The Cage

by Megan Shepherd

  Cora turned toward Lucky and dropped her voice. “Are you buying all this altruistic stuff about saving us?”

  His face looked grim. “Not even a little bit.”

  Despite the Caretaker’s dazzling appearance, he was a liar. A kidnapper. A criminal. Well, after eighteen months locked up with teenage murderers and pushers, she had plenty of experience dealing with criminals.

  Don’t fight back. Don’t try to escape.

  That had been her father’s security officer’s advice for kidnapping situations, and she’d followed the same logic in juvie. She had kept her head down, barely spoken to anyone, scrawled her fear and frustration in her song journal instead of letting herself feel anything. She had waited for help to come, as she was supposed to do. She had obeyed the rules.

  But help wasn’t coming this time.

  She was close enough to see the set of his jaw, the ropelike muscles in his neck. The metallic sheen of his skin hid most imperfections, but not the bump in his nose or the scar on the side of his throat. His chest rose and fell with each breath. Flaws. Breathing. So he wasn’t a machine—which meant he could be hurt.

  One of the apparatuses strapped to his chest gleamed like the hilt of a knife. That could even the playing field. But how could she reach it, when he could move with such incredible speed?

  “I need help,” she blurted out. “My wrist. I hurt it when I woke in the desert.”

  Lucky shot her a warning look, but Cora didn’t tear her eyes away from the Caretaker. She took a step toward him. He regarded her coldly, as though he could see straight through her lie. A crackling sensation began in the air, and the hair on her arms tingled. He was going to vanish as suddenly as he had appeared.

  “Wait!” Cora took another step forward. “Don’t go yet. I need help.”

  “Do not come forward.” His voice was cold as the pressure built faster. He started flickering in front of her, and she knew he’d be gone in seconds, along with any answers. Right now—this moment—was her only chance.

  She lunged for the knife hilt, but his hand was on her wrist in a second, and she let out a cry. Electricity pulsed through her bare skin into her nerves, tingling and jittery and just short of painful. Now she knew what Leon meant about being zapped. Only it wasn’t a zap, it was plunging into an icy pool of water. Falling toward nothing. Dying, all at once. She jerked her arm but couldn’t get free.

  Lucky called her name. Footsteps ran through the grass. But she was swallowed by the pressure. She was the pressure. It coated her skin, wormed into her head, until she thought she would shatter into a million pieces.

  Then, just as suddenly, the pressure was gone. Lucky’s voice calling her name was gone.

  But the stranger was not.

  His hand still held hers, his skin against her skin, flooding her with that wild sensation she couldn’t name. They were no longer in the town square, but in a plain room. The only light came from seams in the metallic walls and radiated out like starlight.

  The Caretaker released her hand. She fell backward, blinded by the starlight, elbow slamming into the hard floor. She scrambled into the corner. Her elbow screamed in pain, but so did every other part of her.

  The Caretaker stood over her, speaking words she didn’t understand into a device on his wrist. His voice was rushed. The staticlike voice that spoke back to him in guttural bursts sounded furious.

  She dared to peek between her fingers, like she had as a little girl watching a scary movie. A window was set in the wall in front of her, three feet tall and six feet long, but this one wasn’t liquid black and opaque. It was almost like a one-way mirror, cloudy but transparent, and beyond it Lucky and Leon and Nok and Rolf argued soundlessly in the grass. She pushed herself to her feet with shaky steps, cradling her elbow.

  “This is how you watch us,” she whispered. “You can see us, but we can’t see you.”

  The Caretaker paused in speaking into his wrist, and looked at her. A muscle twitched in his ropelike jaw. He had called it an enclosure, a habitat, but she knew better.

  It was a cage.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  12

  Lucky

  LUCKY SHOVED ASIDE THE cherry tree’s weeping branches for the millionth time, but there was no sign of Cora. “She can’t just vanish!”

  Rolf’s face was beet red, his fingers twitching frantically. “He took her, don’t you understand?”

