Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,105
to curl up until she was no larger than a grain of sand, until she blew away into the desert and disappeared.
But she could not disappear. Instead, as Jina stepped aside, she found herself face-to-face with a man well into his years.
She started. They were face-to-face—he was barely taller than her.
Behind a pair of thin wired spectacles, his blue eyes widened, looking remarkably lively despite the wrinkles that folded and creased around them. He was balding, with tufts of untamed gray hair that stuck out above his ears. A bizarre déjà vu struck her, as if she’d seen him before, but that was impossible.
He whipped off his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes. When he replaced them, his lips were puckered and he was examining Cress like a bug for dissection. She pressed back against the wall, until Niels grabbed her elbow and yanked her forward.
“Definitely a shell,” the old man murmured, “and a phantom, it seems.”
Cress’s heart pounded a rough, erratic rhythm against her rib cage.
“I’m asking 32,000 univs for her.”
The man blinked at Jina like he’d forgotten she was there. He stood a bit straighter and made a great fuss about removing his spectacles again, to clean them this time.
Cress dug her fingernails into her palm to distract herself from her panic. She stared past the man. A single window was covered in blinds, and there was dust swirling in and out of a beam of sunlight that knifed through them. There was a closed door, presumably a closet, a desk, a bed, and a pile of rumpled blankets in the corner. The blankets were clotted with blood.
A chill raced across her skin.
Then she spotted the netscreen.
A netscreen. She could comm for help. She could contact the last hotel, in Kufra. She could tell Thorne—
“I will give you 25,000.” The man’s tone had solidified while he cleaned his glasses, and was now all business.
Jina snorted. “I will not hesitate to take this girl to the police and have her deported. I’ll collect my citizen’s reward from them.”
“A mere 1,500 univs? You would sacrifice so much on your pride, Jina?”
“My pride, and to know that one less Lunar is walking around on my planet.” She said this with a sneer, and for the first time it occurred to Cress that Jina might truly hate her—for no other reason than her ancestry. “I’ll let her go for 30,000, Doctor. I know you’re paying as much for shells these days.”
Doctor? Cress gulped. This man in no way resembled the finely polished men and women in the net dramas, with their crisp white coats and advanced technology. Somehow, the title served to make her more wary, as visions of scalpels and syringes flashed through her mind.
He sighed. “Ah, 27,000.”
Jina tilted her head back, peering down her nose. “Deal.”
The doctor took her hand, but he seemed to have drawn back into himself. He couldn’t look at Cress full-on, as if he were ashamed that she had witnessed the transaction.
Defiance jolted down Cress’s spine.
He should be ashamed. They should all be ashamed.
And she would not let herself become mere baggage to be bartered for. Mistress Sybil had taken advantage of her for too long. She wouldn’t let it happen again.
Before these thoughts could become anything more than rebellious anger, she was shoved into the room. Jina shut the door, enclosing them all in the hot, dusty space that smelled of stale chemicals. “Make the transfer quick,” she said, folding her arms. “I have other business to tend to in Kufra.”
The doctor grunted and opened the closet. There were no clothes inside, but rather a miniature science lab, with mystery machines and scanners and a stand of metal drawers that clanked when he opened them. He pulled out a needle and syringe and made quick work of removing its packaging.
Cress backed away, arms pulling against her bindings, but Niels stopped her.
“Yes, yes, let me get a blood sample from her, then I’ll make the transfer.”
“Why?” Jina said, stepping between them. “So you can determine something’s wrong with her and compromise our deal?”
The doctor harrumphed. “I have no intention of compromising anything, Jina. I merely thought she would be more complicit while you’re here, allowing me to more safely extract a sample.”
Cress’s gaze darted around the room. A weapon. An escape. A hint of mercy in the eyes of her captor.
Nothing. There was nothing.
“Fine,” Jina said. “Niels, hold her so the doctor can do what he needs to do.”