The Cage (The Cage 1)

“Is it true?” he asked.

For a moment, no one dared to move. Lucky massaged his temple, wincing, like another headache had struck. Nok was breathing hard, cheeks flushed, as the light kept swinging back and forth.

Mali reached for another dinner roll.

“Yes,” Nok said. “By almost two weeks. They can detect these things early. I wasn’t supposed to say anything until I was further along. That medical officer, Serassi, has been testing me in private ever since you and I started sleeping together, with a needle so big it would give you nightmares. She teleported into the salon yesterday and told me I was pregnant.” Nok pressed her hand against her stomach. A slight smile came to her lips. “She said she oversees centers where human children are raised communally, like nurseries, but I asked if we could raise it here, on our own, and she asked the Warden; she said it would be good for her research to observe human child raising in their natural habitat. He agreed.”

Cora glanced at Rolf out of the corner of her eye. Did he know about Nok visiting Leon in the jungle? Seducing Lucky? Did he know there was a chance the baby wasn’t his?

She pushed out of the chair and took a shaky step backward, like Rolf was a powder keg and this information was a lit match.

But he blinked, and his fingers twitched, and then threw his arms around Nok. “That’s wonderful!”

He didn’t know.

He swung Nok in his arms, kissing her cheeks, making her giggle. Cora stumbled backward against the black window. Oblivious to her shock, Lucky pushed past her to congratulate Nok. The tension from earlier had shifted to laughter—Cora was forgotten, and the mole was forgotten, and so was the bone.

Pain throbbed between her temples.

Maybe Rolf wasn’t the mole. Maybe Mali wasn’t either. Maybe there never had been a mole. Maybe the Kindred had been setting her up to be ostracized all along: giving her unfair amounts of tokens, making it seem like she’d stolen the food, letting her out of the cage, as though they were intentionally trying to make the others jealous.

And now she’d dug her own grave by stealing the guitar and accusing Rolf.

The black window at her back hummed against her skin. She’d thought the cage was driving the others crazy, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was just twisting her, like the others kept insisting?

They always said crazy people never knew they were crazy.

Frustrated tears tangled with pain and pushed behind her eyes. Mali was the only one not congratulating Nok. Instead, she calmly offered Cora the rest of her roll across the table. For once, her light brown eyes weren’t cold.

Cora stared at her, then knocked the roll away. “It’s a hell of a time to start being friendly!”

Lucky glanced over his shoulder. The smile on his face faded once he saw the tears that dripped onto her untouched plate. He pushed aside the diner chairs and pulled her into a hug, murmuring in her ear. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like your pancakes?”

This only made Cora cry more, because he was still so kind, despite the fact that he was totally delusional.

“I’m not crazy,” Cora whispered. “This place is a prison. We’re slaves here, Lucky. They’re trying to turn you all against me.”

“Shh,” he said. “I’d never turn against you.”

Over his shoulder, Nok had her hands pressed to her stomach, Rolf still kissing her cheek, but Nok’s smile shifted to uneasiness when she caught Cora’s words.

“At home, we were living half a life,” Lucky said. “I held on to so much anger, Cora. At your dad. At myself. But after our talk, I finally let all that guilt and pain go, and you should too.” He softly pointed his chin toward the others. “Look at how happy Nok and Rolf are. That could be us.”

Nok’s dress ruffled as she came toward them. She smiled at Cora, but the sweetness of the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Lucky’s right,” Nok said. “We were so worried, we even thought we might have to kick you out of the house if you kept making life so difficult for everyone. But you’re over that, now, yeah? You want to be one of us. Don’t you?”

Her threat was as clear as the challenge in her eyes. This was Cora’s ultimatum: embrace their insane paradise, or be ostracized to the biomes like Leon, starved for human contact. And meanwhile, they’d just keep sliding further into insanity.

The bone was still in her hand.

The song ended, and there was a second of silence before it reset itself. Someone had overturned a glass of water that rolled off the table and dripped onto the floor like the ticking of a clock. Drip. Drip. Drip. Lucky was looking at Cora with eyes so full of hope—delusional hope—and if she said yes, they would be a couple, they would run obstacle courses and eat gumdrops and pretend they weren’t rats running on a wheel for the benefit of their alien captors.

He would be happy.

She would be numb.

She had done it before—shut out the screaming voice in the back of her head. At Bay Pines, she’d given in. Back at home, too. The saddest part was how easy giving in was: a tug of the lips into a smile, voice silenced, lyrics kept to herself. Now, she’d resisted the Kindred for weeks—for what? Sunken eyes and weary limbs? Cold looks from the only people in the world who could laugh and smile and comfort her?

She rubbed her eyes with limbs that felt impossibly heavy.

“Okay,” she whispered.

As soon as she spoke the words, relief wound into her tired muscles. She’d had sixteen years of practicing how to give in. It came so naturally, so effortlessly, like greeting an old friend. A small voice tried to claw its way back up, but she forced a smile.

She ignored the tears in her eyes.

“And Rule Three?” Nok said tightly. “You’ll even obey Rule Three?”

Lucky stopped his pacing. Cora’s heart stopped its beating, as the voice tried once more to claw up her throat. Then, with a single lurch, she swallowed it back down again.

“Yes.”

Her voice sounded as broken as she felt.

Genuine smiles stretched across Lucky’s and Nok’s faces. Mali looked as expressionless as always, until her eyes shifted to the black window, where a murky shadow flickered.

Lucky kissed Cora’s temple. “I knew you’d come around. The night of the accident bound us. It was fate. Now we’ll always be together.”

Cora forced a wider smile. Smile, even when you feel like crying.

Lucky brushed away her tears. “I know you’re worried. But the Kindred are so much more advanced than us. They have to know what they’re doing. If they want us to be together and have kids, they must have a good reason. It’s like . . . our duty, Cora. To continue the species.”