The Hunt

by Megan Shepherd

  Makayla bent down to massage her knee—with an exaggerated wince. “I think I need to stay off it another few days at least. A real shame.”

  Roshian looked displeased. He picked at his human clothes, blinking a little fast with black eyes that were only slightly cleared at the edges. He was uncloaked, Cora knew. All the Kindred, even the hostess, were uncloaked in the menageries. If he hadn’t been, he’d have sensed Makayla’s hatred of him in a second.

  His eyes shifted to Cora.

  “You.” His voice was different from the other Kindred’s. They tended to act a little loopy when they were uncloaked, almost like their flood of emotions made them drunk, but Roshian seemed completely in control. “You are new, girl.”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Such unusual hair,” he mused. He wrapped a curl around his finger, running his thumb over the strands delicately. “Blond hair can catch quite a price on the trading floor. The Axion believe consuming parts of the lesser species gives them strength. Your hair would be quite a trophy.” He spoke so casually, comparing her hair to the heads of wild game that hunters displayed on their walls. Her stomach turned at the thought.

  “You must be eager to stretch your legs,” he continued. “I could take you to the savanna, where you could run. I would like to see how fast you are.”

  “Um . . .” She glanced at Makayla, who only gave a slight shrug, as though to say, Good luck. Makayla signaled to Dane to put on some music, and she began leading dancing couples in stiff swaying motions around the lodge. Roshian’s eyes slid to the nearest dancing couple, and Cora prayed he wasn’t going to ask her to dance.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the main door open. She caught sight of a familiar figure over Roshian’s shoulder.

  “Cassian! I mean . . . it’s the Warden. He just arrived and I promised him a . . . a dance.” She awkwardly managed to extract her hair from Roshian’s hand. “Sorry.”

  She hurried toward Cassian, fighting the urge to wipe her hair where Roshian had touched it. Cassian, dressed in a charcoal suit with the jacket slung over one elbow, looked perplexed at her sudden enthusiasm to see him, particularly when she rested her hands on his shoulders.

  “Dance with me,” she hissed.

  His expression grew even more perplexed, but he set down his jacket and stepped closer. Canned music pumped out of the speakers behind the bar, something with a clarinet and a woman’s languorous voice.

  “I had to get away from Roshian,” she whispered. “He seriously creeps me out. Honestly, this whole place does. It’s—”

  “Wait.” He nodded toward the nearest pair of dancers, who were only two tables away, and then pressed a hand to the small of her back, guiding her in the dance closer to the billowing curtains of the veranda, until they were well out of earshot.

  “It’s freezing at night,” Cora continued. “There isn’t enough food. And these guests treat us like slaves, unless they like us, and then it’s even worse.”

  Cassian raised an eyebrow. “I told you this place would give you much to consider. Have you changed your mind, then?”

  She went silent as the dance continued, their feet quietly chasing each other’s, his hand warm against her back. Her plan with Mali and Lucky was still fresh in her mind, as was Mali’s warning that running the Gauntlet puzzles could make her go insane. No, she would prove humanity’s intelligence in a safer way—her way—by cheating. But in order to do that, she still needed Cassian to get her in front of the Gauntlet testers.

  “Cora?” he prompted.

  They were in the open on the veranda now. Alone. She tried to calm her heartbeat. It unnerved her to see him like this, in human clothes, with almost-normal eyes, and such fluid movements as he guided her around the veranda.

  “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Tell me what the perceptive training would involve.”

  “Sessions between you and me here in the lodge, and practice on your own.” He was so close that just a whisper brushed her ear. “In the past, the Gauntlet’s perceptive puzzles have primarily tested candidates on telekinesis, such as rearranging floor tiles to spell words with only one’s mind, or making objects levitate into a basket. If you can achieve levitation of a medium-sized object twelve inches in the air for thirty sustained seconds, I believe you will have a chance of passing whichever test they give you. I can teach you to do that. But, as time is limited, we will have to work diligently and, of course, secretly.”

  He nodded toward the guests visible through the veranda doors. “There are Council members in there even as we speak. They cannot learn of what we are doing.”

