The Hunt (14 page)

Cora

CORA STEPPED INTO THE
supply closet, squeezing between
dusty boxes of booze, and inched the door closed. “Tell me.”

Lucky nearly bumped into an old giraffe carving. “Dane can help us change my birthday.”

Cora turned to Dane. “Let me guess—you want something in return.”

Dane gave his thin smile. “Lucky and I have already settled upon my compensation. It's more about what
Roshian
wants.”

Cora nearly knocked over the giraffe statue in surprise. “What does Roshian have to do with anything?”

“He controls timekeeping for the Kindred,” Lucky said. “He'll tweak my records, but only for one thing.”

The supply closet suddenly felt like it was closing in too tightly around her. “What?”

“You,” Lucky said. And then he clarified, “He wants your hair. The same way he wants the antlers and the horns from the
animals he hunts. I guess he has a special place for a human braid on his psycho shelf of lesser-species memorabilia.”

Dane suppressed a laugh.

Cora's hand drifted to her hair on instinct, tangling in the curls. “I thought it was just the Axion who cared about that kind of thing.”

Dane gave a shrug. “I didn't ask why he wants it. My guess is you're better off not knowing.”

Her feet itched to pace, but the room was so small. “Can you give us a second to talk alone, Dane?”

Dane picked up a dusty bottle of schnapps and peeked out of the cracked door. “Five minutes,” he said.

Once they were alone in the closet, Lucky ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, Cora, we can find another way. You don't have to do this.”

She sank onto a box. “What other way? They'll come for you day after tomorrow if we don't, and you're too stubborn to hide out with Leon.” She twisted the ends of her hair around her fist. “It's just hair.”

“But who knows why Roshian wants it. Maybe he needs the DNA for something. Maybe he
is
a Council spy. Someone must have told the Council that you were behind our escape from the cage. This could be some elaborate scheme by the Council.”

She leveled a stare at him. “The Kindred don't scheme. If they wanted to arrest me, they would just come take me.”

Lucky shook his head. “I still don't like it.”

“I don't either, but we don't have much choice. At least Tessela and Fian are usually around, in case anything goes wrong. Roshian might bend the rules every now and then, but he can't
break them. He's bound by the moral code. And Dane wouldn't dare risk breaking the rules this close to his own birthday, when he's already practically got one foot in Armstrong.”

“Still. It makes me nervous.” Lucky's hand moved like he wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn't, and she started toying with her own fingers. For a second, the privacy of the closet reminded her of the first time they'd been truly alone, without the watching eyes of the Kindred, beneath the boughs of a weeping cherry tree. She had seen in Lucky a boy who didn't know his own strengths. A boy who just wanted a simple life. A beach. A beer. A guitar. A boy who, like her, had had all that taken away from him.

She took his hand and pressed it against her cheek. His fingers were strong and knotty from years of farm work. The cage hadn't changed that. “Let me do this for you,” she whispered.

His eyebrows knit together as though something troubled him. “For once,” he said, “I want to rescue
you
. I want to make a sacrifice for
you
. After what happened in the cage, that night that I—”

He didn't finish, but he didn't have to. She remembered that awful feeling of inevitability as they'd climbed the stairs to his room and he'd started to take off her clothes with that delirious look in his eye.

“You don't owe me anything,” she whispered.

“It isn't about debt,” he said. His hands surrounded hers, growing warmer.

“Then what?” she asked. “We both agreed that kiss was a mistake.”

“I know.” He turned her hand over, tracing the markings on her hand, hesitant to continue. “But there's a reason the Kindred's
algorithm matched us together. We're alike, in a way. We both need a greater purpose. You don't believe it, but it's true. The Gauntlet means more to you than you let on.”

She wasn't quite sure how to answer, so she just watched him tracing the markings on her palm. “Maybe it does,” she said at last.

“More important than you risking working with Roshian to save my ass.”

She smirked. “Your ass is getting saved, end of story.”

The tension between them had shifted, and she turned his hand over instead, tracing her eyes over the tattooed lines in his palm. “What do you think these markings say?”

“‘Rejects,' probably,” he concluded, and then frowned. “Yours is different from mine. Here, on your ring finger. The pinprick is a lot bigger.”

