The Cage (The Cage #1)(52)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Planning escapes had practically been an extracurricular activity at Bay Pines; Cora and her roommate used to lie awake at night swapping far-fetched ideas, most of them stolen from bad action movies. She’d never taken their planning seriously, but four months after she’d been there, a girl two rooms down had succeeded. She’d bribed a guard to unlock her room at night, then sneaked to the kitchen, which was run by outside contractors she’d paid off to smuggle her out in a vat of food scraps so the guard dogs wouldn’t smell her.

Cora bit on a jagged fingernail. The space station was hardly a juvenile detention facility outside Cincinnati, but maybe she could use some of the same tactics. Trading information. Bribery. Cassian had said that the Mosca only cared about payment. . . .

Cassian’s head jerked to hers, and Cora pinched her thigh, hoping Mali was right that pain could block the Kindred’s ability to read minds.

His black eyes scanned her face. “You are trying to hide something from me.”

She pinched herself harder. “No.”

“You should not inflict pain upon yourself.” His chest was rising and falling a little quickly. It made her remember his face so close in the fountain room, his lips just an inch from hers. . . .

He shoved the apparatus into his chest and darted out a hand to pull her close. He whispered in her ear.

“Obey the rules. Please.”

It was no longer an order. It was a request, and one of the few times Cora had heard his voice sound anything other than mechanical. “I’m not the only one watching you,” he said. “I cannot protect you forever.”

HE RETURNED HER TO the empty drugstore. Beyond the doorway, sunshine spilled over the green grass. Cora stumbled toward the light.

She blinked a few times, clearing her foggy head, reminding herself that the crickets chirping weren’t real. The sunlight was fake. It was as much a fabricated prison as the menagerie. At the heart of it, they weren’t any different from those drugged kids.

Nok and Rolf were stretched out on the grass, dressed only in their underwear, playing with the painting kit. Not far away, Mali was toying with the radio, twisting the volume to make the voices rise and fall, rise and fall. Blue paint coated her arms. Rolf had blue streaks over one arm too, and was in the midst of painting a yellow swirl on Nok’s stomach. He dotted her cheek with paint and she laughed, trying to take the brush from him, getting gooey blobs of paint all over them. Their candy-stained lips met, and the brush fell from his hand. They started making out, right in front of Mali and the dozens of black windows.

And the Kindred thought humankind was evolving? If anything, it was devolving.

A hand clamped over her shoulder, and she jumped.

Lucky stood behind her, guitar half forgotten in one hand. His dark eyes raked over her. The last time they’d been together, everything had changed. She had thought she’d found a friend in him. More than that. Someone who made her feel less alone, a boy with a broken hand and a dimple in one cheek, and yet it had all been a lie. We need to grow up, his voice echoed in her head. He had betrayed her the night of the accident, and he had betrayed her here too, when he said he didn’t believe in escape. Cora’s heart didn’t know how fast to beat.

Should she shove him away? Or forgive him?

He answered the questions in her head when he let the guitar fall into the grass, forgotten. He pulled her into his arms.

She clenched her eyes shut. She couldn’t bring herself to hug him back. She couldn’t quite pull away either.

“What happened?” His voice sounded older.

She shook her head against his shoulder. “Where’s Leon? I want everyone to hear this.”

“No one’s seen him in days.”

“Days?” Cora pulled away, confused. She glanced toward Nok and Rolf, who hadn’t yet noticed that she was back. “I’ve only been gone a couple of hours.”

Lucky was very quiet, searching her eyes with his own. “You’ve been gone three days.”

Her heart pounded harder. The Kindred controlled the sunlight, so they could set a day to be however long they wanted. So did this mean instead of four more days until she faced removal, she only had one? It was already the twenty-first day?

Mind racing, she hurried over to where the others were sprawled. Nok glanced at her briefly, then went back to mixing paint. “Hey. You’re back.”

She spoke casually, like Cora had gone on a stroll to the beach, not been taken by the Kindred for three days. And yet Cora detected a flicker of annoyance in her voice—at interrupting her painting, or at being back at all, she wasn’t sure.

Rolf didn’t even pretend to be pleased to see her. “Come back to apologize, I hope?”

“Apologize for what?”

He let out a coarse laugh. “Right. Pretend like nothing’s happened. Where do you claim to have been for three days, if not sneaking around with Leon and stealing our food? If I didn’t know so much about gardening, we might have starved because of your games.”

She let out a frustrated cry. “You still think I’m still stealing food? How? I haven’t even been here! I’ve been with the Caretaker!”

Rolf’s face reddened. His fingers massaged his head as his eye twitched. “Well, now it makes sense. You got him on your side against us. You’re his favorite, after all. He’d do whatever you asked. Change the weather. Stop feeding us. Have you been watching us this entire time, laughing as we starved?”

“Of course not!” Her own head was throbbing. She squeezed her tired eyes shut, resisting the temptation to smack Rolf. Laughing with the Caretaker? More like the slow torture of seeing what they really did to humans. “Listen. I know you don’t like me. You don’t have to. I’ve seen more of their station and I think I know how we can get back to Earth, but we’ll have to act quickly. They’re speeding time up in here. If it’s already the twenty-first day, they might be on to us.” Cora pinched the inside of her arm hard enough to cause a steady stream of pain, glancing at the shadowy figures beyond the black windows.

Lucky had been pacing behind her, but he stopped at her mention of Earth. At the same time, the paintbrush froze in Nok’s hand. Rolf and Mali exchanged a silent glance, but Cora dismissed it.

“The Caretaker took me through a marketplace,” she continued. “I saw some other species. The Mosca.” She glanced at Mali, whose face remained stoic. “You said they were black market traders. Well, they speak English. I heard them talking to human kids they took from Earth. They said they’d be going back to Earth soon for another supply run. If we can just find the fail-safe exit and get out of here, we could negotiate with the Mosca to get a ride back home.”