The Gauntlet

by Megan Shepherd

  Safe—she was safe.

  Or was she?

  Her body ached, but what frightened her even more was that her head didn’t. Something had happened when she’d felt that tear. The pain in her head had vanished. She tried to tentatively push out her psychic abilities, but there was nothing there. It was just as though she’d suddenly lost her hearing or her sense of smell.

  She had broken her mind permanently this time.

  Fear made her breath go still.

  She swallowed and frantically tried to remember something to see if her memories were still intact. Cassian—yes, she could picture him. She knew his name and how they’d met. Lucky—she remembered him too. She sighed in relief. It was okay; she remembered. She knew who Anya was, and Mali, and Nok and Rolf. She remembered waking up in the desert habitat of the cage. Before that, she remembered . . .

  And her relief disappeared.

  She remembered her first day in the cage clearly. The red sand dunes. Finding Lucky, and Yasmine’s body. But before that was only a blank. She knew some facts: she’d been abducted from Earth, her name was Cora—but there were simply no memories. She must have had a family, but she couldn’t remember them. Couldn’t remember going to school, or what she did for fun, or who her friends were. Couldn’t picture her house. Couldn’t even remember what state she was from.

  She drew in a sharp breath. It had happened—exactly what Willa had warned her about. She had torn her brain and lost half her memories: every moment of her life from before the cage. She pressed her back against the platform, fighting a rising sense of panic. Was the damage permanent? What would happen if she never remembered? Would Cassian take her back to a planet she had no memory of? Would she have to rely on Mali and Leon and Nok and Rolf for the rest of her life? She couldn’t even remember her mother or her father.

  Tears started pooling in her eyes, and she pitched forward, burying her face in her knees. Around her, lava hissed and sizzled. Her breath came in uneven sobs.

  Slowly, very faintly, voices came to her head.

  Stand up, Rolf’s voice said.

  She didn’t stop crying. At least tearing her brain hadn’t affected the paragon burst, but what good was it now? Those voices couldn’t bring her memories back. They couldn’t tell her what she’d forgotten about Earth.

  The voices began to whisper louder, voices of her friends and strangers alike:

  Keep going.

  Keep fighting.

  She swallowed back another sob. Whispers of encouragement continued floating between her ears. And then:

  Don’t give up!

  It was the echo of Mali’s voice, practically shouting. Cora opened her eyes at last. Swallowed back the rising panic. At least she remembered Mali. And Cassian, and Leon, and Serassi, and Nok and Rolf and Lucky. She might not remember her old life, but she remembered her new one.

  Keep going, Mali’s voice urged again.

  The door opened, and it took the last of her energy to crawl through into puzzle eight. Bright lights blinded her. She blinked through them. She was on a . . . a stage. Stage lights shone from the ceiling, and she shaded her eyes to peer into row after row of empty theater seating. It was a concert hall. Beautiful and grand. Chairs of red velvet. Gilded theater boxes overlooking the stage. The only other thing onstage beside Cora was a grand piano.

  From somewhere in the rafters, an intercom crackled to life. Cora tensed, apprehensive, mustering courage to fight if she had to. But then a slow song started playing.

  All these years I thought I’d know

  All the places I would go

  An unfamiliar song—or had she known it once and was now missing that memory? She stood shakily and circled the piano. By the process of elimination, this had to be an intellectual puzzle.

  And yet a thousand steps and still, I’m—

  The song on the intercom stopped abruptly as she reached the piano bench. She waited for the song to resume, but it didn’t. She searched the piano, but there were no letters or numbers to rearrange.

  Then an idea struck her. She sat on the bench and rested her fingers just above the keys. In the cage, there had been a music puzzle in the grasslands habitat. Three notes would play on the wind, and she and Lucky had matched them with identical musical notes. Maybe this puzzle was similar, only instead of matching the notes, she had to take it further and finish the song.

