Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,52
the cockpit to the living quarters. The smaller, lighter ones had been stacked on top of one another and some were left out as makeshift furniture in front of the main netscreen.
It bordered on cozy.
The next job would be to actually unpack the crates—the ones that were worth unpacking—but that would be a job for another day. “No, really,” she said when she’d found her breath. “What is all this?”
Thorne slid down beside her and wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I don’t know,” he said, eyeing the stamped labels on the side of the nearest crate: an unhelpful code. “Supplies. Food. I think there are some guns in one of them. And I know I had a few sculptures from this really collectible second-era artist—I was going to make a fortune off of them, but I got arrested before I had a chance.” He sighed.
Cinder squinted at him. Sure that the sculptures were stolen, she found it difficult to muster any sympathy. “Shame,” she muttered, thumping her head back against the crate.
Thorne pointed at something on the far wall, his forearm jutting beneath Cinder’s nose. “What’s that?”
She followed his gesture, frowned, and with a cranky moan pushed herself back to her feet. The corner of a metal frame could be seen behind a tall stack of crates they’d left against the wall. “A door.” She drew up the ship’s blueprint on her retina display. “The medbay?”
Realization brightened Thorne’s face. “Oh, right. This ship does have one of those.”
Cinder settled her fists on her hips. “You covered up the medbay?”
Thorne pulled himself up. “Never needed it.”
“Don’t you think it might be good to have access to, just in case?”
Thorne shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Rolling her eyes, Cinder reached for the uppermost crate and hauled it down onto the floor, already disrupting their hard-won pathway. “How can we be sure there’s nothing in these boxes that can be tracked?”
“What do you think I am, an amateur? Nothing entered this ship without being thoroughly inspected. Otherwise the Republic would have reclaimed it all a long time ago rather than let it idle in that warehouse.”
“There may not be any trackers,” said Iko, making Cinder and Thorne both jump. They still weren’t used to their invisible, omnipresent companion. “But we can still be detected on radar. I’m doing my best to keep us out of the path of any satellites or ships, but it’s surprisingly crowded up here.”
Thorne unrolled his sleeves. “And it’s next to impossible to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere without detection. That’s how they nabbed me last time.”
“I thought there was a trick to it,” said Cinder. “I’m sure I heard once about a way people could sneak into Earth’s atmosphere without notice. Where did I hear that?”
“News to me. I got pretty good at sweet-talking my way into public hangars, but I don’t think that’s going to work with such a high-profile convict on the loose.”
Having found an old rubber band in the galley, Cinder fished it from her pocket and tossed her hair up in a ponytail. Her brain ticked through her memories until, with a snap, it came to her. Dr. Erland had told her that there were more Lunars on Earth than people suspected, and that they had a way of getting to Earth without the government taking notice.
“Lunars know how to cloak their spacecrafts.”
“Huh?”
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