The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

Anya pointed to the fern. “Go ahead. Try it.”

Cora focused on the heavy fern. Before, she had used caution when reaching out toward objects with her mind. But she was out of time. Now she pushed aside that caution and projected her thoughts as hard as she could. Not reaching delicately for the plant, but snatching for it. Instant pain ricocheted through her head, and she hissed but ignored it and pushed harder. The potted fern trembled. It rose an inch.

Cora was so surprised that she dropped her focus, and the fern crashed to the floor, cracking the pot.

“See?” Anya grinned. “Don’t think like a Kindred. Feel like a human.”

Cora pulled off her goggles and shook out her hair, raking her fingers against her aching temples. Her head was throbbing. But still, she’d done it. Which meant maybe she could do it again in the Gauntlet. In the sudden darkness, she noticed that the dripping sound of storm water filtering through the mountain’s crust had lessened. She leaned over the railing, listening.

“The storm must have broken,” Anya observed.

Cora let out a long breath. “That means the delegates will start to land. I’ll have to go up to the surface.” She turned to Anya in the dark. “Cassian still isn’t here. I’m worried about him. And about you and Willa, too. Once I go into that Gauntlet, Bonebreak and Ironmage will have no need of you anymore. What’s to stop them from selling you while everyone is distracted? And . . .” She suppressed a shiver. “I can’t shake the feeling that Fian and Arrowal have something else planned. Something bad.”

Anya rested a hand reassuringly on Cora’s arm. “Your job is to worry about the puzzles,” she said. “Let us worry about what the other species might be planning. You’ll be in there, but we’ll be outside. Technically, I’m a ward of Bonebreak’s now”—she tapped her hard thumb badge against the railing—“which means I can join him and Ironmage as part of the Mosca delegation. We’ll observe your progress from the recess rooms. Assuming you make it to the break after each round, we’ll be able to talk, and let you know about anything we discover.”

Cora smiled. “Thanks. That makes me feel better.”

She slid the goggles back over her head as Ironmage and Bonebreak emerged from the house, dressed not in their rust-red jumpsuits, but in crimson-red ceremonial shielding.

She sniffed the air. They looked nice but still smelled rotten.

“It is time,” Bonebreak said. “We must go now, in the storm’s eye. The official Mosca delegation has already made its way to the surface. They are awaiting us.”

Ironmage held out a simple set of black clothes. “Put these on. They are embedded with nanocircuitry that the stock algorithm will use to track your progress.”

Cora hesitated before taking the clothes.

No more time to train. No more time for Cassian to land and reassure her that everything would be okay.

She was going to have to do this alone.

She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder and turned to find Willa behind her. The chimp gave her a long nod, her dark brown eyes wordlessly reassuring her. She handed Cora a scrap of paper.

I have not wanted to tell you about what happened to me in the Gauntlet because I feared the same might happen to you. The truth is, I lost the one thing that mattered most to me: my identity. The moral puzzle in module eight forced me to face the fact that I was no longer a chimpanzee, but neither was I a human. It shattered any hope I had of ever belonging. And I fear that you might lose what matters most to you too. But I do not fear that anymore. I believe you can do this.

Cora smiled.

No, she wasn’t completely alone.

She went inside to change behind the curtain that divided the bedroom area and cooking area. Ironmage’s children were on the other side, making strange beeping noises. She pulled back the curtain to watch them playing some kind of laser tag game. The youngest one tackled the others, and they all erupted in giggles.

She let the curtain fall.

If it hadn’t been for their curved backs and odd way of walking, she could almost have imagined they were human children. Memories of home flooded her mind. Once, she and Charlie had dressed up their dog, Sadie, in fairy wings. They’d played fetch all morning in the big yard beneath the oak trees, laughing, telling each other that every time Sadie brought back the ball it was a wish granted. What do you wish for? she’d asked Charlie. He’d smiled and thrown out his arms. To fly! And she had laughed too, picking up Sadie and giving her a kiss between her floppy ears. I wish to be famous. A famous singer with my songs on the radio!

Now, as she dressed, she shook her head at how carefree she’d been. In a way, she’d gotten her wish. She was important—an entire species’s survival depended on her. But famous? No one even knew she was alive. And, she realized, maybe it was better that way.

“Home means loved ones . . . ,” she sang quietly, “and good times and shelter from gloom.”

She pictured Fian as she’d seen him on Armstrong, so cold in his cloaked emotions, and yet she had been able to feel his simmering anger just beneath the surface. She represented a threat to Fian’s superior way of life. To the menageries, to the enclosures, to the system that kept Kindred like him powerful and dominant.

She pressed a hand to her throat, fighting against the phantom feeling of suffocation.

She had survived the bridge accident.

She had survived eighteen months in Bay Pines.

She had survived being imprisoned by an alien species.

And she would survive this.

She pushed back the curtain and met the others on the balcony. “I’m ready.”

20

Cora

FIERCE WIND HOWLED AS they neared the transit hub that led to Drogane’s surface. Cora shielded her face from the sleeting rain that blew in from the hub’s enormous gates. “I thought you said the storm had lessened!” she called to Bonebreak.

“This is lessened!” he answered.

The storm was a wall of angry gray rain that made Cora, Anya, and Willa shield their faces. Before, when Cora had gone to the surface to tour the Gauntlet’s module with Bonebreak, the planet had so reminded her of a summer day on Earth that it had made her heart ache. But now, the mountains weren’t visible. The whipping wind howled at an almost deafening level.

“Wait over there, away from the gates!” Bonebreak called, waving them away from the exposed entrance. “Your weak human bodies will be bruised!”

Ironmage strode into the exposed section, rain bouncing off his thick rubber shielding and mask. He flicked at a sharp shard of ice that struck a bare patch of skin like he was shooing away a mosquito. Cora watched him disappear into the storm. Every once in a while, she caught sight of a few flashing cerulean-blue lights in the distance.

&n

bsp; She drew in a sharp breath.

It had to be the Kindred delegates’ ship docking with the Gauntlet.

In another moment, a circular orb appeared out of the haze: one of the rover spheres. Ironmage steered the rolling vehicle to the sheltered side of the transit hub. A dozen of the complex Mosca gears unlocked themselves, and the rover sphere cracked open like an egg.

“Climb in,” he called.

They clambered into the orb, which had a circular bench around the perimeter. Anya sat by herself on one side, knees drawn in to her chest, her fingers once again still. Ironmage leaned forward to press some controls in the center of the orb, steering it so that they rolled smoothly out of the transit hub gates. They passed the other rover sphere stalls, but only one remained. The Mosca delegates must have taken the others.

Ironmage steered the rover sphere up a ramp that led to the planet’s surface. The wind tried to bat around the vehicle, but Ironmage steered it carefully down the valley track, its ridges locking with the gaps in the track for stability, until a tall structure loomed before them. Cora wiped away condensation from the rover’s windows and stared up at a wall of metal.

“That’s it,” Cora told Anya and Willa. “That’s the Gauntlet.”

They all peered through the windows. In the raging storm, the Gauntlet looked imposing and monolithic. There were no more shifting parts, no deconstructed cubes. It was whole.

Near the Gauntlet’s base, a port opened just wide enough for them to roll inside. Through the rover sphere’s window, Cora made out a small garage where the other rovers were parked, as well as vehicles that must belong to the other species. One was a small transport with glowing blue lights and sandstone-colored panels.

She pulled off her goggles. “The Kindred are here.”

“Yes,” Ironmage said. The heavy garage door closed, sealing out the storm. Ironmage hit the controls, and the egg-vehicle cracked open again. “All the delegates are here. We are last to arrive.”