WIND WHIPPED THROUGH THE ruins of the Gauntlet’s control rooms. Mali hunkered close to the wall of the recess room, her braids flying around her head. The other captives shifted anxiously as the last remaining support structures groaned precariously.
“This place isn’t going to last much longer!” she called to Leon, cupping her hands around her mouth so the wind wouldn’t tear her words away.
He jerked his thumb toward the Axion standing guard in the doorway. “Tell that to the guys with the guns.”
Willa rested her hand on Mali’s other arm, pointing toward the monitor, which was flickering between static and displays of the coded symbols. Willa shaped a few gestures with her fingers. Mali hadn’t ever officially studied sign language, but over the years, trapped in different enclosures and cages with a variety of species that couldn’t always speak the same language, she had picked up the basics. She recognized several of Willa’s signs.
Axion. Storm. Clever. Watch screens.
Mali nodded. “I understand.” She twisted toward Leon to translate. “Willa says the Axion aren’t stupid—they know this place is about to go but don’t want to leave until they’re certain Cora has lost. That monitor is still showing some scrolling symbols, which means Cora’s still in the puzzles. It isn’t over. They’re still trying to get into the chambers.”
Willa’s hand clenched harder on Mali’s arm. Mali turned around with a questioning look. The chimp’s wide eyes were riveted to the screen.
Serassi’s eyes were on the screen too. “Fascinating,” she said.
“What is it?” Mali asked, feeling a fresh twinge of panic. “Can you read it?”
“Yes.” Serassi spoke in a hushed voice, eyes shifting nervously to the closest Axion guard, whose back was turned. “The storm is causing bad fluctuation, but I can make out most of it.” Suddenly the corners of her mouth dipped in a smile. “Cora’s made it to puzzle twelve.”
Mali clamped her hand over Willa’s, crying out with relief.
“That girl’s a fighter, for sure,” Leon said incredulously.
Mali squinted in the wind, trying to see through the doorway to the central vestibule. “It looks as though the monitors in the main room have all shorted out completely. I do not think the Axion know the extent of her progress.”
The main support beam groaned again. Even the Axion guard looked over his shoulder to give it a nervous stare.
“What about Cassian?” Mali asked quickly.
“The coding reports that Cora is alone in the puzzle,” Serassi said, keeping her voice low. Her brow furrowed as she tried to interpret the scattering of symbols on the screen. “It doesn’t mean he’s dead. The Gauntlet has been separating them and putting them together at random intervals. If he is in a different part of the Gauntlet, the monitor won’t register that, since it is only following Cora’s progress.”
Leon eyed the groaning beam. “She’d better solve that last puzzle fast. . . .”
“Wait,” Serassi said, focused intently on the screen. “There is new information. It is difficult to read, with the distortion. It seems Cora is in some sort of Earth-like scenario. I can read the symbol for trees. A road.”
“That could be anywhere back home,” Leon said.
“I’m trying to read more,” Serassi said tersely. “The puzzle has the coding for the color red. Red means a morality puzzle.”
“She’s good at those,” Mali said, hope in her voice. “It’s the intellectual and perceptive puzzles that give her the most trouble, but she must have already passed those. She’s been reading Lucky’s journal as a moral guide.” Mali swallowed, squeezing Willa’s hand in her own and Leon’s in the other. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the screen, though the symbols meant nothing to her.
You can do it, Cora. Think of Lucky.
Serassi continued to focus on the screen. “Now I am reading the symbol for water. It’s distorted. I can’t quite make out more details. Rain, I believe.”
“It’s simulating somewhere back on Earth, with trees and a road and rain,” Leon said. “And it’s moral? What’s she supposed to do, stop a flash flood or something?”
“Wait—another water symbol,” Serassi said. “A river. There is distance between Cora and the water. She’s above it. She’s—”
Serassi’s face went suddenly slack.
A dark premonition took hold of Mali. “What happened?” She grabbed Serassi, shaking her. “What about a river?”
“It’s Cora,” Serassi muttered, her eyes wide. “She . . . fell. She fell into the water below. It happened just now. The symbols are going crazy. They’re coming so fast.” Serassi swung her head around, meeting Mali’s gaze directly. “She . . . she’s dead. Drowned.”
Mali’s hand froze on her arm. Suddenly the wind didn’t seem as loud. The puddles didn’t feel as cold against her feet. She felt the blood draining from her extremities in a way that made her dizzy.
“She lost,” Serassi stated.
An awful numbness spread through Mali’s body. “No,” she whispered.
She sank back against the wall, stunned.
She didn’t know which piece of information was harder to process—that Cora was dead or that she had lost. Cora had been their last hope, and she’d gotten so far. They had traveled the galaxy to be here. They had learned to achieve things no human had before. They had fought their way to the very end of the Gauntlet.
