The Cage(77)

Nok and Rolf exchanged a troubled glance. Lucky clenched his jaw, listening and nodding as his eyes darted around to nothing in particular. He had seemed relieved to have her back—so why did she now feel ice down her spine?

“Cora.” His voice was soft. Too soft. Pitying. “There’s something you don’t know.”

The ice down her back spread to her tailbone. She looked to Mali, who only nudged a paintbrush with her toe. Rolf whispered something in Nok’s ear; she let out a giggle before clamping a hand over her candy-stained lips.

Lucky didn’t meet her eyes. “Cora, there’s no point trying to escape. Earth is gone.”





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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37

Cora

THE WORDS CREPT OVER her like a cold mist. Gone? She felt like a stranger in her own body. The wind was blowing, but she felt nothing. The air had lost the smell of flowering trees, replaced with the ozone she’d smelled the first day. Gone? What about Charlie? Her parents? What about her bedroom with the stars on the ceiling, and Sadie asleep at the foot of her bed, and her notebook of half-written lyrics stashed beneath her pillow? Gone? She didn’t need to look down to know her hands were still attached to her wrists—in the same way, she still felt the pull of home.

She shook her head like he’d spoken a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”

Lucky rubbed the back of his neck. “Mali told us. She found out from the Caretaker. It happened right after they took us. That is why there’s no point in trying to escape—there’s nothing to escape to.” For once, he wasn’t popping the knuckles in his left hand.

The fog in her head grew, turning colder by the minute. She threw a hesitant look between the others. None of it made any sense. If Earth was gone, why hadn’t the Caretaker told her? He certainly wasn’t shy about showing her the terrible things that happened in the menageries. And there were the Mosca’s words in the market too. He’d talked about his next supply run to Earth like it was a foregone conclusion.

Her eyes fell on Mali, standing cryptically silent, pinching her own wrist. “How do we know you aren’t lying? If you were working with the Kindred, this would be the perfect thing to say to make us give up hope. And if it was coming from you, not them, we’d be more likely to believe it.”

Mali didn’t answer.

“They’ve never lied to us,” Rolf declared.

Cora threw out her arms toward the mountain range and the ocean and the farm. “This whole place is a lie!”

“No—it’s a chance.” Rolf had been massaging his temples like his head ached, but he abruptly dropped his hands. His voice had an edge of authority that she’d never heard before. What had happened, while she was gone, that made him the leader? “They’ve created an entire new world for us. We’re like gods to them.”

“A world? Props and tricks, that’s all it is. Do you know what the Caretaker showed me, out there? Kids for sale in a market. A little girl made to do tricks. She had blond hair just like mine, but they’d cut it all off, and two of her fingers as well. They drugged her and made her curtsy and clap her hands and kiss like a deranged sideshow. That’s how much they value us, Rolf. We aren’t gods to them. We’re playthings.”

“Listen to yourself! First they give you special treatment. More tokens. Your stupid song on the jukebox, over and over. A private tour of the Kindred’s space station. And now you’re ungrateful for all that they’ve done for you? Why in the world are they still keeping you around? You’re stealing our food. You’re trying to sabotage us. It doesn’t make any sense! What, are you sleeping with the Caretaker or something?”

Everyone fell silent. Cora’s heart started thumping. He didn’t know how close he’d hit to the truth. That moment in the fountain room, his lips so close to hers . . .

No. It wasn’t like that. That was sick.

The light shifted to a late afternoon gold. The Greasy Fork door slid open, and the sound of Cora’s song cranked up on the jukebox. All their heads turned.

“The diner’s finally open again,” Nok said in surprise.

“It’s a trick,” Rolf answered quickly. “I told you, she’s got the Caretaker on her side somehow. She probably asked him to do this, so it would look like she wasn’t behind them stealing our food. We shouldn’t trust it. I have the system in the farm perfectly planned out. If we just stick to our vegetable rations—”