The Cage

by Megan Shepherd

  He spoke words she didn’t understand.

  Cora couldn’t breathe. The man’s touch sparked electricity, but it wasn’t thrilling like it had been with the Caretaker. This was pulsing and painful. She clawed against his fist.

  The Caretaker lowered his head as if this was his commander, and spoke in rapid, insistent words. Was he trying to help her?

  A chill ran up her spine as she realized that these creatures, as mechanical as they seemed, might actually think for themselves. Disagree with each other. Argue. She almost preferred to think of them as machines.

  “Do not struggle, Girl Two,” the Caretaker said. “This is the Warden of this facility. His name is Fian. He merely wishes to examine you.”

  Cora jerked her head toward the dead girl they’d been examining. She started to speak, but the Warden’s hand tightened more around her windpipe. She fought the urge to claw his face off.

  The Warden slowly took each of her hands—the electricity of his touch sickening her—and inspected her fingers front and back, turned her around to feel the muscles along either side of her spine, then pulled her jaw open to look at her teeth. Last, he touched her hair. It was the first time he had been at all gentle. He ran his fingers down the length of it to her chest, and then slowly wrapped one curl around his finger.

  He wasn’t inspecting her like a dead body. He was inspecting her like livestock.

  He released her abruptly. He said a few words in guttural tones and then, without a single glance, left through the starry doorway. Inspection over. She slumped against the wall, heart pounding.

  Had she passed?

  The Caretaker spoke to the researchers, who filed out of the room. One of them, a female with a thin nose and high cheekbones, threw Cora one last look, though her face was a perfect mask of non-emotion. Did the woman pity her? Was she curious? Or was it merely protocol?

  The door slid closed, and Cora sank to the floor. “What was that?”

  “The Warden believes your actions indicate you are not suitable for this enclosure. He intended to remove you.” His gaze veered to the dead girl, so fast she almost missed it. “I convinced him to reconsider, given your assets. I said that your presence in this chamber was accidental—that you had not intended to leave your enclosure.” He leaned over her, his face a mask of indifference. “I saved your life.”

  He spoke so calmly. Cora could only stare, afraid he’d take that favor back.

  “Now I must return you, and there can be no further accidents. The Warden does not offer second chances.”

  He pulled her to her feet, and the spark of his electricity made her light-headed. Warm, invigorating, not like the Warden’s touch. It eased the heaviness of her limbs. He reached for the apparatus strapped to his chest.

  She pulled away.

  “Wait—I can’t go through that again. It feels like being ripped apart. Can’t you take me back another way?”

  He paused. For a second, she wondered if he really did pity her. She wondered if they were telling the truth about their altruistic mission, and that they had saved her from a doomed planet. But then her eyes fell to the girl with the heart-shaped scar, and anger wove between her ribs. Her throat still ached from the Warden’s grip.

  Strangling her hadn’t seemed very altruistic.

  “Materialization is the primary means of transportation into your enclosure,” the Caretaker said. “There is a fail-safe exit in case of a technological breakdown, but this current situation does not warrant its use.”

  “An exit? Like, a physical door?”

  His only answer was to extend his hand. “Come. Soon you will be back exactly where you belong, Girl Two.”

  He was waiting for her to take his hand, giving her this small measure of control. She took it hesitantly. The pressure shifted again, that terrible squeezing that suffocated every pore, and she clutched the Caretaker around the neck, afraid that if she let go of him, or if he let go of her, she would disappear into a thousand particles. His skin was hard as metal, but supple. And warm. So much warmer than she thought it would be. Not at all like the Warden’s harsh grip.

  In the next instant, pressure consumed her.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  14

  Cora

  JUST WHEN CORA COULDN’T bear another moment of bone-splitting pressure, grass materialized beneath her feet. Distant waves crashed. The sun shone directly overhead.

  They were back in the cage.

  The breeze tangled in her hair, along with the metallic smell of the Caretaker’s skin. She let him go like he was a spark, and she a dry piece of wood.

