Authors: Megan Shepherd
“She’s lying,” Nok snapped, cheeks bright red. All eyes went to Leon, who wiped the blood from his face and didn’t deny anything.
Rolf’s fingers started tapping again. He looked confused, like the past few weeks hadn’t happened and he’d just woken here.
This is how it ends,
Cora thought
. With our bleached bones buried beneath the sand.
“Is that true, Leon?” Rolf asked in a deadly quiet voice.
Leon put a hand to his head, wincing like Mali’s last punch had jarred him too hard, or else he was suffering the same headaches. “She threw herself at me, brother. Sorry.”
“
Sorry?
Sorry, that’s it?”
Leon coughed, still wiping away blood. “What do you want, a greeting card?”
Rolf shot back something about Leon deserving to be alone, how Yasmine would have hated him, and Leon’s entire body went rigid.
Cora took a step back.
Mali’s hot breath came in her ear. “If we do not leave now, I do not think we will have another chance.”
Rolf and Leon started throwing insults like punches. It wouldn’t be long before they were trading real blows. Across from them, Nok was taking small steps backward, glancing over her shoulder at the house. Rolf suddenly lunged for the croquet mallet, and Cora dropped to the grass, afraid of the crossfire when he swung it at Leon’s face. Her mind flashed to that first day, the fight between the two of them in the toy store. “I’ll owe you that punch,” Rolf had said, and now he meant it. He was quick, just like his twitching fingers, and he was back on his feet before Leon could catch him.
Rolf let out a furious yell and hurled himself forward—at Nok. Not Leon. Rolf tackled her to the ground, using the mallet to pin her arms as she screamed wildly. Leon was still braced to duck the blow that was less and less likely to come.
“You said you loved me!” Rolf choked, ignoring her pleas. “I saw the way you looked at Lucky and Leon, but you told me I was just being paranoid!”
Nok screamed something in a mix of Thai and English, struggling to get away.
Cora pushed to her feet. “Rolf—”
Rolf threw Cora a look over his shoulder. “Just go! Get out of here! This is between me and Nok.”
Beneath him, Nok gave one final twist, uselessly. Suddenly all the fight rushed out of her and she started sobbing, big racking tears that didn’t seem like acting at all. Nok’s whole life had been a struggle, it seemed. Rolf’s words had been enough to put together a picture of a life in London that wasn’t the jet-setting dream, but rather dirty rooms and flashing lights and bruises hidden beneath flimsy little dresses.
Rolf blinked a few times. “I won’t hurt her,” he said. His voice had grown softer, just like his grip on Nok, anger melting away into devastation. “I would never hurt her. But leave us alone; you never belonged here. If you can get out, then go. Whatever the consequences for us . . .” He swallowed hard, looking at Nok sobbing. “We have bigger worries right now.”
Cora glanced over her shoulder toward the churning sea. “Come with us,” she said.
He shook his head. “I can’t. Chances are it’s my baby. We might not be free, but we’re safe here, and right now that’s more important for the baby than freedom. But Lucky might go. Try the boardwalk. He walks there at night when he can’t sleep.”
The light overhead shifted. Mali pinched herself anxiously, throwing glances toward the ocean. Cora knew she would never see either Nok or Rolf again, but good-byes felt wrong. Her lips wouldn’t form the words, so she turned instead, blinking hard to clear her eyes, striding toward the ocean.
“Cora, wait,” Rolf called.
She turned, brushing the moisture from beneath her eyes. Nok was still sobbing, oblivious to everything. Rolf rubbed the marks on his neck slowly. “You were right, in the medical room. I was studying their technology. Those blue cubes above the doors are amplifiers. Destroy them, and the Kindred won’t be able to open the doors with their minds. It might buy you some time. I’ll make sure Nok doesn’t sound the alarm. Now just go.”
Over her shoulder, the waves were crashing. Beckoning. Mali tugged on her arm.
“Thank you,” she whispered. He gave a curt nod, his attention already back on Nok. Cora turned to Leon. “It’s not too late.”