  Her palms were sweating, leaving dark marks on his shirt. “Why do they even care? I thought the Gauntlet’s whole purpose was to give lesser species a chance to prove our intelligence. You even said humans have run it before.”

  “Some have, yes.”

  “And did their participation have to be so secretive?”

  “No.” He swung her around, so her back was to the lodge. “The difference is, no previous human candidates had a chance of succeeding until now. The Council is not interested in stopping humans from running the Gauntlet. But they are interested in stopping humans from beating it.”

  “What are they so afraid of?” she asked.

  “The Council has a vested interest in keeping humanity a lesser species. Their official stance is that humans are lesser because you primarily act on emotions, not logic. You expend your resources unsustainably. You incite war. If you were to gain intelligent status, you might damage the delicate system of universal governance we currently have.”

  “And unofficially?”

  He glanced toward the veranda doors. “If you had kept a species caged for centuries, and then suddenly gave them the key, along with access to lawmaking and transportation and weaponry, wouldn’t you fear what they would do?”

  He let her go, abruptly, and reached into his pocket. He took out a pair of dice, holding them up to the sunlight. “That is why they cannot know what you are capable of. Not yet.”

  Her palms felt empty without the solidity of his shoulders beneath them. The dice looked different from the others that were scattered around the lodge. The dots on these dice glowed with a faint blue light.

  “I have fitted these dice with amplifiers like the ones we use to control the doors. They make telekinesis easier, especially during training. And this way, if anyone happens to observe us, it will appear we are simply playing tabletop games.”

  He set the dice on a table just inside the veranda doors, next to a basket of old-fashioned metal jacks and dominoes.

  “And why do you care?” she asked more quietly. “This is our battle, not yours.” She realized, as she spoke the words, she was actually curious.

  He pressed a hand against her back again, drawing her once more into the charade of dancing. He whispered, “Was there nothing you cared about outside of yourself, on Earth? No greater cause?”

  She pulled back far enough to level a stare at him. “I was busy enough keeping myself alive in juvie.”

  “Then let us look at your brother, Charlie, for example. I’ve read from your memories of him that ever since he was five years old he donated half his allowance to save polar bears in the Arctic. Why? It makes no logical sense. He never met a polar bear. If he had, it probably would have killed him. He did it because he did not want to live in a world without a diversity of life. He did it because, even at that young age, he knew it was the right thing to do.” He led her farther from the lodge, out toward the edge of the veranda where the wind off the savanna ruffled her hair.

  “So humanity is your polar bear?”

  “It goes far beyond that. Unlike Charlie with his bears, I have met humans. I have seen exactly what the universe would lose without your species. And I know what it feels like, personally, to be powerless. To have others judge you based on false perceptions. I was in a low weight and height percentile when I was a youth. I was constantly overlooked. No one predicted my potent
ial, not even the algorithm. That is why I first started to work with humans, when I was the age for a work assignment.”

  She couldn’t help but slide a hand to the muscles beneath his shirt. “I have a hard time believing you were ever small.”

  He gave the trace of a smile. “I grew bigger.” He drew her an inch closer. “And now I do have power. I am not overlooked any longer. And soon, you will not be either.” His eyes searched hers. She still wasn’t used to seeing him like this—with eyes that were cloudy, but had irises flecked with color.

  She stepped faster and faster in the dance, lies mixing with truths until she wasn’t sure which was which. “I trusted you,” she confessed. “I cared about you. You stood in that ocean and told me you’d help us escape, when all the while you had guards stationed to capture us. I’d have to be a fool to trust you again.”

  Were they really spinning as fast as it seemed? His face remained placid, his steps so calm and easy.

  “Do not let my mistakes stop you from achieving something important. I believe in you—in all humans. Your species has the capacity for such rich emotions; selfishness and greed, yes, but also truth and forgiveness and sacrifice. When you believe in a cause, nothing can stop you. If anyone deserves to be the fifth intelligent species, it is you.”

  She looked away. His words were making her feel things she didn’t want to. She was here to lie, after all. Eventually, to betray him.

