The warehouse was filled with escort-droids, mostly girls, of all different skin tones and hair colors. Most were unclothed, sitting on the ground with their arms wrapped compactly around their knees and their heads tucked down. There were well over two hundred androids lined up in neat rows. Some had packing tape and protective tissue wrapped around their limbs to protect them during shipping. Some had been loaded onto pallets and settled onto plastic crates. Packing foam and cardboard littered the floor around them.
On the wall to Iko’s left there were three stories of metal shelving filled with the packing crates, all labeled with the escort’s makes and models and special features.
“Is this all of them?” said a man.
Iko ducked behind the wall of the warehouse, before inching forward and peering around the doorjamb. She spotted sixty androids—forty-five female and fifteen male, all standing in neat rows. They were all dressed in identical black pants and blush-toned silk tops, simple mandarin-collared dress shirts for the men, and elegant wraps for the women that tied at the waists and draped kimono-style on their arms. Each girl had her hair pulled into a tight bun with an orchid tucked into the side.
“Checking off the order now,” said a woman, who was marching between the rows and making notations on a portscreen. “The order form specified a petite model of make 618, not the medium.”
“I know, but our last petite got shipped out last week. I cleared the change with the palace on Thursday.”
The woman tapped something into the port. “Fifty-nine … sixty. That’s all of them.”
“Great. Let’s load them up. Can’t let them be late for their royal mission.” The man pulled up the massive rolling door, opening the bay to one of the delivery ships, as the woman began making her way through the androids again, opening a panel in each of their necks. Their postures softened.
“Enter single file,” ordered the man. “Squeeze in tight. It’ll be a close fit.”
The androids marched one by one into the ship.
There was no way Iko could get all the way over there without being noticed, and her different clothes would make it clear that she didn’t belong.
The idea that they could mistake her for a rogue android and send her out for reprogramming made her wiring quiver.
Keeping low, she slinked along the wall, away from the two employees, and ducked beneath the first tower of industrial shelving. Hidden behind the crates, she made her way toward the rows of escort-droids that were waiting to be packaged up. Reaching the last row, she crouched down behind an android and felt for the latch on her neck. Iko glanced up to see that half of the rental escort-droids had already settled into the ship.
Humming to herself, she turned the android on. The processor whirred and her head raised. This one had white-blonde hair tipped with florescent green that hung to her waist. Iko brushed her hair off her shoulder and whispered, “I command you to stand up, scream, and run for the exit.”
The girl launched to her feet almost before Iko finished speaking. She started to scream, a spine-chilling, ear-bleeding sound.
Iko threw herself to the ground behind the row of still-seated and oblivious androids and adjusted the volume on her audio processor, but it was too late. The android had already stopped screaming and was now running full speed for the exit, knocking her statue-like brethren over as she passed.
Iko heard the two employees’ cries of shock, and then their footsteps pounding as they chased after the android. As soon as they jumped down into the loading yard, Iko bounced up and scurried through the rows of androids. The rental escorts said nothing, only blinked at her lazily as she pushed her way into their midst.
“Sorry, sorry, don’t mind me, coming through, oh why hello there—” This to a particularly handsome Kai look-alike droid, which had no more reaction than any of the others. “Or not,” she muttered, brushing past him. “Pardon me, a little space, please?”
By the time the two workers had returned, winded and ranting about faulty personality chips and those imbeciles up in programming, Iko had settled comfortably in the back of the ship, squeezed between two of her distant cousins and finding it difficult not to grin like a lunatic.
As it turned out, being human was every bit as much fun as she’d always thought it would be.
* * *
It was easy to grasp why the government of 126 years ago had chosen this spot for the royal family’s safe house. It was less than ten miles from the city of New Beijing, but they were separated by such jagged cliffs that it seemed as though they had entered another country entirely. The house itself was built in a valley carved out with overgrown rice terraces, though Cinder doubted any rice had been cultivated there in generations, giving the house a sense of abandonment.
Jacin settled the podship beside the farmhouse and they stepped out onto a patch of land still soggy from heavy summer rains. The world was silent around them and the air perfumed with fall grasses and wildflowers.
“I hope the girl was right,” said Jacin, moving toward the house. Despite its boarded-up windows, it appeared well maintained. Cinder suspected that a crew was responsible for checking on it a couple times a year, to patch roof tiles and ensure that the power generator wasn’t malfunctioning, so that if a catastrophe ever did occur, it would still be a safe place for the emperor to retire to.
It was probably monitored, too, but she hoped that today, of all days, the country’s security team would have their hands full elsewhere.
“One way to find out,” she said, walking around to the side of the house, where iron doors rested over a cellar entryway. If Cress was right, these doors didn’t lead to a dank storage cellar at all, but to a tunnel that would run beneath the cliffs and lead them straight into the palace sublevels.
Cinder pried open the doors and whipped her built-in flashlight around the stairs. The light caught on cobwebs and concrete and an old-fashioned switch that would light up the tunnel beneath, at least for a little distance.
