WITH SHAKING HANDS, CORA dug the bone free of the mud. She tried to convince herself it was from a dog or a horse, only there were no animals in the cage.
Just people.
If Cassian had taken Yasmine’s body, whose bone was this?
Her stomach clenched with a swell of vomit. The bone was old and sun-bleached; it must have been there for months, maybe even years, though it was hard to tell in a place where time moved differently. She pushed herself to her feet, struggling with the mud threatening to swallow her back down.
The bone had to mean that they weren’t the first kids in the cage. There had been others.
But what had killed them?
To her left, palm branches hid one of the humming black windows. She shoved the leaves aside and pounded on the glass.
“I know you’re watching, Cassian! Show yourself!”
Her hair began to rise even before she’d finished the sentence. She hadn’t quite believed it would work, but then she saw his reflection behind her in the panel and went still. Did she really want to know what had happened to the last group? It wasn’t too late to drop the bone, stop questioning, and accept their prison.
But then she looked at the jungle mud splashed on the hem of her dress. A dead girl’s dress. Any of them could be next, unless she did something about it.
She turned slowly on the Caretaker.
He cut such a striking figure against the jungle backdrop that it was hard not to be anything but awestruck. In person, he was always larger than she remembered. She couldn’t help but take in all the little details that made him real: the dent in his nose. The slight scar on his chin. The way his hand flexed at his side when he was struggling to control his emotions. For a moment she forgot about the bone, and Yasmine, and she was back in the menagerie, on the soft cushions around the babbling fountain. His lips had been just an inch from hers. I’m not interested in learning about kisses from them, he had said, and her anger had melted away, just as it did now. Had he read her thoughts about showing him what a kiss was?
Had he wanted her to show him?
She gasped, shocked by her own line of thought, unable to calm her rapid heartbeat as easily as he was able to. She squeezed the bone, refocusing herself.
“What the hell is this?”
Cassian didn’t blink. “That belonged to a previous inhabitant of this environment.”
“A dead inhabitant.”
The accusation seemed to slip off his smooth skin, and he cocked his head calmly. “Yes. We are able to synthetically replicate your world within these boundaries, but it requires a large supply of carbon. If humans die, it is perfectly logical to recycle their carbon. Most is absorbed quickly; sometimes there are pieces that take longer.”
“This whole place is made of dead bodies?”
“We use a variety of carbon sources, not only human carcasses. I would place the number of bodies that have been absorbed into this environment at twelve. This enclosure is relatively new. Your cohort is only the third one to occupy it.”
She squeezed the bone harder. “What happened to the other two groups?”
“The cohorts both failed. Each ward was terminated as a result of their own actions.”
Cora frowned, uncertain of what he meant.
“They murdered each other,” he clarified calmly, as though this information didn’t trouble him in the least. But it rocked Cora; her heart seized into a fist.
“Murdered?”
“We discovered that none of the previous inhabitants of this environment were adaptable to captivity,” he continued. “They grew irate. The males fought over the females. They started wandering alone instead of residing within the settlement areas. Eventually they killed each other.”
“You mean they went crazy.” It was a struggle to control her voice. “They couldn’t handle your mind games. The headaches. The optical illusions. You pushed them too far, messing around with time and space, matching random strangers together . . . what did you expect would happen?”
She was shouting now.
He folded his hands. “Naturally, given our moral code, this was alarming. It will not happen again.”
“Why not?” She threw her arm in the direction of the jungle huts. “Leon’s halfway there already!”
For a second his mask slipped, and she saw indecision in his eyes. “The previous cohorts were selected solely for their desirable traits and their fertility. Unfortunately, their advanced age made them unable to adapt. That is why the six of you are all of an adolescent age. Old enough for procreation, but young enough to adapt. We spent considerable time reconfiguring the habitats to reflect the needs of your age bracket.”
If it hadn’t been for the heavy fatigue in her limbs, Cora would have wanted to slap him. The adults all turned violent, so they took teenagers instead. This explained the childlike nature of life in the cage: the candy store, the arcade, the prizes. As if they were six years old, not sixteen.
“Is that really what you think matters to us? Toys? Candy?” She sucked in a breath. “Is that really what you think matters to me?”
