The Cage (23 page)

When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her thin shoulders and shook her. Mali just allowed herself to get thrown around like a rag doll. “I do not know.”

“You have to! You’ve seen beyond the walls—you grew up in their world.”

“They tell me what they wish me to know. I assume they remove her.”

He let her go abruptly. “But it hasn’t been twenty-one days yet.”

Mali gave that odd head wobble that was meant to be a shrug. Lucky kicked over one of the bins in disgust; apples rolled everywhere. “They can’t just change the rules! They said we have twenty-one days to obey Rule Three. If they took her before that, then they should take me too. I haven’t obeyed yet either.”

“Perhaps he comes for you next.”

Lucky froze. His head pounded so hard he could barely think. “Coming for me? Well, good. Then he’ll take me wherever he took her, only this time I’ll be ready. Nok, give me that guitar.”

Nok looked up innocently through her long eyelashes. “You want to play?”

“No, I want to break it apart and wrap a string around the Caretaker’s neck when he comes back. Cora was right. It isn’t safe—they can take us at any moment. I should never have listened to you all.”

“Listening to us saved your life.” Rolf kicked an apple with short, sharp jabs, one eye twitching like his head stabbed with pain. His voice was suddenly bitter. “If the Kindred hadn’t—”

“Rolf, shh,” Nok hissed.

“No! I’m tired of everyone acting like idiots instead of using their brains. I thought Cora was smart, but she let her emotions get the best of her. She’s gone crazy with these stupid ideas of escape that are just going to get us all in trouble. You don’t want to end up like her, Lucky.”

Lucky dug his fingers against his temples.

“Don’t you get it?” Rolf sputtered. His face was splotched with red, but his fingers weren’t twitching. “Tell him what you told us, Mali. About Earth.”

A creeping feeling spread through Lucky’s veins. He eyed Mali warily. “What is he talking about?”

“I am not supposed to tell.” Mali shot Rolf a hard look. “The Kindred believe your minds are not yet ready to understand. I only tell
you
because your mind seems stronger than the others.”

Lucky braced himself. He didn’t care about whatever stupid thing Mali and Rolf had argued about. He sensed that he was about to learn something that he could never unlearn. For a moment he clung to his ignorance. If he didn’t know, he could pretend everything was okay. He could close his eyes and think of home and his granddad and that horse that kept kicking over the fence so the chickens got out.

“Earth is gone,” Mali said.

The ground fell out from under him. He collided with the grass, leaning against an apple tree, the smell of blossoms so thick around him he might choke. His head throbbed. He raked his fingers over his face and scalp, trying to ease the pain. Earth was gone, along with his dad in Afghanistan and his granddad and his mother’s grave with the faded plastic flowers and all the horses and the chicken houses he’d repaired last summer and everyone he had ever known, ever loved, ever said hello to as he crossed the street.

Nok crouched beside him. Her fingers were so soft against his head that he wanted to lean his head into her. His mother had had soft hands too.

He remembered her eyes meeting his as the car careened out of control.

Luciano.

And now even her grave was gone. But so was her murderer. Lucky might not have pulled the trigger that day on the airfield, but Senator Mason was dead.

Lucky lived. And Cora lived.

“Poor Lucky,” Nok said, brushing aside his hair. “I know it’s hard. I was upset too, but there’s nothing we can do but be thankful we weren’t there when it happened.”

Rolf crouched over them, casting a cold shadow. “She’s right, you know. You have to think about this logically, Lucky. Put aside your emotions. The Kindred knew what was going to happen to Earth and picked us, out of everyone, to survive. There’s only the six of us and a few thousand humans scattered throughout the Kindred world. The Kindred were telling the truth all along. The rules aren’t there to be cruel. They’re there to save humanity.” He rested a hand on Lucky’s back. “We have a duty to keep ourselves healthy and keep our species going.”

Lucky felt as though his head was splitting in two. The house in Roanoke he grew up in, with the patch of forest behind it. The strip mall where he used to skateboard. The school where he’d only had two months left to graduation. The army recruiting center. Everyone, and everything—gone.

