The Cage (The Cage 1)

Serassi cleared her throat, and Cora pulled the camisole over her head. She tried to cross her arms over her bare chest, but it was pointless, and Serassi didn’t appear to care. Cora hooked her fingers in the waistband of her panties and took a deep breath, then slipped them off quickly and balled them and her camisole on the table.

She was naked.

The room wasn’t freezing, but without clothes, she shivered harder. She kept glancing at the Caretaker to make sure he didn’t turn around, and the other captives too. The girl in the cage seemed to have fallen asleep. Serassi motioned to the table, and Cora stretched out on it. That was both better and worse, because it felt more like a real doctor’s visit, and yet now she was nothing but a specimen. Goose bumps rose on her skin as Serassi ran the instrument over her limbs.

Cora replayed the sound of her name on the Caretaker’s lips. He had made a mistake.

She was his mistake.

She couldn’t imagine such mechanical creatures ever making mistakes. Was there more to them than their stiffness? Was there a beating heart beneath all that knotted cerulean blue? A mind capable of error, and emotion, and even mercy? Finally Serassi removed the instrument and told Cora to stand. She scrambled up and tugged the dress back over her head. A second later, the Caretaker turned around.

“Boy Three,” he said.

Leon was already halfway naked as he passed Cora. Fearless—or at least pretending to be.

At last Serassi announced that the medical exams were over and they would be materialized back to the drugstore. Everyone seemed to sigh, relieved they wouldn’t be in the same room with these monsters anymore—except for Rolf. Cora caught sight of his eyes darting around the room, visually cataloging the equipment on the wall, muttering silent words to himself, fingers twitching like he was working calculations. His gaze rested on one of the blue cubes set into the wall above the doorway. Both his murmuring lips and his twitching fingers stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” she whispered.

He blinked too fast. “N . . . nothing.”

The pressure in the room started to build. Cora closed her eyes. She’d ask him about it later, when they were safely away from the Kindred. She never thought she’d be relieved to return to their prison.

One by one they started to flicker and fade: Rolf, then Nok, then Leon, then Lucky. Lucky clenched her hand as he flickered away, until she was holding nothing. She braced herself for the rematerialization sensation, but it never came.

The pressure faded away.

Her eyes snapped open. The starry light was brighter, stinging her eyes. She whipped her head around in surprise.

“Take me back,” she choked.

“Not you, Girl Two,” the Caretaker said. “We require you to remain here.”

She took a step backward, at the same time that the Caretaker came forward.

19

Cora

AN ICE CUBE OF fear slid down Cora’s back.

The Caretaker’s head turned toward Serassi. “You as well. Leave us.”

Had he just given an order? Cora had thought he was just the hired muscle, but Serassi’s mouth went thin, and she turned sharply and left through the opposite door obediently.

Cora pressed her back against the wall. The caged girl had fallen asleep; she mumbling in her sleep, useless. Apart from rematerialization, the door was the only exit—and the Caretaker would stop her before she could pry it open.

The Caretaker took another step forward. The dead girl flashed in her head. Then waking in the desert. And the Warden’s hand around her neck. Something deep within her pulsed with anger, and she sprang like an animal. Her fingernails clawed the Caretaker’s skin, splintering with sparks of pain as she dragged them across his chin and neck and uniform, ripping jagged lines that vanished almost instantly. If he felt any pain, it didn’t register.

His hand clamped over her shoulder as he shoved her against the wall, knocking the air out of her. Blood seeped from her jagged nails. Her fingers throbbed. The wall seams dug into her back, their light warm and pulsing.

“Let me go!”

The Caretaker’s hands tightened around her wrists. He wore gloves now that prevented any transfer of electricity, but she could still taste metal deep in her throat. She was glad he wore gloves, but in the next second, crazily, she wanted to feel that electrical sensation again. It was like a drug, the only thing that cut through her sleep-deprived fog, and that only made her angrier.

“Do not try to fight,” he ordered.

“I’m tired of not fighting!”

Surprise flickered across his face. His chest rose and fell quickly. It made him seem so very nearly human, and she drew in a sharp breath.

He’s feeling something.

She stopped struggling. He seemed cold, acted stoic, but underneath that exterior there was a beating heart, a warm body, hot blood. Did he feel things like sympathy? What about pain? Desire?

His jaw shifted. Even without pupils, she knew he was looking straight into her eyes. He took one last deep breath, and the pace of his breathing slowed, and the heartbeat pulsing in his hands returned to a regular rate.

He released her wrists but didn’t move away.

“Yes. In answer to your question, we feel all those things. Sympathy. Pain. Desire. They are unintelligent emotions—signs of weakness. Complete eradication is impossible, so we attempt to suppress them in public. Some of us are better at it than others.”

Cora dug the heel of her palm against her temple. “But . . . I didn’t say anything.” She dragged her fingers through her hair, then dropped them abruptly. “You read my mind, didn’t you?”

He didn’t bother to answer. She wished for the ability to steady her own pounding heart as easily as he had.

“That’s how you know my song too, isn’t it? You probed in my head and found my memories. That’s why you keep playing it on the jukebox.”

“The Warden thought it would calm you.”

“The last thing it does is calm me!” Her voice echoed in the chamber. The sleepy girl in the cage stirred awake and looked at them. For a second, Cora realized how they must look. Only inches apart. Her back pressed to the wall. Flushed face and rumpled clothes.

Panic filled her. Would the girl think it was a tryst? Did that even happen between humans and Kindred? But the girl just gave a long yawn and started picking at her toes. Cora’s chest sank in relief, but it didn’t last for long. The Caretaker still watched her with those eyes that could reach too far into her head. How were they supposed to escape from creatures who could read their minds?