The Cage (The Cage #1)(30)
Author: Megan Shepherd

“The Kindred cannot perceive your mind unless they also have a calm mind. If they are uncloaked, they cannot read anything. But it is very difficult to make them uncloak. They practice cloaking since they are very young.”

“Then what’s the third way?”

Mali pinched Cora’s arm. She yelped and jerked her arm back.

“Pain,” Mali said. “It is so strong that it hides other thoughts.”

Cora clutched the angry red spot forming on her arm. “You’ve been pinching yourself this whole time. I thought you were just crazy.”

Mali’s head wobbled in her equivalent of a shrug. She held out her hand flat. “Now. Our agreement.”

Cora forced herself not to flinch away from Mali’s scarred fingers. It went against her every instinct to hand over a piece of herself, with her DNA, to a girl who was so cozy with their captors. “What are you going to do with it?”

Mali’s face was very serious, and then her lips dipped into a smile—just for a second—and she looked young and friendly for once.

“I see why you are his favorite,” Mali said, ignoring her question. “I think at first it is just the color of your hair but it is more. You are determined. You have a sharp mind. That cannot help but intrigue him.”

“Intrigue . . . who?” Lucky asked.

A shiver ran down Cora’s back. She knew exactly who Mali was talking about. In her dream, he’d been an angel. The most beautiful face she’d ever seen, a body more powerful even than Leon’s. So powerful it was terrifying.

Cora’s hand unconsciously drifted to the tangled blond strands around her shoulders. The jukebox song kept playing, over and over. Lucky looked between Cora and the black window like he was missing something.

“Wait,” he said. “You mean the Caretaker? Is that why you get more tokens than the rest of us—you’re his favorite?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Cora yanked on her hair, ripping a dozen strands. She hissed at the sting of pain but passed the hair to Mali, who examined it, then carefully deposited it in the upper pocket of Rolf’s military jacket.

“You can just . . . go ahead and keep that jacket,” Rolf said from across the room.

Mali sauntered to the doorway like nothing had happened. Cora repeated Mali’s words to herself: three ways to block their thoughts. Through meditation, through pain, and when the Kindred were uncloaked. In the black window, a single shadow moved slowly to the left. Cora pressed a hand against her throbbing scalp. It hurt so badly that whoever was watching now wouldn’t hear a thing inside her head.

She stood on tiptoes to whisper in Lucky’s ear.

“I don’t care how much Mali knows about them. I don’t trust her. And I want out of here before we figure out why they’ve really taken us. So we need to find the exit. Starting in the grasslands, right now.”

WHEN CORA HAD BEEN fourteen, her parents had taken her and Charlie to the Serengeti on a safari to see rhinos lazing in the sun and giraffes bending to drink from a watering hole. Now, as she and Lucky gazed out over the grasslands rippling with waist-high grass, goose bumps rose on her arms. It was beautiful, and desolate, and monotonous, just as the Serengeti had been. A near-perfect reproduction in miniature. The only difference was, now she and Lucky were the animals being watched.

“Sometimes I forget it’s all fake,” Lucky said.

There was a slight catch to his voice. Cora felt it too—that there was something so wrong, but also beautiful, about each habitat. As much as she might have hated the Kindred, she couldn’t deny that they were masters at what they did.

“Over there.” She pointed toward a hill. A few scattered trees dotted the landscape, along with a long, low building that looked like a rural Kenyan school.

They started through the tall grass. The wind was strong, coming in waves like the seas. As it bent the grass, it made a hollow sound, like whistling. It made Cora think of a song she’d once written, about how the fences at Fox Run, their gated community, hadn’t been that different from the ones at Bay Pines. Even the names weren’t that different: both were named after the wildlife that had been destroyed for the buildings to be built.

The school door didn’t open when Lucky tugged on it. While he circled the building, Cora examined a few uneven bricks, the first imperfections she’d seen.

“Nothing.” Lucky came around the corner and leaned against the building, frustrated.

A low chime came from the school’s bell tower.

He jerked up, head craned toward the tower. “Did you hear that bell? All I did was lean against a brick. If that’s all there is to the puzzle, they must think we’re idiots.” He pressed the same brick.

The low chime rang again. Cora’s body felt weary and her head foggy, but she forced herself to concentrate. She pressed two different bricks, and two higher-pitched chimes rang. Behind her, the wind whistled harder through the grass.

Lucky started pushing every brick in sight, but no tokens came. Finally he kicked the schoolhouse in frustration.

“Wait.” Cora grabbed his arm. “Listen.”

She closed her eyes, letting the wind wash over her. The notes began to take form, hollow and windy. It was three notes, repeated again and again. She pressed different bricks until she was able to match the exact pitch of the notes.

Tokens rained out of a slot in the school’s door, too many to catch at once.

Lucky frowned. “There must be, I don’t know, thirty tokens here. They just keep giving you more.” There was hesitation in his voice. “I guess you really are the Caretaker’s favorite.”

Before, in the ropes course, he had joked about being jealous of her extra attention. He wasn’t joking now.

“I don’t know what Mali meant by that. She’s crazy.”

But Lucky kept studying the tokens.

“You’ve been alone with him twice now.” There was a strange pitch to his voice. “On the first day when you beamed away with him, and then when he kept you behind during the medical test. Is there anything you haven’t told me? Something he said or . . . did?”

For a flash, she was back in the med room with the Caretaker’s body pressed against her, starlight radiating from the walls. She swallowed. “I told you everything. I don’t know why I get more tokens, Lucky. I swear.”

The wind picked up again, ruffling his hair. He was so handsome that it made her heart unsteady—but the look in his eyes was dangerous. Rolf had said that lab rats sense when things were unfair. Rolf had already snapped at her a few times. Even Nok had kept her distance. Why would the Kindred want them to turn on each other? Or rather, turn on her?