“No one knows,” Mali said. “There are rumors that the moral tests form impossible choices: for example, a human is placed in a room with a caged lion that is dying of starvation. The human is told to save its life, but the only way to do that is to free it so it can eat you. The perceptive puzzles are even worse because they force the brain to work in unnatural ways. Pushing a weak mind to perform telekinesis can rupture the tissue.”
“And this is what you plan on doing?” Lucky asked.
“I’ll be better prepared than the people who have run it before,” Cora said, trying to sound confident. “That’s why I’ll train with Cassian, so I don’t lose my mind.” She took a deep breath. “He said it’s the only way we’ll ever be free. Maybe he’s right.”
“Well, I know this isn’t right,” Lucky said. “This place. The things they do to these animals is sick. And there’s something wrong with these kids too. Everyone’s half starved and bruised. Who knows how many kids have vanished before Chicago. Or how soon the rest of us will.” His face turned very serious.
“What’s wrong?” Cora asked.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Remember what Dane said about turning nineteen?”
Cora nodded slowly.
“My nineteenth birthday is October twenty-first. We were abducted from Earth on July twenty-ninth. I don’t know how much time has passed exactly, but it’s got to be close. And if what happened to Chicago is true . . .”
The significance of his words wove their way into Cora’s head. Nineteen. The age the Kindred determined that a human went from child to adult. Her eyes went to the supply room with the drecktube.
“Shit,” she whispered.
“I’ll turn nineteen any day now and be taken away, and then Mali will, and then you.” He jerked a hand back toward the cell block. “And everyone else.”
“So the Gauntlet’s our only option.” Cora shifted, anxious. It wasn’t just the idea of working with Cassian that bothered her, or that ache in her head when she tried too hard to use her abilities. It was the weight of what it meant. Humanity’s freedom resting on her shoulders alone. What if she failed?
And then again, what if she succeeded?
“There could be a third option,” Mali said quietly, still hanging upside down.
Cora’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”
“The Gauntlet tests competitors in twelve puzzles. If the competitor successfully passes all of them, each tester, known as a Chief Assessor, inputs his approval into the algorithm at the end of the examination. It is a simple process: they approve you or they do not. The exact mechanism is similar to turning a key. Technically, one does not beat the Gauntlet by beating the puzzles. One’s success is registered when all four keys are turned.”
Cora still looked at her blankly.
“I am saying that you do not have to run the Gauntlet,” Mali explained. “You do not have to complete a single puzzle. You must only make the testers turn their keys. It is a . . .” She seemed to search for the word, her arms gesturing upside down. “Loophole.”
“How’s she supposed to do that?” Lucky whispered. “These aren’t exactly creatures you can pull a gun on and make demands.”
Mali smiled thinly. “You take control of their minds.”
For a second, Lucky and Cora just stared at her. Cora started to laugh a little deliriously, wonder if she’d heard wrong. “Not even the Kindred can control other people’s minds.”
“Anya can,” Mali said, and then corrected herself, “Anya could. I see—saw—her do it. If we free Anya, she can teach you. It is not a complex skill to learn, if one has already achieved mind-reading ability. It is merely a modification—a trick. She can teach it to you in a matter of days.”
“Cheating is too risky,” Lucky said. “We’ll think of something else.”
But Cora didn’t answer right away. She picked up a deck of cards Chicago had left behind and riffled through it anxiously. She hadn’t touched a deck in months—not since Bay Pines detention center—and the shuffle felt comfortably familiar.
“She might be onto something,” Cora argued. “They already think we’re criminals. Maybe that’s what makes us smarter than them—we aren’t restrained by logic and rules. We can be clever. We can cheat. They can’t.” She held the deck tightly in her hands. “This way, we don’t have to trust Cassian. We can betray his trust this time. I’ll let him train me; I’ll let him submit me for registration, but there’s no way I’m going to actually run. The minute I stand up in front of the testers, I’ll cheat my way to freedom. For all of us.”
Upside down, Mali smiled.
In the darkness, Cora could feel Lucky’s gaze searing into her. She remembered the kiss they’d shared beneath the boughs of the weeping cherry tree. She had thought she could love him then, but that was before she knew the truth about his mother’s death and her father’s crimes. Before the cage had twisted him into someone who thought life in an elaborate zoo was paradise.
