The Cage: The Hunt Part 13

As they crawled, Cora thought of the last time she'd seen Rolf and Nok in the cage. They'd been in the middle of a fistfight with each other that hadn't looked like it would end well. "You said they were doing okay, right?"

"Okay? Are any of us okay? They were alive, that's all I said. They were pretty freaked out the Kindred might take away Nok's baby. They were holding on to some sad hope they could get home and raise the baby there. Whoa. Hang on. Death trap at twelve o'clock."

He pointed ahead to a place on the floor, but Cora saw nothing until he shone his headlight on it. A glistening, nearly transparent line. He carefully climbed over it, and then motioned for her to do the same.

"Actually," she said, "Nok and Rolf might not be so off base about home. Lucky found information that there's a higher chance than we thought that Earth's still there. Ca.s.sian is going to look into it."

"That right?" Leon mumbled as he consulted his scrawled map.

"Aren't you more excited? We're talking about Earth. It means that we could have a real future. If I beat the Gauntlet, no one could stop us from leaving this station and going home."

"Sweetheart, if you'll recall, I never thought Earth was gone."

"But the Kindred's algorithm predicted it."

He shrugged. "I've never trusted nerds. I go with my gut, which always said Earth was there."

She crawled behind him, thoughts spinning. "Well, if it's true, we'll need a ship to take us there after the Gauntlet is over. Bonebreak must be have one, right?"

Leon snorted. "Don't get your hopes up. I've been asking around. Next ship won't come for another forty years. I got him drunk one night, and he told me all about the last time they helped humans. Years ago, when the supply ships used to come more frequently, the Mosca made a deal with a group of humans to go back to Earth. That was back when the Kindred took mostly adults, and I guess they wanted the smartest ones. They ended up abducting savants, you know? The kinds who can multiply insane numbers in seconds, kind of like Rolf?"

He wiggled his fingers in the air like he was working out numbers. "Well, the Kindred didn't realize half those people are even smarter than them when it comes to numbers. The savants figured out how to override the system, got out of their enclosures, and faked their deaths. They found Bonebreak. He was just an underling at the time. His captain took the humans back to Earth in exchange for them s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with the Kindred's food replicator. One h.e.l.l of an expensive practical joke."

He paused to wipe chalk dust out of his eyes. "It's crazy, but I actually remember my sister talking about it. She's into crime books, you know? Said in the eighteen fifties there was this group of people who just appeared in South Africa-they were all crazy, said they'd been abducted by aliens."

"Eighteen fifties? How old is Bonebreak?"

"Really old, I think. I'm scared to see behind that mask."

"And you trust him?"

Leon snorted. "Our relationship is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I have something he needs-the ability to crawl through tunnels. He has something I need-protection from the Kindred guards, not to mention a bunch of vodka. So do I trust him? Sure, until he finds a different way to get what he needs." He grinned. "But I'm not useless yet."

He pointed ahead to a chalk mark of a dollhouse. "See? Told you I'd find it again. Nok and Rolf are up here." Eventually the tunnel smoothed out and turned to metal, and then ended.

Leon shouldered the gate open into a wide room, like a dark theater. When they crawled out, Cora saw a small house at one end-except one entire wall was missing. Leon led her close, a finger pressed to his lips. In the upstairs bedroom, Nok was getting dressed, and Rolf was toying with an old radio.

"Hey!" Cora started toward them, but Leon threw a hand over her mouth.

"Christ, sweetheart, shut up." He jerked his chin toward a row of dark seating. At least ten Kindred were there, watching Rolf and Nok. She waited a heart-pounding moment, but none of them turned in her direction. They hadn't heard her.

"How are we supposed to get to them?" she whispered.

"We wait. Rolf said they have artificial nighttimes when most go home. Sera.s.si sticks around, but not all the time."

"I can't wait. I have to be back in my cell in the morning."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

Cora squinted at the house, trying to figure it out. Rolf was still fiddling with the radio. A guy like him probably knew Morse code, and she knew it too from those long cla.s.ses in Bay Pines, where she and Queenie had sent each other silent messages with flashlights from across the room while the others watched rehab videos. She focused on the radio light. Turn off, she willed. Her mind probed around the circuitry. There was no amplifier, which meant she had to concentrate harder. Turn OFF. And for a second the light flickered, just like the lightlock of her cell, and then it turned off completely. Rolf frowned, but she quickly turned it back on.

