The Cage (29 page)
Authors: Megan Shepherd
This is how it begins.
She’d been a fool to think she could ever leave the others behind. They would die without her there to keep them sane, and the sand would swallow their bones.
She reached town just as the artificial sun dropped another level. She slowed to a walk. The only sound was the jukebox music and the beeping arcade games. No insects trilling, no barking dogs, no traffic or hum of electricity, but fears roared in her head.
Ahead, sitting on the porch swing, were Lucky and Nok. She ran for them, about to call out, but then slowed. Nok wore a look Cora had never seen before. She wasn’t hiding behind her pink stripe of hair. She was facing Lucky, one hand on his thigh, purring into his ear.
She stopped abruptly.
Back in the jungle, Nok’s panties had been tangled in Leon’s sheets. Now she had her hands on Lucky. Cora dropped to her knees and crawled closer, through the marigolds.
As much as Cora wanted to trust her, Nok was hiding things.
It was time to find out what.
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CORA CROUCHED IN THE
marigolds, bone clutched in her hand, as she made out Nok and Lucky’s voices.
“I can’t stop thinking about her.” Lucky’s voice was broken.
“Poor Lucky,” Nok cooed. “Left all alone.” Cora’s heart started pounding. They were talking about
her
. “It isn’t you. She’s delusional. She didn’t even believe us when we told her that Earth was gone. You can’t reason with someone like that. She and Leon—they’ve lost it, yeah? They weren’t meant for captivity.”
“So what am I supposed to do? It’s been twenty-one days.”
Cora clamped a hand over her mouth, silencing her breath. There was only the sound of the porch swing chains creaking. Then Nok sighed.
“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. At some point you have to look out for yourself.”
“You don’t understand, Nok. I’ve hurt her before. I owe her this.”
“You’ve done everything for her. If she cared about you in return, she’d sleep with you, to keep you from being removed.”
Cora could only make out their shadows on the wall; Nok’s hand grazed Lucky’s cheek as she leaned in to him. “Let me help you,” Nok whispered. “I don’t want you to be removed, Lucky.”
As if her offer wasn’t clear enough, her shadow reached up to ruffle his hair seductively. There was a long pause when Cora’s head filled with terrible images of Nok and Lucky making love in front of a humming black window. She wasn’t sure if she was jealous, or just shocked. It felt so out of character for Nok, like a script Nok had been taught to say.
“You might even enjoy it, yeah?” Nok teased.
Cora’s hand tightened over the bone nearly hard enough to snap it. Lucky was silent a breath too long, and Cora’s heart churned in her throat. She knew Nok wasn’t attracted to Leon or Lucky, so what did she hope to gain by sleeping with them?
It’s a man’s world,
Nok had whispered to herself, in bed the first night.
Controlling men is the only way to survive.
“Come on, Lucky. To save yourself.”
Before he could answer, the sun faded completely and the street lights came on, the diner sign flickered to life, and the jukebox cranked up.
A stranger in my own life, a ghost behind my smile . . .
The song floated on the air, in one ear and out the other, making Cora’s head spin. Someone in the distance called Lucky’s name, and Cora, still crouched in the marigolds, looked over her shoulder to see who it was.
Rolf was coming back from the farm with a crate load of peaches, and peach juice dripping down his chin to stain the front of his shirt. At the same time, Mali came down the drugstore steps, looking as cold and cryptic as always, and the porch swing creaked as Lucky stood. He and Nok descended the stairs, just a hair from where she was crouched.
They all greeted each other and chatted like this wasn’t a cage in an alien space station, but old friends crossing paths back home. Nok threw her arms around Rolf’s neck and kissed his cheek and laughed with the others over some joke Cora wasn’t privy to.
Cora pushed to her feet shakily. Crazy. They were all going crazy. She had to warn them what had happened to the last group. She came around the side of the house, bone held high.
Lucky’s smile faded when he saw her. He swallowed, hard.
“Cora.”
The last time she’d seen him, he’d insisted on believing that Earth was gone, even despite her evidence. He’d told her that if she wanted to keep looking for a way home, she was on her own. Now he picked lint out of the pocket of his leather jacket, pulling on a loose string, avoiding her gaze.
