Scarlet

ship is. It’s like a psychic bond.”
    “If only we had a captain here.”
    He ignored her, marching down the street with spectacular confidence. Cinder followed three steps behind him, jumping at each sound—trash skidding across the road, a hover crossing an intersection two streets away. The sun glistened off the dusty warehouse windows.
    Three empty blocks later, Thorne slowed his pace and peered up at the facade of each building they passed, rubbing his chin.
    Cinder began desperately searching her brain for Plan B.
    “There!” Thorne jotted across the street to a warehouse that was identical to every other warehouse, with giant rolling doors and years of colorful graffiti. Rounding the building’s corner, he tested the main door. “Locked.”
    Spotting the ID scanner beside the door, Cinder cursed. “Figures.” Kneeling down, she pried the plastic face off the scanner. “I might be able to disable it. Do you think there’s an alarm?”
    “There’d better be. I haven’t been paying rent all this time for my darling to sit in an unprotected warehouse.”
    Cinder had just downloaded the programming manual for the scanner’s product number when the door beside them swung open and a plump man with a thin black goatee stepped out into the sunlight. Cinder froze.
    “Carswell!” the man barked. “Just saw the news! I thought you might be showing up here.”
    “Alak, how are you?” A grin broke across Thorne’s face. “Am I really on the news? How do I look?”
    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. E SCAPED CONVICT . C ONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS . I F 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