The Cage (The Cage 1)

Then she went back to her chocolate-covered tuna.

“Maybe she’s deaf?” Nok suggested.

“Maybe she’s a spy,” Rolf countered, blinking quickly, his hands buried in the flower. “I told you that every group of experiments has a control.”

“They don’t need a spy.” Lucky hopped off one of the tables and jerked a thumb at the black window, where two shadowy figures lurked. “They already know everything we do, especially if they can read our minds. Besides, she’s one of us. Human.”

Leon grunted. “You sure about that?”

But the truth was, he knew with one look into her eyes that she was just as human as the rest of them; and just as screwed. He couldn’t stop stealing glances at the scars on her hands. He wondered who had hurt her—Kindred or human.

“Seriously, kid, if you got a name, tell us,” he said. “Girl Three doesn’t have much of a ring.”

Cora gave him a surprised look. “Leon, that was almost a nice thing to say.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Ignoring them, the girl stood and drifted around the room, fingers dancing over the murky black window, leaving ghostly traces of moisture that evaporated as soon as they appeared. Her fingers kept tracing the same shape over and over. Letters, Leon realized. Rough, childlike, clunky.

M-A-L-I.

“Mali?” Cora sounded out the word. “That’s your name?”

The girl gave a stiff nod, but her eyes hesitated, as though there was more to say but she didn’t know how.

“Maybe she means Molly, like with a Y,” Nok suggested.

Leon grunted. “Are you all blind or what? She means just what she wrote. Mali. The country. Look at her hair and skin. She’s telling you where she’s from, dorks.”

Cora’s head swiveled back to the girl. “Is that true?”

The girl’s fingers still danced on the window. “The Kindred know where I am from but not my name, so that is what they call me. I am young when they take me.” She spoke in a strange way that Leon had to struggle to piece together. Each word was so pronounced and distinctive and in the present tense, even if she was talking about the past. It was almost like a speech impediment a little cousin of his had, like her lips didn’t learn to form words right.

“How young?” Cora asked gently.

The girl held up four fingers. Leon’s head ached harder. The Kindred took tiny little kids? Those black-eyed bastards were seriously messed up.

Cora kept her voice soft. “Are there more like you, who were taken as children? Are they in enclosures like this one?”

Leon had to give it to Cora, she had a way with crazy feral humans. Left to him, he’d have shaken the answers out of the girl.

The girl looked at her toes. She wiggled them as though bored. “No.” Nok sighed with relief, until the girl added, “The others are not nearly as fortunate.”

Leon slammed a fist against the table a little too hard. “There’s more than one of this screwy playground?”

“There are nine other environments, each containing between two and twenty individuals, but they are much smaller. Several hundred humans live in the menageries, and a few thousand on the nature preserves. A few hundred more are kept by private owners . . . those are the worst of all.”

For a moment, none of the captives spoke. Even Rolf’s hands, fiddling with the plant, had gone still. Lucky moved a little closer to Cora, like he feared their captors would come drag her away at any moment.

Leon broke the silence.

“Well, shit.”

“What’s a menagerie?” Cora asked. So help him, she actually seemed curious.

Mali steadied an unblinking stare on Cora. “You will see soon enough if you continue to resist the Kindred. There are thousands of humans who are not prime stock who will kill to be where you are. Humans who do not obey. Humans who have flaws. Humans who are taken by species other than the Kindred.”

“Hang on,” Lucky said. “There are other species?”

“Yes. Four are intelligent. The Kindred. The Mosca. The Axion. The Gatherers.”

“What about humans?” Leon barked. “Don’t we count as intelligent?”

“Not unless we’re psychic,” Cora interrupted. “Only the psychic races have any rights.”

Mali picked at her fingernails, bored. “This is why the Mosca take us—we have no rights. Some are black market dealers. The Gatherers and the Axion believe parts of the human body contain chemicals. They trade human hair and knuckle bones and gall bladders and teeth. The right ventricle of the heart is their favorite. They powder it into a tea to stop pain in various parts of their bodies.” Spoken in her strangely flat tone, her words were even more ominous.

Leon set down his tuna. They made tea out of kids’ body parts? What kind of super-evolved beings believed in black magic? Leon worked in the black market himself—he knew all about the things she was describing, only on Earth it was called the illegal wildlife trade. Rhino horns. Alligator skin. Bear gall bladders. They could fetch a fortune, especially in certain Asian and African countries, among discriminating clientele. And yet the difference was, humans weren’t goddamn animals.

Leon stood abruptly, chair scraping backward, and paced to the jukebox. His head felt like it was splitting in two. That same song, over and over. He pounded a fist against the jukebox.

“You must cooperate,” Mali added. “The Kindred keep you safe as long as you obey the rules.” From nowhere, her face cracked in a flat line that somewhat resembled a smile.

They stared at her, mouths agape.

Nok broke the silence with a ragged cry. “The rules? That’s really all this is all about? We eat their food and play their games and have sex and they won’t cut us up for some alien’s tea? Screw it, sign me up. Come on, Rolf. The bedroom. Five minutes.” Her voice was growing hysterical as she paced by the countertop. Rolf’s eyes went wide. The only way to tell he was alive was that he was rapidly turning the same bright shade of red as his flowers.

Lucky came around the counter and grabbed her, forcing her to stop pacing. “No one’s doing Rule Three. They can’t make us do that.”

“Yes,” Mali answered. “They can.” She went back to picking at her toenails.

“She should know, shouldn’t she?” Rolf stuttered, finally coughing some air back into his lungs. “She’s lived with them. Look at the scars on her hands. She was in a cage when we first saw her! What’s worse, ending up like her, or obeying a few rules? I mean . . . it’s hardly torture. We’ve all had sex before, right?”