Cress held her breath and listened—listened
so hard it as giving her a headache—but all she heard
was silence.
Her left leg was beginning to cramp from being
curled into such an awkward position, but she
dared not move for fear she would bump
something and alert the old man to her location.
She hadn't run from the home.
Though she'd been tempted, she'd known that
Jina and the others could still be out there, and
running into them would put her right back
where she'd started.
Instead, she'd ducked into the third room
down the long slender corridor, surprised to
find the door unlocked and the room abandoned.
It had the same setup as the doctor's room:
bed, closet, desk, but to her chagrin it was
missing a netscreen.
If she hadn't been so desperate to find a hiding
spot, she would have wept.
She ended up in the closet.
It was empty, with a bar for hanging clothes
situated below a single shelf.
Cress had used all her strength to clamber up onto
the shelf, propelling up the closet's side walls with
both feet, before squeezing
her way into the tiny alcove.
She'd used her toes to pull the door shut.
For once, she was glad of her small size, and she
figured that if he found her she'd at least have
the leverage from being so high up.
She wished she would have thought to grab some
sort of weapon.
But her hope was that there would be no need for it.
She suspected that when he woke up, he would think
she'd run out into the town and he would go searching
for her, which should give her ample time to get
back to that netscreen and contact Thorne at their
last hotel.
She had lain there for hours, waiting and listening.
Though it was uncomfortable, it kind of reminded her
of sleeping beneath the bed in the satellite during those
long hours when Luna could be seen through her windows.
She'd always felt safe then, and the memory brought
a strange sense of protection, even now.
After a while, she began to wonder whether she'd
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...
