The Gauntlet

by Megan Shepherd

  She pulled back the corner a little farther. Almost there.

  And then her finger froze. With a jolt, she took a quick step back.

  No.

  She glanced around at the walls, the ceiling, the floor, touching her clothes, wondering how exactly the stock algorithm was monitoring her thought processes. Right now, it would be collecting data on her progress and sending a steady feed of information to the monitors in the central vestibule. The Chief Assessors were watching. And she had almost forgotten what Bonebreak had told her:

  The first puzzle is a moral one.

  Which meant it wasn’t about solving a number puzzle at all. It was about presenting an opportunity to cheat to see if the competitor would take the bait.

  She stared at the desk with wide eyes.

  This was the trap.

  She flinched, breath coming fast, eyes darting to the corners. Was someone watching her now? Was the Gauntlet itself—or the stock algorithm program that ran it—monitoring her?

  She shook her head, hard. “No. I won’t cheat.”

  The lights abruptly went out.

  She stared into darkness. Had she lost? Failed already? But then a rumble started, and a door to her right opened.

  Lights flickered on in the next chamber.

  She let out a deep, shaky breath.

  She’d beaten the first puzzle—but only barely. If Bonebreak and Ironmage hadn’t given her that clue, she’d have cheated and failed. Cassian had told her the first puzzle was always intellectual—so if the Gauntlet had changed its programming to lay this trap for her, could she trust anything she’d been told? What else might the Gauntlet throw at her?

  She swallowed.

  She didn’t have a choice: she stepped through the doorway into the second puzzle.

  24

  Mali

  THE CENTRAL VESTIBULE WAS awash in chaos as Kindred argued with Mosca, Gatherers argued with Axion, and delegates yelled about rules at anyone who would listen. Mali ignored the din and instead ran her hands along the seams of the portal door. Minutes ago, Cora had disappeared through it before they could warn her that it was a trap. Mali tried to pry the door open with her fingernails.

  It didn’t move.

  She hissed at the shock of pain as she broke a nail. She bit off the rest of the nail, spitting it on the floor.

  Cora would be trapped inside for the duration of four puzzles. Under normal circumstances, Mali wouldn’t worry about her during these initial, easier puzzles. But this wasn’t just any Gauntlet. Somehow, in some way that they desperately needed to figure out, the Axion had made it into a trap.

  “Arrest this Warden,” ordered Fian—the Axion impostor—as he pointed toward Cassian. “He is a disgraced official and an escaped fugitive.”

  Axion aides moved forward to arrest Cassian. Mali jumped out of their way, breathing hard. She couldn’t let this happen. She tossed a wary look around the room. Who else besides Fian was an Axion in disguise? The Kindred aides? The Mosca? Even the Gatherers?

  Her eyes fell on Serassi.

  Something hardened in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it wasn’t Serassi. Maybe it was an Axion impersonator, which would explain why Serassi, who had once been her friend and ally, had so suddenly turned on them.

  As if reading her mind, Serassi slowly turned to meet Mali’s gaze. Mali shivered with a sudden spark of coldness.

  Impostor, she thought. Traitor.

  “Wait!” Redrage slammed her gloved fist down on the dais and faced Fian. “Take your hands off the Warden, stop yelling in my ears, and have some respect for the fact that you are on my planet, in my jurisdiction, guests here of my turn hosting the Gauntlet. If one more person dares to give an order, they will be escorted out of here immediately and left on the surface. The storm might have lessened, but it will still flay the skin off your bones in a matter of minutes!”

  This put an end to the arguments.

  “That Warden is a Kindred,” Fian said slowly, his voice still tight with anger but trying to show more respect. “He is one of our own, so he should be dealt with under our laws.”

  “Kindred laws are still subject to Council laws,” Brother Magga said in a droning voice. “According to the Intelligent Council Accords of Common Time 549—”

  “Stop talking,” Redrage hissed toward Brother Magga, “or you can tell the storm all about Intelligent Council Accords as you’re freezing to death.”

