“Stars,” she whispered. “I need to find a new pair of gloves.”
“No, you need to calm down and start using your brainwave witchery thing.”
Cinder drew closer to Thorne and swallowed her growing panic. “We belong here,” she murmured. Sweat beaded on the back of her neck, dripping down her spine. “We’re not suspicious. You don’t recognize us. You have no interest or curiosity or…” She trailed off as the attention of people around the room began to drift back to their food and drinks and the netscreens behind the bar. Cinder continued the mindless chanting in her head, We belong here, we are not suspicious, until the statements blurred together into a sensation of invisibility.
They weren’t suspicious. They did belong there.
She forced herself to believe it.
Scanning the crowd, she saw that only one set of eyes was still on her—vibrant blue and filled with laughter. He was a muscular man sitting at a table near the back, a smile playing on his mouth. When Cinder’s gaze held his, he sat back and lifted his attention to the screens.
“Come on, then,” said Thorne, guiding her toward an open booth.
The sound of the door creaking behind them sent Cinder’s stomach heaving like a dying motor. They slid into the booth.
“This was a bad idea,” she whispered, tucking the power cell beside her on the bench. Thorne said nothing, both of them bending their necks over the table as three red uniforms brushed past. A scanner beeped, sending Cinder’s pulse thrumming against her temples, and the last officer paused.
With her cyborg hand beneath the table, Cinder deftly opened the barrel of her imbedded tranquilizer gun, the first time she’d engaged that finger since Dr. Erland had given her the hand.
The officer remained beside their booth and Cinder forced herself to turn toward him, thinking innocence, normal, indistinguishable from anyone else.
The officer was holding a portscreen with a built-in ID scanner. Cinder gulped and looked up. He was young, perhaps in his early twenties, and his face was contorted in confusion.
“Is there a problem, monsieur?” she said, sickened to hear her own voice come out as saccharine sweet as she’d once heard Queen Levana’s.
His eyes blinked wildly. The attention of the other officers, one man and one woman, was captured too, and Cinder could see them hovering nearby.
Heat spread out from the base of her neck, creeping uncomfortably down her limbs. She clenched her fists. The wash of energy in the room was pulsing, almost visible. Her optobionics were beginning to panic, sending concerned warnings about hormones and chemical imbalances across her eyesight, and all the while she desperately grasped for control over her Lunar gift. I am invisible. I am unimportant. You do not recognize me. Please, don’t recognize me.
“Officer?”
“You are … um.” His eyes darted from the port to her face, and he shook his head to dispel the cobwebs. “We’re looking for someone, and this says … you wouldn’t happen to…”
Everyone was watching now. The waitresses, the customers, the eerie guy with the stormy eyes. No amount of internal pleading could make her invisible when a military officer from another country was speaking to her. She was becoming dizzy with the effort of it. Her body was warming, sweat beading on her brow.
She gulped. “Is everything all right, Officer?”
His brow drew together. “We’re looking for a girl … a teenager, from the Eastern Commonwealth. You wouldn’t happen to be … Linh…”
Cinder raised her eyebrows, feigning ignorance.
“Peony?”
Thirty-Six
Cinder’s smile froze to her face. Peony’s name was like a stone on her chest, pressing the air out of her lungs as memories fell across her vision. Peony scared and alone in the quarantines. Peony dying, with the antidote still in Cinder’s hand.
The pain was instant, fire ripping through her muscles. Cinder cried out and gripped the table, nearly falling out of the booth.
The officer stumbled back and his female comrade yelled, “It’s her!”
Cinder felt the table being shoved toward her as Thorne jumped up. It took a moment for the burning to dwindle. The taste of salt lingered on her tongue and someone screamed and in the muddle of her brain she heard chair and table legs screeching across the floor. The woman’s voice: “Linh Cinder, we are taking you into custody.” Red text flashed across her retina.
INTERNAL TEMP ABOVE RECOMMENDED CONTROL TEMP. IF COOL DOWN PROCEDURE DOES NOT ENGAGE, AUTOMATIC SHUTDOWN WILL OCCUR IN ONE MINUTE.
“Linh Cinder, slowly place your hands on top of your head. Do not make any sudden movements.”
She blinked past the bright fog in her vision, barely making out the officer with a gun pointed at her forehead. Behind her, Thorne was swinging a punch at the nose of the young man with the port, who ducked, then swung back. The third officer had his gun on the two men as they collapsed in a brawl onto a nearby table.