“Lucky, we need to talk—”
“Well, decided to join us again?” Rolf set down the crate of peaches roughly. His left eye twitched. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the guitar, would you?” His words were gnashing teeth.
She squeezed the femur. Not a single one of them had even glanced at it. “Listen. I found this bone. The Caretaker—”
“Because it’s funny,” Rolf continued, in a sharp tone that was anything but entertained, “but we found some splintered wood and a guitar pick in Lucky’s room. Then outside of the house, the mulch was disturbed, like someone was burying something. When we dug it up, we found the broken guitar. Like someone intentionally destroyed it. And there’s only one person who has a history of trying to sabotage us.
You.
”
Sweat broke out on her brow. The guitar? God, why did they care about a toy when she was clutching a human bone? “Listen—”
“Is that true, Cora?” Lucky’s brow was knitted with concern. He flexed his hand, but the knuckles didn’t pop this time.
She knew the guitar had meant a lot to him. Music meant the world to her too, but it was nothing compared to going home.
“I just . . . I need to tell you something.”
Nok took her free hand gently, like guiding the elderly. “Right after dinner, yeah? They’ve started feeding us again, and it’s better than ever. You won’t try to steal our food anymore, right?”
Cora stumbled forward, because she didn’t know what else to do. She followed the others into the diner in a daze. The light seemed particularly hazy, and Lucky accidentally knocked into the pendant lamp, sending it swinging back and forth, back and forth, throwing too-bright light onto Rolf’s face, still dripping with peach juice, and then Nok’s grinning face stained with bright red candy, making them all look diabolical in the harsh light.
The others dug into their trays of food like animals. Mali was quiet. She didn’t laugh with them or join in the conversation, but they seemed to accept her because she wanted the same thing as they did—to be obliviously happy here forever.
Lucky pushed her chair out with his foot. “I know it’s been tough on you,” he said as she sank, dazed, into the empty chair opposite him. His hand reached over to cover hers, his eyes soft and brown. “But all our secrets are on the table now. I know it’ll take time to work through it all, but at least we’re here together.” He leaned in to brush his lips over her cheekbone, and she flinched at the sudden smell of wet grass. “I want to see you smile again.”
Smile?
Smile?
She was holding a dead person’s femur.
A cold feeling spread between her shoulder blades, but it wasn’t coming from the black window. Nok was watching her from the other table, with narrowed eyes that could slice her in half. Her eyes darted between Cora and Lucky as she bit into a peach.
No,
Cora thought to herself.
Nok didn’t used to be like this.
Cora could still remember the day the Caretaker came, and Nok squeezing her hand. What had changed her?
Nok sank her teeth into the peach again. Her brown eyes fixated on Lucky, and how his whole body was angled away from her as he spoke to Cora. It wasn’t exactly jealousy in her eyes; more like fear. Widened pupils and a clenched jaw that spoke of desperation.
Nok needed Lucky for something, Cora realized.
Rolf wrapped an arm around Nok, scooting his chair closer, as if he’d noticed too. He whispered a few words in her ear that she didn’t seem to hear. He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and held it up in front of her face. Like a cat, easily distracted, she pounced on the candy and tore open the wrapper.
Rolf smiled.
Rolf knew exactly how to manipulate her, just like the Kindred: a rush of sugar and bright colors to momentarily distract her. Maybe Rolf had been learning from the Kindred all along, studying the ways they manipulated the captives, and studying the captives’ reactions. He’d always had the mind of a scientist. Now he had Nok as his own personal lab rat to manipulate and control.
Cora’s hand suddenly went slack on the bone. Lab rats. Rodents.
Moles.
Ever since the first day, Rolf had insisted that the Kindred would plant a mole among them to help bend the group to their will from the inside. Cora had assumed that Mali was the mole, and yet Rolf had sided with the Kindred right from the start.
Cora played back all the things Rolf had said: they shouldn’t try to escape. That life in the cage was actually desirable. A paradise, even. He had used science and human nature to justify his arguments, and it had sounded so believable.
What if he was lying to them? What if
he
was the mole?
