Atlanta (Part of My World) (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter 4

Her feet pounded against the ground, and suddenly, she was a whirlwind of thoughts.

"CRESS! Have you blocked off access to the ship?" Cinder shouted.

"I'm trying!" She shouted back, her voice high and squeaky.

"Iko! Go seal the radioactive and aerial wave frequencies manually! Quick!" Cinder snapped. Iko started running.

Kai stepped up to the data board, bracing his hands against the port. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

"Here, I'll help," He said, his thin, long fingers flying across the keys. A trillion noises of beeps flooded the room. Something streaked across the glass panel, across the view of space.

It glittered, the pearlescent space pod streaking back across the glass window.

"Cinder! Something's happening!" Kai yelled, his hands suddenly smoothly flying out from under him and undoing all the work he had just finished.

"The Lunars are controlling your bioelectricity!" Cress squeaked, and Cinder narrowed her eyes.

Suddenly she could grasp the waves of bioelectricity around her, and she could grasp a special one. It was different. It wasn't like Wolf's or Thorne's or any other human's. It wasn't like a Lunar's bioelectricity either. This was different. This was something that couldn't be tamed.

Cinder concentrated hard, her eyes narrowed, a bead of sweat dripping down her temple. Her muscles tensed in unison, and her piercing glare shifted from the floor to the space pod in front of them. She could spot something else in the window.

A girl, a girl with sturdy looking shoulders like a swimmer glared back at her, her arms spread, slightly pointed and bent down, her head ducked.

But her eyes were dark, black, almost soulless. But that wasn't normal. Because Cinder knew this girl.

She knew that face. And those eyes had never once been black or that cold. They had never been that merciless. Not when they had screamed at her, and cried at the night of the ball. Not when Cinder had arrived at her new home.

Not ever.

And her shoulders had never been that wide.

And she had never been Lunar.

Linh Pearl had never been Lunar. Had never had eyes that black, that cold.

But there she was, her eyes glaring up at her from her hunched position. But she slowly straightened her spine.

This wasn't Pearl. Not the real Pearl.

She was genetically altered.

And suddenly, a bomb exploded upon the genetic war field.