The Cage (The Cage 1)

The others dug into their trays of food like animals. Mali was quiet. She didn’t laugh with them or join in the conversation, but they seemed to accept her because she wanted the same thing as they did—to be obliviously happy here forever.

Lucky pushed her chair out with his foot. “I know it’s been tough on you,” he said as she sank, dazed, into the empty chair opposite him. His hand reached over to cover hers, his eyes soft and brown. “But all our secrets are on the table now. I know it’ll take time to work through it all, but at least we’re here together.” He leaned in to brush his lips over her cheekbone, and she flinched at the sudden smell of wet grass. “I want to see you smile again.”

Smile? Smile? She was holding a dead person’s femur.

A cold feeling spread between her shoulder blades, but it wasn’t coming from the black window. Nok was watching her from the other table, with narrowed eyes that could slice her in half. Her eyes darted between Cora and Lucky as she bit into a peach.

No, Cora thought to herself. Nok didn’t used to be like this. Cora could still remember the day the Caretaker came, and Nok squeezing her hand. What had changed her?

Nok sank her teeth into the peach again. Her brown eyes fixated on Lucky, and how his whole body was angled away from her as he spoke to Cora. It wasn’t exactly jealousy in her eyes; more like fear. Widened pupils and a clenched jaw that spoke of desperation.

Nok needed Lucky for something, Cora realized.

Rolf wrapped an arm around Nok, scooting his chair closer, as if he’d noticed too. He whispered a few words in her ear that she didn’t seem to hear. He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and held it up in front of her face. Like a cat, easily distracted, she pounced on the candy and tore open the wrapper.

Rolf smiled.

Rolf knew exactly how to manipulate her, just like the Kindred: a rush of sugar and bright colors to momentarily distract her. Maybe Rolf had been learning from the Kindred all along, studying the ways they manipulated the captives, and studying the captives’ reactions. He’d always had the mind of a scientist. Now he had Nok as his own personal lab rat to manipulate and control.

Cora’s hand suddenly went slack on the bone. Lab rats. Rodents. Moles. Ever since the first day, Rolf had insisted that the Kindred would plant a mole among them to help bend the group to their will from the inside. Cora had assumed that Mali was the mole, and yet Rolf had sided with the Kindred right from the start.

Cora played back all the things Rolf had said: they shouldn’t try to escape. That life in the cage was actually desirable. A paradise, even. He had used science and human nature to justify his arguments, and it had sounded so believable.

What if he was lying to them? What if he was the mole?

Cora stood so fast her chair skidded backward. She picked up the bone like a cleaver, and the others all stopped eating in surprise.

“It’s you,” she said to Rolf, her voice barely a whisper, as she felt her thoughts cutting through the fog. “It’s been you, this entire time. Manipulating Nok. Manipulating all of us. You’re the Kindred’s mole!”

Rolf’s lips fell open in true surprise but just as quickly pressed shut. “What are you talking about now? Is this some new plot of yours?”

His innocent act enraged her, and she flew across the table and grabbed the shoulder of his shirt, dragging him toward her, the bone raised to threaten him. Nok jumped up, and Lucky pushed to his feet too.

Mali kept eating her pancakes.

“I’m talking about how you’re working with them,” Cora accused, “like the rat you are, trying to bend us to their will. You twisted Nok first. Convinced her to give up on escape—”

“You’re crazy!”

“Cora, just calm down,” Lucky whispered.

“This is just more of her games!” Rolf snapped. “You take away our food and then have the Caretaker bring it back. You insist on maintaining the seashell calendar so you can make us think time is passing strangely. You’re mad that we won the guitar, so you steal it.” When she started to object, his face turned red. “Are you seriously going to say you didn’t steal the guitar? Just like you didn’t steal the food? Or mess with our heads?”

She started to deny it, but they’d found the guitar. They knew. She hadn’t taken any food, but they’d never believe her now.

Cora let go of Rolf’s shirt abruptly and paced, sweat rolling down her face. “Rolf’s been manipulating you all this entire time, in conjunction with the Kindred. I suspected it from the first time he tried to convince us we shouldn’t fight back. He always had such a convenient explanation for everything strange that was happening, so we wouldn’t question the bigger motivation of what the Kindred wanted with us. He even has a convenient story about his life back home. How he was bullied, so we’d feel sympathy for him. How he was so caught up in his studies that he never had time for the books and TV shows we all might have watched. He even has twitches and strange mannerisms like Mali does. Probably because he’s never even been to Earth and doesn’t know how real people act!”

Rolf looked like he had been slapped. Red splotched his pale face. His fingers, which hadn’t twitched in days, slowly started their neurotic tapping against the table.

“Let him go!” Nok said. “It isn’t true, any of it!”

Cora whirled on her. “Why do you keep defending him?”

“Because you haven’t heard him talk about home like I have. We both lived in London. We went to some of the same restaurants. He’s seen Star Trek and he’s ridden the London Eye and there’s nothing wrong with the way he acts. Anyway, I wouldn’t care if he had grown up among the Kindred, because he’s a good person, and he loves me, and because we’re going to have a baby together!”

She pressed a hand against her mouth. Silence echoed in the diner. Cora stared at her, stunned. Nok was still thin, but she had certainly put on a few pounds over the last few weeks. Cora had assumed it was all the candy. Was this why she’d been acting so strangely? Why she’d needed Lucky and the other boys wrapped around her finger?

Nok tossed Rolf a look that wavered between nervous and excited. Slowly she removed her hand from her mouth. “So, um, now would probably be a good time to tell you that I’m pregnant.”

42

Cora

CORA LET ROLF SLIP out of her hands as fatigue caught up with her all at once, and she slumped into a chair. He pulled away like a frightened animal, then turned to Nok, blinking hard, fingers twisting in his wild red hair.