The Hunt (The Cage 2)

They climbed inside. Leon fumbled with something in his pocket and then a light strapped to his forehead came on. The beam cut through the darkness, showing only a circle of light. Leon moved it slowly around the room so she could see everything. One wall was covered in animal heads that had been detached from the bodies and mounted on hard backings. Not just antlers and horns, but entire heads. An antelope. A deer. Mali had seen much in her life to disturb her, but her pulse had never quite raced in this fluttering, anxious way before.

“I do not understand,” she said.

Leon barely glanced at the animal heads. “He’s a hunter. Deer antlers. People do it all the time at home.”

He spoke so casually of something so strange.

“Not the Kindred,” she said. “I have never seen this.”

Leon kept swinging the light, and it settled on a table where various animal parts were laid out, along with containers of chemicals and the thick black wire the Mosca used for their masks. She stepped closer, squinting at the fur in the darkness. A hyena pelt.

Scavenger.

Her stomach started to turn in revulsion. This was more than just cutting off a claw. He’d completely desecrated Scavenger’s entire body. Her pulse was fluttering harder now, and she glanced at Leon, afraid he could see. Something was very, very wrong.

Leon pointed to a small desk in front of a mirror that was covered by a heavy black cloth. “I leave the packages under there.”

Mali lifted the cloth, trying to calm her heartbeat, but there was only a single black canvas bag underneath. She pulled it out.

“Keep the light on it.” It was closed with intricate Kindred knots, and her fingers flew over them until she had untied the final one. She looked in the direction of Scavenger’s pelt on the table one last time.

She opened the canvas bag.

Leon leaned over her shoulder, the light attached to his head bobbing as he rubbed his chin. “What the . . . ?”

Mali pulled out a Kindred uniform. It was standard for someone of Roshian’s rank: cerulean blue, with five knots down the side. There were also paper notebooks—artifacts from Earth—filled with writing that looked like human speech. But beneath it was something odder. A small, clear box that contained two black half circles that were soft and rubbery. And a tube with a screw-top lid, with writing in a language she didn’t understand, and two heavy barbells.

Leon swiped up the box of half circles. “No way.”

“Do you know what those are.”

“They look like enormous contact lenses.”

She grabbed him, swinging the light so that it shone right in her face, but she didn’t blink. “What are contact lenses.”

“We can’t just magically improve everyone’s eyesight on Earth. People wear them to see better. And the tube is some kind of chemical paint. Don’t you get it, kid? It’s a disguise. The uniform. The weights, to keep his muscles huge. Roshian is only posing as a Kindred.”

Mali found a small square of plastic in the bottom of the bag. She held it up to the light. The words on it were scratched and difficult to read. John Keller, it said. Medical Student, Epidemiology, Boston University. There was a two-dimensional reproduction of a face in the upper corner; it was Roshian’s face, only the skin was pink. His hair was longer. He was smiling and wearing glasses.

“He’s human,” Leon said.

Human. Mali glanced back at the animal heads on the walls. That explained his odd predilections. The way he kept to himself in the Hunt. Why he only seemed to have the cloaked side of his personality.

It also meant that he was not bound by the Kindred moral code.

She dropped the identification card. “We must find Cassian. Now.”

“No way,” Leon said. “If he sees you outside of the menagerie, he’ll know we can sneak out. He’ll put a stop to it. And he’ll turn me in to the guards.”

“This is more important. There will be no more sneaking around if Cora is dead.”

“Please tell me you’re exaggerating.”

“I do not exaggerate.” She climbed one leg back into the service passageway. “The Kindred do not kill humans. But humans kill humans. And I do not think that Roshian—John Keller—only wants Cora for her hair. Now take me to Cassian’s quarters.”

She climbed in the drecktube, and they scrambled through the tunnels, dodging packages and cleaner traps, and this time Leon didn’t make a single comment about staring at her backside.

25

Cora

CORA SHIELDED HER EYES against the bright savanna sun. It glinted off the hood of the nearest safari truck, blinding her so that all she could make out of Roshian was a dark outline.

She took a shaky step backward, nearly tripping over the uneven ground. “Dane, what’s going on?”

He stood at the base of the veranda steps, blocking her. “You heard him,” he said quietly, tossing the yo-yo. “Run. You might have a chance.”

“You brought me here to die?”

His eyes snapped to her. “That’s up to how fast you are. I can’t say I’m optimistic.” He shoved the toy in his pocket, and when he spoke again, his tone was more resigned. “I’ll tell Lucky that you died in an accident. I’ll watch out for him. He could go far here.”

She contemplated hurling herself at him, clawing his face, ripping out clumps of his hair, but it wouldn’t change anything—he wasn’t in charge.

“You!” She spun on Roshian. “If this is just about some trophy, take it! I’ll give you my hair, no favors in return, no questions asked.”

“It is the trophy I want,” Roshian said calmly. “But the trophy means nothing without the hunt.”

He picked up the old rifle, an enormous dark-gray monster that had to weigh twenty pounds, nothing Kindred about it in the slightest.

“Just run already!” Dane hurled his yo-yo at her feet.

She let out a hoarse cry. Her mind kept spinning, trying to find a rational explanation, as Roshian stroked the length of the rifle barrel. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t kill a human. And then he rested a finger on the trigger, and her spinning mind stopped.

Apparently

, somehow, he could.

“Only one way to escape the Big Bad Wolf,” said Anya’s voiceless whisper, and for a second, Cora was glad at least she wasn’t alone. “That’s to run.”

Cora’s heart throbbed harder. Anya might think in riddles, but this one wasn’t hard to decipher.

Cora turned and ran.

Heat rose from the ground, turning the artificial savanna into hazy waves. Tall grass. The watering hole. Rolling hills. Not many places to hide, which was exactly how it had been designed.

Behind her came the metallic clicks of a rifle preparing to fire. Back in DC, her father had once dragged her to a shooting range for a political photo op and made her put on ear protection and fire at a person-shaped target. She had hated everything about that dank cement room of sweaty men, but she remembered one thing: it was a lot harder to shoot a moving target.

Her long dress tangled around her ankles, slowing her, and she jerked it up around her knees so she could run faster, darting and weaving to make herself harder to shoot. Her feet pounded over stone and tufts of grass, throwing up sand behind her. She ran for the closest hill. If she could get behind it—

A bullet whizzed by her side.

She shrieked and veered to the right, throwing herself behind a tree. She could just make out Roshian on the horizon, still standing by the veranda steps. He had lowered the rifle to reload. Even if the bullets were artificial, they would still immobilize her so that he could slice her throat. Her breath slammed in her chest as she dug her fingernails into the tree.

What chance did she have? He was Kindred, and all Kindred were faster, and stronger, and smarter. Tessela, Cassian, Lucky, and Mali—none of them could help her, because they had no idea that at this moment a twisted creature in a safari uniform was lifting a rifle to aim again.

“Anya,” she thought as hard as she could. “Help!”

For a minute, there was nothing. The sun beat down mercilessly. It was only a matter of time before Roshian would corner her, shoot her, and cut off her hair and keep it as a deranged trophy. No one would be left to run or cheat the Gauntlet.