The Cage (3 page)

Now, as she felt the raised dots, she had a new bar for what qualified as “terrifying.”

“The dead girl had them too,” she said quietly.

Lucky let out a mirthless laugh. “That’s real comforting.” He tugged on the barn handle. “It’s locked. I might be able to take it off its hinges, if I can find something to use for a makeshift screwdriver.”

“I’ll look for another way in.” Cora circled the barn until she reached a large black window, six feet wide by three feet tall. The feeling of being watched felt like nails down her back. The window was in good repair, which was odd given the weathered state of the barn. She knocked on the glass. A hollow
thud
sounded. Something was wrong, like it lacked an echo.

She pressed her face against the glass, but a rip of pain tore through her head, and she winced and pulled back. It was too murky to see inside, anyway. More like a television screen than a window. Suddenly a shape moved, just a flicker, and she scrambled back. The tingling sensation down her back ran deeper, and she whirled toward the farm, half expecting to see a knife-wielding stranger rushing up behind her.

Nothing. Barely even a breeze.

Lucky came around, shaking his head, eyeing the window like it creeped him out as much as it did her. “Get this—the door isn’t real. The whole barn is fake, like a movie prop. We’ll have to go to that city.”

Cora glanced toward the sea, where the distant cityscape crouched on the far side of the bay. What if it was where their captors lived? Wouldn’t they be walking right into danger?

She rubbed her eyes. Exhaustion was catching up with her. “No. We should stay put and wait for help. My dad’s in politics. Once he realizes I’m gone, he’ll have the entire country looking for me.”

“I don’t care if your dad is the president of the United States. My dad’s a sergeant in Afghanistan. You think he just kicks rocks around while insurgents are firing at him?”

On the black window, the shadow keeled slightly to the left. Cora took another step away from it.

Lucky’s face softened. He cracked his knuckles, less of a threatening gesture this time, more like an old wound. “If we find a phone, your dad is the first person we’ll call. I promise. Here’s Plan C: we stay off the paths, and stay away from any more of these black windows. And if you see anyone—hear anyone—you run. Neither of us is going to end up like that girl in the water.”

She nodded. “I can live with Plan C.”

They set off down a path made of a material that looked like pavement but felt softer, almost spongy, through a meadow of tall grasses. It was all uncannily beautiful, but that only set off Cora’s nerves. Beauty had a way of masking something darker.

The path crested a rise, showing the far-off city, only it looked much closer now. The structures blurred together in a dizzying way that didn’t seem right at all. Was exhaustion making her head foggy? As they walked more, she could start to see details. First the rooftops, then glimpses of windows, pavement, flashes of color from potted flowers.

She stopped.

It wasn’t just exhaustion messing with her head. The buildings were real, but they were hardly the skyscrapers that they had seemed from a distance. They were between one and two stories high, and there couldn’t be more than ten of them. It was as though the buildings had been placed in just the right locations so that, from a distance, the rooftops lined up to give the appearance of something substantially bigger.

The shadows on Lucky’s face deepened. “I swear this looked like a city from far away. You think it’s in our heads, like virtual reality?”

“I don’t think so. My dad invests in tech, and there’s no virtual reality that comes close to this.” Her mind whirled, playing back conversations with her father, coming up with no explanation. “This must be real. Designed to make us feel a certain way and go certain places, like elaborate optical illusions. The same with the distances. It should have taken us hours to get here, and it’s been what, half an hour?” Sweat trickled down her forehead, though the temperature couldn’t be higher than the mid-sixties.

Lucky motioned for her to follow him to the nearest building. As they circled it, a neon sign flashed above the front door.

CANDY SHOP
.

Cora had mentally prepared herself for anything—tanks and guns and terrorists—but not for a place to buy
taffy
. Could Lucky be right, that this was the set for some movie?

A dozen shops circled an eerily idyllic town square, all built in different architectural styles, with signs above the doors. The drugstore had intricate Middle Eastern designs over the windows. The hair salon was set up like an old-fashioned French burlesque. The flashing lights of the arcade looked straight out of 1980s Tokyo. An enormous weeping cherry tree stood in the center, like a pin stuck in the center of a map. No cars. No people. The only sign of life was a tall Victorian house flanking one side of the square, with lights blazing in the upper windows.