She clamped her mouth shut before her voice broke. She knew how desperate she sounded. The other Kindred viewed them as dolls they could toy with, but she had thought Cassian was different. She thought he saw her as a person, not a plaything.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
Cora closed her eyes, but the image of the bleached bone didn’t go away. Was she truly just a chore for him—something to keep alive and healthy? What about the times he’d bent the rules for her? What about the necklace with the charm of a dog? What about the stars?
She clutched her necklace so hard that the sharp charms bit into her palm. With her eyes closed, she could almost believe she was back home. She’d wake in the morning in her own bed, with the smell of brunch downstairs, and the soft hum of the morning news on the downstairs TV.
“Cora.”
Her eyes snapped open. He’d moved close enough that she tasted metal.
“I know that more matters to you. I know that you long for home. I know that you wish you had told your family more often that you loved them.” He reached for her neck. The Warden’s hand flashed in her head, his fingers against her windpipe. But Cassian’s hand didn’t tighten around her throat; it stopped on the charm necklace. His bare fingers touched it gently, almost reverently, and that nameless electricity sparked around the edges of her throat.
“How long were you watching me on Earth?” she whispered.
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“To know you, and what you are capable of. There is more to you than the other wards know. Boy Two cares for you, but he doesn’t know you. Not as well as I do.” His fingers curled around the charms. Their bodies were very nearly touching. Her eyes sank closed as his breath whispered against her ear.
“A smile can hide so much. A smile can be a lie.” His voice rose and fell oddly. With a start, she realized he was trying to sing—but his voice was rusty and unpracticed; he must never have sung before. It was one of the songs she had written after the bomb threat at her dad’s political rally.
Heat radiated from Cassian’s hand, holding on to the necklace, holding on to her.
“A smile can make me want to scream, and leave all this behind.”
He was singing her words, which she’d never shared with anyone—not even Charlie. Words she’d used to make sense of a life she didn’t fit into anymore. About a little girl who was supposed to spend her whole life smiling, even when she was sad, or scared, or went to prison for a crime she didn’t commit.
Her throat burned. She’d been holding her breath. It caught up with her all at once, and she sucked in air. Her chest grazed against his; electricity pulsed and the bone knocked against her leg. The bone. She’d forgotten the femur clutched in her hand.
She stepped back, and he released her necklace, and the spell was broken.
“Cora—”
“Get away from me.” Her voice was a knife. “You’re a liar. We aren’t safe here at all. If you don’t kill us first, then we’ll end up killing each other.”
He looked at her like she’d slapped him. His hand flexed at his side, once, twice, and he opened his mouth as though to plead with her. But then he straightened, and the mask returned.
“Your safety is of utmost importance to us. The stock algorithm accurately predicts—”
“Did the stock algorithm predict what happened with the last groups?”
He paused. “There is always a margin of error.”
Margin of error, she thought. Such a tidy way to explain twelve dead bodies.
The sun was merciless. The mud tried to swallow her feet. Fear and anger and exhaustion seized her body in a tight fist, and yet the worst of all of it was the way his black eyes shifted to her, always back to her, as though she was different. His pet.
I am different, she realized. I’m the only one sane enough to know we’re in danger.
“I will personally ensure the safety of everyone in this environment,” Cassian repeated more insistently. “We simply require you to follow a set of basic rules.” He leaned close, and all that emotion came rushing back. He could be tender; he could be cruel too. “It has been twenty-one days, Cora. You have until midnight.”
With another swell in pressure, he was gone.
Cora sprinted away from the jungle. The ocean taunted her with each crashing wave that moved too slowly, reminding her that nothing was real, not this place, not Cassian’s promise that they were all safe.
This is how it begins. She’d been a fool to think she could ever leave the others behind. They would die without her there to keep them sane, and the sand would swallow their bones.
She reached town just as the artificial sun dropped another level. She slowed to a walk. The only sound was the jukebox music and the beeping arcade games. No insects trilling, no barking dogs, no traffic or hum of electricity, but fears roared in her head.
Ahead, sitting on the porch swing, were Lucky and Nok. She ran for them, about to call out, but then slowed. Nok wore a look Cora had never seen before. She wasn’t hiding behind her pink stripe of hair. She was facing Lucky, one hand on his thigh, purring into his ear.
She stopped abruptly.
Back in the jungle, Nok’s panties had been tangled in Leon’s sheets. Now she had her hands on Lucky. Cora dropped to her knees and crawled closer, through the marigolds.
As much as Cora wanted to trust her, Nok was hiding things.
It was time to find out what.