She rubbed her thumb over it, almost like she could wipe it away. “I noticed before. I don't know why.”

“It looks almost like a ring,” he said. “The way it meets the black band around your finger. Almost like a . . .” His eyes shot to hers. “Almost like a
diamond
.”

She jerked her hand away and studied it closely.

It wasn't supposed to be a glistening star, she realized. Lucky was right. Cassian must have modified her markings just slightly—just enough not to raise suspicion—to hide this human symbol there as a secret between the two of them. A diamond ring.

“That . . . that can't be right,” she stuttered.

But Lucky's face had darkened. “I bet Cassian did it intentionally. He hid a diamond ring in your markings as some kind of twisted kind of declaration. A vow.” He squeezed his fist, hiding the markings on his own palm.

Cora kept staring at it. It couldn't be true, could it? A tattooed diamond ring? She parted her lips to deny it again, but the door shoved open, and Dane looked in.

“Well, songbird?”

She let her hand fall. “Give me some scissors,” she said quickly, ignoring the marking on her fourth finger. “I'll cut my hair off right now.”

“It isn't quite that simple.” Dane held up two fingers, snipping them together like scissors. “Roshian wants to do the honors himself. Odd, I know. But to each his own.”

Cora glanced back at Lucky, whose face was set with worry.

“Roshian will have to make complicated conversions to change up the new date. It will take some time,” Dane said.

“We don't
have
time. Lucky turns nineteen in two days.”

Dane's eyes shifted to Lucky over her shoulder. “Lucky isn't going anywhere, don't worry. I'll make all the arrangements and let you know when Roshian is ready to make the exchange. It'll have to be after closing. I'll leave a signal for you onstage.”

“A signal?”

“You'll know.”

She ran her hand down her curls. She'd had long hair for as long as she could remember. Jenny, Makayla—theirs was shorn close, and it didn't seem to bother them. She'd get used to it, but still, how much could they snip, snip, snip away at themselves before they stopped being human and started to be something else?

“All right,” she said, reaching down to squeeze Lucky's hand, and only then remembered that, after closing, Tessela and Fian wouldn't be there to look out for her.

Lucky's eyes lingered on her ring finger, and his face darkened again.

A DAY PASSED. CORA
felt the time slipping away as she went about her tasks like each minute was a token falling through slats, never to be recovered. She barely knew what words she was singing, and half the time they came out as jibberish. That night, she snuck out of her cell and curled up with Lucky, holding tight to his shirt collar, as though that could keep him there.

All during the next day—Lucky's birthday—she tried to catch a second alone with Dane to ask him about the plan, but he only ignored her. She sang her first set. Then her second. Roshian wasn't in the audience but Arrowal was, with Fian and two other Council members. The walls felt even more claustrophobic than they usually did. She was nearly dizzy by the start of her final set. She stepped onstage, and stopped.

Dane's yo-yo was tied in a pretty little bow around the microphone.

She whirled her head toward the bar, where Dane was shaking a drink for a Kindred woman. For a second his eyes met hers, and he gave a slight nod. This was the signal. She sang through her set with a shaky voice, singing songs she vaguely remembered from her middle school years, innocent songs about tire swings and first loves that wouldn't give the Council any reason in the slightest to stick around after closing to question her again.

At last, Tessela announced the Hunt was closing. Cora held her breath until every Council member had left. Shoukry finished cleaning the bar, and then they were alone. Dane turned down the lamps.

“Where's Roshian?” Cora asked.

Dane untied his yo-yo from the microphone, slipping it back in his pocket. “Waiting for us.”

He started toward the veranda doors, but Cora snaked out an arm. “I need to see proof first. I'm not going anywhere with you until I know Lucky's birthday is changed.”

Dane took a small envelope from his pocket. She fumbled with the flap and dumped out a metal tag, engraved with the Kindred's writing. “Flip it over,” Dane said.

She did, and her breath caught. A date, in English. October 21, 1998.

Exactly one year
after
Lucky was born.

Dane smiled. “I told you to trust me, songbird. You aren't the only one who doesn't want Lucky to leave. Now, this way.”

