Cinder flinched back, away from the blonde bimbo teetering toward her and the Captain in super tall high heels with a scary expression on her face. She was wearing way too little clothing for Cinder's taste. But apparently the Captain didn't feel the same way, because he stood up from their table and reached out to try to pull the girl into an embrace. She let him hold her for a second, then pulled away, glaring fiercely once again.
"I can't believe you, Carswell! I never thought you would cheat on me!" she huffed, flipping her wavy blond hair over her shoulder in a dramatic way. Cinder had to bite her cheek to keep from bursting into laughter. This was a scene straight out of a cheesy romance TV show.
The Captain held up his hands. "Whoa, Samantha, slow down. I would never cheat on you! That's ridiculous."
"Oh yeah?" Samantha, who must have been his girlfriend, sniffed. "Then how do you explain this?" She gestured to the table Cinder was still seated at, wrinkling her nose as she took in Cinder's dirty shirt and pants and her plain face with no makeup on it.
"Samantha, this is Cinder," the Captain explained, trying to smooth over the moment. "She's new in town and will be coming to Commonwealth High. I was just talking to her." He noticeably didn't mention how he had driven her all over town and paid for her food.
Samantha rolled her eyes. "And talking turns to flirting, and flirting turns to kissing, and suddenly you've got a new girlfriend! Don't try to tell me you guys were just talking." Behind Samantha's back, Cinder saw the waitress Scarlet covering her mouth to hide her snorts of laughter. This was so ridiculous.
The Captain sighed, running his hand through his hair in frustration. Cinder got the feeling that he had to deal with drama from his girlfriend very often. "Let's just - " he grabbed her wrist, pulling her into a corner of the cafe. Cinder watched from their table, slightly amused to see how worked up Samantha was.
"Hey," Scarlet slid into the chair that the Captain had left empty. "You looked lonely. And I'm on break now, so I thought I should use the chance to talk to you."
"I didn't know the Captain had a girlfriend," Cinder remarked, still watching the couple fight. She had never had a relationship with anyone before. Of course, what boy would want to date her? Once they found out about her robot limbs, all hope was lost.
Scarlet stared at her and slowly stood up. "What did you call him?"
"The Captain?" Cinder was confused. "He told me that most people call him that."
Blinking at her in confusion, Scarlet plopped back down into her seat. Then her shoulders began shaking uncontrollably, and she doubled over in fits of laughter. She barely managed to gasp out words through the laughter. "Of course - he told you - I can't believe - "
Cinder still didn't get it. "Scarlet, what?"
The redhead finally got her giggles under control. "Cinder, no one calls Thorne Captain. He wishes people would, since that would inflate his ego even more, but no one does."
"Oh." Cinder didn't have much to say about that. "So I should call him Thorne, then?"
Scarlet shrugged. "I guess. I mean, you can keep calling him Captain, but that sounds kind of silly."
"Yeah." She felt silly now for calling Thorne by an unofficial title all evening. Cinder looked over to where Thorne and Samantha were still arguing. "I'm going to go home," she decided. She knew that the longer she stayed out, the more chance there was that Adri might catch her.
"Need a ride?" Scarlet offered. "I have a motorcycle."
Cinder paused and looked closely at her. "You ride... a motorcycle?" That was not the vehicle she would have imagined the pretty waitress riding.
Shrugging, Scarlet got up. "You got a problem with that?"
A grin spread over Cinder's face. She was going to like this girl, she was sure of that. "Not at all."
The two girls high-fived. "All right," Scarlet said, checking her watch. "I have a half-hour of my break left. You can go outside, I'm just going to run and tell my friend to cover for me if I don't get back in time."
"Oh, you don't have to drive me home -" Cinder tried to say, feeling bad that she might cause Scarlet to get in trouble with her boss.
Scarlet waved her off. "No, it's fine. It's probably better that you don't wait for Thorne. From the way things are looking over there, he'll probably be going home with that girl."
Cinder looked over. The two were kissing fiercely, wrapping around each other in a way that made her want to claw her eyes out. "Have they - have they been together for a long time?"
Looking her way, Scarlet snorted. "Of course not. The longest that Thorne's ever been with a girl is probably five weeks. He just jumps from girl to girl. I think he and Samantha got together... two weeks ago? Honestly, no one even keeps track anymore. By the way, my motorcycle's parked in the alleyway just off the main street." She shrugged and walked back to the cafe counter.
Cinder exited the cafe, heading toward the alley Scarlet had been talking about. By this time, most shops were closing their doors as stars started to wink into existence in the violet-tinged sky above. People were heading back to their cars, getting ready to go back home after an evening spent out. But the bars and nightclubs in the area were just getting started. She could hear music pumping and glasses clinking from inside the ones she passed. Already intoxicated people were stumbling in and out, some even vomiting from all the alcohol in their system. As she walked toward the alley, Cinder passed several shady looking people smoking or doing drugs.
Goosebumps prickled her skin as she stepped into the shadows of the alleyway. Something about this place didn't sit well with her. Cinder was about to turn and head back to the cafe to wait for Scarlet. But before she could do that, a person materialized right in front of her, blocking her exit to the street.
"Who are you?" he growled, a hulking silhouette in the light of the setting sun. The only part of him that Cinder could see clearly was his eyes, which glowed clear emerald green through the darkness.
"I'm nobody. Just... trying to get through." Cinder tried to push past him, but he blocked her easily with a muscled forearm. It was then that Cinder realized how much taller and brawnier he was. The top of her head barely came up to his shoulder, and she sensed that he was taller than he was showing since he was all slumped over.
"I'm not going to let anyone who comes into our alleyway go so fast," he told her, snatching her wrist. Cinder let out a yelp. She had heard stories about this kind of harassment in cities, but she had never expected to be a victim of it.
