Marissa Meyer - Cinder

He turned around, his eyes magnified behind their spectacles. “Incapable of blushing? How so?”

“My brain monitors my body temperature, forces me to cool down if I get too warm, too fast. I guess just sweating like a normal human being wasn’t enough.”

Dr. Erland pulled his portscreen out, punched something in. “That’s really quite smart,” he muttered. “They must have been worried about your system overheating.”

Cinder strained her neck, but couldn’t see the little screen on his port. “Is that important?”

He ignored her. “And look at your heart,” he said, gesturing at the holograph again. “These two chambers are made primarily of silicon, mixed with bio tissue. Amazing.”

Cinder pressed her hand against her chest. Her heart. Her brain. Her nervous system. What hadn’t been tampered with?

Her hand moved to her neck, tracing the ridges of her spine as her gaze traveled over the metal vertebrae, those metallic invaders. “What’s this?” she asked, stretching forward and pointing at a shadow on the diagram.

“Ah, yes, my assistants and I were discussing that earlier.” Dr. Erland scratched his head through the hat. “It looks to be made of a different material than the vertebrae, and it’s right over a central cluster of nerves. Perhaps it was meant to correct a glitch.”

Cinder wrinkled her nose. “Great. I have glitches.”

“Has your neck ever bothered you?”

“Only when I’ve been under a hover all day.”

And when I’m dreaming. In her nightmare, the fire always seemed to be hottest beneath her neck, the heat trickling down her spine. The unrelenting pain, like a hot coal had gotten beneath her skin. She shuddered, remembering Peony in last night’s dream, crying and screaming, blaming Cinder for what had become of her.

Dr. Erland was watching her, tapping his portscreen against his lips.

Cinder squirmed. “I have a question.”

“Yes?” said the doctor, pocketing the screen.

“You said before that I wasn’t contagious after my body got rid of those microbes.”

“That’s correct.”

“So…if I had contracted the plague naturally, say…a couple days ago, how long before I was no longer contagious?”

Dr. Erland puckered his lips. “Well. One can imagine that your body is more efficient at ridding itself of the carriers every time it comes in contact with them. So if it took twenty minutes to defeat them all this time…oh, I would think it would have taken no longer than an hour the time before that. Two at the most. Hard to say, of course, given that every disease and everybody works a little differently.”

Cinder folded her hands in her lap. It had taken a little more than an hour to walk home from the market. “What about…can it cling to, say, clothing?”

“Only briefly. The pathogens can’t survive long without a host.” He frowned at her. “Are you all right?”

She fiddled with the fingers of her gloves. Nodded. “When do we get to start saving lives?”

Dr. Erland adjusted his hat. “I’m afraid we can’t do much until I’ve had a chance to analyze your blood samples and map your DNA sequencing. But first I wanted to get a better grasp on your body makeup, in case it could affect the results.”

“Being cyborg can’t change your DNA, can it?”

“No, but there have been studies suggesting that human bodies develop different hormones, chemical imbalances, antibodies, that sort of thing, as a result of the operations. Of course, the more invasive the procedure, the more—”

“You think it has something to do with my immunity? Being cyborg?”

The doctor’s eyes glowed, giddy, unnerving Cinder. “Not exactly,” he said. “But like I said before…I do have a theory or two.”

“Were you planning on sharing any of those theories with me?”

“Oh, yes. Once I know I am correct, I plan on sharing my discovery with the world. In fact, I have had a thought about the mystery shadow on your spine. Would you mind if I tried something?” He took off the spectacles and slid them back into his pocket, beside the portscreen.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just a little experiment, nothing to worry about.”

She twisted her head as Dr. Erland walked around the table and placed the tips of his fingers on her neck, pinching the vertebrae just above her shoulders. She stiffened at the touch. His hands were warm, but she shivered anyway.

“Tell me if you feel anything…unusual.”

Cinder opened her mouth, about to announce that any human touch felt unusual, but her breath hiccupped.

Fire and pain ruptured her spine, flooding her veins.

She cried out and fell off the table, crumpling to the floor.

RED LIGHT PIERCED HER EYELIDS. GOING HAYWIRE, HER retina display was sending a skein of green gibberish against the backdrop of her lids. Something was wrong with her wiring—her left fingers kept twitching, pulsing uncontrollably.

“Calm down, Miss Linh. You’re perfectly all right.” This voice, calm and unsympathetic in its strange accent, was followed by one much more panicked.

“Perfectly all right? Are you crazy? What happened to her?”

Cinder groaned.

“Only a little experiment. She’s going to be fine, Your Highness. See? She’s waking up now.”

Another strangled protest before she could pry her eyes open. The lab’s whiteness would have blinded her but for the two shadows cutting through it. Her eyes focused the shapes into Dr. Erland’s wool hat and sky blue eyes, and Prince Kai with strands of black hair hanging unkempt across his brow.

As the retina display began running the basic diagnostic test for the second time that day, she shut her eyes again, faintly worried that Prince Kai would notice the green light at the base of her pupil.

At least she had her gloves on.

“Are you alive?” Kai said, pushing her mussed hair back from her forehead. His fingers felt hot and clammy against her skin before she realized that she was the one who was feverish.

Which shouldn’t have been possible. She couldn’t blush, couldn’t have a fever.

Couldn’t overheat.

What had the doctor done to her?

“Did she hit her head?” Kai asked.

The twitching stopped. Cinder pressed her hands against her body in an instinctual effort to hide them.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Dr. Erland said again. “Had a bit of a scare—but no harm done. I am sorry for that, Miss Linh. I didn’t realize you would be so sensitive.”

“What did you do?” she said, careful not to slur her words.

Kai slipped an arm beneath her and helped her sit up. She flinched against him and tugged down her pant leg in case the metal gleam of her shin was visible.

“I was merely adjusting your spine.”

Cinder squinted at the doctor, not needing the little orange light to tell her he was lying, but it popped up anyway.

“What’s wrong with her spine?” Kai’s hand slid down to her lower back.

Cinder sucked in a breath, a shiver racing along her skin. She feared the pain would come back, that the prince’s touch would somehow override her system like Dr. Erland’s had—but nothing happened, and soon Kai lessened the pressure of his touch.

“Nothing is wrong with it,” said Dr. Erland. “But the spinal region is where many of our nerves congregate before sending messages up to our brains.”

Cinder watched Dr. Erland with wild eyes. She could already imagine how quickly Kai would pull away from her when the doctor told him he was supporting a cyborg.

“Miss Linh was complaining of a bothersome pain in her neck…”

She squeezed her fists together until her fingers began to ache.

“…and so I gave her a bit of an adjustment. It’s called chiropractic, a very old practice, and yet amazingly effective. She must have been more out of alignment than I realized, and so the sudden realigning of the vertebrae created a temporary shock to her system.” He grinned at the prince, eyes devoid of concern. The orange light persisted.