Cinder peered out the cockpit window at a crop of leafy plants. The fields stretched out in every direction, the view of the flat horizon broken only by a stone farmhouse nearly a mile away.
A house. A lot of vegetables. And a giant spaceship.
“This isn’t conspicuous at all.”
“At least we’re in the middle of nowhere,” said Thorne, peeling himself out of the pilot seat and sliding on his leather jacket. “If anyone calls the police, it will take them a while to get here.”
“Unless they’re already on their way,” Cinder muttered. Her heart had been drumming throughout their eons-long descent down to Earth, her brain skimming over a thousand different fates that could await them. Though she’d kept up the ridiculous chanting as long as she could, they still had no way of knowing how effective she was being, and she still had the sinking feeling that her attempts to disguise their ship using Lunar magic were pathetically futile. She couldn’t understand how she could manipulate radars and radio waves with nothing but her own muddled thoughts.
Nevertheless—the fact remained that no one had discovered them in space, and so far their luck was holding. Benoit Farms and Gardens appeared to be wholly deserted.
The ramp began to lower off the cargo bay and Iko chirped, “You two go off and have fun now. I’ll be sitting here, by myself, all alone, checking for radar interference and running diagnostics. It’s going to be fantastic.”
“You’re getting really good at your sarcasm,” said Cinder, joining Thorne at the top of the ramp as it smashed a very fine row of hearty foliage.
Thorne squinted at the glare on his portscreen. “Bingo,” he said, pointing at the two-story house that had to be old enough to have survived the Fourth World War. “She’s here.”
“Bring me back a souvenir!” Iko yelled as Thorne stomped down into the field. The ground was soggy from a recent watering and mud clung to the hem of his pants as he cut through the crop, making his own direct route to the house.
Cinder followed, drinking in the wide-open farmland and the fresh air, so sweet after being locked up inside the Rampion’s recycled oxygen. Even with her audio interface turned off, it was the deepest silence she’d ever experienced. “It’s so quiet here.”
“Creepy, isn’t it? I don’t know how people can stand it.”
“I think it’s kind of nice.”
“Yeah, like a morgue is nice.”
A cluster of smaller buildings were thrown haphazardly throughout the fields: a barn, a chicken coop, a shed, a hangar big enough to house a number of hovers or even a spaceship, though not one as big as the Rampion.
Cinder drew up short when she spotted it. She frowned, stretching for the gossamer memory that seemed to recognize the hangar. “Wait.”
Thorne turned back to her. “Did you see someone?”
Without answering, she changed direction, squishing through the mud. Thorne trailed after her, silent as Cinder shoved open the hangar’s door.
“I’m not sure that breaking into Michelle Benoit’s outbuildings is the best way to introduce ourselves.”
Cinder glanced back, scanning the house’s empty windows. “I need to see something,” she said, and stepped inside. “Lights, on.”
The lights flickered to life and she gasped at the sight before her. Tools and parts, screws and bolts, clothes and grimy shop rags, all flung haphazardly around the space. Every cabinet hung open, every storage crate and toolbox had been tipped over. The glossy white floor could hardly be seen beneath the mess.
On the other side of the hangar, a small delivery ship sat with its back window busted out. Shards of glass glittered beneath the blazing lights. The hangar smelled of spilled fuel and toxic fumes, and a little bit like Cinder’s market booth.
“What a sty,” said Thorne, disgusted. “I’m not sure I can trust a pilot with such little respect for her ship.”
Cinder ignored him, busy sending her scanner over the shelves and walls. Despite the distraction of the chaos, her brain-machine interface was picking up on something. A general impression of familiarity, tinges of a long-lost memory. The way the sun angled in from the door. The combined smells of machinery and manure. The crisscrossed pattern of the exposed trusses.
She paced across the concrete, crunching through the debris. She moved slowly, lest the ghost of familiarity vanish.
“Uh, Cinder,” said Thorne, glancing back toward the farm. “What are we doing in here?”
“Looking for something.”
“In this mess? Good luck with that.”
She found a small plot of empty concrete and stalled, thinking. Examining. Knowing she’d been there before. In a dream, in a daze.
She noticed a thin metal cabinet painted a putrid brown, where three jackets hung on a rod. They all had insignias from the EF military embroidered on their sleeves. Squaring her shoulders, Cinder picked her way toward it and pushed the jackets to the side.