The Gauntlet

by Megan Shepherd

  The third puzzle chamber was blessedly dark, giving her a moment to breathe. Two more puzzles to go, she urged herself. But the premonition didn’t go away.

  She waited anxiously for the lights to come on, and when they didn’t, she pushed to her feet and felt against the wall. Nothing . . . Empty . . . But then her foot collided with a hard object. She crouched down to pick it up.

  A gun.

  She jerked her hand back as though it had singed her.

  A gun meant shooting, but shooting what?

  The room remained black, and the darkness began to seep into her mind. She imagined she heard breathing. She spun around. Was it her own breath, or was there someone else in the room? Willa had warned her of deadly moral paradoxes like the one that pitted a Gauntleteer against a starving lion.

  She grabbed the gun, aiming it into the darkness.

  “Hello?” she called.

  No answer.

  Maybe she was alone after all. But then, what was she supposed to shoot? The image of her own name on the anagram puzzle flashed in her mind, and a bitter metallic taste filled her mouth. Surely she wasn’t supposed to shoot herself. Right?

  Her pulse raced as she paced the length of the pitch-black room. It felt too tight, like the walls were moving closer together. There was that sound again, like someone breathing. She spun around sharply, aiming the gun.

  “Hello?”

  The darkness was complete, oppressive, making her lungs feel constricted. But there—a huff. There was someone else here. Or something. The gun started shaking in her hand. When she’d been a little girl and had nightmares in the dark, crying out in her sleep, Charlie had rushed in and turned on the lamp on her bedside table. The monsters in her imagination had vanished. All you need to chase off the darkness, he had said, is light.

  She took a few deep breaths, holding the gun steady. There weren’t any lights here. It was only her, the gun, and whatever was breathing: no lamps, no switches, at least not any that she had felt in the darkened chamber. And yet, slowly, an idea occurred to her.

  By process of elimination, this puzzle had to be either physical or perceptive. And a plain cube with no stairs, no balance beams, and no maze didn’t seem physical.

  This was a perceptive puzzle.

  Which meant the trick had to be using her abilities to see what else was in the room—to see in the dark.

  She looked around the blackness. She’d never practiced anything like this with Cassian or Anya. They had focused only on levitation and mind reading, and the uncertainty made her queasy feeling return. Right now Cassian was out there, with Fian, and she had no idea if he was okay.

  The gun started shaking in her hand.

  But she pushed through her fears to try to see—or rather sense—into the darkness.

  Concentrate. What’s there?

  Anya had told her that humans had to exert extra mental effort to match the perceptive abilities of the other species. She closed her eyes, drew in a full breath, and threw her thoughts out as violently as she could. It made her head spark with pain, but she kept pushing. What was she supposed to shoot? What creature was here with her?

  Focus! See in the dark!

  There. To her left. A flash of movement. She gasped, spinning toward it, aiming the gun. The room was still pitch-black, but she was able to use her psychic abilities to sense what was there: four legs. A swishing tail. Black and white stripes.

  A zebra.

  She sighed with relief—just a zebra. Harmless. And not a real one, either—she sensed it flickering in and out like a hologram. On its side was a bright red bull’s-eye target.

  She took a deep breath and raised the gun at the holographic zebra.

  She concentrated.

  Sensed where it was.

  Squeezed the trigger.

  Suddenly something barked behind her, lunging out of the darkness. She gasped and spun. What is it? She sensed another animal, four legs, long silky fur. A dog.

  Sadie! Sadie was here!

  It happened so fast. She didn’t even realize her finger was still on the trigger until the bullet shot out. Too fast. Distracted. Her hand jerked. Shit! She tried to slow the bullet with her mind, move it to the left a little, and yes: the bullet stopped in midair. Sadie barked again, but Cora ignored the holographic dog and focused only on the bullet. She wasn’t going to let the Gauntlet distract her.

  She was able to reangle the bullet, pause, and release it. At the same time, a burst of pain exploded in the back of her skull.