She did the same, but faster. Three times.

S-O-S.

Rolf's eyebrows knit together in hesitation. He looked like he was going to call down to Nok, but froze. He glanced at the watching Kindred, and then carefully turned the radio away from their eyes.

Cora made it blink again.

I-T-S-C-O-R-A.

Slowly, Rolf looked over his right shoulder, and then his left. With a tentative finger, he pointed to the corner of the room. Cora could just make out an old-fashioned typewriter; she rolled her eyes. Rolf was really pushing her abilities. She concentrated on trying to remember which keys were which from afar, and tapped her message out in the air with her fingers, pushing her mind as hard as she could to make the corresponding keys move. Without amplifiers, depressing each key felt like rolling a boulder uphill.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

She sagged with the effort. Rolf hesitated. His hand went up to push at his hair a bit like he had when Cora had first seen him in the cage. He paced a little, throwing glances her way like there was something else he had to tell her. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the radio and pried the bulb out with his fingernails, and then twisted some wires around. When he pushed a b.u.t.ton, it blinked.

T-E-L-L-M-E.

She took a deep breath and focused on the typewriter again.

HAVE TO BREAK SOMEONE OUT OF CELL SURROUNDED BY KINDRED. ADVICE?.

Rolf stared at the paper in the typewriter. He picked up the radio and pressed the b.u.t.tons to send Morse code.

D-O-N-T-G-E-T-C-A-U-G-H-T.

"What'd he say?" Leon breathed.

"He's being a smarta.s.s," Cora muttered.

"Yeah?" Leon seemed almost impressed. "Didn't think he had it in him."

Then Rolf signaled again.

W-E-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P-2.

And he added: O-N-L-Y-H-A-V-E-F-E-W-D-A-Y-S-L-E-F-T.

"A few days left?" Cora whispered to Leon. "What does he mean? A few days before what?"

"Oh yeah, he wouldn't shut up about that before," Leon said. "He worked out some equation of how long we've been here and how soon the Kindred could take the baby away."

"He can convert Kindred time to days? Are you sure?"

"He had a whole notebook filled with numbers."

She turned back, focusing on the typewriter, but he started flashing a message first.

C-A-N-Y-O-U-G-E-T-U-S-O-U-T?.

Cora paused. "They want our help getting out of there. We could get them into the drecktube when Sera.s.si and the researchers aren't there, but then where would they go? Unless . . ."

Leon gave a suspicious grunt.

"You already agreed to keep Anya with you. And you said Bonebreak's lair takes up a whole sublevel. There must be all sorts of spare nooks they could set up for Nok and Rolf as a safe room. There's even smuggled baby stuff, right? Cribs and diapers and things?"

"Oh, for the love of . . ." Leon rubbed his face hard. "You want the Mosca to help raise a baby? Have you listened to a single thing I've said about them?"

"I don't expect them to read bedtime stories," she shot back. "Just to give them a safe place to live until after I've run the Gauntlet, when Sera.s.si won't have any claim on their baby anymore."

"Bonebreak gets p.i.s.sed enough just having me around. For him to put up with a crying baby would take serious cash."

"How much?"

He sighed. "I'll ask."

Cora turned back to the house, concentrating on the typewriter.

AM WORKING ON A SAFE ROOM. HOLD ON. WILL COME BACK FOR YOU WHEN READY.

And then she added: YOU CAN CONVERT TIME?.

Rolf read her message and nodded, not bothering with the radio.

LUCKY'S BIRTHDAY IS OCT 21. HOW SOON UNTIL HE TURNS 19?

Rolf bent down to his notebook and started writing furiously, working out the equation, pushing at gla.s.ses that he no longer needed. He set down the pencil and picked up the radio. The lights flashed and flashed.

Cora let out a small sound of shock.

"What?" Leon said. "What's his spy code say?"

