Cress crouched in the corner of the van, gripping her knees against her
chest. She was trembling, despite the sweltering heat. She was thirsty
and hungry and her shins were bruised where they'd collided with the
van's ledge. Though she'd pulled down the bolts of fabric to sit on,
the constant jerking of the truck on the uneven ground made her backside
ache.
The night was so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face,
but sleep wouldn't come. Her thoughts were too erratic as she tried to
discern what these people wanted with her. She'd played the moments
before her capture over in her head a hundred times, and Jina's expression
had definitely lit up when Cress had confirmed Jina's suspicions.
She was a shell. A worthless shell.
Why had Jina sensed value in that?
She racked her brain, but nothing made sense.
She tried her best to remind calm. Tried to be optimistic. Tried to tell
herself that Thorne would come for her, but doubts kept crowding out the
hope.
He couldn't see. He didn't know where she'd gone. He probably didn't
even know she was missing yet, and when he found out ... what if he
thought she'd abandoned him?
What if he didn't care?
She couldn't forget the image of Thorne sitting at that card table with
some strange girl draped over him. He hadn't been thinking about Cress
then.
Perhaps Thorne wouldn't come for her.
Perhaps she'd been wrong about him all this time.
Perhaps he wasn't a hero at all, but just a selfish, arrogant, womanizing—
She sobbed, her head cluttered with too much fear and anger and jealousy and
horror and confusion, all of it writhing and squirming in her thoughts until
she couldn't keep her frustrated screens bottled up any
longer.
She wailed scrunching her hair in her fists until her scalp burned.
But her screams died out fast, replaced with clenched teeth as she attempted
to calm herself again. She rubbed her fingers around her writs
as if she had long strands of hair to wrap around them. She swallowed
hard in an attempt to gulp down the rising panic, to keep herself from
hyperventilating.
Thorne would come for her. He was a hero. She was a damsel. That's
how the stories went—that's how they always went.
With a groan, she settled into her corner and started to cry again,
cried until no more tears would come.
Suddenly, she jolted awake.
There being salt dried on her cheeks and her back ached from being
hunched over. Her butt and sides were bruised from the bumping of the
van, which, she realized, had come to a stop.
She was instantly alert, the grogginess shaken off by a new wave of
fear. There was a hint of light coming through the cracks around
the doors, which meant they'd driven through the night. A door slammed
and she could make out Jina's chatter, no longer friendly and comforting.
The van shook as the driver got out.
"Making good time," Cress heard a man say. "Someone want to help
me back here?"
Another man laughed. "Can't take the little wait yourself?"
Jina's voice cut through their boasting. "Try not bruise her. I want
top payment this time, and you know how he negotiates. Nitpicking
every little thing."
Cress gulped as the boots came closer. She steeled herself. She would
lunge. She would fight. She would be ferocious. Bite and scratch and kick
if she had to. She would take him by surprise.
And then she would run. Fast as a cheetah, graceful as a grizzle.
It was still early. The sand would be cool on her bare feet. Her blisters
were almost healed, and while her legs still ached horribly, she could ignore
them. Hopefully they would deem her not worth coming after.
Or maybe they would shoot her.
She gulped down the thought. She had to take the risk
The lock clanked. She took in a deep breath, waited for the door to
open—and pounced. A guttural scream was ripped out of her, all her anger
and vulnerability swelling up and unleashing in that one vicious
moment as her clawed fingers scrabbled for his eyes.
The man caught her. Two hands snapped around her pale wrists.
Her momentum kept her careening outside the truck and she would have
tumbled to the sand if he hadn't held her half suspended. Her war cry
was abruptly cut off.
The man started to laugh—laughing at her, at her pathetic attempts
to overpower him.
"She is a tiger, I'll give you that," he said to the man who had teased
him. He twisted Cress around so he could hold both other wrists in one
firm grip. Her body still dangled from his hold as he began Martin her
away from the van and into the dunes.
"Let me go!" she shrieked, kicking back at him, but he was undeterred
by her flailing. "Where are you taking me? Let me go!"
"Calm down, little girl. I'm not going to hurt you. Wouldn't be worth
it." He snorted and dropped her down the other side of the dune.
She stumbled and rolled a couple times in the sand before bolting into
a crouch. She swiped hair and sand from her face. By the time she looked
up at the man, he had a gun pinned on her.
Her heart sputtered.
"Try to run, I shoot. And I don't mean to kill. But you're smarter than
that, aren't you? You've got nowhere to go anyway, right?"
Cress gulped. She could still hear the voices on the other side of the
dune. She hadn't been able to tell how many caravaners were still along
in the group.
"Wh-what do you want from me?"
"I suspect you have business to tend too?"
Standing, she stumbled a bit down the hill, the sand unstable beneath
her. The man didn't flinch. He jerked the barrel of the gun toward her
feet. "Go on. It'll be another few hours before we stop, so better get it out
of the way now. Don't want you losing your water in the back of that nice
van. We wouldn't get our security deposit back, and Jina hates that."
Her lower lip are trembled and she cast another glance around the desert,
the wide opens of this barren landscape. She shook her head. "No, I
can't. Not with..."
"Ah, I won't watch." To prove his point, he spun around and scratched
behind his ear with the gun. "Just make it quick."
She spotted another man over the dune, faced away from her, and
suspected he was relieving himself. Cress turned away, ashamed and
embarrassed, She wanted to cry, wanted to beg the man to let her be, to
just leave her here. But she knew it wouldn't work. And she didn't want
to beg this man for anything.
Thorne would come for her, she thought as she stumbled to the base of
the dune in search of what privacy she cold find.
Thorne had to come for her.
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...