“
We
were our own enemy,” Rolf pressed. “Humans. We were so cruel to each other, and to our planet. We didn’t deserve what we had. Look at Cora—she’s sabotaging us, and herself as well. That’s human nature.”

Lucky looked between Nok and Rolf. Neither had spoken much about their pasts, but he could see in their eyes that they had always been outsiders on Earth, just like him. Rolf’s twitching and Nok’s hiding behind her pink streak of hair. The same for Leon, who faced the entire world like it was out to get him. The same for Cora, who’d been wronged by her own father—and by him.

Maybe the Kindred were right to take me.

Maybe he belonged in a cage more than he ever did on Earth. Maybe they all did.

His face was wet, through from tears or sweat or spray from the creek, he wasn’t sure. He sat up. His knuckles popped from the old accident scars. He rubbed the aching joints.

Rolf’s fingers were twitching again. “The Kindred saved our lives. They fixed Nok’s asthma, and my poor vision. I bet they even healed that hand you keep saying gives you trouble. Try it. Nok, give him the guitar.”

“I told you, I can’t play anymore.”

“Just try. Let this be your proof. Earth ruined your hand and took away your music, and the Kindred gave them back to you.”

Lucky dragged a hand over his face. Now that he really thought about it, his joints didn’t actually feel that stiff. Had cracking his knuckles just been an old habit?

“Give me the guitar.”

“You aren’t still planning on attacking the Caretaker with the guitar strings, yeah?” Nok asked.

“Just give me the goddamn guitar.”

Nok handed it over. For a moment, Lucky cradled the wood in his hands. He’d missed the feel of wood. Everything in the cage, even if it looked real, had a synthetic quality. Nothing was quite the right weight or texture, but this was. The wood slipped into his hands like an old friend. The strings were taut.

For a brief second, everything hit him again: they were the only ones left.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He struck one note, then two. He hadn’t played at all since the accident. Punching the hospital wall had damaged his fingers too badly for fine dexterity. Now, though, the joints didn’t pop or grind. His tendons moved fluidly. Sound came out that tore his heart in two all over again. He played for the hand that the Kindred had miraculously fixed, and he played for a lost world, and he played for a girl who, wherever she was, didn’t even know that they would never go home again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

33

Cora

AFTER LEAVING THE KINDRED
marketplace, the hallway Cassian led Cora down was not glinting with starlight like the ones they had left behind. It was narrow, with a low ceiling and murky light coming from the hairline cracks in the floor. These wound like an animal den, twisting and dank and unpredictable. She grazed the walls with a hand that felt too heavy and came away with a chalky dust.

“We are in the deepest section of the aggregate station. These tunnels are dug out of rock. Kindred stations are never permanent; they last one or two hundred human years at the most. We are a transient species. We locate a sizable asteroid and build our stations around it, ship by ship, interlocking until we have an entire functioning system with residential, governmental, commercial, and recreational sectors. When it is time to move on, we merely reverse the interlocking and go our separate ways.”

They passed the shadows of more Kindred. Unlike the ones in the market, these weren’t stiff, but slinking, loose, skittering like animals. Uncloaked.

She inched closer to Cassian.

They rounded a corner. At the end of the next hallway, under an island of light, a Kindred girl with loose black hair down to her waist stood before a node of four doorways. She was dressed in a light green gown that was elegant and flowing, almost humanlike. So different from the Kindred in the market, who all wore cerulean uniforms or white robes. The girl leaned on the podium and gave an unexpected yawn. The movement was so jarringly fluid—so uncloaked--that Cora jumped.

“Uncloaking is necessary for our well-being,” Cassian explained as they approached. “We abhor the lesser emotions—jealousy, lust, fear—and yet to be alive is to experience such states. There is no escaping them, only delaying them until an appropriate time and place. That is why we have these menageries, where Kindred can go for emotional leave.”

“What happens in a menagerie?” She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

“Anything to express or enhance emotion. Games of chance. Intoxicants. Brothels—though not here. Some menageries allow Kindred to do virtually whatever they want with the lesser species, and humans are a particular favorite because, as you have noted, we are quite similar physically.”

