The bone had to mean that they weren’t the first kids in the cage. There had been others.
But what had killed them?
To her left, palm branches hid one of the humming black windows. She shoved the leaves aside and pounded on the glass.
“I know you’re watching, Cassian! Show yourself!”
Her hair began to rise even before she’d finished the sentence. She hadn’t quite believed it would work, but then she saw his reflection behind her in the panel, and went still. Did she really want to know what had happened to the last group? It wasn’t too late to drop the bone, stop questioning, and accept their prison.
But then she looked at the jungle mud splashed on the hem of her dress. A dead girl’s dress. Any of them could be next, unless she did something about it.
She turned slowly on the Caretaker.
He cut such a striking figure against the jungle backdrop that it was hard not to be anything but awestruck. In person, he was always larger than she remembered. She couldn’t help but take in all the little details that made him real: the dent in his nose. The slight scar on his chin. The way his hand flexed at his side when he was struggling to control his emotions. For a moment she forgot about the bone, and Yasmine, and she was back in the menagerie, on the soft cushions around the babbling fountain. His lips had been just an inch from hers. “I’m not interested in learning about kisses from them,” he had said, and her anger had melted away, just as it did now. Had he read her thoughts about showing him what a kiss was?
Had he wanted her to show him?
She gasped, shocked by her own line of thought, unable to calm her rapid heartbeat as easily as he was able to. She squeezed the bone, refocusing herself.
“What the hell is this?”
Cassian didn’t blink. “That belonged to a previous inhabitant of this environment.”
“A dead inhabitant.”
The accusation seemed to slip off his smooth skin, and he cocked his head calmly. “Yes. We are able to synthetically replicate your world within these boundaries, but it requires a large supply of carbon. If a human dies, it is perfectly logical to recycle their carbon. Most is absorbed quickly; sometimes there are pieces that take longer.”
“This whole place is made of dead bodies?”
“We use a variety of carbon sources, not only human carcasses. I would place the number of bodies that have been absorbed into this environment at eighteen. This enclosure is relatively new. Your cohort is only the third one to occupy it.”
She squeezed the bone harder. “What happened to the other two groups?”
“The cohorts both failed. Each ward was terminated as a result of their own actions.”
Cora frowned, uncertain of what he meant.
“They murdered each other,” he clarified calmly, as though this information didn’t trouble him in the least. But it rocked Cora; her heart seized into a fist.
“Murdered?”
“We discovered that none of the previous inhabitants of this environment were adaptable to captivity,” he continued. “They grew irate. The males fought over the females. They started wandering alone instead of residing within the settlement areas. Eventually they killed each other.”
“You mean they went crazy.” It was a struggle to control her voice. “They couldn’t handle your mind games. The headaches. The optical illusions. You pushed them too far, messing around with time and space, matching random strangers together . . . what did you expect would happen?”
She was shouting now.
He folded his hands. “It will not happen again.”
“Why not?” She threw her arm in the direction of the jungle huts. “Leon’s halfway there already!”
For a second his mask slipped, and she saw indecision in his eyes. “The previous cohorts were selected solely for their desirable traits and their fertility. Unfortunately, their advanced age made them unable to adapt. That is why the six of you are all of an adolescent age. Old enough for procreation, but young enough to adapt. We spent considerable time reconfiguring the habitats to reflect the needs of your age bracket.”
If it wasn’t for the heavy fatigue in her limbs, Cora would want to slap him. The adults all turned violent, so they took teenagers instead. This explained the childlike nature of life in the cage: the candy store, the arcade, the prizes. As if they were six years old, not sixteen.
“Is that really what you think matters to us? Toys? Candy?” She sucked in a breath. “Is that really what you think matters to me?”
She clamped her mouth shut before her voice broke. She knew how desperate she sounded. The other Kindred viewed them as dolls they could toy with, but she had thought Cassian was different. She thought he saw her as a person, not a plaything.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
Cora closed her eyes, but the image of the bleached bone didn’t go away. Was she truly just a chore for him—something to keep alive and healthy? What about the times he’d bent the rules for her? What about the necklace with the charm of a dog? What about the stars?
She clutched her necklace so hard that the sharp charms bit into her palm. With her eyes closed, she could almost believe she was back home. She’d wake in the morning in her own bed, with the smell of brunch downstairs, and the soft hum of the morning news on the downstairs TV.
“Cora.”
Her eyes snapped open. He’d moved close enough that she tasted metal.
“I know that more matters to you. I know that you long for home. I know that you wish you had told your family more often that you loved them.” He reached for her neck. The Warden’s hand flashed in her head, his fingers against her windpipe. But Cassian’s hand didn’t tighten around her throat; it stopped on the charm necklace. His bare fingers touched it gently, almost reverently, and that nameless electricity sparked around the edges of her throat.
“How long were you watching me on Earth?” she whispered.
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“To know you, and what you are capable of. There is more to you than the other wards know. Boy Two cares for you, but he doesn’t know you. Not as well as I do.” His fingers curled around the charms. Their bodies were very nearly touching. Her eyes sank closed as his breath whispered against her ear.
