LUCKY STORMED THROUGH THE town square, past the flashing lights of the arcade and the thumping beats of jukebox music. Each one punctuated what an idiot he was. He’d stayed up all night, but Cora hadn’t come back. He should have known she’d run away the minute he told her the truth. Why did he ever think she’d forgive him for putting her in prison? Because she smiled at his jokes? Asked him about his granddad’s farm? God, what an idiot he was.
He raked a hand through his hair, fighting against the pain in his skull. His mother’s eyes burned behind his eyelids. He was back in their car on the rainy bridge. Arguing over the radio station, country or top 100. Then the glare of headlights. The car spinning out of control. His mother calling his name. Luciano.
And he’d let her murderer go free for a pile of cash.
He followed the sound of guitar music to the farm. The others were playing the orchard puzzle. It involved picking apples, each one stamped with a different constellation, and tossing them in bins with the same mark. Nok plucked at the guitar with unskilled hands, while Rolf and Mali tossed apples back and forth, laughing, trying to hit each other more than the bins. A pile of half-eaten apples rotted in the sun.
He stared at them like they’d gone insane. “What are you doing?”
Rolf caught an apple from Mali. “There wasn’t any breakfast this morning. That makes the third day. There’s not much here, but it will keep us from starving. We aren’t going to play Cora’s games. She’s egging us on for a fight. All I can conclude is that she’s jealous because we’re happy.” He took a bite of the apple, then tossed it in Lucky’s direction. “Catch!”
The apple hit Lucky’s shoulder and bounced on the grass. Rolf looked at him expectantly, then pointed enthusiastically toward the apple. “Throw it back. I want to see what kind of arm you’ve got. Aren’t all you Americans good at baseball?” A grin cracked his face, like he was making a joke between two friends.
Lucky kicked the apple into the stream.
“Listen. Cora’s gone. Last night I followed her into the mountains, but she just vanished. I thought she was hiding out, but when I went back this morning, her footsteps ended in the snow. There was a second set of prints too, bigger than a human’s. The Caretaker must have taken her.”
Nok and Rolf only blinked calmly, and it made Lucky’s stomach flip. Didn’t they care?
He turned to Mali. “Where did he take her?”
When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her thin shoulders and shook her. Mali just allowed herself to get thrown around like a rag doll. “I do not know.”
“You have to! You’ve seen beyond the walls—you grew up in their world.”
“They tell me what they wish me to know. I assume they remove her.”
He let her go abruptly. “But it hasn’t been twenty-one days yet.”
Mali gave that odd head wobble that was meant to be a shrug. Lucky kicked over one of the bins in disgust; apples rolled everywhere. “They can’t just change the rules! They said we have twenty-one days to obey Rule Three. If they took her before that, then they should take me too. I haven’t obeyed yet either.”
“Perhaps he comes for you next.”
Lucky froze. His head pounded so hard he could barely think. “Comes for me? Well, good. Then he’ll take me wherever he took her, only this time I’ll be ready. Nok, give me that guitar.”
Nok looked up innocently through her long eyelashes. “You want to play?”
“No, I want to break it apart and wrap a string around the Caretaker’s neck when he comes back. Cora was right. It isn’t safe—they can take us at any moment. I should never have listened to you all.”
“Listening to us saved your life.” Rolf kicked an apple with short, sharp jabs, one eye twitching like his head stabbed with pain. His voice was suddenly bitter. “If the Kindred hadn’t—”
“Rolf, shh,” Nok hissed.
“No! I’m tired of everyone acting like idiots instead of using their brains. I thought Cora was smart, but she let her emotions get the best of her. She’s gone crazy with these stupid ideas of escape that are just going to get us all in trouble. You don’t want to end up like her, Lucky.”
Lucky dug his fingers against his temples.
“Don’t you get it?” Rolf sputtered. His face was splotched with red, but his fingers weren’t twitching. “Tell him what you told us, Mali. About Earth.”
A creeping feeling spread through Lucky’s veins. He eyed Mali warily. “What is he talking about?”
“I am not supposed to tell.” Mali shot Rolf a hard look. “The Kindred believe your minds are not yet ready to understand. I only tell you because your mind seems stronger than the others.”
