Scarlet

he smelled of very expensive soap. He was sporting a well-worn leather jacket with a single medallion pinned onto the collar, the rank of captain.
    “Aren’t the androids that work at the quarantines government property?” he said, staring at Earth through the window.
    “Yeah, I think so.” Cinder frowned. She’d never given it any thought before, but saying it aloud brought on a flurry of suspicion.
    Thorne voiced the thought first. “Why would the government program androids to harvest ID chips?”
    “Maybe it’s not to sell on the black market,” Cinder said, pressing Peony’s chip into the arm of the chair. “Maybe they just wipe them clean and recirculate them.”
    But she didn’t believe that. ID chips were cheap to make and if the public ever found out their loved one’s identities were being erased, there would be an uproar.
    She bit her lip. Was there another reason then? Something else the government was using the chips for? Or had someone managed to reprogram the quarantine androids without the government even knowing?
    Her gut tightened. How she wished she could talk to Kai …
    “What are those other two?”
    She glanced down. “Direct communication chip, and a personality chip that used to belong to an android, a friend of mine.”
    “Are you some sort of chip hoarder or something?”
    She scowled. “I’m just keeping them safe until I figure out what to do with them. Eventually I’ll need to find a new body for Iko, something she can…” She trailed off, then gasped. “That’s it!”
    She hurriedly stashed the other two chips in her calf again. Grabbing Iko’s personality chip, she sped off to the cargo bay. Thorne followed her—into the hall, down the hatch to the sublevel, into the engine room, lingering in the doorway while Cinder crawled beneath the ductwork and popped up beside the computer mainframe.
    “We need a new auto-control system,” she said, opening a panel and running her finger along the labels. “Iko is an auto-control system. All androids are! Of course, she’s used to the functionality of a much smaller body, but … how different can it be?”
    “I’m going to guess, really different?”
    She shook her head and plugged the chip into the system’s mainframe. “No, no, this is going to work. It just needs an adapter.” She worked while she talked, twisting live wires out of their connections, rearranging, reconnecting.
    “And we have an adapter?”
    “We’re about to.”
    Turning, she scanned the control panel behind her. “We’re never going to use the dust-vacuum module are we?”
    “The dust what?”
    She yanked a connector cord from the panel and snapped one end into the mainframe, the other into the inlet for the auto-control system—the same that had nearly fried her own circuitry.
    “And that should do it,” she said, sitting back on her heels.
    The system lit up, the sound of an internal diagnostics check familiar to Cinder’s ear. Her heart was palpitating—to think that she wouldn’t be alone anymore, that she could succeed in rescuing at least one person who mattered to her …
    The mainframe fell quiet again.
    Thorne stared up at the ship’s ceiling as if he expected it to cave in on him.
    “Iko?” Cinder said, facing the computer. Were the speakers on? The sound and data input settings correct? She’d been able to communicate with Thorne just fine when they were in the warehouse, but …
    “Cinder?”
    Her relieved gasp nearly knocked her backward. “Iko! Yes, it’s me, it’s Cinder!” She grabbed hold of a cooling tube that hung overhead—a part of the engine, a part of the ship.
    And Iko was all of it.
    “Cinder. Something’s wrong with my vision sensor. I can’t see you, and I feel funny.”
    Tongue jutting from her mouth, Cinder bent over to analyze the slot where Iko’s personality chip had found a new home. It seemed to fit perfectly, protected and functional. There was no hint of any compatibility issues. Her smile split from ear to ear.
    “I know, Iko. Things are going to be a little different for a while. I’ve had to install you as the auto-control system of a spaceship. A 214 Rampion, Class 11.3. Do you have net connectivity? You should be able to download the specs.”
    “A Rampion? A spaceship ?”
    Cinder ducked. Though there was only one speaker in the engine room, Iko’s voice echoed from every corner.
    “What are we doing on a spaceship?”
    “It’s a long, long story, but it’s all