The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

“You think?” Cora asked dryly.

“So this is it?” Rolf shook his head. “All that work, all that training, and we end up slaves on some half-dead moon for the rest of our lives? No way. You have to get us out of this. Cora, I’m going to be a father. I’m responsible for our baby. For Sparrow. And for Nok, too. She can’t give birth in a place like this.” His voice was rising in fear.

“Maybe you two should have thought about that before getting pregnant,” Cora said tightly. “Where did you possibly think it would be a safe place to raise a child? On a Kindred station? On a Mosca planet? At least here there are other humans. There’s air a baby can breathe. There’s food and water. Who knows what the rest of the world is like off this moon.”

Rolf looked as though she’d slapped him.

She immediately regretted her harsh tone. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just worried about Sparrow. I am too.”

Rolf sniffed. “Well, you could act more like it.” He went to lie down in the corner.

Cora went to the opposite side of the cell and curled up close to the oil lamp, hugging her knees. Could she really blame Rolf for trying to take care of his loved ones?

She thought of Cassian. She’d called him a monster once, but he wasn’t at all. He’d turned himself in for a crime he hadn’t committed in order to save her life. She closed her eyes, pained at the memory. The last time she’d seen him, she and Mali had been crawling through the station tunnels. She’d glimpsed Cassian through a crack; he’d been strapped down to a table, interrogated by Kindred doctors with equipment that snaked into his veins and ripped apart his memories. She could still hear the echo of his screams deep in her mind. She pressed a hand to her mouth, silencing her own sobs.

How did she know he was even still alive? He had told her that if anything went wrong with their plan, the Fifth of Five, a secret organization of Kindred who were sympathetic to humans, would rise up and try to free humans by force. Had that happened? Was it war now on the station?

“Cassian,” she whispered to herself, “I’m sorry.”

Before arriving on Drogane, Cora and Mali had devised a plan to save him, though now, enslaved, it seemed hopeless. They had intended to separate once on Armstrong: Mali and Leon would sneak off and board one of the Kindred supply ships, which would take them back to the station. They would find a way to free Cassian and then meet Cora on Drogane.

But Mali was missing. And Leon was just as trapped as Cora was.

Cora wiped her thumb beneath her eyes—it should be her rescuing Cassian, anyway. Mali and Leon had agreed to it because Cora was a wanted fugitive and they weren’t—the minute Cora stepped foot on the station, she’d be arrested. And yet it itched at her, the need to help Cassian. He had saved her. It was her turn to save him.

She hugged her legs harder.

Back home, she had survived Bay Pines detention center by keeping her head down and waiting out the eighteen-month sentence. During the day, she’d written letters to her parents about her classes and her roommate, Queenie. At night, she’d written song lyrics for herself. Songs about strength, about stars, about hope. They had helped her endure the time.

“Have to stay strong . . . ,” she sang under her breath. “Have to hold on. . . .”

But her voice faded. The reek of the slaves was overpowering.

She pressed her face into her hands.

There was no eighteen months to wait out, now. There were no parents to pick her up at the end and take her back to her bedroom and her waiting dog.

There was only Armstrong.

For weeks, then for months . . . maybe forever.

3

Mali

MALI PACED IN FRONT of the ship’s viewing screen.

Beyond, the red curve of Armstrong’s shape loomed as they orbited at a low altitude. They were too far away to see the town, even with the viewing screen’s powerful magnifier, and likewise, none of the people on Armstrong would be able to see them. The lights of the ship would look like just another bright star.

“We must return for them,” Mali said.

Anya sat in the second pilot’s chair, hugging her knees tight, eyes big. Mali’s heart softened. Anya was a genius, yes, but she was also a ten-year-old girl who’d just seen her friends captured.

Bonebreak snorted as he checked the orbital velocity. Behind the thick mask he wore, Mali couldn’t see his face, only his hunchback and his grotesquely twisted limbs clothed in Mosca shielding. “Forget them. They’re . . . what’s the human word? Oh, yes. Toast.”

