The Hunt

by Megan Shepherd

  She stormed into the nursery. Rolf followed her, glancing back at the open door.

  “At least we’re safe for the time being,” Rolf said.

  “Until when?” she asked. “Until we can’t teach them anything they haven’t already learned from books? Rolf, I don’t know anything about raising a baby. It won’t take them long to figure that out. A month, maybe two, and they’ll take her away as soon as she’s developed enough.”

  She glanced over at the crib and felt sick all over again.

  “I won’t let it come to that.” Rolf rested his hands on her shoulders.

  They went back into the hallway, but Serassi had vanished. They found her downstairs, inspecting a microwave oven that kept dinging despite the fact that nothing was cooking. If she was upset that Nok had nearly tried to claw her face off, she didn’t show it.

  “Do this for Sparrow,” Rolf whispered.

  It gave Nok something to hold on to, and she took a deep breath and turned to Serassi. “What about the others?”

  Serassi straightened. “None of the others are expecting a child, so there is no reason for them to be here.” She nodded toward the staircase. “You will find suitable clothing in the bedroom upstairs. Try to ignore the observers and act as naturally as you would if you were in your former lives. This habitat has been left open so the observers can ask you any questions they might have about what you are doing and why. Answer their questions promptly. Otherwise, you are free to live as you choose.”

  The tight walls of the living room pressed in toward Nok.

  “Where is Cassian? Can we talk to him?”

  Serassi returned to inspecting the microwave. “If you believe that Cassian will take you away from this place, you are mistaken. He needed to hide Cora’s escape attempt and his own role in it from the Council. Tessela and Fian are two of his supporters, and thus they agreed to lie. But I care nothing for his mission. And so he offered to give me the two of you and your baby for my own research purposes, in exchange for my silence.” Serassi closed the microwave door. “I am the one you answer to now.”

  Nok closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her throat.

  “We have simulated day and night for you,” Serassi continued. “I will return tomorrow to perform the first round of tests, along with my fellow reproductive scientists. We expect you to comply with the mission of this facility and act in a way befitting parents-to-be. Cook meals and dine together. Prepare the house for your coming child. Follow whatever customs you would on Earth. And, most importantly, focus on your health. For the baby.”

  Her eyes, once more, went to Nok’s belly.

  Nok pressed her hands tighter to fight against the sense that Serassi was already communicating with her child; that Sparrow somehow already belonged more to this creature than to Nok.

  Serassi left through the red front door, which seemed a bit farcical; she could have stepped down through the missing wall. Once she was gone, Nok threw her arms around Rolf. She wanted to burst into tears, but they didn’t come. “How much time do we have until Sparrow is developed enough that they could take her away?”

  “I can’t be certain,” Rolf said. “Their time works differently. In the cage, I had started to work through the calculations—it’s an algorithm based on the speed of the rotations of this station and the gravitational pull of nearby planets. But then . . . Well.” His face went dark. “It didn’t seem to matter anymore.”

  Nok didn’t need to ask him what he meant. She and Rolf had both gone a little crazy in the cage, convinced that the unlimited candy and video games were paradise.

  “Can you try to figure it out again?” she asked, squeezing his arms. “We need to know how much time we have to . . .” Pressure built behind her eyes but she still didn’t cry. This time, she wasn’t going to go along blindly, letting people order her to pose this way and that. She was done being a living doll. “. . . to escape. Sparrow is not going to grow up in this dollhouse with an alien for a mother. She’s going to grow up with you and me—far away from here.”

  10

  Cora

  IT WAS A NOISY night. The brother and sister from Australia whispered to each other from their neighboring cells, and once Dane fell asleep, Pika started grumbling aloud to the bobcat’s tail about the yo-yo. The only quiet corner was Mali’s and the hyena’s, and Cora wondered what Mali must think of all this. Like Dane, Mali had once sided with their Kindred kidnappers. But that had changed when she’d learned Anya was alive—and the Kindred had lied about it.