“This seems to be it,” she said, glancing back at the group. Thorne, blindfolded, was resting his elbow on a scowling Dr. Erland.
It was going to be a long walk.
“All right,” she said. “Jacin, come back with the Rampion and circle the city until you get my comm.”
“I know.”
“And keep an eye out for anything suspicious. If you detect anything at all, keep flying and wait for us to contact you again.”
“I know.”
“If everything goes as planned, we’ll be at the palace landing pad by 18:00 but if something goes wrong, we might have to come back here, or through one of the escape tunnels to the other safe—”
“Cinder,” said Thorne. “He knows.”
She glared at him and wanted to argue, but going over their escape plan one more time wasn’t going to do anything but remind her of all the things that could go wrong. Jacin did know—they’d discussed the matter into the ground, and everyone was all too aware of how easily this plan could fall apart without him. Without any of them.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Forty-Six
Cress studied herself in the full-length dressing room mirror and almost began to cry.
She had somehow, someway, become a character in an opera.
Her skin had sloughed off the last of the sunburn, leaving the tiniest kiss of sun on her complexion.
Iko had cropped her hair so that it framed her face in pretty, golden waves, and though they’d had no makeup aboard the ship, Iko had also taught her to pinch her cheeks and nibble on her lips until they flushed a nice pinkish color.
She was, against her better judgment, beginning to warm to Iko. At least she wasn’t as bad as that Darla had been.
And though Cress herself had been the one to place the rush purchase at the designer boutique, using a hacked financial account, she hadn’t entirely believed this was all happening before this moment.
She was going to a royal wedding, in a gown of raw silk and chiffon, dyed deep royal blue to match her eyes (Iko’s suggestion). The bodice was snug and the skirt so full she wasn’t entirely sure she could walk without tripping. The shoes were simple form-fitting flats. Though she and Iko had discussed an array of fancy heels at length, Cinder had reminded them that Cress may have to run for her life at some point during the day’s events, and practicality had won out.
“Bristol-mèi, what do you think?” asked the attendant as she finished with the last button on Cress’s back.
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
The girl preened. “We are thrilled that you chose us for your royal wedding debut. We could not be more honored.” She scooped Cress’s hair away from her ears. “Do you have your jewelry with you, to see how it looks all put together?”
Cress tugged awkwardly at her earlobe. “Oh, no, that’s all right. I—uh—have to pick it up on the way. To the palace.”
Though a flicker of confusion crossed the girl’s face, she merely bowed her head and shuffled out of the dressing room. “Are you ready for your husband to see you?”
Cress flinched. “I suppose.”
She followed the attendant out of the dressing room and into a luxuriously furnished sitting area, where she spotted her new “husband.”
Wolf was scowling at a mirror and trying to pat down his unkempt hair. He wore an impeccably fitted tuxedo with a classic white bow tie and pressed lapels.
He caught Cress’s eye in the reflection, and she couldn’t help but stand a little straighter, but though his gaze skimmed over her, he had no reaction whatsoever.
Deflated, Cress clasped her hands. “You look great … sweetheart.”
He did, in fact, look like a romance hero, all muscles and edges and chiseled bone structure. He also looked miserable.
Suddenly nervous, Cress gave a little twirl, displaying her full regalia.
Wolf only gave her a crisp nod. “The hover is waiting.”
She let her hands drop to her sides, resigned to the fact that Wolf would dress for his role, but he would not play it. “Right. You have the invitations?”
He patted his breast pocket. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
In the delivery ship, traveling from the warehouse to the caterer, Iko had found it all too easy to command another android to switch clothes so that she could fit in with the rest of them in their staff uniforms—as long as no one was too put off by her blue hair braids, which had now been pulled into a neat bun.
She had departed the ship with the first group of rental androids at the catering office, so that when her body double was later discovered wearing the wrong clothes at the florist, Iko would be long gone.
And who would ever suspect her? She was just another brainless, obedient android.
But that was the hard part.
Standing in perfect unison with the others. Blinking precisely ten times a minute. Keeping quiet while the human catering staff chatted excitedly about maybe seeing the emperor himself and ruminated over how terrifying it would be if Queen Levana wasn’t pleased with the food. Iko was forced to bite her tongue, allowing her programmed instincts, the instincts she’d spent her life trying to keep buried while she learned about humor and sarcasm and affection, to keep her expressionless.
From there, they had been herded into a large hover. Though it wasn’t a far distance, the trip was made longer as the hover rounded to the back of the palace, near the research and laboratory facilities and, of course, the staff entrance.
Iko sensed the chatter of the catering staff grow more nervous as the hover began to slow.
She heard some gates being opened and then the hover came to a gradual stop and the staff began to file into a commercial loading dock. It was not the fancy entryway that Iko had always envisioned entering the palace through, but she tried not to let her disappointment show as she fell into line behind her stiff cohorts.