“It’s our best shot.”
“Then I want to come with you. And Mali too.” Lucky dropped his voice, though it was just the two of them. “I still don’t trust him.”
“He told me something that might change your mind.” She glanced toward the door, making sure they were alone. She told him about the ship in hushed excitement, about what it could mean and where they might go. But his eyes didn’t light up the way hers had.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “I thought this was what we all wanted.”
“What about the Gauntlet?” he said. “And proving humanity’s worth?”
“That hasn’t changed.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how this conversation was getting derailed. “All I’m saying is that after the Gauntlet is over and we’ve won freedom for all these people, we’ll have choices. The Kindred won’t be able to stop us from going home, and now we might have the means to do it.”
But his eyes stayed dark. “What about Pika and Makayla and everyone? Will they be able to go back with us too?”
She blinked. “I don’t know how big the ship is—”
“And what about the other humans in the other menageries? There are hundreds. Maybe more. And there are other stations too.”
“I get what you’re saying.” She tried to keep the tension out of her voice. “But I never agreed to take everyone home. Isn’t freeing them enough?”
At her exasperation, his expression softened. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. What you’re doing takes a lot of bravery. But when you made the decision to run the Gauntlet, you made a decision to stand up for humanity. That doesn’t end as soon as the last test is finished. You can’t flip the system on its head and then walk away to let everyone else pick up the pieces.”
She wasn’t sure what to say, so she paced tightly, trying to process his words.
“I know that isn’t easy to hear,” he continued. “I made a commitment too, to take care of these animals. As much as I miss home, I can’t break that commitment just because I want to sleep in my bed again and eat a real pizza.”
“Home is about more than that,” she said testily. “And you know it.”
“You’re right—we have everything on Earth. Family. Friends. But there’s one thing missing there.”
“What’s that?”
He paused. “Something worth fighting for.”
Cora dropped her hand from the bridge of her nose and, for a second, felt a little dizzy.
His face softened. “Listen, I didn’t mean to—”
“Haven’t we been through enough?” she interrupted. “Cassian picked us because we were all misfits back home. Our lives were broken. Your mother’s death. My time in juvenile detention. Nok being trapped by that London agency, and Leon’s family in prison, and Rolf’s parents’ expectations. And what do we get for all of our suffering—locked in this prison for the rest of our lives.”
She was suddenly aware she was shouting, and dropped her voice. “You can’t ask us to sacrifice more. We need this. After we win the Gauntlet, we’ll have a chance to go home and make lives for ourselves that are a little less broken.”
Warm tears had gotten netted in her eyelashes. She pushed them out roughly with shaking hands. Lucky’s face was unreadable; only his eyes gave any hint of what he was feeling.
“I don’t want to stay here, Lucky.” Her voice broke.
He drew her into his arms. She pressed her face against his chest, surprised at how fast his own heart was beating. “I know,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes, after the Gauntlet. We’ll see how much chaos there is, how people deal with freedom. I’d never deny you a chance to go home if that’s what you really want, and I wouldn’t ask anyone else to give that up either. But just so you know”—he pulled back to look into her face—“I’m staying.”
She jerked back in surprise. “Lucky, be reasonable.”
“I’m serious. Working with these animals has reminded me of who I used to be. I went a little crazy in the cage, I know, but I’m not that person now. I’ve taken responsibility for these animals, and that might not seem like a lot, when you’re trying to free our whole species, but that’s dozens of living creatures who need me. I can’t run away from them. I don’t want to. I’m staying where we’re needed, whether you beat the Gauntlet or not.”
Cora had so many things to say, and yet couldn’t seem to speak a single one of them. For the rest of the day, his words swirled in her head as she sang distracted songs while the others went about their work, a little more cheerfully now that Dane was gone. Christopher and Mali didn’t get into any fights. Shoukry slipped some sugar and lemon into Cora’s water as a treat. Makayla even jumped onstage and sang a song with her, though her voice was terrible.
The whole time, Cora couldn’t shake Lucky’s words.
Where we’re needed.
SHE WAS STILL TRYING to put their conversation out of her head when it was time to meet Leon that night. Most of the animals had fallen asleep quickly, and the other humans too. She focused on opening her cell’s lock, ignoring how her pain was worsening, and the images of Roshian screaming in pain.
She opened Lucky’s and Mali’s cells too. Wetness dripped beneath her nose but she wiped it away, hoping the others wouldn’t see. The three of them tiptoed to the feed room, then knocked twice on the drecktube door.
Leon shouldered it open. “Took you long enough.”
They climbed in, crawling in a single line in the maze of tubes only Leon knew, until at last they arrived at Roshian’s quarters. They were similar to Cassian’s; so similar that Cora’s thoughts, a little heady, kept swimming back to the night before. She had promised to forgive Cassian if he helped her. Part of her wondered if maybe that’s why she was so anxious to board that ship and run. Not just to go back to Earth—but to escape promises she had made.
Leon pushed open a panel to reveal a hidden room. It smelled stale, like old paper. He flicked on a lamp. Inside were stacks of books, artifacts, and a dressing table. He dumped a box out on top of the table. “This is the stuff.”
Lucky riffled through the box of supplies, lifting out a uniform.
Cora inspected the other objects. Black contact lenses. The tube of metallic paste that wasn’t paste at all, but microscopic metal pieces. Papers and documents marking Roshian as a Kindred, along with notes he’d meticulously kept of ways they spoke and their mannerisms. She handed Leon the contacts.
“Put these in. They have to cover your whole eye, not just the iris.”
It was a hard black shell the size of half a golf ball. He groaned as he lifted his eyelid and jabbed the contact in with unskilled hands.
Lucky sighed. “Let me. My granddad wore contacts and was always getting them stuck.” He fiddled around with Leon’s eye, trying to find the best way to insert the lens, and finally figured out, after a lot of Leon’s cursing, that he could slide it in from the top.
Leon blinked with his one black eye.
“Can you see?” Lucky asked.
“Yeah. Like sunglasses.”
He groaned again as Lucky jabbed in the other one. When it was done, he kept squinting and blinking, tilting his head to try to see out of the corners.
“The Kindred don’t blink much,” Cora said. “You have to practice showing no emotion.”
“You try shoving these in your eyes and not blinking.”
“I don’t get how this paste works.” Cora squeezed the tube, and the contents came out in a single thick blob.
Mali took it from her. “It is Axion technology. They use something like this to bathe but it is white. The pieces coat the body and attract dust and dirt like a magnet. Someone has modified this so that it clings longer and added small metal pieces to mimic Kindred skin.”
“Roshian’s file said he was a med student studying chemistry,” Cora said. “Maybe he altered it himself.”
Leon grabbed the paste from Cora’s hand. He slapped it onto his bare arm and, at first, n
othing happened. Then it slowly started to absorb into his skin, spreading like melted butter until his biceps was a shimmering copper color, then his forearm, then his shoulder. Once it was done, Cora eyed him eerily. If it wasn’t for the rumpled clothes Leon was wearing, it might have been Roshian sitting there, or any of the Kindred.
“What does it feel like?” Lucky asked.
Leon shrugged. “Like I look like a sparkly idiot.”
“No, it’s good,” Cora said. “It’s believable. It covers your tattoos, and even the bruises.”
Mali dumped the uniform in his lap. “Dress yourself.”