“A smile can hide so much. A smile can be a lie.” His voice rose and fell oddly. With a start, she realized he was trying to sing—but his voice was rusty and unpracticed; he must never have sung before. It was one of the songs she had written after the bomb threat at her dad’s political rally.
Heat radiated from Cassian’s hand, holding on to the necklace, holding on to her.
“A smile can make me want to scream, and leave all this behind.”
He was singing her words, which she’d never shared with anyone—not even Charlie. Words she’d used to make sense of a life she didn’t fit into anymore. About a little girl who was supposed to spend her whole life smiling, even when she was sad, or scared, or went to prison for a crime she didn’t commit.
Her throat burned. She’d been holding her breath. It caught up with her all at once, and she sucked in air. Her chest grazed against his; electricity pulsed and the bone knocked against her leg. The bone. She’d forgotten the femur clutched in her hand.
She stepped back, and he released her necklace, and the spell was broken.
“Cora—”
“Get away from me.” Her voice was a knife. “You’re a liar. We aren’t safe here at all. If you don’t kill us first, then we’ll end up killing each other.”
He looked at her like she’d slapped him. His hand flexed at his side, once, twice, and he opened his mouth as though to plead with her. But then he straightened, and the mask returned.
“Your safety is of utmost importance to us. The stock algorithm accurately predicts—”
“Did the stock algorithm predict what happened with the last groups?”
He paused. “There is always a margin of error.”
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Margin of error, she thought. Such a tidy way to explain eighteen dead bodies.
The sun was merciless. The mud tried to swallow her feet. Fear and anger and exhaustion seized her body in a tight fist, and yet the worst of all of it was the way his black eyes shifted to her, always back to her, as though she was different. His pet.
I am different, she realized. I’m the only one sane enough to know we’re in danger.
“I will personally ensure the safety of everyone in this environment,” Cassian repeated more insistently. “We simply require you to follow a set of basic rules.” He leaned close, and all that emotion came rushing back. He could be tender; he could be cruel too. “It has been twenty-one days, Cora. You have until sunset.”
With another swell in pressure, he was gone.
Cora sprinted away from the jungle. The ocean taunted her with each crashing wave that moved too slowly, reminding her that nothing was real, not this place, not Cassian’s promise that they were all safe.
This is how it begins. She’d been a fool to think she could ever leave the others behind. They would die without her there to keep them sane, and the sand would swallow their bones.
She reached town just as the artificial sun dropped another level. She slowed to a walk. The only sound was the jukebox music and the beeping arcade games. No insects trilling, no barking dogs, no traffic or hum of electricity, but fears roared in her head.
Ahead, sitting on the porch swing, were Lucky and Nok. She ran for them, about to call out, but then slowed. Nok wore a look Cora had never seen before. She wasn’t hiding behind her pink stripe of hair. She was facing Lucky, one hand on his thigh, purring into his ear.
She stopped abruptly.
Back in the jungle, Nok’s panties had been tangled in Leon’s sheets. Now she had her hands on Lucky. Cora dropped to her knees and crawled closer, through the marigolds.
As much as Cora wanted to trust her, Nok was hiding things.
It was time to find out what.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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41
Cora
CORA CROUCHED IN THE marigolds, bone clutched in her hand, as she made out Nok and Lucky’s voices.
“I can’t stop thinking about her.” Lucky’s voice was broken.
“Poor Lucky,” Nok cooed. “Left all alone.” Cora’s heart started pounding. They were talking about her. “It isn’t you. She’s delusional. She didn’t even believe us when we told her that Earth was gone. You can’t reason with someone like that. She and Leon—they’ve lost it, yeah? They weren’t meant for captivity.”
“So what am I supposed to do? It’s been twenty-one days.”
Cora clamped a hand over her mouth, silencing her breath. There was only the sound of the porch swing chains creaking. Then Nok sighed.
“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. At some point you have to look out for yourself.”
“You don’t understand, Nok. I’ve hurt her before. I owe her this.”
“You’ve done everything for her. If she cared about you in return, she’d sleep with you, to keep you from being removed.”
Cora could only make out their shadows on the wall; Nok’s hand grazed Lucky’s cheek as she leaned in to him. “Let me help you,” Nok whispered. “I don’t want you to be removed, Lucky.”
As if her offer wasn’t clear enough, her shadow reached up to ruffle his hair seductively. There was a long pause when Cora’s head filled with terrible images of Nok and Lucky making love in front of a humming black window. She wasn’t sure if she was jealous, or just shocked. It felt so out of character for Nok, like a script Nok had been taught to say.
“You might even enjoy it, yeah?” Nok teased.
Cora’s hand tightened over the bone nearly hard enough to snap it. Lucky was silent a breath too long, and Cora’s heart churned in her throat. She knew Nok wasn’t attracted to Leon or Lucky, so what did she hope to gain by sleeping with them?
It’s a man’s world, Nok had whispered to herself, in bed the first night. Controlling men is the only way to survive.
“Come on, Lucky. To save yourself.”
Before he could answer, the sun faded completely and the street lights came on, the diner sign flickered to life, and the jukebox cranked up.
A stranger in my own life, a ghost behind my smile . . .