“I still don’t like it,” Lucky said. “But I definitely don’t like the idea of you going through tests that could rupture your brain, or get you eaten by a lion, or mangled in some physical test.”
She bit hard on the inside of her lip. She could smell the rankness of the cell block. Unwashed kids, sick animals, and, beneath it all, the tang of blood.
All night, she toyed with the deck of cards like it was a rosary, whispering prayers and fears and hopes as she shuffled. At Bay Pines, she’d had a cellmate named Tonya who everyone called Queenie because of the queen of hearts tattoo on her shoulder. Queenie’s mom had been a sous-chef in Las Vegas, and her dad a card counter at the blackjack tables. He had taught Queenie and her brother to count cards and he’d put them on his team. It wasn’t illegal, at least not technically. But there had been an argument with another patron. Accusations of more serious cheating. A fight that resulted in two card dealers in the ICU and Queenie sent to juvie.
But were you really cheating? Cora had asked.
Queenie had snorted and tossed a jack of spades at her bed. Of course we were.
Queenie taught her how to hide spare cards in the loose folds of her khaki uniform. It had started out of boredom, two insomniacs locked together in a cinder-block room until the seven-a.m. bell, but then, after two Venezuelan girls beat up Cora in the library, it became necessary. She needed protection, and for that she needed extra commissary credits, and to get them she needed to win at cards. Cheating had been dangerous then, and it would be even more dangerous now. But a thrill raced up Cora’s nerves every time she imagined taking the Gauntlet and twisting it on its head: proving humanity’s intelligence not through the Kindred’s system, but through her own.
But that meant doing the one thing she’d sworn she’d never do, the thing she couldn’t stomach even the idea of.
Trusting Cassian again.
11
Cora
AFTER A FEW DAYS, Cora discovered why no one bothered with the shower: the water was ice-cold, and besides, who was there to stay clean for, when the low lights of the Hunt hid all the grime? She learned the hard way that she had to fight her way first thing in the morning to the feed room, or she’d get only crumbs. Already, not even a full week in, she had bruises from being elbowed by the others.
“Take this.” Mali thrust a threadbare blanket at her, just before the clock clicked to Showtime. “You are cold last night. I hear you shivering.” She frowned and scrunched up her face. She was missing a tooth from where she’d gotten in a fight with Pika the night before over the only magazine, an old Seventeen with half the pages torn out. “I mean . . .” She scrunched her face up more. “You were cold. I heard y
ou.”
Cora hugged the blanket close. “You’re doing good, Mali. Thanks for this.” Mali smiled, seeming pleased with her progress toward acting more human.
The clock clicked to Showtime.
“Already?” Makayla yawned from behind them. “I seriously could have used another hour of sleep.” She took a step, wincing on her bad knee.
“You okay?” Cora said, nodding toward the bandage.
Makayla gave a dark laugh. “What, my knee? Yeah. I did it to myself.” She stretched her leg out, wincing slightly. “You know that clingy guest, Roshian? He decided I’m his personal pet. He used to take me out on the savanna every day and ask me to run. Thought the exercise was good for me after I’d spent the night in a cramped cell, you know? Like he was doing me a favor. It got old fast, so I smashed my knee into the cell bars. Thought it might get me out of dancing too, but no such luck.”
Cora’s own knee ached with phantom pain. “Couldn’t the Kindred heal you?”
Makayla rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t expend the extra effort. Not on us.” She shouldered open the door.
The low lights and chatter of the Hunt spilled out. It looked like afternoon already, the artificial sun lowering over the savanna horizon. A few Kindred guests were already there, waiting for their servers and entertainers. Cora’s eyes immediately scanned the room for Cassian, but he wasn’t there, and she felt slightly disappointed. He hadn’t returned since the first day. Lucky had once accused her of being captivated by their caretaker—and maybe he was right. She’d told herself after Cassian’s betrayal that any attraction was over. And yet, anger or love, it was still Cassian who consumed her thoughts.
She followed Makayla toward the stage. One Kindred guest perched on a stool at the bar. Two danced stiffly together, even with no music. Another was seated at a table near the stage, his eyes sunken and dark. He stood as soon as they entered, as though he had been waiting.
Roshian.
He stepped toward Makayla, petting her head. “Has your knee improved, girl?”