Chapter 1: The Island

AN: Advance warning- this is not yet finished. I do have a plot in mind and intend to finish it, but I have no idea how to keep a release schedule. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters in The Lunar Chronicles or the Riordanverse. Any OCs I add I will note at the beginning of the chapters.

"Well. I think that went well," said Thorne, leaning back in the pilot's chair at last. He no longer had the Rampion's controls in a death grip.

Cinder snorted. "Right. Extremely well." She sighed. "At least we're not dead, or captured again."

They drifted just outside of Earth's atmosphere, heading toward Rieux, France to look for Michelle Benoit, the pilot who supposedly had some connection to Princess Selene. Cinder had just escaped from the New Beijing Prison along with one Carswell Thorne, imprisoned for stealing this very ship, among other things. She didn't exactly mean to bring him along, but she had accidentally ended up in his cell instead of an empty one in her escape, and it would have been more trouble to leave him behind. And he conveniently had been a cadet, knew how to fly, and had had the Rampion hidden in a hangar in New Beijing.

As they began to descend back into the upper atmosphere, Thorne gave a quick gasp. He tried to cover it up, but Cinder immediately noticed.

"What is it?"

Thorne shrugged, failing to look nonchalant. "Oh, nothing, just a calibration issue, I'm sure."

Cinder looked at the dashboard. The entire navigation system appeared to be down. "I don't think that's all it is." It could have easily been a small malfunction, but when Cinder tried to access her own network, it too was blank. Nothing else seemed to be affected. "I, uh, I'm having trouble connecting myself." She thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. "Oh! We must be over the Bermuda Triangle."

Thorne looked aghast. "You're kidding, right?"

Cinder shook her head. "I've never heard of anywhere else on Earth that makes equipment act up like this. Just because no one can explain it doesn't mean it's not real."

They looked at each other in dawning horror.

"Do you think the cloaking will still work?" Thorne asked worriedly.

"How am I supposed to know? I don't have any connectivity either!"

Thorne examined the dashboard again. "Hey, ship? Can you restart the net connection?"

"It's Iko," Cinder corrected.

"Yeah, sorry. I mean Iko. Can you do something?"

Silence.

Cinder breathed deeply, trying not to panic. "Okay. So no net, no auto-commands, no … wait, can you still send an S.O.S.?"

"N-…actually yes."

International manhunt be damned, Thorne punched in the series of dots and dashes. Cinder let out a brief sigh of relief.

They were so focused on watching the dashboard, hoping for a return message, that neither of them noticed the storm until they were directly inside it.

A loud crack of thunder shook the ship. Thorne jumped and cursed, looking pale. Cinder felt queasy. Rain began to patter on the windows, and she could hear gusts of wind.

"Autopilot controls are down too," Thorne announced.

"Then use the manual ones," Cinder snapped. She wished her gift would be able to help in this situation, but she hadn't had nearly enough practice yet, and she suspected bioelectricity was a little different than the lightning kind.

"I shouldn't have skipped all those inclement weather flight training days," he muttered, still not taking the sticks. "Okay, but don't expect it to be-"

He was cut off as a huge tremor shook the ship. No, more than a tremor. They were going down!

"Thorne!" Cinder commanded. "Drive!"

He didn't hesitate this time. "Okay!" he yelled over the increasingly louder rain. "It's gonna be a rough landing."

Thankfully already buckled, Cinder held tight to the copilot chair, wondering how things could be going so badly. Couldn't she get a break after escaping not only Levana, but a maximum-security prison? Had she gotten away only to crash in the Bermuda Triangle? She thought of Kai, and how she would probably never see him again. Not that he would have wanted to see her, anyway. She tried to close her eyes, but she couldn't stop watching.

The Rampion spiraled through the sky, tumultuous ocean and cloudy sky the only things visible. It was hard to tell how close they were to the water, but it felt like they were going down pretty fast. Whatever had hit them had damaged the engines enough to make them nearly plummet.

Suddenly, a small island appeared below them. "Hang on!" Thorne said. "I'm going to aim for the shore."

He started to angle the craft for minimum impact, but the ground was rushing up to meet them too quickly.

The last thing Cinder heard was Thorne screaming (or was it her?) and a crunch as they hit the ground. Then everything went black as her system initiated its auto-shutdown.

-ooo-

Some time later, Cinder opened her eyes to daylight pouring through the ship's windows. She sat up and nearly tumbled forward, as they had landed kind of sideways. If she wasn't strapped into her seat, she would've fallen out on impact. Thorne was also beginning to stir, rubbing his eyes at the light, which illuminated surprisingly little internal damage. She ran her diagnostics. Nothing seemed out of order, except for a few small bruises from her seatbelt. Unbuckling carefully to offset the tilt, she leaned over to examine him.

"Ugh, my back," he groaned. "I think we hit a rock or something."

"Whatever we hit, at least we're alive," Cinder pointed out. "You don't have any visible injuries. Anything else hurt besides your back?"

Thorne shook his head. "I'll be fine in a min-augh," he grimaced as he tried to sit up.

Cinder sighed and pulled herself up, half-crawling out of the cockpit. "There's probably a med kit in here somewhere."

It didn't take long to find one, but unfortunately the only painkillers had a side effect of drowsiness. Within minutes of taking a couple pills, Thorne was snoring peacefully.