He cracked his knuckles anxiously, keeping a good distance from Mali, looking toward the ocean, then back toward the jungle. “I can’t. This is where Yasmine is. Her ghost won’t let me go.”
Mali grabbed Cora, and they started running for the beach. Cora didn’t look over her shoulder to see them all one last time, because she knew their faces would be burned into the space behind her eyelids.
They raced to the boardwalk, where a figure heard them coming and stood from the deck chair, in the darkness looking as vague as the night sky.
His hand drifted to the side of his skull, where Cora had hit him.
The last time she and Lucky had spoken, she had hurt him deeply. A broken head and a broken heart. She was supposed to be his partner, his match. That rainy night on the bridge would forever tie them together. He had lost his mother. Cora had spent eighteen months locked up.
But Lucky was wrong when he thought being here could be a fresh start. There were no fresh starts for caged birds. There was only as much freedom as their captors wished to give them.
His eyes found hers beneath the stars.
“Lucky.” Her breath fogged in the air. “We’re getting out of here. Come with us.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t seem surprised at all.
“I know about you and the Caretaker,” he said.
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FEAR THREADED THROUGH CORA’S
veins. “Did Leon tell you?”
“The Caretaker told me himself.” Lucky took a step forward, his face unreadable. “He came to visit me last night. He said you were asleep in his bed. He didn’t say anything outright, just that I could have whatever I wanted if I left you alone. To tell him the type of girl I wanted and he’d give her to me.” He looked toward the sea, because it must have been easier than looking at her. “I told him the girl I wanted was you.”
“Lucky, I didn’t know—”
“I didn’t believe him. I thought he was tricking me, but he wasn’t, was he?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“You loved me because I was a victim. But I never was, Lucky. I was the one who came up with the idea to take the fall for my dad.” A month ago, if she’d met Lucky, she’d have fallen like a comet for him. She clasped her necklace as if she could hold on to that girl she’d been before, but then she released it. “Cassian knew that. He sees me as someone who can save herself.”
Lucky touched the place on the side of his head where she had hit him. Cora had expected he would be furious at her. Crazed. She hadn’t expected such heartbreaking hurt in his eyes.
He shook his head. “Just go. You never needed someone to protect you, I can see that now.”
He turned toward the boardwalk, but Cora grabbed his arm. “You always wanted to be a hero, Lucky, but you don’t need a victim for that. Be your own hero. Come with us.”
Mali glanced over her shoulder, and Cora felt nervous too. Had Rolf kept Nok from sounding the alarm? Did the Warden know? Not even Cassian could help them then.
“Please, Lucky. We can go back. Earth is there, I know it.”
His head tilted toward the stars that shone over a red desert, snow-covered mountains, a town where they might have been amused, but never truly happy. Would the Kindred take Nok and Rolf and Leon away? Without humans, this place would be meaningless.
Lucky turned away from the shops and habitats that had made up their artificial world, facing the ocean instead.
“Let’s go home.”
THE THREE OF THEM
stood in the sand, letting the surf whisper to their toes. “You have to swim without stopping,” Cora said. “There will be a pressure lens. You have to push past.”
Lucky and Mali listened intently, then waded fearlessly past the breakers. But Cora hung back. She hadn’t been in water over her head since the accident. The rush of pure cold pouring in the car windows, up through the gearshifts. These crashing waves were mild and warm, but they still drenched her with fear. She waded deeper, crunching the sand with her toes, and didn’t panic until the moment when a wave lifted her up and her toes didn’t touch the ocean floor when she bobbed back down.
She treaded water with quick, jerky movements.
Breathe. Count backward from ten.
Ten. Nine. Eight . . .
Lucky was a good swimmer. Mali’s strokes were jerkier, less practiced, but she was strong where the others weren’t: she knew the Kindred’s mind games. Even if she’d never faced a puzzle like this before, she could handle the psychological pressure.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Lucky asked.
Cora took a deep breath.
Seven . . .
“I’m sure.” As soon as Cora answered, she hit a cold patch in the ocean. It chilled her certainty. She recalled Cassian’s kiss and his whispered words. “Leave them to me.” He wouldn’t lie to her, would he? Lying would mean death for them—and she’d looked into his storm-cloud eyes. She’d seen raw emotions there. The last thing he wanted was their deaths.
