But she didn’t try to run. No one ever put up a fight when being taken to the quarantines.
Their eyes met. Cinder opened her mouth but nothing came out. She tried to plead forgiveness with her eyes.
The faintest of smiles touched Peony’s lips. She raised a hand and waved with only her fingers.
Cinder returned it, knowing it should be her.
She had already outlived fate once. She should be the one being carted away. She should be the one dying. It should be her.
It was about to be her.
She tried to speak, to tell Peony she would be right behind her. She wouldn’t be alone. But then the android beeped. “Scan complete. No letumosis-carrying pathogens detected. Subject is urged to stand fifty feet back from infected patient.”
Cinder blinked. Relief and dread both squirmed inside her.
She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t going to die.
She wasn’t going with Peony.
“We will alert you via comm when Linh Peony enters the subsequent stages of the disease. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Cinder wrapped her arms around herself and watched Peony lay down as she was carted away, curling up like a child on the gurney.
Chapter Six
CINDER SLINKED THROUGH THE BALMY NIGHT, THE SOUND of her boots shuffling across the concrete, as if both legs were made of steel. The empty night was a chorus of muted sounds in her head: the sandy crunching of Iko’s treads, the sputtering of street lamps above them, the constant hum of the magnetic superconductor beneath the street. With every step, the wrench inside Cinder’s calf clanked. It all dulled in comparison to the video replaying in her mind.
Her interface did that sometimes—recording moments of strong emotion and replaying them over and over. Like déjà vu or when the last words of a conversation linger in the air long after silence has settled in. Usually, she could make the memory stop before it drove her crazy, but tonight she didn’t have the energy.
The black splotch on Peony’s skin. Her scream. The med-droid’s syringe dragging Cinder’s blood from the flesh of her elbow. Peony, small and trembling on the gurney. Already dying.
She stopped, clutching her stomach as nausea roiled up. Iko paused a few paces ahead, shining her spotlight on Cinder’s scrunched face.
“Are you all right?”
The light darted down the length of Cinder’s body, and she was sure Iko was searching for bruise-like rings even though the med-droid had said she wasn’t infected.
Instead of answering, Cinder peeled off her gloves and shoved them into her back pocket. Her faintness passing, she leaned her shoulder against a street lamp and drank in the humid air. They’d made it home, almost. The Phoenix Tower apartments stood on the next corner, only the top floor catching the faint light from the crescent moon, the rest of the building cast in shadow. The windows were black but for a handful of lights and some bluish white glares from flickering netscreens. Cinder counted floors, finding the windows to the kitchen and Adri’s bedroom.
Though dim, a light was still on somewhere in the apartment. Adri wasn’t a night person, but perhaps she’d discovered that Peony was still out. Or perhaps Pearl was awake, working on a school project or comming friends late into the night.
It was probably better this way. She didn’t want to have to wake them.
“What am I going to tell them?”
Iko’s sensor was on the apartment building for a moment, then the ground, picking up the shuffled debris across the sidewalk.
Cinder rubbed her sweaty palm on her pants and forced herself onward. Try as she might, suitable words would not come to her. Explanations, excuses. How do you tell a woman her daughter is dying?
She swiped her ID and entered through the main door this time. The gray lobby was decorated only with a netscreen that held announcements for the residents—a rise in maintenance fees, a petition for a new ID scanner at the front door, a lost cat. Then the elevator, loud with the clunking of old machinery. The hallway was empty, save the man from apartment 1807 snoozing on his doorstep. Cinder had to tuck in his splayed arm so Iko wouldn’t crush it. Heavy breathing and the sweet aroma of rice wine wafted up.
She hesitated in front of apartment 1820, heart pounding. She couldn’t recall when the video of Peony had stopped repeating in her head, eclipsed by her harsh nerves.
What was she going to say?
Cinder bit her lip and held up her wrist for the scanner. The small light switched to green. She opened the door as quietly as possible.
Brightness from the living room spilled into the dark hallway. Cinder caught a glimpse of the netscreen, still showing footage of the market from earlier that day, the baker’s booth going up in flames again and again. The screen was muted.
Cinder entered the room, but halted mid-step. Iko bumped against her leg.
Facing her from the middle of the living room were three androids with red crosses painted on their spherical heads. Emergency med-droids.
Behind them, Adri in her silk bathrobe stood against the mantel although the holographic fire was turned off. Pearl was still fully clothed, sitting on the sofa with her knees pulled up to her chin. They were both holding dry washcloths over their noses and eyeing Cinder with a mixture of repulsion and fear.
Cinder’s stomach clenched. She drew a half step back into the hallway, wondering which of them was sick, but she quickly realized that neither of them could be. The androids would have taken them immediately. They wouldn’t be protecting their breath. The entire building would be on lockdown.
She noticed a small bandage on Adri’s elbow. They’d already been tested.
Cinder shifted her messenger bag, setting it on the ground, but kept the magbelt.
Adri cleared her throat and lowered the cloth to her sternum. She looked like a skeleton in the pale lighting, mealy skin and jutting bones. Without makeup, dark circles swelled beneath her bloodshot eyes. She’d been crying, but now her lips were set in a stiff line.
“I received a comm an hour ago,” she said once the silence had congealed in the room. “It informed me that Peony was picked up in the Taihang District junkyard and taken—” Her voice broke. She dropped her gaze, and when she looked up again, her eyes were flashing. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
Cinder shifted, trying not to look at the med-droids.
Without waiting for Cinder’s answer, Adri said, “Iko, you can begin disposing of Peony’s things. Anything she wore in the past week can go into waste collection—but take it to the alley yourself, I don’t want it clogging up the chutes. I suppose everything else can be sold at the market.” Her voice was sharp and steady, as if this list had been repeating in her head from the moment she’d received the news.
“Yes, Linh-ji,” said Iko, wheeling back into the hallway. Cinder stayed, frozen, both hands clutching the magbelt like a shield. Though the android was incapable of ignoring Adri’s commands, it was clear from her slowness that she didn’t want to leave Cinder alone so long as the med-droids were watching with their hollow yellow sensors.
“Why,” said Adri, wringing the washcloth, “was my youngest daughter at the Taihang District junkyard this evening?”
Cinder drew the magbelt against her, lining it up from shoulder to toe. Made of the same steel as her hand and equally tarnished, it felt like an extension of her. “She came with me to look for a magbelt.” She drew in a heavy breath. Her tongue felt swollen, her throat closing in. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I saw the spots, and I called the emergency hover. I didn’t know what to do.”