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A square hole gaped up at thes was drilled into the foundation, leading to a secret sublevel

Thorne bent over, planting his hands on his knees "How did you know that was there?"

Cinder couldn’t tear her gaze away froeway

Unable to voice the truth, she said si her flashlight as she was hit with thick, stale air The beaar above, with no doors and no s Almost afraid to knohat she’d just stuhts On"

She heard the sound of an independent generator click on first, before three long overhead fluorescents gradually brightened, one after another Thorne’s shoes thus of the ladder He spun around and froze

"What--what is this?"

Cinder couldn’t answer She could barely breathe

A tank sat in the center of the roolass lid A collection of coauges, bioelectricity scanners Machines with dials and tubes, needles and screens, plugs and controls

A long operating table against the far wall held an array offro table with a near-eical tools--scalpels, syringes, bandages, face masks, towels On the ere two blank netscreens

Asroom, the opposite side more closely resembled Cinder’s workshop in the base, co iron Discarded android parts and co hand

Cinder shuddered, chilled from the air that sround cave

Thorne crept toward the tank It was eoo-like lining beneath the glass dolove before re that it wasn’t there

"A suspended anihosts of unknown surgeons could be listening "Designed to keep so periods of ti?"

Cinder nodded Nearing the tank, she pressed her fingers to the glass and tried to re up here, but she couldn’t Only addledabout this dungeon She hadn’t been fully conscious until she’d been en route to New Beijing, ready to start her new life as a scared, confused orphan, and a cyborg

The girl’s outline in the goo seemed too s appeared to have been significantly heavier than the right She wondered how long she had lain there without any leg at all

"What do you suppose it’s doing down here?"

Cinder licked her lips "I think it was hiding a princess"

Thirty-Two

Cinder’s feet were ceround room She couldn’t shake the vision of her eleven-year-old self lying on that operating table as unknown surgeons cut and sewed and pieced her body together with foreign steel limbs Wires in her brain Optobionics behind her retinas Synthetic tissue in her heart, new vertebrae, grafted skin to cover the scar tissue

How long had it taken? How long had she been unconscious, sleeping in this dark cellar?

Levana had tried to kill her when she was only three years old

Her operation had been coht years In a tank, sleeping and drea

Not dead, but not alive either

She peered down into the ilass Hundreds of tiny wires with neural transmitters were attached to the walls and a small netscreen was implanted on the side No, not a netscreen, Cinder realized No net access could infiltrate this rooet back to Queen Levana

"I don’t get it," said Thorne, exaical tools on the other side of the room "What do you think they did to her down here?"

She peered up at the captain, but there was no suspicion on his face, only curiosity

"Well," she started, "programmed and implanted her ID chip, for starters"