The Hunt (7 page)

Cora

IT WAS A NOISY
night. The brother and sister from Australia whispered to each other from their neighboring cells, and once Dane fell asleep, Pika started grumbling aloud to the bobcat's tail about the yo-yo. The only quiet corner was Mali's and the hyena's, and Cora wondered what Mali must think of all this. Like Dane, Mali had once sided with their Kindred kidnappers. But that had changed when she'd learned Anya was alive—and the Kindred had lied about it.

“Cora,” Lucky whispered. “You still awake?”

“As if I could sleep.” She tapped on the bars above her. “What about you, Mali?”

Two arms and a head appeared, upside down. Thin as she was, Mali had to be the only one who could squeeze her head between the bars. “I do not sleep either.”

“Where have they been keeping you?” Lucky asked.

Cora told him about the six-by-six cell, and the grimaces on
both his face and Mali's said they were all too familiar with it.

“I do not think they have caught Leon,” Mali said. “He might come back for us.”

Lucky snorted. “He won't.”

The disappointment on Mali's face was plain to see, even upside down. In the cage, she and Leon had been matched. An arrangement that Leon had resisted, to say the least, and yet Cora knew that the Kindred had matched them because they were more alike than he wanted to admit.

Cora reached up and squeezed Mali's dangling hand.

Lucky's voice dropped an octave, as though he knew he was treading dangerous ground. “They said the Warden brought you here. He didn't hurt you, did he?”

Cora felt her heart beat just once, painfully, as if someone had reached into her chest and squeezed out all the blood. Had he hurt her? He'd
decimated
her.

She clenched her jaw.

“I'm fine.” She squinted into the darkness. “Are there black windows here? Are they watching us?”

“Not as far as I can tell. It isn't like the cage, where they watched us all the time. They don't seem to care what we do, as long as we don't cause trouble. Wait until you get a good look at this place during the daytime. It's a dump.”

Mali grunted her agreement. “We are not prime specimens anymore.”

Cora glanced toward the other cells, listening to the faint sounds of shifting bodies as the others slept. She pulled her blanket tighter.
Chicago's
blanket. What had he done to merit being dragged off on his nineteenth birthday, instead of being sent to Armstrong?
And what were the Kindred's lies he'd been yelling about?

“I don't know if I believe a word Dane says,” Cora said, “but we can't stay here.”

Lucky let out a harsh laugh. “We tried to escape. You know as well as I do how that played out.”

“I'm not talking about escape,” Cora whispered. “Cassian has a different plan. There's a series of tests that's happening in a few weeks. If I run them and pass, humans will be granted intelligent species status. They won't be able to cage us anymore. That's why he put us here, to train me in psychic abilities secretly so I can pass the tests.”

Mali, her long braids dangling toward the floor, let out another soft grunt. “You speak of the Gauntlet.”

Cora nodded.

Lucky stared at her with an unreadable expression in the blue glow. “Psychic abilities?” There was a strange undertone in his voice. She couldn't shake the feeling that words like
freak
were circling around in the back of his head.

“Will you do it,” Mali asked.

“I didn't say yes,” Cora said. “I can't bring myself to trust him. He had me completely fooled before. You have no idea how awful it is to even be around him, the constant reminders that he was lying the entire time.”

Lucky didn't respond right away, and she realized her connection with Cassian was probably the last thing he wanted to talk about.

“The Gauntlet is dangerous,” Mali said. “Eleven humans attempt to run it before. None still live.”

“They died in the puzzles?”

“A few. The physical challenges are difficult, but the moral and perceptive ones are most dangerous. They can break your mind. Some humans go insane and die after.”

“What kind of puzzles were they?” Cora asked.

“No one knows,” Mali said. “There are rumors that the moral tests form impossible choices: for example, a human is placed in a room with a caged lion that is dying of starvation. The human is told to save its life, but the only way to do that is to free it so it can eat
you
. The perceptive puzzles are even worse because they force the brain to work in unnatural ways. Pushing a weak mind to perform telekinesis can rupture the tissue.”

“And this is what you plan on doing?” Lucky asked.

“I'll be better prepared than the people who have run it before,” Cora said, trying to sound confident. “That's why I'll train with Cassian, so I
don't
lose my mind.” She took a deep breath. “He said it's the only way we'll ever be free. Maybe he's right.”