Lucky braced himself. He didn’t care about whatever stupid thing Mali and Rolf had argued about. He sensed that he was about to learn something that he could never unlearn. For a moment he clung to his ignorance. If he didn’t know, he could pretend everything was okay. He could close his eyes and think of home and his granddad and that horse that kept kicking over the fence so the chickens got out.
“Earth is gone,” Mali said.
The ground fell out from under him. He collided with the grass, leaning against an apple tree, the smell of blossoms so thick around him he might choke. His head throbbed. He raked his fingers over his face and scalp, trying to ease the pain. Earth was gone, along with his dad in Afghanistan and his granddad and his mother’s grave with the faded plastic flowers and all the horses and the chicken houses he’d repaired last summer and everyone he had ever known, ever loved, ever said hello to as he crossed the street.
Nok crouched beside him. Her fingers were so soft against his head that he wanted to lean his head into her. His mother had had soft hands too.
He remembered her eyes meeting his as the car careened out of control.
Luciano.
And now even her grave was gone. But so was her murderer. Lucky might not have pulled the trigger that day on the airfield, but Senator Mason was dead.
Lucky lived. And Cora lived.
“Poor Lucky,” Nok said, brushing aside his hair. “I know it’s hard. I was upset too, but there’s nothing we can do but be thankful we weren’t there when it happened.”
Rolf crouched over them, casting a cold shadow. “She’s right, you know. You have to think about this logically, Lucky. Put aside your emotions. The Kindred knew what was going to happen to Earth and picked us, out of everyone, to survive. There’s only the six of us and a few thousand humans scattered throughout the Kindred world. The Kindred were telling the truth all along. The rules aren’t there to be cruel. They’re there to save humanity.” He rested a hand on Lucky’s back. “We have a duty to keep ourselves healthy and keep our species going.”
Lucky felt as though his head was splitting in two. The house in Roanoke he grew up in, with the patch of forest behind it. The strip mall where he used to skateboard. The school where he’d only had two months left to graduation. The army recruiting center. Everyone, and everything—gone.
“We were our own enemy,” Rolf pressed. “Humans. We were so cruel to each other, and to our planet. We didn’t deserve what we had. Look at Cora—she’s sabotaging us, and herself as well. That’s human nature.”
Lucky looked between Nok and Rolf. Neither had spoken much about their pasts, but he could see in their eyes that they had always been outsiders on Earth, just like him. Rolf’s twitching and Nok’s hiding behind her pink streak of hair. The same for Leon, who faced the entire world like it was out to get him. The same for Cora, who’d been wronged by her own father—and by him.
Maybe the Kindred were right to take me.
Maybe he belonged in a cage more than he ever did on Earth. Maybe they all did.
His face was wet, though from tears or sweat or spray from the creek, he wasn’t sure. He sat up. His knuckles popped from the old accident scars. He rubbed the aching joints.
Rolf’s fingers were twitching again. “The Kindred saved our lives. They fixed Nok’s asthma, and my poor vision. I bet they even healed that hand you keep saying gives you trouble. Try it. Nok, give him the guitar.”
“I told you, I can’t play anymore.”
“Just try. Let this be your proof. Earth ruined your hand and took away your music, and the Kindred gave them back to you.”
Lucky dragged a hand over his face. Now that he really thought about it, his joints didn’t actually feel that stiff. Had cracking his knuckles just been an old habit?
“Give me the guitar.”
“You aren’t still planning on attacking the Caretaker with the guitar strings, yeah?” Nok asked.
“Just give me the goddamn guitar.”
Nok handed it over. For a moment, Lucky cradled the wood in his hands. He’d missed the feel of wood. Everything in the cage, even if it looked real, had a synthetic quality. Nothing was quite the right weight or texture, but this was. The wood slipped into his hands like an old friend. The strings were taut.
For a brief second, everything hit him again: they were the only ones left.
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He struck one note, then two. He hadn’t played at all since the accident. Punching the hospital wall had damaged his fingers too badly for fine dexterity. Now, though, the joints didn’t pop or grind. His tendons moved fluidly. Sound came out that tore his heart in two all over again. He played for the hand that the Kindred had miraculously fixed, and he played for a lost world, and he played for a girl who, wherever she was, didn’t even know that they would never go home again.