“It’s like Epcot Center,” she muttered. “All different cultures and time periods crammed together.”

Lucky cocked an eyebrow. “Dead girls don’t float up on the beach in Disney World.”

“Not as a rule, no.”

He jerked his chin toward the house. “If the lights are on, maybe there’s a phone. Maybe even a—”

His words were cut short by a shout coming from the shops. The yell came again, high-pitched and scared, followed by a deep bellow.

The saloon-style doors of the toy stop crashed open, and two boys spilled out.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

5

Cora

CORA REACHED FOR HER
necklace, forgetting its absence, and felt her heart thudding beneath a too-thin layer of skin. Two boys. Both strangers. One—the biggest guy Cora had ever seen—was about to pummel the other one to death.

She spun toward Lucky. “What do we do?”

He pointed to the cherry tree. “Stay here. If anything happens, run.” He wrapped her fingers around a branch, rooting her, and took off. A gust of wind lifted one of the tree’s weeping branches to brush her cheek, as though laying claim to her.

She jerked away. “Yeah. I don’t think so.”

She ran after Lucky. The larger of the two boys—a Polynesian built like a small country and dressed in a three-piece charcoal suit—had his hands around the neck of the other boy, a twitchy redhead with pale skin, who inexplicably wore a French revolutionary war jacket.

Lucky jumped onto the porch, and Cora flinched. A fight between teenagers was like a fight between dogs: the worst thing you could do was get in the middle.

“Break it up!” he yelled, laying a hand on the hulk’s shoulder.

He was braver than Cora, or else he hadn’t been around as many fights as she had. Girls had fought all the time at Bay Pines, and after getting sucker punched that first day, Cora had learned that the best tactic was to hide in the bathroom and wait for the guards to break them up. Only there weren’t any guards here—just a kid in a leather jacket.

The hulk whirled on Lucky, smacking away his hand. Tattooed black lines swirled around the right side of his forehead and eye, a look both ancient and menacing—completely mismatched with his tailored suit. For all his bulk, though, there was a softness around his eyes that said he couldn’t be much older than she was.

“Mind your hands, eh?” He spit at Lucky in a rough accent. The redhead kid took advantage of the distraction to dart into the toy shop, probably looking for a back exit.

“Get back here!” The hulk shoved open the saloon-style doors, with Lucky right behind.

Cora climbed onto the porch. Inside, the shop was set up like an old-fashioned general store straight out of a Western movie. It even smelled old, like grain in burlap sacks and coffee and cotton, though there weren’t any of those things on the shelves, only brightly colored toys of all shapes and sizes. The hulk had the other boy against a glass countertop, hands around his throat. In the corner, a dark-haired girl in a black dress rocked back and forth, emitting a high-pitched wail.

Cora pushed through the swinging doors and knelt by the girl. “Hey, you okay?”

A strangled sound came from the girl’s throat. She looked Asian; her full lips were pressed together; dark brown hair with a pink streak fell in her left eye. Beautiful—the kind that didn’t happen in real life. Cora positioned herself to shelter the girl from the fight and glanced over her shoulder.

Lucky had managed to separate the boys. “What’s this all about?”

The hulk spit on the ground. “I’ll ask the questions around here, brother. And I’d rather talk to that pretty blond friend of yours.”

Cora jerked her head up. He was talking about her. Her muscles reacted faster than her brain, pushing her to her feet, as he headed toward her.

A whir of movement flashed, followed by a
crack
. Cora flinched as a spray of blood fanned across the floor.

Lucky had smashed his fist into the hulk’s nose.

The tattooed boy stumbled backward until he collided with one of the creepy black windows. It didn’t shatter. It didn’t even creak. He dragged the back of his forearm across his bleeding nose as if that was all the tending it needed.

“How about
I
ask the questions?” Lucky flexed his hand. “Let’s start with your names and finish with what the hell’s going on.”

