The Cage (The Cage #1)(66)
Author: Megan Shepherd

It hadn’t even been Nok’s fault. She had done nothing but obey the rules.

Cora had been the one who’d broken them.

Rage started boiling inside of her, heating her up faster and faster until she feared she’d melt. She had thought Cora was a friend. She had defended her against Rolf’s claims. And this is what she got for her friendship—her baby ripped away?

Pain fractured behind her left eye, and she doubled over. A memory overcame her. Standing on the tarmac in Chiang Mai, in her older sister’s finest dress that her mother had patched, a backpack with fifteen hundred baht and a bag of peanuts in case she got hungry. Her parents pulling her into a stiff hug, her mother trying not to cry. “Like winning the lottery,” her mother had said, and then, less than twenty-four hours later, arriving at a London apartment and realizing she’d practically been sold into slavery.

She’d grown up with strangers, forced to be photographed, observed.

Her daughter would not have that life.

Her daughter would have a mother.

Nok crouched next to Lucky, forcing herself to keep her rage tamped down. She had seen how Delphine had handled this kind of situation—not with raised voices, but with soft ones. Not with fists, but with whispered words.

She smoothed Lucky’s hair. “You see?” She petted the healed place on his forehead. “Rolf was right. This is what Cora has done to us. They’re taking away everything we have because of her violent tendencies. Even my baby. It doesn’t matter if she was a good person. She’s crazy now, and she has to be stopped before she ruins everything.”

46

Cora

WHEN THE REMATERIALIZATION WAS over, Cora found herself in a small room nearly bare of furniture. Open doorways led to two more small rooms. It didn’t have the medical chamber’s austerity, nor the market’s bustling chaos, nor the menagerie’s faux Greek columns. But starry light came from the seams in the wall, marking it as a Kindred space.

Cassian held her tightly. As soon as he released her, she took a quick step away.

She crossed to the single window and shoved open the curtain, afraid to see a black window and know she was still being watched. But on the other side was the night sky filled with endless stars. Some so faint they were nearly invisible, some close enough to burn her eyes. In the center was a distant planet, ringed like Saturn, the blue color of water. She had to grab the curtain to keep from falling.

“This is what’s outside? Outer space?”

“That is a projected image. I selected it for you.” He paused. “I know you like the stars.” He traced a pattern on the wall in the central room, where a cabinet slid out, revealing a square container and a single square drinking glass.

She peeked into one of the other rooms. A bed with no sheets or blankets, and a shelf holding a few blue cubes and nothing else. Had he brought her to a prison cell?

“Where are we?” she asked.

“My quarters.” He spoke so casually that Cora barely had time to register before he pointed to the sitting room. “Sit in there.”

“Your quarters? I thought you’d take me to one of the menageries.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The Warden did instruct me to take you to a menagerie. And as you recall, I did take you to one. The Temple. I fulfilled his orders—I just didn’t leave you there, drugged and caged.” She thought she saw a flicker of dark amusement cross his face. “Never let it be said that my kind does not excel at finding loopholes.”

He picked up the square glass and the bottle, but hesitated. “The Warden recommended that I take you to a menagerie called the Harem. It is located on the seventh sector—an area frequented by disgraced Kindred and Mosca traders. They go through human girls quickly there. It is a place I do not think you would like to go. I would certainly not enjoy having to leave you there.”

He was implying using girls for sex, or worse—things she couldn’t even imagine. It made the childish tricks in the Temple seem positively innocent. What had she done to make the Warden hate her this much?

Cassian pointed toward the sitting room. “Sit. Please. I would not like to spend the little time we have arguing.”

Cora made her way into the sitting room. It was barren, save for some metal crates pushed against the wall and a book tossed on top of the crates, dog-eared and worn. Peter Pan and Wendy. An artifact from Earth. It was the only thing at all in the entire room that had any glimmer of personality. Cassian picked up the book quickly and dropped it into one of the metal crates.

The bare room reeked of desolation. “Do you all live like this, so spartanly?”

“Yes, though not by choice. There is not an abundance of resources in space. Dust and rock and light can only power so much. We live a frugal life out of necessity. The technology used to create your environment works only within certain confines and requires a high amount of carbon. We could not create such luxury for ourselves.” He traced another pattern on the wall. A small tray emerged, which served as a table for the glass and square container. He poured a sharp-smelling liquid into the glass and took a deep drink.

“What’s that?”

“Alcohol, made from fermented lichens.”

“You have alcohol?”

He glanced at her with a flicker of amusement. “Every society in the universe has invented alcohol—even some lesser species, such as your own. Intoxicants are prohibited, in general, outside of the menageries. But we are allowed to keep one container in our quarters, in case of difficulty controlling emotions.”

She grabbed the glass out of his hand, downing the contents, wincing as it burned her throat in a way her mother’s expensive wine never had. She held out the glass for more. “I’m definitely having difficulty controlling my emotions.”

Cassian hesitated—clearly he meant the drink for himself, not her—but then refilled her glass. She took a slower sip, letting her heavy eyelids sink slightly. The room was quiet, too quiet, and she cleared her throat. “What did you mean when you said that the algorithm didn’t make a mistake, but you did?”

He dragged a crate over as a makeshift chair. “It is protocol to monitor the stock algorithm’s selections before the transfer from the native environment to the artificial one. I performed the required period of observation on the other Girl Two. She would have been suitable.” He looked down at his hands. “I continued to monitor Boy Two simultaneously. He was performing a research operation on one of your networked computers. He found an article from the previous year about your father’s employment. You were standing in the picture. Boy Two’s emotions were very strong. Impossible to ignore.”