They passed through the fluttering white curtains to the artificial outdoors, where she had to shade her eyes against the sun. She hadn't been on the veranda since the first day, when Cassian had shown her the savanna. She knew it wasn't real, just forced perspective and illusions, and yet her mind refused to believe that those scrubby hills didn't stretch as endlessly as they appeared to do.

Dane started down the stairs.

“Aren't we meeting him here?” she asked.

Dane jerked his head toward the savanna. “The light out there is better. Wouldn't want him to accidentally snip off an ear, right?”

She ran her fingers over the engraved tag, tucking it into her dress, and slowly followed him down the steps. She'd never been on the lower level, where the soil was sandy and patchy with dry grass. This was where the real action was, not up in the lodge. The
garage, with its artificial trucks that ran along a bluelight track, and the armory, row after row of rifles. Her heart skipped a beat, seeing those guns. She knew they wouldn't work for her, and yet it seemed it would be so easy to grab one off that wall and blast her way to freedom.

Footsteps came from around the side of the garage. Roshian. Something about the way he carried himself made him loom despite his short stature. He let his eyes run down and up her body, settling on her hair. For a second, she wanted to go back on their deal. The idea of his hands on her, cutting away the hair she'd had her whole life, made her feel sick.

She glanced at the dashboard of the closest safari truck, where the rough carving had been made.

POD30.1

It gave her a small boost of hope. “Let's get this over with,” Cora said.

“Yeah.” Dane's voice had an odd tone. “Sure.”

She looked for scissors. Neither of them seemed to have a pair, and neither seemed in a hurry either, though Dane was giving off an anxious sort of energy. He pulled out his yo-yo, tossing it distractedly. A slow, uneasy feeling started to creep up her back. They had to do this fast so the others didn't get suspicious of her absence. And did they really need to come all the way out here?

She glanced toward the veranda. Dane was standing between her and the stairs, legs spread a little wide. If she tried to bolt back to the lodge, he'd catch her in a second.

“What's going on, Dane? I thought this was about my hair.”

“Oh, it is.”

Slowly, Roshian took out a long black case from the truck's backseat. Cora took a shaky step backward. Roshian was bound by the same moral code as all the Kindred. As deranged and self-serving as that code was, none of them ever went outside of its boundaries. Kidnapping children was fine. Dragging them out to a savanna and shooting them wasn't.

Roshian opened the case: a rifle, this one battered and dented. Not Kindred technology. Her heart started screaming for her to get out of there.

“What's going on?” she demanded.

“I asked you once how fast you could run,” Roshian said. “Unfortunately, I never got an answer, but I have studied the way you move. You are flexible, and your reflexes are fast. I would guess that you can run quite fast when pressed.”

She leveled a wary look at him.

He couldn't kill her.

He
couldn't
. He was Kindred. Was this some sick joke he and Dane were playing? A game?

“I suggest you start running,” Roshian said.

Mali

THE LODGE WAS DARK
during Free Time. Mali had never liked the inside of the menagerie—she preferred the wide-open spaces of the savanna, even if it was artificial, to the smoky air with the chained animals and clinking glasses. She couldn't imagine that on Earth people really just sat around in dank rooms like this. If Lucky's theory about POD30.1 was correct and they returned to Earth, would she have to spend so much time indoors too?

She tucked the backstage door key into the pocket of her safari uniform. She'd stolen it from Dane while he had slipped out earlier, claiming he had to help Cora clean up, which didn't sound at all like Dane. So Mali had stayed behind a few extra minutes, pretending to repair the safari truck's windshield, keeping her eyes open for something suspicious. That was when she had seen Roshian sneak around the side of the garage, and she'd rushed into the garage to hide. He was up to something, and all she could think about was what he had done to Scavenger.

She'd slipped out the back of the garage and climbed the stairs to the lodge, but there was no sign of Dane or Cora or Roshian. The lodge was empty. None of the fleet trucks had been taken. She pinched herself to keep worry at bay and started to return backstage. It was a big station, and Dane's key could only get her so far. There was no way she could track down which level and sector they might have taken Cora to.

But a rustle from the bar made her freeze. Years of fighting made her body react by instinct and her muscles tensed in a familiar pattern.
There.
A shadow, moving behind the bar.

Glass shattered and the figure cursed. “Bloody hell.”

Mali's muscles eased. “Leon.”