“Well, I know
this
isn't right,” Lucky said. “This place. The things they do to these animals is sick. And there's something wrong with these kids too. Everyone's half starved and bruised. Who knows how many kids have vanished before Chicago. Or how soon the rest of us will.” His face turned very serious.

“What's wrong?” Cora asked.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Remember what Dane said about turning nineteen?”

Cora nodded slowly.

“My nineteenth birthday is October twenty-first. We were abducted from Earth on July twenty-ninth. I don't know how much time has passed exactly, but it's got to be close. And if what happened to Chicago is true . . .”

The significance of his words wove their way into Cora's head. Nineteen. The age the Kindred determined that a human went from child to adult. Her eyes went to the supply room with the drecktube.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“I'll turn nineteen any day now and be taken away, and then Mali will, and then you.” He jerked a hand back toward the cell block. “And everyone else.”

“So the Gauntlet's our only option.” Cora shifted, anxious. It wasn't just the idea of working with Cassian that bothered her, or that ache in her head when she tried too hard to use her abilities. It was the weight of what it meant. Humanity's freedom resting on her shoulders alone. What if she failed?

And then again, what if she
succeeded
?

“There could be a third option,” Mali said quietly, still hanging upside down.

Cora's head jerked up. “What do you mean?”

“The Gauntlet tests competitors in twelve puzzles. If the competitor successfully passes all of them, each tester, known as a Chief Assessor, inputs his approval into the algorithm at the end of the examination. It is a simple process: they approve you or they do not. The exact mechanism is similar to turning a key. Technically, one does not beat the Gauntlet by beating the puzzles. One's success is registered when all four keys are turned.”

Cora still looked at her blankly.

“I am saying that you do not have to run the Gauntlet,” Mali explained. “You do not have to complete a single puzzle. You must only make the testers turn their keys. It is a . . .” She seemed to search for the word, her arms gesturing upside down. “Loophole.”

“How's she supposed to do that?” Lucky whispered. “These aren't exactly creatures you can pull a gun on and make demands.”

Mali smiled thinly. “You take control of their minds.”

For a second, Lucky and Cora just stared at her. Cora started to laugh a little deliriously, wonder if she'd heard wrong. “Not even the Kindred can control other people's minds.”

“Anya can,” Mali said, and then corrected herself, “Anya
could
. I see—
saw
—her do it. If we free Anya, she can teach you. It is not a complex skill to learn, if one has already achieved mind-reading ability. It is merely a modification—a trick. She can teach it to you in a matter of days.”

“Cheating is too risky,” Lucky said. “We'll think of something else.”

But Cora didn't answer right away. She picked up a deck of cards Chicago had left behind and riffled through it anxiously. She hadn't touched a deck in months—not since Bay Pines detention center—and the shuffle felt comfortably familiar.

“She might be onto something,” Cora argued. “They already think we're criminals. Maybe that's what makes us smarter than them—we aren't restrained by logic and rules. We can be clever. We can cheat. They can't.” She held the deck tightly in her hands. “This way, we don't have to trust Cassian. We can betray
his
trust this time. I'll let him train me; I'll let him submit me for registration, but there's no way I'm going to actually run. The minute I stand up in front of the testers, I'll cheat my way to freedom. For all of us.”

Upside down, Mali smiled.

In the darkness, Cora could feel Lucky's gaze searing into her. She remembered the kiss they'd shared beneath the boughs
of the weeping cherry tree. She had thought she could love him then, but that was before she knew the truth about his mother's death and her father's crimes. Before the cage had twisted him into someone who thought life in an elaborate zoo was paradise.

“I still don't like it,” Lucky said. “But I definitely don't like the idea of you going through tests that could rupture your brain, or get you eaten by a lion, or mangled in some physical test.”

She bit hard on the inside of her lip. She could smell the rankness of the cell block. Unwashed kids, sick animals, and, beneath it all, the tang of blood.

All night, she toyed with the deck of cards like it was a rosary, whispering prayers and fears and hopes as she shuffled. At Bay Pines, she'd had a cellmate named Tonya who everyone called Queenie because of the queen of hearts tattoo on her shoulder. Queenie's mom had been a sous-chef in Las Vegas, and her dad a card counter at the blackjack tables. He had taught Queenie and her brother to count cards and he'd put them on his team. It wasn't illegal, at least not technically. But there had been an argument with another patron. Accusations of more serious cheating. A fight that resulted in two card dealers in the ICU and Queenie sent to juvie.

