Scarlet

They passed beneath the manhole and Cinder detected the steady sound of water growing louder. “We’re almost to the combined main line,” she said, at first eager to reach it—it was hot as Mars in this cramped tu

No longer would it just be surface water runoff they were trekking through.

“Oh, aces,” said Thorne, groaning. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

Cinder wrinkled her nose and focused on taking shallow, burning breaths.

The smell grew nearly unbearable as they traipsed through the sludge and came to the sewer co

Cinder’s imbedded flashlight searched the tu

She fought off another bout of nausea as the pungent stink of the sewer clouded her nostrils, her throat, her lungs.

“Ready?” she said, inching forward.

“Wait—what are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

Thorne blinked at her, then down at the sewage he could barely make out in the darkness. “Don’t you have some tool in that fancy hand of yours that can get us across?”

Cinder glared, light-headed from her body’s instinctively short breaths. “Oh, wow, how could I have forgotten about my grappling hook?”

Spi

He was staring at her legs with unbridled disgust.

Cinder looked down. The stark white jumper was now tinged greenish brown and clung, sopping, to her legs.

“Look,” she yelled, aiming the flashlight at Thorne, “you can either get over here or you can go back and serve the rest of your sentence in peace. But you have to make a decision now.”

After a stream of curses and spitting, Thorne inched his way into the sludge, holding his arms aloft. He was grimacing the whole time as he slinked his way to the grate and hauled himself up beside Cinder.

“This is what I get for complaining about the soap,” he muttered, pressing himself against the wall.

The grate was already digging into Cinder’s bare foot and she shifted her weight onto her cyborg leg. “All right, Cadet. Which way?”

“Captain.” He opened his eyes and peered down the tu

“It’s near the old Beihai Park,” Thorne said, scratching at his whiskered chin. “Which way is that?”

Cinder nodded and turned south.

Her internal clock told her they’d been walking for only twelve minutes, but it seemed like hours. The grate dug into her foot with each step. Her wet pants were plastered to her calves and sweat dripped down the back of her neck, sometimes tricking her into thinking it was a spider fallen down her jumpsuit and making her feel guilty for giving Thorne a hard time before. Though they didn’t see any rats, she could hear them scurrying away from her light, down countless tu

Thorne talked to himself as they walked, working through his clogged memory. His ship was definitely near Beihai Park. In the industrial district. Not six blocks south of the maglev tracks … well, maybe eight blocks.

“We’re about a block away from the park,” Cinder said, pausing at a metal ladder. A spot of light drifted down toward them. “This goes up to West Yunxin.”

“Yunxin sounds familiar. Sort of.”

She pleaded for patience and started to climb.

The ladder rungs bit into her foot, but the air was blissfully fresh as she neared the top. The sound of the rushing water was replaced with the hum of maglev tracks. Reaching the manhole cover, Cinder paused to listen for signs of humanity, before pushing the cover off to the side.

A hover glided overhead.

Cinder ducked, heart racing. Daring to inch her head up, she spotted silent lights atop the white vehicle. It was an emergency hover. Visions of androids armed with brain-interface-overriding tasers sent a shudder through her, before the hover turned a corner and she saw a red cross on one side. It was a medical hover, not law enforcement. Cinder nearly collapsed from relief.

They were in the old warehouse district, near the plague quarantines. Medical hovers were to be expected.

She glanced both ways down the deserted street. Though it was still early, the day was already hot and whimsical mirages were rising from the pavement, having forgotten the drenching summer storm from two nights before.

“Clear.” She hauled herself up onto the road and sucked in a deep breath of the city’s humidity. Thorne followed, his uniform glaringly bright in the sun, except for the legs, which were still murky green and smelled of sewage. “Which way?”

Shielding his eyes with his forearm, Thorne squinted at the concrete buildings and rotated in a full circle. Faced north. Scratched his neck.

Cinder’s optimism crumbled. “Tell me you recognize something.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” he said, waving her away. “I just haven’t been here in a while.”

“Think faster. We aren’t exactly blending in with our surroundings out here.”

With a nod, Thorne started down the street. “This way.”

Five steps later he paused, pondered, turned around. “No, no, this way.”

“We’re dead.”

“No, I’ve got it now. It’s this way.”

“Don’t you have an address?”

“A captain always knows where his ship is. It’s like a psychic bond.”

“If only we had a captain here.”

He ignored her, marching down the street with spectacular confidence. Cinder followed three steps behind him, jumping at each sound—trash skidding across the road, a hover crossing an intersection two streets away. The sun glistened off the dusty warehouse windows.

Three empty blocks later, Thorne slowed his pace and peered up at the facade of each building they passed, rubbing his chin.

Cinder began desperately searching her brain for Plan B.

“There!” Thorne jotted across the street to a warehouse that was identical to every other warehouse, with giant rolling doors and years of colorful graffiti. Rounding the building’s corner, he tested the main door. “Locked.”

Spotting the ID sca

“There’d better be. I haven’t been paying rent all this time for my darling to sit in an unprotected warehouse.”

Cinder had just downloaded the programming manual for the sca

“Carswell!” the man barked. “Just saw the news! I thought you might be showing up here.”

“Alak, how are you?” A grin broke across Thorne’s face. “Am I really on the news? How do I look?”