The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

The third puzzle chamber was blessedly dark, giving her a moment to breathe. Two more puzzles to go, she urged herself. But the premonition didn’t go away.

She waited anxiously for the lights to come on, and when they didn’t, she pushed to her feet and felt against the wall. Nothing . . . Empty . . . But then her foot collided with a hard object. She crouched down to pick it up.

A gun.

She jerked her hand back as though it had singed her.

A gun meant shooting, but shooting what?

The room remained black, and the darkness began to seep into her mind. She imagined she heard breathing. She spun around. Was it her own breath, or was there someone else in the room? Willa had warned her of deadly moral paradoxes like the one that pitted a Gauntleteer against a starving lion.

She grabbed the gun, aiming it into the darkness.

“Hello?” she called.

No answer.

Maybe she was alone after all. But then, what was she supposed to shoot? The image of her own name on the anagram puzzle flashed in her mind, and a bitter metallic taste filled her mouth. Surely she wasn’t supposed to shoot herself. Right?

Her pulse raced as she paced the length of the pitch-black room. It felt too tight, like the walls were moving closer together. There was that sound again, like someone breathing. She spun around sharply, aiming the gun.

“Hello?”

The darkness was complete, oppressive, making her lungs feel constricted. But there—a huff. There was someone else here. Or something. The gun started shaking in her hand. When she’d been a little girl and had nightmares in the dark, crying out in her sleep, Charlie had rushed in and turned on the lamp on her bedside table. The monsters in her imagination had vanished. All you need to chase off the darkness, he had said, is light.

She took a few deep breaths, holding the gun steady. There weren’t any lights here. It was only her, the gun, and whatever was breathing: no lamps, no switches, at least not any that she had felt in the darkened chamber. And yet, slowly, an idea occurred to her.

By process of elimination, this puzzle had to be either physical or perceptive. And a plain cube with no stairs, no balance beams, and no maze didn’t seem physical.

This was a perceptive puzzle.

Which meant the trick had to be using her abilities to see what else was in the room—to see in the dark.

She looked around the blackness. She’d never practiced anything like this with Cassian or Anya. They had focused only on levitation and mind reading, and the uncertainty made her queasy feeling return. Right now Cassian was out there, with Fian, and she had no idea if he was okay.

The gun started shaking in her hand.

But she pushed through her fears to try to see—or rather sense—into the darkness.

Concentrate. What’s there?

Anya had told her that humans had to exert extra mental effort to match the perceptive abilities of the other species. She closed her eyes, drew in a full breath, and threw her thoughts out as violently as she could. It made her head spark with pain, but she kept pushing. What was she supposed to shoot? What creature was here with her?

Focus! See in the dark!

There. To her left. A flash of movement. She gasped, spinning toward it, aiming the gun. The room was still pitch-black, but she was able to use her psychic abilities to sense what was there: four legs. A swishing tail. Black and white stripes.

A zebra.

She sighed with relief—just a zebra. Harmless. And not a real one, either—she sensed it flickering in and out like a hologram. On its side was a bright red bull’s-eye target.

She took a deep breath and raised the gun at the holographic zebra.

She concentrated.

Sensed where it was.

Squeezed the trigger.

Suddenly something barked behind her, lunging out of the darkness. She gasped and spun. What is it? She sensed another animal, four legs, long silky fur. A dog.

Sadie! Sadie was here!

It happened so fast. She didn’t even realize her finger was still on the trigger until the bullet shot out. Too fast. Distracted. Her hand jerked. Shit! She tried to slow the bullet with her mind, move it to the left a little, and yes: the bullet stopped in midair. Sadie barked again, but Cora ignored the holographic dog and focused only on the bullet. She wasn’t going to let the Gauntlet distract her.

She was able to reangle the bullet, pause, and release it. At the same time, a burst of pain exploded in the back of her skull.

She cried out. The gun fell. The bullet slammed into the zebra on target, but she doubled over in pain, clutching at her skull. The barking stopped. Both holographic animals vanished, leaving her alone.

Her head felt splintered in two.

She winced. This couldn’t be right. Anya had said to push her mind to the limit, but this felt all wrong. Something was dripping on the ground—her own blood.

Ahead, the next door slid open.

Puzzle four.

She’d won. But she could barely move. Her head was throbbing, tender and raw. What had she done to herself? Had she broken her brain, just as Willa had warned her? She tried to use telepathy to see what was in the next puzzle chamber, but her head pulsed with such a sharp burst of pain that she nearly blacked out. She sank against the wall.

Took a deep breath.

When she tried to use her psychic abilities again, she got a slight, barely there glimmer of something and was flooded with relief. She hadn’t broken her mind completely—just torn it.

Still, this was bad. She had two perceptive puzzles left to solve. She needed her brain intact.

She wiggled her fingers, checking to make sure they weren’t shaking like Anya’s. She blinked, testing out her vision, mentally checking herself over for any damage, just as her brother used to do after wrestling matches, making sure he hadn’t pulled any muscles. God, she missed him. He . . . He . . .

She froze.

Her brother.

She couldn’t remember his name.

Her lips parted in shock. She racked her brain, pushing through the pain. She remembered her mother, Linda. Her father, John. She could picture her brother’s face, but there was simply no name there, only a gaping blank. And her dog . . . her dog who had just been here . . . she couldn’t remember what her dog looked like, or the dog’s name, or even what breed it was.

She swallowed back a lump of fear.

This must be what would happen if she pushed her mind too far. She’d torn her mind partway and she’d now forgotten little details like names and appearances. What if she broke her mind completely? Would she forget everything? Her family, her friends, even her own identity?

She pressed a hand to her nose as she stumbled toward the door. She didn’t dare push her mind further. But then how could she complete the remaining perceptive puzzles?

The sound of wind and a crack of thunder tore her from her thoughts. She took one look through the doorway at the fourth puzzle—the last for this round—and sank to her knees.

As if it could possibly get worse.

“Oh, no,” she said aloud.

27

Cora

CORA STOOD ON A platform a dizzying hundred feet off the ground. Tall pines rose on all sides. Wind howled, whipping her hair, pushing her forward. She crouched down, gripping the edge of the platform to keep from getting blown off. Icy sleet stung her arms and face. She squinted into the storm, but the door behind her, back to puzzle three, had shut and vanished.

She was in a forest, alone.

From what she could tell, it was the same high-ropes course Lucky had completed in the cage. The platform circled a giant pine tree, connected by ladders and rope swings and bridges to other platforms. Only now, wind pushed violently at the bridges, making them creak and groan in a way that shot fear to her heart. The rope swings thrashed around, whipping at the air. Sleet bit into her eyes. She lifted her hand to anxiously wipe at her face, but a gust of wind shoved her

backward. She cried out, fingers scrambling for hold, but ice coated the platform, and her fingernails slipped off it uselessly. The wind blew her toward the edge faster. A rope danced in the air, snapping like a whip. She grabbed it a second before she would have fallen. It jerked and twisted in the storm, but she held on tight, knuckles white, pulling herself back onto the platform until she could wrap her arms around the tree trunk, pressing her chest to the bark.

The storm raged harder, rain drenching her.

She let out a shaky breath.

This was nothing like the course in the cage. This was practically a hurricane, and Lucky wasn’t here to coach her how to climb from tree to tree. That day, she’d realized how special Lucky was: how even in the middle of a nightmare, he could find moments of joy. But Lucky hadn’t plunged over a bridge, as she had. Her throat clenched at the memory. Sitting in the passenger side while her dad drove drunk across a bridge late at night in the rain, swerving at the last minute to avoid an oncoming car.

Breaking through the bridge’s guardrail.