Marissa Meyer - Glitches

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Contents

Begin Reading

Are you ready to meet your new family?

She tore her gaze away from the window, where snow was heaped up on bamboo fences and a squat android was clearing a path through the slush, and looked at the man seated opposite her. Though hed been kind to her throughout their trip, two full days of being passed between a hover, a maglev train, two passenger ships, and yet another hover, he still had a nervous smile that made her fidget.

Plus, she kept forgetting his name.

I dont remember the old family, she said, adjusting her heavy left leg so that it didnt stick out quite so far between their seats.

His lips twisted awkwardly into an expression that was probably meant to be reassuring, and this ended their conversation. His attention fell down to a device he never stopped looking at, with a screen that cast a greenish glow over his face. He wasnt a very old man, but his eyes always seemed tired and his clothes didnt fit him right. Though hed been clean-cut when he first came to claim her, he was now in need of a razor.

She returned her gaze to the snow-covered street. The suburb struck her as crowded and confused. A series of short one-story shacks would be followed by a mansion with a frozen water fountain in its courtyard and red-tiled roofs. After that, a series of clustered town houses and maybe a run-down apartment complex, before more tiny shacks took over. It all looked like someone had taken every kind of residence they could think of and spilled them across a grid of roads, not caring where anything landed.

She suspected that her new home wasnt anything like the rolling farmland theyd left behind in Europe, but shed been in such a foggy-brained daze at the time that she couldnt remember much of anything before the train ride. Except that it had been snowing there, too. She was already sick of the snow and the cold. They made her bones ache where her fleshy parts were connected to her steel prosthetics.

She swiveled her gaze back toward the man seated across from her. Are we almost there?

He nodded without looking up. Almost, Cinder.

Enfolding her fingers around the scar tissue on her wrist, she waited, hoping he would say something else to ease her nerves, but he didnt seem the type to notice anyones anxiety above his own. She imagined calling him Dad, but the word was laughably unfamiliar, even inside her head. She couldnt even compare him with her real father, as her memory had been reduced to a blank slate during the intrusive surgeries and all she had left of her parents was their sterile identity profiles, with plain photos that held no recognition and a tag at the top labeling them as DECEASED. Theyd been killed in the hover crash that had also claimed her leg and hand.

As confirmed by all official records, there was no one else. Cinders grandparents were also dead. She had no siblings. No aunts or uncles or friendsat least, none willing to claim her. Perhaps there wasnt a human being in all of Europe who would have taken her in, and thats why theyd had to search as far as New Beijing before they found her a replacement family.

She squinted, straining to remember who they were. The faceless people who had pulled her from the wreckage and turned her into this. Doctors and surgeons, no doubt. Scientists. Programmers. There must have been a social worker involved, but she couldnt recall for sure. Her memory gave her only dizzy glimpses of the French countryside and this stranger sitting across from her, entranced by the device in his hands.

Her new stepfather.

The hover began to slow, drifting toward the curb. Its nose hit a snowbank and it came to a sudden shuddering stop. Cinder grabbed the bar overhead, but the hover had already settled down, slightly off-kilter in the packed snow.

Here we are, said the man, eyes twinkling as the hover door slid open.

She stayed plastered to her seat, her hand still gripping the bar, as a gust of icy wind swirled around them. Theyd arrived at one of the tiny shack houses, one with peeling paint and a gutter that hung loose beneath the weight of the snow. Still, it was a sweet little house, all white with a red roof and enough dead branches sticking up from the ground that Cinder could almost imagine a garden come springtime.

The man paid the hover with a swipe of his wrist, then stepped out onto a pathway that had been plowed down to a sheet of ice. The door to the house opened before hed taken a step and two girls about Cinders own age came barreling down the front steps, squealing. The man crouched down on the pathway, holding out his arms as the girls launched themselves into him.

From her place inside the hover, Cinder heard the man laugh for the first time.

A woman appeared inside the doorway, belting a quilted robe around her waist. Girls, dont suffocate your father. Hes had a long trip.

Dont listen to your mother, just this once. You can suffocate me all you like. He kissed his daughters on the tops of their heads, then stood, keeping a firm grip on their hands. Would you like to meet your new sister? he asked, turning back to face the hover. He seemed surprised at the empty pathway behind him. Come on out, Cinder.

She shivered and pried her hand away from the safety bar. Sliding toward the door, she tried to be graceful stepping out onto the curb, but the distance to the ground was shorter than shed expected and her heavy leg was inflexible as it crunched through the compact ice. She cried out and stumbled, barely catching herself on the hovers doorframe.

The man hurried back toward her, holding her up as well as he could by the arm, one hand gripping her metal fingers. Its all right, perfectly natural. Your muscles are weak right now, and it will take time for your wiring to fully integrate with your nervous system.

Cinder stared hard at the ground, shivering both from cold and embarrassment. She couldnt help finding irony in the mans words, though she dared not laugh at themwhat did integrated wiring have to do with being perfectly natural?

Cinder, the man continued, coaxing her forward, this is my eldest daughter, Pearl, and my youngest, Peony. And that is their lovely mother, Adri. Your new stepmother.

She peered up at his two daughters from behind a curtain of fine brown hair.

They were both staring openly at her metal hand.

Cinder tried to shrink away, but then the youngest girl, Peony, asked, Did it hurt when they put it on?

Steady on her feet again, Cinder pried her hand out of the mans hold and tucked it against her side. I dont remember.

She was unconscious for the surgeries, Peony, said the man.

Can I touch it? she asked, her hand already inching forward.

Thats enough, Garan. People are watching.

Cinder jumped at the shrill voice, but when she looked up, her stepmother was not looking at them, but at the house across the street.

Garan. That was the mans name. Cinder committed it to memory as she followed Adris gaze and saw a man staring at her through his front window.