The song floated on the air, in one ear and out the other, making Cora’s head spin. Someone in the distance called Lucky’s name, and Cora, still crouched in the marigolds, looked over her shoulder to see who it was.
Rolf was coming back from the farm with a crate load of peaches, and peach juice dripping down his chin to stain the front of his shirt. At the same time, Mali came down the drugstore steps, looking as cold and cryptic as always, and the porch swing creaked as Lucky stood. He and Nok descended the stairs, just a hair from where she was crouched.
They all greeted each other and chatted like this wasn’t a cage in an alien space station, but old friends crossing paths back home. Nok threw her arms around Rolf’s neck and kissed his cheek and laughed with the others over some joke Cora wasn’t privy to.
Cora pushed to her feet shakily. Crazy. They were all going crazy. She had to warn them what had happened to the last group. She came around the side of the house, bone held high.
Lucky’s smile faded when he saw her. He swallowed, hard.
“Cora.”
The last time she’d seen him, he’d insisted on believing that Earth was gone, even despite her evidence. He’d told her that if she wanted to keep looking for a way home, she was on her own. Now he picked lint out of the pocket of his leather jacket, pulling on a loose string, avoiding her gaze.
“Lucky, we need to talk—”
“Well, decided to join us again?” Rolf set down the crate of peaches roughly. His left eye twitched. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the guitar, would you?” His words were gnashing teeth.
She squeezed the femur. Not a single one of them had even glanced at it. “Listen. I found this bone. The Caretaker—”
“Because it’s funny,” Rolf continued, in a sharp tone that was anything but entertained, “but we found some splintered wood and a guitar pick in Lucky’s room. Then outside of the house, the mulch was disturbed, like someone was burying something. When we dug it up, we found the broken guitar. Like someone intentionally destroyed it. And there’s only one person who has a history of trying to sabotage us. You.”
Sweat broke out on her brow. The guitar? God, why did they care about a toy when she was clutching a human bone? “Listen—”
“Is that true, Cora?” Lucky’s brow was knitted with concern. He flexed his hand, but the knuckles didn’t pop this time.
She knew the guitar had meant a lot to him. Music meant the world to her too, but it was nothing compared to going home.
“I just . . . I need to tell you something.”
Nok took her free hand gently, like guiding the elderly. “Right after dinner, yeah? They’ve started feeding us again, and it’s better than ever. You won’t try to steal our food anymore, right?”
Cora stumbled forward, because she didn’t know what else to do. She followed the others into the diner in a daze. The light seemed particularly hazy, and Lucky accidentally knocked into the pendant lamp, sending it swinging back and forth, back and forth, throwing too-bright light onto Rolf’s face, still dripping with peach juice, and then Nok’s grinning face stained with bright red candy, making them all look diabolical in the harsh light.
The others dug into their trays of food like animals. Mali was quiet. She didn’t laugh with them or join in the conversation, but they seemed to accept her because she wanted the same thing as they did—to be obliviously happy here forever.
Lucky pushed her chair out with his foot. “I know it’s been tough on you,” he said as she sank, d
azed, into the empty chair opposite him. His hand reached over to cover hers, his eyes soft and brown. “But all our secrets are on the table now. I know it’ll take time to work through it all, but at least we’re here together.” He leaned in to brush his lips over her cheekbone, and she flinched at the sudden smell of wet grass. “I want to see you smile again.”
Smile? Smile? She was holding a dead person’s femur.
A cold feeling spread between her shoulder blades, but it wasn’t coming from the black window. Nok was watching her from the other table, with narrowed eyes that could slice her in half. Her eyes darted between Cora and Lucky as she bit into a peach.
No, Cora thought to herself. Nok didn’t used to be like this. Cora could still remember the day the Caretaker came, and Nok squeezing her hand. What had changed her?
Nok sank her teeth into the peach again. Her brown eyes fixated on Lucky, and how his whole body was angled away from her as he spoke to Cora. It wasn’t exactly jealousy in her eyes; more like fear. Widened pupils and a clenched jaw that spoke of desperation.
Nok needed Lucky for something, Cora realized.
Rolf wrapped an arm around Nok, scooting his chair closer, as if he’d noticed too. He whispered a few words in her ear that she didn’t seem to hear. He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and held it up in front of her face. Like a cat, easily distracted, she pounced on the candy and tore open the wrapper.
Rolf smiled.
Rolf knew exactly how to manipulate her, just like the Kindred: a rush of sugar and bright colors to momentarily distract her. Maybe Rolf had been learning from the Kindred all along, studying the ways they manipulated the captives, and studying the captives’ reactions. He’d always had the mind of a scientist. Now he had Nok as his own personal lab rat to manipulate and control.
Cora’s hand suddenly went slack on the bone. Lab rats. Rodents. Moles. Ever since the first day, Rolf had insisted that the Kindred would plant a mole among them to help bend the group to their will from the inside. Cora had assumed that Mali was the mole, and yet Rolf had sided with the Kindred right from the start.
Cora played back all the things Rolf had said: they shouldn’t try to escape. That life in the cage was actually desirable. A paradise, even. He had used science and human nature to justify his arguments, and it had sounded so believable.