The Cage

by Megan Shepherd

  He clenched his jaw in a gesture that looked startlingly human, as if this was actually hard for him. Sweat broke out on Cora’s skin.

  “Are you turning me in to the Warden?”

  “No.” He pulled her closer, so they were only inches apart. “I am going to give you what you want. Answers. And when you see what is beyond the walls, you will not be so anxious to disobey us anymore. You will find that life here—life with me—is far superior to anything out there.”

  Her heartbeat throbbed in her veins. “Life with you?” she echoed.

  The muscles in his throat constricted. “Life in the environment, watched over by me.” His hand tightened over hers.

  Pressure consumed her.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  31

  Cora

  WHEN THE STATIC-LIKE PRESSURE ebbed away, Cora opened her eyes.

  A row of cabinets. A metal table. They were back in the medical room.

  Before she could speak, Cassian dragged her toward one of the wall cabinets. He took out a metal bar the length and thickness of a pencil. When he snapped his wrist, it opened to reveal a set of shackles.

  “My colleagues would question my motivations if I were to transport an unrestrained human subject. Hold out your hands.”

  Cora pulled back. Her head felt deep in a fog; was it really only hours ago she’d twirled beneath a fairy-tale tree with Lucky while the others danced in the rain? The sting of his betrayal felt as fresh as the snow melting down her legs. “Tell me where we’re going first.”

  He gripped the restraints impatiently. “If you insist on asking questions, I can summon the Warden. He would be happy to give you answers—perhaps while he was dismembering you.”

  Cora begrudgingly held out her wrists. The shackles clamped over her. The metal was flexible, just like the Kindred’s clothing, and molded itself to every contour of her wrists. Cassian guided her toward the door, which slid open automatically.

  Light glinted from the hallway, and she shielded her eyes. It was a strange kind of light, bright enough to sting her retinas but richer somehow, multidimensional, like a kaleidoscope. As her eyes adjusted, she saw it spill over Cassian’s face and the empty metal floor, not constant but moving like it was fractured on water, giving the hallways an underwater sense even though it was perfectly dry. Cassian didn’t slow his pace to allow her to marvel. He pulled her along at a brisk clip.

  She was in the Kindred’s world, now.

  It was an overwhelming and terrifying idea, until she realized that each detail might tell her valuable information about their society—she might even find a way to escape. But as they walked, her hope faded as they continued down a hallway that had no remarkable features. No air ducts. No elevator shafts. As far as she could see in either direction, the hallway was the same. Her headache returned, throbbing gently. Was it more of their space-bending technology?

  After what must have been ten minutes, a faint rumble sounded in the distance. She glanced at Cassian, who was taciturn as always. The sound grew. The hum of machinery. Footsteps. Even voices, though too garbled to tell if they were speaking English. An end to the interminable hallway came suddenly, with brighter light and the rush of wind.

  Cora’s footsteps slowed. “Where are we?”

  “Do not speak here. Do not stop walking. Do not stare—some of the other species consider it rude.”

  “Other species?” she hissed.

  The hallway ended before he could respond. The sound of voices swelled as they rounded a corner into an enormous chamber that rose thirty feet high, packed tightly with people. Painfully bright lights radiated from interlocking wall seams onto a mass of bodies dressed in all shades of blue. Kindred. Hundreds of them, weaving to and fro like at a busy airport, some striding with determined steps, others grouped to one side, speaking in low voices. Stalls were set up haphazardly in the center of the room and clustered around the edges like hunched cockroaches. They displayed objects Cora didn’t recognize, except for a few. A rice cooker with Chinese lettering on it. A potted lemon tree. A stack of license plates from different countries.

  Maybe it was a museum of stolen artifacts from Earth and other planets, but from the way the Kindred argued in that flat way of theirs, she got the sense that transactions were happening. It was certainly like no store or supermarket Cora had been to. No one carried baskets or bags, so where did they put their purchases? Did they use money?