But were you really cheating?
Cora had asked.

Queenie had snorted and tossed a jack of spades at her bed.
Of course we were.

Queenie taught her how to hide spare cards in the loose folds of her khaki uniform. It had started out of boredom, two insomniacs locked together in a cinder-block room until the seven-a.m. bell, but then, after two Venezuelan girls beat up Cora in the library, it became necessary. She needed protection, and for that she needed extra commissary credits, and to get them she needed
to win at cards. Cheating had been dangerous then, and it would be even more dangerous now. But a thrill raced up Cora's nerves every time she imagined taking the Gauntlet and twisting it on its head: proving humanity's intelligence not through the Kindred's system, but through her own.

But that meant doing the one thing she'd sworn she'd never do, the thing she couldn't stomach even the idea of.

Trusting Cassian again.

Cora

AFTER A FEW DAYS,
Cora discovered why no one bothered
with the shower: the water was ice-cold, and besides, who was there to stay clean for, when the low lights of the Hunt hid all the grime? She learned the hard way that she had to fight her way first thing in the morning to the feed room, or she'd get only crumbs. Already, not even a full week in, she had bruises from being elbowed by the others.

“Take this.” Mali thrust a threadbare blanket at her, just before the clock clicked to Showtime. “You are cold last night. I hear you shivering.” She frowned and scrunched up her face. She was missing a tooth from where she'd gotten in a fight with Pika the night before over the only magazine, an old
Seventeen
with half the pages torn out. “I mean . . .” She scrunched her face up more. “You
were
cold. I
heard
you.”

Cora hugged the blanket close. “You're doing good, Mali. Thanks for this.” Mali smiled, seeming pleased with her progress
toward acting more human.

The clock clicked to Showtime.

“Already?” Makayla yawned from behind them. “I seriously could have used another hour of sleep.” She took a step, wincing on her bad knee.

“You okay?” Cora said, nodding toward the bandage.

Makayla gave a dark laugh. “What, my knee? Yeah. I did it to myself.” She stretched her leg out, wincing slightly. “You know that clingy guest, Roshian? He decided I'm his personal pet. He used to take me out on the savanna every day and ask me to run. Thought the exercise was good for me after I'd spent the night in a cramped cell, you know? Like he was doing me a favor. It got old fast, so I smashed my knee into the cell bars. Thought it might get me out of dancing too, but no such luck.”

Cora's own knee ached with phantom pain. “Couldn't the Kindred heal you?”

Makayla rolled her eyes. “They wouldn't expend the extra effort. Not on us.” She shouldered open the door.

The low lights and chatter of the Hunt spilled out. It looked like afternoon already, the artificial sun lowering over the savanna horizon. A few Kindred guests were already there, waiting for their servers and entertainers. Cora's eyes immediately scanned the room for Cassian, but he wasn't there, and she felt slightly disappointed. He hadn't returned since the first day. Lucky had once accused her of being captivated by their caretaker—and maybe he was right. She'd told herself after Cassian's betrayal that any attraction was over. And yet, anger or love, it was still Cassian who consumed her thoughts.

She followed Makayla toward the stage. One Kindred guest
perched on a stool at the bar. Two danced stiffly together, even with no music. Another was seated at a table near the stage, his eyes sunken and dark. He stood as soon as they entered, as though he had been waiting.

Roshian.

He stepped toward Makayla, petting her head. “Has your knee improved, girl?”

Makayla bent down to massage her knee—with an exaggerated wince. “I think I need to stay off it another few days at least. A real shame.”

Roshian looked displeased. He picked at his human clothes, blinking a little fast with black eyes that were only slightly cleared at the edges. He was uncloaked, Cora knew. All the Kindred, even the hostess, were uncloaked in the menageries. If he hadn't been, he'd have sensed Makayla's hatred of him in a second.

His eyes shifted to Cora.

“You.” His voice was different from the other Kindred's. They tended to act a little loopy when they were uncloaked, almost like their flood of emotions made them drunk, but Roshian seemed completely in control. “You are new, girl.”

