Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,106
as she stumbled away. Her shoulder collided with Niels and she started to fall backward, but then he was gripping her by the elbow and hauling her against him. Her legs had become soggy and useless beneath her. “No—please. Leave me alone!” She pleaded at the doctor and saw such a mixture of emotion on his lined face that she fell silent.
His eyebrows were bunched together, and his mouth tightly pursed. He kept rapidly blinking behind his glasses, like trying to clear away an eyelash, until his gaze fell away from her altogether. There was pity in him. She knew it—she knew this was sympathy he was trying to disguise.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please let me go. I’m just a shell, and I’m stranded here on Earth, and I haven’t done anything to anyone, and I’m nobody. I’m nobody. Please, just let me go.”
He did not meet her eyes again, even as he stepped forward. She tensed, trying to back away, but Niels held her firm. The doctor’s touch felt papery, but his grip was strong as he took her wrist in one hand.
“Try to relax,” he murmured.
She flinched as the needle dug into her flesh, the same spot where Sybil had taken blood a hundred times. She bit hard on the inside of her cheek, refusing to so much as whimper.
“That was all. Not so awful, was it?” His tone was eerily soft, like he was trying to comfort her.
She felt like a bird who’d had her wings clipped and been thrown into a cage—another filthy, rotting cage.
She’d been in a cage all her life. Somehow, she’d never expected to find one just as awful on Earth.
Earth, she reminded herself as the doctor plodded back across the groaning floorboards. She was on Earth. Not trapped in a satellite in space. There was a way out of this. Freedom was just out that window, or just down those stairs. She would not be a prisoner again.
The doctor fit the syringe full of her blood into a machine and flipped on a portscreen.
“There now, I will transfer over the funds, and you can be on your way.”
“You’re using a secure connection?” Jina asked, taking a step forward as the doctor tapped in some sort of code word. Cress squinted, watching where his fingers landed, in case she would later need it. It could save time not having to hack it.
“Trust me, Jina, I have more reason than you to keep my transactions hidden from prying eyes.” He studied something on the screen, before saying, more solemnly, “Thank you for bringing her.”
Jina scowled at his balding head. “I hope you’re killing all these Lunars when you’re done with them. We have enough problems with the plague. We don’t need them too.”
His blue eyes flashed and Cress detected a hint of disdain for Jina, but he covered it over with another benign look. “The payment has been transferred. If you would untie the girl before you go.”
Cress kept still as the bindings were taken off her wrists. She whipped her hands away as soon as they were gone and scurried against the nearest wall.
“Lovely doing business with you again,” Jina said. The doctor merely grunted. He was watching Cress from the corner of his eye, trying to stare at her without being obvious.
And then the door closed and Jina and Niels were gone. Cress listened to their feet clopping down the hallway, the only noise in the building.
The doctor rubbed his palms down the front of his shirt, like cleansing them of Jina’s presence. Cress didn’t think he could feel half as filthy as she did, but she stayed as still as the wall, glaring.
“Yes, well,” he said. “It is more awkward with shells, you know. Not so easy to explain.”
She snarled. “You mean, not so easy to brainwash.”
He tilted his head, and the odd look had returned. The one that made her feel like a science experiment under a microscope. “You know that I’m Lunar.”
She didn’t answer.
“I understand you’re frightened. I can’t imagine what sort of mistreatment Jina and her hooligans put you through. But I am not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m doing great things here, things that will change the world, and you can help me.” He paused. “What is your name, child?”
She didn’t answer.
When he moved closer, his hands extended in a show of peace, Cress shoved all her fear down into her gut and used the wall to launch herself at him.