She was crying. He felt his heart breaking. He wasn’t a hero—he was a weak little kødd.
Then, abruptly, the grate swung open. A black-eyed face looked out. Rolf’s heart shot to his throat. It was a Kindred, in the tunnels! But—wait. This particular Kindred was familiar.
“Leon?” Rolf said incredulously.
“Don’t let the eyes fool you,” Leon said. Behind him, Cora’s familiar blond head poked out of the tunnel.
Leon snorted. “Bloody hell, Nok, I knew you missed me, but tears?”
Rolf threw his arms around Leon, who mumbled something about getting a room, and hugged him hard.
38
Cora
“WE’VE GOT PROBLEMS,” CORA said, as soon as they were in the drecktube tunnels.
“I thought we just escaped our problems,” Rolf said, jerking his head back in the direction of Serassi’s dollhouse experiment.
“Bigger ones. The Council arrested Cassian. We’re on the run now. I can’t participate in the Gauntlet. Our only hope is to get off the station.”
“What about Lucky and Mali?” Nok asked.
Cora hesitated. Cassian had warned her not to go back for the others. But Cassian hadn’t known that Fian would turn on them. Even now, Fian could be leading more guards to the Hunt to arrest them. “I’m going back for them. The rest of you should go with Leon to the Mosca camp. We’ll meet there. With luck we can negotiate something with Bonebreak. If he can’t take us all the way back to our solar system, at least he could take us somewhere where we aren’t being hunted.”
Leon’s face was unreadable in the dark tunnel. “I’m going with you.”
She rested a hand on the rubber shielding over his shoulder. “You can’t. They won’t make it through the tunnels without you.”
She turned before she could change her mind. She crawled on her hands and knees, following Leon’s chalk markings of zebra stripes, fighting the claustrophobia creeping into her lungs, until she made it back to the Hunt.
She pressed her ear against the door, listening.
Someone was humming on the other side but paused to giggle.
Pika.
Cora knew that she could trust Jenny and Christopher, and Shoukry and Makayla. But Pika’s loyalties were a mystery.
Cora sighed and drew up her knees, leaning against the cold metal tunnel, and waited for the cover of night.
SHE WAS NEARLY FREEZING by the time Pika left, and the sounds of chatter and cell doors closing had died down. She eased the door open and peeked into the darkness.
The coast was clear.
She tiptoed through the quiet rooms and scaled the stairs silently to find Mali’s cell. She started to reach for the lightlock, but a hand snaked out and grabbed her.
Mali’s face loomed in the glowing light.
Cora pressed a finger to her lips. Mali nodded. Cora closed her eyes and focused on unlocking the door. It swung open, and they both tiptoed back down to the lower level. Mali started for Lucky’s door, but Cora held out a hand.
“Wait.”
Something didn’t feel right. It went back to her argument with Lucky about what would happen after the Gauntlet. He’d said that he wouldn’t leave the animals, Gauntlet or not. If she woke him up now, would he still refuse to go?
She chewed on her lip, knowing they were running out of time. She motioned for Mali to follow her into the medical room, where she quietly told Mali everything that had happened. “So now we run,” she added, “and hope we can bribe our way off this station, which isn’t going to be easy without any money.”
Mali’s eyes widened for a moment. “Wait here.” She scampered off before Cora could stop her, and returned with one of the filthy safari sacks.
“Mali, that reeks.”
“Yes.” Mali untied the bag as though she was immune to the stench. “Keeps the others away so they do not find this.”
Tokens. Hundreds of them.
“They belonged to Dane,” Mali explained. “When we swapped Roshian’s collection of tails into his cookie tin, we had to empty these out. I told Lucky I would hide them.” She closed the bag again. “Will they be enough?”
Cora paused—it was the first time she’d heard Mali state a question like a question. She smiled. “I hope so.”
Cora turned around and started rooting through the medical room cabinets. Mali slung the bag over her shoulder and frowned. “What are you looking for?”
“I heard Pika say something once about reverse revival pods. To put agitated animals to sleep. It’s for Lucky. There’s a chance he’ll insist on staying behind. And now isn’t the time for him to be noble.”
Mali hesitated but then reached into the cabinet and took out a greasy package. “It is this one.”
Back in the cell room, they knelt by Lucky’s cell. He was asleep with one arm through the bars, the fox curled against his palm. For a second, a part of Cora hated what she was doing. But she pushed past that feeling and set the pod near his face. In a moment the tense set to his expression eased, as he slipped into a deeper sleep.
Cora opened his door, and they dragged him over the dirty floor.
“He will be mad when he wakes,” Mali warned.
“Yeah,” Cora muttered as she heaved his sleeping form down the tunnel. “But he’ll also be alive.”
CORA’S ARMS ACHED BY the time they’d crawled halfway through the tunnel, but she didn’t dare stop. Lucky’s body was too heavy to lift over the cleaner trap triggers, so they’d had to double back and take different tunnels until her vision blurred from the thin air.
She paused to catch her breath. From the nearest grate came the sounds of heavy boots and flat Kindred language.
“Do you understand what they’re saying?” Cora asked.
Mali wobbled her head. “A little. They are looking for us.”
Cora’s heart started thumping harder. She prayed the tokens would be enough to convince Bonebreak to let them on that ship. She dragged Lucky down turn after turn, following Leon’s chalked marks on the walls.
“Move to the side!” Mali yelled. “Now.”
Cora tossed a look at a package that was floating behind them. Not fast, but faster than they were crawling with an unconscious body. Mali pressed herself into one of the tunnel alcoves, clutching the sack of tokens tight against her chest. Cora glanced at Lucky, then at the nearest alcove. Not enough room for the both of them. She shoved him as far back into the alcove as she could and, just as the package nipped at her heels, d
ived into the empty one across from him.
Every moment felt like eternity as Cora waited for the package to float past. There was a crack in the alcove and she pressed her ear against it, listening for the sounds of more Kindred guards hunting for them.
There were Kindred voices, but quieter. She almost thought she heard a few words of English, and pressed her eye against the crack.
Beyond was a cell.
Six feet by six feet. It could have been the exact one they’d put her in after her failed escape attempt. The same toilet. The same sink. But there was an examination table in the center. A figure shifted on it, and she gasped.
Cassian.
She pressed a hand against the wall. He was unconscious, strapped to the table. Tubes snaked through his skin and ears and nose, pulsing. On a small screen next to him, a three-dimensional projection showed flashes of images. Fian and Tessela. Serassi and her equipment. Cora. The dice and cards they’d used to train with. The machines were dissecting his thoughts. First was a projection of him playing go fish with Mali on a beach. And then one of him trying to draw a dog in the privacy of his quarters.
And then, the kiss they’d shared just hours before.
Suddenly Cassian hissed, and she realized he wasn’t unconscious. They were doing something to him, probing his mind, and it was tearing him apart, just as it was tearing her apart to watch.
One of the doctors must have heard her gasp; he looked around. She jerked away from the wall crack, breathing hard.
Across from her, one more package drifted by.
“It is clear,” Mali whispered.
Cora’s heart was pounding so hard she wasn’t sure she could talk. “Go. I’ll catch up.” Mali gave her an uncertain look, but she shook her head. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Mali gave her a long, steady look but left. Cora spun and pressed her eye back against the crack. There was equipment on the wall she hadn’t noticed before. It was all the length of her arm, and it ended in sharp needles and blades. She didn’t have to know what the instruments were for to know that Cassian would likely never walk out of that room unchanged.
When he had confessed to her crimes, he must have known that this would be his fate.