The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

Bonebreak sighed. “There’s a Mosca outpost one-half of a rotation from here—about a human week’s time. The owner keeps decommissioned ships for parts. But it would be impossible to trade this clunker for a new one. I’d have to use all my credit.”

“So?” Mali asked bluntly.

Bonebreak sputtered, “I am a black market trader! Credit is the blood in my veins. Without credit, I might as well be dead.”

Mali shrugged, not seeing the problem. She turned to Anya. “Can you communicate with Cora telepathically to let her know we are coming back for them?”

“I can try.” Anya sat straighter in the chair, working the kinks out of her neck, and then closed her eyes. Her face strained with effort, a muscle tensing in her cheek, until she let out a long breath and shook her head. “It isn’t working. I think we’re too far away.”

“Then we must hurry,” Mali said. “Before they give up all hope. Or before Leon does something dumb, like try to be a hero, and gets himself killed.”

“You heard her. Take us to that outpost!” Anya wiggled her fingers at Bonebreak, a not-so-subtle threat to control his mind again if he disobeyed.

Bonebreak grumbled, “If we are going to go through with this senseless plan, then it at least needs to appear convincing.” He dug around in his bag until he came out with two small molded black rubbery pieces and the thick thread Mosca used to sew on masks. “It will look suspicious for me to be traveling with two free humans. The outpost trader would smell something rotten before we even landed. It is safest for me to mark as you my property. Just a . . . what is the word? Charade.”

He held up the glistening shielding.

Mali eyed him uneasily. This had been exactly what she and Anya had feared when forming an alliance with a Mosca. Bonebreak’s kind were untrustworthy and unpredictable.

This was why rescuing Cassian was so important: Cassian had prior claim to them. If they freed Cassian, Bonebreak wouldn’t be able to betray them.

He wiggled the needle, awaiting their response.

Mali pulled Anya to the facilities room, where they could speak privately. “I do not trust him.”

Anya rolled her eyes. “Neither do I, but he’s kind of right. How else can we get Cora? She’s got to run that Gauntlet. There’s no one else.” She ran a shaky hand over her shorn blond locks, the tremor in her fingers as bad as that of a woman of seventy, not a girl of ten—the result of having spent years sedated under heavy drugs. If not for that physical weakness, it might have been Anya herself running the Gauntlet as humanity’s savior.

Anya shoved her shaking hand into her pocket, cheeks flushing pink, as though embarrassed by the weakness.

Mali tried hard to think of any other possibility but came up with nothing. “Fine. But once we get to Armstrong, Leon and I are going to find a way to board a Kindred supply ship back to the station. We must free Cassian—he is the only thing that can protect us from Bonebreak’s claim.”

Anya nodded.

They rejoined Bonebreak in the main cabin. Mali drew in a sharp breath, hating the Mosca’s stench. He held up the needle enticingly. “Your hand, girl.”

She extended it reluctantly. He set a small piece of rubber shielding over the pad of her thumb but paused before sewing. His gloved fingers grazed her own, the scars deeply embedded in her fingers. “You’ve been in a scrape.”

“Yes. With the last Mosca who owned me,” she said tensely. “I have scars, but he is dead.” She let the warning linger.

Bonebreak shrugged and started sewing the shielding to her scarred thumb. She didn’t flinch at the pain. Pain was something she was used to—something she had trained herself to withstand in order to shield her mind from outside prodding.

Bonebreak finished, ripping the thread with his teeth, and then repeated the process on Anya’s thumb. “If we’re leaving,” he said, glancing at the viewing screen, “we’d better make it fast. It will take us nearly a full rotation to reach the outpost and return. I fear your friends may not last that long.”

Mali nodded thoughtfully. She was a long way from trusting Bonebreak, but she had to begrudgingly admit that she admired his practicality.

“Let’s do it,” Mali said. “The wolves are strong, but the rabbits are clever.”

Anya grinned and plunked down in the copilot’s seat. “Get us to that outpost,” she ordered.

4

Cora

CORA REACHED OUT HER thoughts toward a pebble in the corner of the quarantine cell. Slowly, telekinetically, she lifted it. One inch. Two. Three—

She lost concentration and it fell.

“Dammit.”

Only one day in quarantine and she already felt weak from the fetid air in the tents, and desperately thirsty, and hopeless. Rolf snored loudly on the other side of the cell. He had slept for what Cora guessed was twenty-four hours. She understood his exhaustion. The escape from the space station, Lucky’s death, Bonebreak’s offer to help her run the Gauntlet on the Mosca planet . . . the past few days had been a roller coaster. But unlike Rolf, she had remained awake despite her exhaustion, sick with worry. She hadn’t had such bad insomnia since the first days in the Cage, when she and Lucky had stayed up all night talking about his life on his granddad’s farm in Montana. Lucky. The thought of him brought a pang of sadness. She sucked in an audible breath, so sharp that Rolf stirred.

His face was creased with sleep. He rubbed his eyes as he looked at the quarantine bars. “So it wasn’t just a nightmare.”

She picked up the pebble, rolling it between her fingers. “Not the kind that goes away when you wake up.”

Rolf came over and sat next to her. It seemed he’d forgiven her for snapping at him the day before. He squinted into the low light, looking around the empty tent. “Where did everyone go?”

“To the mines. They left a few hours ago. You’ve been asleep awhile. Here.” She handed him a canteen of water that a deputy had brought them. It still held a few tepid sips.

He drank it quickly and then wiped his lips. “I thought I heard you cry out.”

“I was thinking of Lucky.” She glanced around to make sure all the deputies were outside before taking the journal from her waistband. “Ellis didn’t find this when they searched us. It’s Lucky’s journal. It’s the last thing I have of him.”

He reached out for it and silently flipped through the pages, then stopped on a dog-eared page and read out loud:

Mom sacrificed herself for me. She knew the car accident was going to happen a second before it did and swerved the wheel to keep me safe. I guess that’s what parents do for children. I guess that’s what people do for the ones they love.

Rolf looked up at Cora. “Lucky’s mother died protecting him?”

Cora swallowed, thinking of that awful night on the bridge. She nodded shakily. “Yeah.”

Rolf reread the journal entry thoughtfully. “What you said yesterday is true: Nok and I should have thought more before getting pregnant. But now I have to face the fact that I’m going to be a father. It isn’t something I imagined—I couldn’t even get a girlfriend back home. And my own father wasn’t much of a role model. It was my brother they all admired—I was just the freakish younger brother they shipped off to school.” He rubbed his face. “I don’t have the first clue how to be a good parent.”

Cora thought of her own father—his political job had meant he’d been distant, yes, but in a way, his work as a senator was to create a better world for Cora and Charlie. “I think it starts with building a home. A safe, loving community for her.” She motioned to the tents. “This place might not even be so bad, if it wasn’t run by a crazy sheriff.”

Rolf nodded, considering this.

The tent flap opened, admitting blindingly bright daylight, and Cora quickly hid the journal. They both shielded their eyes as two deputies entered and stood guard while the long line of slaves filed back in. The slaves’ hands were caked with dirt and bleeding from torn fingernails. Their eyes were vacant, g

azes skimming over Cora and Rolf behind the quarantine bars and registering no curiosity or acknowledgment at all. They were broken shells of the people they must once have been. Watching them, Cora couldn’t help imagining herself a year from now, just as broken and hollow.

And what of Nok and Leon, taken as wives? She shuddered to think what must be in store for them.

The slaves all sank back into their positions lying or sitting around the tent, spooning mouthfuls of the bland broth the guards distributed.