  “Cora,” Lucky whispered. “You still awake?”

  “As if I could sleep.” She tapped on the bars above her. “What about you, Mali?”

  Two arms and a head appeared, upside down. Thin as she was, Mali had to be the only one who could squeeze her head between the bars. “I do not sleep either.”

  “Where have they been keeping you?” Lucky asked.

  Cora told him about the six-by-six cell, and the grimaces on both his face and Mali’s said they were all too familiar with it.

  “I do not think they have caught Leon,” Mali said. “He might come back for us.”

  Lucky snorted. “He won’t.”

  The disappointment on Mali’s face was plain to see, even upside down. In the cage, she and Leon had been matched. An arrangement that Leon had resisted, to say the least, and yet Cora knew that the Kindred had matched them because they were more alike than he wanted to admit.

  Cora reached up and squeezed Mali’s dangling hand.

  Lucky’s voice dropped an octave, as though he knew he was treading dangerous ground. “They said the Warden brought you here. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  Cora felt her heart beat just once, painfully, as if someone had reached into her chest and squeezed out all the blood. Had he hurt her? He’d decimated her.

  She clenched her jaw.

  “I’m fine.” She squinted into the darkness. “Are there black windows here? Are they watching us?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. It isn’t like the cage, where they watched us all the time. They don’t seem to care what we do, as long as we don’t cause trouble. Wait until you get a good look at this place during the daytime. It’s a dump.”

  Mali grunted her agreement. “We are not prime specimens anymore.”

  Cora glanced toward the other cells, listening to the faint sounds of shifting bodies as the others slept. She pulled her blanket tighter. Chicago’s blanket. What had he done to merit being dragged off on his nineteenth birthday, instead of being sent to Armstrong? And what were the Kindred’s lies he’d been yelling about?

  “I don’t know if I believe a word Dane says,” Cora said, “but we can’t stay here.”

  Lucky let out a harsh laugh. “We tried to escape. You know as well as I do how that played out.”

  “I’m not talking about escape,” Cora whispered. “Cassian has a different plan. There’s a series of tests that’s happening in a few weeks. If I run them and pass, humans will be granted intelligent species status. They won’t be able to cage us anymore. That’s why he put us here, to train me in psychic abilities secretly so I can pass the tests.”

  Mali, her long braids dangling toward the floor, let out another soft grunt. “You speak of the Gauntlet.”

  Cora nodded.

  Lucky stared at her with an unreadable expression in the blue glow. “Psychic abilities?” There was a strange undertone in his voice. She couldn’t shake the feeling that words like freak were circling around in the back of his head.

  “Will you do it,” Mali asked.

  “I didn’t say yes,” Cora said. “I can’t bring myself to trust him. He had me completely fooled before. You have no idea how awful it is to even be around him, the constant reminders that he was lying the entire time.”

  Lucky didn’t respond right away, and she realized her connection with Cassian was probably the last thing he wanted to talk about.

  “The Gauntlet is dangerous,” Mali said. “Eleven humans
attempt to run it before. None still live.”

  “They died in the puzzles?”

  “A few. The physical challenges are difficult, but the moral and perceptive ones are most dangerous. They can break your mind. Some humans go insane and die after.”

  “What kind of puzzles were they?” Cora asked.

  “No one knows,” Mali said. “There are rumors that the moral tests form impossible choices: for example, a human is placed in a room with a caged lion that is dying of starvation. The human is told to save its life, but the only way to do that is to free it so it can eat you. The perceptive puzzles are even worse because they force the brain to work in unnatural ways. Pushing a weak mind to perform telekinesis can rupture the tissue.”

  “And this is what you plan on doing?” Lucky asked.

  “I’ll be better prepared than the people who have run it before,” Cora said, trying to sound confident. “That’s why I’ll train with Cassian, so I don’t lose my mind.” She took a deep breath. “He said it’s the only way we’ll ever be free. Maybe he’s right.”

