The Hunt (12 page)

Cora

THE DRECKTUBE TUNNELS WERE
even worse than Cora had
imagined.

Frigid, thin air crept up the folds of her pajamas as she crawled behind Leon on the rough-hewn ground. She'd snuck out of her cell as soon as the others had fallen asleep, tiptoeing to the door and knocking softly, half surprised that Leon had actually kept his word when he swung the door open for her, and even more surprised when he said he'd found Nok and Rolf in some giant dollhouse. Now, as he led her toward the Temple menagerie, her knees were already red and raw; thank goodness she wore a long dress during the day, because she didn't know how she'd explain scraped knees to Dane in the morning.

“Gotta watch out for the traps,” Leon explained over his shoulder. “Almost sizzled me a few times, but I've learned their tricks now. It's the packages that are the real danger. If you hear
one coming, get out of the way. Hurts like hell if you get hit with one. What do you call it, again? Making things float around?”

“Telekinesis.”

“And you can really do that, eh?”

Cora kept crawling. She had told him about unlocking the cell door, and about the dice, and now she felt self-conscious. “It's weird, I know.”

He snorted. “No way. Wish I could throw things around with my mind. Ooh, undress girls just by thinking about it. And stealing would be so much easier. . . .”

“Monsters.”

She stopped crawling abruptly. It was the same odd whisper as before. Her forehead broke out in sweat despite the frigid tunnel.

“Please tell me you heard that voice,” she said.

“Voice?” Leon frowned. “You feeling okay?” He twisted around and reached out, swiping his finger under her nose. It came away with blood.

She pinched her nose distractedly. “It's . . . nothing. Let's just keep going.”

“That's a lot of blood.”

“Keep going.” Her voice was sharp.

Leon muttered something under his breath as he paused at a few doorways, consulting his markings. “So let's say you can break this Anya girl out of her cell with your telekinesis badassery. Where exactly is she going to camp out? I'm guessing there isn't a nice secret room for her in the Hunt.”

“Um, no. But I did have one idea.”

At her hesitation, he turned around, eyes hooded. “No.”

“Leon, she
has
to stay with you. There's nowhere else.”

“I'd rather cuddle up with Kindred guards.”

“It won't be forever. Just until after I've run the Gauntlet. A week or two, tops.”

“Are you kidding? That
is
forever.”

Cora let out a sigh, rubbing her hands over her face. If only the air wasn't so thin, maybe she could think better. Leon was the kind of guy who would take a bribe, but she didn't have any money or food or anything. What could she offer him?

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Think about something you really want.”

“More psychic shit?”

“I need to practice mind reading.”

He grumbled a little, but closed his eyes. She concentrated on probing into his thoughts. She sensed something colorful and bright, flashing lights that almost reminded her of the arcade back in the cage. But there was something else there, deeper. A face.

Her eyes flew open. “I
knew
you liked Mali!”

He cursed. “I wasn't thinking about her. I was thinking about Assassin's Creed.”

“Yeah, but not deep down. I can tell what you
really
want, way more than video games.” A slow smile stretched across her face. “If you helped us out, I'm sure Mali would be very grateful.”

He scowled deeper, rubbing his head as if he didn't like the idea of her crawling around in his thoughts. But after a second, he asked, “How grateful?”

“Well Anya
is
like a little sister to her. And if it was my sister
you were rescuing . . .” Cora thought for a minute. “Maybe second base?”

He snorted, and then turned around and started crawling again. “Whoring out your friends now, sweetheart? Remind me not to make any promises on your behalf. Don't worry about it. Mali would probably just knock me out anyway. I'll babysit your psychic brat. That's what friends do, eh?”

Cora smiled.

“Could have used your psychic powers when I was trying to find out which door led to the Temple,” he continued. “Took me forever to figure it out. I staked them all out for days until I overheard someone say something about Zeus in the last one.”

They crawled to the last doorway, and he pointed to his chalk drawing.

