The Cage(75)

Rolf took a step closer to Nok, protectively. Mali had shrugged out of the military jacket, and Nok was using her body as a canvas, drawing bright blue swirls all over her arms. Empty chocolate wrappers surrounded them. Nok’s lips were stained bright purple from lollipops.

“You too, Rolf,” Nok said. “Take off your shirt. I’ll paint you next.”

He cast one look back toward the jungle behind the movie theater, searching for the moving shape of a tattooed Maori or a small blond girl, but the leaves were quiet now.

He sat in the grass and pulled his shirt over his head, and closed his eyes. Rolf would be a canvas if she wanted him to be. He’d be anything for her. He’d be everything for her.

Nok dotted his nose with paint, and he fell just a little bit more in love with her.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

36

Cora

CORA COULDN’T STOP SHAKING as Cassian led her down the dank burrows back to the austere upper levels. The shock of seeing the menageries had lulled her into silence. Caged kids. Missing fingers. Drugged eyes. Cora’s chest knotted with longing for this whole nightmare to be over. She wanted to play in the backyard with Sadie. She wanted to pick up where she left off, be back in Charlie’s Jeep, scrawling lyrics.

Home is the place you never know . . .

Until there is no more home . . .

Cassian’s head cocked toward hers; it was usually difficult to gauge where exactly he was looking, but this time she felt the heat of his gaze. “I thought showing you this alternative would make you content in your environment. Yet in your head, you are only more determined to return to Earth.”

Cora nodded.

“Cora, your home . . .” He stopped. “Never mind.”

They walked in more silence, Cassian’s hand balling into a fist and releasing. There was something he wasn’t telling her, but no matter how she searched his dark eyes, she couldn’t see into his head.

A door slid open, revealing the star-lit medical room. Cassian held out a hand to stop her. “This is your home now. You must accept that.” He removed her shackles mechanically. While he readied the rematerialization apparatus, she leaned against the examination table, running a fingernail over her lips. The pull of home was too strong to give up on. She glanced at the doorway that had closed behind them.

Planning escapes had practically been an extracurricular activity at Bay Pines; Cora and her roommate used to lie awake at night swapping far-fetched ideas, most of them stolen from bad action movies. She’d never taken their planning seriously, but four months after she’d been there, a girl two rooms down had succeeded. She’d bribed a guard to unlock her room at night, then sneaked to the kitchen, which was run by outside contractors she’d paid off to smuggle her out in a vat of food scraps so the guard dogs wouldn’t smell her.

Cora bit on a jagged fingernail. The space station was hardly a juvenile detention facility outside Cincinnati, but maybe she could use some of the same tactics. Trading information. Bribery. Cassian had said that the Mosca only cared about payment. . . .

Cassian’s head jerked to hers, and Cora pinched her thigh, hoping Mali was right that pain could block the Kindred’s ability to read minds.

His black eyes scanned her face. “You are trying to hide something from me.”

She pinched herself harder. “No.”

“You should not inflict pain upon yourself.” His chest was rising and falling a little quickly. It made her remember his face so close in the fountain room, his lips just an inch from hers. . . .

He shoved the apparatus into his chest and darted out a hand to pull her close. He whispered in her ear.

“Obey the rules. Please.”

It was no longer an order. It was a request, and one of the few times Cora had heard his voice sound anything other than mechanical. “I’m not the only one watching you,” he said. “I cannot protect you forever.”

HE RETURNED HER TO the empty drugstore. Beyond the doorway, sunshine spilled over the green grass. Cora stumbled toward the light.

She blinked a few times, clearing her foggy head, reminding herself that the crickets chirping weren’t real. The sunlight was fake. It was as much a fabricated prison as the menagerie. At the heart of it, they weren’t any different from those drugged kids.

Nok and Rolf were stretched out on the grass, dressed only in their underwear, playing with the painting kit. Not far away, Mali was toying with the radio, twisting the volume to make the voices rise and fall, rise and fall. Blue paint coated her arms. Rolf had blue streaks over one arm too, and was in the midst of painting a yellow swirl on Nok’s stomach. He dotted her cheek with paint and she laughed, trying to take the brush from him, getting gooey blobs of paint all over them. Their candy-stained lips met, and the brush fell from his hand. They started making out, right in front of Mali and the dozens of black windows.