  She touched a key hesitantly. A low C note reverberated through the room. Something about the familiar vibration washed over her skin, instantly calming her, as though she’d taken a deep breath of fresh air. She closed her eyes. It felt natural, deep down. She felt certain that back home—though she didn’t remember—she must have known how to play. She tried to shut off that blankness where her memories should have been and play on instinct.

  Somewhere deep, she missed music. She missed her memories. She missed home, whatever it had been.

  Serassi’s paragon burst flared to life too at the sound of the note. Music was one of the reasons Cassian had been fascinated by humans—an art form that the Kindred, in their sterile world, didn’t practice. She could feel humanity’s love of music humming inside her. All those voices, all those minds and hearts blossoming in unison.

  She pressed another key, trying to remember the melody of the song on the intercom, and hummed a note to match it. She would need to get the rhyming just right, as well as the rhythm. The lyrics would have to make sense too with the rest of the song, not to mention the notes would need to perfectly match the ones that came before them. If she hit one wrong note or got one imperfect rhyme, she might lose the puzzle. And she couldn’t lose now, not when she was so close to seeing her friends again. To stopping the Axion.

  “I’m not just any girl . . .”

  She hummed the words slowly, her voice raspy with lack of warm-up. She hit each key on the piano slowly, careful to match the melody that had played moments ago as her mind worked to finish the rest of the line. Even now, she could feel the paragon burst working within her. Her thoughts came faster than they ever had before. She was aware of so much more than she’d ever been. It was as though Serassi had downloaded an encyclopedia into her mind, not just of facts but of emotions, ideas, sensations.

  “I’m not just any girl. . . . I have an iron will, and I will show you who I am.”

  She hit the last key.

  The intercom crackled back to life—the puzzle wasn’t over yet. Another song started playing.

  Dreams are like stars, stronger at night

  This second song was more complicated. There were more sharps and flats to the notes, the speed was more staccato, the words harder to rhyme. But she didn’t care. The challenge felt thrilling. She kept playing, faster now and more confidently, not worried about stumbling over the notes.

  Her voice rang out as she found just the right pitch: “Shining with promise, promising bright.” The room took on another energy, almost as if the empty seats were all filled. Cora pictured ghosts of people in all the seats, not just attentive spectators but active participants in her song. She pictured Mali and Lucky in the front row, Leon and Nok and Rolf behind them. Because she wasn’t the only one singing. It was their voices too, echoing in her head.

  The voices of humanity.

  Yo soy tan solo sin ti

  Her fingers slowed to a stop. Was that Spanish? For a moment that beautiful flood of hope faltered. The voices in her head died down, as hesitant as she was. Her pulse started to pound faster. Her fingers were frozen over the keys.

  She didn’t speak any foreign languages.

  She let out a ragged breath. Dammit. Just once, couldn’t the stock algorithm take pity on her? Throw her an easy puzzle? But no, it had woven tricks and traps into every single one, making it impossible. She’d only managed to beat the others with the help of the paragon burst, or else with clues that Willa and Ironmage and Cassian had given her ahead of time.

  The speaker crackled again, waiting for her to finish the song. Taunting her w
ith its silence.

  I don’t speak Spanish, she wanted to yell. I can’t do it! Suddenly anger filled her—she’d come so far. She wanted to kick the bench over, slam her fists over the keys, rip out the piano wires with her hands.

  But then one of the echoing voices reached her:

  But I do.

  Lucky. Lucky’s voice. He’d been born in Colombia. He spoke Spanish fluently. Cora scrambled to sit back on the bench, her shaking fingers poised over the keys. She could match the notes and handle the rhythm.

  She just needed the words.

  From deep down, the paragon burst stirred. She could feel it in her blood, her bones, almost moving her hands and her vocal cords for her. Lucky’s spirit was inside her, putting words in her mouth.

  “Pero tu espíritu,” she sang, not understanding the words coming out of her mouth, “es siempre conmigo.”

  She struck the final note.

