The Cage (The Cage #1)(47)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Nok crouched beside him. Her fingers were so soft against his head that he wanted to lean his head into her. His mother had had soft hands too.

He remembered her eyes meeting his as the car careened out of control.

Luciano.

And now even her grave was gone. But so was her murderer. Lucky might not have pulled the trigger that day on the airfield, but Senator Mason was dead.

Lucky lived. And Cora lived.

“Poor Lucky,” Nok said, brushing aside his hair. “I know it’s hard. I was upset too, but there’s nothing we can do but be thankful we weren’t there when it happened.”

Rolf crouched over them, casting a cold shadow. “She’s right, you know. You have to think about this logically, Lucky. Put aside your emotions. The Kindred knew what was going to happen to Earth and picked us, out of everyone, to survive. There’s only the six of us and a few thousand humans scattered throughout the Kindred world. The Kindred were telling the truth all along. The rules aren’t there to be cruel. They’re there to save humanity.” He rested a hand on Lucky’s back. “We have a duty to keep ourselves healthy and keep our species going.”

Lucky felt as though his head was splitting in two. The house in Roanoke he grew up in, with the patch of forest behind it. The strip mall where he used to skateboard. The school where he’d only had two months left to graduation. The army recruiting center. Everyone, and everything—gone.

“We were our own enemy,” Rolf pressed. “Humans. We were so cruel to each other, and to our planet. We didn’t deserve what we had. Look at Cora—she’s sabotaging us, and herself as well. That’s human nature.”

Lucky looked between Nok and Rolf. Neither had spoken much about their pasts, but he could see in their eyes that they had always been outsiders on Earth, just like him. Rolf’s twitching and Nok’s hiding behind her pink streak of hair. The same for Leon, who faced the entire world like it was out to get him. The same for Cora, who’d been wronged by her own father—and by him.

Maybe the Kindred were right to take me.

Maybe he belonged in a cage more than he ever did on Earth. Maybe they all did.

His face was wet, through from tears or sweat or spray from the creek, he wasn’t sure. He sat up. His knuckles popped from the old accident scars. He rubbed the aching joints.

Rolf’s fingers were twitching again. “The Kindred saved our lives. They fixed Nok’s asthma, and my poor vision. I bet they even healed that hand you keep saying gives you trouble. Try it. Nok, give him the guitar.”

“I told you, I can’t play anymore.”

“Just try. Let this be your proof. Earth ruined your hand and took away your music, and the Kindred gave them back to you.”

Lucky dragged a hand over his face. Now that he really thought about it, his joints didn’t actually feel that stiff. Had cracking his knuckles just been an old habit?

“Give me the guitar.”

“You aren’t still planning on attacking the Caretaker with the guitar strings, yeah?” Nok asked.

“Just give me the goddamn guitar.”

Nok handed it over. For a moment, Lucky cradled the wood in his hands. He’d missed the feel of wood. Everything in the cage, even if it looked real, had a synthetic quality. Nothing was quite the right weight or texture, but this was. The wood slipped into his hands like an old friend. The strings were taut.

For a brief second, everything hit him again: they were the only ones left.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He struck one note, then two. He hadn’t played at all since the accident. Punching the hospital wall had damaged his fingers too badly for fine dexterity. Now, though, the joints didn’t pop or grind. His tendons moved fluidly. Sound came out that tore his heart in two all over again. He played for the hand that the Kindred had miraculously fixed, and he played for a lost world, and he played for a girl who, wherever she was, didn’t even know that they would never go home again.

33

Cora

AFTER LEAVING THE KINDRED marketplace, the hallway Cassian led Cora down was not glinting with starlight like the ones they had left behind. It was narrow, with a low ceiling and murky light coming from the hairline cracks in the floor. These wound like an animal den, twisting and dank and unpredictable. She grazed the walls with a hand that felt too heavy and came away with a chalky dust.

“We are in the deepest section of the aggregate station. These tunnels are dug out of rock. Kindred stations are never permanent; they last one or two hundred human years at the most. We are a transient species. We locate a sizable asteroid and build our stations around it, ship by ship, interlocking until we have an entire functioning system with residential, governmental, commercial, and recreational sectors. When it is time to move on, we merely reverse the interlocking and go our separate ways.”

They passed the shadows of more Kindred. Unlike the ones in the market, these weren’t stiff, but slinking, loose, skittering like animals. Uncloaked.

She inched closer to Cassian.

They rounded a corner. At the end of the next hallway, under an island of light, a Kindred girl with loose black hair down to her waist stood before a node of four doorways. She was dressed in a light green gown that was elegant and flowing, almost humanlike. So different from the Kindred in the market, who all wore cerulean uniforms or white robes. The girl leaned on the podium and gave an unexpected yawn. The movement was so jarringly fluid—so uncloaked–that Cora jumped.

“Uncloaking is necessary for our well-being,” Cassian explained as they approached. “We abhor the lesser emotions—jealousy, lust, fear—and yet to be alive is to experience such states. There is no escaping them, only delaying them until an appropriate time and place. That is why we have these menageries, where Kindred can go for emotional leave.”

“What happens in a menagerie?” She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

“Anything to express or enhance emotion. Games of chance. Intoxicants. Brothels—though not here. Some menageries allow Kindred to do virtually whatever they want with the lesser species, and humans are a particular favorite because, as you have noted, we are quite similar physically.”

His black eyes settled on her, and she looked away. “When you rescued Mali, was she in a brothel?”

“No. She was part of a fight ring with three other human girls and a chimpanzee.” He raised an eyebrow at her surprise. “Have you not seen her fight yet? Do not underestimate her.”