  “Get away from her!” Lucky’s voice cut like a knife. She turned in a daze as he and the others sprinted across the grass.

  The Caretaker ignored them, eyes only on Cora. “Remember: three rules. That is all we require.” His outline flickered like an old-fashioned television set, and then vanished, just as the others rushed up.

  Cora wiped her mouth, swallowing hard despite the memory of the Warden’s hand clamped around her neck. “I’m okay. He took me to a room I wasn’t supposed to see. It’s where they observe us.” She pointed toward the candy shop, head foggy. “It was just behind one of these black windows.”

  Rolf frowned. “The candy shop wall that supports the black window can’t be more than six inches thick—not nearly enough room for a viewing chamber.” His lips moved silently as he seemed to be performing calculations. “The black windows must work on forced perspective technology that’s more advanced than anything I’ve heard of. The walls appear straight, but they must bend to accommodate viewing chambers.”

  Cora dug her knuckles into her aching forehead. “There are more of the Kindred, behind the windows. Researchers. And the one who’s in charge—they called him the Warden. His real name is Fian. He was huge like the Caretaker, with a knot of angry wrinkles between his eyebrows. He tried to strangle me, but the Caretaker stopped him. And I saw . . .” She paused. How would they react when she told them about the dead girl?

  “So this is it?” Nok cried. “We’re here for the rest of our lives? No more dim sum, or walks through Hyde Park, or old Star Trek reruns, or any of that?”

  She was pacing wildly, near the breaking point, and Cora swallowed back the words she’d been poised to say. One horror at a time.

  Lucky pulled Nok into a hug. Nok collapsed against his shoulder, though she was a good three inches taller than him, and let out a burst of runny-nose tears.

  “We’ll get out of here,” he said softly, meeting Cora’s eyes over Nok’s shoulder. “I promise. We’ll go home.”

  Home. What had Charlie done, when she’d disappeared from the passenger side of his Jeep? She pictured her father holed up in a hotel room with his security staff, the head of the FBI on the phone. Maybe her disappearance had finally brought them all together; a family again, only without her. And for all she knew, the Kindred had wiped every memory they had of her.

  She let out a choked breath.

  She leaned in to them, her face pressed between Nok’s cheek and Lucky’s shoulder. To Cora’s surprise, Leon crashed into her, wrapping his big arms around all of them. Rolf was the only one left alone, his fingers twitching against the stiff pockets of his military jacket. Cora grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the group embrace. It was the five of them, no longer strangers, any differences they once might have had now meaningless. Nok slipped her bony hand into Cora’s and squeezed.

  Girl Two, the Caretaker had called her. No longer a person. Now a specimen. Given a second chance only because the Caretaker had intervened.

  “I know we’re all strung out,” Lucky said. “We can get through this, as long as we stick together.” The group broke apart shakily. The morning light turned to noon in a single click, and Cora’s song started on the jukebox.

  “Great,” Leon muttered. “Lunc
h time. I feel better already.”

  “Food’s not a bad idea.” Lucky cracked the knuckles in his left hand. “None of us have eaten anything in days, except for Leon, and he’s alive, so it must be safe. Rolf, you and me will bring the trays out here so we all have some fresh air to help us think. Nok . . .” He paused, avoiding Cora’s eyes. “Tell Cora what we figured out . . . about the marks on our necks.”

  He disappeared with Rolf into the diner. Nok stumbled through an explanation about the matching constellations, and by the time Lucky came back with the trays of noodles, Cora understood why Lucky hadn’t told her himself. They were matched? She could barely look at him without feeling mortified—although a small voice in her head whispered that he was the kind of guy she’d always liked. Not arrogant, like the boys she’d gone to school with. Not flamboyantly dramatic, like most of the guys in Charlie’s theater classes.

  The kind of guy with grease on his hands.

  She looked down at her noodles. They smelled wrong—sticky sweet. The song ended and flipped over, starting again. Was it supposed to make them complacent—or torture them?