More time to examine the ship, then. "Hey, Iko? Can you hear me?"

Still nothing. Cinder swore as she realized that even the constant overhead hum of electricity was dead.

She made her way over to the dashboard, ready to make use of her new hand's charger cable. Plugging it in, she held her breath as the screen lit up.

Everything was gibberish. She smacked it a few times, but the problem seemed to be deeper than just calibration. And it wasn't as if she could look up the blueprints to fix it. She sighed, hope fading again, and made her way to the engine room, which, besides a few broken pipes strewn around, didn't look much worse for wear.

After reconnecting the split wires and jiggling all the switches back into place, it looked better, but there was still no electric current. Cinder knew everything was assembled correctly, and clearly the system was at least able to accept a charge. She plugged her finger in again, but nothing started. Frustrated, she checked everything again. Still nothing.

Cinder couldn't hear Thorne snoring anymore. It was getting late, as the afternoon sun began to approach the horizon. What if they had to spend the night on this island? Sure, they had food, but there was no electricity to keep warm, and who knew how cold it might get? She had to go look for something to make a fire. There were at least a few trees, so there had to be wood. She didn't exactly know how to make a fire, and she couldn't look it up with the interwebs being inaccessible, but maybe Thorne knew how with his academy training.

Panic rising at the time she was losing, Cinder shoved all her tools back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She practically had to slide out of the engine room due to the incline. She made her way to Thorne, who was completely still and no longer snoring, and frantically tried to shake him awake.

"Hrruuuuhhh?" he finally croaked, his eyes trying to focus on her face. "Cnn…uh, Cinder?"

"Yeah, it's me," she replied, surprised at how relieved she felt. "You've been asleep for…" — she tried to check her internal clock before remembering — "…a while."

Thorne closed his eyes again. "Is something wrong? Or can I go back to sleep?"

"Not imminently, but we still don't have electricity, and it's going to be night fairly soon. Is your back better so you can help me look for wood and build a fire?"

Thorne didn't respond. He was asleep again.

Cinder groaned. "Fine. I'll do it myself." She used her lockpick to open one of the cabinets and managed to find a pad of paper and pen.

Gone to find wood. Don't freak out if you don't see me. -Cinder

She scanned the terrain outside the windows. It seemed pristine (except for the spaceship, of course) and devoid of all but plant life, sand, and soil. It almost looked cultivated, but she couldn't see anyone or anything that looked like a place to live.

Well, no sense in wasting time. She took a deep breath and stepped through the ship's door.

Immediately her nose was filled with a dozen different smells, all of them fruity and tropical. Not far from her, several trees stood laden with fruit. She heard a trickling sound, like wine being poured into one of Adri's fancy glasses. The sun was brighter than she had realized, and not quite as near the horizon as it seemed from inside. It was overwhelming, but at the same time almost as beautiful as the New Beijing palace.

Cinder shook away her bedazzledness and took a few steps forward, turning slowly to gauge the shape and lay of the island. She couldn't quite see the beach, but the land was mostly flat and the ocean glittered in the distance no matter which direction she turned.

Her gaze stopped suddenly on the ship. A huge, jagged scar ran across the side, blackened and ugly against the landscape.

Cinder gulped. Another few inches deep and it would have split the ship in half. They had been lucky to crash when they did. She supposed whatever had hit them had left that scar, but what could have made such a deep cut? It looked like lightning, but that shouldn't have done much damage to a space-worthy craft like this.

She approached the hull slowly, as if it were still crackling with electricity. Speaking of which, that would explain why all the equipment was fried (except her own, but that was a problem for later). She put her gloved hand in the crack, marveling at the power it must have taken to do this. It didn't seem like anything Levana had, which made it even more of a mystery. Granted, Levana probably had plenty of things up her sleeve that no one knew about, but the ship had presumably been cloaked and completely unnoticed by anyone the rest of their flight. Maybe one of her ships had been coincidentally patrolling and just happened upon them? Whatever it was, they hadn't been pursued, so Cinder guessed they were at least safe for the moment.

She let her hand slip from the crack, turning around to start walking. She began by going behind the ship, planning to walk straight out until she could no longer see it, then turning to the left.

After about fifteen minutes, she looked back. Still visible. It was kind of hard to miss. Most of the trees were spread away from it, plus it was a much different color than the rest of the island.

Cinder began to relax a little. It was a pleasant place, even if she had to worry about surviving the night in a broken spaceship.

A bit later, she caught sight of a bright glow that seemed to be coming from a thicker grove of trees. Curious but cautious, she crept closer. The glow kept getting brighter, sometimes slightly shifting but constant in its location. So it wasn't a mirage, at least. About a hundred yards away, she let out a soft gasp as she realized what it was.

Metal. A way to fix the ship.

She had to resist the urge to run immediately towards it, reminding herself to be cautious. If someone else (though she still hadn't seen anyone) was here, they might be in the same situation and need metal to fix something, too. And that could lead to a fight, which Cinder wasn't necessarily prepared for. She didn't want to be forced to use her glamour, but maybe self-defense would be an acceptable excuse.

Should she go back and tell Thorne? She hesitated a moment, but no. She had left him a note, and she already knew he wouldn't be much help in a fight anyway.

Cinder took a deep breath and continued toward the glinting metal, heart pounding and eyes squinting.