The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

Cora’s breath hitched in her throat.

He’s okay.

He was standing upright, one hand knitting against his forehead as though his head pained him. When their eyes met, his hand fell. All she could think about was how she’d left him behind on the aggregate station. How she’d heard his screams as he was tortured, how all that pain had been to cover up her crimes.

Leon set her down, and then Cassian took a step forward. Hesitantly. Did he hate her? Blame her? But then he took another, and then he was across the room, and she was in his arms, and she never wanted to let him go. She held him as tightly as she dared, afraid of the scars, afraid of hurting him more.

“You’re okay,” Cora whispered.

He had changed out of the bloodstained Warden’s uniform she’d last seen him in. The soft black clothes he wore now smelled of smoke and the ozone scent of the aggregate station, but beneath it was the tang of metal that made her think of the interrogation table.

“Yes,” he said haltingly. “Thanks . . . thanks to Leon and Mali.”

Cora knit her fingers in the folds of his clothes. Her finger grazed a cut on the side of his neck. “I watched the Kindred torturing you. They were going to kill you. God, Cassian, I’m so sorry. I blame myself for leaving you there.” She swallowed, pulling back slightly. “What did they do to you?”

That pain flashed in his eyes again. He looked away, almost like closing a door between them. “Standard interrogation.” His voice was suddenly formal, a little forced. From the way his jaw flexed, she knew it must have been anything but standard. “I wasn’t strong enough to resist the mind probes. The Council learned about the Fifth of Five. Now it’s war on the station.”

Her eyes searched his. What wasn’t he saying?

“War?” Her lips parted. “The Fifth of Five must be hugely outnumbered.”

“Tessela is using the kill-dart guns. They have a chance.” He gently tugged a pine needle from her tangled hair.

She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes.

“Um, before the make-out session starts,” Leon said, and Cora jolted alert, “maybe we should talk about this whole Axion-taking-over-the-world thing.” He pointed to a clock above the recess room door. A sliver of the round face was green, the hand ticking down. “This break only lasts ten minutes.”

Cora took a step back from Cassian, suddenly aware of a dozen sets of eyes watching her. She cleared her throat, combing her fingers through her hair. She glanced at the clock.

Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time.

“The Axion?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

Cassian explained the Axion’s ability to disguise themselves, how they had been impersonating Arrowal and Fian and others, and how the battle on the station was actually an Axion attack, part of a wider war in which Axion were assaulting other planets simultaneously. Suddenly her mind ached, and she sank onto a bench, clutching the sides of her skull.

“Are you okay?” Cassian asked, touching her shoulder.

“It’s just all so much to take in at once. And . . . I think I strained my mind too hard,” Cora said. “In the perceptive puzzle. Tore something . . . I can’t remember certain things.” Wincing, she looked around the room until she met Anya’s eyes. The small girl was standing alone by the recess room door, fingers now calm at her sides.

“I did what you told me to, Anya,” Cora said. “Something went wrong.”

“But did it work?” Anya asked quickly.

“What?” Cora rubbed the sides of her head. “Well, yeah. I was able to stop a bullet in midair and redirect it. I’ve never done anything like that before. But the pain, and my memories—”

“That will pass,” Anya answered. “I bet your arms and legs are sore too, right? They’ll recover, and so will your mind.”

Cassian was watching Anya with an unreadable expression. “You told her to strain her mind? That is dangerous—”

A knock came at the door, interrupting him.

Everyone went quiet.

“Open it,” Cora said, and Leon, standing closest to the door, did.

Serassi stood on the other side.

Cora instantly dropped her arms to her sides. “What do you want?”

The Kindred Chief Genetics Officer’s black gaze went to each of them in turn, taking in the crowded room full of Mosca and humans and a chimpanzee. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “I am not an Axion, if that is what you are wondering.”

Cora shot up from the bench, alarm blazing. “How do you know about the impostors, unless you are one?”

Serassi blinked calmly with her black eyes like oily puddles. There was no kindness in her gaze. No glimmer of friendship.

But then again, there never had been.

“Am one? No, not at all.” Serassi lowered her head slowly, closing her eyes. Her whole body hardened in concentration, a look Cora recognized as a Kindred going through the uncloaking process. After a few seconds, Serassi looked up with uncloaked eyes. Her irises were visible: brown with faint flecks of blue.

Cora regarded her warily.

“The Axion have learned how to turn off the frequency that gives away their disguises,” Serassi said. “They intend to reinstate their status as the original intelligent species, not by breaking from the others, but by dominating them. Beginning with the Kindred.”

Cora glanced at Cassian. “We already know that.”

Serassi did not blink. She merely fixed her steady gaze on Cora. “But do you know how to stop them?”

Cora’s heart thundered in her chest. “Do you?”

Serassi nodded.

“We cannot trust this woman!” Bonebreak cried. “The uncloaking proves nothing. How do we know she is not a decoy they’ve sent?” He sniffed the air as though he could tell her true nature through scent alone.

Cora turned to Serassi. “Bonebreak’s right. Rolf and Nok told me about what you did to them. Locked them up in that dollhouse experiment. Forced them to act out human life. Threatened to take their baby. We’d be crazy to trust you.”

“The dollhouse experiment, as you call it,” Serassi said flatly, “was crucial for me to collect necessary DNA samples. I needed a full range of human emotions and strengths, including those of child rearing, for my plan to be successful.”

Cora paced, hoping the movement would distract her from the ache in her h

ead. “How could the dollhouse have anything to do with defeating the Axion?”

“Quite a bit, in fact. Their ability to disguise themselves is why I was forced to be so secretive in my efforts. As Chief Genetics Officer, I had the full genetics laboratory equipment at my disposal, but I had to devise an explanation for why I was using such sensitive equipment: that was when I invented the idea of the dollhouse experiment. I convinced the other Kindred scientists that I was obsessed with child raising. Such a ridiculous interest made them think less of me, so no one looked too carefully into my work as I gathered DNA samples from a wide range of humans—thousands in all, from the enclosure wards, the menageries, the humans in processing on their way to Armstrong—in an effort to create the one thing that can stop the Axion.” She held up a small syringe. “This.”

Almost in unison, everyone in the room took a step backward.

“What is that?” Cora asked hesitantly.

“For generations, Kindred medical officers have collected DNA samples as part of routine processing before sending humans to Armstrong. When I realized what the Axion were planning, I suspected that it was possible to bind that DNA to other humans using a procedure normally used for healing extreme injuries. I began covertly collecting more DNA from select humans with a wide range of abilities. The serum in this syringe holds the best of humanity’s intelligence, strength, and moral fiber. It contains a protein that can bond this human DNA to another human’s DNA chain.”

Cora’s eyes widened. She didn’t know much about biology and genetics, but from what Serassi was saying, it seemed she’d done the impossible. “You mean that all of humanity’s strengths are in that one vial? An entire race’s knowledge and abilities?”

Serassi held it up. “I call it a ‘paragon burst.’”

Cora eyed the syringe cautiously.

“I’ll need to inject it directly into your bloodstream,” Serassi continued.

Cora turned away, pacing. “What do you think?” she asked Cassian quietly.

He rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder, easing the tension there. “You have passed the easiest of the puzzles, but not without cost. They have ruptured your mind and exhausted your body. The probability that you can pass even the next round, let alone the final one, is dangerously low.”