The satellite shuddered as Sybil's podship disconnected from the dock-
ing clamp, and Cress was left alone again in the galaxy. Despite how
Cress yearned for companionship, it was always a relief when Sybil left
her, and this time even more than usual. Normally her mistress only vis-
ited every three or four weeks, just often enough to safely take another
blood sample, but this was the third time she'd come since the wolf-
hybrid attacks. Cress couldn't remember her mistress ever seeming so
anxious. Queen Levana must have been growing desperate to find the
cyborg girl. "Mistress's ship has detached," said Little Cress. "Shall we play a
game?" If Cress hadn't been so flustered from yet another visit, she would
have smiled, as she usually did when Little Cress asked this question. It
was a reminder that she wasn't entirely without companionship.
Cress had learned, years ago, that the word satellite came from a Latin
word meaning a companion, or a minion, or a sycophant. All three in-
terpretations had struck her as ironic, given her solitude, until she'd pro-
grammed Little Cress. Then she understood.
Her satellite kept her company. Her satellite did her bidding. Her
satellite never questioned her or disagreed or had any pesky thoughts of
her own.
"Maybe we can play a game later," she said. "We'd better check the files
first."
"Certainly, Big Sister."
It was the expected response. The programmed response.
Cress often wondered if that's what it would be like to be truly Lunar
—to have that sort of control over another human being. She would fan-
tasize about programming Mistress Sybil as easily as she'd programmed
her satellite's voice. How the game would change then, if her mistress
was to follow her orders for once, rather than the other way around.
"All screens on."
Cress stood before her panorama of invisi-screens, some large, others
small, some set on top of the built-in desk, others bracketed to the satel-
lite walls and angled for optimal viewing no matter where she was in the
circular room.
"Clear all feeds."
The screens went blank, allowing her to see through them to the satel-
lite's unadorned walls.
"Display compiled folders: Linh Cinder; 214 Rampion, Class 11.3; Em-
peror Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth. And..." She paused, enjoying
the rush of anticipation that passed through her. "Carswell Thorne."
Four screens filled up with the information Cress had been collecting.
She sat down to review the documents she'd all but memorized.
On the morning of 29 August, Linh Cinder and Carswell Thorne es-
caped from New Beijing Prison. Four hours later, Sybil had given Cress
her orders—find them. The command, Cress later discovered, came from
Queen Levana herself.
Scrounging up information on Linh Cinder had taken her only three
minutes—but then, almost all the information she'd found was fake. A
fake Earthen identity written up for a girl who was Lunar. Cress didn't
even know how long Linh Cinder had been on Earth. She'd simply
popped into existence five years ago, when she was (supposedly) eleven
years old. Her biography had family and school records prior to the
"hover accident" that had killed her "parents" and resulted in her cyborg
operation, but that was all false. One had to follow Linh Cinder's ances-
try back only two generations before they hit a dead-end. The records
had been written to deceive.
Cress glanced at the folder still downloading information on Emperor
Kaito. His file was immeasurably longer than the others, as every mo-
ment of his life had been recorded and filed away—from net fangroups
to official government documentation. Information was being added all
the time, and it had exploded since the announcement of his engage-
ment to the Lunar queen. None of it was helpful. Cress closed the feed.
Carswell Thorne's folder had required a bit more legwork. It took Cress
forty-four minutes to hack into the government records of the American
Republic's military database and five other agencies that had had deal-
ings with him, compiling trial transcripts and articles, military records
and education reports, licenses and income statements and a timeline
that began with his certificate of birth and continued through numer-
ous accolades and awards won while he was growing up, through his
acceptance into the American Republic military at age seventeen. The
timeline blinked out after his nineteenth birthday, when he removed his
identity chip, stole a spaceship, and deserted the military. The day he'd
gone rogue.
It started up again eighteen months later, on the day he was found
and arrested in the Eastern Commonwealth.
In addition to all the official reports, there was a fair amount of
swooning and gossiping from the many fangroups that had sprouted in
the wake of Carswell Thorne's new celebrity status. Not nearly as many
as Emperor Kai had, of course, but it seemed that plenty of Earthen girls
were taken with the idea of this handsome rake on the run from the law.
Cress wasn't bothered by it. She knew that they all had the wrong idea
about him.
At the top of his file was a three-dimensional holograph scanned in
from his military graduation. Cress preferred it to the infamous prison
photo that had become so popular, the one in which he was winking at
the camera, because in the holograph he was wearing a freshly pressed
uniform with shining silver buttons and a confident, one-sided grin.
Seeing that smile, Cress melted.
YOU ARE READING
Cress
Teen FictionTheir best hope lies with Cress, a girl trapped on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's being force to work for Queen Levana, and she...