  She cried out. The gun fell. The bullet slammed into the zebra on target, but she doubled over in pain, clutching at her skull. The barking stopped. Both holographic animals vanished, leaving her alone.

  Her head felt splintered in two.

  She winced. This couldn’t be right. Anya had said to push her mind to the limit, but this felt all wrong. Something was dripping on the ground—her own blood.

  Ahead, the next door slid open.

  Puzzle four.

  She’d won. But she could barely move. Her head was throbbing, tender and raw. What had she done to herself? Had she broken her brain, just as Willa had warned her? She tried to use telepathy to see what was in the next puzzle chamber, but her head pulsed with such a sharp burst of pain that she nearly blacked out. She sank against the wall.

  Took a deep breath.

  When she tried to use her psychic abilities again, she got a slight, barely there glimmer of something and was flooded with relief. She hadn’t broken her mind completely—just torn it.

  Still, this was bad. She had two perceptive puzzles left to solve. She needed her brain intact.

  She wiggled her fingers, checking to make sure they weren’t shaking like Anya’s. She blinked, testing out her vision, mentally checking herself over for any damage, just as her brother used to do after wrestling matches, making sure he hadn’t pulled any muscles. God, she missed him. He . . . He . . .

  She froze.

  Her brother.

  She couldn’t remember his name.

  Her lips parted in shock. She racked her brain, pushing through the pain. She remembered her mother, Linda. Her father, John. She could picture her brother’s face, but there was simply no name there, only a gaping blank. And her dog . . . her dog who had just been here . . . she couldn’t remember what her dog looked like, or the dog’s name, or even what breed it was.

  She swallowed back a lump of fear.

  This must be what would happen if she pushed her mind too far. She’d torn her mind partway and she’d now forgotten little details like names and appearances. What if she broke her mind completely? Would she forget everything? Her family, her friends, even her own identity?

  She pressed a hand to her nose as she stumbled toward the door. She didn’t dare push her mind further. But then how could she complete the remaining perceptive puzzles?

  The sound of wind and a crack of thunder tore her from her thoughts. She took one look through the doorway at the fourth puzzle—the last for this round—and sank to her knees.

  As if it could possibly get worse.

  “Oh, no,” she said aloud.

  27

  Cora

  CORA STOOD ON A platform a dizzying hundred feet off the ground. Tall pines rose on all sides. Wind howled, whipping her hair, pushing her forward. She crouched down, gripping the edge of the platform to keep from getting blown off. Icy sleet stung her arms and face. She squinted into the storm, but the door behind her, back to puzzle three, had shut and vanished.

  She was in a forest, alone.

  From what she could tell, it was the same high-ropes course Lucky had completed in the cage. The platform circled a giant pine tree, connected by ladders and rope swings and bridges to other platforms. Only now, wind pushed violently at the bridges, making them creak and groan in a way that shot fear to her heart. The rope swings thrashed around, whipping at the air. Sleet bit into her eyes. She lifted her hand to anxiously wipe at her face, but a gust of wind shoved her
backward. She cried out, fingers scrambling for hold, but ice coated the platform, and her fingernails slipped off it uselessly. The wind blew her toward the edge faster. A rope danced in the air, snapping like a whip. She grabbed it a second before she would have fallen. It jerked and twisted in the storm, but she held on tight, knuckles white, pulling herself back onto the platform until she could wrap her arms around the tree trunk, pressing her chest to the bark.

  The storm raged harder, rain drenching her.

  She let out a shaky breath.

  This was nothing like the course in the cage. This was practically a hurricane, and Lucky wasn’t here to coach her how to climb from tree to tree. That day, she’d realized how special Lucky was: how even in the middle of a nightmare, he could find moments of joy. But Lucky hadn’t plunged over a bridge, as she had. Her throat clenched at the memory. Sitting in the passenger side while her dad drove drunk across a bridge late at night in the rain, swerving at the last minute to avoid an oncoming car.

  Breaking through the bridge’s guardrail.

  Tipping downward.

