The Cage (The Cage 1)

Cassian’s hand curled on the bar. “I wish to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. You’re the Warden. Everything was a lie.”

“I told you that I feared I was making a mistake. You assumed I meant betraying my people. I meant betraying you. Lying to you gave me no joy. I almost aborted the mission when I saw the strain it was putting on your cohort, and on you. I did not want you to end up like the previous groups.”

“Dead? How kind.”

He paused. “I did not lie to you about our mission. All my actions were for your own good. Under my orders, my researchers were putting pressure on your minds to see if they could bring you to the point of mental evolution.”

“So you could justify enslaving us, when we failed?”

“So we could free you, when you succeeded.” He lowered his voice, almost as though he feared someone might overhear them. But he was the Warden—there was no one higher than him, was there? Where did he even plan to take her, if his plan had worked? She couldn’t exactly picture a parade rolling down the austere aisles of the aggregate station, celebrating humanity’s intelligence. The Kindred had made it perfectly clear they didn’t want humans as equals.

“I pushed you to prove that humans are intelligent, as I know you can be. Anya was psychic; she read my mind on two separate occasions. When the other Kindred learned of this, they drugged her and locked her in the menagerie to hide her abilities. I was a low-ranking soldier—there was nothing I could do about it. So I set my mind to working my way up our ranks, rotation after rotation, until I was chosen by our Council as Warden.”

Anya. The caged Icelandic girl who looked like a younger version of Cora. Was that the reason Cassian had thought Cora could be psychic, because she reminded him of Anya? She didn’t know what to believe—if Anya had truly become as intelligent as the Kindred, why was she locked up? Wouldn’t she have outsmarted them before they could drug her?

“I did see some of Anya’s traits in you,” he said, reading her mind, “but not because of your appearance. Because of your ability to navigate the space between cultures. Anya never fit in with any cohorts; Mali was the only friend she had. I believe it was this isolation that broke her mind.”

Cora glanced at Lucky and Mali, so far away. Isolation. Well, she had certainly achieved that.

“Being Warden granted me certain privileges,” Cassian continued, “such as a lack of oversight. I was able to circumvent the stock algorithm without being detected, and select you. I did everything I could to try to break your mind. It was no accident that the fail-safe exit was located in the ocean—I wanted you to have to face all your darkest fears. I gave you more tokens so the others would grow jealous and turn on you. I planted the bone in the jungle to drive a further wedge. I thought, when you discovered your past with Lucky, you would leave him. When you still showed signs of caring, I offered him a bargain to stay away from you. I needed you to be alone. Terrified. Only then would your mind truly break.”

Air slipped from her lungs. All the confusion and stress she’d been through for weeks was just for his twisted experimentation. Had he planted the comic book? The Mosca traders? Had he fabricated a chance for escape just so he could snatch it from her, and leave her even more broken? She pressed a hand to her head. What about the kiss—was that the biggest lie of all?

Give her stars. Kiss her. Make her fall in love.

Then betray her.

All she could feel was hurt. Worse than that—dead. Her heart still beat, but the blood had dried in her veins. There was no warmth. He had taken every piece of her that was alive—her heart, her soul, her trust—and smashed it beneath those metallic boots of his.

She had nothing now.

No family.

No friends.

No future.

“I did not wish to hurt you,” he continued. “I tried other techniques, with the other cohorts. All of them failed—” His head jerked toward the black window. His eyes narrowed a fraction, and then he straightened instantly. He was perceiving something Cora couldn’t. Someone listening, or someone coming.

She didn’t care. She was the kind of broken there was no fixing.

And then her index finger started trembling. It pulsed strangely, like pins and needles were digging into it. Then her middle finger. Something strange happened to the lighting, almost like it got brighter, but only around the black window. Cora blinked, confused. Like on the beach, and in the bookshop, the sensation was in her head too, and her sense of balance, and her ability to sense temperature, and detect smells—all her senses, all at once. The whisper of intuition, now loud as a scream. There was someone behind that window, though they were blocked from her view. Two Kindred males, neither of them quite as tall as Cassian, one with a metal cast over one arm, the other with a deep wrinkle in the center of his forehead—Fian.

Pain exploded in her head. She clutched at her scalp as though she could keep her mind from fracturing. The strength leached out of her legs, and she slammed to the floor. Her muscles seized up, twitching and throbbing so fast she couldn’t control her limbs.

The door flew open. Cassian was by her side. “Tell me what you are experiencing. Strange sensations. Visual disturbances.”

His words found her through a fog of pain and racking tremors. He had spoken those words to her before. In the fountain room of the Temple menagerie, after she had collapsed. Had that been part of his plan too? Had he shown her the menagerie in hopes of breaking her?

“Serassi. Come at once.” He was speaking into his wrist communicator. She had never heard him sound afraid before.

A moment later, Serassi’s rough palms scraped against her head, feeling her temperature. Incomprehensible Kindred words were exchanged as her vision faded in and out. Static crackled in her ears, deafening her, except she could hear everything perfectly—inside her own head. She felt as though she wasn’t in her own body. She was almost hovering above it, in all corners at once, watching her own self as she convulsed. Cassian clutched her shoulders, holding her still, while Serassi administered some kind of drug.

“I’m sorry.” Cassian was speaking to her body, though her mind was hovering a few feet above them. “I had to betray you. It was the last part of the plan. The only thing strong enough to break you.” His hand kept flexing, flexing, flexing. Serassi left to fetch something from the next room, and Cassian bent down.

His lips so close to hers. His hands gripping her shoulders.