The Cage(119)

For hours, Cora paced in the cell. Serassi had given her new clothes to wear. Plain black robes with a single knot at the shoulder, which Cora could only assume was a sign of their status now, the lowest of the low. Lucky and Mali wore the same robe. The constellation markings on their necks were gone, nothing to identify them as a gender or even a number.

It was clear the Kindred weren’t returning them to the cage. So what would happen to them? And what had happened to Nok and Rolf? There were no toilets, no food, which meant the Kindred couldn’t be planning to keep them there for long. Words that Mali and Cassian had both hinted at scrolled through her mind: Drugged girls. Dead girls. Private owners. Menageries.

The door at the end of the room opened. Cassian entered.

Cora looked away. She didn’t want to see those lips she had kissed. Those eyes that had cleared like storm clouds. His approaching footsteps were heavy and slow. From the corner of her eye, she saw his fingers curl around the bars of her cell. She could almost convince herself that he was feeling something. Regret, maybe. But she snatched back those traitorous thoughts. Any true emotion he had shown her had been a trick.

“Cora.”

His voice was so quiet that, huddled in the farthest part of the cell, she could almost pretend he hadn’t spoken.

“I brought you something.” He slid an object through the bars, and her heart clenched. The little red radio with dials like a smiling face. Nok’s radio. Did this mean that Nok didn’t need it anymore—that they’d transferred her somewhere? And what about Rolf? She glanced at Lucky and Mali, who watched them but couldn’t hear past their own cells. A part of Cora wanted to lunge for this small comfort he was offering—voices on the airwaves, a link to home—but she didn’t want anything from him. She hugged her legs closer.

Cassian’s hand curled on the bar. “I wish to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. You’re the Warden. Everything was a lie.”

“I told you that I feared I was making a mistake. You assumed I meant betraying my people. I meant betraying you. Lying to you gave me no joy. I almost aborted the mission when I saw the strain it was putting on your cohort, and on you. I did not want you to end up like the previous groups.”

“Dead? How kind.”

He paused. “I did not lie to you about our mission. All my actions were for your own good. Under my orders, my researchers were putting pressure on your minds to see if they could bring you to the point of mental evolution.”

“So you could justify enslaving us, when we failed?”

“So we could free you, when you succeeded.” He lowered his voice, almost as though he feared someone might overhear them. But he was the Warden—there was no one higher than him, was there? Where did he even plan to take her, if his plan had worked? She couldn’t exactly picture a parade rolling down the austere aisles of the aggregate station, celebrating humanity’s intelligence. The Kindred had made it perfectly clear they didn’t want humans as equals.

“I pushed you to prove that humans are intelligent, as I know you can be. Anya was psychic; she read my mind on two separate occasions. When the other Kindred learned of this, they drugged her and locked her in the menagerie to hide her abilities. I was a low-ranking soldier—there was nothing I could do about it. So I set my mind to working my way up our ranks, rotation after rotation, until I was chosen by our Council as Warden.”

Anya. The caged Icelandic girl who looked like a younger version of Cora. Was that the reason Cassian had thought Cora could be psychic, because she reminded him of Anya? She didn’t know what to believe—if Anya had truly become as intelligent as the Kindred, why was she locked up? Wouldn’t she have outsmarted them before they could drug her?

“I did see some of Anya’s traits in you,” he said, reading her mind, “but not because of your appearance. Because of your ability to navigate the space between cultures. Anya never fit in with any cohorts; Mali was the only friend she had. I believe it was this isolation that broke her mind.”

Cora glanced at Lucky and Mali, so far away. Isolation. Well, she had certainly achieved that.

“Being Warden granted me certain privileges,” Cassian continued, “such as a lack of oversight. I was able to circumvent the stock algorithm without being detected, and select you. I did everything I could to try to break your mind. It was no accident that the fail-safe exit was located in the ocean—I wanted you to have to face all your darkest fears. I gave you more tokens so the others would grow jealous and turn on you. I planted the bone in the jungle to drive a further wedge. I thought, when you discovered your past with Lucky, you would leave him. When you still showed signs of caring, I offered him a bargain to stay away from you. I needed you to be alone. Terrified. Only then would your mind truly break.”