Marissa Meyer - Cinder

Dr. Erland perked up, scratching his temple with the corner of his port. “A teenage girl, you say? How…” He fumbled for an appropriate descriptor. Unusual? Coincidental? Lucky?

“Suspicious,” said the girl, her voice low. Dr. Erland turned, found her glower bearing down on him.

“Suspicious? Whatever do you mean?”

She perched against the edge of the counter, diminishing her height so she was eye level, but she still seemed intimidating with her folded arms and unimpressed scowl. “Just that you’re always more than willing to placebo the male cyborgs that come in, but you perk right up when you catch word of a girl, especially the young ones.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then started again. “The younger, the healthier,” he said. “The healthier, the fewer complications we’ll have. And it isn’t my fault that the draft keeps picking on females.”

“Fewer complications. Right. Either way, they’re going to die.”

“Yes, well. Thank you for the optimism.” He gestured to the man on the other side of the glass. “Placebo, please. Come join us when you’ve finished.”

He stepped out of the lab room, Li at his side, and cupped a hand around his mouth. “What is her name again?”

“Fateen?”

“Fateen! I can never remember that. One of these days, I’ll be forgetting my own name.”

Li chuckled, and Dr. Erland was glad he’d made the joke. People seemed to overlook an old man losing his mind if he occasionally made light of it.

The hallway was empty save for two med-droids lingering by the stairwell, awaiting orders. It was a short walk to lab room 6D.

Dr. Erland pulled a stylus from behind his ear and tapped at his port, downloading the information Li had sent him. The new patient’s profile popped up.

LINH CINDER, LICENSED MECHANIC

ID #0097917305

BORN 29 NOV 109 T.E.

0 MEDIA HITS

RESIDENT OF NEW BEIJING, EASTERN COMMONWEALTH. WARD OF LINH ADRI.

Li opened the door to the lab. Tucking the stylus back behind his ear, Dr. Erland entered the room with twitching fingers.

The girl was lying on the table on the other side of the viewing window. The sterile quarantine room was so bright he had to squint into the glare. A med-droid was just capping a plastic vial filled with blood and plunking it onto the chute, sending it off to the blood lab.

The girl’s hands and wrists had been fastened with metal bands. Her left hand was steel, tarnished and dark between the joints as if it needed a good cleaning. Her pant legs had been rolled up her calves, revealing one human leg and one synthetic.

“Is she plugged in yet?” he asked, slipping his port into his coat pocket.

“Not yet,” said Li. “But look at her.”

Dr. Erland grunted, staving off his disappointment. “Yes, her ratio should be impressive. But it’s not the best quality, is it?”

“Not the exterior maybe, but you should have seen her wiring. Autocontrol and four-grade nervous system.”

Dr. Erland quirked an eyebrow, then lowered it just as fast. “Has she been unruly?”

“The med-droids had trouble apprehending her. She disabled two of them with a…a belt, or something, before they were able to shock her system. She’s been out all night.”

“But she volunteered?”

“Her legal guardian did. She suspects the patient has already had contact with the disease. A sister—taken in yesterday.”

Dr. Erland pulled the microphone across the desk. “Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty,” he sang, rapping on the glass.

“They stunned her with 200 volts,” said Li. “But I expect her to be coming around any minute now.”

Dr. Erland hooked his thumbs on his coat pockets. “Well. We don’t need consciousness. Let’s go ahead and get started.”

“Oh, good,” Fateen said in the doorway. Her heels clipped against the tile floor as she entered the lab room. “Glad you found one to suit your tastes.”

Dr. Erland pressed a finger to the glass. “Young,” he said, eyeing the metallic sheen of the girl’s limbs. “Healthy.”

With a sneer, Fateen claimed a seat before a netscreen that projected the cyborg’s records. “If thirty-two is old and decrepit, what does that make you, old man?”

“Very valuable in the antique market.” Dr. Erland lowered his lips to the mic. “Med? Ready the ratio detector, if you please.”

SHE WAS LYING ON A BURNING PYRE, HOT COALS BENEATH HER back. Flames. Smoke. Blisters burbling across her skin. Her leg and hand were gone, leaving stumps where the surgeons had attached her prostheses. Dead wires dangled from them. She tried to crawl but was as useless as an upended turtle. She reached out with her one hand, trying to drag her body from the fire, but the bed of coals stretched off into the horizon.

She’d had this dream before, a hundred times. This time though, it was different.

Instead of being all alone, like usual, she was surrounded. Other crippled victims writhed among the coals, moaning, begging for water. They were all missing limbs. Some were nothing more than a head and a torso and a mouth, pleading, pleading. Cinder shrank away from them, noticing bluish splotches on their skin. Their necks, their stump thighs, their shriveled wrists.

She saw Peony. Screaming. Accusing Cinder. She had done this to her. She had brought the plague to their household. It was all her fault.

Cinder opened her mouth to beg for forgiveness, but she stopped when she caught sight of her one good hand. Her skin was covered in blue spots.

The fire began to melt the diseased skin away, revealing metal and wires beneath the flesh.

She met Peony’s gaze again. Her sister opened her mouth, but her voice sounded awkward, deep. “Ready the ratio detector, if you please.”

The words hummed like bees in Cinder’s ears. Her body jolted, but she couldn’t move. Her limbs were too heavy. The smell of smoke lingered in her nostrils, but the heat from the flames was dying away, leaving only her sore, burning back. Peony faded away. The pit of coals melted into the ground.

Green text scrolled along the bottom corner of Cinder’s vision.

Beyond the darkness, she heard the familiar rumble of android treads. Iko?

DIAGNOSTICS CHECK COMPLETE. ALL SYSTEMS STABILIZED. REBOOTING IN 3…2…1…

Something clattered above her head. The hum of electricity. Cinder felt her finger twitch, the closest thing to a flinch her body was capable of.

The darkness began to warm, a subtle crimson brightness beyond her eyelids.

She forced her eyes open, squinting into harsh fluorescents.

“Ah! Juliet awakens.”

She shut her eyes again, let them adjust. She tried to bring her hand up to cover them, but something had her locked in place.

Panic raced along her nerves. She opened her eyes again and turned her head, straining to see who had spoken.

A mirror filled the wall. Her own face stared wild-eyed back at her. Her ponytail was a mess: dull, tangled, in need of a wash. Her skin was too pale, almost translucent, as if the voltage had drained her of more than energy.

They’d taken her gloves and her boots and rolled her pant legs up. She was not looking at a girl in the mirror. She was looking at a machine.

“How are you feeling, Miss, uh…Miss Linh?” said a disembodied voice in an accent she couldn’t pinpoint. European? American?

She wet her parched lips and craned her neck to peer at the android behind her. It was fidgeting with a small machine on a countertop, amid a dozen other machines. Medical equipment. Surgical toys. IVs. Needles. Cinder realized she was attached to one of the machines by wired sensors on her chest and forehead.

A netscreen hung on the wall to her right, displaying her name and ID number. Otherwise the room was empty.