The Cage (33 page)

“Because of the truth about what happened with your father,” he said.

CORA’S EYES CLOSED TO
the room and the starry window, as she remembered a different night long ago. It was two days after she had been released from Bay Pines.

Her welcome-home party.

The divorce had been finalized halfway through her incarceration, but her mother had flown back from Miami and drank enough pinot grigio to be able to be under the same roof as her father, though never in the same room. They’d invited all her old school friends and her father’s colleagues. Her mom had attached a silk bow to Sadie’s collar. There had been a three-tiered cake and presents, as though she’d been away at a European boarding school for the last eighteen months, and not an upstate detention facility.

No one talked about Bay Pines. No one asked her how bad the cafeteria food was or if any of the girls had attacked her. Her father had made a long toast to her return. Then the guests had left, and her parents got into one of their marathon fights and her mother stormed out, and the maids cleaned the spilled champagne, and Cora went outside to look at the night sky.

Whether she was looking up from Bay Pines or Fox Run, whether her family was together or broken, at least the stars had always looked the same.

Her father joined her, and for the first time since the night of the accident, they were alone. They exchanged a few words about the upcoming election, and the fight he’d had with her mother over the guest list, and then he’d leaned over the railing, with no warning, and let his gin glass slip into the bushes below, and covered his face with his hands.

It was the first time Cora had ever seen him cry.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, between sobs that made the loose skin on his neck tremble. He was already bald by then, and his manicured fingers clutched his head as though it needed to be held together. “I’d had too much to drink. I was so angry with your mother, threatening divorce.”

It had taken Cora a moment to even realize he was talking about the night of the accident, because he only ever spoke about it in vague terms, and only if he had to. As a senator, he’d always been coached in what to say, so it was rare to see him open up like this. She watched his fingers fumbling over his bald scalp, searching for something, anything. He looked older than she’d ever seen him, and it was the first time she realized that one day he would die.

“It eats at me. It should have been me. My little girl spent eighteen months in that place, and all it would have taken was a single phone call, a single confession, and you would have walked free.”

He had collapsed into a sobbing collection of tired eyes and world-worn fingers and wrinkles that hadn’t been there before that night.

Cora leaned against the railing next to him. She had tried hard not to think often about the night of the accident. That terrifying plunge off the bridge, the car filling with water, shivering together on the shore, her father reeking of alcohol. Sitting among the wet grass, she’d thought through what would happen next. The police would arrest him. He would lose his senatorship and his reputation. Her family would lose their livelihood. Her mother would divorce him for real. She and Charlie would lose a father.

Below, in the garden, the shattered pieces of his gin glass reflected the moonlight. She remembered each day of those eighteen months. The fights in the shower. The leering eyes of the guards. The lights that stayed on all night. At the time, it had seemed an eternity.

“It was my choice, Dad.” She had glanced back through the windows at her house, where her mother slept on the sofa and Charlie played video games. She felt like she was looking into another person’s life. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I hadn’t known the consequences. I knew exactly what I was doing when I told the police that I had been behind the wheel. I was saving our family.”

“I never should have gone along with it.” Her dad sobbed. “I should have confessed. I should have served the time.”

Cora had reached over and covered his large old-man hand with her small one. “It’s okay, Dad. I knew what I was doing.”

She had lied to him plenty back then, but not that night on the porch. It
was
okay. Her father worked too hard, and was away from home too often, but he loved her. She knew him—she loved him—and she never once blamed him for going along with a decision that she had made on her own. Lucky had it all wrong, when he thought that her father had forced her to take the fall for him. She had never been a victim. Not once in her life. It had been her idea to take the fall. There on the banks of the river, waiting for the police to come, she had practically forced her father to agree. And even after the conviction, and after the divorce happened anyway, and after juvie, and after coming home and knowing that she would never belong again, she had never once regretted it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

47

Cora

“HE’S MY FATHER,” SHE
whispered. “I had the ability to help him. It’s what anyone would have done.”

