As soon as the Caretaker flickered into the clearing, Lucky jumped him. He managed to get the rope around his neck, pull it taut so it dug into the creature’s metallic skin, but then the air rushed out of Lucky’s lungs, and he felt himself flying across the clearing. His back collided with the mulched chips.
Before he could sit, the Caretaker was standing over him, one booted foot resting on his chest.
“I have an offer for you,” the Caretaker said.
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49
Cora
IN THE MORNING, CORA blinked awake on an unfamiliarly hard bed. Her vision focused on a black panel with a starry sky. The smell of ozone lingered on the air. She stretched out, reveling in having slept soundly through the entire night for the first time in weeks, and then gasped. She jerked upright. The light from the wall seams, the empty shelves . . . she’d fallen asleep in Cassian’s bedroom. The events of the previous day came rushing back: how, in that murky time between awake and asleep, she’d wanted his lips on hers. It was a mortifying thought—all the worse because he must have been able to read her mind.
His door opened, and he entered. She stood in a rush, smoothing out her dress and her hair, looking everywhere but at his eyes.
“It is time to return to your enclosure.”
His demeanor was perfectly even. Emotionless. Cora envied him that ability.
He led her to the control room, every move perfectly mechanical and by the book, just as it had been on the day of the medical examinations, after he’d slipped and said her name by accident. It wasn’t until he had stabbed the apparatus through his chest and dematerialized them both into the peach orchard that she observed any emotion at all.
His hand flexed a little too hard by his side. “One final day. Continue to disobey, and I will have no choice but to take you to the Harem.”
With that, he was gone.
Cora watched the grass blow around the place where his two heavy boots had stood. He—her jailer, her captor—was risking so much for her. She made her way toward town, winding through the maze of peach trees, trying to find the right words to convince the others to escape with her. They were furious at her, thinking she was trying to sabotage them. Not to mention, she’d knocked Lucky out and run.
She reached the edge of the town and shrank behind a tree. Nok and Rolf were playing croquet on the lawn between the house and the movie theater. Those two were frighteningly unstable, especially after all the accusations they’d thrown at her in the diner. She skirted behind the row of shops until she was close enough to overhear their conversation.
Crack.
Rolf swung his croquet mallet, his force extra hard as he smacked the ball.
Crack.
The sound was strange; not like wood against wood. “Try it again,” Nok ordered, a hard edge to her voice. Rolf paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then slammed the croquet mallet down again. Nok stooped to examine the ball. She gave him a grim nod.
“That’s the right amount of force. Remember, she can make a weapon out of anything. If she comes back, she’ll probably be armed, yeah? We can’t take any chances after she tried to kill Lucky. Now hit it again.”
Rolf hefted the croquet mallet.
Fear trickled down Cora’s back. They weren’t playing croquet. So what were they hitting so hard with the mallets? She dared to peek over the bushes.
Pumpkins. Big, round ones. They’d painted blue-eyed faces on them that looked an awful lot like hers.
Rolf brought down the mallet. Crack.
Nok nodded. “Perfect.”
Cora slunk along the ground, afraid to even breathe, until fear got the best of her and she took off at a run toward the habitats. Her legs burned. Her vision went glassy. Did they really think she had tried to kill Lucky? What had this place done to them, to twist them into such angry versions of themselves?
She stopped running when she reached the swamp, and collapsed against a tree to catch her breath. This was going to be harder than she thought. She needed to test her theory that they could escape through the fail-safe exit beneath the waves, but that wouldn’t help her much if the others had it out for her. She couldn’t go to Lucky for help; she was sure the Kindred had fixed his head injury, but they couldn’t fix a broken heart. That left Mali, who might as well be a Kindred, and Leon, who had gone completely insane—but at least he didn’t hate her, so he was her best chance.
The sun shifted a degree. Noon already. She ran for the jungle, her bare feet slapping across the raised walkway through the thick underbrush. She reached Leon’s makeshift camp just as a drenching rain began.
