The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

15

Mali

BY THE TIME THE Kindred supply shuttle docked on the aggregate station, every muscle in Mali’s body was strained. For the last eight days, she’d been pressed awkwardly against Leon in the ship’s insulated lining. His elbow shoved in her back. Her nose crammed near his armpit. Only puddles of condensation to drink and pilfered cargo stores to eat from. She figured she’d like him a lot better again when they had a few feet between them.

They listened in hushed silence as the Kindred officials unloaded the shuttle cargo hold, turned off the lights, and sealed the doors. Once she was certain it was clear, Mali pushed her way out of the ship’s lining, gasping for air.

“Couldn’t . . . breathe . . . ,” she said. “You’re too . . . fat.”

Leon stumbled out behind her, stretching his neck, sucking in deep gulps of air. “It’s muscle! Besides, it wasn’t a picnic having my face smooshed up against your hair, either. It kept getting in my nose.”

They went to opposite sides of the shuttle’s cargo hold, eager for some distance. Mali closed her eyes. She wiggled her toes and fingers, pumping some blood back into them. She opened one eye, glancing at him sidelong. Okay, it hadn’t all been terrible. One thought of that kiss and she felt herself going warm. Again.

Leon sniffed the air filtering through the shuttle’s vents. “Old air and rusted metal.” He made a face. “I didn’t miss that smell.”

The station’s smell, faint though it was, stirred unpleasant memories for Mali too: Being imprisoned in the enclosure. Learning Anya had been drugged. Fian’s betrayal.

“With luck,” she said, “we will not be here long. Cora saw Cassian in one of the interrogation rooms on the fourth level. We traveled there through the shipping tunnels before; we only need to follow our previous footsteps, locate the kill-dart weapons cache Cora told you about, and use them to free Cassian. Then we come back here, steal a shuttle that Cassian knows how to fly, and go to Drogane.”

“You say it like that’s easy,” Leon said flatly.

“You doubt my abilities?”

“No way. I’m not stupid.” He held up his hand in mock surrender as she went to the cargo door, pressed her ear against it, and then slowly eased it open. Beyond was the same flight room they’d departed from weeks ago, though spotless now. Someone had cleaned all signs of the battle that had raged here when they’d escaped.

She signaled to Leon that it was safe to exit, and they silently slipped out of the shuttle and made their way to the edge of the flight room. Mali knew the official modules and corridors of the station well, but those would be swarming with Kindred. It was Leon who knew the hidden interior tunnel system.

“I don’t see any entrances to the tunnels,” Leon said, jerking his chin toward the edge of the flight room. “We’ll have to go into the hallways and look for one there.”

Mali didn’t like the risk, but she nodded. She took a step toward the door, glancing at the sensor directly above it. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Telekinesis had never been her strongest talent, but the amplifiers built into the sensors would make it easier. She concentrated. The door slid open an inch. She redoubled her concentration. Two inches. Then . . .

“Shit!” Leon hissed.

Mali’s eyes flew open. The hallway beyond the cracked doorway was decimated. A crater three feet across scarred the metal floor. Damaged lights flickered on and off eerily. Smoke still rose from the wreckage.

She blinked in incomprehension. “An explosion. It happened recently.” She twisted around to Leon. “What caused this?”

He shrugged one shoulder.

They both listened keenly, but except for the flickering lights, there was no other sound. No footsteps. No battle calls. No blaring alarms. They eased open the doors and tiptoed into the silent hallway. Mali went to the edge of the crater and peered down. It cut straight through to the level below, and even the level below that. Stains of dark blood were smeared on the edges. Kindred blood.

“A gas main blow?” Leon offered.

“There are no gas mains,” Mali answered. She crouched to inspect the burn marks. “This had to have been intentional. Biosynthetic chemicals would be the only ones strong enough to do this. They are kept in the science chambers, which are only accessible to Kindred officials. The Kindred must have set off this explosion themselves.”

“Why would they blow up part of their own station?” Leon asked.

