The portal door kept rising. Fian pushed her toward it. Cold air was on her calves now.
And then the rover sphere door cracked open. She nearly cried out. She knew those faces!
Mali.
Leon.
Cassian!
He was at the rover sphere’s controls. Her heart started thundering violently. She blinked and blinked, unable to believe it, trying to get out of Fian’s grasp. Her friends spilled out of the rover sphere and she twisted toward them. Cassian was alive. He was here. Her eyes drank him in. One hand clutched at his ribs, as though they were bruised. And his skin—she winced. Pockmark scars dotted his arms and neck from the wire probes the Kindred doctors had tortured him with. A sickening feeling struck her as she realized they looked just like the bullet holes from her nightmare.
His eyes found hers in the crowd. She felt a ripple of the same electric spark as when they touched—bright and jarring, but now heavy with guilt. Cora stifled a sob. He was limping. She’d never seen him like this before—weak. The distance between them ate at her. If only she could feel his warmth, hold him close, tell him she was wrong to have doubted him, tell him that she loved him.
“Cassian!” She nearly dislocated her shoulder trying to tear herself from Fian’s grip.
Cassian took a step forward but hesitated, as though fearing to get too close. In the next instant, Kindred and Axion aides swarmed between them, stopping Mali and Leon before they could come any closer.
“Cora!” Cassian called. That moment of hesitation was gone. He shoved an Axion out of his way.
The portal door was nearly entirely open now. Cold air brushed the back of her neck. Serassi and Leon were arguing, looking like they were moments away from punching each other. Mali was glaring between the Axion and Kindred delegations as though she didn’t trust either one. Two Axion aides grabbed Cassian and held him back with a rifle pressed into his spine. In the commotion, their eyes met. Memories flooded Cora of the last time she’d seen him, tortured and screaming in agony.
“Let me go!” she cried, trying to pull free from Fian’s grasp.
Fian’s eyes went to the portal door. He smiled.
Cora hissed in a breath, realizing her mistake a second too late. Fian’s hands were already moving before she could react.
“My pleasure,” he said, and shoved her through the portal door into the first puzzle chamber.
23
Cora
CORA SLAMMED INTO A hard metal floor.
Bursts of pain radiated from her knees and palms. She took in the room in a daze: a ten-by-ten-by-ten cube, glowing panels on all sides, walls and floor and ceiling identical, so that she suddenly wasn’t certain which way was up. And the portal door . . .
The door was closing. She scrambled for the gap, trying to see through. Back in the central vestibule, two Axion guards were holding back Cassian. Mali and Leon were yelling something to Willa and Anya.
The door kept lowering. Five inches left. Four. Three.
“No!” she cried. “Wait!”
Fian’s boots suddenly loomed before the narrowing crack. He crouched to meet her gaze. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll handle your Warden.”
And the door sealed.
“No!” She clawed at the door, then pounded with her fists. Nothing. She shoved herself to her feet, breathing hard, pacing. Fian was planning something, she knew it. Something even worse than what he’d already done to Cassian.
She kicked the door one more time. Useless. It wouldn’t open again until the first round was complete. She spun back toward the chamber. She had to get through these puzzles—they were the only way back to Cassian.
She took a step forward, and the chamber went black.
She stopped. Blinked in the darkness. Cold air from unseen vents snaked up her ankles. She held out her hands and shuffled forward until she touched the place where she guessed the door had been. She felt for the seams, but they were gone. It was just a wall now, identical to every other side.
She raked her nails across her scalp. She closed her eyes, trying to send Cassian a psychic message. Cassian . . . answer me, please . . . But there was no response. The walls were thick, designed specifically to prevent telepathic communication.
She cursed.
Without warning, a rumble spread through the darkness, and she took a quick step away from the wall.
The lights flickered back on, blindingly bright.
She shaded her face with her hands, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Her heartbeat pounded in her chest. The stock algorithm was capable of engineering any possible habitat or scenario; she could find herself on the edge of a cliff or charged by a lion—and there were no safeguards.
Die here, die for real.