  Tears streamed down her face. The stock algorithm couldn’t know this—it was just a code and a machine—but it had given her a gift with this puzzle. It had stirred her blood and reminded her of what mattered. Of Lucky. Of hope. She didn’t remember her family back home, but as she played, she felt them. Felt their love, even from afar. She felt the melody of the world, a planet that was a song in itself, and a people who wouldn’t stop singing.

  She pushed up from the piano.

  The notes lingered in the cavernous concert hall. She looked out over the empty theater and smiled. Somewhere, deep down, Lucky would always be with her. As soon as the next door appeared, she’d be finished with this round. And she was ready: to see her friends, to face the final round—and most of all, to bring humanity the song it deserved.

  34

  Mali

  A BOMB.

  Mali threw herself under the worktable that was littered with Willa’s frequency-emitter equipment, shielding her head with her hands. A bomb had gone off—a package that Leon had smuggled from the station. The explosion had ripped through the chambers of the Gauntlet. Torn apart the central vestibule, shattering half the control compartments.

  Dust still rained down through the recess rooms. The bomb’s boom echoed off the walls, making her ears ring and her head spin.

  She blinked out of her shock.

  Had she seen right? Was Bonebreak really . . . gone? Dead? That Mosca trader was the last person she’d expect to sacrifice himself.

  Dust clouded as the wreckage settled. Dazed, she squinted through it, trying to find the others. Something was dripping, splashing her. Blood? Was it hers or someone else’s? She held up her wet hands, relieved to find it was only water seeping through the walls.

  She crawled shakily out from under the table. Willa was frantically trying to salvage the damaged emitter equipment, and from across the room Serassi was yelling something at her, but Mali couldn’t make out the words past the ringing in her ears. She caught sight of a beam pierced through Serassi’s leg, pinning her in place near the coded monitor. Her dark Kindred blood was soaking into the fabric of her left pant leg and mingling with the puddles of water on the floor.

  Mali traced the lines of water up to the ceiling, still feeling dazed. Where was the water coming from? The Gauntlet modules weren’t powered by any liquid fuel source. The water had to be external. . . .

  The storm.

  The realization hit her with a dark sense of foreboding. When they had entered Drogane’s atmosphere, Cassian had warned of the planet’s unpredictable weather. He’d said they were fortunate to land during the eye of the storm and that his instruments indicated the worst of the weather would most likely hold off until the Gauntlet was over.

  But storms were anything but predictable.

  “Mali!”

  Someone was calling her name, but it sounded small and tinny, as though coming from miles away. She tilted her head, tapping her ear to try to stop the ringing, as she searched the room, coughing through the dust. Cassian had gone to Serassi’s side and was trying to wrench the beam out of her leg with his bare hands. Willa was still fumbling with the equipment like it was more precious than any of their lives. Ironmage was sprawled on his back near the bench, unconscious, a bruise on his temple where shrapnel must have hit him. She started to crawl toward him to make sure he was alive when someone streaked across her line of vision.

  Anya’s clothes—the impostor.

  “Stop!” she yelled. The impostor was the only one who could tell them where the real Anya was. She tried to scramble to her feet, but her balance was thrown off from the blast. She careened first to the left, then to the right, until she managed to grab hold of a bench.

  Leon was near the doorway, clutching the side of his face, blood streaked over his tattoos. The impostor was running straight toward him.

  “Leon, don’t let him get away!”

  Dazed, Leon shook his head, stumbling as though he too were barely able to stand. Mali choked in desperation. She tried to take a step forward but tripped and fell.

  “Please, Leon, I . . . I need you!”

  She winced at her own words. Never in her life had she begged someone for help. And yet Leon didn’t look at her with a gloat of superiority. He only blinked through his daze, eyes darting to the impostor, and nodded.

  “I’ll get him, Mali. I promise!” He took off after the impostor.

  Mali sucked in a sob—leave it to Leon, a criminal, a smuggler, a lovable pain in her side—to be the one person in the world she could rely on.