  “I don’t, actually. I have no idea what’s going on!”

  Nok collapsed, burying her face in the grass. She sobbed in big racking shudders, clutching her head like it ached, smearing snot all over the grass. Jesus. Not that he could blame her—he’d nearly pissed his pants when that metal-skinned creature had appeared—but someone had to hold their shit together. Not that he was any type of leader, but in a group with a fashion model, a twitchy recluse, and a girl whose life he had ruined, he guessed he was the closest thing.

  Leon cast Nok a disgusted look. “This isn’t the time for breakdowns, sweetheart. Get up!”

  He kicked her.

  “Hey!” Lucky shoved Leon, hard. “Don’t be a jerk.” Was everyone insane? The headaches had been bad enough. Now they were acting like terrified preschoolers, picking fights, throwing tantrums. “She’s scared, you bastard.”

  Leon kicked her again, harder this time.

  “Oh, hell no.” Lucky started toward Leon, but Nok pushed herself up from the grass, cheeks slick with tears. Hot anger twisted her mouth. Her knee connected with Leon’s groin in a satisfying smack that send him doubled over to the ground.

  “Christ, woman! You trying to kill me?”

  In response, she started kicking him harder with her long, bony feet. “How does that feel? You like that?”

  Lucky exchanged a look with Rolf. He knew he should pull Nok away, but he had to admit that it was satisfying to watch. Nok gave him one more kick before Lucky grabbed her.

  “That’s enough. Not that he didn’t deserve it.”

  Leon rolled over, staring at the sky with glassy eyes. A husky grunt came out of his mouth.

  Lucky released Nok. “Stop fighting for one second and let’s think this through. We need to find out where he took Cora. She couldn’t have just disappeared.”

  Rolf shoved his spindly fingers through his hair. “Yes, she could. We’re not on Earth anymore. They can bend space and time. We don’t even know what they want.”

  “They want us to sleep together!” Nok sank to the grass, next to the prostrate Leon, their earlier fight forgotten. “They want us to have babies so they can do god knows what, probably torture them or raise little human slaves.” Her face went white. “What if they eat them?”

  Rolf crouched next to her and patted her back stiffly. “I’m sure that’s not the case. Otherwise they’d just eat us.”

  Nok’s face went paler. Lucky let out a silent curse—Rolf was only making it worse. He rubbed his face, hoping to jar some sense into himself. He’d been looking right at Cora when she’d vanished. She’d tossed her head back to look at him one last time. The last time someone had looked at him with such fear in her eyes had been his mother, right before she died. He’d told Cora he’d been five years old when she died, not fifteen. He’d told her he hadn’t seen it, when he’d been in the very car. His mother had yelled out his real name—“Luciano.” Then squealing brakes and twisting metal. Rain and broken glass. Waking up disoriented in a hospital, attached to an IV. His dad there, still wearing his fatigues, eyes sunken from the flight from Afghanistan, saying the worst words in the world.

  “She didn’t make it.”

  He’d ripped the IV out of his arm. Shouted. His dad tried to hold him down. His granddad’s face, with its gray beard, peering through the glass window in the door. Then he was out of bed, and he burned. He slammed his fist into the cement wall. Blood spurted from his left han
d. He’d had the random and misplaced thought that no one would ever call him Luciano again.

  Only his mom used his real name.

  He’d seen the other driver. A fancy politician type who would get off on a technicality. It made his blood burn enough that, as soon as he was out of the hospital, he drove to the airfield with his dad’s pistol tucked in his waistband. He wasn’t planning to kill the senator, exactly. He just wanted to point the gun and see the look in his eyes.

  “Revenge can’t bring your mother back,” the senator’s men had said when they’d stopped him. “Neither can money, but it can give you opportunities you’d never have. Your grandfather’s farm is going into foreclosure. . . .”

  He’d hated himself for it, but he’d taken their money.

  It had been an awful lot of zeroes.