Mali touched the edge of the crater. A familiar smell hung in the air. She leaned closer to a puddle of mystery liquid and sniffed. She drew back sharply. “One of the incendiaries was peach liqueur.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “They only keep that in the Hunt menagerie. Trust me, I know every bar on this station.”

Shots rang out down the hall, and he spun around. Mali went rigid. She knew that sound: laser pulses. Pulses could be strong enough to either kill or stun, depending on the setting, and these sounded especially deadly.

“Quick.” She pointed to where the explosion had shattered through the wall to reveal one of the tunnels. They crawled into the tunnel as the laser pulses fired closer.

“We need to get to the Hunt,” Leon whispered. “And get Dane’s kill-dart guns. Whatever’s going on here, we need weapons of our own.”

Footsteps approached, followed by the shouts of Kindred and then more shots. Mali pressed a finger to her lips. The tunnel was shallow, and Leon reached out to pull her closer.

“Careful.”

He hugged her tightly so that she wouldn’t be visible from the hallway. His chest against her back. His breath on her neck. She felt her heart starting to beat faster. For all she’d acted like she’d been annoyed by the days pressed uncomfortably close together in the supply ship, she had to admit, she did like the feeling of his arms around her.

Trusting someone this much, she thought, is dangerous. And yet, perhaps, a danger she was willing to face.

More footsteps approached, stiff and regimented. Cloaked Kindred. But the other sets of footsteps were looser and quick, more like how uncloaked Kindred would fight.

“The Kindred are fighting one another,” Mali whispered. “Cloaked against uncloaked.”

“Why?”

Mali’s lips parted to answer, but she wasn’t certain. Her mind turned to what Cora had told her about Cassian’s secret organization, the Fifth of Five. If anything went wrong with the Gauntlet, the Fifth of Five planned to rise up and forcibly take control of the station.

“The Fifth of Five must believe that the Gauntlet plan has failed,” she whispered. “They do not know that Cora is preparing to run a different Gauntlet. That there is still hope. This complicates things significantly. We must find Cassian, quickly.”

Another explosion went off on a nearby level, shaking the whole station.

“We gotta get out of here first,” Leon said, eyeing the creaking beams overhead, “before this whole level collapses. Come on. I know where we can go.”

They crawled deeper into the tunnel, away from the sounds of laser pulses. The chalked navigation marks Leon had made weeks ago were dusty but still there. At every turn, he consulted his old marks until he found the symbol for Bonebreak’s lair—a masked face—and led Mali down two more levels and through winding passages, pointing out the cleaner traps along the way and showing her how to avoid them. At last, they reached a grate at the end of the tunnel.

“This level’s practically forgotten,” he said. “It’s where Bonebreak used to house his smuggling operation. We’ll be safe here.” He elbowed open the grate, and they climbed out into a dimly lit room. Mali drew in a lungful of fresh air, studying the room. A warehouse. Lit only by a pair of flickering wall lights, the rest long broken.

A huge figure suddenly lurched from the shadows.

Mali tensed, ready to fight.

“Wait!” Leon said. “Look.”

And then she recognized, as the creature emerged into the lights, four legs like a horse, a ridiculously l

ong neck, and brown and yellow spots. A . . . giraffe? Here? Behind it were two zebras and a lioness, tethered to the wall.

“Bonebreak traded in animals?” she said.

Leon shook his head. “Uh, I think I’d remember if those had been here before.”

Mali took a hesitant step forward. The lioness turned to her with lazy eyes, flicking her tail. Recognition flared in Mali. “They’re the animals from the Hunt. Someone must have brought them here.”

“Mali?”

Both of them spun at the sound of Mali’s name. A girl stood in the doorway, too far from the nearest light to be seen clearly. But Mali recognized her outline. The strong, lithe dancer’s body. The way she favored one knee. The hair twisted into balls.

“Makayla?”

Makayla ran up and, before Mali could react, threw her arms around her. “I can’t believe you’re here! I thought you left the station!” They had never been the best of friends—Mali had kept her distance in the Hunt—but she’d observed Makayla long enough to know she was trustworthy.

“I did leave. We came back.” Mali introduced Leon and explained why they had returned. Makayla nodded along, a serious expression on her face.