panel and removed the nodes from her chest. The heart rate machine flatlined.
“Hello?” said Cinder. “Could you tell me what’s going on?”
No answer. A green light flickered beside the android’s sensor, and the door opened into a room’s white tiled hallway. The med-droid wheeled Cinder’s exam table out of the lab, past the mirror. The corridor was empty and smelled of bleach, and one of the table’s wheels squeaked in time with the android’s treads.
Cinder craned her head but was unable to meet the med-droid’s sensor. “I think I have some oil in my calf if you’d like me to fix that wheel.”
The android remained silent.
Cinder pressed her lips. Numbered white doors slid past them. “What’s in lab room 4D?”
Silence.
Cinder drummed her fingers, listening to the crinkle of tissue paper and the wheel that was sure to give her a twitch. She caught the sound of voices somewhere far away, down another corridor, and half expected to hear screams coming from behind the closed doors. Then one of the doors opened, and the android pushed her past a black 4D. The room was almost an exact duplicate of the other but without the observation mirror.
Cinder was wheeled alongside another exam table, upon which sat a familiar pair of boots and gloves. Then, to Cinder’s surprise, her shackles released with a simultaneous whistle of air.
She jerked her hands and feet out of the opened metal rings before the android could realize it had made a mistake and bind her again, but the android showed no reaction as it retreated to the hall without comment. The door clanked shut behind it.
Shivering, Cinder sat up and searched the room for hidden cameras, but nothing struck her as obvious. A counter along one wall held the same heart-rate machines and ratio detectors as the other had. One netscreen to her right sat blank. The door. Two exam tables. And her.
She swung her legs over the side and snatched up her gloves and boots. While lacing up her left boot, she remembered the tools she’d stashed in her leg before leaving the junkyard, what seemed like eons ago. She unlatched the compartment and was relieved to find it hadn’t been raided. With a steadying breath, she grabbed the largest, heaviest tool she had—a wrench—before closing the compartment and tying off her boot.
With her synthetic limbs covered and a weapon in hand, she felt better. Still tense, but not as vulnerable as before.
More confused than ever.
Why give her stuff back if they were going to kill her? Why take her to a new lab?
She rubbed the cool wrench against the bruise on the eye of her elbow. It almost looked like a spot from the plague. She pressed on it with her thumb, glad to feel the dull pain that proved it wasn’t.
Again she scanned the room for a camera, half expecting a small army of med-droids to stampede the room before she could destroy all the lab equipment, but no one came. The hallway outside betrayed no footsteps.
Sliding off the exam table, Cinder went to the door and tested the handle. Locked. An ID scanner was inserted into the frame, but it stayed red when she flashed her wrist before it, so it must have been coded to select personnel.
She went to the cabinets and fiddled with the row of drawers, but none opened.
Tapping the wrench against her thigh, she turned on the netscreen. It blazed to life, a holographic image jumping out at her. It was her again, her medical diagram spliced in half.
She swiped the wrench through the holograph’s abdomen. It flickered, then returned to normal.
Behind her, the door whooshed open.
Cinder spun, tucking the wrench against her side.
An old man in a gray newsboy cap stood before her, holding a portscreen in his left hand and two blood-filled vials in the other. He was shorter than Cinder. A white lab coat hung from his shoulders as it would a model skeleton. Lines drawn into his face suggested he had spent many years thinking very hard over very difficult problems. But his eyes were bluer than the sky and, at that moment, they were smiling.
He reminded her of a child salivating over a sticky bun.
The door shut behind him.
“Hello, Miss Linh.”
Her fingers tightened on the wrench. The strange accent. The disembodied voice.
“I am Dr. Erland, the leading scientist of the royal letumosis research team.”
She forced her shoulders to relax. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a face mask?”
His gray eyebrows lifted. “Whatever for? Are you sick?”
Cinder