Forty-Five
Iko blew kisses and waved—a fluttery, five-fingered wave—as the podship coasted off the road and merged with the morning traffic. It was not a far walk to the warehouse, but she could feel her internal processor humming with excitement the whole way.
By her calculation, she would be arriving at the warehouse by 07:25. The delivery hover filled with the palace’s order of sixty escorts was set to depart from the warehouse at 07:32. Half of the escorts would be dropped off at the catering office by 07:58. The rest would be delivered to the florist at 08:43, to be taken to the palace along with the human staff.
Iko expected that she would be inside the palace by no later than 09:50.
The industrial district was mostly deserted. Much of the city, and perhaps the whole world, had taken this as a holiday in order to watch the royal wedding. No one was around to notice Iko as she strutted down the alley toward the warehouse or hopped blithely over the chain-link fence into the yard where five delivery ships were backed up to the warehouse loading docks.
She was dressed simply in black slacks and a white blouse. She was still a little disappointed that she couldn’t wear a fancy ball gown, but she felt stunning in her own way.
She couldn’t wait for Emperor Kai to see her. The thought put an extra bounce in her step as she rounded the front of the first ship and darted up the stairs into the loading dock.
The sight before her made her pause and almost crash face-first onto her perfectly shaped nose.
The warehouse was filled with escort-droids, mostly girls, of all different skin tones and hair colors. Most were unclothed, sitting on the ground with their arms wrapped compactly around their knees and their heads tucked down. There were well over two hundred androids lined up in neat rows. Some had packing tape and protective tissue wrapped around their limbs to protect them during shipping. Some had been loaded onto pallets and settled onto plastic crates. Packing foam and cardboard littered the floor around them.
On the wall to Iko’s left there were three stories of metal shelving filled with the packing crates, all labeled with the escort’s makes and models and special features.
“Is this all of them?” said a man.
Iko ducked behind the wall of the warehouse, before inching forward and peering around the doorjamb. She spotted sixty androids—forty-five female and fifteen male, all standing in neat rows. They were all dressed in identical black pants and blush-toned silk tops, simple mandarin-collared dress shirts for the men, and elegant wraps for the women that tied at the waists and draped kimono-style on their arms. Each girl had her hair pulled into a tight bun with an orchid tucked into the side.
“Checking off the order now,” said a woman, who was marching between the rows and making notations on a portscreen. “The order form specified a petite model of make 618, not the medium.”
“I know, but our last petite got shipped out last week. I cleared the change with the palace on Thursday.”
The woman tapped something into the port. “Fifty-nine … sixty. That’s all of them.”
“Great. Let’s load them up. Can’t let them be late for their royal mission.” The man pulled up the massive rolling door, opening the bay to one of the delivery ships, as the woman began making her way through the androids again, opening a panel in each of their necks. Their postures softened.
“Enter single file,” ordered the man. “Squeeze in tight. It’ll be a close fit.”
The androids marched one by one into the ship.
There was no way Iko could get all the way over there without being noticed, and her different clothes would make it clear that she didn’t belong.
The idea that they could mistake her for a rogue android and send her out for reprogramming made her wiring quiver.
Keeping low, she slinked along the wall, away from the two employees, and ducked beneath the first tower of industrial shelving. Hidden behind the crates, she made her way toward the rows of escort-droids that were waiting to be packaged up. Reaching the last row, she crouched down behind an android and felt for the latch on her neck. Iko glanced up to see that half of the rental escort-droids had already settled into the ship.
Humming to herself, she turned the android on. The processor whirred and her head raised. This one had white-blonde hair tipped with florescent green that hung to her waist. Iko brushed her hair off her shoulder and whispered, “I command you to stand up, scream, and run for the exit.”
The girl launched to her feet almost before Iko finished speaking. She started to scream, a spine-chilling, ear-bleeding sound.
Iko threw herself to the ground behind the row of still-seated and oblivious androids and adjusted the volume on her audio processor, but it was too late. The android had already stopped screaming and was now running full speed for the exit, knocking her statue-like brethren over as she passed.
Iko heard the two employees’ cries of shock, and then their footsteps pounding as they chased after the android. As soon as they jumped down into the loading yard, Iko bounced up and scurried through the rows of androids. The rental escorts said nothing, only blinked at her lazily as she pushed her way into their midst.
“Sorry, sorry, don’t mind me, coming through, oh why hello there—” This to a particularly handsome Kai look-alike droid, which had no more reaction than any of the others. “Or not,” she muttered, brushing past him. “Pardon me, a little space, please?”
By the time the two workers had returned, winded and ranting about faulty personality chips and those imbeciles up in programming, Iko had settled comfortably in the back of the ship, squeezed between two of her distant cousins and finding it difficult not to grin like a lunatic.
As it turned out, being human was every bit as much fun as she’d always thought it would be.
* * *
It was easy to grasp why the government of 126 years ago had chosen this spot for the royal family’s safe house. It was less than ten miles from the city of New Beijing, but they were separated by such jagged cliffs that it seemed as though they had entered another country entirely. The house itself was built in a valley carved out with overgrown rice terraces, though Cinder doubted any rice had been cultivated there in generations, giving the house a sense of abandonment.
Jacin settled the podship beside the farmhouse and they stepped out onto a patch of land still soggy from heavy summer rains. The world was silent around them and the air perfumed with fall grasses and wildflowers.
“I hope the girl was right,” said Jacin, moving toward the house. Despite its boarded-up windows, it appeared well maintained. Cinder suspected that a crew was responsible for checking on it a couple times a year, to patch roof tiles and ensure that the power generator wasn’t malfunctioning, so that if a catastrophe ever did occur, it would still be a safe place for the emperor to retire to.
It was probably monitored, too, but she hoped that today, of all days, the country’s security team would have their hands full elsewhere.
“One way to find out,” she said, walking around to the side of the house, where iron doors rested over a cellar entryway. If Cress was right, these doors didn’t lead to a dank storage cellar at all, but to a tunnel that would run beneath the cliffs and lead them straight into the palace sublevels.
Cinder pried open the doors and whipped her built-in flashlight around the stairs. The light caught on cobwebs and concrete and an old-fashioned switch that would light up the tunnel beneath, at least for a little distance.
“This seems to be it,” she said, glancing back at the group. Thorne, blindfolded, was resting his elbow on a scowling Dr. Erland.
It was going to be a long walk.
“All right,” she said. “Jacin, come back with the Rampion and circle the city until you get my comm.”
“I know.”
“And keep an eye out for anything suspicious. If you detect anything at all, keep flying and wait for us to contact you again.”
“I know.”
“If everything goes as planned, we’ll be at the palace landing pad by 18:00 but if something goes wrong, we might have to come back here, or through one of the escape tunnels to the other safe—”
“Cinder,” said Thorne. “He knows.”
She glared at him and wanted to argue, but going over their escape plan one more time wasn’t going to do anything but remind her of all the things that could go wrong. Jacin did know—they’d discussed the matter into the ground, and everyone was all too aware of how easily this plan could fall apart without him. Without any of them.
“Fine. Let’s go.”