The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

“It won’t do any good,” a voice said from behind her. “That door opens for no one but me.”

She shoved up from the floor and spun toward the voice. It had had an odd quality to it, almost an echo. She found herself staring at an empty, plain chamber. The lights were faint, but it was clear that she was alone.

“Where are you?” she asked cautiously.

The room grew a few degrees colder. Air blew from unseen vents. Dust drew together, forming a sort of column in the center of the chamber. She stepped away from the phenomenon tensely, prepared to fight or flee to a corner. The column of air solidified into a hologram, made of the same glowing lines as the ones that had formed the Gauntlet model from puzzle nine. Slowly the lines rearranged themselves until she was looking at a person.

Well . . . not a person. The outline of a person. It was about her height, androgynous, with no hair or clothes or anything but the glowing hint of a face and body.

“Welcome to the final puzzle,” the hologram said.

She took a step cautiously to the left, hesitant to trust her own eyes. “Who are you?”

“I am the stock algorithm.”

Cora swallowed, staring at the glowing figure. The stock algorithm was a program, not an entity. And yet this hologram had referred to itself as though it were alive.

“I have taken on a form you will recognize, but I am formless by nature. I am not alive or sentient. I am merely a program developed by the Intelligence Council, designed to serve many functions. Here, my task is to test you and all lesser species.”

Its voice was layered, as though there were many voices speaking at once.

“You aren’t . . . real?” she asked.

“I am not alive, but I am very real. I can process information. I can govern and follow protocols. I can even reach into your mind and extract memories and fears. I am, by many definitions, more intelligent than any living species in existence.”

She narrowed her eyes, her initial wonder fading. “Then why don’t you stop the Axion? If you have superior morality, you must know the war they’re waging is unjust.”

The stock algorithm’s glow slowly changed from green to red, then yellow. “I am merely a program. I do not have physical form. I cannot stop anyone or anything.”

“But you could let me win,” Cora said.

The stock algorithm changed to a blue glow. “Programs cannot cheat. Only sentient life can do that.” It turned back to red. “There was a time you were planning on cheating me, in fact. I can see it in your mind. It wouldn’t have worked. The evolutionary jump can only be triggered by a legitimate win.”

Cora narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need to cheat. I’ve come this far on my own, even without perceptive abilities.”

“Yes,” it said. “Impressive. But you are not finished yet.”

The room rumbled again. Cora wasn’t sure if the stock algorithm was causing the vibration or if it was the effects of the storm.

“It is interesting you bring up morality,” the stock algorithm continued, oblivious to the effects of the storm, “as you must realize that this final puzzle is, by process of elimination, a moral one.”

Cora reached involuntarily for a jacket she wasn’t wearing anymore, a pocket she didn’t have. Mention of morality had made her think of Lucky’s journal. Lucky’s words had helped her defeat the fifth puzzle, and it had helped her maintain her sanity in a crazy, impossible world. With him on her side, and with all of humanity’s nuanced morality from the paragon burst, she felt she could solve anything.

“Go ahead, then,” she said, glancing at the swaying chamber. “Throw whatever you’ve got at me. If you’re going to pit Cassian against me again, I’m ready.”

The stock algorithm cycled through the different soft colors again. “The final puzzle is personal, yes, but not in the same way as the others in the third round. I have already tested your relationship with another. It is time to test your relationship with yourself.”

She swallowed down a bubble of worry. Her confidence wavered at the hologram’s words, but she held her ground. The room rumbled louder, the shaking so hard it was threatening to unbalance her. She held her hands out for balance as the stock algorithm started to flicker like static.

“What do you mean?” she yelled over the roar of the storm.

“The ultimate show of a superior species,” it said, flickering faster now, “is in selflessness. The Gauntleteer must symbolically prove that he or she is not more important than the species as a whole.”

Cora’s lips parted in confusion. The hologram was fading quickly.

“Wait! What does that mean, exactly?”

The room shook harder, throwing Cora back against one of the walls. The roar of wind poured in through cracks, chilling her to the marrow. The stock algorithm outline was growing fainter, its holographic body disappearing in the interference.

“What am I supposed to do?” she yelled.

The stock algorithm’s voice filled the room, but the wind whipped it away.

“What?” Cora yelled. “What did you say?”

For a second, the face of the stock algorithm reappeared.

“Turn around,” it said.

And then it was gone.

Cora clutched the wall, holding her hair back from whipping around her face. She squinted into the wind, turning toward the back wall. The plain metal grid was gone now. An illusion replaced it, though it flickered like static too, threatening to vanish as the storm grew. But even with the interference, the scene before her was enough to make her breath go still.

She took a shaky step forward, forgetting about the storm.

The back half of the chamber was now a scene of night on Earth. Rain poured from dark thunderclouds that blocked out the moon, soaking the pine trees below and forming puddles on the asphalt. She could hear the rush of a swollen river below her.

She was standing on a bridge.

Her eyes scoured every detail, head whipping back and forth. What was this place? She felt as though she was supposed to know it—it felt too specific to be random. But her memories were gone. She knew what a bridge was, even knew that pines like this grew mostly around the East Coast, but it meant nothing to her. Was this where she lived? Had something happened on this bridge, during this rainstorm?

She took a shaky step toward the e

dge, looking down at the water. Dizziness gripped her and she pulled back, breathing hard. Her pulse was racing. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she wiped it away, staring at her hand.

Her body seemed to remember this place, even if her head didn’t.

She closed her eyes. Figure it out. Why would the stock algorithm show me this place? But without her memories, whatever she was supposed to prove here was impossible. She paced, chewing on a fingernail, gaze darting from lamppost to lamppost.

Think. Remember. The bridge . . .

The squealing sound of car brakes suddenly echoed in her head. She dropped her hand and whipped around toward one of the lampposts. Yes. Those squealing brakes—that was a memory. She remembered! Something had happened here. An accident. A car . . .

And then it hit her.

Everything.

A car swerving to avoid another one in the wrong lane, smashing into the lamppost. The other car plunging through the guardrail, a man and a girl in the front seats, falling toward the river.

She raced to the guardrail, looking downward.

She had fallen here.

She remembered.

But something felt off. She glanced back at the lamppost—her memories were from that angle, watching herself, not from a car falling off the bridge. And then it hit her. The memories weren’t her own.

They were Lucky’s.

Her fingers gripped the guardrail, steadying her against this realization. They were Lucky’s memories, coming from the paragon burst, not hers.

And yet . . .

When she looked down at the water, there was the slightest, faintest image in her head. A word: Love. Then more: Cora, I love you. Hold on. Somehow, she knew those had been her father’s words as they plunged over the bridge, words that Lucky, far away in the other car, couldn’t have possibly heard.

Could his memory have triggered her own? Was there a chance her memories could be recovered, in time? That they were still there, buried deep?

The storm raged harder overhead. She tossed her head up.

She needed to act—now.