Scarlet

the netscreens and uproarious laughter.
    Cinder took two steps inside, her breath caught, and she spun around to leave. Thorne blocked her path with an outstretched arm. “Where are you going?”
    “There are too many people. We’ll have better luck with the police.” She pushed him away but froze when she spotted a green hover easing onto the cobblestones outside, the emblem of the Eastern Commonwealth military painted on its side. “ Thorne. ”
    His arm stiffened and then the tavern seemed to quiet. Cinder slowly faced the crowd. Dozens of strangers, gaping at her.
    A cyborg.
    “Stars,” she whispered. “I need to find a new pair of gloves.”
    “No, you need to calm down and start using your brainwave witchery thing.”
    Cinder drew closer to Thorne and swallowed her growing panic. “We belong here,” she murmured. Sweat beaded on the back of her neck, dripping down her spine. “We’re not suspicious. You don’t recognize us. You have no interest or curiosity or…” She trailed off as the attention of people around the room began to drift back to their food and drinks and the netscreens behind the bar. Cinder continued the mindless chanting in her head, We belong here, we are not suspicious, until the statements blurred together into a sensation of invisibility.
    They weren’t suspicious. They did belong there.
    She forced herself to believe it.
    Scanning the crowd, she saw that only one set of eyes was still on her—vibrant blue and filled with laughter. He was a muscular man sitting at a table near the back, a smile playing on his mouth. When Cinder’s gaze held his, he sat back and lifted his attention to the screens.
    “Come on, then,” said Thorne, guiding her toward an open booth.
    The sound of the door creaking behind them sent Cinder’s stomach heaving like a dying motor. They slid into the booth.
    “This was a bad idea,” she whispered, tucking the power cell beside her on the bench. Thorne said nothing, both of them bending their necks over the table as three red uniforms brushed past. A scanner beeped, sending Cinder’s pulse thrumming against her temples, and the last officer paused.
    With her cyborg hand beneath the table, Cinder deftly opened the barrel of her imbedded tranquilizer gun, the first time she’d engaged that finger since Dr. Erland had given her the hand.
    The officer remained beside their booth and Cinder forced herself to turn toward him, thinking innocence, normal, indistinguishable from anyone else.
    The officer was holding a portscreen with a built-in ID scanner. Cinder gulped and looked up. He was young, perhaps in his early twenties, and his face was contorted in confusion.
    “Is there a problem, monsieur?” she said, sickened to hear her own voice come out as saccharine sweet as she’d once heard Queen Levana’s.
    His eyes blinked wildly. The attention of the other officers, one man and one woman, was captured too, and Cinder could see them hovering nearby.
    Heat spread out from the base of her neck, creeping uncomfortably down her limbs. She clenched her fists. The wash of energy in the room was pulsing, almost visible. Her optobionics were beginning to panic, sending concerned warnings about hormones and chemical imbalances across her eyesight, and all the while she desperately grasped for control over her Lunar gift. I am invisible. I am unimportant. You do not recognize me. Please, don’t recognize me.
    “Officer?”
    “You are … um.” His eyes darted from the port to her face, and he shook his head to dispel the cobwebs. “We’re looking for someone, and this says … you wouldn’t happen to…”
    Everyone was watching now. The waitresses, the customers, the eerie guy with the stormy eyes. No amount of internal pleading could make her invisible when a military officer from another country was speaking to her. She was becoming dizzy with the effort of it. Her body was warming, sweat beading on her brow.
    She gulped. “Is everything all right, Officer?”
    His brow drew together. “We’re looking for a girl … a teenager, from the Eastern Commonwealth. You wouldn’t happen to be … Linh…”
    Cinder raised her eyebrows, feigning ignorance.
    “Peony?”

 
    Thirty-Six
    Cinder’s smile froze to her face. Peony’s name was like a stone on her chest, pressing the air out of her lungs as memories fell across her vision. Peony scared and alone in the quarantines. Peony dying, with the antidote still in Cinder’s hand.
    The