Authors: Megan Shepherd

The Cage (40 page)

“There’s nothing to explain. You’re the Warden. Everything was a lie.”

“I told you that I feared I was making a mistake. You assumed I meant betraying my people. I meant betraying
you
. Lying to you gave me no joy. I almost aborted the mission when I saw the strain it was putting on your cohort, and on you. I did not want you to end up like the previous groups.”

“
Dead?
How kind.”

He paused. “I did not lie to you about our mission. All my actions were for your own good. Under my orders, my researchers were putting pressure on your minds to see if they could bring you to the point of mental evolution.”

“So you could justify enslaving us, when we failed?”

“So we could
free
you, when you succeeded.” He lowered his voice, almost as though he feared someone might overhear them. But he was the Warden—there was no one higher than him, was there? Where did he even plan to take her, if his plan had worked? She couldn’t exactly picture a parade rolling down the austere aisles of the aggregate station, celebrating humanity’s intelligence. The Kindred had made it perfectly clear they didn’t want humans as equals.

“I pushed you to prove that humans are intelligent, as I know you can be. Anya was psychic; she read my mind on two separate occasions. When the other Kindred learned of this, they drugged her and locked her in the menagerie to hide her abilities. I was a low-ranking soldier—there was nothing I could do about it. So I set my mind to working my way up our ranks, rotation after rotation, until I was chosen by our Council as Warden.”

Anya. The caged Icelandic girl who looked like a younger version of Cora. Was that the reason Cassian had thought Cora could be psychic, because she reminded him of Anya? She didn’t know what to believe—if Anya had truly become as intelligent as the Kindred, why was she locked up? Wouldn’t she have outsmarted them before they could drug her?

“I did see some of Anya’s traits in you,” he said, reading her mind, “but not because of your appearance. Because of your ability to navigate the space between cultures. Anya never fit in with any cohorts; Mali was the only friend she had. I believe it was this isolation that broke her mind.”

Cora glanced at Lucky and Mali, so far away.
Isolation.
Well, she had certainly achieved that.

“Being Warden granted me certain privileges,” Cassian continued, “such as a lack of oversight. I was able to circumvent the stock algorithm without being detected, and select you. I did everything I could to try to break your mind. It was no accident that the fail-safe exit was located in the ocean—I wanted you to have to face all your darkest fears. I gave you more tokens so the others would grow jealous and turn on you. I planted the bone in the jungle to drive a further wedge. I thought, when you discovered your past with Lucky, you would leave him. When you still showed signs of caring, I offered him a bargain to stay away from you. I needed you to be alone. Terrified. Only then would your mind truly break.”

Air slipped from her lungs. All the confusion and stress she’d been through for weeks was just for his twisted experimentation. Had he planted the comic book? The Mosca traders? Had he fabricated a chance for escape just so he could snatch it from her, and leave her even more broken? She pressed a hand to her head. What about the kiss—was that the biggest lie of all?

Give her stars. Kiss her. Make her fall in love.

Then betray her.

All she could feel was hurt. Worse than that—dead. Her heart still beat, but the blood had dried in her veins. There was no warmth. He had taken every piece of her that was alive—her heart, her soul, her trust—and smashed it beneath those metallic boots of his.

She had nothing now.

No family.

No friends.

No future.

“I did not wish to hurt you,” he continued. “I tried other techniques, with the other cohorts. All of them failed—” His head jerked toward the black window. His eyes narrowed a fraction, and then he straightened instantly. He was perceiving something Cora couldn’t. Someone listening, or someone coming.

She didn’t care. She was the kind of broken there was no fixing.

And then her index finger started trembling. It pulsed strangely, like pins and needles were digging into it. Then her middle finger. Something strange happened to the lighting, almost like it got brighter, but only around the black window. Cora blinked, confused. Like on the beach, and in the bookshop, the sensation was in her head too, and her sense of balance, and her ability to sense temperature, and detect smells—all her senses, all at once. The whisper of intuition, now loud as a scream. There
was
someone behind that window, though they were blocked from her view. Two Kindred males, neither of them quite as tall as Cassian, one with a metal cast over one arm, the other with a deep wrinkle in the center of his forehead—Fian.

Pain exploded in her head. She clutched at her scalp as though she could keep her mind from fracturing. The strength leached out of her legs, and she slammed to the floor. Her muscles seized up, twitching and throbbing so fast she couldn’t control her limbs.

The door flew open. Cassian was by her side. “Tell me what you are experiencing. Strange sensations. Visual disturbances.”

His words found her through a fog of pain and racking tremors. He had spoken those words to her before. In the fountain room of the Temple menagerie, after she had collapsed. Had that been part of his plan too? Had he shown her the menagerie in hopes of breaking her?

“Serassi. Come at once.” He was speaking into his wrist communicator. She had never heard him sound afraid before.