  “Well, I know this isn’t right,” Lucky said. “This place. The things they do to these animals is sick. And there’s something wrong with these kids too. Everyone’s half starved and bruised. Who knows how many kids have vanished before Chicago. Or how soon the rest of us will.” His face turned very serious.

  “What’s wrong?” Cora asked.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Remember what Dane said about turning nineteen?”

  Cora nodded slowly.

  “My nineteenth birthday is October twenty-first. We were abducted from Earth on July twenty-ninth. I don’t know how much time has passed exactly, but it’s got to be close. And if what happened to Chicago is true . . .”

  The significance of his words wove their way into Cora’s head. Nineteen. The age the Kindred determined that a human went from child to adult. Her eyes went to the supply room with the drecktube.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  “I’ll turn nineteen any day now and be taken away, and then Mali will, and then you.” He jerked a hand back toward the cell block. “And everyone else.”

  “So the Gauntlet’s our only option.” Cora shifted, anxious. It wasn’t just the idea of working with Cassian that bothered her, or that ache in her head when she tried too hard to use her abilities. It was the weight of what it meant. Humanity’s freedom resting on her shoulders alone. What if she failed?

  And then again, what if she succeeded?

  “There could be a third option,” Mali said quietly, still hanging upside down.

  Cora’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”

  “The Gauntlet tests competitors in twelve puzzles. If the competitor successfully passes all of them, each tester, known as a Chief Assessor, inputs his approval into the algorithm at the end of the examination. It is a simple process: they approve you or they do not. The exact mechanism is similar to turning a key. Technically, one does not beat the Gauntlet by beating the puzzles. One’s success is registered when all four keys are turned.”

  Cora still looked at her blankly.

  “I am saying that you do not have to run the Gauntlet,” Mali explained. “You do not have to complete a single puzzle. You must only make the testers turn their keys. It is a . . .” She seemed to search for the word, her arms gesturing upside down. “Loophole.”

  “How’s she supposed to do that?” Lucky whispered. “These aren’t exactly creatures you can pull a gun on and make demands.”

  Mali smiled thinly. “You take control of their minds.”

  For a second, Lucky and Cora just stared at her. Cora started to laugh a little deliriously, wonder if she’d heard wrong. “Not even the Kindred can control other people’s minds.”

  “Anya can,” Mali said, and then corrected herself, “Anya could. I see—saw—her do it. If we free Anya, she can teach you. It is not a complex skill to learn, if one has already achieved mind-reading ability. It is merely a modification—a trick. She can teach it to you in a matter of days.”

  “Cheating is too risky,” Lucky said. “We’ll think of something else.”

  But Cora didn’t answer right away. She picked up a deck of cards Chicago had left behind and riffled through it anxiously. She hadn’t touched a deck in months—not since Bay Pines detention center—and the shuffle felt comfortably familiar.

  “She might be onto something,” Cora argued. “They already think we’re criminals. Maybe that’s what makes us smarter than them—we aren’t restrained by logic and rules. We can be clever. We can cheat. They can’t.” She held the deck tightly in her hands. “This way, we don’t have to trust Cassian. We can betray his trust this time. I’ll let him train me; I’ll let him submit me for registration, but there’s no way I’m going to actually run. The minute I stand up in front of the testers, I’ll cheat my way to freedom. For all of us.”

  Upside down, Mali smiled.

  In the darkness, Cora could feel Lucky’s gaze searing into her. She remembered the kiss they’d shared beneath the boughs of the weeping cherry tree. She had thought she could love him then, but that was before she knew the truth about his mother’s death and her father’s crimes. Before the cage had twisted him into someone who thought life in an elaborate zoo was paradise.

  “I still don’t like it,” Lucky said. “But I definitely don’t like the idea of you going through tests that could rupture your brain, or get you eaten by a lion, or mangled in some physical test.”

  She bit hard on the inside of her lip. She could smell the rankness of the cell block. Unwashed kids, sick animals, and, beneath it all, the tang of blood.