  “Nok.” He forced himself to sound calm. “It’s going to be okay. Seriously. Stop crying.”

  She looked up from her hands. A collection of black dots flashed on the milky white skin of her neck, standing out as bright as stars against the night sky. It triggered a memory. His granddad showing him the stars.

  Constellations.

  That’s what the black dots formed on Nok’s neck, he realized. A constellation. Cassiopeia, to be exact. He grabbed Rolf, who protested weakly, and pushed back his hair to see identical black dots.

  Dazed, he turned to Leon, who held up his hands.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, brother.”

  “I think the marks on our necks are constellations. Yours”—he craned his neck to see Leon’s neck—“looks like the Big Dipper.” He felt his own neck. “Mine is Orion. And that’s what Cora has too, if I’m remembering right.”

  Nok abruptly stopped crying, feeling her neck.

  “That makes no sense,” Rolf said. “Constellations aren’t fixed in the sky into certain shapes. If you looked at the same stars from any other planet, they would appear different. And we aren’t on Earth.”

  “Well, I have no idea why they marked us with stars, and I have no idea why they put Leon in a suit and Rolf in a military jacket, and I have no idea where Cora is right now. I have no damn idea why any of this is happening.”

  Rolf cleared his throat. “I might.”

  Lucky spun on him. Rolf’s cheeks burned as he continued. “It isn’t so crazy, you know—that they could be telling the truth. Humans are destroying the planet. Maybe it will take another few thousand years, or maybe it will happen tomorrow. But maybe they did take us to preserve our species.”

  “You believe them?” Lucky said.

  Rolf pushed at his nose like he was used to wearing glassing. “I’m saying that we should consider all options. As far as the marks on our necks, I don’t know why they used constellations, but I can guess why we’re marked. Rule Three. Procreation. The symbols match us in pairs. Nok and me. Lucky and Cora. Leon and . . .” He blinked. “Well, the girl who died, I suppose.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Lucky’s stomach twisted. The Kindred had matched him with the girl he’d sent to juvie. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was it some kind of retribution for what he’d done? A sick experiment?

  He ran a shaky hand over his face. He’d been so close to a fresh start. Two months until graduation, until he was shipped off for some boot-camp crap and then on a plane to some far-away country where people would likely shoot at him, but he didn’t care. He’d been prepared for insurgents. He hadn’t been prepared for this.

  Maybe he should just stay away from Cora. He’d already hurt her enough. But the thought of that black-eyed monster laying a hand on her made him livid. Maybe it was time to tell her the truth.

  If she ever came back.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  13

  Cora

  CORA RESTED HER FINGERS on the glass viewing panel. Lucky and Leon were hurling accusations at each other while Rolf clutched Nok, who was sobbing.

  I’m here, Cora wanted to say. I’m right here.

  “You are not supposed to be here,” the Caretaker said. “I must return you.”

  He seized her shoulders. Electricity tore through her. She tried to twist away, but he lifted her so high her feet dangled above the ground.

  “Put me down!”

  Incredibly, he did. Her feet connected with the floor. She winced as her hurt elbow popped. He took notice and turned her arm palm up, then gently inspected the bruised bone of her elbow. His fingers tightened over the bones, and with a snap they realigned.

  She stumbled back to the safety of the wall. “How did you do that? And how did we transport here?”

  He touched the knife hilt. “You thought you could harm me with this, but it is not a weapon.” He pulled it out, a thin strip of metal that ended in a needle as long as her forearm. It dripped with something that looked like blood, but darker than a human’s. “It allows me, and anything I am touching, to dematerialize. Now take my hand.”

  She shook her head.

  “I thought it was a dream.” Memories of his beautiful face stumbled into her head. “But it wasn’t. It was real. I remember your face because you were the one who took me, didn’t you?”

  “I must return you to your habitat.”

  He reached for her. She jerked back, skirting the room. Her eyes searched for any possible exits but found nothing. The light was bolder on the far wall, beneath what looked like a pulsing blue cube; starry light poured through wall seams that were shaped like a rectangle and tall enough for a person to pass.

