The Cage (The Cage 1)

Anya.

Their owner had sold Anya’s beautiful blond hair and four of her knucklebones.

Even if they’d only been together a few months, Anya had been the closest thing to a sister that Mali ever had. Like Mali, Anya had been taken at a young age from her home—a place called Iceland—by the Mosca traders. But unlike Mali, she had never grown submissive to their captors. She had always tried to escape her owners. First at age six. Then at seven. Always talking about proving that humans were as intelligent as the Kindred. After Cassian had rescued them from the fight ring, Serassi had told Mali that Anya had died due to complications from old wounds. And yet here was Cora, saying that Cassian had taken her to see a human child that he knew well, with blond hair and two missing fingers.

Could Anya still be alive?

Mali glanced over her shoulder, making sure the others weren’t watching, and ran up the steps to the drugstore. She couldn’t be certain if Serassi would be watching; Serassi rarely observed them herself, far more consumed with analyzing data the other researchers collected. Hormone levels, fertility rates, the science of couples and romantic liaisons—that was Serassi’s particular interest, but Mali pressed her hand to the black window and focused her thoughts on wishing to speak to her.

Nothing happened for a few minutes, but then pressure came, and a caretaker appeared—not Cassian, but the female one who filled in for him when he was on emotive leave—and grabbed her. They materialized into a dark chamber that took shape into the medical room, where Serassi was leaning over the examination table. Mali paused. A human girl’s body rested on the table. Long black hair. Very tall. A constellation mark of the Big Dipper on her neck.

It had to be Mali’s predecessor.

“That will be all for now, Tessela.” Serassi dismissed the substitute caretaker with a wave and then returned to her work. She addressed Mali without so much as a glance. “You requested to speak with me. Why?”

Mali circled the table slowly, her bare feet cold on the metal floor. “Is this the previous Girl Three. The one who dies.”

Serassi did not bother to verify something they both knew was true.

Mali kept her distance. She’d seen plenty of dead humans before, in the worst menageries, or in cages, or cut apart by the black market traders. But she’d never seen the Kindred, with their high moral standards, deigning to handle a corpse.

“Will you dismantle her body for parts.” Mali kept her voice calm. She had learned that the Kindred were more likely to respect her, and thus answer her questions, if she acted as stoically as they did.

Serassi’s black eyes met Mali’s. “Of course not. You know better than that. We are not like the Mosca. I am merely cataloging this girl’s DNA to add it to the stock algorithm. We are creating a new program for human reproduction. Soon we will not even need the breeding facilities; we will be able to engineer your race just as we engineer our own. It will be far more efficient.”

“Leon tells me that he kills her.”

Serassi removed a needle from the wall casings as long as her forearm. “Boy Three is disoriented. He is mistaken if he thinks this girl died because of him. The first day they were introduced to their enclosure, I materialized into the cage to check on their vital signs as they woke. This girl saw me as I was rematerializing. She was afraid and ran. Boy Three did not see because I was standing behind him. The ocean has a high saline level to prevent drowning, but this girl was an expert swimmer. She was able to pass beyond the breakers. It is an oversight we have corrected; the ocean is no longer a threat, if that is what worries you.” She stuck the needle into the dead girl’s abdomen, and Mali flinched. “Now, you did not summon me because of her. What do you want?”

Mali felt Serassi’s probing mind shuffling through her own thoughts. It had taken her years to learn how their telepathy worked and, more importantly, how to block it. She focused her energy on splitting her thoughts: on the surface of her mind, she thought about the dead girl’s blue lips. But deeper, where Serassi couldn’t probe, she wondered if they were examining the dead girl not for fertility or reproductive DNA, but to see if her body had evolved. Mali knew the rumors. Anya had even been the source of some of them. Anya had claimed she could sometimes hear what the Kindred were thinking, or predict what they were going to do next. Mali had tried to tell Anya to keep such information to herself, but she’d been too young to realize the danger of talking freely.

“Do you know Cassian takes Cora to the menageries,” Mali said.

Serassi withdrew the needle probe from the dead girl’s abdomen, checking it to get a reading. “Yes.” Her voice was dismissive—she didn’t have time for Cassian’s foolishness. “It was risky of him. If the Council found out, he would be severely reprimanded.”

“Cora says she saw a girl there with blond hair and two missing fingers.” Mali stared at the dead girl’s blue lips. “It sounds like Anya.”

Serassi’s hand paused. The probe lingered an inch above the dead girl’s belly button.

“You tell me that Anya is dead,” Mali pressed.

“Then why are you asking me something you already know? Are you suggesting that I lied to you?”

There was a challenge in Serassi’s eyes. Something bitter cold, and Mali flinched again. On the surface, Serassi was one of the best Kindred at cloaking her emotions. But Mali had come to know her and could read some slips of emotion, just as she could with Cassian.

“You would be wise not to question us,” Serassi said. The door slid back open, and Tessela entered. “Now return to your enclosure, Girl Three.”

Girl Three. There had been a time when Serassi had called Mali by her name, just as Cassian did. But now the familiarity was gone. She had asked too many questions.

Tessela grabbed her, and they dematerialized back to the drugstore, facing the green grass and warm sun, though Mali hugged the jacket tighter. She stopped on the porch and looked out over their world as Tessela disappeared behind her.

The ocean lapped against the beach. The stream wound through the farm. In the distance, she could make out the highest dunes of the desert.

Cora had said that this enclosure was a lie. The artificiality of it had never bothered Mali before, because she knew there was no alternative. Earth was gone. She had never questioned that.

But now she wondered if Anya was still alive. And if the Kindred had lied to her about Anya, what else had they lied about? Could Earth still be there, and they’d only been told it wasn’t to keep them complacent?