Cress

“Be right there,” said Scarlet, stashing away the rest of the supplies as Wolf jumped down from the exam table. When she glanced over at him, he was grinning, one finger rubbing against the cut.

In the cargo bay, Thorne and Cinder were seated on one of the storage crates, hunkered over a deck of paper cards. Cinder’s hair was still a mess from her recent semi-victory over Wolf.

“Oh, good,” said Thorne, glancing up. “Scarlet, tell Cinder she’s cheating.”

“I’m not cheating.”

“You just played back-to-back doubles. You can’t do that.”

Cinder crossed her arms. “Thorne, I just downloaded the official rulebook into my brain. I know what I can and can’t do.”

“Aha!” He snapped his fingers. “See, you can’t just download stuff in the middle of a game of Royals. House rules. You’re cheating.”

Cinder threw up her hands, sending cards fluttering throughout the cargo bay. Scarlet snatched a three out of the air. “I was taught that you can’t play back-to-back doubles either. But maybe that was just how my grandma played.”

“Or maybe Cinder’s cheating.”

“I am not—” Clenching her jaw, Cinder growled.

“Iko called us out here for something?” said Scarlet, dropping the card back onto the deck.

“Oui, mademoiselle,” said Iko, adopting the accent that Thorne often imitated when talking to Scarlet, though Iko sounded much more authentic. “There’s breaking news coming out on the Lunar special operatives.” The netscreen on the wall flickered, as Iko hid the ticking clock and palace blueprint and replaced them with a series of vids—reporters and grainy footage of armed military personnel coaxing half a dozen muscular men into a secured hover. “It seems that since the attack, the American Republic has been conducting investigations into the operatives, and a sting operation is going down right now in the three Republic cities that were attacked: New York, Mexico City, and São Paulo. They’ve already rounded up fifty-nine operatives and four thaumaturges, to be held as prisoners of war.”

Scarlet stepped closer to the screen, which was showing footage from Manhattan Island. It appeared that this particular pack had been hiding out in an abandoned subway line. The operatives were bound at their hands and ankles and each one had at least two guns trained on him from the surrounding troops, but they all looked as carefree as if they were picking wildflowers in a meadow. One even flashed an amused grin at the camera as he was herded past. “Do you know any of them?”

Wolf grunted. “Not well. The different packs didn’t usually socialize, but I’d see them in the dining hall, and sometimes during training.”

“They don’t seem too upset,” said Thorne. “Evidently they’ve never tasted prison food.”

Cinder came to stand beside Scarlet. “They won’t be there for long. The wedding is in two weeks, and then they’ll be released and sent back to Luna.”

Thorne hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “In that case, this seems like a pretty big waste of time and resources.”

“I disagree,” said Scarlet. “The people can’t keep living in fear. The government is trying to show that they’re doing something to keep the massacres from happening again. This way, they can feel like they have some sort of control over the situation.”

Cinder shook her head. “But what happens when Levana retaliates? The whole point of the marriage alliance was to hold her temper in check.”

“She won’t retaliate,” said Wolf. “I doubt she’ll even care.”

Scarlet glanced at the tattoo on his forearm. “After all the work she’s gone through to create you … them?”

“She wouldn’t jeopardize the alliance. Not for the operatives, who were only meant to serve one purpose to begin with—to launch that first attack and remind Earth that Lunars can be anyone, anywhere. To make them afraid of us.” He began to shuffle restlessly from foot to foot. “She’s done with us now.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Iko, “because now that they’ve discovered how to track the operatives, everyone expects the rest of the Union to follow suit.”

“How did they find them?” asked Cinder, adjusting her ponytail.

A sigh of air whooshed through the cooling system. “It turns out, Lunars have managed to reprogram a bunch of the med-droids stationed at plague quarantines all over the world. They’ve been harvesting ID chips from the deceased and shipping them off to these operatives to be reprogrammed and inserted into their bodies, so they could blend in with society. Once the government figured out the connection, they just had to follow the trail of the ID chips, and they were led straight to the packs’ operation bases.”

“Peony…” Cinder shifted closer to the netscreen. “That’s why the android wanted her chip. You’re telling me it would have ended up inside one of them?”

“Spoken with true derision for our canine friends,” said Thorne.