The Cage(97)

He glanced at her with a flicker of amusement. “Every society in the universe has invented alcohol—even some lesser species, such as your own. Intoxicants are prohibited, in general, outside of the menageries. But we are allowed to keep one container in our quarters, in case of difficulty controlling emotions.”

She grabbed the glass out of his hand, downing the contents, wincing as it burned her throat in a way her mother’s expensive wine never had. She held out the glass for more. “I’m definitely having difficulty controlling my emotions.”

Cassian hesitated—clearly he meant the drink for himself, not her—but then refilled her glass. She took a slower sip, letting her heavy eyelids sink slightly. The room was quiet, too quiet, and she cleared her throat. “What did you mean when you said that the algorithm didn’t make a mistake, but you did?”

He dragged a crate over as a makeshift chair. “It is protocol to monitor the stock algorithm’s selections before the transfer from the native environment to the artificial one. I performed the required period of observation on the other Girl Two. She would have been suitable.” He looked down at his hands. “I continued to monitor Boy Two simultaneously. He was performing a research operation on one of your networked computers. He found an article from the previous year about your father’s employment. You were standing in the picture. Boy Two’s emotions were very strong. Impossible to ignore.”

Lucky had said he looked her up on the internet every few months at his library, hoping for news that would make him feel better about playing a part in her time in juvenile detention.

That whole time, Cassian had been watching?

“He felt intense guilt,” Cassian continued, “which was perplexing, since he had not directly wronged you. He felt curiosity too, and very strong attraction, though that only made his guilt increase. I began to observe you as well. Call it . . . curiosity. Your experience with captivity was somewhat unusual in a female of your age and your intelligence. Such resilience is highly desirable to us, after what happened to the previous cohorts.”

She swallowed. Her hand still felt dry from the femur bone.

“You had other traits—physical attractiveness, a quiet demeanor, an emotional strength—that would make for an interesting pairing with any of the three males selected. I already knew Boy Two would be more than interested in you. So I went against the stock algorithm. I selected you myself. The Warden strongly disapproved, but I argued that your resilience would make you highly adaptable to an environment such as this.”

“That’s what this is all about, resilience?” She clutched the glass harder. “You thought that because I was in prison before, and didn’t cause disruptions, that I’d roll over and accept this prison too? You’ve got it all wrong. The accident and my time at Bay Pines didn’t make me resilient. It left me a shell of a person. I can’t face enclosed spaces. I can’t face water. It didn’t matter where I went or who I was around after that; I didn’t belong anywhere. Not at home. Not in prison either. It changed me, Cassian.”

Her fingers were trembling on the glass. He folded his own across from her, a gesture that felt startlingly human. “Perhaps we define resiliency differently. My understanding was that resilience isn’t about weakness, but strength.”

“Exactly. I’m not strong. I can’t sleep and when I do, it’s just nightmares. I can’t even—”

Her voice failed her. She was about to say she couldn’t even love Lucky like he deserved, but Cassian didn’t need her to list her failures. He could see them in her head.

For a long time, he didn’t answer. He must be thinking about how he made a mistake. He thought she was more than she was. He saw something that wasn’t there. She didn’t think she would ever care if the monster who brought her here regretted it, but in some ripped-bare part of her, she found that she did care. Yes, she did.

She wanted to know why he thought she was resilient.

“Because of the truth about what happened with your father,” he said.

CORA’S EYES CLOSED TO the room and the starry window, as she remembered a different night long ago. It was two days after she had been released from Bay Pines.

Her welcome-home party.

The divorce had been finalized halfway through her incarceration, but her mother had flown back from Miami and drank enough pinot grigio to be able to be under the same roof as her father, though never in the same room. They’d invited all her old school friends and her father’s colleagues. Her mom had attached a silk bow to Sadie’s collar. There had been a three-tiered cake and presents, as though she’d been away at a European boarding school for the last eighteen months, and not an upstate detention facility.