The Hunt (The Cage 2)

“And he’s cute,” the girl said in a matching accent, appraising Lucky, scratching a sore on her neck. “Has all his fingers and toes and everything. Prime stock, not like us rejects. What, did you fail out of an enclosure?”

Lucky cracked his knuckles. “Something like that.”

“I’m Jenny. This is my brother, Christopher. And this”—she nudged the burlap sack with her toe—“is Roger.”

Blood seeped from the sack, seriously creeping Lucky out.

“Come on. Dane will have a fit if we aren’t back soon.” Jenny grabbed her brother’s jacket and they turned back to the lodge. Lucky craned his neck to look out the door, hoping for a glimpse of other human kids to see if Cora was among them, but the backstage door thudded closed. Pika reached out and squeezed his biceps, making him jump. She giggled. “You’re strong. You carry Roger.”

Dazed, he knelt by the burlap sack. He started to pick up the corner, gagging on the tangy smell of blood. He followed Pika back down the hall to one of the smaller rooms. It had a clogged drain in the floor and medical equipment on the walls. Pika pointed to the center of the room, where he set down the sack. She opened it, and he saw fur, in a pattern that he recognized.

“A bobcat?” he said. “Jesus, I thought it was a person.”

“Jenny named him Roger.” Pika started muttering to herself as she dug around amid the equipment in a cabinet.

Blood poured from a deep puncture on the bobcat’s left shoulder. Its eyes were open and glassy. Its chest didn’t move. It looked as dead as anything he had ever seen.

“Now watch.” Pika pulled out a tool that looked like a long-handled plastic lighter. She grabbed a tattered cloth from a bin and wiped the blood from the bobcat’s shoulder, then set the lighter-tool over the animal’s wound and punched a button. The machine started whirring. Lucky got the sense that Pika had been taught to use this piece of Kindred technology in the way you’d train a child to operate a microwave: memorize which buttons to hit with no understanding of how it really worked.

The machine whirred louder and then stopped suddenly. Pika flipped it over and pulled out one of the used firecracker casings. When she ran her fingers over the wound, it was red, but healed.

“This is the most important part,” she said, stroking the bobcat’s stump of a tail. “You gotta make sure they’re in their cage before you wake them up. Otherwise you’re in trouble. At least with the big ones. Roger’s pretty tame.”

She struggled to drag the bobcat by its front legs back to the main room and into a cage just high enough for it to stand, with a water trough and food pellets. She locked the door with a pin, then reached through the bars and set a small package by the bobcat’s nose.

She tapped her own nose. “Releases a smell that revives them. It’ll take a few minutes. There are pods that do the opposite too, if you need to calm one down.”

She started mumbling to herself while she cleaned up the rest of the blood streaking the floor. She didn’t do a very good job. He peered into the bin where she tossed the soiled cloth and found hundreds more rags, all soaked with blood.

Lucky stared at the bobcat. The wound might be technically healed, but it still looked raw and painful. Slowly the bobcat opened one glazed-over eye.

There was pain there, and suddenly Lucky was back on his granddad’s farm. He’d seen the same look in his granddad’s horses when they were ill or injured. But that was different. Illnesses couldn’t be helped, sometimes horses just went lame, but this . . . This was sport.

His fingers curled around the bars of the nearest cage, squeezing so tight his joints ached. The Kindred had healed his busted hand when they’d taken him, and now he was in danger of breaking it again out of anger.

Something in the bottom of the nearest empty cell caught his eye. A book. The Call of the Wild. And in a bin in the corner, there was a blanket and one of those old-fashioned ball-and-cup games.

His head whipped to Pika. “They keep people in these cells too?”

She chewed on the tip of her braid. “Of course. This is where we all sleep.”

Her words sank in slowly. All of them—humans and animals, as if there was no difference. And maybe, to the Kindred, there wasn’t.

In the cell, the bobcat’s eyes were both open now, and it was breathing steadily, but it hadn’t bothered to stand up. Why would it? It had probably gone through this dozens of times already. An endless cycle that always ended in pain.

Was this his life now? Sleeping in filth? Spending his days cleaning up the Kindred’s messes? He looked at his nails, his breathing coming quick and unsteady, wondering how long before he was as scraggly as the rest of the kids.

The bobcat blinked.

“You said the Kindred hunt with rifles?” Lucky asked.

Pika’s mumbling ended. She chewed harder on her braid, darting looks toward the red door that led to the lodge. “Don’t get any ideas. The rifles don’t work for us, only for the Kindred. If you tried to pull the trigger, nothing would happen. Trust me, we’ve all tried.” She giggled again, more nervously. “The Kindred aren’t stupid.”

He watched the bobcat slowly close its eyes. He sank down next to it, wanting to hide his face from Pika, his breath coming faster, the panic he was trying to swallow back. There was no going home—that’s what he’d learned from their botched escape. Not for him. Not for Pika. Not for these animals either.

He gently stroked the bobcat’s mangy fur.

He wished he could do more. He wished he could do anything. Because if the Kindred hunted animals just for sport, what did they do to humans?

The backstage door opened, and two Kindred carried in sealed crates. Pika jumped up, tugging on Lucky’s jacket. “Fresh supplies!” she said, their talk of rifles already forgotten. “Oh boy! Sometimes they put in salt licks for the animals, but we get first dibs. They’re so good. Like potato chips. Only without the chips. So basically just salt, I guess.” She trailed off, mumbling to herself excitedly as she dragged him toward the feed room.

The Kindred set down the crates. “Is it only the two of you back here?” one asked.

“Yep!” Pika said, tearing open the crate.

“Do not leave this feed room until you have finished unpacking all the supplies.” The Kindred exchanged a look, then closed the door firmly behind them.

4

Cora

THE GAUNTLET.

Cora raised an eyebrow at the word Cassian had just spoken. “Why does that sound suspiciously like something that’s going to get me killed?”

Cassian motioned for her to follow him into the alcove, where they could speak privately. Through the wooden screen she could still hear the music and feel the breeze, but they were alone.

“The Gauntlet,” he said, “is a series of tests used to rate species on four categories of intelligence. It is run by the Stock Algorithm, which serves as an impartial third party. Because it is a computer program, it cannot be influenced by any outside factors.”

“And what does it have to do with me?”

The expression on his face softened. “Everything. It is humanity’s chance to prove its value, and thus gain freedom.” He paused. “However, it is true that the Gauntlet’s puzzles are challenging, even dangerous. If the test were easy, it would serve no purpose. It was originally established a million and a half rotations ago, when there were only two intelligent species: the Gatherers and the Axion. The Gatherers had taken my people under their guidance long before, and taught us to improve our minds and bodies over generations, until we had mastered the essential abilities. They wanted to admit us into intelligent society, but the Axion questioned our qualifications. They are an ancient species, but secretive and suspicious. And so the Gauntlet was created to prove our worth. That is how the Kindred became the third intelligent species.”

“I’m guessing that means the Mosca were the fourth. Did they beat the Gauntlet too?”