Six. Five . . .
That was what kept her going. She wasn’t paddling toward death. She was paddling toward life.
Four . . .
Toward home.
“On the count of three,” she said. “Count backward.” The stars overhead shone brightly. A strange nostalgia crept over her. From here, the diner lights were still flashing, the jukebox music still playing.
“Three,” Lucky said.
Cora thought about Nok, and Rolf, and Leon, and what would happen to them. Yasmine’s ghost would haunt this same water. When death had come to her, Cora hoped it had been quick.
“Two,” Lucky said.
Cora’s lungs started to close up. She wondered if she would ever see Cassian again.
“One.”
Their heads disappeared, just as Cora filled her lungs. A second before she dived below, a figure appeared on the beach. There was no mistaking his hulking shape as he came tearing into the water.
Leon. He’d changed his mind.
But Cora was already underwater. There was no going back up. Water stung her nose. Her hair floated away. She felt like a ghost herself, like Yasmine was down there, calling to her, wanting to pull Cora down too.
Cora followed her ghost. Yasmine’s death, Cora’s life. With each stroke the pressure grew. The water grew colder, unnaturally so. Salt water filled her eyes, or maybe it was tears. The others were nowhere. Her chest was imploding, insisting it was time to go back for air.
She pushed past her instincts. There was no going back. The darkness was complete, a universe with no stars. And cold. The ocean really did go on forever. She imagined she was back in her father’s car with river water rushing in. What if he’d never broken the windshield? Time confused itself, and she was back there, trapped in the car. She thrashed against the seat belt and the dashboard and the floor. She stroked, and stroked, and bubbles burst around her as her lungs squeezed out the last breath of air. She screamed into the silent water.
She couldn’t swim anymore. Her arms burned. Her lungs demanded oxygen that wasn’t there. Only water. And water. And water. No pressure lens.
Cassian wouldn’t lie to me.
Her arms threatened to give out. She had nothing left in her, no heart, no soul. She saved her last thought for her mother, and father, and brother. She remembered a hike they had taken up Blood Mountain, when Sadie had been a puppy, when her father had just been a lawyer from Roanoke and her mother an aspiring actress and it was the four of them against the world. She wanted to go back to that time. And Charlie. She wanted to be in the airplane on Charlie’s first flight as a pilot and be there on Sadie’s last day. Most of all, she wanted to tell them that she loved them.
A calmness overtook her. The ache in her arms slowly abated. The pain through her body dissipated. If this was dying, it was quieter than she would have thought. It was black curling in at the edges of her mind, and then it was nothing.
And then, strangely, she breathed.
Air.
Cold seeped through her back, water choking her lungs; wet hair streaked her face. She blinked her eyes open and saw her own hand resting on a cold metal floor the pattern of woodgrain. Light the color of the stars bled through gaps in the walls. Her middle finger twitched.
She coughed up water, and sucked in a lungful of air.
She was alive.
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THE TOWN SQUARE FELT
too empty without the others. Rolf had watched them disappear into the night, leaving only him and Nok, who had sobbed for ten minutes before her anger bubbled up in one last surge, and she started struggling again. Weeks ago, he’d never have had the strength to keep her from running to the house to summon Serassi. But hiking up the mountain to sled had given him stamina, and throwing apples in the farm puzzle had built muscles in his thin arms. Nok tried to claw at the ground, but he pinned her wrist.
“Not yet. I’m sorry.”
“This is how you treat someone you love? Who’s going to be the mother of your
child
?”
Hot fury flashed behind Rolf’s eyes, pulsing in time with his aching head. She was trying to manipulate him again. It was so obvious now. As he looked around at the perfectly still trees and buildings of the cage, he felt a strangeness that unsettled him. Over the past few weeks he’d gotten used to the paths that looped them back to their starting place; he’d even stopped thinking it strange that such a beautiful girl had fallen for him. Now, anger built in him until he wanted to squeeze Nok’s wrists so hard she’d cry out.