  He drew her closer still. “I felt you inside my head, Cora. You read my thoughts. And you liked the power that came with that. You think you’re unnatural, but you aren’t. You’re exceptional.”

  The sun felt as though it was burning even brighter. The veranda seemed to be swimming. She let go of him abruptly and clamped a hand on the nearest table to steady herself.

  His shadow was cast next to her. “It killed me to betray you,” he whispered. “The last thing I wanted was to push you away. I wanted to hold you close, like we were dancing just now, feeling your arms around me—”

  “Stop,” she whispered.

  His breath brushed her cheek. “I don’t have to be your enemy.”

  She gripped the edge of the table hard. Somehow this had all gotten out of control. The sun seemed to grow brighter until it was blinding.

  “I understand you,” he continued. “And I want you to understand me. I want you to stay awake at night thinking about me again, like you used to. It was so difficult not to go to you, those nights, and answer every question you had, and ask you a thousand of my own.”

  She remembered those nights in the cage. Nok would be snoring at her side, the boys asleep on the floor and Lucky downstairs keeping watch, and Cora would stare at the black window, wondering about the creature behind it with the black eyes, more curious than she should have been.

  “Say yes,” he whispered. “We can change the world, you and I.”

  With her eyes closed, she could almost believe he wasn’t Kindred at all. Just a young man whispering into her ear on a warm summer day. A rush of feeling found a crack in her head and flooded into her heart. Conflicting emotions pushed against each other in her chest, as her vision went blurry.

  “Yes,” she whispered. It had been the plan all along—agree to work with him, only to betray him later. And yet this didn’t feel like a lie.

  He brushed her cheek.

  That spark.

  Her eyes snapped open at the same time something tugged in her mind. No. She looked through the curtains at the other dancers, Makayla and Roshian, Jenny and another Kindred. Cassian was no different. This was a man who’d betrayed her. A creature who had kidnapped her.

  Her vision went white with anger.

  Suddenly Cassian let out a hiss and jerked away. Cora jolted, blinking hard, trying to calm down the rush of fury running through her. When her vision finally cleared, she saw him clutching his left hand. Blood seeped from his palm.

  She blinked, confused.

  A spiky metal jack flashed in the sunlight. One of the jack’s sharp points was embedded deep in his metallic skin—skin that was nearly impossible to pierce.

  “Why did you stab yourself?” she blurted out, her head still throbbing.

  “I didn’t.” He looked at her carefully. “You did. You were so upset that . . . it doesn’t matter why. What matters is that you moved it with your mind.”

  She stared at the welling blood in his palm. She’d wanted to hurt him, as he’d hurt her. She’d wanted him to feel pain—and he had.

  She reached for a curtain to steady herself. This wasn’t like when she had used her abilities before. This wasn’t a pleasant sensation of power, but pain and dizziness and bile rising in her throat. “I . . . need . . . to sit down.”

  Her breath started to come too fast. For weeks she’d been trying to capture this sensation again, but now it was too much, too fast, too sudden. It had felt right, before, but now it felt dangerous. She shoved the curtains away, stumbling into the lodge. Makayla stopped dancing with Roshian. Dane looked up from the bar.

  Everyone’s eyes went to the dark blood dripping slowly from Cassian’s hand.

  She looked around desperately.

  The entrance was sealed. There was nowhere to go. From one of the lounge tables, the Council members and Fian watched her intently, their card game forgotten.

  Oh god. Not now. Not while they’re watching.

  Her head ached. She concentrated on not moving anything else, not making the lights flicker, not doing anything to give herself away in front of them. More blood dripped on the floor. Bright red.

  She touched her nose and her fingers came away wet.

  Then she crumpled to the ground.

  12

  Leon

  LEON STUDIED THE MAP that Bonebreak had scribbled on the torn-out page of a paperback novel. The lines were as shaky as the creature’s voice behind the mask, jerking and twisting and sometimes ending randomly, supposedly showing him the way safely through the supply tunnels from Bonebreak’s shop to the sector that housed the Axion delegates.

