
With their eight personal guards acting as a protective bubble around them, Cress found herself being herded along with the others toward the lab rooms. When they reached the sixth door, Cinder knocked, using the special rhythm they’d devised.
The door swung open a beat later. Thorne was flushed and scowling. He had his cane in one hand, a cloth bundle in the other, and his blindfold still on.
“Doctor’s not coming,” he said.
A hesitation, before Cinder said, “What do you mean he’s not coming?”
He gestured toward the back of the lab and they all pushed inside, leaving Cinder’s brainwashed puppets to linger, baffled, in the hallway. A window was set into the wall, showing a sterile quarantine room. The doctor was seated on top of a lab table, his head hanging down, his fingers fidgeting with his hat.
With a growl, Cinder marched up to the window and pounded on it with her fist.
The doctor lifted his head, messy gray hair sticking out in all directions.
Grabbing a microphone from the desk, Cinder pushed a button and screamed, “We don’t have time for this! Get out here.”
The doctor only smiled, sadly.
“Cinder,” said Thorne, his tone heavy in a way Cress had rarely heard. “He has the plague.”
Cress’s stomach dropped, as Cinder reeled back from the window.
The doctor smoothed down his hair. “Has everyone made it back safely?” he asked, his voice coming through some speaker in the wall.
It took Cinder a moment, but then she stammered, “Yes. Everyone but you.”
A hand landed on Cress’s head. She gasped and recoiled, but Thorne was already wrapping his arm around her shoulders and squeezing her against him. “Just checking it was you,” he whispered.
She blinked up at his profile. The hours they’d spent apart suddenly felt like days, and she realized it could as easily have been him that was being left behind, instead of the doctor. She dug herself further into his embrace.
“I am sorry,” said Dr. Erland, the words crisply spoken, like he’d been waiting to say them. He looked more fragile than ever sitting on that lab table, his face carved with wrinkles. “Miss Linh. Mr. Wolf.” He sighed. “Crescent.”
Her eyes widened. No one had called her that since Sybil. How had he even known?
It was a common name on Luna. Perhaps it was a lucky guess.
“I’ve hurt you all in some way. Been at least partly responsible for some tragedy in your lives. I am sorry.”
Cress gulped, feeling a twinge of regret in the base of her stomach. The doctor still wore a bruise on his jaw from where she’d hit him.
“I have made some important discoveries,” said the doctor. “How much time can you spare?”
Cinder’s hand tightened around the microphone. “Jacin’s ETA is in six minutes.”
“That will have to suffice.” The sorrow on the old man’s face hardened. “Is His Majesty with you?”
“He’s unconscious,” said Cinder.
His eyebrows lifted, almost imperceptibly. “I see. Would you be so kind as to pass on a message to him?” Before Cinder could respond, the doctor pulled on his hat and inhaled a deep breath. “This plague is not a random tragedy. It is biological warfare.”
“What?” Cinder planted her hands on the desk. “What do you mean?”
“The Lunar crown has been using antibodies found in the blood of the ungifted to manufacture an antidote for at least sixteen years, and perhaps much longer. But sixteen years ago, letumosis didn’t even exist, unless it, too, had been manufactured in a Lunar laboratory. Lunars wanted to weaken Earth, and to create a dependency on their antidote.” He patted his chest, as if looking for something in his pocket, but then seemed to realize it was missing. “Right. I’ve indicated my findings on the portscreen that is now in Mr. Thorne’s possession. Please give it to His Majesty when he is recovered. Earth should know that this war did not start with the recent attacks. This war has been going on beneath our noses for over a decade, and I do fear Earth is losing.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Cinder leaned down into the microphone. “We’re not going to lose.”
“I believe you, Miss Linh.” The doctor’s breath shuddered. “Now, would … would Cress come closer, please?”
Cress stiffened. She pressed against Thorne’s side as the others all looked at her, and it was only his gentle nudge that unstuck her feet. She crept toward the window that divided them from the quarantine room.
Only now, as she came to stand before the microphone, did she realize it was a one-way window. She could see the doctor, but on the other side he was probably looking at a reflection of himself.
Cinder cleared her throat, not taking her curious gaze off Cress. “She’s here.”
A pathetic smile tried to climb up the doctor’s lips, but failed.
“Crescent. My Crescent Moon.”
“How do you know my full name?” she asked, too confused to recognize the harshness of her tone.
But the doctor did not seem fazed, even as his lips began to tremble. “Because I named you.”
She shivered, clawing her hands into the folds of her skirt.
“I want you to know that it nearly killed me when I lost you, and I have thought of you every day.” His gaze hovered somewhere near the base of the window. “I always wanted to be a father. Even as a young man. But I was recruited into the crown’s team of scientists immediately following my education—such an honor, you know. My career became everything, and there was no time for a family. I was already in my forties when I married, my wife another scientist whom I had known for many years and never thought I liked very much until she decided that she liked me. She was not much younger than me, and the years passed, and I had given up hope … until, one day, she was pregnant.”
A chill slipped down Cress’s spine. It felt like listening to an old, sad tale, one that she was removed from. One that she felt she knew the ending to, but denial kept a distance between her and the doctor’s words.
“We did all the right things. We decorated a nursery. We planned a celebration. And sometimes at night, she would sing an old lullaby, one that I’d forgotten over the years, and we decided to call you our little Crescent Moon.” His voice broke on the last word and he slumped over, scratching at his hat.
Cress gulped. The window, the sterile room, the man with a dark blue rash, all began to blur in front of her.
“Then you were born, and you were a shell.” His words slurred. “And Sybil came, and I begged—I begged her not to take you, but there was nothing … she wouldn’t … and I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead, and all along you were … if I’d known, Crescent. If I’d known, I never would have left. I would have found a way to save you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.” He hid his face as sobs racked his body.
Pressing her lips together, Cress shook her head, wanting to deny it all, but how could she when he knew her name, and she had his eyes, and—
A tear slipped past her eyelashes, rolling hot down her cheek.
Her father was alive.
Her father was dying.
Her father was here, in front of her, almost in arm’s reach. But he would be left here to die, and she would never see him again.
Cool metal brushed against her wrist, and Cress jumped.
“I’m so sorry,” Cinder said, retracting her hand. “But we have to leave. Dr. Erland…”
“I know, y-yes, I know.” He swiped hastily to clear his face. When he lifted his head, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes glassy. He looked as weak and frail as a broken bird. “I’m s-so sorry this is how … oh, please be careful. Please be safe. My Crescent Moon. I love you. I do love you.”
Her lungs hiccupped, as more tears dripped off her jaw, dotting her silk skirt. She opened her mouth, but no words came. I love you. I love you too. Words that had been so easy in daydreams, and now seemed impossible.
She believed him, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t know if she loved him back.
“Cress,” said Cinder, tightening her grip. “I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
She nodded dumbly.
“Good … good-bye,” she said, the only word that would come, as she was dragged away from the window.
On the other side of the glass, the doctor sobbed. He did not look up again, but he raised a shaking hand in farewell. The tips of his fingers were shriveled and blue.