The Cage (The Cage #1)(72)
Author: Megan Shepherd

She sank down the tree to the jungle floor, letting the mud streak her clothes. The rain pounded harder against the nearest black windows. Were the researchers there now, studying her fear? She balled herself tight, as though that could protect her from their watching eyes.

This wasn’t some experiment.

This was her life.

Thunder cracked again. Little rivers formed in the mud. Soon the clearing would flood, but she didn’t care. Even if she found the fail-safe exit, she couldn’t escape on her own, knowing what grisly fate awaited the others.

She didn’t hear feet approaching until a set of toes wiggled in front of her. She jerked upright. A girl stood among the palm fronds, her long, dark hair streaked with rain, so quiet and still that she nearly blended into the shadows.

The dead girl, Cora thought. Yasmine, come to take her dress back.

Cora grasped the charm around her neck as though it could protect her. The girl stepped out of the shadows, and light fell on her face.

Not Yasmine. Mali.

“The Warden sent you to remove, didn’t he?” Cora had to shout over the rain. She wiped the rain from her face, trying to see better, tasting salty tears. She pictured cages and drugged children. Herself in a toga, forced to do tricks.

Mali crouched in the mud. “No one sends me.” Her eyes slid to the nearest black window. She pinched her shoulder. “I decide on my own to help you escape.”

The rain was so loud that Cora thought she must have misunderstood. But Mali’s eyes were unflinching.

“Why?”

Mali stood abruptly, rain dripping off her eyelashes. “Follow me. I will take you to a place where the Kindred cannot easily read our minds.”

She moved faster than Cora had ever seen anyone go. Cora sprinted behind her. The rain lightened as they neared the edge of the jungle. The walkway gave way to stone through the swamp, and then sand as they entered the desert. The maze loomed a hundred feet away, but Mali veered away from it. She led Cora up the highest dune. From the top, they could see all eight habitats.

Cora doubled over to catch her breath. “This is where we can speak privately? It’s the most exposed place in the entire cage.”

Mali folded her legs and collapsed cross-legged in the sand. “Sometimes it is easier to hide in plain sight. It is not ourselves we try to hide, but our minds. The fewer distractions, the better.” She pointed toward the dunes that stretched for miles, endless and monotonous, the perfect place for meditation.

Cora hesitantly sat across from her. “How can I trust you?”

“You have no choice.” A crease formed in the center of her forehead. “You say that in the menagerie you see a girl with shorn blond hair and two missing fingers.”

Drugged girls. Forced kisses. She nodded.

“Her name is Anya,” Mali said. “Three years ago we are privately owned by the same Kindred official. He sells four of her knuckles to the Mosca. He tries to do the same to me, but Cassian rescues us before he can. Anya and I are separated. The Kindred later tell me she dies from an infection.” Mali leaned close, a braid falling in her eyes. “But they lie.”

Below, the town and the eight habitats looked like a perfect doll village. A world of lies.

Mali pushed back her fallen braid. “If we can escape this enclosure, I know the paths through the aggregate station. If you help me free Anya, then I will take you to the market and the Mosca. They help escaped humans sometimes. For the right price. Your hair will fetch a ship alone. Information is more expensive. A finger to know if Earth is still there. Maybe two.”

She spoke so casually. Cora ran her thumb over her knuckles, feeling the hardness beneath flesh. “I’ll give them all ten fingers and ten toes, if that’s what it takes.”

“We first must discover the location of the fail-safe exit,” Mali said. “That is one thing I do not know.”

“I think . . . I think I do.” Cora rubbed her knuckles harder. “It has to be in the ocean. It’s the only habitat that doesn’t have a puzzle, and sometimes it shimmers in a strange way. It gives me a headache, like the other optical illusions.” She looked off at the ocean uneasily. That deep water, nearly as dark as the river water that had swallowed her. She turned away from it with a shudder. “While I test my theory, I need you to talk to the others. They think you’re on their side and that you know everything about the Kindred. Try to convince them that it’s worth coming with us.”

Mali frowned. “We should just go. You and me.”

A breeze carried sand across Cora’s dress. Artificial wind. Artificial sand. To Mali, who had spent most of her life here, the difference was negligible. But to Cora, it was everything. “One day, when we’re back on Earth, you’ll understand why I can’t leave them here.”

Mali considered this while she toyed with a braid. “I will try to convince Lucky. The others might listen to him.”

“Good. Then tonight, after dinner, we’ll meet by the movie theater. If everything goes right, we’ll be out of here by tomorrow. I’ll help you find Anya.”

Mali nodded. The sun dimmed as she unfolded her long legs to head back to town. Cora didn’t follow right away. She wanted one final look over their cage: the distant mountain, the red barn, the cherry tree where Lucky had told her about their shared past. The colors were brighter than they were on Earth; the temperature more even, and the weather more predictable. But she would trade a gray, rainy day in the city for a lifetime of all the brightest colors in the world.

At the base of the dune, ocean waves lapped gently on the beach. A perfect scene straight from a postcard, and yet Cora recoiled. Ever since plunging over that bridge, she’d avoided deep water. That night had changed her. Before the accident, she had thought her father ruled the world. Afterward, she saw him for what he was: just a man, as insecure as everyone else, easily manipulated by his own daughter.

She forced herself to take a step, and then another, as sweat broke out on her temples. The thought of that cold water eating up her toes and her ankles and her waist left her shaken, but she had no choice. She took a deep breath and walked faster, then ran, and crashed into the sea with all the force she could manage. She didn’t think about the murky depths or the salty chill as she waded deeper. She tensed her muscles to dive.

A force as unyielding as gravity stopped her.

Her head was roaring so much that she had hardly noticed the pressure building. It wasn’t until Cassian’s arms were around her, preventing her from going underwater with a grip hard enough to bruise, with raw emotion on his face—desperation—that she knew she was right. His gloves were gone, and the clips on his shirt were only half closed. The rematerialization apparatus jutted out of his bare skin at the base of his rib cage, where a metal port had been grafted into his body. The metallic skin around it was streaked with angry black veins, as though he hadn’t had time to properly connect to the device. She flinched at the sight. He must have dropped everything to stop her.