The Cage(111)

“Cora, wait,” Rolf called.

She turned, brushing the moisture from beneath her eyes. Nok was still sobbing, oblivious to everything. Rolf rubbed the marks on his neck slowly. “You were right, in the medical room. I was studying their technology. Those blue cubes above the doors are amplifiers. Destroy them, and the Kindred won’t be able to open the doors with their minds. It might buy you some time. I’ll make sure Nok doesn’t sound the alarm. Now just go.”

Over her shoulder, the waves were crashing. Beckoning. Mali tugged on her arm.

“Thank you,” she whispered. He gave a curt nod, his attention already back on Nok. Cora turned to Leon. “It’s not too late.”

He cracked his knuckles anxiously, keeping a good distance from Mali, looking toward the ocean, then back toward the jungle. “I can’t. This is where Yasmine is. Her ghost won’t let me go.”

Mali grabbed Cora, and they started running for the beach. Cora didn’t look over her shoulder to see them all one last time, because she knew their faces would be burned into the space behind her eyelids.

They raced to the boardwalk, where a figure heard them coming and stood from the deck chair, in the darkness looking as vague as the night sky.

His hand drifted to the side of his skull, where Cora had hit him.

The last time she and Lucky had spoken, she had hurt him deeply. A broken head and a broken heart. She was supposed to be his partner, his match. That rainy night on the bridge would forever tie them together. He had lost his mother. Cora had spent eighteen months locked up.

But Lucky was wrong when he thought being here could be a fresh start. There were no fresh starts for caged birds. There was only as much freedom as their captors wished to give them.

His eyes found hers beneath the stars.

“Lucky.” Her breath fogged in the air. “We’re getting out of here. Come with us.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t seem surprised at all.

“I know about you and the Caretaker,” he said.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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52

Cora

FEAR THREADED THROUGH CORA’S veins. “Did Leon tell you?”

“The Caretaker told me himself.” Lucky took a step forward, his face unreadable. “He came to visit me last night. He said you were asleep in his bed. He didn’t say anything outright, just that I could have whatever I wanted if I left you alone. To tell him the type of girl I wanted and he’d give her to me.” He looked toward the sea, because it must have been easier than looking at her. “I told him the girl I wanted was you.”

“Lucky, I didn’t know—”

“I didn’t believe him. I thought he was tricking me, but he wasn’t, was he?”

She swallowed. “No.”

“Jesus. Why?”

“You loved me because I was a victim. But I never was, Lucky. I was the one who came up with the idea to take the fall for my dad.” A month ago, if she’d met Lucky, she’d have fallen like a comet for him. She clasped her necklace as if she could hold on to that girl she’d been before, but then she released it. “Cassian knew that. He sees me as someone who can save herself.”

Lucky touched the place on the side of his head where she had hit him. Cora had expected he would be furious at her. Crazed. She hadn’t expected such heartbreaking hurt in his eyes.

He shook his head. “Just go. You never needed someone to protect you, I can see that now.”

He turned toward the boardwalk, but Cora grabbed his arm. “You always wanted to be a hero, Lucky, but you don’t need a victim for that. Be your own hero. Come with us.”

Mali glanced over her shoulder, and Cora felt nervous too. Had Rolf kept Nok from sounding the alarm? Did the Warden know? Not even Cassian could help them then.

“Please, Lucky. We can go back. Earth is there, I know it.”

His head tilted toward the stars that shone over a red desert, snow-covered mountains, a town where they might have been amused, but never truly happy. Would the Kindred take Nok and Rolf and Leon away? Without humans, this place would be meaningless.

Lucky turned away from the shops and habitats that had made up their artificial world, facing the ocean instead.

“Let’s go home.”

THE THREE OF THEM stood in the sand, letting the surf whisper to their toes. “You have to swim without stopping,” Cora said. “There will be a pressure lens. You have to push past.”