  “For once in your life,” he said, “obey what I tell you. Or else someone will question why you are here.”

  He led her deeper into the chaos, veering abruptly left and right, as though he saw some sort of organized system that she didn’t. A few Kindred slid their black eyes to her, but their faces registered no curiosity. They were like automatons, masked and unfeeling. Three in the crowd wore Cassian’s same black uniform, but most wore a simpler variation of the uniform the Warden had worn, with a row of knots down one side, though some of the Kindred—both male and female—clothed themselves in white robes with a single knot at the shoulder. They kept their eyes low to the ground and did not speak.

  No other colors flashed among the crowd, except a shocking blur of red: two figures who might have been normal height if standing upright, but whose backs were so hunched that they couldn’t be more than five feet tall. They wore dirty rust-red jumpsuits and masks that fractured their eyes like insects’, and they had an odd way of walking, a little fast and jerky. No patch of skin or face or hair was showing; there could be anything under those jumpsuits, but the way their backs twisted so unnaturally screamed that they weren’t human.

  She nearly collided with someone while trying to study the insect-masked creatures. She started to apologize but froze. A man’s leather belt was directly in front of her, at eye level. Her head pitched up, and up, until she was looking into the face of a creature—a man, as far as she could tell—with startlingly green eyes and skin a watery shade of gray. He had to be eight feet tall. He ruffled fingers at her that were long and willowy as water reeds, and she gasped.

  Cassian dragged her away by her wrist cuffs.

  “That was an alien!”

  She supposed her words sounded ridiculous—Cassian was an alien too, but she had never really thought of him that way. Her eyes ran over his features; they had looked so foreign to her at first, but compared to the other creatures, he seemed strikingly close to being human. As his dark eyes cut to hers, she felt a kinship she knew she’d never feel with the other species. At least he had eyes . . . who knew what was underneath those masks.

  “That was a Gatherer.” His tone was flat. “And they, in particular, do not like to be observed. They especially do not like to be bumped into by lesser species. If you must stare, the Mosca could not care less.” He jerked his chin toward the two hunchbacked figures in insect-like masks. “All they care for is unloading their wares, consuming alcohol, and falling asleep in some hallway.”

  Cora gave the two Mosca a wide berth as they passed. The sea of cerulean-clad Kindred moved so stiffly around them, their heads held high, as though to show that they were superior. Most of the booths were run by Kindred, but a few were manned by more of the Mosca in masks and rust-red jumpsuits. They tended to huddle on the floor, their voices droning in fits and starts behind their masks.

  Cassian led her past a stall stacked high with comic books: some in French, some Japanese, a few English. A short Kindred man—only six feet tall—stood stiffly behind the table, dressed in a uniform with only two knots on the side, with a jean jacket slung over his shoulders and sunglasses perched on his nose, looking so strikingly out of place that she had to stare.

  She ducked to read the title of his comic book as they passed. Aquaman. A date was stamped on the bottom left corner. She did the math quickly—the comic book wouldn’t come out for another two years.

  Her
head started to throb. How was that possible? Had they been gone from Earth for two years? Or did the Kindred have the ability to manipulate time even more than she thought?

  Cassian kept walking so fast that she barely had time to think. She tried to turn to see the comic book again, to confirm she hadn’t imagined it, but they were too far past the stall. “That comic book. The date—”

  But Cassian shot her a cold look, to be quiet.

  Cassian stopped abruptly as two Kindred soldiers in identical black uniforms approached. They exchanged words with Cassian that sounded harmless, though Cassian’s fingers dug into Cora’s arm like a warning. She looked over her shoulder amid the crowd, half expecting to see Fian’s creased face bearing down on her.

  “Hey, give that back.”

