“Not that I know of.” She glared. “Is this relevant?”
“It’s fascinating,” Dr. Erland said, dodging the question. He pulled out his portscreen, making some notation. “Eleven years old,” he muttered again, then, “You must have gone through a lot of prosthetic limbs growing into those.”
Cinder twisted her lips. She should have gone through lots of limbs, but Adri had refused to pay for new parts for her freak stepdaughter. Instead of responding, she cast her eyes to the door, then at the blood-filled vials. “So…am I free to go?”
Dr. Erland’s eyes flashed as if injured by her question. “Go? Miss Linh, you must realize how valuable you’ve become with this discovery.”
Her muscles tensed, her fingers trailing along the hard outline of the wrench in her pocket. “So I’m still a prisoner. Just a valuable one now.”
His face softened, and he tucked the port out of sight. “This is much bigger than you realize. You have no idea how important…no idea of your worth.”
“So what now? Are you going to inject me with even more lethal diseases, to see how my body fares against those?”
“Stars, no. You are much too precious to kill.”
“You weren’t exactly saying that an hour ago.”
Dr. Erland’s gaze flickered to the holograph, brow furrowed as if considering her words. “Things are quite different than they were an hour ago, Miss Linh. With your help, we could save hundreds of thousands of lives. If you are what I think you are, we could—well, we could stop the cyborg draft, to start with.” He settled his fist against his mouth. “Plus, we would pay you, of course.”
Hooking her thumbs into the belt loops of her pants, Cinder leaned against the counter that held all the machines that had seemed so threatening before.
She was immune.
She was important.
The money was tempting, of course. If she could prove her self-sufficiency, she might be able to annul Adri’s legal guardianship over her. She could buy back her freedom.
But even that insight dulled when she thought of Peony.
“You really think I can help?”
“I do. In fact, I think every person on Earth could soon find themselves immensely grateful to you.”
She gulped and lifted herself onto an exam table, folding both legs beneath her. “All right, just so long as we’re clear—I am here on a volunteer basis now, which means I can leave at any point I want to. No questions, no arguments.”
The doctor’s face brightened, eyes shining like lanterns between the wrinkles. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“And I do expect payment, like you said, but I need a separate account. Something my legal guardian can’t access. I don’t want her to have any idea I’ve agreed to do this, or any access to the money.”
To her surprise, he didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”
She sucked in a steadying breath. “And one other thing. My sister. She was taken to the quarantines yesterday. If you do find an antidote, or anything that even holds promise as an antidote, I want her to be the first one to get it.”
This time, the doctor’s gaze faltered. He turned away and paced to the holograph, rubbing his hands down the front of his lab coat. “That, I’m afraid I cannot promise.”
She squeezed her fists together. “Why not?”
“Because the emperor must be the first to receive the antidote.” His eyelids crinkled with sympathy. “But I can promise your sister will be second.”
Chapter Twelve
PRINCE KAI WATCHED THROUGH THE GLASS AS A MED-DROID inserted an IV into his father’s arm. Only five days had passed since the emperor had shown the first signs of the blue fever, but it felt like a lifetime. Years’ worth of worry and anguish rolled into so few hours.
Dr. Erland had once told him of an old suspicion that bad things always came in threes.
First, his android Nainsi had broken before she could communicate her findings.
And now his father was sick, with no hope for survival.