Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,9
were stuck in them. Growling, she smacked her palm against her temple a few times.
“You’re escaping.”
“Not at this very moment,” she said through her teeth, roughly shaking her head. “But, yes, that is the general idea.” Her face lit up when she spotted the port in his lap. “What model portscreen is that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He held it up for her. “I’m putting together a portfolio of the women I’ve loved.”
Pushing herself from the wall, she snatched the portscreen away and flipped it over. A tip of her cyborg finger opened, revealing a small screwdriver. It wasn’t long before she’d undone the plate on the underside of the port.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your vid-cable.”
“What for?”
“Mine’s on the fritz.”
She pulled a yellow wire from the screen and dropped it back into Thorne’s lap, then sank cross-legged to the floor. Thorne watched, mystified, as she tossed her hair to one side and unlatched a panel at the base of her skull. A moment later her fingers emerged with a wire similar to the one she’d just stolen from him, but with one blackened end. The girl’s face contorted in concentration while she installed the new cable.
With a pleased sigh, she shut the panel and tossed the old cable next to Thorne. “Thanks.”
He grimaced, shrinking away from the wire. “You have a portscreen in your head?”
“Something like that.” The girl stood and ran a hand over the wall again. “Ah, that’s much better. Now how do I…” Trailing off, she pushed the button in the corner. A glossy white panel slid up into the wall, ejecting the urinal with smooth precision. Her fingers fished into the gap left between the fixture and the wall, searching.
Inching away from the neglected cable on his cot, Thorne cleared his mind of the image of her opening a plate in her skull, once again calling up the personification of a gentleman, and attempted to make small talk while she worked. He asked what she was in for and complimented the fine workmanship of her metal extremities, but she ignored him, making him briefly question if he’d been separated from the female population for so long that he could be losing his charm.
But that seemed unlikely.
A few minutes later, the girl seemed to find what she was looking for, and Thorne heard the motorized-drill sound again.
“When they locked you up,” Thorne said, “didn’t they consider that this prison might have some security weaknesses?”
“It didn’t at the time. This hand is kind of a new addition.” She paused and stared hard at one corner of the alcove, as if trying to see through the wall.
Maybe she had X-ray vision. Now that he could find some good uses for.
“Let me guess,” Thorne said. “Breaking and entering?”
After a long silence of examining the retracting mechanism, the girl wrinkled her nose. “Two counts of treason, if you must know. And resisting arrest, and unlawful use of bioelectricity. Oh, and illegal immigration, but honestly, I think that’s a little excessive.”
He squinted at the back of her head, a twitch developing in his left eye. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
The screwdriver in her finger began to spin again. Thorne waited until there was a lull in the grinding. “What’s your name?”
“Cinder,” she said, followed by another swell of noise.
When it died down: “I’m Captain Carswell Thorne. But usually people just call me—”
More grinding.
“Thorne. Or Captain. Or Captain Thorne.”
Without responding, she wriggled her hand back into the alcove. It seemed like she was trying to twist something, but it must not have budged, as a second later she sat back and huffed with frustration.
“I can see that you’re in need of an accomplice,” Thorne said, straightening his jumpsuit. “And lucky for you, I happen to be a criminal mastermind.”
She glowered at him. “Go away.”
“That’s a difficult request in this situation.”
She sighed and dusted the flecks of white plastic from her screwdriver.
“What are you going to do when you get out?” he asked.
She turned back to the wall. The grinding persisted for a while before she paused to roll her neck, working out a crick. “The most direct route out of the city is north.”
“Oh, my naive little convict. Don’t you think that’s what they’ll be expecting you to do?”
She jabbed the screwdriver into the alcove. “Would you please stop distracting me?”
“I’m just saying we might be able to help each other.”
“Leave me alone.”
“I have a ship.”
Her gaze darted to him for only a beat—a look of warning.