  She whipped her head in the other direction, following voices in English. In the booth across from them, three human children dressed in costume—one a cowboy, one in a princess crown, another in a baseball uniform—were chained to a post, arguing over a dirty stuffed dog. Fears over the Warden finding her folded themselves into a pocket of her mind, present but tucked away. These children couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

  The boy in the princess crown grabbed the dog. He was missing his two front teeth and half of one of his fingers. The other boy let out a racking cough, and the creature manning the booth, one of the masked Mosca, tore the dog away.

  “Worthless. All you childrens.” His voice, behind the mask, came in fits and starts like a static-filled radio program. “When I go back to Earth next, I will get little childrens who know how to behave. I will to bring them back here, and then will throw the lot of you childrens out.”

  Cora instinctively moved closer to Cassian. He glanced at her dilated pupils and sweating brows, and said a few final words to the guards, then led her through the rest of the market quickly.

  They plunged into another hallway, this one blessedly empty. It was all she could do to put one heavy foot in front of the other through the murky light that made her feel as though she were moving underwater.

  “Why were those kids chained up back there, and missing teeth and fingers?” she whispered insistently, rubbing her knuckles against her tired eyes. “Were they for sale?”

  “They were, yes, but do not fear. That was one of the more reputable trading halls. Those children were protected by basic laws. If they were selling the children for individual body parts, they would not have done so out in the open.”

  Cora stopped in the center of the empty hallway. “So it was a pet store?” She looked at him hard. “It’s nice to know that’s how you think of us.”

  “I told you that you would not like what you saw. You should feel fortunate. The Kindred only take humans of the highest-quality stock. The Mosca take whatever they can get; those humans often suffer a poor fate.” He paused. “It is a deplorable practice. In my previous position, it was my responsibility to save and protect humans mistreated by private owners.”

  “How heroic of you.”

  “Keep walking.” His fingers curled around the bar imprisoning her wrists as he pulled her farther along down the hall. “We did not come here to see a trading hall. We are going to see the menageries. Be warned that until now, you have only ever seen one aspect of our world: the public one, where we cloak our emotions to demonstrate the highest standards of intelligence, obedience, and above all, emotional control. But as much as we would like to, we cannot suppress emotions forever. They have a way of coming out, and that is why we live very different private lives.” He reached a door that didn’t open automatically like the others, but he stopped. The light from the seam in the door danced over his features, casting his eyes in shadows.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked.

  “I am wondering if I am doing the right thing.” His voice was distant, as though he was speaking more to himself. “Perhaps I am making a mistake.”

  Cora stepped closer, letting the light play over her face, which she knew must look sunken and worn. “Sometimes mistakes are worth making.”

  The muscles in his neck constricted. His hand tightened and flexed at his side as he turned away from the light, and shadows ate at his features. “The ways in which humans and Kindred think is so very different. Mistakes in our world are to be avoided at all cost, because they betray a lack of intelligence, just like lesser emotions. It is sometimes difficult to understand you when you say such things—that sometimes mistakes are worth making.”

  He stepped back into the dancing glow.

  There was more than confusion written on his face. There was curiosity too. This black-eyed creature studied her like he truly did want to see inside her head, more than just thoughts and images, but to see her, understand who she was and why she thought what she thought.

  He wanted to understand humanity.

  Good luck, Cora thought. I’d like to understand it myself.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  32

  Lucky

  LUCKY STORMED THROUGH THE town square, past the flashing lights of the arcade and the thumping beats of jukebox music. Each one punctuated what an idiot he was. He’d stayed up all night, but Cora hadn’t come back. He should have known she’d run away the minute he told her the truth. Why did he ever think she’d forgive him for putting her in prison? Because she smiled at his jokes? Asked him about his granddad’s farm? God, what an idiot he was.

  He raked a hand through his hair, fighting against the pain in his skull. His mother’s eyes burned behind his eyelids. He was back in their car on the rainy bridge. Arguing over the radio station, country or top 100. Then the glare of headlights. The car spinning out of control. His mother calling his name. Luciano.

  And he’d let her murderer go free for a pile of cash.