  Brother Magga seemed flustered for a moment, then shut his mouth.

  Redrage turned to Cassian. “They are correct in one thing, Warden. It is disrespectful to roll into another species’ Gauntlet without an invitation. You’d better have a good reason for intruding, or else you’ll be the first to face the storm.”

  Cassian’s eyes slid to Mali’s. She nodded slowly. She knew they were thinking the same thing: he couldn’t just come out and expose Fian for the Axion impostor that they both knew he was. It would be chaos. They’d have a war on their hands. They needed to figure out the Axion plot in secret.

  “The Gauntleteer,” Cassian answered instead. “I came because Bonebreak cannot be her sponsor. He has no claim over her.”

  Redrage raised an eyebrow, looking at Bonebreak. “Is this true?”

  Bonebreak’s jaw hung open beneath his mask, as though lost for words. He scratched his chin, folded his arms, looking as though he were trying to buy some time. “Uhh . . .”

  “It is,” Cassian asserted, and held out a metal tag. “As Warden, I have Cora Mason as my charge. Any claim that this Mosca trader might have on her is nullified by my prior claim.”

  “Irrelevant!” Fian said. “He’s been stripped of his Warden title.”

  “I warned you to be quiet!” Redrage snapped at Fian. “And unless you have some proof of your claims, I don’t want to hear another word.”

  Fian’s face flamed. He had no documentation, no files. He clearly couldn’t prove Cassian’s demotion.

  Redrage cocked her masked head toward Cassian. “You do know what being a sponsor entails, do you not?”

  “I do,” Cassian said. The only hint of emotion Mali saw on his face was a twitch in his jaw. She frowned. As far as she knew, being a sponsor meant assisting in training and in supporting the Gauntleteer between rounds. But now she had a cold premonition that being a sponsor meant something else . . . something dangerous. Bonebreak must have really wanted that trade deal if he was willing to risk himself as Cora’s sponsor. She tried to reach her thoughts into Cassian’s mind. For a second she picked up on a claustrophobic sensation . . . but then Cassian closed off his thoughts, shutting Mali out.

  Redrage shrugged. “Very well, but you will be fined twenty tokens for stealing the rover.”

  One of the Gatherers cleared his throat. He pointed a long finger at the coded monitors that were filled with scrolling symbols Mali couldn’t read.

  “The Gauntleteer has passed the first puzzle,” he announced.

  A ripple of anger visibly tightened Fian’s face. Serassi only blinked, as frustratingly devoid of emotion as she always seemed. Mali narrowed her eyes, feeling even more certain that Serassi was an Axion in disguise.

  Leon took a few steps to stand beside Mali. “Come on.” He nodded toward one of the recess rooms off the central vestibule, the one reserved for the Mosca delegation. “We need to regroup. There’s nothing we can do for Cora until she finishes the next three puzzles.” He glanced at the Axion delegation and whispered, “We need to figure out what those freaks are up to and how to stop them.”

  Mali still felt hot anger pumping through her, but Leon rested a steady hand on her shoulder, and the anger cooled. He was right, the oaf.

  Mali nodded and signaled to Cassian, then to Anya, who had been surprisingly quiet during the arguments. She’d hardly even acknowledged Mali and barely seemed glad to see Mali alive. Mali reached out to her telepathically.

  Is everything okay?

  She pushed the thoughts across the room but hit a mental wall. I
t had a cold feeling to it, and Mali recoiled as though she’d gotten an electric shock.

  Anya only blinked calmly as though nothing had happened.

  Mali followed the Mosca delegation into the recess room, throwing hesitant looks at Anya, wondering if the Kindred drugs had damaged her friend’s mind more than she let on.

  Once they were gathered in the recess room, Cassian closed the door. “It is safe to speak freely,” he said. “With this door closed, the other delegations cannot hear or sense what we say. These recess rooms have been designed to be private.”

