Marissa Meyer - Cinder

“Peony…”

“Go! Go away!”

Cinder stepped back. Back. Had the bleary sense to stop and pick up the folded magbelt. She moved toward the exit, her human leg as numb as the prosthesis. Peony’s sobs chased after her.

Three white androids met her around a corner. They had yellow sensors and red crosses painted on their heads and two were pushing a hovering gurney between them.

“Are you the letumosis victim?” one asked in a neutral voice, holding up an ID scanner.

Cinder hid her wrist. “No. My sister, Linh Peony. She-she’s that way, to the left.”

The med-droids with the gurney wheeled away from her, down the path.

“Have you had direct contact with the victim in the past twelve hours?” the remaining android asked.

Cinder opened her mouth, hesitated. Guilt and fear curdled in her gut.

She could lie. There was no proof she had it yet, but if they took her to the quarantines, she didn’t stand a chance.

But if she went home, she could infect everyone. Adri. Pearl. Those screeching, laughing children rushing through the hallways.

She could barely hear her own voice. “Yes.”

“Are you showing symptoms?”

“N-no. I don’t know. I feel lightheaded, but not—” She stopped herself.

The med-droid neared her, its treads grating on the dirty ground. Cinder stumbled away from it, but it said nothing, only inched closer until Cinder’s calves were pressed against a rotting storage crate. It held up the ID scanner in one pronged hand, and then a third arm appeared from within its torso—a syringe in place of grippers.

Cinder shuddered but didn’t resist as it grabbed her right wrist and inserted the needle. She flinched, watching as dark liquid, almost black in the android’s yellow light, was pulled up into the syringe. She was not afraid of needles, but the world began to tilt. The android removed it just in time for her to slump down onto the crate.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Initiating blood scan for letumosis-carrying pathogens.” Cinder heard a motor start up inside the android, faint beeps announcing each step. The android’s light dimmed as its power source was diverted.

She held her breath until her control panel kicked in and forced her lungs to contract.

“ID,” said the android, holding the scanner out to her. A red light passed over her wrist and the scanner beeped. The android stashed it away in its hollow torso.

She wondered how long it would take for it to finish the scan and determine that she was a carrier, confirming that she was at fault. For everything.

The sound of treads approached along the path. Cinder turned her head as the two androids appeared with Peony atop their gurney. She was sitting up with her hands wrapped around her knees. Swollen eyes wildly darted around the junkyard as if searching for an escape. As if she’d stumbled into a nightmare.

But she didn’t try to run. No one ever put up a fight when being taken to the quarantines.

Their eyes met. Cinder opened her mouth but nothing came out. She tried to plead forgiveness with her eyes.

The faintest of smiles touched Peony’s lips. She raised a hand and waved with only her fingers.

Cinder returned it, knowing it should be her.

She had already outlived fate once. She should be the one being carted away. She should be the one dying. It should be her.

It was about to be her.

She tried to speak, to tell Peony she would be right behind her. She wouldn’t be alone. But then the android beeped. “Scan complete. No letumosis-carrying pathogens detected. Subject is urged to stand fifty feet back from infected patient.”

Cinder blinked. Relief and dread both squirmed inside her.

She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t going to die.

She wasn’t going with Peony.

“We will alert you via comm when Linh Peony enters the subsequent stages of the disease. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Cinder wrapped her arms around herself and watched Peony lay down as she was carted away, curling up like a child on the gurney.

CINDER SLINKED THROUGH THE BALMY NIGHT, THE SOUND of her boots shuffling across the concrete, as if both legs were made of steel. The empty night was a chorus of muted sounds in her head: the sandy crunching of Iko’s treads, the sputtering of street lamps above them, the constant hum of the magnetic superconductor beneath the street. With every step, the wrench inside Cinder’s calf clanked. It all dulled in comparison to the video replaying in her mind.

Her interface did that sometimes—recording moments of strong emotion and replaying them over and over. Like déjà vu or when the last words of a conversation linger in the air long after silence has settled in. Usually, she could make the memory stop before it drove her crazy, but tonight she didn’t have the energy.

The black splotch on Peony’s skin. Her scream. The med-droid’s syringe dragging Cinder’s blood from the flesh of her elbow. Peony, small and trembling on the gurney. Already dying.

She stopped, clutching her stomach as nausea roiled up. Iko paused a few paces ahead, shining her spotlight on Cinder’s scrunched face.

“Are you all right?”

The light darted down the length of Cinder’s body, and she was sure Iko was searching for bruise-like rings even though the med-droid had said she wasn’t infected.

Instead of answering, Cinder peeled off her gloves and shoved them into her back pocket. Her faintness passing, she leaned her shoulder against a street lamp and drank in the humid air. They’d made it home, almost. The Phoenix Tower apartments stood on the next corner, only the top floor catching the faint light from the crescent moon, the rest of the building cast in shadow. The windows were black but for a handful of lights and some bluish white glares from flickering netscreens. Cinder counted floors, finding the windows to the kitchen and Adri’s bedroom.

Though dim, a light was still on somewhere in the apartment. Adri wasn’t a night person, but perhaps she’d discovered that Peony was still out. Or perhaps Pearl was awake, working on a school project or comming friends late into the night.

It was probably better this way. She didn’t want to have to wake them.

“What am I going to tell them?”

Iko’s sensor was on the apartment building for a moment, then the ground, picking up the shuffled debris across the sidewalk.

Cinder rubbed her sweaty palm on her pants and forced herself onward. Try as she might, suitable words would not come to her. Explanations, excuses. How do you tell a woman her daughter is dying?

She swiped her ID and entered through the main door this time. The gray lobby was decorated only with a netscreen that held announcements for the residents—a rise in maintenance fees, a petition for a new ID scanner at the front door, a lost cat. Then the elevator, loud with the clunking of old machinery. The hallway was empty, save the man from apartment 1807 snoozing on his doorstep. Cinder had to tuck in his splayed arm so Iko wouldn’t crush it. Heavy breathing and the sweet aroma of rice wine wafted up.

She hesitated in front of apartment 1820, heart pounding. She couldn’t recall when the video of Peony had stopped repeating in her head, eclipsed by her harsh nerves.

What was she going to say?

Cinder bit her lip and held up her wrist for the scanner. The small light switched to green. She opened the door as quietly as possible.

Brightness from the living room spilled into the dark hallway. Cinder caught a glimpse of the netscreen, still showing footage of the market from earlier that day, the baker’s booth going up in flames again and again. The screen was muted.

Cinder entered the room, but halted mid-step. Iko bumped against her leg.