  Plunging.

  Crashing.

  Dark water pouring in through the windows.

  Cora’s limbs started shaking violently, as if the bridge accident had happened just moments ago, not years. She squinted into the rain and dared to lift one hand, staring at the tremble. Her mind was too tender and painful to be able to make her hands stop shaking. The wind howled harder. Something cracked not far away. She twisted her head to see one of the pines attached to hers by a rope bridge crashing its way to the ground.

  She screamed and held on tighter as the tree fell, ripping away the rope bridge, ropes snapping and whipping in the air, the entire platform shaking violently. A few boards ripped away, but the platform remained intact. There was now only one way off her platform, though—a narrow ladder to another pine. The storm roared, and the next pine began to groan as well. She let out quick breaths as she forced herself to crawl to the edge. She had to do this. For Cassian. For everyone. When she dared to look down, amid the swirling rain and sleet, the ground did that awful dizzying telescoping thing, making her feel like she was already falling.

  Drip.

  A drop of blood from her nose fell toward the ground. Her head was throbbing in a way that made her more certain than ever that something had gone wrong when she’d strained her abilities. She tried again to think of her brother’s name. Alex? Carl?

  Panic started to crawl up her throat.

  The tree groaned again.

  Dozens of bridges and ladders spanned the forest, giving her hundreds of possible paths to get from her platform to the last one. But she’d run this course before. Thanks to Lucky, she knew the quickest path. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it was the exact same puzzle as in the cage. Cassian must have arranged it somehow, to give her an edge. He couldn’t cheat, of course, but he was skilled at bending the rules.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to him from afar.

  She wiped away another streak of blood from her nose and gripped the first rung of the ladder that connected the platform to the next. It was coated with ice, and her hand slipped off. Panic tried to take control of her limbs, but she forced herself to carefully grip each rung, climbing as fast as she dared. She reached the next platform, which was swaying, the tree creaking dangerously. Lightning cracked overhead, lighting up the swirling sleet. This platform connected to the next in two ways: a wooden bridge and a rope ladder. She mentally ran through the course she’d taken with Lucky—he’d taken the bridge. She steadied herself on the slick bridge, her feet threatening to slip on every icy step.

  A nearby tree cracked in the storm, plunging to the ground. She cringed, bracing herself, as it crashed straight into the rope ladder. She gasped. If she’d taken that rope ladder, she’d be dead.

  The biting rain numbed her hands and feet. Don’t look down, she told herself. Lucky had held her in his arms that first night, warming her with talk of home. She concentrated on that memory, letting it warm her again.

  She pushed through the wind. Crossed another bridge. Climbed a twisting rope.

  And then, at last, she was at the final rope swing.

  With numb fingers she unhitched the rope from where it was wound around a giant tree trunk. She couldn’t get a good grip, no matter how much she tried to shake the blood back into her hands, but she stepped toward the edge of the platform, knowing she didn’t have a choice.

  Wind howled at her.

  If she didn’t land on the opposite platform on the first swing, she’d be stuck out there, dangling in the abyss. She clutched the rope, counting down.

  Five.

  The wind whipped harder, blinding her with sleet.

  Four.

  She blinked away the sleet. Three. She breathed into her hands, trying to warm them. The plunging distance to the ground made her stomach twist.

  Two.

  Suddenly the tree she was on groaned. Something snapped and it lurched. Inch by inch, it started to tilt.

  She sucked in a breath. “One!”

  She jumped a second before the tree buckled.

  Wind whipped her hair back. She let out a shriek and clutched the rope hard. It all happened so fast. The final platform came rushing toward her. Closer, closer—but something was wrong. It was too far. The wind was too strong, whipping her around. There was no way the rope swing could possibly reach.

  She let out a desperate cry as the rope reached its farthest point and came swinging back the other way. “No!” She kicked out, trying to reach the platform with her toe. The movement made her body twist around, as the rope swung in big loopy circles instead of a smooth arc, tossing her like a leaf in the storm. She kicked furiously, trying to hook her feet around the rope.