  All night, she toyed with the deck of cards like it was a rosary, whispering prayers and fears and hopes as she shuffled. At Bay Pines, she’d had a cellmate named Tonya who everyone called Queenie because of the queen of hearts tattoo on her shoulder. Queenie’s mom had been a sous-chef in Las Vegas, and her dad a card counter at the blackjack tables. He had taught Queenie and her brother to count cards and he’d put them on his team. It wasn’t illegal, at least not technically. But there had been an argument with another patron. Accusations of more serious cheating. A fight that resulted in two card dealers in the ICU and Queenie sent to juvie.

  But were you really cheating? Cora had asked.

  Queenie had snorted and tossed a jack of spades at her bed. Of course we were.

  Queenie taught her how to hide spare cards in the loose folds of her khaki uniform. It had started out of boredom, two insomniacs locked together in a cinder-block room until the seven-a.m. bell, but then, after two Venezuelan girls beat up Cora in the library, it became necessary. She needed protection, and for that she needed extra commissary credits, and to get them she needed to win at cards. Cheating had been dangerous then, and it would be even more dangerous now. But a thrill raced up Cora’s nerves every time she imagined taking the Gauntlet and twisting it on its head: proving humanity’s intelligence not through the Kindred’s system, but through her own.

  But that meant doing the one thing she’d sworn she’d never do, the thing she couldn’t stomach even the idea of.

  Trusting Cassian again.

  11

  Cora

  AFTER A FEW DAYS, Cora discovered why no one bothered with the shower: the water was ice-cold, and besides, who was there to stay clean for, when the low lights of the Hunt hid all the grime? She learned the hard way that she had to fight her way first thing in the morning to the feed room, or she’d get only crumbs. Already, not even a full week in, she had bruises from being elbowed by the others.

  “Take this.” Mali thrust a threadbare blanket at her, just before the clock clicked to Showtime. “You are cold last night. I hear you shivering.” She frowned and scrunched up her face. She was missing a tooth from where she’d gotten in a fight with Pika the night before over the only magazine, an old Seventeen with half the pages torn out. “I mean . . .” She scrunched her face up more. “You were cold. I heard y
ou.”

  Cora hugged the blanket close. “You’re doing good, Mali. Thanks for this.” Mali smiled, seeming pleased with her progress toward acting more human.

  The clock clicked to Showtime.

  “Already?” Makayla yawned from behind them. “I seriously could have used another hour of sleep.” She took a step, wincing on her bad knee.

  “You okay?” Cora said, nodding toward the bandage.

  Makayla gave a dark laugh. “What, my knee? Yeah. I did it to myself.” She stretched her leg out, wincing slightly. “You know that clingy guest, Roshian? He decided I’m his personal pet. He used to take me out on the savanna every day and ask me to run. Thought the exercise was good for me after I’d spent the night in a cramped cell, you know? Like he was doing me a favor. It got old fast, so I smashed my knee into the cell bars. Thought it might get me out of dancing too, but no such luck.”

  Cora’s own knee ached with phantom pain. “Couldn’t the Kindred heal you?”

  Makayla rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t expend the extra effort. Not on us.” She shouldered open the door.

  The low lights and chatter of the Hunt spilled out. It looked like afternoon already, the artificial sun lowering over the savanna horizon. A few Kindred guests were already there, waiting for their servers and entertainers. Cora’s eyes immediately scanned the room for Cassian, but he wasn’t there, and she felt slightly disappointed. He hadn’t returned since the first day. Lucky had once accused her of being captivated by their caretaker—and maybe he was right. She’d told herself after Cassian’s betrayal that any attraction was over. And yet, anger or love, it was still Cassian who consumed her thoughts.

  She followed Makayla toward the stage. One Kindred guest perched on a stool at the bar. Two danced stiffly together, even with no music. Another was seated at a table near the stage, his eyes sunken and dark. He stood as soon as they entered, as though he had been waiting.

  Roshian.

  He stepped toward Makayla, petting her head. “Has your knee improved, girl?”