The Hunt (The Cage 2)

Someone—well, something—was sitting in one of the chairs. It wore a mask and a dirty red jumpsuit, and from the way it was hunched, it didn’t look human.

Lucky rested his head back against the floor. A crumpled teddy bear with half the stuffing poking out sat inexplicably next to him. Was he . . . hallucinating? He didn’t have the strength to reach out to the bear; just that one small attempt to sit up had nearly made him vomit.

“Get us out of here,” someone was saying. He blinked until he could see Mali standing over the alien in the chair. “This ship is Axion technology,” she said, drumming on the curved interior walls with her knuckles. “Stolen, I think.”

Ship? Why would they hide out in a ship?

“Kid snatchers,” Leon grumbled, rubbing his sore shoulder and pointing to some cages that had been soldered to the walls. “Bonebreak must have retrofitted the ship for runs to Earth.”

Lucky closed his eyes again. So that creature in the chair was Bonebreak. Waves of blackness shivered over him. He winced through the pain until he saw Cora climb up through the hatch and close it behind her.

Cora.

The others.

They were all safe. All together.

Bonebreak grumbled from behind his mask, and Lucky opened one heavy eyelid. It sounded something like dogs or logs, but then a girl he didn’t know, tiny, short hair, nine or ten years old, jerked her fingers—she was missing two and her hands were shaking badly—and Bonebreak’s voice turned to garbles again. That must be Anya. But when had Cora freed her? How had . . . how had he even gotten here?

Anya twitched her small fingers again, and Bonebreak jerkily removed his glove, then traced a few symbols into the control panel; other controls seemed to move on their own—either Bonebreak was moving them with his mind or Lucky was truly hallucinating now.

Leon was pacing unsteadily, cradling his shoulder like it was hurt. “How’s she know how to work the controls?” he snapped, jerking his head toward Anya.

“She does not know how,” Mali answered. “Bonebreak knows how. His mind is still alert. She merely commands him what to do, and he is using his own knowledge to do it.”

“Can you get him to make the windshield visible, Anya?” Cora asked.

Anya concentrated on Bonebreak. His fingers stiffly worked a few more controls, and the windshield flickered.

Cora sank into the second pilot’s seat, eyes wide. “My god . . .”

The others went running to the front to see. Lucky tried to stand, but just the thought of moving was painful.

“Kindred,” Leon grunted, looking at the screen. “Those bastards have made it into the flight room. Dozens of them.”

“They are well armed,” Rolf observed. A second later, as though to prove his point, the ship rocked violently. Nok let out a cry, then smacked Bonebreak in the shoulder.

“Get us out of here already!”

Bonebreak let out another tense grumble of disapproval. It was louder this time, almost a full curse, as though he was regaining control over his body.

“Anya cannot sustain this level of mental control much longer,” Mali warned. “Her mind will give out eventually, as well as her hands. The Kindred drugs damaged them.”

“She has to keep it up.” Cora spun around in the second pilot’s chair. “At least until we’re out of here.”

The ship rocked again, as something hit it from the outside. Their voices began to fade into the background, like that mysterious dripping sound. Lucky’s ears had started ringing. He readjusted his hold on his ribs.

Damn, but it stung.

Suddenly the ship rumbled. Nok cried out and tried to grab ahold of something, but the walls were perfectly smooth. She and Rolf stumbled over to where the cages had been retrofitted in and clutched onto the bars.

“That’s a good idea,” Cora said. “Everyone hold on to the bars.”

Lucky reached out to halfheartedly grab at a cage, but his fingers didn’t reach. The ship rumbled again. The teddy bear slid slowly toward the left. He felt a sudden wave of dizziness, and his head hit the wall.

“Ow.”

“Lucky, you’re awake!” Cora sank to his side. Her soft hands touched his forehead. She reached gently toward his bloody jacket, which he refused to let her touch. How did she always manage to smell like flowers? “You have to hold on to something too,” Cora whispered. “We don’t know how fast this thing goes.”