  Almost—

  But her numb hand slipped.

  Suddenly she was back in the car with her father, plunging off that bridge, every fear in the world coming true in one terrible squeal of brakes, and her pulse started racing faster and faster.

  But then her other hand closed over the rope. She clamped on hard. Got her feet wrapped around it.

  Her pulse throbbed, quick and urgent.

  She hadn’t fallen.

  She was alive.

  Suspended between two platforms, blinding rain soaking her, but alive. Blood was flowing again from her nose, streaking her arms, dripping to the forest floor. She looked around desperately. There was no way out but down.

  And falling meant losing.

  Death.

  A rumbling sound started above her head. She squinted into the storm overhead and saw a sight that made her laugh a little deliriously. A dark square formed in the middle of the black clouds.

  The next door. There, at the top of the rope.

  And then her delirious laugh threatened to overtake her. To reach it, she’d have to climb. And her hands were so numb. Her muscles wrung out. She reached an exhausted hand up, forcing herself to climb inch by inch on a rope that was slippery with ice. She ignored the nosebleed. Ignored the wind trying to push her back down. Ignored that awful throbbing pain in her head as she climbed, and climbed, and at last touched the edge of the door with a rush of relief.

  A hand reached down to help her.

  A hand so big it could only belong to a Kindred. Cassian.

  She let her muscles go slack. She clutched the hand, letting her eyes sink closed. She’d made it. Round one was done. She didn’t dare think about the rest of the Gauntlet or whatever sabotage Fian was planning. She just wanted out.

  Cassian pulled her the rest of the way up, through the floor of the central vestibule, between those blinding lights. She collapsed gratefully on the familiar ground, eyes still squeezed closed.

  “Thank you,” she breathed, opening her eyes.

  Only it wasn’t Cassian.

  Fian blinked at her, not an ounce of mercy in his eyes.

  28

  Nok

  KEENA WAS STILL SICK in bed, fading in and
out of consciousness, unable to lead.

  Nok couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if Armstrong’s de facto leader didn’t recover soon; she certainly didn’t like being the one everyone turned to for answers in Keena’s absence. It had been a few grueling hours since the refugee ships had landed. Nearly forty battle-scarred Kindred, Gatherer, and Mosca ships that each carried a ragtag group of survivors who were now recovering in the shade of the old slave tent, which, with Rolf’s help, they had set up as a makeshift hospital.

  Now, she and Rolf and a few head citizens congregated in the sheriff’s office with Makayla and a Gatherer named Brother Paddal to hear about this new threat. Nok glanced out the window at the eerily calm skies and then at the Gatherer. Eight feet tall, gray skin, fingers like crab legs. She chewed on her lip. She seriously wished Keena were here.

  “Start from the beginning,” she said.

  “Does he really have to be a part of this?” Makayla jerked her head toward Dane, who was standing near the sheriff’s office doorway, arms crossed.

  Nok gave Dane a long, untrusting look. “Believe me,” she said, “I wish we didn’t have to include him, but the mine guards chose him as their representative. They deserve a voice.”

  Makayla folded her arms, glaring at Dane, as she explained how war had broken out on the Kindred station, how they’d heard on the ship’s communication system that it had actually been an Axion battalion in disguise, and how Fian—to their surprise—had been an impostor. The real one had been imprisoned for months in the same cells as Cassian.

  “And you saw Mali and Leon?” Rolf pressed.

  Makayla nodded. “They were okay, last I saw. But the station was in bad shape. The Kindred didn’t stand a chance.”

  Next to her, the towering Brother Paddal nodded. “The Axion’s attack was well orchestrated throughout the galaxy,” he explained. “From what our communications officer could gather, they attacked at least eleven Kindred stations simultaneously, reaching as far as the Lehani province. We also received reports of attacks on the Mosca planets of Drore and Dramaden. Our entire Gatherer east-sector fleet was wiped out. My ship’s tracking device was broken, which is the only way I was able to escape.”