Oh, no.
The camp was destroyed. The sheets with Leon’s artwork had been torn down and trampled in the mud. Rotten fruit spilled out of overturned orchard crates. No one lived there anymore, that was certain. And judging by how violently Leon had destroyed his camp, he might be even more dangerous than he had been before.
Cora flinched as rain came harder, and thunder struck high up in the sky. It made the same sound as a hideous crack, like a croquet mallet slamming into a pumpkin. She leaned against a tree, hands pressed to her throbbing head. The previous six inhabitants were dead now, murdered by each other. How long before history repeated itself?
She sank down the tree to the jungle floor, letting the mud streak her clothes. The rain pounded harder against the nearest black windows. Were the researchers there now, studying her fear? She balled herself tight, as though that could protect her from their watching eyes.
This wasn’t some experiment.
This was her life.
Thunder cracked again. Little rivers formed in the mud. Soon the clearing would flood, but she didn’t care. Even if she found the fail-safe exit, she couldn’t escape on her own, knowing what grisly fate awaited the others.
She didn’t hear feet approaching until a set of toes wiggled in front of her. She jerked upright. A girl stood among the palm fronds, her long, dark hair streaked with rain, so quiet and still that she nearly blended into the shadows.
The dead girl, Cora thought. Yasmine, come to take her dress back.
Cora grasped the charm around her neck as though it could protect her. The girl stepped out of the shadows, and light fell on her face.
Not Yasmine. Mali.
“The Warden sent you to remove, didn’t he?” Cora had to shout over the rain. She wiped the rain from her face, trying to see better, tasting salty tears. She pictured cages and drugged children. Herself in a toga, forced to do tricks.
Mali crouched in the mud. “No one sends me.” Her eyes slid to the nearest black window. She pinched her shoulder. “I decide on my own to help you escape.”
The rain was so loud that Cora thought she must have misunderstood. But Mali’s eyes were unflinching.
“Why?”
Mali stood abruptly, rain dripping off her eyelashes. “Follow me. I will take you to a place where the Kindred cannot easily read our minds.”
She moved faster than Cora had ever seen anyone go. Cora sprinted behind her. The rain lightened as they neared the edge of the jungle. The walkway gave way to stone through the swamp, and then sand as they entered the desert. The maze loomed a hundred feet away, but Mali veered away from it. She led Cora up the highest dune. From the top, they could see all eight habitats.
Cora doubled over to catch her breath. “This is where we can speak privately? It’s the most exposed place in the entire cage.”
Mali folded her legs and collapsed cross-legged in the sand. “Sometimes it is easier to hide in plain sight. It is not ourselves we try to hide, but our minds. The fewer distractions, the better.” She pointed toward the dunes that stretched for miles, endless and monotonous, the perfect place for meditation.
Cora hesitantly sat across from her. “How can I trust you?”
“You have n
o choice.” A crease formed in the center of her forehead. “You say that in the menagerie you see a girl with shorn blond hair and two missing fingers.”
Drugged girls. Forced kisses. She nodded.
“Her name is Anya,” Mali said. “Three years ago we are privately owned by the same Kindred official. He sells four of her knuckles to the Mosca. He tries to do the same to me, but Cassian rescues us before he can. Anya and I are separated. The Kindred later tell me she dies from an infection.” Mali leaned close, a braid falling in her eyes. “But they lie.”
Below, the town and the eight habitats looked like a perfect doll village. A world of lies.
Mali pushed back her fallen braid. “If we can escape this enclosure, I know the paths through the aggregate station. If you help me free Anya, then I will take you to the market and the Mosca. They help escaped humans sometimes. For the right price. Your hair will fetch a ship alone. Information is more expensive. A finger to know if Earth is still there. Maybe two.”
She spoke so casually. Cora ran her thumb over her knuckles, feeling the hardness beneath flesh. “I’ll give them all ten fingers and ten toes, if that’s what it takes.”
