She pulled herself from the daze, blinking at Thorne. “Lunars can cloak their spacecrafts. Keep Earthen radars from picking up on them. That’s how so many are able to make it to Earth, if they manage to get away from Luna in the first place.”
“That’s terrifying,” said Iko, who had acknowledged the truth of Cinder’s race much as she’d acknowledged Thorne’s convict status: with loyalty and acceptance, but without changing her opinion that Lunars and convicts remained untrustworthy and unredeemable as a general rule.
Cinder had not yet figured out how to tell her that she also happened to be the missing Princess Selene.
“I know it is,” said Cinder, “but it would be awfully convenient if I knew how they did it.”
“Do you think it’s with their”—Thorne rolled his wrist toward her—“crazy Lunar magic stuff?”
“Bioelectricity,” she said, quoting Dr. Erland. “Calling it magic only empowers them.”
“Whatever.”
“I don’t know. It could be some special technology they install on their ships.”
“Optimistically hoping it’s magic, maybe you should start practicing?”
Cinder bit the inside of her cheek. Start practicing what?
“I guess I can try.” Turning her attention back to the crate, she pulled up the lid and was met with a box of packing chips. She stuffed her metal hand into it and emerged with a skinny wooden doll bedecked in feathers and painted with six eyes. “What is this?”
“Venezuelan dream doll.”
“It’s hideous.”
“It’s worth about twelve thousand univs.”
Heart skipping, Cinder lowered the doll back into the protective packaging. “You don’t think you might have something useful in all of these? Like, I don’t know, a fully charged power cell?”
“Doubtful,” said Thorne. “How much longer will ours hold out?”
Iko chimed, “Approximately thirty-seven hours.”
Thorne gave Cinder a thumbs-up. “Plenty of time to learn a new Lunar trick, right?”
Cinder shut the crate’s lid and slid it back against the others, trying not to show panic at having to use her new gift for anything, much less something as huge as disguising a cargo ship.
“In the meantime, I’ll do a little research, try to determine the best place for us to land. Not the Commonwealth, obviously. I hear Fiji’s nice this time of year.”
“Or Los Angeles!” Iko practically sang. “They have a huge escort-droid outlet store there. I wouldn’t mind having an escort-droid body. Some of the newer models come with color-changing fiber-optic hair.”
Cinder slumped onto the floor again and scratched at her wrist—a tick that was becoming awkward now that she had no gloves to fiddle with. “We’re not landing a stolen American ship in the American Republic,” she said, fixing her attention on the netscreen, where her own prison picture hovered in the corner. She was so sick of that picture.
“Do you have any suggestions?” said Thorne.
Africa.
She heard herself saying it, but nothing came out.
That’s where she was supposed to go. To meet Dr. Erland, so that he could tell her what to do next. He had plans for her. Plans to make her a hero, a savior, a princess. Plans to overthrow Levana and instate Cinder as the true queen.
Her right hand started to shake. Dr. Erland had set up the cyborg draft and treated dozens, perhaps hundreds of cyborgs like throwaways, all for the sake of finding her. And then, when he found her, he kept the secret of her identity until he had no other choice but to tell her, all the while planning out the rest of her life. He had made his need for revenge the highest priority.
But what the doctor hadn’t considered was that Cinder had no desire to be queen. She didn’t want to be a princess or an heir to anything. All her life—at least, all the life she could remember—all she’d ever wanted was freedom. And now, for the first time, she had it, however tenuous it was. There was no one telling her what to do. No one to judge or criticize.
But if she went to Dr. Erland, she would lose all that. He would expect her to reclaim her rightful place as the queen of Luna, and that struck her as the most binding shackles of all.
Cinder gripped her shaking hand with the steady cyborg one. She was tired of everyone deciding her life for her. She was ready to figure out who she really was—not what anyone else told her to be.