Marissa Meyer - Cinder

“I didn’t know how to control it. I didn’t know what was happening.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “It’s probably a good thing I’m in here. There’s nowhere out there I would fit in, not after that.” She gestured to some nonexistent place beyond the white walls. “Good thing Levana’s going to put me out of my misery.”

“Is she, Miss Linh? That’s a shame. I was hoping you would have inherited more gumption from our people.”

“Sorry. I seem to have lost my gumption when my foot fell off during a live netfeed.”

The doctor wrinkled his nose at her. “You worry so much about such silly things.”

“Silly?”

Dr. Erland smirked. “I came down here for a very important reason, you know, and we haven’t got all day.”

“Right.” Cinder grumbled as she rolled up her sleeve and extended her arm toward him. “Take as much blood as you want. I won’t be needing it.”

Dr. Erland patted her elbow. “That was a ruse. I am not here for blood samples. There will be Lunars in Africa to test if I need them.”

Cinder let her arm sink back into her lap. “Africa?”

“Yes, I am going to Africa.”

“When?”

“In about three minutes. There is much work to be done, and it will be difficult to complete it in a jail cell, so I’ve decided to go to where the first cases of letumosis were documented, in a small town east of the Sahara Desert.” He spun his fingers through the air, as if gesturing at an invisible map. “I hope to find some carrier hosts and convince them to become a part of my research.”

Cinder unrolled her sleeve. “So why are you here?”

“To invite you to join me there. When it’s convenient, of course.”

Cinder scowled. “Gee, thanks, Doc. I’ll check my calendar to see when I’ll be available again.”

“I hope you will, Miss Linh. Here, I have a gift for you. Two gifts, in fact.” Dr. Erland reached into the bag and pulled out a metal hand and a metal foot, both gleaming beneath the bright lights. Cinder’s eyebrows shot up.

“State of the art,” said Dr. Erland. “Fully accessorized. Plated with 100 percent titanium. And look!” Like a child with a new toy, he fidgeted with the hand’s fingers, revealing a hidden flashlight, a stiletto knife, a projectile gun, a screwdriver, and a universal connector cable. “It’s a pillar of usefulness. The tranquilizer darts are stored in here.” He opened a compartment on the palm, revealing a dozen skinny darts. “Once your wiring synchronizes, you should be able to load it with a simple thought.”

“That’s…fantastic. Now when I’m on the chopping block, I can at least take a few bystanders down with me.”

“Exactly!” He chuckled. Cinder frowned, irritated, but Dr. Erland was too busy ogling the prostheses to notice. “I had them made especially for you. I used your body scan to make sure I had the right dimensions. If I’d had more time, I could have done a skin graft, but we can’t have everything, I suppose.”

Cinder took the parts when he handed them to her, inspecting their craftsmanship with trepidation.

“Don’t let the guard see those, or I really will be in trouble,” he said.

“Thanks. I sure am excited to wear them for the last two days of my life.”

With a sly grin, Dr. Erland cast his gaze around the small cell. “Funny, isn’t it? So much advancement, so much technology. But even the most complicated security systems aren’t designed with Lunar cyborgs in mind. I guess it’s a good thing there aren’t many of you around, or we might have a reputation for jailbreaks.”

“What? Are you crazy?” Cinder said, voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Are you suggesting that I should try to escape?”

“In fact, I am a little bit crazy these days.” Dr. Erland scratched at his lined cheek. “Can’t be helped. All that bioelectricity with nowhere to go, nothing to do….” He sighed whimsically. “But no, Miss Linh, I am not suggesting you should try to escape. I am saying you must escape. And you must do it soon. Your chances for survival will drop drastically once Levana comes for you.”

Cinder leaned back against the wall, sensing the start of a headache. “Look, I appreciate that you care about me, I really do. But even if I could find a way out of here, do you realize how livid Levana would be? You yourself said there will be horrible consequences if she doesn’t get what she wants. I am not worth starting a war over.”

His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. He looked young for a moment, almost giddy. “Actually, you are.”

She cocked her head, squinting at him. Maybe he really was mad.

“I tried to tell you when you were in my office last week, but you had to run off to see your sister—ah, and I am sorry about your sister, by the way.”

Cinder bit the inside of her cheek.

“Anyway, you see, I had your DNA sequenced. It informed me not only that you are Lunar, not only that you are not a shell, but also something of your heritage. Your bloodline.”

Cinder’s heartbeat quickened. “My family?”

“Yes.”

“And? Do I have one? My parents, are they…” She hesitated. Dr. Erland’s eyes had saddened at her outburst. “Are they dead?”

He pulled his hat off. “I’m sorry, Cinder. I should have gone about this a better way. Yes, your mother is dead. I do not know who your father is or if he is alive. Your mother was, shall we say…known for her promiscuity.”

She felt her hopes shrivel. “Oh.”

“And you have an aunt.”

“An aunt?”

Dr. Erland squeezed the hat in both hands. “Yes. It’s Queen Levana.”

Cinder blinked at him.

“My dear girl. You are Princess Selene.”

SILENCE FILLED THE STERILE WHITE AIR BETWEEN CINDER and Dr. Erland, filled the fogginess in Cinder’s head. The confusion did not leave her face. “What?”

The doctor reached forward and put his hand over Cinder’s. “You are Princess Selene.”

She jerked away from him. “I don’t—what?”

“I know. It seems unbelievable.”

“No, it seems…that’s impossible. Why would you joke about this?”

He smiled softly and patted her hand again. Which is when Cinder realized that her vision was clear. No orange light was plaguing her.

The breath left her. Her gaze fell to the empty wires poking out from her ankle.

“I know it will take time for you to come to terms with this,” said Dr. Erland, “and I wish I could be here to help you through it. And I will. I will tell you everything you need to know when you get to Africa. But now, it is imminent that you understand why you cannot let Levana take you. You are the only one who can dethrone her. Do you understand?”

She shook her head, dazed.

“Princess—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Dr. Erland wrung the hat in his lap. “All right. Miss Linh, listen to me. I have been searching for you for so many years. On Luna, I knew the man who brought you to Earth and performed your surgery. I tracked him down in an attempt to find you, but by then he’d already started to lose his mind. All I could get out of him was that you were somewhere here, in the Commonwealth. I knew I was looking for a cyborg, a teenager—and yet there were so many times when I thought I would go crazy myself before finding you. Before being able to tell you the truth. And then you were there—suddenly—in my lab. A miracle.”

Cinder raised a hand, cutting him off. “Why? Why did they make me a cyborg?”

“Because your body was too badly damaged in the fire,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. “Your limbs could not have been rescued. It’s amazing you were able to survive at all, and that you’ve managed to stay hidden for all these—”