The Prison of Luna

Scarlet

SCARLET shook her head.

"No, Wolf, you can't," she pleaded, over and over again. "They'll kill you, she'll kill you, with her own bare hands no doubt."

"That's a risk I'll have to take," he growled through seethed teeth.

"Wolf, listen to me." She grabbed his arm, and he turned to her, eyes wild. "Even if you did manage to get out, how could we leave Winter? She risked her lives saving us."

Wolf scowled at the logic.

"Well, trying to save us, but still, we can't leave her."

"And we're not leaving without Kai." Cinder crawled to them in their small cage, holding surprising balance on her missing leg and hand.

"Right," Scarlet agreed. "Who knows what Konn Torin will do to us if something happened to him."

"He told me he'd kill me." Cinder let out a small, humorless laugh. "And I believe him completely." Wolf growled in response, fisting his hands, but finally letting them go limp in his lap.

Scarlet understood what he was feeling.

She wanted more than anything to get out of this stuffy cage, to go back to earth, away from the moon, for good. But sense overrides desire.

Usually.

Cress spoke up.

"How long do you think they'll keep us here before..." She trailed off, biting her lip, but Thorme finished her sentence with a finger slicing across his throat.

"I'm not sure." Cinder shrugged. "Can't be long." She was surprisingly calm when saying this, but as Scarlet pondered it more, she discovered it wasn't tranquility.

She had just given up.

This horrified Scarlet, and suddenly she realized how right Wolf was. Levana was trying to break their spirits, Cinder's spirit, and she was succeeding.

They needed to get out of there, no matter the cost.

She turned to Cinder.

"No." The cyborg turned to her, looking tired. It only made Scarlet angrier. "We can't just sit here. We have to get out. Don't you see, Cinder? She's winning, millions of people are dying, and we're just sitting here in a cage!"

Cinder didn't respond, and Scarlet looked to Wolf. "Let's get out of here."

Wolf nodded, and peeked his head out the cage, gripping the steel bars. "Hey," he growled. The guard stationed below the hanging cage tilted his head up to him, looking bored.

"Prisoners must -" he was cut off when Wolf grabbed his shoulders and pounded the heel of his hand on the spot where his spine met his brainstem. The guard gawked and fell foreword onto the ground without another sound.

Wolf then turned to Cinder, who was slumped up against a side of the cage, paying Wolf no heed.

"Cinder, give it to me." The girl turned away. "Cinder please, we don't have time for this, more guards will be here any second." Cinder finally sighed, and reached into one of the many pockets of her cargo pants, pulling out a knife.

Wolf took it, and pressed an almost invisible button on the hilt. The blade hummed to life, glowing red.

"A laser cutter?" Scarlet looked to Cinder, baffled.

"Winter passed it to me," she deadpanned, saying nothing more. Scarlet huffed, pushing a lock of crimson hair behind her ear. Wolf had been staring at them.

"Well! Get on with it!" Scarlet pushed him toward the front of the cage, but stopped when a hacking cough rattled them all.

"Carswell!" The coughing continued, turning heads to the far end of the cage. Thorne was hunched over his stomach, hacking like mad. Cress had a hand over his back in an instant, another placed on his chest. Blood splattered on the cold steel below him, and Cress gasped, using Thorne's crisp, white shirt to clean the blood from his chin.

The intensity of his coughing paused, and he looked up at Cress, obvious pain in his eyes. His strained neck became visible.

Purple spots, rimmed with red.

Scarlet recoiled.

The Plague.