Cora stood so fast her chair skidded backward. She picked up the bone like a cleaver, and the others all stopped eating in surprise.
“It’s you,” she said to Rolf, her voice barely a whisper, as she felt her thoughts cutting through the fog. “It’s been you, this entire time. Manipulating Nok. Manipulating all of us.
You’re
the Kindred’s mole!”
Rolf’s lips fell open in true surprise but just as quickly pressed shut. “What are you talking about now? Is this some new plot of yours?”
His innocent act enraged her, and she flew across the table and grabbed the shoulder of his shirt, dragging him toward her, the bone raised to threaten him. Nok jumped up, and Lucky pushed to his feet too.
Mali kept eating her pancakes.
“I’m talking about how you’re working with them,” Cora accused, “like the rat you are, trying to bend us to their will. You twisted Nok first. Convinced her to give up on escape—”
“You’re crazy!”
“Cora, just calm down,” Lucky whispered.
“This is just more of her games!” Rolf snapped. “You take away our food and then have the Caretaker bring it back. You insist on maintaining the seashell calendar so you can make us think time is passing strangely. You’re mad that we won the guitar, so you steal it.” When she started to object, his face turned red. “Are you seriously going to say you didn’t steal the guitar? Just like you didn’t steal the food? Or mess with our heads?”
She started to deny it, but they’d found the guitar. They knew. She hadn’t taken any food, but they’d never believe her now.
Cora let go of Rolf’s shirt abruptly and paced, sweat rolling down her face. “Rolf’s been manipulating you all this entire time, in conjunction with the Kindred. I suspected it from the first time he tried to convince us we shouldn’t fight back. He always had such a convenient explanation for everything strange that was happening, so we wouldn’t question the bigger motivation of what the Kindred wanted with us. He even has a convenient story about his life back home. How he was bullied, so we’d feel sympathy for him. How he was so caught up in his studies that he never had time for the books and TV shows we all might have watched. He even has twitches and strange mannerisms like Mali does. Probably because he’s never even been to Earth and doesn’t know how real people act!”
Rolf looked like he had been slapped. Red splotched his pale face. His fingers, which hadn’t twitched in days, slowly started their neurotic tapping against the table.
“Let him go!” Nok said. “It isn’t true, any of it!”
Cora whirled on her. “Why do you keep defending him?”
“Because you haven’t heard him talk about home like I have. We both lived in London. We went to some of the same restaurants. He’s seen
Star Trek
and he’s ridden the London Eye and there’s nothing wrong with the way he acts. Anyway, I wouldn’t care if he
had
grown up among the Kindred, because he’s a good person, and he loves me, and because we’re going to have a baby together!”
She pressed a hand against her mouth. Silence echoed in the diner. Cora stared at her, stunned. Nok was still thin, but she had certainly put on a few pounds over the last few weeks. Cora had assumed it was all the candy. Was
this
why she’d been acting so strangely? Why she’d needed Lucky and the other boys wrapped around her finger?
Nok tossed Rolf a look that wavered between nervous and excited. Slowly she removed her hand from her mouth. “So, um, now would probably be a good time to tell you that I’m pregnant.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CORA LET ROLF SLIP
out of her hands as fatigue caught up with her all at once, and she slumped into a chair. He pulled away like a frightened animal, then turned to Nok, blinking hard, fingers twisting in his wild red hair.
“Is it true?” he asked.
For a moment, no one dared to move. Lucky massaged his temple, wincing, like another headache had struck. Nok was breathing hard, cheeks flushed, as the light kept swinging back and forth.
Mali reached for another dinner roll.
“Yes,” Nok said. “By almost two weeks. They can detect these things early. I wasn’t supposed to say anything until I was further along. That medical officer, Serassi, has been testing me in private ever since you and I started sleeping together, with a needle so big it would give you nightmares. She teleported into the salon yesterday and told me I was pregnant.” Nok pressed her hand against her stomach. A slight smile came to her lips. “She said she oversees centers where human children are raised communally, like nurseries, but I asked if we could raise it here, on our own, and she asked the Warden; she said it would be good for her research to observe human child raising in their natural habitat. He agreed.”