Ever since she was little, Cress had yearned to leave her RV and explore the world. She had a trailer. She had food. What was stopping her from driving out of these godforsaken woods and doing what she'd always dreamed of?
Levana Blackburn.
Okay, it was more the walls that stopped Cress. And the laser detectors, if she ever got any further. But she could break into those, and in the end Levana was the one controlling everything. Trapping her here to no end.
When she was younger, she couldn't understand why. She had tried climbing over the walls, taking tree vines and draping them over the edge.
(They were poison ivy.)
When she had grown older, Cress had come to accept it. Look on the bright side, she would always think to herself. Someday, my prince will come. And he'd sweep her off her feet and help her escape and they'd live the rest of their lives together, traveling the world. Seeing everything she had dreamed to see.
Someday.
But contradicting that, contradicting everything, Cress was now planning her own escape. She had laid out her many computers—one patrolling the area around her, checking if there were any curious passerby who could help her (but it was futile, no one ever came this deep in the woods), one loading the coordinates she had saved of places she could go once she'd escaped, another downloading all her files into a drive, deleting themselves once they'd been extracted—and one, the most important one, holding all the code to access the alarms and wall enclosures.
Cress sat in the middle of all these screens and vaguely wondered if this operation would work.
She shook the thought away. I am a criminal mastermind. Cress forced the thought as hard as she could. I am a criminal mastermind, and I am preparing my escape.
She turned back to the screens. Tapping at the keyboard, she linked it to the last one, scrolling through the wall code. Skimming it. Finding the one piece that linked it all together, that changed everything.
Fingers fumbling over the keys, zipping over the code, she had found it. Cress sighed, feeling a loose strand of hair slip from her braid. She didn't bother tucking it back in. She deleted the link, and added a new command: release.
Almost immediately, she heard a shudder outside.
Cress rushed to the window to look, leaning against the windowsill. Outside, the concrete wall had started creaking open, shaking the wildlife around it. The beautiful trees and moss that had grown over the wall cracks over time. Cress winced.
Then she whirled back to the screen. Okay, wall down. Laser beams to go.
But before she could skim through the other batch of code, a ping sounded at her shoulder. Twisting in her chair, Cress sought out the connection to the first screen, and linked the keyboard to it. Then she wheeled her chair back around to read the notification:
1 UNKNOWN VEHICLE ENTERING: "CRESCENT MOON'S ENCLOSURE."
WITHIN 2.3 MILES OF ENCLOSURE WALLS. WILL SET OFF ALARMS.
CONTAINS 2 DEVICES: A STATE OF THE ART TRACKER, TAMPERED CODING.
A TABLET. DESCRIPTIONS FOR THIS DEVICE DO NOT REGISTER ON SYSTEM.
Cress gulped. Spinning back to the last screen, she thought. Hard.
An unknown vehicle. Could that mean help?
But she was already so far in her escape.
She thought back to her childish dreams of someone coming to rescue her. A prince coming to sweep her off her feet.
And she gave in to them.
Cress moved with a sudden speed, nudging the keyboard back to its original place and tapping out commands with the flick of her fingers. The only sound in the silent room was that of her clicking fingers. She tricked the system, making it think the unknown vehicle was Sybil, Levana's assistant. She didn't visit often—but it was the only believable choice the system would account for.
Then she disabled the lasers, covering her tracks. When she was finished, Cress glanced at the clock. 10 minutes had passed—enough time for the vehicle to have entered the open enclosure. Her computer helpfully notified that the car was due to arrive in exactly 20 seconds.
Swinging out of her chair, she hurried out the door.
12…11….10
Every second felt as if it were crawling up her spine, agonizingly slow. Cress clenched her teeth and watched the wall.
….9…8…5….
The sound of a faulty engine stirred the air.
4…3….2…
Cress gulped.
The nose of a rusty old Jeep entered the enclosure, and she strained to catch a glimpse of the driver. No such luck—there was a dark tint to the window. It chugged onward, slow and steady, and when Cress thought she couldn't take it anymore the car stopped and the driver's door opened. She held back an exhilarated gasp.
The driver stepped out of the car. Cress grinned.
Then frowned.
Wait.
The shocking familiarity of his face startled her. This man… she knew him from somewhere.
Except that was impossible. She had never seen anyone other than Sybil.
He seemed to notice her shock, and grew more confident for it. Cress could tell.
Then he inclined his head, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, and with a sudden rush of realization she knew.
Someday, my prince will come.
Today, that would change. No more somedays. No more wishing on stars.
Because this man was Carswell Thorne, a true criminal mastermind.