He stuck his head up, grabbing for a bar towel to clean up whatever bottle he'd broken. “Mali?” His hand immediately went to smooth back his hair. “Aren't you supposed to be locked up?”

Mali walked to the bar in quick, silent steps. She pulled out a stool so she could lean in close. “What are you doing here.”

“What does it look like?” He finished dabbing off the spilled liquid that smelled so sweet it made her stomach turn. “I was doing a run for Bonebreak, and it took me right by here. The lights and music were off, so I didn't think anyone would mind, eh? This bar has the best drinks of all of them.” He flashed his best smile. “Want one? You and me and a few drinks could be fun.”

She leveled him a cold stare.
Such an idiot. Such an attractive, stupid idiot.

“You will ruin all our plans if someone catches you,” she said.

“Eh.” He dismissed her worries with a wave, then poured her a glass of orange liqueur anyway. “You don't give me enough credit. I've been crawling around this station for weeks and I haven't been
caught. I even broke into Council chambers once, and tried on their ceremonial uniforms. A little stiff around the collar, but not as bad as you'd think.” He downed Mali's glass of liqueur when it was clear she wasn't going to touch it. “What are
you
doing sneaking around? Miss me?”

That smile again. It almost,
almost
, made her want to smile back. But she tossed a look at the backstage door, then leaned across the bar. “I believe a Kindred named Roshian has taken Cora and I fear for her.”

“Roshian?”
Leon grunted up the name like fresh vomit. “Shit. We need another drink.”

Mali narrowed her eyes. “You are aware of him.”

“Oh, yeah. He's one of Bonebreak's best customers. I deliver contraband to his quarters every half rotation. All the other Kindred have quarters like army barracks, you know? Not a thing out of place. And Roshian's is like that, at first glance, but he's somehow got himself another room, a secret one, connected through a viewing screen he can open. It's filled with a bunch of human artifacts. Dude seriously likes his comic books. And all that witchcraft stuff you were talking about, powdered animal parts and antlers and shit.”

Mali pinched herself, hoping the pain would help her focus, because what he was saying made no sense. “You must have misunderstood. The Kindred condemn such beliefs.”

“Well, damned if I know. Maybe he's got Axion friends.”

“What is in the packages that you deliver.”

“I've never looked. I don't want to know what messed-up contraband guys like him want.”

Mali had rarely felt this uneasy. First Cora disappearing,
now these revelations about Roshian . . .

Leon narrowed his eyes. “Why do you have that look on your face?”

“What look.”

“That I'm-going-to-make-Leon-do-something look.”

She leaned on the counter. “You know how to get to Roshian's quarters.”

He sighed. “Here it comes.”

“I want you to take me there. I want to see what is in the packages that you deliver. It might explain where he took Cora.”

He held up his hands. “Okay, but I'm going to expect a thank-you at the end of this. A foot rub to start. We'll negotiate from there. And I'm taking this.” He swiped a fresh bottle.

Mali let her smile come this time, despite her worry.

Leon motioned her to a panel behind the stage that was hidden by a curtain. He removed the balled-up bag of potato chips that held the panel open, and bowed.

“After you. At least I'll get a good view out of this.” His gaze dropped to her butt.

She dropped to all fours and crawled in. He clambered in after her, making a ruckus as he crawled along. From his strained breath she could tell the tunnel's thin air bothered him, but she didn't mind the tight passages. For a second, Mali let herself think about what would happen if they could prove Earth was there, and if they could go back after the Gauntlet. She had asked Cora once how she could go about finding her family. Cora had said that she'd need a
phone number
or
mailbox
or
email address
, none of which Mali had, and none of which sounded like things a Saharan nomad camp would have either. But Leon might be able to help.
Leon seemed to know how to get around official requirements. And, if she was being honest, she wouldn't mind getting to know him back on Earth.

They crawled up two levels, then turned down a maze of ducts, avoiding a cleaner trap that she saw even before he did, and finally came to a drecktube marked with chalk. Leon jerked his thumb at the crudely drawn face with
x
's over the eyes. “I do that to mark which quarters belong to assholes.”

