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There was no sign of Wolf

She thought she’d seen hiht Her ship was parked to the left Her pulse was racing, otten what she’d come for

She told herself that she would be able to find hiather her wits After she talked to the detectives and persuaded them to track Wolf down and arrest hi her hands into her pockets, she hurried around the building, toward her ship

A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs The night’s chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen

Scarlet had heard olves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms

But never had a wolf’s howl sent a chill down her spine like that

Nine

"Argh, get it off, get it off!"

Cinder spun, steadying herself on the curved, slick concrete walls as she cast the flashlight behind her Thorne rithing and squir an array of curses and un and saw a thrivingacross it in all directions She shuddered, but turned away and kept

"It’s only a cockroach," she called back to hi to kill you"

"It’s in my uniform!"

"Would you keep quiet? There’s a h that manhole"

She scoffed, more preoccupied with the map of the sewer system in her head than on her coht of a cockroach beneath her shirt did ured it would still be preferable to walking through the ankle-deep sludge with one bare foot, and she wasn’t whining

They passed beneath thelouder "We’re aler to reach it--it was hot as Mars in this cra fro stench wafted toward her, so strong she aler would it just be surface water runoff they were trekking through

"Oh, aces," said Thorne, groaning "Tell me that’s not what I think it is"

Cinder wrinkled her nose and focused on taking shallow, burning breaths

The se and ca themselves on the lip of a concrete wall

Cinder’s i up the slih for therate that lined the far edge, stable enough for s Between thee swelled and churned, at least two ht off another bout of nausea as the pungent stink of the sewer clouded her nostrils, her throat, her lungs

"Ready?" she said, inching forward

"Wait--what are you doing?"

"What does it look like?"

Thorne blinked at her, then down at the sewage he could barely make out in the darkness "Don’t you have soet us across?"

Cinder glared, light-headed from her body’s instinctively short breaths "Oh,could I have forgotten about obbled down another rank breath and lowered herself into thess as sheon the inside, Cinder crossed as quickly as she could, choking down her gag reflex The weight of her rounded so the current didn’t knock her off balance and soon she was on the other side, pulling herself onto the grate She flattened her back against the tunnel wall and peered back at the pretend captain

He was staring at her legs with unbridled disgust

Cinder looked down The stark white ju, to her legs

"Look," she yelled, aiet over here or you can go back and serve the rest of your sentence in peace But you have to , Thorne inched his way into the sludge, holding his ar the whole tirate and hauled hi about the soap," he rate was already digging into Cinder’s bare foot and she shifted her weight onto her cyborg leg "All right, Cadet Which way?"

"Captain" He opened his eyes and peered down the tunnel in each direction, but beyond the pale light filtering in from the closest manhole, the sewers disappeared in blackness Cinder adjusted the brightness of her flashlight, sending it darting over the frothy surface of the water and dripping concrete walls

"It’s near the old Beihai Park," Thorne said, scratching at his whiskered chin "Which way is that?"

Cinder nodded and turned south