Cassian didn’t answer. In his eyes she saw herself reflected: tangled hair, delicate features, dark under-eye circles. Taking the fall for her father didn’t mean she was brave. It certainly didn’t make her a paragon of humanity.

But she sensed that Cassian disagreed, and it was a strange feeling. He didn’t see her as a victim, like Lucky did. He knew that the lie had been her idea. He didn’t care about the accident or her false imprisonment or the skills she’d learned in juvie or even her high-profile family.

He cared about the sacrifice she had made.

“Humans have been cruel to you,” he said. “Your father, for allowing you to accept blame for his crimes. Your fellow inmates in detention. Those in the media who unfairly judged you. And yet you bear no resentment toward them. I took you from your world because I wished to give you something better.”

Her heart pounded. She never expected this. Not from him.

“I don’t want better.” Her voice was faint. “I want home, flaws and all. And don’t try to tell me it isn’t there. I saw the comic book. I know time works differently for you. Just tell me straight that it was all a lie. Earth is still there, isn’t it?”

Her words reverberated around the small corners of his room. Echoed back at her, they sounded desperate, but she refused to back down. Not when everything she had ever loved was at stake.

She could tell by his flat expression that he was going to lie again. She could almost
feel
the lie forming on his lips, could almost taste its bitterness. But then he closed his mouth. “There is no short answer to that question.” The flatness in his face was gone now; he was telling the truth. “Because we ourselves do not know.”

She gripped the edge of the table. “How can you not know? It’s a huge planet. It’s either there or it isn’t.”

“Two hundred rotations ago, the stock algorithm ran a projection that predicted humans would destroy their own planet with a ninety-eight point six degree of certainty. We began taking the last groups of humans before the destruction was predicted to occur. So by all projections, the answer to your question is yes, Earth is gone.”

“But I overheard the Mosca in the market talking about going back to Earth for another supply run. And that comic book was stamped with a date in the future.”

He took the glass from her and swallowed her concerns with another pour of alcohol. “Many artifacts are counterfeit—you cannot trust the comic books are authentic. And we do not concern ourselves with the Mosca. If they believe Earth exists, perhaps they have not been back yet to verify its destruction.”

“But have
you
verified it? Have any Kindred seen it with their own eyes?”

“A ninety-eight point six percent rate does not require verification.”

She didn’t listen to his talk about percentages and statistics. All Cora heard was that there was a chance; the stock algorithm had made mistakes before. Margins of error.

Maybe this was a mistake, too.

“You forget that I can read what you are thinking,” he said. “You still hope to return to Earth, even knowing the high likelihood it is gone. Perhaps the Mosca would be able to help you, but they are an unscrupulous species. They would just as likely betray you. The wisest course of action would be to forget your dreams; if you will only agree to obey, I can request an extension from the Warden. He won’t like it, but I have some sway. I could make the enclosure more comfortable for you.”

On the wall, the fake stars shimmered. He had already risked so much for her—and now he was willing to sacrifice more. She picked up the glass and twirled it in her fingers.

“It isn’t about the comforts of Earth. It’s about what’s real. My life at home was as fake as my life here. I was never allowed to be myself—I always had to be a senator’s daughter. My mother couldn’t be an actress, like she wanted, and it made her bitter and resentful. I could never be a songwriter, because my dad’s handlers thought that if any of my songs got online, it would hurt might dad’s chances at reelection. We had to be these artificial versions of ourselves, always smiling when we were sad, cloaking our real emotions, just like you do.

“If I can go home, I can change that. I can truly live, even if it’s painful. I want a real relationship with my father and my mother. We can be a real family again, even with the divorce—we were making progress. I want to write songs about the things I’ve been through, and I want to fall in love with someone I choose, not who was chosen for me.” She tore her hand away from her necklace. “You probably don’t understand that.”