  The room was nothing more than several benches, a coded monitor, and a small facilities closet with food and water. Between the entire Mosca delegation—eight Mosca, including Bonebreak and Ironmage—and Cassian, Willa, Anya, Leon, and Mali, it was tight. Mali hugged her arms in close, not liking the press of bodies around her. Except for Leon. Him, she didn’t mind so much.

  “So how do we figure out which of them are impostors?” she asked.

  “We know Fian is one,” Cassian answered. “And given that Fian can’t have done all this on his own, I believe Serassi might be as well. Along with Crusader and the ten Axion aides, that makes thirteen Axion that we know about, some disguised and some not.”

  “Hardly enough for an army,” Mali said. “Or even a coup.”

  “Which is why I believe there must be more,” Cassian agreed. “Perhaps even someone in this very room, sent here by the Axion to spy on us. Which is why I must insist that none of us leave the room until Cora has finished the first round.”

  Everyone went quiet.

  Mali shivered as she looked around the room. Bonebreak. Ironmage. Leon. Willa. Anya. Plenty of Mosca she wouldn’t trust even if they weren’t impostors.

  “Hey.” Leon rested a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We find out one of these bastards is in here, I’ll let you get in the first punch.”

  She couldn’t help but smile.

  At least one thing was certain: Leon was no impostor. No Axion would ever offer her the first punch. An Axion couldn’t possibly understand how much it would mean to her to get that honor. But Leon did.

  Out of everyone in the world, Leon knew what was deep in her heart.

  There was no faking that.

  25

  Cora

  AS SOON AS CORA crossed into the second puzzle, a familiar smell hit her. Sweet, minty, strong. Candy. She had expected to find another bare ten-by-ten-by-ten cube, but an illusion was projected throughout the room.

  A candy shop.

  She touched the shop’s glass counter with unsteady fingers. The candy jars, the giant cash register, the bins along the back wall—everything was identical to the candy shop they’d found in the cage. She almost expected Lucky to walk through the door behind her, joking about sugar highs. She moved behind the counter hesitantly. In the cage, the candy store had been an intellectual puzzle: the keys on the cash register weren’t numbers but letters, and each receipt card was an anagram. Nok had solved them almost instantly by unscrambling the letters to form words like CHOCOLATE and LICORICE and MINTS.

  There was a card in the cash register’s receipt box here too.

  MY ANISE.

  Cora’s fingers rested on the cash register keys. Anise was a sweet herb that licorice was made out of. But anagrams were supposed to be scrambled nonsense words, and this one seemed already solved. So was she supposed to scramble it herself? That didn’t sound like much of a puzzle.

  Her pulse beat in her fingertips, urging her to hurry to unscramble the word. MA . . . MAN . . . But her thoughts kept twisting back to the central vestibule. The scars on Cassian’s arms. The way he’d hesitated before calling to her. The fear in his eyes, almost as though he’d feared her, as though getting close to her again meant risking his life even more.

  She snapped back to the letters. Solve it.

  MANY . . .

  ANY . . .

  NAME . . .

  Nothing she could come up with worked, and she huffed in frustration. The first puzzle was a trap, she reminded herself. This could be a trap too.

  She forced herself to calm down.

  She studied the card more carefully, staring at the letters, continuing to mentally move them around. SAY . . . YES . . . SAM . . .

  No combinations made sense.

  SIN . . .

  SEINE, the river in Paris? But no, there was only one E. What else could it want her to spell? A habitat, like DESERT or JUNGLE?

  A name?

  AMY . . .

  YAS . . .

  She sucked in a breath as a sickening chill uncurled in her stomach. There was a name that started with Y. Then an A. Then S. Bile rose in her throat as she arranged one letter after another, half hoping she wasn’t right.

  But the letters kept matching up.

  Y . . . A . . . S . . . M . . . I . . . N . . . E.

  She swallowed back the sour taste of bile. Yasmine had been the Middle Eastern girl she and Lucky had found in the cage on their first day. The original Girl Three. Yasmine had been dead when they found her, drowned. Cora had seen the Kindred experimenting on her body. She bent down, dizzy with the memory, then forced herself to take a breath and slowly tap out Yasmine’s name on the cash register keys.

