The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

Another support beam snapped. Nok pushed Cora away. “Go, hurry!”

The deputies grabbed Nok, pulling her to safety as another portion of the tent ceiling buckled. The last support snapped.

Screams rang out as the entire tent collapsed.

Cora ducked behind the platform just as the heavy canvas slammed down overhead. The dust was so thick, she couldn’t see. Everywhere, bodies fought against the canvas, amid the smothered yells of those who couldn’t breathe. Cora gasped for air in the lee of the platform, spotting a small opening at the edge of the tarp. She crawled for it, but the canvas pressing down was too heavy. Her lungs were choked.

She kept crawling, barely aware of the other bodies also thrashing to get out from under the collapsed tent. She saw a glint of light ahead—daylight. She was so close to the edge of the tarp. She reached and reached but couldn’t make it. . . .

Suddenly the canvas lifted. A face looked in.

“Dane!” she cried, coughing.

He reached a hand in, grabbing hers, and dragged her out the rest of the way. She emerged, coughing, into fresh air. Took deep gulps, filling her lungs. She squinted into the sunlight. The collapsed tent looked like something from a nightmare; bodies pushed up from inside, trying to crawl out. She could make out the sound of cutting as the Kindred used knives to saw their way free.

“Come on,” Dane said. “That tent won’t slow them down for long.”

“You—you saved me.”

“And you’re going to save me.”

“Nok and Rolf . . .”

“They got out. I saw them. They ran to another tent with some of Ellis’s deputies. And Anya took off toward the ship. Bonebreak too. I saw them both heading across the desert separately.”

“He’ll take off without us if he gets there before Anya.”

“We can outrun him,” Dane assured her.

We? Cora thought warily. But he had just saved her life. And she knew if he stayed, he was a dead man. The deputies knew he’d been planning a mutiny.

She hesitated.

Dammit. She couldn’t leave him.

“Help me get Willa,” she said, “and you can come with us.”

Dane nodded. “I know where she is.”

They raced for the slave barracks. There were no deputies guarding the entrance—they’d all run to the command center tent once the fighting had commenced. Inside, the slaves were all wild-eyed and anxious, trying to figure out what was happening.

Cora grabbed at the bars just inside the tent flap, straining to look for Willa among the crowd. Anxious slaves called to her.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s the Kindred, isn’t it? They’re attacking!”

“Where’s Ellis?”

“Ellis is dead,” Cora said. She strained again to see Willa, but there were too many figures in the way. She fumbled with the latch until she figured out how to release it. “You’re no longer slaves.” She threw open the door. “Go!”

The slaves started pouring out of the tent into the fresh air and sunshine.

“Do you see Willa?” Cora called to Dane.

He motioned to the rafters in the rear of the tent. “Back there!”

As soon as they could squeeze between the escaping slaves, they ran inside the barracks.

A thump sounded behind her.

She whirled to find Willa in the center of the room. She’d dropped from the supports where she’d been hanging.

“Willa,” Cora breathed, “you have to come with us.”

Willa snorted and shook her head, making a writing motion as though she were referring to the last note she’d written Cora.

“I know I haven’t proven myself yet,” Cora said. “But we don’t exactly have a choice. Kindred have come, bad ones who are trying to stop me from running the Gauntlet. If they find out you’ve run it before and could help me, they’ll kill you.”

Willa huffed, but her eyes looked uncertain.

“It’s true,” Dane added.

Willa cocked her head as she listened to the commotion outside. She shuffled to the tent entrance, peering outside, and then jerked upright at the sight of the battle and the flashing lights of the Kindred cruisers. Not far away, figures were climbing out of the central command tent wreckage. They moved almost robotically—Kindred who had managed to cut their way free. They turned, sensing Cora’s presence.

One of them pointed.

Willa started running for the entrance.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Cora said. “Let’s go!”

The three of them raced out of the slave barracks. Willa tugged Cora’s sleeve. The chimp pointed a hairy finger toward the tent that served as the fleet garage.

“The trucks,” Dane said. “That’s brilliant. I know where Ellis kept the keys. Let’s go!”

They veered in the direction of the garage. The Kindred were running toward them, thirty yards away, then twenty, closing the gap fast. Dane reached the closest truck and Willa jumped in the back, pounding on the side in urgency. Cora climbed into the passenger’s side.

Dane fumbled with the keys, cheeks going red. “I can’t . . . never learned . . .”

“Seriously? Give the keys to me. Slide over.”

“I was fourteen when they took me from Earth,” he started as they switched places. “Only driven twice . . . my dad’s minivan . . .”

Cora slammed the keys into the ignition and cranked the truck to life. The complicated controls looked like those of an airliner jet, not a car. She glanced at the pedals—there were six.

“Cora,” Dane said warningly, looking behind them.

“I don’t know which pedals to push!”

“The Kindred—”

“I know!”

She picked a pedal at random and slammed a foot down.

The truck roared forward. She cried out, gripping the wheel hard. In the rearview mirror, she watched a surprised Willa holding on for dear life. The truck raced forward, kicking up dust. She blinked furiously and tried to control the wheel.

“The Kindred are still running,” Dane said. “Damn, they’re fast! They’re nearly gaining on us!”

Cora pushed the pedal harder. In the rearview mirror, she could see a half dozen Kindred tearing across th

e desert behind them.

“There’s the ship,” she said.

Ahead, the gleaming fleet of white ships and Mosca troops had vanished. The hologram must have shorted out, because now only Bonebreak’s dented old ship crouched on the horizon. Lights came on beneath it as it prepared to depart. The ground rumbled softly.

“Anya and Bonebreak must already be on board,” Cora said. “They’ll wait for us. They have to.”

Other lights suddenly shone overhead, moving back and forth like helicopter spotlights.

Dane leaned out the truck window. “Kindred cruisers are overhead. They must have had one on the shuttle. It’s like a motorcycle with a propeller—and it’s got guns!”

On cue, a volley of laser pulses shattered the ground in front of them. Cora screamed and jerked the wheel to avoid the deep ditch the lasers had created. The rearview mirror reflected the running Kindred easily leaping over the ditch.

“Pull up beneath the hatch,” Dane said, pointing beneath Bonebreak’s ship. “The truck will block us and give us a second to climb up.”

Cora pressed her foot harder against the pedal, but the truck wouldn’t go any faster. She muttered prayers under her breath, trying hard to remember driver’s ed back at Richmond High. Parallel parking . . . something about a three-point turn . . .

She slammed her foot against another pedal, then another, until she found the brakes, whipping the steering wheel around. The truck skidded and she cringed. For a second it felt as if the truck were lifting on two wheels. They spun, spun, and she caught glimpses of the Kindred soldiers, then glimpses of the cruiser lights overhead . . .

Then the truck stopped. She looked up through the windshield.

They were directly beneath the ship’s hatch. Anya looked down, round cheeks flushed. “Climb up!” Anya yelled above the roar. “Hurry!” She reached down with a small hand to help pull Cora up, but she wasn’t strong enough, and Willa made a stirrup with her hands to help boost her from below. Cora climbed in on her stomach. She spun around and reached down for Willa.