Lucky pressed a hand harder against his ribs. The idea of crawling over to the cages seemed impossible. His legs were still attached—he could see that when he lifted his head, even with his blurry vision—but for some reason he couldn’t feel them.

“Where are we going?” he muttered, voice sounding distant.

Cora scooted over to cradle his head in her lap—when had he slumped to the floor?—and had one leg pressed against the captain’s chair to brace them steady. Her fingers brushed his hair back tenderly. Should he tell her that this was his dream? Sitting like this under the cherry tree, his head in her lap, back on his granddad’s farm?

Ow.

There was pain in his cheek. Someone was slapping him. “Stay with me,” Cora was saying.

He coughed violently. If only this damn bullet wasn’t in his side. He couldn’t even remember which guest had hunted him—was it Roshian? Cassian? No, that wasn’t right, Cassian never hunted. Wait, they were still in the Hunt, right?

“. . . going home,” Cora said.

The words sank into him like a punch, and his heart began to thump with panic. Home. Home? He tried to sit up. No, no, there was something wrong about home. Some reason they weren’t supposed to go back, but he couldn’t quite remember.

“Wait. I think . . .” He fumbled until he found Cora’s shoulder, and traced it up to her face. “I think we were . . .”

“Shh.” Around them, the world rocked and bucked, but not here beneath the cherry tree. In the distance, Rolf lost his footing and smacked against the wall. His head connected with a crunch, and Nok shrieked.

Anya’s face twisted harder in concentration. Bonebreak’s hands snapped back into position, moving faster. The world jolted as the ship lifted, and Lucky’s fingers fumbled against Cora’s face.

“You’ll be okay,” she was saying. “Bonebreak says . . . emergency medical kit . . . once we’re away from the station . . .”

The teddy bear slid back the other way and stopped by his face. He felt a sudden welling of panic. Wait. It wasn’t a teddy bear. It was that little fox that liked to chew on wooden statues he stole from the lodge, only someone had torn out all its stuffing, and there was so much blood that he felt he couldn’t bear such pain.

Then he remembered why they couldn’t go home.

“This is wrong. The animals—”

“We’re flying!” someone yelled.

Cora twisted around to look, and fear shot through him that she was going to pull away. He dug his fingers into her shoulder and forced words up his throat. “I tried to tell you. We shouldn’t leave, don’t you see? Earth doesn’t need us. They need us here. The animals. The kids. Where’s Pika? And Shoukry? We can’t just leave—”

Cora was saying something he couldn’t make out. Something placating and reassuring about having no choice but to leave, about Cassian being arrested, about the Kindred finding out she had killed Roshian.

She didn’t understand!

“No!” he spit out. “No, there’s another way.” He reached a bloody hand into his pocket for Dane’s torn-out journal pages. “We’ll regret it if we leave them. You think we’ll go home and just forget everyone we left behind?”

She stared at the blood-stained journal with wide eyes.

Other voices crackled nearby.

“. . . don’t see any exit or bay . . .”

“How are we . . . ? Oh . . . shit.”

The voice morphed into a scream. Lucky’s stomach shot to his throat as his head swam. They were falling. Plunging into nothing, rapidly. He’d been on a rolle

r coaster before—the free-falling kind. This was a hundred times worse. The teddy bear tumbled away. So did the journal. Cora was clutching him, or maybe he was clutching her. Falling, falling . . .

And then they stopped abruptly.

The screaming stopped, but the ringing in his ears didn’t. The ship didn’t seem to be falling anymore, though it vibrated in a rumbling sort of way, like a train over tracks.

“Space!” someone yelled. “Look! We’re . . . stars!”

A thunk sounded.

And then—

“Anya!”

Lucky’s vision was blackening around the edges, and the angles all seemed wrong and he couldn’t tell who was talking. Was Anya walking on the wall? No . . . she had collapsed. She was unconscious on the floor.

“Oh god, is she dead?” someone else shrieked.