“We first must discover the location of the fail-safe exit,” Mali said. “That is one thing I do not know.”
“I think . . . I think I do.” Cora rubbed her knuckles harder. “It has to be in the ocean. It’s the only habitat that doesn’t have a puzzle, and sometimes it shimmers in a strange way. It gives me a headache, like the other optical illusions.” She looked off at the ocean uneasily. That deep water, nearly as dark as the river water that had swallowed her. She turned away from it with a shudder. “While I test my theory, I need you to talk to the others. They think you’re on their side and that you know everything about the Kindred. Try to convince them that it’s worth coming with us.”
Mali frowned. “We should just go. You and me.”
A breeze carried sand across Cora’s dress. Artificial wind. Artificial sand. To Mali, who had spent most of her life here, the difference was negligible. But to Cora, it was everything. “One day, when we’re back on Earth, you’ll understand why I can’t leave them here.”
Mali considered this while she toyed with a braid. “I will try to convince Lucky. The others might listen to him.”
“Good. Then tonight, after dinner, we’ll meet by the movie theater. If everything goes right, we’ll be out of here by tomorrow. I’ll help you find Anya.”
Mali nodded. The sun dimmed as she unfolded her long legs to head back to town. Cora didn’t follow right away. She wanted one final look over their cage: the distant mountain, the red barn, the cherry tree where Lucky had told her about their shared past. The colors were brighter than they were on Earth; the temperature more even, and the weather more predictable. But she would trade a gray, rainy day in the city for a lifetime of all the brightest colors in the world.
At the base of the dune, ocean waves lapped gently on the beach. A perfect scene straight from a postcard, and yet Cora recoiled. Ever since plunging over that bridge, she’d avoided deep water. That night had changed her. Before the accident, she had thought her father ruled the world. Afterward, she saw him for what he was: just a man, as insecure as everyone else, easily manipulated by his own daughter.
She forced herself to take a step, and then another, as sweat broke out on her temples. The thought of that cold water eating up her toes and her ankles and her waist left her shaken, but she had no choice. She took a deep breath and walked faster, then ran, and crashed into the sea with all the force she could manage. She didn’t think about the murky depths or the salty chill as she waded deeper. She tensed her muscles to dive.
A force as unyielding as gravity stopped her.
Her head was roaring so much that she had hardly noticed the pressure building. It wasn’t until Cassian’s arms were around her, preventing her from going underwater with a grip hard enough to bruise, with raw emotion on his face—desperation—that she knew she was right. His gloves were gone, and the clips on his shirt were only half closed. The rematerialization apparatus jutted out of his bare skin at the base of his rib cage, where a metal port had been grafted into his body. The metallic skin around it was streaked with angry black veins, as though he hadn’t had time to properly connect to the device. She flinched at the sight. He must have dropped everything to stop her.
But he couldn’t stop her, not when she was this close.
He pushed her back to the shallow surf. “Don’t, Cora. You can’t do it. Your mind isn’t strong enough.”
She started. His voice was different. Less rigid. Startlingly human. Was he uncloaked? A rush of curiosity swelled. You do not know what I am like, when I am uncloaked. But she ignored her curiosity. He wouldn’t be stopping her unless she was right. She had solved the last of the puzzles—the only one that really mattered.
The exit.
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50
Cora
THE OCEAN WAVES WENT on crashing, even when everything else in Cora’s world had ground to a halt. The salt air beckoning her toward the exit she knew was just beneath those waves—if only Cassian weren’t holding her back.
More than just his voice had changed. It was his eyes. They had always been fathomlessly black, but they were cloudy now, like a broken storm, clearing into something that looked drastically more human.
Her lips parted. “Your eyes—”
“Don’t,” he said again, his voice so warm and rich and varied as his fingers knitted against her. “Don’t go in the water. Your mind can’t handle it.”
Cora’s head spun, still thrown off by seeing raw emotions in a man she had thought practically mechanical. “That’s the way out, isn’t it? I figured it out in your quarters, when you were telling me the real reason the Warden took us.”
