Scarlet

unsafe compressions. It also didn’t say anything about a living girl inside.
    Thorne tapped the unlock icon on the screen and twisted the door’s manual bolt, then shoved the door open.
    The engine was loud and hot and smelled like melted rubber.
    “Hello?” he called into the dark. “Cyborg girl? Are you in here?”
    If she responded, the words were lost in the engine’s thrumming. Thorne gulped. “Lights, on?”
    A red emergency light brightened above the doorway, casting gloomy shadows over the enormous revolving engine and the masses of cords and coils that sprawled out beneath it.
    Thorne squinted, spotting something almost white.
    Sinking to his hands and knees, he crawled toward her. “Cyborg girl?”
    She didn’t move.
    As Thorne came closer, he saw that she was on her back, dark hair sprawled across her face. Her robotic hand was plugged into the port of an exposed computer panel.
    “Hey, you,” he said, hovering over her. He peeled up her eyelids, but her gaze was dark and empty. Craning down, Thorne placed an ear against her chest, but if there was a heartbeat it was drowned out by the roaring engine.
    “Come on,” he growled, reaching for her hand and working the connector out of the port. The nearest computer panel went dark.
    “Auto-control system disconnected,” lilted a robotic voice overhead, startling Thorne. “Engaging default system procedures.”
    “Good plan,” he muttered, grabbing her ankles. Thorne dragged her slowly into the hallway and propped her up against the corridor wall. Whatever her cyborg parts were made of, it was a lot heavier than flesh and bone.
    He pressed an ear to her chest again. This time he was met with a faint beat.
    “Wake up,” he said, shaking her. Cinder’s head slumped forward.
    Sitting back on his heels, Thorne screwed up his lips. The girl was horribly pale and filthy from their trek through the sewers, but in the hallway’s brightness he could tell she was breathing, if barely. “What, do you have a power button or something?”
    His attention fell on her metal hand with the cord and plug still dangling from her knuckle. Grabbing her hand, he peered at it from every angle. He remembered a flashlight, a screwdriver, and a knife in three of the fingers, but he wasn’t yet sure what her pointer finger was hiding. If it was a power button, he couldn’t see any way of getting at it.
    The connector cable though …
    “Right!” Thorne jumped up, nearly toppling into the wall. He jabbed at the screen that opened the door to the podship dock. White lights flared overhead as he entered.
    He grasped Cinder’s wrists and tugged her into the dock, dropping her in between the two small satellite ships that sat like toadstools among a mess of cables and service tools.
    Panting, he reeled the podship’s charging cord out of the wall, then froze, staring at the girl’s cable, at the ship’s cable, at the girl.… He cursed again and dropped them both. Two males. Even he could tell that they wouldn’t connect.
    Knocking his knuckles against his temple, Thorne forced himself to think, think, think.
    Another idea flashed and he squinted down at the girl. She seemed to be growing paler still, but maybe that was a trick of the lighting.
    “Oh…,” he said, a new idea dropping into his brain. “Oh, boy. You don’t think … oh, that’s disgusting.”
    Shoving away his squeamishness, he gently pulled the girl toward him so that she collapsed over one arm. With his free hand, he searched around her tangled hair until he discovered the tiny latch just above her neck.
    He looked away as he opened it, before daring to peer inside from the corner of his eye.
    A jumble of wires and computer chips and switches that made absolutely no sense to Thorne filled a shallow compartment in the back of her skull. He let out a breath, glad that the control panel completely hid any brain tissue from sight. At its base, he spotted what appeared to be a small outlet, the same size as the plugs.
    “Ouch,” Thorne muttered, reaching for the podship cable again and hoping that he wasn’t about to make a huge mistake.
    He wiggled the plug of the recharging cord into her control panel. It snapped into place.
    He swallowed a breath.
    Nothing happened.
    Sitting back, Thorne held Cinder at arm’s length. He pushed her hair back from her face and waited.
    Twelve heartbeats later, something hummed inside her skull. It grew louder, and then fell silent altogether.
    Thorne