The Hunt (9 page)

Cora

CORA CLAMPED A HAND
over her mouth. “Leon!” She
hadn't expected to see him again, especially not here, especially not covered in grime. She threw her arms around him.

“I heard you chatting with your new friend,” he said. “Figured I'd wait for him to leave before stopping by for a visit. Kindred are the jealous sort, you know.”

“I knew you'd come back for us!”

The shower room door cracked open, and she swiveled her head around in alarm, but it was only Lucky and Mali, peeking their heads in.

“Cora?” Lucky said. “You shouted. I thought—” But then he caught sight of Leon. “Holy shit.”

Mali elbowed past him into the room, her eyes wide. For a second, Cora thought Mali might give Leon a hug, but she just punched at a piece of armor sewn to his shoulder. “What happened to you.”

Leon rubbed his arm where her fist had made impact. “Nice to see you again too, kid.” He gave Lucky a nod. “All of you. I've been shacking up with a Mosca operation. Not bad guys, actually, if you can make out what they're saying behind those masks. Bonebreak, he's their leader. Reminds me a bit of my uncle. Likes vodka. Snores too.” He motioned to a wrapped package on the floor that was letting off a smell even worse than the shower room drain. “They're black-market dealers. They use the drecktube tunnels to smuggle their stuff around the station, and humans are the only ones flexible enough to crawl around in there.”

“Have you been looking for us this entire time?” Cora asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh . . . yeah. Sure have.”

“How did you come up through the drecktube?” Lucky asked. “It's locked.”

“Not from the inside,” Leon said, but then scratched the back of his head as if avoiding something. “Actually, I, uh, found something in there. Someone. Sort of like a, well, dead guy. Don't know if he was a friend of yours.”

Cora and Lucky exchanged a look. “Was he wearing driving gloves?” she asked. “And goggles?”

Leon nodded. “Charred up bad. He shouldn't have been down there, eh? Those tunnels are death traps if you can't navigate them.”

“He didn't go down there intentionally,” Lucky explained. “His name was Chicago. The Kindred threw him down there. They do that to humans when we turn nineteen.”

“If we have misbehaved,” Mali clarified.

Leon eyed Mali warily, as if he was worried she might attack him again, but then his hand itched at the spot on his neck where the markings that paired with hers used to be.

“Listen,” Cora said in a rush. “If you can pass through the drecktubes safely, then we need you to do something important.” She told him about the Gauntlet and their plan to cheat it, which elicited a rare nod of approval from him. “But we need a girl for it all to work,” she continued. “Her name is Anya. She's being kept in the Temple menagerie. Short blond hair, about ten years old, missing some fingers. We're going to have to get her out of there somehow. See if you can break into their backstage area. If you find her, leave a mark with that chalk on the floor here, so we'll know. Be careful. Don't let anyone see you.”

“Tell her that you are friends with me,” Mali added. “She will trust you more.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “Friends, is that all?”

Mali only blinked stiffly, and Leon seemed disappointed.

“Have you seen Nok and Rolf?” Cora asked, but he shook his head. “Try to find them too. We need to make sure they're okay.”

Leon rolled his eyes. “Anything else? Chocolate milk? Gumdrops?”

Someone drummed on the shower room door sharply. “Cora.” It was Dane. “Get out here. Break's over. Who's in there with you?”

Cora shoved Leon back toward the drecktube. “Go. Quick.” He grumbled as he climbed in. She paused, holding the door open for a second. “It's good to see you, Leon.”

He gave a reluctant half smile. “Yeah, sweetheart. You too.”

She closed the drecktube just as Dane opened the door. He froze when he saw her and Lucky standing so close, and Mali off to the side. His eyes slid over Lucky, tracing the shape of his body as though looking for imperfections. “What's going on in here?”

“Nothing,” Cora answered quickly. “Sorry. I'm going.”

She started down the corridor and opened the backstage door, letting in the sounds of birds and clinking glasses, but a hand stopped her.

