The floor dropped out from beneath her. The princess. His princess.
He knew.
She waited a full breath for her lie detector to recognize his falsehood, but it didn’t. He was telling the truth.
“Africa,” she said. “Iko, take us to Africa—to where the first outbreak of letumosis occurred.”
Twelve
The fall was slow at first, gradual, as the pull of the satellite’s orbit was overpowered by the pull of Earth’s gravity.
Thorne hiked up his pant leg, using his toe to pry off his left boot. The knife he’d stashed there clattered onto the floor and he grabbed for it, awkwardly trying to angle the blade toward the blanket that was knotted around his wrists.
The girl murmured around her gag and shifted toward him. Her binds were much more secure and complex than his own. The thaumaturge had only bothered to have Thorne tie his hands in front of him, but this girl had binds all down her legs, in addition to having her wrists fastened behind her and the gag over her mouth.
With no leverage to press the knife against his own binds, he nodded at the girl. “Can you turn around?”
She flopped and rolled onto her side, pushing off the wall with her feet to turn herself so her hands were toward him. Thorne hunkered over her and sawed at the sheet that was cutting into her arms. By the time he’d hacked it off, there were deep red lines carved into her skin.
She ripped the gag off her mouth, leaving it to hang around her neck. A knot of her frayed hair caught in the fabric. “My feet!”
“Can you untie my hands?”
She said nothing as she snatched the knife from him. Her hands were shaking as she angled the blade toward the binds around her knees, and Thorne thought maybe it was best for her to practice on herself anyway.
Sawing through the sheet, she looked like a madwoman—her brow wrinkled in concentration, her hair knotted, her complexion damp and blotchy, red lines drawn into her cheeks from the gag. But the adrenaline had her working quickly and soon she was kicking away the material.
“My hands,” Thorne said again, but she was already grasping for the sink and pulling herself up on trembling legs.
“I’m sorry—the entry procedures!” she said, stumbling out into the main room.
Thorne grabbed the knife and clambered to his feet as the satellite took a sudden turn. He slipped, stumbling into the shower door. They were falling faster as Earth’s gravity claimed them.
Using the wall for balance, Thorne rushed into the main room. The girl had fallen too, and was now scrambling to get over the bed.
“We need to get to the other podship and disconnect,” said Thorne. “You need to untie me!”
She shook her head and pressed herself against the wall where the smallest of the screens was embedded, the screen that the thaumaturge had meddled with before. Strings of hair were sticking to her face.
“She’ll have a security block on the ship and I know the satellite better and—oh, no, no, no!” she screamed, her fingers flying over the screen. “She changed the access code!”
“What are you doing?”
“The entry procedures—the ablative coating should hold while we’re passing through the atmosphere, but if I don’t set the parachute to release, the whole thing will disintegrate on impact!”
The satellite shifted again and they both stumbled. Thorne fell onto the mattress and the knife skittered out of his grip, bouncing off the end of the bed, while the girl tripped and landed on one knee. The walls around them began to tremble with the friction of Earth’s atmosphere. The blackness that had clouded the small windows was replaced with a burning white light. The outer coating was burning off, protecting them from the atmosphere’s heat.
Unlike the Rampion, this satellite was designed for only one descent toward Earth.
“All right.” Forgetting about his binds, Thorne swung himself over to the other side of the bed and hauled the girl back to her feet. “Get that parachute working.” She was still wobbly as he spun them toward the screen and dropped his arms over her, forming a cocoon around her body. She was even shorter than he’d realized, the top of her head not even reaching his collarbone.
Her fingers jabbed at the screen as Thorne widened his stance and locked his knees, bracing himself as much as he could while the satellite shook and rocked around them. He hunched over her, trying to hold his balance and keep her steady while codes and commands flickered and scrolled across the screen. His attention flicked to the nearest window, still fiery white. As soon as the satellite had fallen far enough into Earth’s atmosphere, the auto-gravity would shut off and they would be as secure as dice in a gambler’s fist.
“I’m in!” she shouted.
Thorne curled the toes of his one shoeless foot into the carpet. He heard a crash behind him and dared to glance back. One of the screens had fallen off the desk. He gulped. Anything not bolted down was about to turn into projectiles. “How long will it take to—”
“Done!”
Thorne whipped her around and thrust them both toward the mattress. “Under the bed!” He stumbled and fell, dragging her down with him. The cabinets swung open overhead and Thorne flinched as a rain of canned goods and dishes clattered around them. He hunkered over the girl, deflecting them away from her. “Quick!”
She scurried forward, out of the ring of his arms, and pulled herself into the shadows. She backed against the wall as far as she could, both hands pushing against the bed frame to lock her body in place.
Thorne kicked off from the carpet and grabbed the nearest post to pull himself forward.
The shaking stopped, replaced with a smooth, fast descent. The brightness from the windows faded to a sunshine blue. Thorne’s stomach swooped and he felt like he was being sucked into a vacuum.
He heard her scream. Pain and brightness exploded in his head, and then the world went black.
BOOK Two
The witch snipped off her golden hair and cast her out into a great desert.
Thirteen
Cress would not have believed that she had the strength to drag Carswell Thorne beneath the bed and secure his unconscious body against the wall if the proof wasn’t in her arms. All the while, cords and screens and plugs and dishes and food jostled and banged around them. The walls of the satellite groaned and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to imagine the heat and friction melting through the bolts and seams, trying not to guess at how stable this untested satellite could be. Trying not to think about plunging toward the Earth—its mountains and oceans and glaciers and forests and the impact that a satellite thrown from space would have when it crashed into the planet and shattered into billions of tiny pieces.
She was doing a poor job of not imagining it all.
The fall lasted forever, while her small world disintegrated.
She’d failed. The parachute should have opened already. She should have felt it release, felt the snap back as it caught their descent and lowered them gently to Earth. But their fall was only faster and faster, as the satellite’s air grew warmer. Either she’d done something wrong or the parachute hatch was faulty, or perhaps there was no parachute at all and the command was from false programming. After all, Sybil had commissioned this satellite. Surely she’d never intended to let Cress land safely on the blue planet.
Sybil had succeeded. They were going to die.
Cress wrapped her body around Carswell Thorne and buried her face into his hair. At least he would be unconscious through it all. At least he didn’t have to be afraid.
Then, a shudder—a sensation different from the drop—and she heard the brisk sound of nylon ropes and hissing and there it was, the sudden jerk that seemed to pull them back up into the sky. She cried out and gripped Carswell Thorne tighter as her shoulder smacked into the underside of the bed.
The fall became a sinking, and Cress’s sobs turned to relief. She squeezed Thorne’s prone body and sobbed and hyperventilated and sobbed some more.
It took ages for the impact to come and when it did, the jolt knocked Cress into the bed again. The satellite crashed and slid, rolled over and tumbled. They were slipping down something solid, perhaps a hill or mountainside. Cress clenched her teeth against a scream and tried to protect Thorne with one arm while bracing them against the wall with the other. She’d expected water—so much of the Earth’s surface was water—not this solid something they’d hit. The spiraling descent finally halted with a crash that shook the walls around them.