“Yes.” His heart was beating wildly through his shirt. “Yes, that’s the way out, but it’s impossible for humans to pass through. Your physical body can do it—it’s just a matter of swimming down far enough—but your mind won’t let you do what it believes is impossible. You’d have to go beyond the point where you could swim back to the surface.” His hand wove through her hair, and she closed her eyes, overcome by this new side of him. “You shouldn’t have been able to perceive it. It’s true that they’ve been monitoring you for signs of perceptive ability, but none of you have yet exhibited any, despite the extents to which they’ve pushed your minds.”
“I don’t have to be psychic to be smart.” Her voice sounded certain, and yet her thoughts wavered. Was deduction really all there was to it? There’d been that time the ocean had shimmered so strangely. The time in the bookstore when her vision and balance had pulsed.
She stared at the waves that weren’t waves at all, but just more illusions, wondering what it all meant. One of Cassian’s hands still tangled in her hair and the other pulled at her waist, refusing to let her go, flooding her with that spark.
His storm-cloud eyes searched hers. “What are you thinking? Tell me.”
His frantic request threw her off—she was so used to him reading her mind—until she remembered that he couldn’t read minds when his own was flooded with emotions.
I’m thinking about you, she thought, knowing he couldn’t read her. Seeing you like this, uncloaked and real, as desperate as I am.
“I can’t stay here,” she said. “None of us can. Through the ocean is the only way.” A breeze sent a spray around them. A drop landed on the shoulder of his uniform. She touched it with the pad of her finger. “Don’t you understand? None of this is real. We can’t live like that.”
“Not everything is an illusion.” His hands pawed at her waist. “There are real oceans out there, on other planets. I’ll get permission to take you there. I’ll show you an ocean, or dogs, or the stars—I’ll show you whatever you want, as long as
you stay here.”
His breath was straining against the machinery strapped to his chest. He wanted her to be like Charlie’s pet rat, taken out to ride on his shoulder, but at the end of the day, always locked back in his cage.
She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at his. Those dark eyes, the scar on the side of his neck, the nights he spent sleepless. They were more alike than she wanted to admit. She thought of that single chair in his quarters. Why hadn’t she seen until then how alone they both were?
Cora had wanted so badly to feel normal for once. She hadn’t belonged in Bay Pines, and she hadn’t belonged back home either. Maybe she would never belong: maybe there were certain people, like her, meant to live between worlds. Cassian too. The only Kindred who felt sympathy for humans and a desire to understand them, not use them.
“I can do it,” Cora whispered. “I figured out the puzzle was there without perceptive abilities, so I know I can make it through.”
His hands pulled her close enough to whisper, with a voice so human she could close her eyes and almost pretend he was. “Stay here. With me. The things I have done . . .” He stopped, and swallowed. “I’ve made so many mistakes, Cora.”
She didn’t know which mistakes he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. They had both made so many. In that moment, more had changed than just his eyes. In her, or in him, she wasn’t sure. When she had first seen him, she had thought him such a terrifyingly beautiful creature. Their captor. Their jailer. He was still those things to her, but he was something more. She didn’t want to put a word on it, and she didn’t know how she even would, but she knew it had to do with the times he had asked her what it meant to be human.
This was what had changed, and it was so devastatingly simple: she had become a person to him; he had become a person to her. Human, Kindred—it didn’t matter. It was just her, and him, standing in the sea.
His hand grazed the constellation markings on her neck. She couldn’t help but think about Lucky, who drew her to him as if they’d been made for each other—exactly as the Kindred engineered it. She and Lucky had everything needed to fall in love: attraction, respect, a shared past she hadn’t even known about. But in the same way the trees here were not quite trees, and the fruit was not quite fruit, the Kindred had misjudged something about humanity, and people, and the connections between humans. Love wasn’t just a combination of matching physical and personal criteria. It was something you couldn’t put into words, just a certainty, a twist of fate, a spark.
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