Dane had followed her. “Hang on, songbird. A word.”

Her heart thudded with fears—had he heard Leon?

“Look, I'm not blind,” he said, and then nodded back toward the shower room. “I can guess what that was. You wanted to sneak off to be with Lucky, and have Mali stand guard. Well, I can't blame you—we don't get many guys looking like
him
around here. But we're here to work, and that's it. Any privileges you had before—to date, to eat when you want, to take long baths—are over now. You gave that up when you failed out of your last enclosure.”

Making out? That's what Dane thought this was about? She clenched her jaw against the ripple of anger that surged up her throat. “Got it,” she said tightly, but he didn't let her go. She had seen how Dane's gaze had lingered over Lucky, when he tended to the animals with such care, and especially when he took his shirt off to wash himself in the water trough.

“So just keep to yourself,” Dane said. “And we'll be fine.”

The ball of anger twisted harder in her stomach. If he thought he had a chance with Lucky, he was going to be greatly disappointed. Even if Lucky did like boys, he wouldn't go for Dane in a million years.

“Right,” she choked, and pushed her way into the lodge.

FOR DAYS, CORA CHECKED
the floor around the shower room drecktube obsessively, but there were no chalk messages from Leon. Maybe he had run into trouble finding Anya, or maybe he'd just abandoned them, like he had before. She could think of
nothing but their plan, as she stumbled through her duties and rushed through her songs. On the days when Council members were there, her stomach curled. She watched them play cards and thought back to Queenie in Bay Pines and the Venezuelan girls they cheated together. Those girls never caught on. With luck, the Council wouldn't either.

When Cassian finally returned, she couldn't help but notice he wore gloves. She wondered if his palm was still wounded from the metal jack, or if he'd worn them as protection in case it happened again.

He spoke briefly to Tessela, who nodded and came to the stage.

“You can finish your shift early,” Tessela told her. “One of the patrons wishes you to play a game of cards.” She indicated the most private of the alcoves.

Cassian was already waiting for Cora there. She sank onto one of the benches, avoiding looking at the basket of jacks. Faint sounds came from the other side of the alcove's wooden screen. Makayla's tap shoes. Clinking glasses from the bar. The roar of a distant vehicle driving toward the savanna. She shifted, flustered and suddenly warm. Being alone with him always made Cora feel too hot, like standing outside on a summer day at noon—in danger of getting burned.

Cassian took a seat a safe distance across from her. “How is your head?”

“Better.” She picked at her fingernails. “How is your hand?”

He slowly removed his gloves. The skin on his palm had mostly healed, though it was still red. “It was my fault. I provoked you, though it was not my intention.”

She reached out and placed her hand over his, hoping the gesture would relieve any suspicions he might have. “It doesn't matter. I agreed to run the Gauntlet, and I will.”

He looked up at her touch, and for a second she feared he'd sensed her lie. But then storm clouds in his pupils darkened, and he leaned forward as though gravity was drawing him closer. “I know it is not easy for you to trust me again,” he said, “But I knew you would agree.”

She tilted her head, curious. “Did you?”

“Forgiveness, mistakes, determination—all human values I have known and appreciated. But I've learned more about humanity after watching you. Something that I first observed on Earth but never quite understood until now. Perseverance. Or rather, perseverance in the face of the illogical.”

For a second, her mind turned back to being ten years old, standing bruised beneath an oak tree, and Charlie lecturing her about being stubborn.

“You mean not giving up?”

He nodded. “To us, that is an unfathomable trait. The decisions we make are carefully weighed. In the cage, you should have given up many times. You didn't, even when it defied logic. And most incredibly of all, not giving up was the right decision.”

“It wasn't,” she argued. “It didn't work.”

“Your escape did not succeed, true. And yet not giving up was the
right
decision. It made you stronger. That is what fascinates me. If it had been Kindred wards, they would still be there, running puzzles for the rest of their lives. It makes me not want to give up either. Not just in my head, but also in my heart.” He pressed a
hand to his chest, and she felt her own heart start to thump. “When I weigh this decision to train you to run the Gauntlet, logic tells me it is not the wisest choice. And yet I believe it is right.”

