The Cage(18)

Cora forced a smile. Smile, even when you aren’t sure a rescue is going to come.

Rolf came tripping down the stairs, looking like a sleepy porcupine with his hair sticking up at random angles. Lucky stood, stretching his back. “I had some ideas last night about how we can figure out where we are and who put us here.”

Leon patted him heavily on the shoulder. “Sure thing, Bright Eyes. Just not before breakfast.” He sauntered toward the diner.

Lucky cursed and started after Leon.

Rolf rubbed the back of his neck like it ached, watching the two boys argue outside. “Leon took my pillow in the middle of the night. Said he was twice my size so he should get twice the pillows.”

He chewed on his lip and blinked. Though Cora was usually good at reading people, Rolf was an enigma. His red hair swept down to nearly hide his eyes, two blue-green mysteries in an otherwise expressionless face.

“You can’t let him bully you,” she said.

His face remained impassive, except for a slight twitch in one eye. “Guys like him have been beating up on me my entire life. We call them b?ller—bullies. I tried standing up for myself once. I went to a private school in Oslo where a team of boys twice my size waited for me each day after school by the bus stop. Karl Crenshaw was their leader. He was a big Scottish kid, ugly, always made fun of my twitches. One day he beat me with a cricket bat. I was in a coma for two weeks.”

Nok made a sympathetic pout but frowned suddenly and dropped her arms. “Do you all feel that?”

Cora did. Her skin was tingling. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck rose like static electricity. She exchanged a worried glance with Nok. “We’ve got to get the others.” They ran toward the square as a crackling sound started, but Cora couldn’t trace it. It seemed to come from everywhere. It built like pressure, a constrictive feeling like taking off in an airplane, and got stronger and stronger until Cora thought her body might burst.

As she rounded the corner, she saw Lucky ahead. He turned and met her eyes. She never thought she’d see someone so brave look so afraid.

A scream came from behind her, and she whirled to find Nok with a hand over her mouth, letting out frightened little gasps. A creeping feeling crawled up her neck—the same feeling she got around the black windows, only a thousand times stronger. Lucky crashed into her, holding her tight, preventing her from turning around.

“What is it?”

“Don’t, Cora. Don’t look.”

Whatever was standing right behind her was terrifying even to someone as brave as him. But he couldn’t stop her from looking. She had to.

She looked over her shoulder.

They weren’t alone.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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11

Cora

A NEW FIGURE—A MAN—STOOD next to the cherry tree. He had to be close to seven feet tall. Something about his black uniform suggested a soldier, though Cora had never seen clothes like his before. They fit closely to the muscles of his arms and chest and moved with him so seamlessly that they were almost liquid cloth—except for the row of knots down one side. He wore a utility band slung across his chest, which glistened with equipment that looked far more advanced than the prototypes her father invested in. He carried himself as stiffly as a soldier in an army recruiting ad, with buzzed hair and the straight back of a warrior—except for a few key differences. His impressive height. His skin, which was somewhere in between the color of copper and bronze and reflected the sunlight like metal. And his eyes.

They had no irises. No pupils. They were entirely black.

Breath slipped from her. His was the face from her dreams. The most beautiful creature she had ever seen, yet he no longer looked angelic. He was terrifying.

And he isn’t human.

They weren’t in a dream, or virtual reality. They’d been taken by gods or aliens—or monsters.

The soldier flexed his glove.

Rolf fell to his knees. Nok crumpled next to him. The soldier’s presence screamed danger, but there was something captivating about him too, like staring into a flame. It was impossible to look away.

Coldness pooled between her shoulder blades. She leaned closer to Lucky, her heart pounding. Had this man been the shadowy figure behind those black windows? Studying them, like Rolf said? Was he the one who had dressed her in a stranger’s clothes?