  Was that a door?

  Don’t fight back. Don’t try to escape.

  But this wasn’t a man she was going to be able to reason with. This wasn’t a guard at Bay Pines who could be bribed or flirted with. Wherever they were, the police weren’t going to find them. The only thing left was escape.

  “You cannot escape,” he answered.

  She whirled. Had he read her thoughts—or just seen the intention on her face? Either way, she forced her chin high.

  “I can try.”

  She shoved off from the wall and dove toward the doorway, just as he lurched toward her. She braced to feel his superhuman grip on her arm, but a burst of static came from the communication device on his wrist. It distracted him long enough for her to dig her fingers into the glowing door seams and pull until her muscles screamed, but nothing happened.

  Abruptly, the door slid open on its own.

  She fell through and slammed onto a hard metallic floor on the other side. Four sets of perfectly polished black boots stood in front of her, attached to bodies that, when she dared to look up, showed four sets of black eyes. Kindred. Just like the Caretaker. They were all between six and seven feet tall. All with skin that shimmered like metal, ranging from dark bronze to ruddy copper, and dressed in cerulean uniforms with knots along the left side—three had six knots, one had seven. Two had a slimmer build, with glossy black hair tugged back in stiff knots and uniforms tailored to their curves. Females.

  None of them had the Caretaker’s knifelike apparatus strapped to them, but they all wore some form of equipment slung around their hips. It spanned their thighs and looked like the protective wear an athlete might wear, but it was covered in flat buttons. When one of the female’s black-tipped fingers pressed against the buttons, Cora realized they were keypads. Computers, maybe?

  The four Kindred stood in front of a metal table that bore a body, laid flat as though sleeping, long dark hair still stained with salt. On the body’s chin, a scar shaped like a lopsided heart.

  Cora recognized the dead girl and screamed.

  Powerful hands grabbed her from behind and lifted her to her feet. The Caretaker let her go, and she braced herself against the wall, head spinning. “What are you doing to her?”

  The Caretaker’s wrist communicator buzzed incessantly, but he ignored it. “They are examining Girl Three’s body, as pe
r protocol. They are researchers who are here to monitor your safety and record data about your interactions.”

  “She’s dead! What do you need to monitor?”

  The Caretaker’s black eyes slid to the others. “Every time a ward dies, we take the opportunity to examine the body, to record any changes in your species’ physical evolution.”

  “Evolution happens over aeons. You can’t track it with one person.”

  “Your limited mind cannot understand our advanced technology, nor the finer points of evolutionary theory.”

  There was an ominous ring to his words. The girl with the heart-shaped scar was naked now, no more white sundress; and from what Cora could see, she didn’t have webbed fingers or extra toes or anything evolutionarily advanced. She was just a girl, like Cora. It hadn’t been that long ago that Cora and Lucky had dragged her out of the water.

  “You are frightened.” For once, the Caretaker’s voice sounded softer, and she jerked her head toward him in surprise. Had he seen how her hands were trembling? “There is no reason to be. We do not mean to harm you. That would go against the responsibilities we have assumed.”

  Before she could respond, another section of the wall slid open and starry light filled the room, blinding her. She shaded her eyes. Footsteps approached quickly. The air shot from her lungs as something slammed into her. She collided against the opposite wall with a sickening crack. She tried to breathe, but an enormous fist clamped around the back of her neck, thumb pressing into her windpipe.

  When the door shut and sealed off the blinding light, she found herself inches from another Kindred. A man. This one was dressed in the same cerulean uniforms of the researchers, but his build was more like the Caretaker’s. Tall. Built like a warrior. Though, unlike the Caretaker, no scars or broken bones marred his face. He was just as strikingly beautiful as all of them, and yet his eyes were a little too sunken, a little too sharp, like a permanent knot had formed between them. He scowled, and a vertical wrinkle sliced between his eyebrows.