He shouldered open the narrow door, holding a finger to his lips to be quiet. But no sound came from within except the constant whir of air through the wall seams. They climbed into a set of standard crew quarters that looked identical to all the quarters she had seen for low-level officers. A single bedroom. One chair, and a table that folded out from the wall. Blue bins holding blankets and a few rationed belongings. Leon went to the viewing screen and gave it a firm jab with his elbow. It clicked open.

Mali inspected the hinges closely. “These mechanisms are very crude. It is odd that he does not protect this hidden door with perceptive ability.”

They climbed inside. Leon fumbled with something in his pocket and then a light strapped to his forehead came on. The beam cut through the darkness, showing only a circle of light. Leon moved it slowly around the room so she could see everything. One wall was covered in animal heads that had been detached from the bodies and mounted on hard backings. Not just antlers and horns, but entire heads. An antelope. A deer. Mali had seen much in her life to disturb her, but her pulse had never quite raced in this fluttering, anxious way before.

“I do not understand,” she said.

Leon barely glanced at the animal heads. “He's a hunter. Deer antlers. People do it all the time at home.”

He spoke so casually of something so strange.

“Not the Kindred,” she said. “I have never seen this.”

Leon kept swinging the light, and it settled on a table where various animal parts were laid out, along with containers of chemicals and the thick black wire the Mosca used for their masks. She stepped closer, squinting at the fur in the darkness. A hyena pelt.

Scavenger.

Her stomach started to turn in revulsion. This was more than just cutting off a claw. He'd completely desecrated Scavenger's entire body. Her pulse was fluttering harder now, and she glanced at Leon, afraid he could see. Something was very, very wrong.

Leon pointed to a small desk in front of a mirror that was covered by a heavy black cloth. “I leave the packages under there.”

Mali lifted the cloth, trying to calm her heartbeat, but there was only a single black canvas bag underneath. She pulled it out.

“Keep the light on it.” It was closed with intricate Kindred knots, and her fingers flew over them until she had untied the final one. She looked in the direction of Scavenger's pelt on the table one last time.

She opened the canvas bag.

Leon leaned over her shoulder, the light attached to his head bobbing as he rubbed his chin. “What the . . . ?”

Mali pulled out a Kindred uniform. It was standard for someone of Roshian's rank: cerulean blue, with five knots down the side. There were also paper notebooks—artifacts from Earth—filled with writing that looked like human speech. But beneath it was something odder. A small, clear box that contained two black
half circles that were soft and rubbery. And a tube with a screw-top lid, with writing in a language she didn't understand, and two heavy barbells.

Leon swiped up the box of half circles. “No way.”

“Do you know what those are.”

“They look like enormous contact lenses.”

She grabbed him, swinging the light so that it shone right in her face, but she didn't blink. “What are contact lenses.”

“We can't just magically improve everyone's eyesight on Earth. People wear them to see better. And the tube is some kind of chemical paint. Don't you get it, kid? It's a disguise. The uniform. The weights, to keep his muscles huge. Roshian is only posing as a Kindred.”

Mali found a small square of plastic in the bottom of the bag. She held it up to the light. The words on it were scratched and
difficult to read.
John Keller,
it said.
Medical Student, Epidemiol
ogy, Boston University.
There was a two-dimensional reproduction of a face in the upper corner; it was Roshian's face, only the skin was pink. His hair was longer. He was smiling and wearing glasses.

“He's human,” Leon said.

Human.
Mali glanced back at the animal heads on the walls. That explained his odd predilections. The way he kept to himself in the Hunt. Why he only seemed to have the cloaked side of his personality.

It also meant that he was not bound by the Kindred moral code.

She dropped the identification card. “We must find Cassian. Now.”

“No way,” Leon said. “If he sees you outside of the menagerie,
he'll know we can sneak out. He'll put a stop to it. And he'll turn me in to the guards.”

“This is more important. There will be no more sneaking around if Cora is dead.”

“Please tell me you're exaggerating.”

“I do not exaggerate.” She climbed one leg back into the service passageway. “The Kindred do not kill humans. But
humans
kill humans. And I do not think that Roshian—John Keller—only wants Cora for her hair. Now take me to Cassian's quarters.”

She climbed in the drecktube, and they scrambled through the tunnels, dodging packages and cleaner traps, and this time Leon didn't make a single comment about staring at her backside.