The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

“You mean that without the enhanced strength of the paragon burst, I don’t stand a chance.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Memories of the first four puzzles washed through Cora’s head, along with a wave of pain. She hissed in a sharp breath and closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. Cassian’s hand on her shoulder tightened to steady her. When she opened them again, everyone in the room was staring at her.

Cora glanced at the clock on the wall: only a sliver remained green. “Why do the Axion even care if I win or not? I’m a human—I’m no threat to them.”

“They care because once a species wins the Gauntlet,” Serassi explained, “it triggers a change in the entire species. We call it an ‘evolutionary jump.’ Evolution is more complicated than you have learned on Earth. It is not only a biological change that occurs over millennia, but also a spiritual one. Once one member of a species attains intelligent status, it opens the door for the others. For some who are already highly gifted, like Anya, they will see an immediate change. Others will take more time, but the result will be the same. If you win the Gauntlet, your entire species will become more powerful.”

Cora blinked through the incredible things Serassi had just said. “Even so, humanity would still be in its infancy. We’d still be no threat.”

“That is correct,” Serassi said evenly. “You would not be a threat. But the Kindred are not in our infancy. We are the peacekeepers, the police, the army of the universe. We have the best chance of defeating the Axion.”

“But how would elevating humans elevate the Kindred, too?” Cora asked.

Serassi cocked her head. Her eyes slowly went to Cassian, and Cora got a creeping feeling that she was missing something very important.

“You never told her?” Serassi asked.

Cora whipped her head around to Cassian. “Didn’t tell me what?”

He swallowed.

A crazy premonition entered her mind. Her eyes traced over the curve of his throat, his lips, his jaw. She’d noticed from the first day the startling similarities between their species, but the differences—their black eyes, their large size—had been impossible to ignore. Surely, Serassi couldn’t be suggesting what Cora imagined. . . .

“Humans and Kindred,” Cassian said slowly, “are the same species.”

30

Cora

CASSIAN’S WORDS HIT CORA like a slap in the face. She sat heavily on the bench. The others seemed equally stunned. Leon flexed his hands, seeming to compare them with Serassi’s larger ones. Bonebreak and the other Mosca whispered to one another in words Cora couldn’t understand.

“Same species?” Cora repeated.

“Not exactly identical, of course,” Cassian clarified, keeping his gaze just slightly away from hers. “We derive from the same ancestral species: Homo erectus. Our DNA is similar enough that if a human wins the Gauntlet, both our species will experience the evolutionary jump.”

“That can’t be.” Cora shook her head. “You told me that you were an astral species, not a terrestrial one.”

He glanced at Serassi. “That has been true of us for the last twenty thousand years, but we originated on Earth. I told you that we owe our intelligence to the Gatherers, who long ago elevated us to live among the stars. It was Earth where they found us. Our two species had already branched apart. You Homo sapiens were smaller and faster—you spread more quickly across the continents. Our ancestors were Neanderthals, larger and smarter, but in danger of annihilation. That was when the Gatherers took us. That is why we among the Fifth of Five care so strongly about your species. Because Earth is our planet, too, or at least it was once. You are kin to us.”

She stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language.

“Only a few know,” Cassian added, still not meeting her gaze. “I learned myself when I became the leader of the Fifth of Five—it is a closely guarded secret. The Intelligence Council does not wish to reveal that Kindred are related to a lesser species. I intended to tell you, but you hated me so viciously after you thought I betrayed you that you wouldn’t have believed me.” He paused and then spoke more softly. “I always knew that your plan to cheat the Gauntlet wouldn’t work—cheating wouldn’t have triggered the evolutionary jump. But you didn’t want to hear it. If the Council hadn’t stopped your plan, I would have had to find a way to do so myself.”

“What about the paragon burst? Isn’t that cheating?”

“Not as long as it is composed only of human DNA,” Serassi said.

Cora spun to face her. “You aren’t part of the Fifth of Five. Why do you care about helping humans?”

“I do not,” she answered flatly. And then she cocked her head. “Let me rephrase that: I have been a friend to Anya and Mali, in my own way. I have always been fair in my dealings with humans, I have served diligently as Chief Genetics Officer overseeing human health, I have even tended to your own wounds on multiple occasions. It is my duty as a Kindred to protect lesser species, and I take that responsibility seriously. But care? No, I do not personally care about helping humans evolve. You are merely a necessary piece of the puzzle. This is the only way to make us evolve, too.”

Cora narrowed her eyes. Technically the Kindred didn’t lie, but she could still selectively twist the facts. Something still sat uneasy with Cora. She paced back and forth.

“So if your plan works, and the Kindred become powerful enough to stop the Axion, what’s to stop the Kindred from attempting to become the most powerful race yourselves?” Her question was directed toward Serassi, but her gaze went to Cassian.

A quiet spread through the room.

“We have no interest in domination,” Cassian stated.

“That isn’t what Fian and Arrowal seem to think,” Cora countered.

“Fian and Arrowal are Axion in disguise,” Cassian said. “The real Fian is, at this very moment, risking his life in battle on the aggregate station.”

“It’s true,” Leon added. “We saw it ourselves.”

Cora made the mistake of meeting Cassian’s eyes—so clear, so blue, so obvious in that moment that he wasn’t entirely alien. “You have to trust me, Cora,” he said. “I am not lying about this. My cards are all on the table. The Kindred do not wish for domination. Not I, not Serassi, not any of us.”

He held out his hands palms up. She thought about their training sessions in the Hunt, when she had taught him how to lie. Right now, he wasn’t bluffing.

Above the doorway, the timekeeper clock gave an audible click. Time was almost out. Any moment, the impostor Fian would come to collect Cora.

Serassi uncapped the syringe, eyes on the clock. “We can wait no longer. The effects of this paragon burst will not be immediate; it might take one or two puzzles before the effects settle. Until then, you may feel disoriented.”

Cora glanced at the needle, then at the clock. Did she trust what Serassi and Cassian were saying? Did she have a choice?

“Wait.” All eyes turned to Mali, who had been silent but now stepped forward. “I assume you have Nok and Rolf’s DNA samples in that vial.”

Serassi nodded.

Mali glanced over her shoulder at Leon. “But you do not have mine or Leon’s.” She began to roll up her sleeve. “The stock algorithm chose us because of our unique traits. Leon’s strength and his artistic aptitude. My adaptability and keen senses.” She held her bare arm out. “I want to contribute.”

“Mali,” Cora said, “we don’t even know if this will work.”

Mali shot her a stiff look. “I do not mean to offend you, but”—her eyes traveled from the bloodstains around Cora’s nose to the bruises covering her body—“you need all the help you can get.”

Leon snorted. He came over and shoved back his sleeve too. “Mali has a good point. That vial can’t hold all of humanity’s strengths if it doesn’t have any of my DNA.”

Cora rolled her eyes.

“Hang on,” Bonebreak said. He rooted around in his pocket

, then produced a tangled lock of dark hair. “Here’s more. From, you know, the other one.”

Cora stared at him. “From Lucky? You stole hair off his dead body?”

Bonebreak looked toward the ground sheepishly. “In case we needed money in a pinch. What do you call it? For a rainy day.”

Cora made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, but then she threw her hands up. “Fine.” From beyond the door, she could hear footsteps approaching. She nodded to Serassi.

Serassi replaced the syringe tips with different, larger ones from the tool belt at her uniform’s waist. Moving quickly, she sterilized Mali’s and Leon’s arms, then drew their blood and took a sample from Lucky’s hair.

The footsteps outside the door stopped.

“Lift up your hair and turn around,” Serassi told Cora. “Quickly.”