The bright light faded and she was able to warily open her eyes, surprised to find herself still in the ten-by-ten-by-ten cube. No illusions or habitats. The only difference was that a small table had materialized in the center of the chamber: a wooden desk filled with blocks that looked like toys.
She eyed the table cautiously. She knew better than to trust anything that appeared so innocent. She turned back to the wall, resting her fingertips on the smooth surface.
I’m coming, Cassian, she thought. Hang on.
She drew in a steadying breath and approached the desk. There were nine blocks, each with a number printed on the top: 8, 105, 2, 34, 300, 1, 15, 90, 4. There had to be some pattern. She reached for the first block, but it was fastened to the table. It could slide left or right or up or down, but it could not come loose. She tried another, then another. All the blocks could slide, but only in certain directions. She slid the 34 between 15 and 90 but wasn’t able to move the 4 anywhere except up.
“Rolf,” she muttered, “I could really use your brain right now.”
The first puzzle they’d found in the cage had been a number puzzle, like this. Rolf had figured it out almost instantly, spinning its numerical gears until the lock opened and candy poured out onto the floor, filling the toy store with a sickeningly sweet aroma. The memory started to make Cora’s stomach turn.
“Think,” she told herself. Cassian is waiting. He’s in trouble. All she could picture was those scars on his arms and neck. She couldn’t change the fact that he’d been tortured—but she’d be damned if she’d let it happen again.
She gripped the edge of the desk.
There had to be some relationship among the numbers. What was it Willa had said in their training? Sort out the numbers and you will end up with one word. The word will be your key to solving the puzzle.
By that logic, if the 2 was a B and the 4 was a D, then they shouldn’t be next to each other sequentially. But she still couldn’t move the 4 at all, and what number would 300 represent, anyway?
She tossed a glance over her shoulder, worried about what might be happening outside—only to realize she wasn’t sure anymore which wall had held the portal door. They all looked identical now. And knowing how the Kindred could manipulate gravity and forced perspectives, for all she knew she’d come in through the ceiling and was now standing on one of the walls.
“Come on. Concentrate.”
She started to hum aloud, forced at first, but after the first f
ew notes, the tension eased from her shoulders. The sound of a soft melody always settled her mind.
She touched the 300 block. If this puzzle was anything like the one Willa told her about, then 300 had to represent a letter. If she added the digits, 3 plus 0 plus 0, she got 3, which would be a C. And there was a 1 block, which could be A . . .
It was starting to make sense. Four of the blocks could stand for A, B, C, and D. Cassian had told her that the puzzles got harder as she progressed, which meant this first one might really be this simple. She slid the 1 in front of the 2, and the 300 next, but the 4 still wouldn’t move. She tried to pry it up, but it wouldn’t budge.
She hummed harder. Her pitch rose with her frustration, turning into a growl, and she tore herself away from the desk. “I don’t have time for this!”
Her eyes caught on the edge of the 4 block, and she stopped. The corner of the number 4 was loose—a label glued to the top of the block. She stepped closer. When she’d pulled so hard, the edge of the label had started to peel free. Hesitantly, she picked at it with her fingernail. The corner came up cleanly. She tried the same with the 105 cube.
It came up cleanly, too.
She swallowed. I could peel up the labels and rearrange them without moving the blocks at all.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Charlie had once done the same thing with their old Rubik’s Cube toy. On a long car ride, their father had told them the first one to solve the Rubik’s Cube would get to choose where they stopped for lunch, thinking it would distract them during the long car ride between campaign stops. She’d driven herself crazy trying to twist the cube to form six sides of the same color, but Charlie had just taken out his penknife, secretly peeled off each of the colored stickers, and moved them around. Their dad had thought Charlie was a genius.
Slowly, Cora started humming again.
She peeled the label a little bit farther. It was cheating, yes, but her friends were in danger—and what did it matter as long as she got it right in the end? She and Mali had made the same argument when they’d devised the idea to cheat the Gauntlet. That plan had failed when Fian had closed all the loopholes, but the same strategy could help her now.