  She pushed to her feet, making her way across the room after them. She clung to the wall for support as she stumbled into the central vestibule.

  She froze, gaping. The vestibule was even more damaged than the Mosca recess room. The floor behind the judges’ dais was now a hole where the bomb must have exploded. There was no sign of Bonebreak’s body, only a few pieces of torn rust-red jumpsuit. Her stomach twisted as she felt an unexpected hitch of sadness. Sadness, for a Mosca? But not just any Mosca. A Mosca from whom she’d never expected anything but betrayal but who had just saved all their lives.

  The four Chief Assessors’ chairs had been ripped up and twisted, the dais itself splintered in two. Monitors crackled and hissed, showing only static. For a second she remembered that Cora was trapped inside the Gauntlet puzzle chambers, and she ran to the portal door. Had Cora felt the blast? Had the bomb broken the puzzle modules? But the portal door was still sealed, a burn mark across the front the only sign of damage. Mali tried to pry the door open with her fingers, but it wouldn’t budge. She let go with a frustrated sigh.

  Cora was still on her own.

  Half the overhead lights had shattered and the few remaining ones flickered uselessly. Bodies of Gatherer and Axion and Kindred delegates littered the floor, and she fought the urge to turn away at the sight of a severed arm wearing a Mosca sleeve, and a chunk of hair, and a single boot with the Axion crest.

  She coughed, trying to clear the dust from her eyes. Where had Anya’s impostor run to? Had Leon caught him? Some of the survivors were starting to rise out of the dust. It felt like eternity since the bomb had detonated, but Mali knew it must have been only seconds. The dust hadn’t even fully settled. She heard moans. A scream of pain. And yet that high-pitched ringing was still in her ears.

  She tapped her ears again as she stumbled around the remains of the vestibule. She let go of the wall and suddenly slid across the floor, catching herself on the broken dais. This wasn’t just off-kilter balance from the blast. The room was actually leaning. Water was running down the floor, pooling against the back wall. And then the room shook and shifted again, and Mali and the others were thrown backward. She clung to the dais.

  It was the storm, she realized as more water poured in through the ceiling. The bomb’s blast must have compromised the infrastructure of the Gauntlet modules. The structure was no longer stable. It might have easily withstood the storm before, but now they were at the mercy of Drogane’s raging tempests.

  “Mali!” Leon appeared in the doo
rway, one hand clutched over his bleeding face.

  “Where’d he go?” she yelled back. “Where’s the impostor?”

  “Forget him—behind you!”

  She spun just as an Axion lunged for her. She ducked out of the way, twisting around the dais, using the off-balance room to her advantage. The Axion tumbled toward the back wall, hitting his head hard. Mali took a deep breath, steeling herself.

  She flexed her muscles, ready to fight. The Axion was pushing himself to his feet again, but he was dazed from the blast too. She frowned, noticing his uniform. Beneath the thick coating of dust, he wore long, gauzy white robes that swept the floor. Gatherer robes.

  She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Another Axion rose from the dust, coughing. He ripped a thick Mosca mask from his face. Confused, she caught sight of a Kindred uniform she recognized—Fian’s uniform. Only now an Axion woman wore it, her gaunt frame too small for it, the sleeves dangling too long for her arms.

  “It’s the blast.” Leon stumbled beside her, still clutching his face. Blood had stained the collar of his shirt a crimson red. “It somehow set off Willa’s equipment and triggered the frequency that makes them drop their disguises. Now all those sneaky bastards can’t hide anymore. They’re exposed and they know it. There’s no telling what they’ll do—we should be ready for anything.”

  Mali drew in a sharp breath. That was the high-pitched ringing she still heard. The frequency that Willa had broadcast to turn Axion impostors back into their real selves. It had spread beyond the Mosca recess room into the full Gauntlet chambers, and now the impostor Fian was exposed, and all the rest. . . .