"Your alleyway?" she managed to squeak out.
"Yes, pretty girl. Our alleyway." With that, he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, letting her watch as about a dozen more figures as big and strong as her captor melted out of the shadows. "We're the Wolf Pack. And you're being held by our Alpha."
Cinder tried to think through the panic racing through her veins. "If you think you're going to get ransom money for my freedom, that's not true. My adoptive mother hates me. If anything, she'll pay you to get me out of her sight."
The boy holding her snorted. "We don't care about money. We've got enough of that. What we want right now... is a new target to practice on."
Fear made her body feel icy cold. "What are you going to do to me?"
The rest of the gang closed in on her, suffocating Cinder with their living-on-the-streets smell. "Oh, don't be afraid," the voice in her ear cooed. She tried to edge away from him, but he only strengthened his grip. Then, with a single flick of his arm, he threw Cinder to the ground. She knew she should be thinking about her own survival, but for some reason, the only thought in her brain was that she had probably just dented her $5,000 titanium-plated metal leg. And her hand.
"GET AWAY FROM HER!" the world above Cinder swam and blurred as a new figure raced into the scene. Scarlet? Cinder tried to sit up, but everything was spinning spinning spinning. So she was forced to lie on the gritty ground and listen to screams of rage and punches being thrown and gang members being knocked to the ground.
"I hate you, Wolf!" she heard Scarlet scream. "I can't believe you would prey on a new girl! And a younger one, at that! YOU COWARDLY SCUM!"
More punches. "GO TO HELL!"
Then there were arms scooping her up, carrying her to a different alley. Cinder's blurry eyes could barely focus on Scarlet's face as she told her what had happened. "I'm so sorry, Cinder... I should never have left you alone."
The last thing she saw was the stars above, swimming and blurring and turning into crazy constellations.
Scarlet was shaking as she started the prized red motorcycle that had been a birthday gift from her Grand-mere when she turned seventeen last year. She couldn't believe what had happened. It was all stupid Giles's fault. He had stopped her as she was leaving the cafe, interrogating her on where she was going. Scarlet had run as fast as should could to the alley with her motorcycle so that Cinder wouldn't have to wait any longer. When she had entered the alley and saw that Cinder was nowhere in sight, she had known in her gut that something was very, very wrong.
The only thing that had worked to her advantage was her strength. After finding Cinder in the Wolf Pack's alley, she had charged at the gang members and started kicking and punching anyone in sight. The boys hadn't anticipated her fighting skills, so they had been very unprepared when she proved to be a competent opponent. Scarlet's grandma had taught her self-defense skills and armed her with a hand pistol when she was eleven. "This is a dangerous world, little Scarlet. You have to be prepared," she had said.
She didn't like using the pistol, especially to threaten people, but in situations like this it was necessary. Cinder must have hit her head because she had been close to knocked out when Scarlet found her in the alley. She had been rendered completely defenseless, and Scarlet had had no choice but to use the pistol to threaten Wolf. She had knocked him to the ground and held it at his head with one hand while the other scooped up Cinder.
All right, what now? Scarlet had a feeling she shouldn't take Cinder home bruised and knocked unconscious- not that she even knew where the girl lived. If Thorne had been the one to drive her downtown, and they had only just met, that meant that Cinder had been running away for some reason. Luckily, she didn't have to make the decision.
At that moment, Cinder came around. She moaned softly from where Scarlet had seated her on the motorcycle. "Are you okay?" Scarlet asked touching her arm softly.
Cinder swayed like she was about to tumble off the motorcycle seat, and Scarlet grabbed her to keep her steady. "Cinder!"
She blinked several times and shook her head like she was just waking up. "Scarlet? What happened?"
"Oh, thank goodness you're okay," Scarlet breathed. "Those boys were rough with you."
Cinder looked her over. "You're bleeding."
Sure enough, blood was running from the knuckles of her right hand, which had split when she had punched Wolf and the other pack members. She wiped them off on her waitress apron. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me." Life on the farm had toughened Scarlet up a lot.
"Who were those boys?" Cinder asked, yanking one of her gloves off. Scarlet sucked in a breath, trying to hide her surprise at seeing that Cinder had a metal hand. She had never met anyone with a prosthetic before. Cinder began examining the metal joints, popping off some of the fingers and examining them closely before twisting the hand back together. She pulled up her pant leg and started the same process on a metal leg.
"That was the Wolf Pack," Scarlet explained. "They go to Commonwealth High, but most of the time they just cut class and smoke in the bathrooms. They always grab random people off the streets and beat them up, then leave them in the streets for the police to find. And Wolf - well, his real name is Ze'ev, actually - is their leader. Their Alpha wolf. Aren't they so clever?"
Cinder scrunched up her nose. "Why aren't they arrested?"
Scarlet sighed. "The thing is, no one has ever actually caught them beating anyone up. Everyone knows it's them that does it, but no one has caught them in action yet. And the police can't really arrest someone if they have no proof. God, I hate Wolf so, so, much..."
"Crap." Cinder wasn't listening to Scarlet's rant anymore. She had pulled off her boot and was examining a metal foot. Scarlet stared at it for a moment, taking in the screws and bolts and wires, the grease packed between the joints. Abruptly, Cinder yanked the foot out of its socket so she was left with a disconnected foot and a bunch of wires hanging out of the bottom of the ankle. "It's dented." She growled in annoyance. "This thing was expensive!"
"I should probably take you home," Scarlet said. "Are you still dizzy?"
Cinder shook her head. "Much better. And thank you, if I haven't said that already. You really saved me out there."
Scarlet smiled. "That's what friends do."