  The register dinged cheerfully. A token rolled down into the change trough.

  She picked up the token, feeling sick, waiting for the next door to appear. She’d won, hadn’t she? But the walls remained the same. Then her fingers brushed four slots in the counter—the same size as tokens. Great. She had to solve four anagrams to win.

  She shoved the token into the first slot and a new card popped up.

  A RHINOS.

  Okay. Think. Rhinoceros made her think of the Hunt, where all the animals had been so horribly mistreated. She tried to piece apart the letters.

  NOIS . . .

  RINA . . .

  She sighed. Nothing seemed to click.

  HARI . . .

  Her uneasiness grew as she continued to rearrange the letters, coming up with nothing, until at last she found a combination that worked.

  ROSHIAN.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead. Roshian was the only person Cora had ever killed, impaling him through the eye. Her stomach twisted as she typed his name and got her second token. She was starting to realize the trick of this puzzle. What a messed-up game. Technically an intellectual one, yes, but it wasn’t about challenging her intellect. The stock algorithm was trying to shake her confidence by showing her the names of the dead.

  People die when they get close to you, songbird, Dane had said. I’m not taking any chances.

  She swallowed down the guilty taste of bile.

  The third card popped up with a ding, and she closed her eyes, wincing. She knew what it would say. She just knew. There was only one other person who had died as a result of getting too close to her.

  She opened her eyes with heavy dread.

  CORA LIES ON FLU.

  It was a nonsense sentence, but the first two words made her flinch as though each one were a slap. Cora lies. Which was exactly what she had done to Lucky. It was part of the reason he was dead.

  Her fingers were shaking now, but she typed Lucky’s real name, LUCIANO FLORES, the ding of each key making her want to retch. A third token rolled out. She snatched it up, clenching her jaw. She wasn’t going to let this puzzle shake her. If the stock algorithm was trying to make her doubt herself, it would have to work harder.

  She slammed the token into the third slot, determined, and the final card popped up.

  MACAROONS.

  She focused on the letters with renewed resolve. Who else was dead because of her? No names came to mind, and for a second, her confidence faltered. A cold chill spread through her legs. Maybe she hadn’t figured out the hidden trick of this puzzle after all.

  SCAR . . . CARO . . .

  And then her lips parted—there was a name in the letters.

  CORA.

  Her own
name. The chill grew as she unscrambled the rest of the letters.

  CORA MASON.

  She jumped back from the cash register as if the keys had turned molten. She stared at her name. Yasmine, Roshian, and Lucky were all dead because of her, and now her own name was on a card.

  Am I going to die too?

  Fear shot to her throat. She pushed back, shaking her head. No, the stock algorithm had no way of knowing that. It was just trying to make her second-guess herself, that was all. A trick. She paced, wondering how much time she’d already wasted.

  I can’t let it get in my head.

  She set her fingers on the keys, ready to type her own name, but paused. What if, by entering in her name, she was somehow signing her own death warrant? What if typing her name would make it come true?

  She lifted her fingers off the keys, letting out a tight breath. This could be another moral test in disguise. Add her name to the list of the dead, and the Gauntlet would make certain it happened. But what choice did she have? If she didn’t solve the puzzle, she wouldn’t move on.

  She started typing slowly.

  C-O-R-A-M-A-S-O-

  She hesitated, the premonition that she was ensuring her own death almost too overwhelming to fight against.

  She swallowed.

  She hoped she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

  She typed the N.

  26

  Cora

  C-O-R-A-M-A-S-O-N.

  Cora stepped back, tense, braced for something terrible to happen.

  The cash register dinged. A door appeared to her left.

  She’d won.

  She let out quick breaths, not daring to trust it. Had she just sealed her own fate? Her legs shook as she walked around the counter, toward the open door. She peeked into the next cube: plain walls. Empty. She stepped in quickly, glad to be away from the cloyingly sweet smell of the candy shop, from the names of the dead, from her own name.

  The door closed behind her.