Another memory returned to her, this one from a year ago. Their father had forbidden Charlie to take flight lessons.
Too dangerous for an eighteen-year-old,
he'd said. So Charlie had gotten a job after school at a call center to pay for the lessons, and on weekends when he was supposed to be working with a college prep tutor, he'd driven to a small airstrip outside Richmond.
Dad will be
furious if he finds out,
Cora had said.
You told me yourself, you have
to know when to give up.
Charlie had just shaken his head.
You have
to know when
not
to give up too.

She still rested her hand over Cassian's. She remembered the first time she'd felt the electricity of his touch, how he was so much warmer than she'd expected. For a second, she forgot this was all an act.

She cleared her throat. “We should get to work.”

He blinked as though he'd forgotten why they were there too.

“Of course.” He took out a pair of amplified dice, working one die between his fingers. “Telekinesis is the first thing we are taught.” He set the die on the table and concentrated. It suddenly slid toward him, all on its own, as though someone had given it a shove.

He set it back on the table.

“Focus first on the shape, memorize it, so that if you closed your eyes you could still picture it. Then simply give it a tap with your thoughts, as you would with your finger.”

Cora stared at the die. Hard and compact, just like her anger had been. The anger was still there, buried down deep where she
would never forget, but she was finding it harder to direct that anger at the man seated across from her.

She thought about tapping the die.

Nothing happened.

She wrinkled her brow and concentrated harder. Her vision started to blur, and the room felt like it keeled to the left, though she knew it wasn't moving. She ignored her shifting perceptions and focused on the die.

Tap.

Again, nothing happened, and in frustration she reached out and flicked it with her finger.

Cassian shook his head slowly. “That is cheating.”

“Well, the result's the same.”

He replaced the die in its starting position. “Intelligent species are interested in more than results. We are interested in processes. Doing things in a correct, efficient, logical manner. Cheating does not fit into that.”

Cora picked up the die, toying with it. That was what it came down to, wasn't it? The end result. If she ran the Gauntlet by the Kindred's rules and won, humanity would be freed. If she cheated, the end result might be the same, and yet it wouldn't be the same at all—it would mean so much more because they'd have achieved it their own way.

By her count, there were only twenty-one days before the Gauntlet module would arrive on the station along with the non-Kindred delegates. Cassian would expect her to run the puzzles correctly, efficiently, and logically. His world would be thrown into chaos when she cheated. Everyone's would. But then, finally, maybe the Kindred would understand that just because humans
didn't do things their way didn't mean humans weren't intelligent.

“Right.”

She focused again on the die.

Once she felt like she had the corners of the die firmly in her head, she tapped it mentally again.

It moved. Hardly more than a wobble, but it moved.

She let out a cry of surprise. “It worked!”

Cassian smiled. “A good start.” He set the die back in the center. “Try again.”

Concentrating was harder this time. He smiled so rarely that it was distracting. She had to try to put him out of her mind and just feel the shape of the die, and
tap
.

The die slid clear across the table, fell off, and bounced against the wall.

“Did you see that?” She jumped up without thinking. “It really worked—
ow!
”

Pain suddenly ripped through her brain. Cassian leaped up, pressing a hand to her back, the electricity from his touch warming her.

“Breathe,” he said. “Slowly. You need to send oxygen to your brain.”

But the headache didn't abate, and she sank onto the bench.

“Perhaps that is sufficient for today,” he said with concern. “Your mind is not yet fully healed from before. Keep one of the dice. Practice at night. But do not strain yourself.”

She tucked a die inside her dress, then stood and headed back toward the lodge.

“Wait, Cora. One more thing.” Still clutching her head, she
turned to find him right in front of her. She stared at his chest, the button-down shirt that was so human, so real. A thread was loose. “I won't betray your trust again. I promise.”