Free Cress by Marissa Meyer

as he was told, but his focus was now caught on the needle. “Why do you want medicine? Are you sick?”
    “For my brother.”
    “Also Lunar?”
    The boy’s eyes widened. They always did when Dr. Erland threw out the word so casually, but he never understood why. He only asked for Lunars. Only Lunars ever knocked on his door.
    “Stop looking so skittish,” Dr. Erland grumbled. “You must know that I’m Lunar too.” He did a quick glamour to prove himself, an easy manipulation so that the boy perceived him as a younger version of himself, but only for an instant.
    Though he’d been tampering with bioelectricity more freely since he’d arrived in Africa, he found that it drained him more and more. His mind simply wasn’t as strong as it used to be, and it had been years since he’d had any consistent practice.
    Nevertheless, the glamour did its job. The boy’s stance relaxed, now that he was somewhat sure that Dr. Erland wouldn’t have him and his family sent to the moon for execution.
    He still didn’t come any closer, though.
    “Yes,” he said. “My brother is Lunar too. But he’s a shell.”
    This time, it was Erland’s eyes that widened.
    A shell.
    Now that had true value. Though many Lunars came to Earth in order to protect their non-gifted children, tracking those children down had proven more difficult than Erland had expected. They blended in too well with Earthens, and they had no desire to give up their disguise. He wondered if half of them were even aware of their own ancestry.
    “How old?” he said, setting the syringe down on the counter. “I would pay double for a sample from him.”
    At Erland’s sudden eagerness, the boy took a step back. “Seven,” he said. “But he’s sick.”
    “With what? I have pain killers, blood thinners, antibiotics—”
    “He has the plague, sir. Do you have medicine for that?”
    Dr. Erland frowned. “Letumosis? No, no. That isn’t possible. Tell me his symptoms. We’ll figure out what he really has.”
    The boy looked annoyed at being told he was wrong, but not without a tinge of hope. “Yesterday afternoon he started getting a bad rash, with bruises all over his arms, like he’d been in a brawl. Except he hadn’t. When he woke up this morning he was hot to the touch, but he kept saying he was freezing, even in this heat. When our mother checked, the skin under his fingernails had gone bluish, just like the plague.”
    Erland held up a hand. “You say he got the spots yesterday, and his fingers were already turning blue this morning?”
    The boy nodded. “Also, right before I came here, all those spots were blistering up, like blood blisters.” He cringed.
    Alarm stirred inside the doctor as his mind searched for an explanation. The first symptoms did sound like letumosis, but he’d never heard of it moving through its four stages so quickly. And the rash becoming blood blisters … he’d never seen that before.
    He didn’t want to think of the possibility, and yet it was also something he’d been waiting for years to happen. Something he’d been expecting. Something he’d been dreading.
    If what this boy said was true, if his brother did have letumosis, then it could mean that the disease was mutating.
    And if even a Lunar was showing symptoms …
    Erland grabbed his hat off the desk and pulled it on over his balding head. “Take me to him.”

 
    Eight
    Cress hardly felt the hot water beating on her head. Outside her washroom, a second-era opera blared from every screen. With the woman’s powerful voice in her ears, swooning over the incessant shower, Cress was the star, the damsel, the center of that universe. She sang along at full volume, pausing only to prepare herself for the crescendo.
    She didn’t have the full translation memorized, but the emotions behind the words were clear.
    Heartbreak. Tragedy. Love.
    Chills covered her skin, sharply contrasted against the steam. She pressed a hand to her chest, drowning.
    Pain.