  “Well,” Lucky said. “I guess we should figure out what the hell is going on.”

  “We’ve been abducted by little green men,” Leon said. “Or in this case, big bronze men. What more do you need?”

  “I need to know why.” He turned to Rolf. “No offense, Rolf, but I don’t believe they’re telling the truth about why they brought us here. So what do we know? They took the five of us specifically. They want us to reproduce, which is . . . messed up. They’re watching us from behind those panels. They want to study us in our natural habitat”—he motioned to the row of fake shops—“or whatever this is supposed to be. Why? For entertainment?”

  “Maybe they want to see how we interact?” Nok offered. “Like, not just our daily lives, but under pressure. When situations change. Maybe that’s why they’ve given us clothes that aren’t ours and thrown us together in random pairs and given us food that tastes wrong. I mean, this looks like khee mao noodles, but it tastes like a cinnamon bun.”

  “To what end?” Lucky asked.

  Nok tapped her chin, thinking, and then a look of horror crept over her face. “What if they’re going to attack Earth? Maybe this is all a war scenario. They might want to see how people will react under pressure so they can make it an easy fight.”

  Everyone was quiet. Cora’s song played steadily from the jukebox, taunting them.

  “Maybe.” Lucky rubbed his forehead like his head ached. “It’s one possible theory, and it explains some things, but not others. If that were the case, why would they care if we reproduce? I was thinking, maybe we really are like lab rats. The Kindred seem pretty similar to us, physically. They can speak our language, so our vocal cords must be similar, and they breathe the same air we do, so we must just be a few chromosomes away or something. Wouldn’t that make us perfect test subjects?”

  Rolf frowned. “I suppose so. Theoretically.”

  “They could be developing some new kind of drug but don’t want to test it out on themselves first. We’re the lab chimps now. And the drugs . . .” Lucky looked at the noodles.

  Nok and Rolf both shoved their trays away.

  “There’s something else.” Cora knew she couldn’t withhold what she’d seen forever. “While I was in their control rooms, I saw the dead girl’s body. They were examining it. Maybe experimenting—I don’t know. They said it was protocol to monitor dead bodies for signs that humans were evolving, but she looked perfectly normal to me. It felt like they were covering for something.”

  Even Leon dropped his fistful of noodles. He always looked so tough, but for once he seemed almost stricken. Cora recalled that the girl with the heart-shaped scar was supposed to have been his match.

  “This is seriously shitty. All of it.” He pushed off from the grass and sauntered toward the row of shops.

  Lucky shook his head. “That guy is going to be trouble.”

  Cora watched Leon disappear in the town. “I’ll talk to him.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  15

  Cora

  CORA FOUND LEON SITTING on the movie theater steps, head cradled in his hands. “Leon, you can’t just run off. We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

  “We’re going to die, that’s what.”

  She paused. She’d seen him angry, and impatient, but never depressed. “We’re not going to die. The Kindred brought us here, which means they can take us back. It’s nonsense, what they said about humans destroying the Earth. Humans have been polluting for centuries. It’ll take aeons before we actually destroy it—if we ever do.”

  He tossed a stone from the potted marigolds into the grass. “You remind me of my sister, you know that? She has hair just like yours. She never gives it a rest either—always telling me I run from my problems.”

  She sat next to him. “Your sister has blond hair?”

  He snorted. “She dyes it. And she’s got about fifty pounds on you, but yeah. Long blond hair. Same annoying way of giving me a hard time.” He tossed a pebble at her foot, not hard enough to hurt. The others’ voices were barely audible from the town square. “I can’t stop thinking about that girl. The dead one. How she and I were supposed to be together . . . or whatever.”

  Sweat trickled down his face. He tossed another pebble.

  “Do you have a girlfriend at home?” Cora asked softly.

  He snorted. “I’m not exactly boyfriend material, sweetheart. Dad’s in prison. My two older brothers too. My little sister, Ellie, made me swear I wouldn’t end up like them. She was the only one who believed I had a chance to do something other than getting locked up.” He glanced at the closest black window. “I guess that’s what happened anyway, eh? How ironic.”