“Um, yeah.”

“Such unusual hair,” he mused. He wrapped a curl around his finger, running his thumb over the strands delicately. “Blond hair can catch quite a price on the trading floor. The Axion believe consuming parts of the lesser species gives them strength. Your hair would be quite a trophy.” He spoke so casually, comparing her hair to the heads of wild game that hunters displayed on their walls. Her stomach turned at the thought.

“You must be eager to stretch your legs,” he continued. “I
could take you to the savanna, where you could run. I would like to see how fast you are.”

“Um . . .” She glanced at Makayla, who only gave a slight shrug, as though to say,
Good luck.
Makayla signaled to Dane to put on some music, and she began leading dancing couples in stiff swaying motions around the lodge. Roshian's eyes slid to the nearest dancing couple, and Cora prayed he wasn't going to ask her to dance.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the main door open. She caught sight of a familiar figure over Roshian's shoulder.

“Cassian! I mean . . . it's the Warden. He just arrived and I promised him a . . . a dance.” She awkwardly managed to extract her hair from Roshian's hand. “Sorry.”

She hurried toward Cassian, fighting the urge to wipe her hair where Roshian had touched it. Cassian, dressed in a charcoal suit with the jacket slung over one elbow, looked perplexed at her sudden enthusiasm to see him, particularly when she rested her hands on his shoulders.

“Dance with me,” she hissed.

His expression grew even more perplexed, but he set down his jacket and stepped closer. Canned music pumped out of the speakers behind the bar, something with a clarinet and a woman's languorous voice.

“I had to get away from Roshian,” she whispered. “He seriously creeps me out. Honestly, this whole place does. It's—”

“Wait.” He nodded toward the nearest pair of dancers, who were only two tables away, and then pressed a hand to the small of her back, guiding her in the dance closer to the billowing curtains of the veranda, until they were well out of earshot.

“It's freezing at night,” Cora continued. “There isn't enough food. And these guests treat us like slaves, unless they like us, and then it's even worse.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow. “I told you this place would give you much to consider. Have you changed your mind, then?”

She went silent as the dance continued, their feet quietly chasing each other's, his hand warm against her back. Her plan with Mali and Lucky was still fresh in her mind, as was Mali's warning that running the Gauntlet puzzles could make her go insane. No, she would prove humanity's intelligence in a safer way—
her
way—by cheating. But in order to do that, she still needed Cassian to get her in front of the Gauntlet testers.

“Cora?” he prompted.

They were in the open on the veranda now. Alone. She tried to calm her heartbeat. It unnerved her to see him like this, in human clothes, with almost-normal eyes, and such fluid movements as he guided her around the veranda.

“Maybe,” she said slowly. “Tell me what the perceptive training would involve.”

“Sessions between you and me here in the lodge, and practice on your own.” He was so close that just a whisper brushed her ear. “In the past, the Gauntlet's perceptive puzzles have primarily tested candidates on telekinesis, such as rearranging floor tiles to spell words with only one's mind, or making objects levitate into a basket. If you can achieve levitation of a medium-sized object twelve inches in the air for thirty sustained seconds, I believe you will have a chance of passing whichever test they give you. I can teach you to do that. But, as time is limited, we will have to work diligently and, of course, secretly.”

He nodded toward the guests visible through the veranda doors. “There are Council members in there even as we speak. They cannot learn of what we are doing.”

Her palms were sweating, leaving dark marks on his shirt. “Why do they even care? I thought the Gauntlet's whole purpose was to give lesser species a chance to prove our intelligence. You even said humans have run it before.”

“Some have, yes.”

“And did their participation have to be so secretive?”

“No.” He swung her around, so her back was to the lodge. “The difference is, no previous human candidates had a chance of succeeding until now. The Council is not interested in stopping humans from running the Gauntlet. But they are interested in stopping humans from
beating
it.”

“What are they so afraid of?” she asked.

“The Council has a vested interest in keeping humanity a lesser species. Their official stance is that humans are lesser because you primarily act on emotions, not logic. You expend your resources unsustainably. You incite war. If you were to gain intelligent status, you might damage the delicate system of universal governance we currently have.”

“And unofficially?”

