The Cage (The Cage 1)

“Great,” Leon muttered. “Lunch time. I feel better already.”

“Food’s not a bad idea.” Lucky cracked the knuckles in his left hand. “None of us have eaten anything in days, except for Leon, and he’s alive, so it must be safe. Rolf, you and me will bring the trays out here so we all have some fresh air to help us think. Nok . . .” He paused, avoiding Cora’s eyes. “Tell Cora what we figured out . . . about the marks on our necks.”

He disappeared with Rolf into the diner. Nok stumbled through an explanation about the matching constellations, and by the time Lucky came back with the trays of noodles, Cora understood why Lucky hadn’t told her himself. They were matched? She could barely look at him without feeling mortified—although a small voice in her head whispered that he was the kind of guy she’d always liked. Not arrogant, like the boys she’d gone to school with. Not flamboyantly dramatic, like most of the guys in Charlie’s theater classes.

The kind of guy with grease on his hands.

She looked down at her noodles. They smelled wrong—sticky sweet. The song ended and flipped over, starting again. Was it supposed to make them complacent—or torture them?

“Well,” Lucky said. “I guess we should figure out what the hell is going on.”

“We’ve been abducted by little green men,” Leon said. “Or in this case, big bronze men. What more do you need?”

“I need to know why.” He turned to Rolf. “No offense, Rolf, but I don’t believe they’re telling the truth about why they brought us here. So what do we know? They took the five of us specifically. They want us to reproduce, which is . . . messed up. They’re watching us from behind those panels. They want to study us in our natural habitat”—he motioned to the row of fake shops—“or whatever this is supposed to be. Why? For entertainment?”

“Maybe they want to see how we interact?” Nok offered. “Like, not just our daily lives, but under pressure. When situations change. Maybe that’s why they’ve given us clothes that aren’t ours and thrown us together in random pairs and given us food that tastes wrong. I mean, this looks like khee mao noodles, but it tastes like a cinnamon bun.”

“To what end?” Lucky asked.

Nok tapped her chin, thinking, and then a look of horror crept over her face. “What if they’re going to attack Earth? Maybe this is all a war scenario. They might want to see how people will react under pressure so they can make it an easy fight.”

Everyone was quiet. Cora’s song played steadily from the jukebox, taunting them.

“Maybe.” Lucky rubbed his forehead like his head ached. “It’s one possible theory, and it explains some things, but not others. If that were the case, why would they care if we reproduce? I was thinking, maybe we really are like lab rats. The Kindred seem pretty similar to us, physically. They can speak our language, so our vocal cords must be similar, and they breathe the same air we do, so we must just be a few chromosomes away or something. Wouldn’t that make us perfect test subjects?”

Rolf frowned. “I suppose so. Theoretically.”

“They could be developing some new kind of drug but don’t want to test it out on themselves first. We’re the lab chimps now. And the drugs . . .” Lucky looked at the noodles.

Nok and Rolf both shoved their trays away.

“There’s something else.” Cora knew she couldn’t withhold what she’d seen forever. “While I was in their control rooms, I saw the dead girl’s body. They were examining it. Maybe experimenting—I don’t know. They said it was protocol to monitor dead bodies for signs that humans were evolving, but she looked perfectly normal to me. It felt like they were covering for something.”

Even Leon dropped his fistful of noodles. He always looked so tough, but for once he seemed almost stricken. Cora recalled that the girl with the heart-shaped scar was supposed to have been his match.

“This is seriously shitty. All of it.” He pushed off from the grass and sauntered toward the row of shops.

Lucky shook his head. “That guy is going to be trouble.”

Cora watched Leon disappear in the town. “I’ll talk to him.”

15

Cora

CORA FOUND LEON SITTING on the movie theater steps, head cradled in his hands. “Leon, you can’t just run off. We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

“We’re going to die, that’s what.”

She paused. She’d seen him angry, and impatient, but never depressed. “We’re not going to die. The Kindred brought us here, which means they can take us back. It’s nonsense, what they said about humans destroying the Earth. Humans have been polluting for centuries. It’ll take aeons before we actually destroy it—if we ever do.”

He tossed a stone from the potted marigolds into the grass. “You remind me of my sister, you know that? She has hair just like yours. She never gives it a rest either—always telling me I run from my problems.”

She sat next to him. “Your sister has blond hair?”

He snorted. “She dyes it. And she’s got about fifty pounds on you, but yeah. Long blond hair. Same annoying way of giving me a hard time.” He tossed a pebble at her foot, not hard enough to hurt. The others’ voices were barely audible from the town square. “I can’t stop thinking about that girl. The dead one. How she and I were supposed to be together . . . or whatever.”

Sweat trickled down his face. He tossed another pebble.

“Do you have a girlfriend at home?” Cora asked softly.

He snorted. “I’m not exactly boyfriend material, sweetheart. Dad’s in prison. My two older brothers too. My little sister, Ellie, made me swear I wouldn’t end up like them. She was the only one who believed I had a chance to do something other than getting locked up.” He glanced at the closest black window. “I guess that’s what happened anyway, eh? How ironic.”

Cora toyed with a pebble. “I’m glad she believed in you.”

“Well, it didn’t do any good. I never listened to her. I dropped out of school and took a job working for my brother. He smuggles electronics from China—among other merchandise. Black market stuff. Just a matter of time before we were both caught.”

The pebble slipped from her fingers. “Oh.”

“I worry about her.” His voice was quieter. “Ellie. If she’s okay.”