  Cora toyed with a pebble. “I’m glad she believed in you.”

  “Well, it didn’t do any good. I never listened to her. I dropped out of school and took a job working for my brother. He smuggles electronics from China—among other merchandise. Black market stuff. Just a matter of time before we were both caught.”

  The pebble slipped from her fingers. “Oh.”

  “I worry about her.” His voice was quieter. “Ellie. If she’s okay.”

  Cora’s heart clenched. She liked this side of him, the one that cared about his little sister. She almost told him she’d been locked up too, but stopped. Her father’s voice was too fresh. “We’ll never speak of what happened,” he had said. “Not to the media, not even to each other. You’re not an ex-con, you’re our daughter.”

  But she was an ex-con. That’s what they never understood.

  She stood and tugged on Leon’s massive arm. “Come on.”

  When they returned to the others, Nok was twisting the pink strand of her hair nervously. “You really think we can go back?” she asked.

  “Of course we can’t!” Rolf sputtered, pushing at the place where his glasses should reside. “That could be the reason they killed the other girl—for all we know, she was trying to escape. They gave us three rules. That’s all. We should at least try to obey. There might not even be any walls or exits, anyway.”

  “There is an exit,” Cora said. “The Caretaker called it a fail-safe.”

  Rolf shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. They’d just see us through those panels and stop us.”

  “Why do you want to stay here so badly?” Cora snapped.

  He blinked like she had slapped him. “It isn’t about staying here,” he said. “It’s about staying alive.”

  Staying alive. Cora had experience with staying alive. At Bay Pines, girls made makeshift knives out of toothbrushes. Pummeled each other with pillowcases full of loose change. She’d tried to banish such memories, like her father had said, but some things were harder to forget.

  Maybe she shouldn’t try
so hard to forget.

  “I might have an idea,” she said hesitantly. “The Kindred are stronger than us, but not invincible. The Caretaker breathes oxygen, which means he could choke. He had a bump on his nose like it had been broken. He’s not flawless.”

  “What are we going to hurt them with?” Rolf asked. “Meat loaf? Every inch of this place has been designed like a padded cell.”

  “There are weapons.” She leaned in and dropped her voice. “Remember those toys we saw in the shops? The Caretaker said they were authentic artifacts from Earth. That means they’re real, not soft like everything else. Those croquet mallets could inflict serious damage. We could use the guitar strings as a garrote.”

  “What’s a garrote, eh?” Leon asked.

  “A weapon you can use to strangle a person silently,” she explained calmly.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “How’s a girl like you know a thing like that?”

  Cora bit the inside of her cheek. “I watch a lot of TV,” she lied.

  Thankfully, Lucky saved her from having to explain further. “It’s a good plan—and the only one we’ve got. We have twenty-one days before they remove us. Until then, we’ll solve their puzzles—it will look like we’re cooperating. But really, we’ll map the different habitats to find the fail-safe exit and win prizes we can secretly turn into weapons we can defend ourselves with.”

  Rolf shook his head. “We can’t even solve the jukebox puzzle, and you expect to escape from super-intelligent extraterrestrials? Impossible.”

  Cora glanced at the black window. Was the Caretaker watching? Her skin still tingled at the memory of the spark of electricity. Did all humans feel it, or was it only her?

  Lucky shot Leon a sharp look. “And don’t even think about acting on Rule Three.”

  Leon held up his hands. “Why are you telling me? My girl’s dead.”

  Nok let out a quiet sound of disgust.

  Cora rubbed the constellation marks on her neck. It wasn’t just her eyes that felt tired. It was her whole body; her face, her limbs, her mind. They had more to worry about than the Kindred. Captivity did strange things to people. In Bay Pines, pretty girls had lusted after balding old male guards because that’s all there was, and human nature was too strong—even stronger when family and routine were taken away.