He glanced toward the veranda doors. “If you had kept a species caged for centuries, and then suddenly gave them the key, along with access to lawmaking and transportation and weaponry, wouldn't
you
fear what they would do?”

He let her go, abruptly, and reached into his pocket. He took out a pair of dice, holding them up to the sunlight. “That is why they cannot know what you are capable of. Not yet.”

Her palms felt empty without the solidity of his shoulders beneath them. The dice looked different from the others that were scattered around the lodge. The dots on these dice glowed with a faint blue light.

“I have fitted these dice with amplifiers like the ones we use to control the doors. They make telekinesis easier, especially during training. And this way, if anyone happens to observe us, it will appear we are simply playing tabletop games.”

He set the dice on a table just inside the veranda doors, next to a basket of old-fashioned metal jacks and dominoes.

“And why do
you
care?” she asked more quietly. “This is our battle, not yours.” She realized, as she spoke the words, she was actually curious.

He pressed a hand against her back again, drawing her once more into the charade of dancing. He whispered, “Was there nothing you cared about outside of yourself, on Earth? No greater cause?”

She pulled back far enough to level a stare at him. “I was busy enough keeping myself alive in juvie.”

“Then let us look at your brother, Charlie, for example. I've read from your memories of him that ever since he was five years old he donated half his allowance to save polar bears in the Arctic. Why? It makes no logical sense. He never met a polar bear. If he had, it probably would have killed him. He did it because he did not want to live in a world without a diversity of life. He did it because, even at that young age, he knew it was the right thing to do.” He led her farther from the lodge, out toward the edge of the veranda where the wind off the savanna ruffled her hair.

“So humanity is your polar bear?”

“It goes far beyond that. Unlike Charlie with his bears, I have met humans. I have seen exactly what the universe would lose without your species. And I know what it feels like, personally, to be powerless. To have others judge you based on false perceptions. I was in a low weight and height percentile when I was a youth. I was constantly overlooked. No one predicted my potential, not even the algorithm. That is why I first started to work with humans, when I was the age for a work assignment.”

She couldn't help but slide a hand to the muscles beneath his shirt. “I have a hard time believing you were ever small.”

He gave the trace of a smile. “I grew bigger.” He drew her an inch closer. “And now I do have power. I am not overlooked any longer. And soon, you will not be either.” His eyes searched hers. She still wasn't used to seeing him like this—with eyes that were cloudy, but had irises flecked with color.

She stepped faster and faster in the dance, lies mixing with truths until she wasn't sure which was which. “I trusted you,” she confessed. “I cared about you. You stood in that ocean and told me you'd help us escape, when all the while you had guards stationed to capture us. I'd have to be a fool to trust you again.”

Were they really spinning as fast as it seemed? His face remained placid, his steps so calm and easy.

“Do not let my mistakes stop you from achieving something important. I believe in you—in all humans. Your species has the capacity for such rich emotions; selfishness and greed, yes, but also truth and forgiveness and sacrifice. When you believe in a cause, nothing can stop you. If anyone deserves to be the fifth intelligent species, it is you.”

She looked away. His words were making her feel things
she didn't want to. She was here to lie, after all. Eventually, to betray him.

He drew her closer still. “I felt you inside my head, Cora. You read my thoughts. And you liked the power that came with that. You think you're unnatural, but you aren't. You're exceptional.”

The sun felt as though it was burning even brighter. The veranda seemed to be swimming. She let go of him abruptly and clamped a hand on the nearest table to steady herself.

His shadow was cast next to her. “It killed me to betray you,” he whispered. “The last thing I wanted was to push you away. I wanted to hold you close, like we were dancing just now, feeling your arms around me—”

“Stop,” she whispered.

His breath brushed her cheek. “I don't have to be your enemy.”

She gripped the edge of the table hard. Somehow this had all gotten out of control. The sun seemed to grow brighter until it was blinding.

“I understand you,” he continued. “And I want you to understand me. I want you to stay awake at night thinking about me again, like you used to. It was so difficult not to go to you, those nights, and answer every question you had, and ask you a thousand of my own.”

She remembered those nights in the cage. Nok would be snoring at her side, the boys asleep on the floor and Lucky downstairs keeping watch, and Cora would stare at the black window, wondering about the creature behind it with the black eyes, more curious than she should have been.