“What's that supposed to be, a goat?” she asked.

“Goat? It's clearly a Greek Minotaur!” He grumbled as he wiped away a stray chalk mark. “If I had some proper paints, maybe charcoal pencils . . .”

He signaled for her to be quiet as he shouldered the door open a crack, holding his breath so as not to be too loud. A tickle itched the back of Cora's head.

“Beware the monsters,”
the voiceless whisper called.
“Danc
ing through the halls.”

Cora flinched. Dancing? Through the halls? Either she really was going crazy, or the person sending her those psychic messages was.

Leon cursed and immediately pulled his head back in. “Shit!”

“What's wrong?”

“It's the Temple for sure, but not the backstage area. It's the main hall and there's Kindred roaming all around.”

Monsters dancing,
Cora thought.
Through the halls . . .

Was someone sending her a warning?

Tentatively, Cora peeked through the crack. It was the same shimmering Greek palace that she had visited with Cassian, only now she was looking at it from a different angle. Beyond the Kindred's boots, she could make out the ten-by-ten-foot cells with lightlocks above the bars. If she strained her neck, she could see the last cell, Anya's, and the girl's sluggish hand sticking out between the bars—missing two fingers. The hand was waving languidly, as though conducting an imaginary orchestra of dancing monsters.

Cora ducked back in.

Could it have been
Anya's
voice in her head?

“She's there,” Cora said, “but there's no way we can get to her out in the open. We have to find the backstage area.”

Leon rubbed the back of his head. “I know where the rest of these tunnels go, and it isn't to the Temple's backstage. Did you see how there were slots in their cells for passing things like food through? I don't think there
is
a backstage in this menagerie.”

Cora's head throbbed. She felt moisture beneath her nose again and wiped it away. She peeked back through the crack. “So to get to her, I'm going to have to walk right through the menagerie, amid dozens of Kindred, and flash around abilities I'm not even supposed to have to unlock her door?”

“And carry her out,” he said, eyeing her thin arms. “Don't forget about that.”

“So, basically, it's impossible.”

Leon closed the door and added a chalk mark that was a circle with a line through it, a symbol that looked like it marked certain doom. Then he patted her on the shoulder. “Good luck with all that, sweetheart.”

Cora

THEY CRAWLED BACK TO
the Hunt in silence. Cora's lungs were burning, making her even more irritable. It felt like the tunnel's walls were getting tighter, but it had to just be claustrophobia and uncertainty tangled up together. At least she wasn't going crazy—yet. That voiceless whisper had definitely been Anya, warning her. But if that was the case, then why hadn't Anya explained how they could break her out of the Temple?

Maybe because she doesn't know how,
Cora's own voice
answered back.

“I'll come back each night,” Leon said. “Same system. Two knocks to say it's safe, and I'll open the door. Slip a note down the drecktube if anything changes. See if you can figure out some genius new plan in the meantime.”

“Rolf's the genius, not me,” Cora muttered, and then stopped abruptly. “Hang on. Rolf might be just what we need. He's brilliant. And Nok's a good schemer. Can you take me to them?”

Leon scratched his head. “They're in a crowded sector. Lots more shipments moving around. Last time I was there, I got caught between two crates that nearly dragged me into a cleaner trap.” But when she tilted her head, looking at him sweetly, he sighed. “You're going to get us killed, you know that? Come on. It's this way.”

As they crawled, Cora thought of the last time she'd seen Rolf and Nok in the cage. They'd been in the middle of a fistfight with each other that hadn't looked like it would end well. “You said they were doing okay, right?”

“Okay? Are any of us okay? They were alive, that's all I said. They were pretty freaked out the Kindred might take away Nok's baby. They were holding on to some sad hope they could get home and raise the baby there. Whoa. Hang on. Death trap at twelve o'clock.”