  He followed the sound of guitar music to the farm. The others were playing the orchard puzzle. It involved picking apples, each one stamped with a different constellation, and tossing them in bins with the same mark. Nok plucked at the guitar with unskilled hands, while Rolf and Mali tossed apples back and forth, laughing, trying to hit each other more than the bins. A pile of half-eaten apples rotted in the sun.

  He stared at them like they’d gone insane. “What are you doing?”

  Rolf caught an apple from Mali. “There wasn’t any breakfast this morning. That makes the third day. There’s not much here, but it will keep us from going hungry. We aren’t going to play Cora’s games. She’s egging us on for a fight. All I can conclude is that she’s jealous because we’re happy.” He took a bite of the apple, then tossed it in Lucky’s direction. “Catch!”

  The apple hit Lucky’s shoulder and bounced on the grass. Rolf looked at him expectantly, then pointed enthusiastically toward the apple. “Throw it back. I want to see what kind of arm you’ve got. Aren’t all you Americans good at baseball?” A grin cracked his face, like he was making a joke between two friends.

  Lucky kicked the apple into the stream.

  “Listen. Cora’s gone. Last night I followed her into the mountains, but she just vanished. I thought she was hiding out, but when I went back this morning, her footsteps ended in the snow. There was a second set of prints too, bigger than a human’s. The Caretaker must have taken her.”

  Nok and Rolf only blinked calmly, and it made Lucky’s stomach flip. Didn’t they care?

  He turned to Mali. “Where did he take her?”

  When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her thin shoulders and shook her. Mali just allowed herself to get thrown around like a rag doll. “I do not know.”

  “You have to! You’ve seen beyond the walls—you grew up in their world.”

  “They tell me what they wish me to know. I assume they remove her.”

  He let her go abruptly. “But it hasn’t been twenty-one days yet.”

  Mali gave that odd head wobble that was mean
t to be a shrug. Lucky kicked over one of the bins in disgust; apples rolled everywhere. “They can’t just change the rules! They said we have twenty-one days to obey Rule Three. If they took her before that, then they should take me too. I haven’t obeyed yet either.”

  “Perhaps he comes for you next.”

  Lucky froze. His head pounded so hard he could barely think. “Coming for me? Well, good. Then he’ll take me wherever he took her, only this time I’ll be ready. Nok, give me that guitar.”

  Nok looked up innocently through her long eyelashes. “You want to play?”

  “No, I want to break it apart and wrap a string around the Caretaker’s neck when he comes back. Cora was right. It isn’t safe—they can take us at any moment. I should never have listened to you all.”

  “Listening to us saved your life.” Rolf kicked an apple with short, sharp jabs, one eye twitching like his head stabbed with pain. His voice was suddenly bitter. “If the Kindred hadn’t—”

  “Rolf, shh,” Nok hissed.

  “No! I’m tired of everyone acting like idiots instead of using their brains. I thought Cora was smart, but she let her emotions get the best of her. She’s gone crazy with these stupid ideas of escape that are just going to get us all in trouble. You don’t want to end up like her, Lucky.”

  Lucky dug his fingers against his temples.

  “Don’t you get it?” Rolf sputtered. His face was splotched with red, but his fingers weren’t twitching. “Tell him what you told us, Mali. About Earth.”

  A creeping feeling spread through Lucky’s veins. He eyed Mali warily. “What is he talking about?”

  “I am not supposed to tell.” Mali shot Rolf a hard look. “The Kindred believe your minds are not yet ready to understand. I only tell you because your mind seems stronger than the others.”

  Lucky braced himself. He didn’t care about whatever stupid thing Mali and Rolf had argued about. He sensed that he was about to learn something that he could never unlearn. For a moment he clung to his ignorance. If he didn’t know, he could pretend everything was okay. He could close his eyes and think of home and his granddad and that horse that kept kicking over the fence so the chickens got out.