Anya twisted to him with even wider eyes. “Don’t say that!”

Mali folded her arms tightly, narrowing her eyes at Bonebreak. “Anya’s right. We can’t give up on them.”

It hadn’t been either her or Anya’s choice to leave the moon. When they’d watched through the viewing screen as those trucks drove toward their friends, they had frantically tried to figure out the ship’s controls and managed to zoom in the magnifier. They had seen the fear on Nok’s face. A dark-haired woman with a handkerchief covering her mouth. Even Leon had looked worried—Leon, who was the toughest boy Mali knew, not to mention handsome, who had an annoying way of making her short of breath. And then Bonebreak had returned to the ship, anxious and hurried, as he’d shoved them away from the controls. The next thing Mali knew, they were high above the moon.

“Those soldiers are bad people,” Mali said. “One of them is a boy I knew in the Hunt. Dane. He cannot be trusted.”

Bonebreak flicked a finger toward the moon on the viewing screen. “I’ve heard about that sheriff with the metal badge on her face. Ellis. She’s got a nasty reputation. Mosca used to come here to trade in black market human wards, but that came to an end when Ellis butchered six Mosca captains in a row. For no other reason than she didn’t like the way we smelled!” He sniffed at his armpits as though reassuring himself of his delicate odor. “She’s not someone to be trifled with, especially seeing as we have nothing of value to trade.” He turned to Anya. “You seem smart for a small little childs. You agree with me, yes?”

There was the slightest undercurrent of fear in his voice. It was clear that Bonebreak was afraid of Anya, ever since she had proven she could not only control a gun through telekinesis, but also control him.

Anya didn’t answer at first. Mali eyed her sidelong. It had been several years since they’d last spoken, and the Anya she had known then—just seven years old—had held a child’s black-and-white sense of morality. Now that she was older, had she learned that not everything was so straightforward?

“The wolves are strong,” Mali whispered to Anya, “but the rabbits are clever.”

Anya’s eyes lit up at the words. That was the motto, taken from a fairy tale, that Anya had used during their escape three years ago from a private owner. It meant the Kindred might be power

ful, but humans were clever. The motto had spread throughout the network of privately owned humans, even into the menageries, whispered as a seemingly innocent fairy tale so the Kindred wouldn’t be suspicious. It had just begun to swell in force when Kindred guards had come for Anya, drugged her, and locked her in the Temple before her whisperings could incite any uprisings.

Anya grinned at Mali. “The rabbits are very clever.” She turned to Bonebreak. “Does this ship have weapons?”

Bonebreak dabbed a cloth over his sweating forehead, shaking his head. “It’s only a cruiser. A transport.”

Anya tapped a finger over her lips as she looked over the steerage panel. “There might be a way to modify the controls. Reconfigure the propulsion system as a weapon.” She shrugged. “At the least, we could use the ship as a battering ram. Return to Armstrong’s surface and crash it into the main tent.” She smacked her hands together, mimicking an explosion.

“Don’t you dare!” Bonebreak gasped. “This ship cost eight thousand tokens!” He looked to Mali as though pleading for help.

“He’s right,” Mali said reluctantly. “We cannot crash it. We will need it eventually to get to Drogane.” She paced, careful to give a wide berth to Lucky’s body beneath the tarp, and then looked at Bonebreak. “You said the sheriff has worked with traders before. What if you approached her, claiming to be an exotic species trader, and offered to buy Cora and the others?”

Bonebreak groaned behind his mask. “Did you not hear me, little childs? Ellis killed the last six Mosca captains who approached her for a trade!” He rested his face in his hands, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t work, anyway. They’ve seen our ship. It’s a piece of junk. They know we’re as poor as cave rats. That sheriff wouldn’t even sit for a meeting.”

Anya’s big eyes danced with mischief. “Not if we had a different ship—a really impressive one. Didn’t we pass a trade outpost a while back?”