Without answering, Alak swerved his attention toward Cinder. His friendliness froze over, buried beneath a trace of discomfort. Gulping, Cinder shut the scanner’s panel and stood. Her netlink was already connecting to the newsfeed she’d abandoned during their escape, and sure enough, there was a stream of warnings flashing across her own picture, the one they’d taken when she’d been admitted into the prison. ESCAPED CONVICT. CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. IF SEEN, COMM THIS LINK IMMEDIATELY.
“Seen you on the news too,” Alak said, glancing at her steel foot.
“Alak, I’m here to pick up my ship. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”
As sympathetic wrinkles creased the corners of Alak’s mouth, he shook his head. “I can’t help you, Carswell. The feds watch me close enough as it is. Storing a stolen ship is one thing, I can always claim ignorance to that. But assisting a convicted felon … and assisting … one of them.” His nose wrinkled at Cinder, but he simultaneously took a step back as if afraid of her retaliation. “If they track you here and find out I helped, it’s more trouble than even I can risk. You’d better just hang low for a time. I won’t tell I saw you. But I won’t let you take your ship. Not now. Not until all this blows over. You understand, right?”
Thorne flushed with disbelief. “But—she’s my ship! I’m a paying customer! You can’t just keep her from me.”
“Each man for himself. You know how it is well as anyone.” Alak slid his gaze back toward Cinder, his fear easing more and more into revulsion. “Get on your way now, and I won’t comm the police. If they come around, I’ll tell them I haven’t seen you since you dropped off the ship last year. But if you stay here much longer, I’ll comm them myself, I swear I will.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than Cinder heard a hover down the street. Her heart skipped at the sight of a white emergency hover—this one without the red cross on its side—but it disappeared down another street. She spun back toward Alak. “We don’t have anywhere else to go. We need that ship!”
He stepped back from her again, his body framed in the doorway. “Look here, little girl,” he said, his tone determined despite the way his attention kept swooping down to her metal hand. “I’m trying to help you out because Carswell’s been a good customer of mine, and I don’t rat out my customers. But it’s no favor to you. I wouldn’t blink twice before sending you off to rot. It’s the best your kind deserve. Now get away from my warehouse before I change my mind.”
Desperation welled inside Cinder. She clenched her fists as a surge of electricity lashed out, blinding her. White-hot pain flared up from the base of her neck, flooding her skull, but it was blessedly brief and left bright spots sparking in her vision.
Panting, she reeled back the burning energy, just in time to see Alak’s eyes roll back. He toppled forward, landing in Thorne’s arms.
Cinder staggered against the wall, dizzy. “Oh stars—is he dead?”
Thorne groaned from the weight. “No, but I think he’s having a heart attack!”
“It’s not a heart attack,” she murmured. “He’ll … he’ll be fine.” She said it as much to convince herself as him, having to believe these accidental flares of her Lunar gift weren’t dangerous, that she wasn’t becoming the terror to society that everyone believed her to be.
“Aces, he weighs a ton.”
Cinder grabbed Alak’s feet and together they dragged him into the building. An office to their left had two netscreens—one with a security feed showing the warehouse’s exterior, just as the door closed behind two white-clad fugitives and the unconscious man. The other screen showed a muted news anchor.
“He may be a selfish jerk, but he sure does have good taste in jewelry.” Thorne held up Alak’s hand by the thumb, fiddling with a silver-plated band around his wrist—a miniature portwatch.
“Would you focus?” Cinder hauled Thorne to his feet. Turning, she scanned the massive warehouse. It stretched out the full length of the city block, filled with dozens of spaceships, large and small, new and old. Cargo ships, podships, personal fliers, raceships, ferries, cruisers.
“Which one is it?”
“Hey, look, there was another jailbreak.”
Cinder glanced at the netscreen, which now showed the chairman of national security talking to a crowd of journalists. On the bottom of the screen scrolled the words: LUNAR ESCAPES FROM NEW BEIJING PRISON, CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
“This is great!” said Thorne, nearly knocking her over with a slap on her back. “They’re not going to worry about us if they have a Lunar to track down.”
Cinder dragged her attention away from the broadcast, just as his grin fell.
“Wait. You’re Lunar?”
“You’re a criminal mastermind?” Spinning on her heels, she stalked into the warehouse. “Where’s this ship?”
“Hold on there, little traitor. Breaking out of jail is one thing, but assisting a psychotic Lunar is a bit out of my league.”
Cinder rounded on him. “First, I’m not psychotic. And second, if it wasn’t for me, you would still be sitting in that jail cell ogling your portscreen, so you owe me. Besides, they’ve already got you pegged as my accomplice. You look like an idiot in that picture, by the way.”
Thorne followed her gesture to the screen. His own jail picture was blown up beside hers.
“I think I look pretty good…”
“Thorne. Captain. Please.”
He blinked at her, a touch of smugness wiped quickly away by a brisk nod. “Right. Let’s get out of here.”
Cinder sighed in relief, following Thorne as he marched into the maze of ships. “I hope it’s not one in the middle.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, pointing up. “The roof opens.”
Cinder glanced up at the seam in the middle of the ceiling. “That’s convenient.”
“And there she is.”
Cinder followed Thorne’s gesture. His ship was larger than she’d expected—much larger. A 214 Rampion, Class 11.3 cargo ship. Cinder pulled up her retina scanner and downloaded the ship’s blueprint, speechless at everything it could claim. The engine room and a fully stocked dock with two satellite podships took up the underbelly, while the main level housed the cargo bay, cockpit, galley kitchen, six crew quarters, and a shared washroom.
She rounded to the main entry hatch and saw that the seal of the American Republic had been hastily painted over with the silhouette of a lounging naked lady.
“Nice touch.”
“Thanks. Did it myself.”
Despite her worries that the painting could make them more easily identified, she couldn’t help being faintly impressed. “It’s bigger than I expected.”
“There was a time when she housed a twelve-man crew,” Thorne said, petting her hull.
“Should be plenty of room for avoiding each other then.” Cinder paced beneath the hatch, waiting for Thorne to open it, but when she glanced back she found him lovingly rubbing his temple against the ship’s underside and cooing about how much he’d missed her.
Cinder was in the middle of rolling her eyes when an unfamiliar voice ricocheted through the warehouse. “Over here!”
Turning, she saw someone crouched over Alak’s body, haloed in a square of light. They wore the unmistakable uniform of the Eastern Commonwealth military.
Cinder swore. “Time to go. Now.”
Thorne ducked toward the hatch. “Rampion, code word: Captain is king. Open hatch.”
They waited, but nothing happened.
Cinder raised panicked eyebrows.
“Captain is king. Captain is king! Rampion, wake up. It’s Thorne, Captain Carswell Thorne. What the—”
Cinder shushed him. Beyond the ship’s hull, four men were making their way through the crowded warehouse, flashlights shining off the assorted landing gear.
“Maybe the power cell is dead,” said Cinder.
“How? It’s just been sitting here.”