The Cage (24 page)
Authors: Megan Shepherd
She could only stare at him. The Kindred had no homeland, so they wanted to experience humans’, and they’d kidnap kids and lock them up to get it.
She tested her shackles again. They held too tight.
“This menagerie, or one like it, is where I must take you if the Warden orders your removal—assuming he lets you live. These are all children who had to be removed from their enclosures or private owners for one reason or another.”
“Why are they all
children
?” Her voice was barely audible.
“We do not only take children. We prefer to take them, however, because of their malleable natures and heightened ability to adapt.”
“But what happens when they grow up?”
His face darkened. No longer a man of starlight, but of shadows. “If the adults are docile, they are kept in research facilities, or given light menial work. However, many grow unruly as they age. They are sent to unmanaged preserves; there they are free to be as savage as their true natures dictate.” He pointed through the window toward the last cage. “This girl is the one I wanted to show you.”
The last cell was a tableau of a Greek throne room, with a little girl of about ten years, with wheat-blond hair shorn close to her scalp. She sat on a leather stool, hands clasped in her lap, staring into a hearth that crackled with what must be simulated flames.
“That girl was relocated from Iceland four years ago,” Cassian said. “She was put in an enclosure like yours, though less advanced, with only two biomes. She refused to eat, which disobeys Rule Two. After several rotations she had to be removed, and was sold to a private owner, from whom she escaped. She escaped from her next two owners as well, but was caught each time. She will be here for the remainder of her life. We administer drugs to her to keep her docile. We must do that with the rebellious ones. For their own safety.”
Cora could only stare. The girl would be there—staring at the stone hearth, isolated, drugged—for
the rest of her life
?
“That could be you, Cora,” Cassian said.
It wasn’t hard to imagine—with her wheat-blond hair, the girl almost looked like a younger version of Cora. In the cell, the girl raised a sluggish hand to scratch her shorn scalp. She was missing two fingers, from the middle knuckle up. Cora’s own fingers started throbbing.
Cassian leaned in close. “Do you still intend on disobeying our rules?”
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CORA’S HEAD SPUN. THIS
little girl. The boy in the scroll room. The other girl, asleep under the watch of statues. They were just a few of many who had been taken. A living display, a breathing museum, to satisfy the Kindred’s fascination.
Her stomach twisted.
“I am trying to keep you from this, Cora,” Cassian said quietly. “Do not make me bring you to a place like this. It would only—”
He stopped when the door below opened. They both leaned toward the window as two Kindred women entered the chamber below, wearing Grecian costume dresses, their hair loose, their faces plastered with the exaggerated emotion that meant they were uncloaked. They strode directly to the Icelandic girl’s cell.
Cassian’s cold gaze slowly slid to Cora, and she got the sense that whatever they were about to witness was going to be even worse than it already was.
Below, the taller Kindred woman reached through the bars and beckoned to the girl, who stood and approached slowly, walking like she was dizzy. The Kindred woman said a few words that Cora couldn’t hear through the viewing panel.
“She wants the girl to clap,” Cassian explained. “To perform a trick for her entertainment.”
The girl slowly brought her disfigured hands together like a wind-up toy, which made the Kindred women gasp in delight.
The Kindred woman’s lips moved again.
“Now she wishes for the girl to bow,” Cassian translated.
The girl bent at the waist, sweeping her arm with a slightly dizzy flourish, and the Kindred handed her a token. The token fell from the girl’s missing fingers, but she picked it up with her other hand and slipped it into her pocket.
“The humans in these exhibits collect the tokens and redeem them for prizes,” Cassian explained. “The more tricks they perform, the more rewards they earn.”
Disgust crept up Cora’s skin. This was what the Kindred though of humans? That, other than a handful of elite ones suitable for breeding, they were no good for anything but performing cheap tricks?
The shorter Kindred handed the girl another token, then leaned forward with her lips pursed. Cassian explained, “She has asked for a kiss, this time.”
All the tension that had been knotted in Cora’s body unraveled all at once, plunging to her feet.
A
kiss
?
The shackles felt too tight. Her lungs constricted. Sweat broke out on her forehead and her vision started to blur as the horror of everything descended on her all at once.
The Kindred could do anything to them, she realized.
Kiss them.
Kill them.
The insanity of this place hit her like a blow to the chest. The world didn’t seem to move in real time. It jerked and jolted between slow motion and fast forward. Her balance keeled, just like it had that day in the bookstore. Her vision sharpened and blurred too, as the colors of the room pulsed too brightly.
Cora pressed a hand against the glass. Cassian said a few words that she couldn’t process. She couldn’t stop staring at the little girl below. The girl bent forward and met the woman’s lips through the bars of the cage, giving her a peck, chaste and sexless, like a deranged kissing booth. A small sound came from Cora’s throat. She realized she was swaying.
Strong hands shook her. The bright colors faded to normal. The sound of her own pulsing heart dialed down in volume. Cassian shook her again, hard.
“Cora. What is happening to you?”
She tried to speak, but her lips were too dry. Cassian checked her pulse, lifted each eyelid, even looked down her throat. Examining her, just as the Warden had done, like she was merely a problem to be solved, but Cora didn’t care.
Lucky was right. They’ll never let us go.
“Describe what is happening.” His voice came urgently in her ear. “Are you experiencing strange sensations? Visual disturbances?”
She shoved Cassian and his strange questions away and braced herself against her knees, but her hands were too sweaty and slipped off. She stumbled toward the floor. Cassian caught her. Her hands were still bound, but she grabbed the strap across his chest, holding tight. She pressed her face against his chest, eyes squeezed closed, as though to block out everything that was happening.
“Take me away from here. Please.”
