Marissa Meyer - Cinder

She sighed. The ball.

She didn’t regret saying no when the prince had asked her, because she knew how badly that would end. Any number of things were sure to go wrong—from tripping on the stairs and flashing the prince a sexy metal thigh, to running into Pearl or Adri or someone from the market. People would talk. The gossip channels were sure to look into her past, and pretty soon the whole world would know that the prince had taken a cyborg to his coronation ball. He would be mortified. She would be mortified.

But it didn’t make it any easier when she wondered, what if she were wrong? What if Prince Kai wouldn’t care? What if the world were different and nobody cared if she was cyborg…and on top of that, Lunar?

Yeah. Wishful thinking.

Spotting the broken netscreen on the carpet, she peeled herself off her chair and kneeled before it. The black screen was just reflective enough for her to see the outline of her face and body, the tanned skin of her arms contrasted with the dark steel of her hand.

Denial had run its course until it had nowhere else to go. She was Lunar.

But she was not afraid of the mirrored surface, not afraid of her own reflection. She couldn’t understand what Levana and her kind, their kind, found so disturbing about it. Her mechanical parts were the only disturbing thing in Cinder’s reflection, and that had been done to her on Earth.

Lunar. And cyborg.

And a fugitive.

Did Adri know? No, Adri never would have housed a Lunar. If she’d known, she would have turned Cinder in herself, probably expecting payment.

Had Adri’s husband known?

That was a question Cinder would probably never know the answer to.

Nevertheless, she was confident that so long as Dr. Erland didn’t say anything, her secret would be safe. She would just have to go on as if nothing had changed.

In many ways, nothing had. She was every bit an outcast as ever.

A white blob caught her eye in the screen’s surface—Kai’s android, its lifeless sensor staring down at her from its perch on top of her desk. Its pear-shaped body was the brightest thing in the room and probably the cleanest. It reminded her of the sterile med-droids in the labs and the quarantines, but this machine did not have scalpels and syringes hidden in its torso.

Work. Mechanics. She needed the distraction.

Returning to her desk, she turned on her audio interface for some tranquil background music. Kicking off her boots, she gripped both sides of the android and wheeled it toward her. After a quick examination of its external plating, she tipped the android over, laying it horizontal so that it balanced on the edge of its treads.

Cinder opened the back panel and inspected the wiring throughout the cylindrical frame. It was not a complicated android. The interior was mostly hollow, a shell for housing a minimum of hard drives, wires, chips. Tutor androids required little more than a central processing unit. Cinder suspected that the android would have to be wiped and reprogrammed, but she had a feeling that wasn’t a viable option. Despite Kai’s nonchalance, it was clear this android knew something important, and after their conversation in the research hall, she had an uneasy feeling it had something to do with Lunars.

War strategies? Classified communications? Evidence for blackmail? Whatever it was, Kai clearly thought it would help, and he’d trusted Cinder to save it.

“No pressure or anything,” she muttered, gripping a flashlight between her teeth so she could see inside the android. She grabbed a pair of pliers and coerced the wires from one side of its cranium to the other. Its configuration was similar to Iko’s, so Cinder felt a familiarity with its parts, knew exactly where to find all the important connections. She checked that the wire connectors were sound, that the battery held power, that no important pieces were missing, and everything seemed fine. She cleaned out the noise translator and adjusted the internal fan, but Nainsi the android remained a lifeless statue of plastic and aluminum.

“All dressed up with nowhere to go,” said Iko from the doorway.

Cinder spit out the flashlight with a laugh and glanced down at her oil-stained cargo pants. “Yeah, right. All I need is a tiara.”

“I was talking about me.”

She spun her chair around. Iko had draped a strand of Adri’s pearls around her bulbous head and smeared cherry lipstick beneath her sensor in a horrible imitation of lips.

Cinder laughed. “Wow. That’s a great color on you.”

“Do you think?” Iko wheeled her way into the room and paused before Cinder’s desk, trying to catch her reflection in the netscreen. “I was imagining going to the ball and dancing with the prince.”

Cinder rubbed her jaw with one hand and mindlessly tapped the table with the other. “Funny. I’ve found myself imagining that exact thing lately.”

“I knew you liked him. You pretend to be immune to his charms, but I could see the way you looked at him at the market.” Iko rubbed at the lipstick, smearing it across her blank white chin.

“Yeah, well.” Cinder pinched her metal fingers with the pliers’ nose. “We all have our weaknesses.”

“I know,” said Iko. “Mine is shoes.”

Cinder tossed the tool onto her desk. Something like guilt was beginning to grow in her when Iko was around. She knew she should tell Iko about being Lunar, that Iko more than anyone would understand what it was like to be different and unwanted. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. By the way, Iko, it turns out I’m Lunar. You don’t mind, do you?

“What are you doing down here?” she asked instead.

“Just seeing if you need help. I’m supposed to be dusting the air vents, but Adri was in the bath.”

“So?”

“I could hear her crying.”

Cinder blinked. “Oh.”

“It was making me feel useless.”

“I see.”

Iko was not a normal servant android, but she did retain one prominent trait—uselessness was the worst emotion they knew.

“Well, sure, you can help,” Cinder said, rubbing her hands together. “Just don’t let her catch you with those pearls.”

Iko lifted the beaded necklace up with her prongs, and Cinder noticed she was wearing the ribbon Peony had given her. She pulled back, as if she’d been stung. “How about some light?”

The blue sensor brightened, shedding a spotlight into Nainsi’s interior.

Cinder twisted up her lips. “Do you think it could have a virus?”

“Maybe her programming was overwhelmed by Prince Kai’s uncanny hotness.”

Cinder flinched. “Can we please not talk about the prince?”

“I don’t think that will be possible. You’re working on his android, after all. Just think about the things she knows, the things she’s seen and—” Iko’s voice sputtered. “Do you think she’s seen him in the nude?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Cinder yanked off her gloves and tossed them onto the table. “You’re not helping.”

“I’m just making conversation.”

“Well stop.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Cinder pushed her chair back from the worktable and swung both legs up to rest on top of it. “It has to be a software issue.”

She sneered to herself. Software issues usually came down to reinstallation, but that would turn the android into a blank slate. She didn’t know if Kai was concerned with the android’s personality chip, which had probably developed into something quite complicated after twenty years of service, but she did know Kai was concerned with something in this android’s hard drive, and she didn’t want to risk wiping whatever it was.

The only way to determine what was wrong and if a reboot was necessary was to check the android’s internal diagnostics, and that required plugging in. Cinder hated plugging in. Connecting her own wiring with a foreign object had always felt hazardous, like if she wasn’t careful, her own software could be overridden.