The Cage (The Cage 1)

Cora ran a finger along her lips, sorting through Mali’s words. A hand sank onto her shoulder, and she jumped out of her fog. Lucky jerked his head toward the doorway, and she followed him to where they could talk in private.

“Go easy on Nok and Rolf,” he said as soon as they were out of earshot. “They’re terrified, and everyone’s tempers are short. Leon too—why do you think he stormed out like that? He’s scared. At least here we’re safe. Beyond the walls . . . who knows.”

“Lucky, they’re talking about giving up on escape. That’s insane. We can’t spend our lives here.”

“We won’t. I have plans, remember? Retire at thirty-eight. Military pension. A beach somewhere with a beer and a girl who doesn’t mind me picking at a guitar with my bad hand.” He flexed his scarred knuckles. “Just give them a few days to calm down.”

“They only gave us twenty-one days and we’ve already wasted some of that time. We can’t let some headaches stop us.”

He took her hand in his reassuringly. “We won’t.”

Her face felt heavy, but she smiled. At least there was one other sane person around. Even if she’d only known Lucky a few days, she felt drawn to him in a way that had nothing to do with the constellation marks on their necks, and everything to do with his determination not to spend their lives as a sideshow.

“Um, guys?” Nok said.

The smile fell from Cora’s face. Nok and Rolf had backed away from the jukebox, which Mali was circling, bobbing her head up and down, a predator ready to strike.

“She must not know what it is,” Lucky said. “Maybe she’s afraid of it.”

Mali approached the jukebox hesitantly. Cora was about to tell her it was a puzzle they couldn’t solve when her long fingers started to fly over the controls. Rearranging shapes. Stacking them. She worked out the first combination of shapes in seconds and moved on to the second.

Cora was speechless.

They’d been wrong about Mali. The jukebox wasn’t foreign to her, or at least its puzzle wasn’t. From the corner of her eye, Cora glimpsed Rolf’s hand twitching—making the same shapes as Mali’s, she realized. He had had the same intensely focused look in the medical room, studying the blue cube above the doorway.

“Hey,” she whispered to him. “In the medical room, you were looking at their equipment like you’d figured something out.”

His fingers went still. There was an edge to his blue-green eyes that hadn’t been there before. He shook his head. “Looking around, that’s all.”

They were interrupted when Mali clicked the last shapes together, and a token slid from a trough on the side of the jukebox. Mali caught it with sticky fingers and inserted it into a slot, then pressed a red button.

The song ended.

Another one began. It was terrible, something poppy and vaguely Japanese, but it was wonderfully, marvelously new. Mali leaned against the jukebox and licked the rest of the sauce off her fingers. “That is a very basic puzzle. The Kindred give it to children.” The Japanese song rose in volume, filling the space with high-pitched voices. “Some puzzles are more difficult,” she continued. “Have you found the one in the bookstore yet? That one is very challenging.” She drifted closer to Nok, who took a jerky step back.

“If she can solve that puzzle,” Lucky whispered in Cora’s ear, “maybe she can help us solve the others.”

Mali suddenly spun, drifting over with that strange bobbing motion, and reached out to touch the curling ends of Cora’s hair. “It is useless to speak in low voices. They know what you say.” She tapped Cora’s head. “They hear you here.”

Lucky tensed. “They can even read our minds through the panels? Then any kind of planning we do is useless. We might as well scream it out loud.”

“There are ways to block the Kindred.” Mali twirled a strand of Cora’s hair slowly around her finger. “It is not thoughts they read, but intentions like escape and restlessness. To read one single word requires much concentration and a strong mind.”

“The Caretaker can read specific words,” Cora said.

“He has a very strong mind,” Mali answered, almost proudly. “And he watches you for so long that he can read even your softest thoughts. Not mine. I spend years learning to block him.”

“So tell us how,” Lucky said.

“I will.” A slow smile stretched across Mali’s face. “For a price.”

22

Cora

MALI TWIRLED CORA’S HAIR tighter around her finger. “Your hair is quite pretty, do you know that. The Kindred have very dark hair and most humans do too. It is rare to find one with hair so light.” She paused. “If you give me some perhaps I will tell you.”

Cora jerked backward. “You want my hair?”

“Only a small piece.”

Lucky cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s not happening—”

“Wait.” Cora took a deep breath. “I’ll give you some—one lock. But you have to tell us first how to block our thoughts.”

Lucky shot her a look like she’d lost her mind, but Cora ignored him. She shook a strand of hair tantalizingly. “Do we have a deal?”

Mali wobbled her head—her version of a nod. “There are three ways to shield your thoughts,” she explained. “The first takes many years to learn. It is similar to a form of meditation. You must divide your mind into two streams of thought.” She pointed outside, where the ocean was crashing against the beach. “Observe the ocean. The water is warm above and cold below. The mind is the same. Let the Kindred read what is above but not in the deep. Think hard about something—the song on the jukebox—but let your true thoughts sink below. The Kindred can tell that you are hiding something, but they cannot break through.”

“That’s it?” Lucky said.

Mali wobbled her head again. “It takes me seven years to learn this.”

Cora and Lucky exchanged a look. She shrugged and practiced concentrating on the records flipping in the jukebox. Then she tried to split her thoughts to also focus on Lucky’s leather jacket. But within seconds, she’d lost all thoughts of the record, and her headache only worsened. She tried again, but her thoughts jumped from one to the other, never both simultaneously, and the effort made her restless mind throb.

She rubbed her eyes. “What are the other ways?”