The redheaded boy in the military jacket rubbed his neck. His eyes were blue-green, with heavy lashes that made him look like a kid playing dress-up. A small spattering of black dots, not unlike Lucky’s, clustered below his ear. The hulk had them too. Cora glanced at the girl in the corner—her straight hair hid her neck.

“It’s no good asking the two of them anything.” The hulk jerked his chin toward the others. “I’ve been trying to get answers out of them for the better part of an hour. She hasn’t stopped sobbing, and he’s close-lipped.” His accent was Australian or New Zealander; with his darker skin, he might be Maori.

“I’m Leon, by the way.” He spit a line of blood on the floor that landed an inch from the Asian girl’s foot. She rocked harder, hands pressed tightly over her head, fingers gripping her hair so hard Cora was afraid she’d pull it out.

“Easy.” Cora rubbed the girl’s skeletal shoulder, ignoring the tension and weariness in her own muscles.

“Her name is Nok,” the red-haired boy said, still rubbing the splotchy red marks on his neck. His voice was deeper than she’d expected. “I’m Rolf. From Oslo, in Norway. She and I met a few hours ago when we woke up in different shops. She’s Thai, but she speaks English well. Said she lives in London. Except for a bad headache, she was okay before we ran into this Neanderthal and he started demanding to know what was going on.”

“
Do
you know what’s going on?”

Rolf shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. She doesn’t know either. Before she had the panic attack, she told me she was a model; the high-fashion type with big magazine spreads. Someone famous, I think. There must be people looking for her.” He crouched next to Nok and said softly, “He’s not going to hurt you. He’s just a stupid
bølle
who picks on anyone he can.”

Nok peeked out from the pink stripe of hair and scooted closer to Rolf.

Cora stood. “I’m Cora; this is Lucky.” She glanced around the toys in the shop. “I think we should try to set off a flare, or make a sign that an airplane could read with some of this stuff.”

“This isn’t bloody Robinson Crusoe,” Leon said. “There’s an arcade and a movie theater, and you’re talking about spelling some S.O.S. shit out of rocks.”

“No . . . she’s right.” Lucky leaned against the countertop. “We need to find a way to make contact with someone, and we should keep searching the town. There could be dozens more of us.”

“Not dozens,” Rolf said. “Just one.”

Cora turned, rubbing her pounding temples. With its high collar and epaulettes, Rolf’s military jacket gave him an air of authority that didn’t fit with his neurotic blinking. His fingers found some sort of metal combination lock built into the edge of the glass countertop; it had a row of gears that he spun now absent-mindedly, spreading a deep, nearly ominous rumble throughout the room. “Another girl, I think. Three girls and three boys. Six altogether.”

“Three and three makes six, eh?” Leon grunted. “You must be some kind of genius.”

Rolf cleared his throat awkwardly. “Hardly. I just have a gift for observational reasoning. It’s what I’m studying at Oxford. Well, that and robotics. And Greek philosophy.”

Cora frowned. “Wow. How old are you?”

His cheeks flamed. “Fifteen.” He shook his head quickly, dismissing it. “But that doesn’t matter. Observational reasoning is really just deduction, at its core. Any of us can deduce. Nok and I explored each of the stores when we woke. There were six chairs in the diner. Six umbrellas on the boardwalk. Six dolls behind the counter.” He nodded toward the glass case beneath the countertop, which held the dolls, and a child’s painting kit, and a bright croquet set. “We explored the house, too. There’s a few bedrooms upstairs, a living room downstairs. There were six dressers with six sets of clothing in the bedrooms. Judging by the clothing, there’s still one girl missing. She’ll be wearing a white sundress.”

Cora’s head shot around to Lucky. His mouth was set grim. “Yeah. About that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We found her. She’s dead. Drowned in the ocean, just over that rise.”

Rolf looked up in surprise, pushing at the bridge of his nose, a gesture like a person with glasses might do. Even Nok stopped cringing. Her eyes were still damp, but Cora saw something else, just for a flash. Nok’s mouth tightened. Her eyes narrowed a hair. And then, just as fast, she was wailing again, leaning into Rolf, crying harder.

Cora had seen plenty of girls at Bay Pines put on a show for the guards, to gain sympathy. She knew good acting when she saw it. But why would Nok put on an act?