The pain soon faded, trounced by adrenaline and curiosity. They’d arrived at a new town, but even she could tell this one had never been as wealthy or populated as Kufra. Modest buildings the color of the desert stretched down a sand-spotted road. Walls of red clay, painted indigo and pink, had long been bleached in the sun, their roofs covered with broken tiles. A fenced area not far away held half a dozen camels and there were a few more wheeled, dirty vehicles stationed along the street, and—
She blinked the sun and sand from her eyes.
A spaceship sat in the center of town. A Rampion.
Her heart skipped with frenzied hope, but it was quickly smothered. Even from this distance she could see that the Rampion’s main hatch was painted black, not adorned with a lounging lady as had been reported when Thorne’s ship landed in France.
She whimpered, tearing her eyes away as her captors herded her into the nearest building. They entered a dark hallway. Only a small window in the front let in any light, and it had been caked with windblown sand over the years. There was a tiny desk set into a corner with a board of old-fashioned keys hanging on the wall. Cress was shuffled past it and taken to the end of the corridor.
The walls reeked with something pungent—not a bad scent, but too overpowering to be pleasant. Cress’s nose tickled.
She was pushed up a staircase, so thin that she had to follow behind Jina, with Niels behind her. An eerie silence haunted the sand-colored walls. The stench was stronger up here and a shiver raced down her spine, making goose bumps bloom across her arms. Her fear had bundled itself up in a cluster of nerves at the base of her spine.
By the time they reached the last door in the hallway and Jina raised her fist to knock, Cress was shaking so hard she almost couldn’t stand. She was surprised to find herself longing for the security of the van.
Jina had to knock twice before they heard footsteps and the creak of the door. Niels kept Cress tucked securely behind Jina, and all she could see were the cuffs of a man’s brown trousers and worn white shoes with fraying laces.
“Jina,” said a man—sounding like he’d just woken from a nap. “I heard a rumor out of Kufra that you were on your way.”
“I’ve brought you another subject. Found her wandering in the desert.”
A hesitation. Then the man said, without question, “A shell.”
His certainty made Cress squirm. If he had not had to ask, that meant he could sense her. Or, rather, couldn’t sense her. She remembered Sybil complaining that she could not sense Cress’s thoughts—how much more difficult it was to train and command a person like her, as if it were all Cress’s doing.
This man was Lunar.
She flinched away, wanting to curl up until she was no larger than a grain of sand, until she blew away into the desert and disappeared.
But she could not disappear. Instead, as Jina stepped aside, she found herself face-to-face with a man well into his years.
She started. They were face-to-face—he was barely taller than her.
Behind a pair of thin wired spectacles, his blue eyes widened, looking remarkably lively despite the wrinkles that folded and creased around them. He was balding, with tufts of untamed gray hair that stuck out above his ears. A bizarre déjà vu struck her, as if she’d seen him before, but that was impossible.
He whipped off his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes. When he replaced them, his lips were puckered and he was examining Cress like a bug for dissection. She pressed back against the wall, until Niels grabbed her elbow and yanked her forward.
“Definitely a shell,” the old man murmured, “and a phantom, it seems.”
Cress’s heart pounded a rough, erratic rhythm against her rib cage.
“I’m asking 32,000 univs for her.”
The man blinked at Jina like he’d forgotten she was there. He stood a bit straighter and made a great fuss about removing his spectacles again, to clean them this time.
Cress dug her fingernails into her palm to distract herself from her panic. She stared past the man. A single window was covered in blinds, and there was dust swirling in and out of a beam of sunlight that knifed through them. There was a closed door, presumably a closet, a desk, a bed, and a pile of rumpled blankets in the corner. The blankets were clotted with blood.
A chill raced across her skin.
Then she spotted the netscreen.
A netscreen. She could comm for help. She could contact the last hotel, in Kufra. She could tell Thorne—
“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.