  Deliver this provision pack to them, Bonebreak had said, handing Leon a damp wrapped package. And don’t open it.

  Well, no danger there. From the faintly rotting smell emanating from the package, Leon was the opposite of curious to know what was inside. He’d heard rumors of the Axion’s penchant for body parts—pretty depraved beliefs for a supposedly highly evolved species.

  The air in the tunnels was so thin his lungs ached. He wheezed hard and shoved the map in his back pocket, then crawled down the tunnel, following a track that blinked with faint lights. His left shoulder still ached from where they’d sewn on that rubbery shielding to brand him as one of them.

  Bottom-feeders, he thought. This kind of sneaking-around-in-ducts shit was meant for someone small, like Rolf. Leon was as cumbersome as a rhino and about as loud and—

  He stopped.

  Ahead, a thin line near the bottom of the tunnel shimmered like sparkly fishing wire. He inched closer and adjusted the headlamp Bonebreak had given him. It was attached to the upper half of a Mosca mask, and it smelled like death. The light shone on the shimmering wire. Not wire, exactly. It was clearly broken in places, more like a hologram or laser beam catching the chalky air.

  It had to be one of the cleaner traps Bonebreak had warned him about. Trip it, and he’d combust in a ball of fire.

  Slowly, he eased a leg over the trap, his muscles shaking. If only there were more air to breathe. As it was, he felt so light-headed. Pull yourself together, he ordered himself, easing one hand over the trap, then the other. A bead of sweat rolled off his forehead and fell toward the trap.

  He cringed, bracing for an explosion.

  But the drip landed a fraction of an inch to the left. Dizzy with relief, he eased his other leg over, and then collapsed against the tunnel wall, breathing hard.

  “Try to clean me,” he muttered. “You can clean my ass, is what you can clean.” He dug in his pocket for a shard of chalk and marked th
e wall on either side of the trap with a cartoon bomb. He shone the headlight to admire his artwork.

  Not bad.

  After more crawling, and two more cleaner traps that he marked with pictures, he reached a point where the tunnel changed to roughly hewn rock, though the bluelight track continued on unabated. The surface was dusty against his hands. Ahead, the tunnel led past a handful of small metal doors.

  “Well, shit. This isn’t right.”

  He pulled out Bonebreak’s map but didn’t see anything that indicated little doorways in a row. The map was useless. Bonebreak was probably trying to lead him straight to his death.

  A whirring sound made him look over his shoulder. A square package was coming down the tunnel, guided by the bluelight, just high enough off the ground so it wouldn’t trigger any cleaner traps. He knew the Kindred had all kinds of crazy powers, but seeing a floating box hurtling toward him was still too weird to process, until he realized the tunnel was so tight that there wasn’t enough room for the package and for him. He crawled faster, sweeping the headlight left and right to search for any of the nearly invisible traps. He finally reached the indentation for the first small doorway and threw himself into it just as the package hurtled by.

  He pressed his back against the door, waiting for the package to pass. Okay, hurtled might have been an exaggeration. The package still hadn’t even passed by yet. FedEx was faster than this.

  He settled back against the doorway to wait, and sniffed the thin air. Was that . . . horse shit? And were those . . . voices? Yeah, voices. Coming from behind the door. He pressed his ear against the crack. One voice was masculine and almost familiar. Leon made out a single word.

  Zebra.

  Zebra? Well, why not. By now he was used to weird shit. At least the voices were speaking English. He sniffed again, and it smelled stronger. He pressed his ear against the door, trying to muffle the sound of his wheezing.

  “I’ll put the zebra back in its cell,” the voice said. “Mali needed your help anyway.”

  Leon’s hands started shaking. He recognized the voice now. It was Lucky. And Mali must be close too. Mali, the crazy girl with stringy braids and ninja moves who, somehow, though he’d never have imagined it in a billion years, he actually kinda liked. Liked liked. He’d refused to acknowledge it in the cage, but that was what happened when you had weeks with no one to talk to but Mosca: You accepted tough things about yourself, like an undeniable attraction to a weirdo.