Through his clothes, his heartbeat was nearly as fast as her own, and she wondered why he cared so much about her panic attack to ask such odd questions. He hesitated only briefly before removing her from the viewing room, sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her when her limbs were too sluggish to move on her own. He spoke in a rush to the blue-eyed Kindred and took Cora through another doorway to a Parthenon-style room that was blessedly silent, empty save for a circular fountain in the center, surrounded by a ring of artificial stone benches.
A bathroom. No matter how intelligent they were, the Kindred still had to take a piss somewhere.
Cassian set her down on the soft cushions around the fountain. He removed his gloves and dipped his hands in the water, then touched them to her face, trying to cool her down, but his touch never cooled her. The water just made it spark more.
Her eyes were closed. She panted for air. Once her head cleared, she grabbed the strap across his chest and pulled him close. She slapped him, hard, across the face.
Her palm stung.
He didn’t flinch, of course—she could never hurt skin as hard as metal. But his throat constricted. He was very close to her, water dripping off his hands onto her dress.
“Why did you strike me?” he asked.
“Because you’re one of them. You’re a monster just like those women down there.”
“I am trying to protect you from that. It is the way the world is, and I want you to understand how dangerous it would be without my assistance.”
“Our enclosure is no different from this one! Run your mazes. Play your games. You’re sick, all of you.”
Cassian’s black eyes shifted between Cora and the door back to the menagerie. “I brought you here to show you how
desirable
your environment is.”
“Because there we’re only forced to kiss each other, you mean? Here we have to kiss
you
?”
His eyes darkened to a deeper shade of black. “A kiss is a very common trick. I do not understand why it bothers you to this degree.”
She let her head fall back on the cushions. “Because it’s more than a kiss. It’s Rule Three. Procreation. Taking love and making it a trick, or an obligation. You’ll never understand that.”
The fountain gurgled calmly into the silence.
“Help me understand,” he said, and he sounded sincere. Cora opened one eye, surprised by this. “We have nothing like it in our culture. I’m . . . sorry. I did not understand what it meant to you.”
His black eyes moved back and forth, back and forth, searching her own. He had said that he wanted to understand humanity, but it wasn’t so simple.
“It’s not a trick.” Her temper was cooling beside the bubbling fountain. “It’s not like clapping your hands or giving a bow.”
He paused. “What is it like?”
She wondered, fleetingly, what the Kindred did to show affection if they didn’t kiss. He sounded genuinely curious.
Help me understand.
His face was so close to hers that she would only have to tilt her chin to show him exactly what a kiss was like. That would teach him more about humans than months of studying them.
What would that electric spark feel like, between their lips?
A drip of water from the fountain landed on Cora’s cheek, and she jerked out of her thoughts, shocked by where her mind had gone. “It’s personal,” she snapped, and wiped the drip off her cheek. “It’s something special between two people who care about each other. It’s very emotional. Something you’d know nothing about.”
His hand had stopped flexing, but his eyes stayed on her lips.
“You do not know what I am like in private,” he answered. “When my emotions are uncloaked.”
“No. I don’t. I don’t want to, not if you’re anything like the rest of your kind.” When he didn’t respond, her blood burned hotter. “If you’re so fascinated, why don’t you give one of those kids on exhibit a token for a kiss? I’m sure they’d be delighted to show you.” Her words were poison. She wanted him to say yes. She wanted to know he was as bad as the rest of his kind.
“I’m not interested in learning about kisses from them,” he said simply.
His black eyes didn’t move away from her lips for a second.
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ROLF STOOD AT THE
top of the mountain, ankle-deep in snow, gazing at the line of little red flags. At the bottom of the racecourse, Mali waited in her oversized military jacket, sled slung over her shoulder. Lucky stood behind her, looking like he hadn’t slept in days; he’d only come when Nok had dragged him along.
Rolf pitied Lucky—to a point. Earth was gone; it was a fact. Fighting the truth was like fighting gravity. The news had hit Rolf hard at first, too. He’d thought about the little curry shop two blocks from his dormitory, and about the secret patch of tulips tucked away behind the manor in Tøyen gardens, and how he used to count the beautiful red bricks on the walk to school (11,321) as a boy—but there was no logic in mourning what was already gone. Besides, it meant no more bullying from his classmates. No more parents’ rigid expectations. No more being stuck with an entire race of people who were too stupid to see they were destroying their own planet.
But Rolf wasn’t stupid.
He arranged his sled to match up with the red flags. He wasn’t good at the physical puzzles, but this one wasn’t about strength or speed but reflexes. It involved throwing one’s weight at the precise angle and time to turn the sled through the flag course. He’d never sledded with the other children in Tøyen gardens, afraid of being mocked. But he was
good
at it. Who knew?
“Just go already!” Nok jumped up and down by his side, a smile stretched between her red cheeks. Her lips were stained bright blue from candy. He still couldn’t believe how beautiful she was, and that she was
his
. On impulse, he pulled her close for a kiss. She laughed and kissed him back.
He’d never understood unspoken rules on Earth: social norms that flew over his head, polite conversation, a hierarchy of coolness where he’d always been on the bottom rung. But here, he understood the rules. There were only three! Clean, logical, efficient. The only thing that didn’t make sense was that the food was still missing. At first he’d thought the Kindred just favored Cora, but it made no sense, because the Kindred had sworn to keep them healthy. So it had to be Cora stealing on her own, but if she was gone, who was stealing it now? The only conclusion Rolf could reach was that Lucky had been mistaken when he said the Caretaker had taken her—she must still be here, hiding out like Leon. Maybe they were even working together.
He narrowed his eyes. From the mountain, he could see all the way to the farm. He’d spent the last two days organizing a system of rationing fruits and vegetables to keep them fed. Cora might be trying to starve them, but
he
would keep them alive.
Nok tugged on a red curl hanging in his face. “Go, silly. It’s my turn next.”