A moment later, Serassi’s rough palms scraped against her head, feeling her temperature. Incomprehensible Kindred words were exchanged as her vision faded in and out. Static crackled in her ears, deafening her, except she could hear everything perfectly—inside her own head. She felt as though she wasn’t in her own body. She was almost hovering above it, in all corners at once, watching her own self as she convulsed. Cassian clutched her shoulders, holding her still, while Serassi administered some kind of drug.

“I’m sorry.” Cassian was speaking to her body, though her mind was hovering a few feet above them. “I had to betray you. It was the last part of the plan. The only thing strong enough to break you.” His hand kept flexing, flexing, flexing. Serassi left to fetch something from the next room, and Cassian bent down.

His lips so close to hers. His hands gripping her shoulders.

It wasn’t all a lie.

The words echoed in her head. Cassian’s voice, and yet his lips hadn’t moved. Unspoken words. He had only thought them. He glanced toward the door, removed his gloves, and pressed his hands against Cora’s temples.

Electricity jolted through her, grabbing her floating perceptions and pulling them all back into flesh and bone. She sputtered awake, shoving him away. “Don’t touch me!”

She stared at her shaking fingertips. What the hell had happened?

He ignored her. “Did your vision change? Were you able to read my thoughts—”

“Stop it!” She clamped her hands over her ears, trying to wrap her mind around what was happening.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” He reached an ungloved hand toward her, but she shoved him away again. “You perceived something. This will change everything, Cora. There are others like me, who believe humans are capable of intelligence, but we are a minority. Most fear what would happen if humans gain intelligence. The right to govern themselves. The right to participate in our commerce and law. If the Council learns of this, they will try to silence you, just as they did Anya.”

She drew in a sharp breath. God—was he right? Had she actually psychically perceived those two Kindred standing behind the window? There really wasn’t any other explanation for something that should be impossible, and yet . . .

She slumped against the wall. She’d never even considered that the rumors might be true. It had sounded so far-fetched when Mali talked about kids becoming psychic. They lived in the real world, not a fantasy one.

But she had
seen
those Kindred behind the window.

“I don’t care what you have planned,” she snapped, trying to catch her breath. “I’m done being your experiment.”

His enthusiasm melted off his face. “I broke you. I know that. But I will fix you again. I will make you even stronger. I am not alone. We intend to hide you in a menagerie, but I will watch out for you there. I will not let any harm come to you. I will teach you how to control and focus your ability. Cora. We can change everything, together.”

That last word hung in the air. There was hope in his voice—hope her heart didn’t mirror.

She gave him a cold look. “Get away from me.”

He hovered by the door, as though he wished she would change her mind. After a few painful breaths he left, his boots loud, and the sound of the closing door louder.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Lucky waving his hands to get her attention. “What happened?” he mouthed. In the cell next to him, Mali hunched in the corner, watching keenly. Mali had known Anya well, almost like a sister. She must have seen Anya have a seizure like that at some time. Did she know what Cora had just experienced?

Lucky pointed at himself, then Cora, then Mali. He kept repeating one word, but Cora didn’t understand until he pointed toward the door.
Escape.
He was trying to get her to cling to hope. But Cora let her head fall. Her body was spent. Escape? There was no escape for them. Even if they managed to get out, even if Leon was crawling around in vent shafts to break them free, the Kindred would only catch them again. They were in Cassian’s world now, and he made the rules.

Cora picked up the radio with shaking hands. It felt so solid, so comforting. The last thing she had to cling to. From the speaker came the sound of a song. It didn’t bounce the right away around the sharpened corners and metal bars.

Not at home in paradise, not at home in hell . . .

Cassian had taken her freedom but given her the last song she’d written, in Charlie’s Jeep. Her last memory of home. She squeezed the radio, fighting back tears. Had Cassian’s awful experiment really worked?

She pulled her knees in tight. Her whole body was shaking. Maybe it came from her intuition. Maybe it was a latent talent all humans had, but none developed because they didn’t know it was even possible.

But she was psychic.

At least she had been, for a moment.

The Kindred thought they were like children, naive and in need of protection, but they were wrong. She had changed, which meant humanity could change, and if the Kindred didn’t think they were intelligent creatures,
dangerous
creatures, they weren’t nearly as perceptive as they thought. Humans didn’t deserve to be caged. They didn’t deserve to be dressed up like dolls and toyed with. They didn’t deserve to be used and manipulated and betrayed, even if the ends were just.

She would show the Kindred how powerful humans could be. Maybe some mistakes were worth making, but ripping her from her home was a mistake they would regret dearly.

She would make Cassian regret it most of all.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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About the Author

MEGAN SHEPHERD
is also the author of the Madman’s Daughter trilogy. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Visit her online at www.meganshepherd.com.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Also by Megan Shepherd

The Madman’s Daughter

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

THE CAGE
. Copyright © 2015 by Megan Shepherd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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ISBN 978-0-06-224305-8 (trade bdg.)

EPub Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062384492

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