He pointed ahead to a place on the floor, but Cora saw nothing until he shone his headlight on it. A glistening, nearly transparent line. He carefully climbed over it, and then motioned for her to do the same.

“Actually,” she said, “Nok and Rolf might not be so off base about home. Lucky found information that there's a higher chance than we thought that Earth's still there. Cassian is going to look into it.”

“That right?” Leon mumbled as he consulted his scrawled map.

“Aren't you more excited? We're talking about Earth. It means that we could have a real future. If I beat the Gauntlet, no one could stop us from leaving this station and going home.”

“Sweetheart, if you'll recall,
I
never thought Earth was gone.”

“But the Kindred's algorithm predicted it.”

He shrugged. “I've never trusted nerds. I go with my gut, which always said Earth was there.”

She crawled behind him, thoughts spinning. “Well, if it's true, we'll need a ship to take us there after the Gauntlet is over. Bonebreak must be have one, right?”

Leon snorted. “Don't get your hopes up. I've been asking around. Next ship won't come for another forty years. I got him drunk one night, and he told me all about the last time they helped humans. Years ago, when the supply ships used to come more frequently, the Mosca made a deal with a group of humans to go back to Earth. That was back when the Kindred took mostly adults, and I guess they wanted the smartest ones. They ended up abducting savants, you know? The kinds who can multiply insane numbers in seconds, kind of like Rolf?”

He wiggled his fingers in the air like he was working out numbers. “Well, the Kindred didn't realize half those people are even smarter than
them
when it comes to numbers. The savants figured out how to override the system, got out of their enclosures, and faked their deaths. They found Bonebreak. He was just an underling at the time. His captain took the humans back to Earth in exchange for them screwing around with the Kindred's food replicator. One hell of an expensive practical joke.”

He paused to wipe chalk dust out of his eyes. “It's crazy, but I actually remember my sister talking about it. She's into crime books, you know? Said in the eighteen fifties there was this group of people who just appeared in South Africa—they were all crazy, said they'd been abducted by aliens.”

“Eighteen fifties? How old is Bonebreak?”

“Really old, I think. I'm scared to see behind that mask.”

“And you trust him?”

Leon snorted. “Our relationship is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I have something he needs—the ability to crawl through tunnels. He has something I need—protection from the Kindred guards, not to mention a bunch of vodka. So do I trust him? Sure, until he finds a different way to get what he needs.” He grinned. “But I'm not useless yet.”

He pointed ahead to a chalk mark of a dollhouse. “See? Told you I'd find it again. Nok and Rolf are up here.” Eventually the tunnel smoothed out and turned to metal, and then ended.

Leon shouldered the gate open into a wide room, like a dark theater. When they crawled out, Cora saw a small house at one end—except one entire wall was missing. Leon led her close, a finger pressed to his lips. In the upstairs bedroom, Nok was getting dressed, and Rolf was toying with an old radio.

“Hey!” Cora started toward them, but Leon threw a hand over her mouth.

“Christ, sweetheart, shut up.” He jerked his chin toward a row of dark seating. At least ten Kindred were there, watching Rolf and Nok. She waited a heart-pounding moment, but none of them turned in her direction. They hadn't heard her.

“How are we supposed to get to them?” she whispered.

“We wait. Rolf said they have artificial nighttimes when most go home. Serassi sticks around, but not all the time.”

“I can't wait. I have to be back in my cell in the morning.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

Cora squinted at the house, trying to figure it out. Rolf was still fiddling with the radio. A guy like him probably knew Morse code, and she knew it too from those long classes in Bay Pines,
where she and Queenie had sent each other silent messages with flashlights from across the room while the others watched rehab videos. She focused on the radio light.
Turn off,
she willed. Her mind probed around the circuitry. There was no amplifier, which meant she had to concentrate harder.
Turn OFF.
And for a second the light flickered, just like the lightlock of her cell, and then it turned off completely. Rolf frowned, but she quickly turned it back on.

She did the same, but faster. Three times.