Rolf, maybe worried they hadn't seen his signal, flashed the lights again. A dark premonition washed over her. She willed the light to blink more, but it never did.

Three blinks.

"Only three days," she said.

21.

Lucky THE NEXT MORNING, LUCKY crouched on the backstage floor next to the zebra.

He'd meant to stay awake all night, but he must have fallen asleep at some point, because suddenly Cora had been in his cell, shaking him awake with a hand pressed to his mouth to keep him quiet. She had whispered about her trip with Leon. About Anya's voice in her head and how it was going to be harder than they thought to break Anya out. And then the worst: how Rolf had figured out Lucky only had three days until he turned nineteen.

If he was being honest, he had just been glad to see Cora again. A tiny part of him had wondered, when she'd disappeared with Leon, if maybe she'd run. But she hadn't, and she'd returned with some crazy idea to smuggle him out through the drecktube before his birthday and have him set up camp in a Mosca safe room.

Like h.e.l.l, he had told her. She hadn't run, so he wasn't going to either.

Now he stroked the zebra's neck, wincing at its sunken eyes and the blood crusted around its nostrils, and thought of how Mali had said that no one was looking out for the animals but him. He rubbed the zebra's neck gently, long strokes along the direction of its hair, the same way he did with the horses on his granddad's farm when they were laid up with colic. The bullet extractor lay on the floor beside him, ready to use. Press it to the wound and in minutes the zebra would be healthy again.

But would it? he wondered. What does it really mean to look out for them?

After all, just having a heart that pumped and lungs that breathed didn't make an animal healthy. It only kept it alive until it could be shot all over again. Once, on his granddad's farm, a yearling horse named Newt had been attacked by coyotes. Newt had broken two legs trying to get away from them and blinded himself on a wire fence.

Get my rifle, his granddad had said quietly.

But he could recover, Lucky had said.

His granddad had taken one long look at the horse and shaken his head. Maybe he could survive, his granddad said. But not without suffering.

Lucky picked up the bullet extractor hesitantly. Part of him wanted to toss it away and let the zebra die in peace. That was a cruel sort of kindness, not one a lot of people could stomach, but he thought maybe, if his granddad could do it, then he could too.

A giggle came from the supply rooms, and he whipped his head around. Pika was in there debating aloud to herself whether zebra or giraffe tails were cuter.

Who was he kidding? If he refused to heal the animals, Pika would just do it herself.

He clenched his jaw and set the tool against the wound, extracted the bullet, and took out a revival pod from his pocket. Its waxiness rubbed off on his skin as he set it next to the zebra's nose. The animal's nostrils twitched. Then its eyelid cracked open, showing a half-moon of milky whiteness beneath. At last, the animal jolted awake.

"Shh," Lucky said, pressing a firm hand on its shoulder. "Shh, girl. You're all right."

Slowly, its pulse returned to normal.

A sneering voice behind him ruptured the silence. "What next, you going to train it to wear a little saddle?" Dane strode into the cell block. "Bet the Kindred would pay extra tokens to see that. Maybe they'll transfer you to a circus menagerie. You could be part of the freak show."

"We're already in a freak show," Lucky muttered. "Look around."

Dane hovered in the shadows outside his cell, smirking. Then he went inside, rooted around a little, and emerged with a small notebook. "Here. A present. Now you can write down all these deep tortured feelings so the rest of us don't have to listen to them."

He tossed Lucky the notebook. A few pages had been ripped out, but the rest were empty. Lucky threw it aside, next to his jacket. He didn't like accepting things from Dane. He didn't like even talking to Dane. But, right now, he needed him.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Makayla said you wanted to talk to me, so talk."

Lucky could hear the note of interest in the other boy's voice, behind the sneer. Not that he had anything against a guy liking a guy or anything, but Dane would be disappointed if he thought that's how Lucky played.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was cool of you to switch my work a.s.signment before, and you said if I ever needed anything else-"

Pika came in, lugging a bucket of water for the antelopes and dribbling water all over the floor. Her face lit up. "Hi, Dane! You need a break? You want me to take over making the announcements? I wouldn't mind. Really."