His black eyes settled on her, and she looked away. “When you rescued Mali, was she in a brothel?”

“No. She was part of a fight ring with three other human girls and a chimpanzee.” He raised an eyebrow at her surprise. “Have you not seen her fight yet? Do not underestimate her.”

They reached the Kindred girl dressed in her flowing gown. An almost maniacal smile stretched across her face. She wore glasses with painted blue eyes that made her look more like a doll than a living creature.

Was this what
uncloaked
looked like up close?

Something about the way she tipped her head down coyly at Cassian was a little familiar, not to mention seductive. Cora threw him another look. What exactly did he get up to, in his uncloaked time? Did he come to see
her
?

The Kindred woman made a high-pitched hissing sound that might have been a laugh, almost as though she could read Cora’s thoughts. Cassian responded to her curtly and led Cora past the girl.

“I informed her I was here in an official capacity. It is rare to be cloaked here, particularly when escorting a lesser species. I do not want to draw more attention to ourselves than we must. We will use a service passageway.”

He pushed open a doorway with his hand. It was the first time a door hadn’t opened automatically, and she wondered how exactly their telepathy worked. Her thoughts plunged into darkness as soon as they entered the hallway. Only faint light came from the small drill holes in the walls, but Cassian guided her forward as though he didn’t need light, or else knew the passageway by heart. It opened into a viewing room. Unlike the cage’s, there was nothing scientific feeling about this. It was simply a rock-hewn cave with a wide window overlooking a chamber below.

Cassian motioned to the window. “We can see out, but they cannot see us.”

Cora approached the window hesitantly. After passing through such dank corridors, she had expected something repugnant, but the chamber beyond was a complete contrast: well lit, with a gleaming limestone floor and stately columns at either end like a Greek temple. Cells were built into the temple facade opposite them. Each one was ten feet wide by ten feet deep, but stretched to create a visual illusion that made the cell appear much larger. More advanced Kindred technology.

Each cell was decorated in soft silks and columns; one was a bedroom, with a young human girl asleep in a gilded bed overlooked by statues of Athena and Zeus. Another cell contained a wooden table stacked with scrolls, and a human boy with very dark brown skin, dressed in a toga. His pupils were dilated. Drugged.

Cora drew in a tight breath. Their worn faces didn’t look so different from her own sleep-deprived one. “Why do you do this to them—just to entertain yourselves?”

The bright lights of the temple reflected on Cassian’s stoic metallic face. “There is some educational value, but yes. These children are primarily here to entertain the uncloaked. We enjoy viewing vignettes of what life on Earth must be like.”

“What about that oath you swore to protect lesser races?”

“No one is harming them.” Cassian’s voice was carefully devoid of emotion. “They are perfectly safe in their enclosures. They have ample food and a facsimile of their natural habitat.”

If her hands hadn’t been bound, she might have slapped him. Did he truly believe
this
was fulfilling their oath?

“Each menagerie adheres to a different theme,” he continued. “This one is called the Temple. It is modeled after humans’ early philosophical foundations. There is one on the third level of the aggregate station that is modeled after prehistoric Earth, called the Cave. There are seven menageries on this station alone.”

Mali had once mentioned the Kindred’s penchant for dressing like humans. Now Cora understood that the Kindred girl at the doorway was dressed so strangely because she was in costume.

“Why human places, human times?”

“When we uncloak, we crave experiences, and there is no society, nor habitat, better suited for the cultivation of experiences than the human world. Of all the species, intelligent and lesser, humans are the most vibrant.”

“What about
your
world?”

“The concept of a homeland fascinates us because we have not had one since the Gatherers elevated us to live among the stars. The environments on Earth, the weather, the shape of the land and the way you build your structures into it—the idea is quite foreign and quite . . . charming. Your kind is just as interesting. Like your planet, you are all so varied, so prone to warfare and destruction, but also beauty.” He paused. “Can you blame us for wanting to watch such fascinating creatures? To act like them, even?”