S-O-S

Rolf's eyebrows knit together in hesitation. He looked like he was going to call down to Nok, but froze. He glanced at the watching Kindred, and then carefully turned the radio away from their eyes.

Cora made it blink again.

I-T-S-C-O-R-A

Slowly, Rolf looked over his right shoulder, and then his left. With a tentative finger, he pointed to the corner of the room. Cora could just make out an old-fashioned typewriter; she rolled her eyes. Rolf was really pushing her abilities. She concentrated on trying to remember which keys were which from afar, and tapped her message out in the air with her fingers, pushing her mind as hard as she could to make the corresponding keys move. Without amplifiers, depressing each key felt like rolling a boulder uphill.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

She sagged with the effort. Rolf hesitated. His hand went up to push at his hair a bit like he had when Cora had first seen him in the cage. He paced a little, throwing glances her way like there was something else he had to tell her. He snatched up the radio and pried the bulb out with his fingernails, and then twisted some wires around. When he pushed a button, it blinked.

T-E-L-L-M-E

She took a deep breath and focused on the typewriter again.

HAVE TO BREAK SOMEONE OUT OF CELL SURROUNDED BY KINDRED. ADVICE?

Rolf stared at the paper in the typewriter. He picked up the radio and pressed the buttons to send Morse code.

D-O-N-T-G-E-T-C-A-U-G-H-T

“What'd he say?” Leon breathed.

“He's being a smartass,” Cora muttered.

“Yeah?” Leon seemed almost impressed. “Didn't think he had it in him.”

Then Rolf signaled again.

W-E-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P-2

And he added:

O-N-L-Y-H-A-V-E-F-E-W-D-A-Y-S-L-E-F-T

“A few days left?” Cora whispered to Leon. “What does he mean? A few days before what?”

“Oh yeah, he wouldn't shut up about that before,” Leon said. “He worked out some equation of how long we've been here and how soon the Kindred could take the baby away.”

“He can convert Kindred time to days? Are you sure?”

“He had a whole notebook filled with numbers.”

She turned back, focusing on the typewriter, but he started flashing a message first.

C-A-N-Y-O-U-G-E-T-U-S-O-U-T?

Cora paused. “They want our help getting out of there. We could get them into the drecktube when Serassi and the researchers aren't there, but then where would they go? Unless . . .”

Leon gave a suspicious grunt.

“You already agreed to keep Anya with you. And you said Bonebreak's lair takes up a whole sublevel. There must be all sorts of spare nooks they could set up for Nok and Rolf as a safe room. There's even smuggled baby stuff, right? Cribs and diapers and things?”

“Oh, for the love of . . .” Leon rubbed his face hard. “You want the Mosca to help raise a baby? Have you listened to a single thing I've said about them?”

“I don't expect them to read bedtime stories,” she shot back. “Just to give them a safe place to live until after I've run
the Gauntlet, when Serassi won't have any claim on their baby anymore.”

“Bonebreak gets pissed enough just having me around. For him to put up with a crying baby would take serious cash.”

“How much?”

He sighed. “I'll ask.”

Cora turned back to the house, concentrating on the typewriter.

AM WORKING ON A SAFE ROOM. HOLD ON. WILL COME BACK FOR YOU WHEN READY.

And then she added:

YOU CAN CONVERT TIME?

Rolf read her message and nodded, not bothering with the radio.

LUCKY'S BIRTHDAY IS OCT 21. HOW SOON UNTIL HE TURNS 19?

Rolf bent down to his notebook and started writing furiously, working out the equation, pushing at glasses that he no longer needed. He set down the pencil and picked up the radio. The lights flashed and flashed.

Cora let out a small sound of shock.

“What?” Leon said. “What's his spy code say?”

Rolf, maybe worried they hadn't seen his signal, flashed the
lights again. A dark premonition washed over her. She willed the light to blink more, but it never did.

Three blinks.

“Only three days,” she said.