He was quiet for some time, and then very slowly rubbed the scar on his neck. “I understand more than you think. I could not have observed humanity for this long without being affected by it. The others of my kind are fascinated by the brightly colored parts of humanity: your clothing, your architecture, the tricks you can perform. I’m not as interested in those. I like the quieter part, like how humans wish on stars knowing they won’t be answered. And what you told me once, about how some mistakes are worth making. I have made mistakes myself.” He took the glass and took another sip, as though he could swallow whatever memories pained him. “That is why your capacity for emotional depth intrigues me. The Kindred do not have those notions. Forgiveness. Sacrifice. They are remarkable traits.”

His face had looked so otherworldly at first, like a god, or someone from her dreams. But now she knew he was just a person, and he was young too, and felt things like guilt and shame and the need for forgiveness.

“You should not be ashamed to be one of the unintelligent species,” he said, looking into the glass. “The intelligent species are not perfect, though we may pretend to be. We can lie. We can manipulate. We can betray. Your kind are not capable of the same level of evil as mine is.” He set the glass back down, and the liquid settled. It was cold in his room, but he didn’t seem to feel it.

“Yes, we are.” She thought of the girls at Bay Pines who bullied each other just for fun, and of her friends who had vanished after her arrest, and even of herself, who had been so careless with Lucky’s heart. She took the glass and downed the rest of it. “You admit that the Kindred lie. Were you lying when you said your people had taken us for our own benefit? All your talk about swearing altruistic oaths . . .” She looked down into the glass. “It isn’t true, is it?”

He didn’t answer. This close, his eyes weren’t just black; there was depth to them, like the cut crystal of the glass.

“Tell me why the Warden
really
had you take us,” she asked.

The angles of his room felt extra sharp. The tension was heavy in the air, nearly at the point of bursting.
No more lies. Please.

He leaned in slowly. “Our oath is not a lie. We do see ourselves as stewards, and not just because of our fondness for humans. It is our duty to ensure your survival—and all the lesser species’ survival—because the universe would lose its richness without humanity, and diversity of thought leads to the ultimate intelligence.” He paused. “But you in particular. You six. There is more to it than what we have told you, and more to your enclosure.”

“So you admit that those researchers
have
been manipulating us.” Her vindication was immediately swallowed by anger. “But why would they mess with the puzzles? Why put us in such strange pairs? Why turn the others against me?”

“Mali has mentioned rumors to you that certain humans are beginning to demonstrate signs of perceptive ability. Some have claimed to be mildly psychic, even telekinetic. None of the claims have been verified. The six of you were chosen, in part, because of your potential to display perceptive ability, if your minds were pushed in the correct manner. Challenging your concepts of time and space, for example. Altering the weather. Putting pressure on you in terms of presenting puzzles with variable rewards.”

She stared at him like he was speaking another language. All of it, everything, had been an attempt to see if they were evolving. The headaches. The irritability. The fighting among themselves. The scrape of anger clawed her once more. “It was under the Warden’s orders, wasn’t it? And those researchers were more than happy to screw with our heads. But we could have killed each other, like the last groups. We still could! When Rolf finds out Nok’s sleeping with Leon, it could all go to hell!”

She sank forward, resting her tired head in her hands, trying to quiet the millions of thoughts warring for her attention. Her neck throbbed as though the Warden’s icy grip was still there. No wonder he’d been willing to kill her—she wasn’t being a good little specimen. She wished she had never awakened in that desert, and seen that ocean, with its strange shimmer and its dead body. Why had they even given them an ocean, anyway? Was it just more manipulation? There was no puzzle there. Eight puzzles in the habitats, eight in the shops—that’s what Cassian had said. And all the environments they’d found had a puzzle: the treetop ropes course in the forest, the maze in the desert, the scavenger hunt in the swamp, the musical puzzle in the grasslands, the harvest game in the farm, the temple maze in the jungle, and the sledding race in the arctic habitat.