Cress

“I will give you 25,000.” The man’s tone had solidified while he cleaned his glasses, and was now all business.

Jina snorted. “I will not hesitate to take this girl to the police and have her deported. I’ll collect my citizen’s reward from them.”

“A mere 1,500 univs? You would sacrifice so much on your pride, Jina?”

“My pride, and to know that one less Lunar is walking around on my planet.” She said this with a sneer, and for the first time it occurred to Cress that Jina might truly hate her—for no other reason than her ancestry. “I’ll let her go for 30,000, Doctor. I know you’re paying as much for shells these days.”

Doctor? Cress gulped. This man in no way resembled the finely polished men and women in the net dramas, with their crisp white coats and advanced technology. Somehow, the title served to make her more wary, as visions of scalpels and syringes flashed through her mind.

He sighed. “Ah, 27,000.”

Jina tilted her head back, peering down her nose. “Deal.”

The doctor took her hand, but he seemed to have drawn back into himself. He couldn’t look at Cress full-on, as if he were ashamed that she had witnessed the transaction.

Defiance jolted down Cress’s spine.

He should be ashamed. They should all be ashamed.

And she would not let herself become mere baggage to be bartered for. Mistress Sybil had taken advantage of her for too long. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

Before these thoughts could become anything more than rebellious anger, she was shoved into the room. Jina shut the door, enclosing them all in the hot, dusty space that smelled of stale chemicals. “Make the transfer quick,” she said, folding her arms. “I have other business to tend to in Kufra.”

The doctor grunted and opened the closet. There were no clothes inside, but rather a miniature science lab, with mystery machines and scanners and a stand of metal drawers that clanked when he opened them. He pulled out a needle and syringe and made quick work of removing its packaging.

Cress backed away, arms pulling against her bindings, but Niels stopped her.

“Yes, yes, let me get a blood sample from her, then I’ll make the transfer.”

“Why?” Jina said, stepping between them. “So you can determine something’s wrong with her and compromise our deal?”

The doctor harrumphed. “I have no intention of compromising anything, Jina. I merely thought she would be more complicit while you’re here, allowing me to more safely extract a sample.”

Cress’s gaze darted around the room. A weapon. An escape. A hint of mercy in the eyes of her captor.

Nothing. There was nothing.

“Fine,” Jina said. “Niels, hold her so the doctor can do what he needs to do.”

“No!” The word was ripped out of Cress as she stumbled away. Her shoulder collided with Niels and she started to fall backward, but then he was gripping her by the elbow and hauling her against him. Her legs had become soggy and useless beneath her. “No—please. Leave me alone!” She pleaded at the doctor and saw such a mixture of emotion on his lined face that she fell silent.

His eyebrows were bunched together, and his mouth tightly pursed. He kept rapidly blinking behind his glasses, like trying to clear away an eyelash, until his gaze fell away from her altogether. There was pity in him. She knew it—she knew this was sympathy he was trying to disguise.

“Please,” she sobbed. “Please let me go. I’m just a shell, and I’m stranded here on Earth, and I haven’t done anything to anyone, and I’m nobody. I’m nobody. Please, just let me go.”

He did not meet her eyes again, even as he stepped forward. She tensed, trying to back away, but Niels held her firm. The doctor’s touch felt papery, but his grip was strong as he took her wrist in one hand.

“Try to relax,” he murmured.

She flinched as the needle dug into her flesh, the same spot where Sybil had taken blood a hundred times. She bit hard on the inside of her cheek, refusing to so much as whimper.

“That was all. Not so awful, was it?” His tone was eerily soft, like he was trying to comfort her.

She felt like a bird who’d had her wings clipped and been thrown into a cage—another filthy, rotting cage.

She’d been in a cage all her life. Somehow, she’d never expected to find one just as awful on Earth.

Earth, she reminded herself as the doctor plodded back across the groaning floorboards. She was on Earth. Not trapped in a satellite in space. There was a way out of this. Freedom was just out that window, or just down those stairs. She would not be a prisoner again.

The doctor fit the syringe full of her blood into a machine and flipped on a portscreen.

“There now, I will transfer over the funds, and you can be on your way.”

“You’re using a secure connection?” Jina asked, taking a step forward as the doctor tapped in some sort of code word. Cress squinted, watching where his fingers landed, in case she would later need it. It could save time not having to hack it.