Cress

“Trust me, Jina, I have more reason than you to keep my transactions hidden from prying eyes.” He studied something on the screen, before saying, more solemnly, “Thank you for bringing her.”

Jina scowled at his balding head. “I hope you’re killing all these Lunars when you’re done with them. We have enough problems with the plague. We don’t need them too.”

His blue eyes flashed and Cress detected a hint of disdain for Jina, but he covered it over with another benign look. “The payment has been transferred. If you would untie the girl before you go.”

Cress kept still as the bindings were taken off her wrists. She whipped her hands away as soon as they were gone and scurried against the nearest wall.

“Lovely doing business with you again,” Jina said. The doctor merely grunted. He was watching Cress from the corner of his eye, trying to stare at her without being obvious.

And then the door closed and Jina and Niels were gone. Cress listened to their feet clopping down the hallway, the only noise in the building.

The doctor rubbed his palms down the front of his shirt, like cleansing them of Jina’s presence. Cress didn’t think he could feel half as filthy as she did, but she stayed as still as the wall, glaring.

“Yes, well,” he said. “It is more awkward with shells, you know. Not so easy to explain.”

She snarled. “You mean, not so easy to brainwash.”

He tilted his head, and the odd look had returned. The one that made her feel like a science experiment under a microscope. “You know that I’m Lunar.”

She didn’t answer.

“I understand you’re frightened. I can’t imagine what sort of mistreatment Jina and her hooligans put you through. But I am not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m doing great things here, things that will change the world, and you can help me.” He paused. “What is your name, child?”

She didn’t answer.

When he moved closer, his hands extended in a show of peace, Cress shoved all her fear down into her gut and used the wall to launch herself at him.

A roar clawed up from her throat and she swung her elbow, as hard as she could, landing a solid hit against his jaw. She heard the snap of his teeth, felt the shock in her bones, and then he was falling backward and landing so hard on the wooden floor that the entire building shook around them.

She didn’t check to see if he was unconscious, or if she’d given him a heart attack, or if he was in any shape to get up and follow her.

She wrenched open the door and ran.

Thirty-Seven

Dr. Erland woke up on the floor of a hot, dusty hotel room, unable for a moment to remember where he was.

This was not the laboratories beside New Beijing Palace, where he’d watched cyborg after cyborg break into red and purple rashes. Where he’d seen the life drain out of their eyes, and cursed the sacrifice of another life, while plotting the next step in his hunt for the only cyborg that mattered.

This was not the labs of Luna, where he’d studied and researched with a singular drive for recognition. Where he’d seen monsters born at the end of his surgical tools. Where he’d watched the brainwaves of young men take on the chaotic, savage patterns of wild animals.

He was not Dr. Dmitri Erland, as he’d been in New Beijing.

He was not Dr. Sage Darnel, as he’d been on Luna.

Or perhaps he was—he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember … didn’t care.

His thoughts kept turning away from himself and his two hateful identities, and swarming back to his wife’s heart-shaped face and honey-blonde hair that became frizzy whenever the ecology department was injecting new humidity into Luna’s controlled atmosphere.

His thoughts were on a screaming baby, four days old and confirmed a shell, as his wife dropped her into the hands of Thaumaturge Mira, with all the coldness and disgust she would have shown a rodent.

The last time he’d seen his little Crescent Moon.

He watched the whirling ceiling fan that did nothing to dispel the desert heat and wondered why, after all these years, his hallucinations had chosen this time to torture him.

This shell girl did not really have his wife’s freckles or blonde hair. This shell girl did not have his unfortunate height or his own blue eyes. This shell girl was not his daughter, returned from the dead to haunt him. The illusion was all in his mind.

Perhaps it was fitting. He’d done so many horrible things. The recent attack against Earth was only the culmination of years of his own efforts. It was through his own research that Queen Channary had begun developing her army of wolf hybrids, and through his experiments that Levana was able to see it to its bloody finale.

And then there were all those he’d hurt to find Selene and end Levana’s reign. All those he’d murdered to find Linh Cinder.