She pressed her hand against her mouth, silencing a sob.
Willa started making a strange huffing noise that Mali thought might be how she expressed her grief. She glanced toward the Axion guard, but with the chaos from the storm, he hadn’t heard their exclamations.
“Hey . . .” Leon pulled her into his arms, holding her tight. “Listen, she died for a cause. We’re still here. We’ll still fight, however we can. We won’t go down easy.”
But even despite Leon’s reassurances, a blackness had appeared in Mali’s chest. She heard Leon’s words as only hollow sounds. Fighting was useless. They’d already fought and lost. They’d be enslaved now, not just humans but all the species, or else slaughtered. She stared at her hands, at the scars, and started shaking with anger. She had promised herself never to be a victim again. And yet here she was. Her fingers started trembling harder, tingling even. She shook them, thinking it must be the cold. But they tingled in a way that felt . . . strange.
She pulled away from Leon, looking down at her hands.
Why did they feel so different? Like energy was pooling in her fingertips. That energy spread into her palms and up her arms. She didn’t dare touch Leon, fearing the energy, like he might shatter into dust if she touched him.
“I feel odd,” she said.
Leon started knitting his fingers too, as though they were spasming. “It must be the cold,” he said. “And the shock of . . .” He nodded toward the monitor that had reported Cora’s death.
But the feeling was now spreading throughout Mali’s body faster. She felt suddenly ten pounds lighter, as though she were barely even sitting on the ground anymore. It was a mix of euphoria and confidence so powerful it was almost scary. The sensation crept up her spine, her neck, into her head. A starburst of electricity radiated through her brain, and she gasped and clutched at a piece of the shattered wall.
“Mali, look!” Leon pointed to Mali’s hand.
Mali glanced down at the piece of wall beneath her fingers. It was made of something strong, like steel. The power of the storm, even of the bomb, had only barely managed to dent it. And yet the portion in her hand was crumpled like a ball of paper.
She whipped her hand back.
“How’d you do that?” Leon said. “You bent metal!”
At the same time, Serassi’s head slowly tilted up. Her hair hung in messy waves by her ears, but there was a different look on her face. One not of despair but of wonder. Serassi knit her fingers against the back of her skull, eyes wide. “Impossible . . .”
“You feel it too, don’t you?” Mali said.
“What?” Leon asked in alarm. “What’s going on? Why are my hands all tingly?”
“Because it’s happening,” Serassi said, her voice shaking. “The evolutionary jump. It’s happening. It’s strongest with me and Mali because our perceptive abilities are already honed, but it’s starting with you too, Leon. It’ll take more time with you and the others, but it’s happening. You feel different, don’t you?”
He looked uncomfortably at his hands. “Kind of strong. Like I downed an energy drink.”
“Just wait,” Serassi said, and then her face broke into a smile. “It will grow. It will spread. First humans will feel stronger physically, as you two are already experiencing. Be capable of running faster, greater strength. Then greater intelligence will come. A more sophisticated moral sensibility. Then, in time, perceptive powers will develop. Don’t you see?”
She looked among them all. “It worked. The Gauntlet. I don’t know how Cora did it, but it worked.” She glanced at the symbols scrolling across the screen, lips moving silently as she tried to piece it together. “If she had failed, the stock algorithm would have stopped broadcasting those scrolling symbols, but they’re still going. Ah! I see my mistake now. I thought the symbol meant fall, but it didn’t. It meant jump. Cora jumped intentionally. She . . . she sacrificed herself symbolically. She won the moral puzzle. She won the Gauntlet.”
Mali gasped. Cora won.
Mali could barely process such a revolutionary concept, except that her mind seemed to be working faster than it ever had before. She scrolled quickly through what this meant—that the tingle in her fingers was the evolutionary jump. That she was one of the first humans it would happen to, and soon she’d be more perceptive, smarter, stronger.
But . . .
“But she’s still gone?” Mali asked.
Serassi must have heard the uncertain tone in her voice. “I’m afraid so. The screen is very clear about the death symbol.” She paused. “But she didn’t die for nothing.”
Mali felt dizzy again. Cora had won, but at such a heavy price. She glanced at the Axion guarding the door. His back was still turned. He hadn’t seen the information on the monitor, and neither had any other Axion, judging by the repetitive thunking in the central vestibule as his colleagues still tried to break into the portal door, not knowing that it was futile now. Not knowing the Gauntlet was already over.
“Serassi, if you’re experiencing the evolutionary jump too, if you’re stronger, do you think you can free us?” Mali whispered.
Serassi smiled in cold determination. She stood, stalking silently toward the Axion guard. She ran her fingers through her loose hair, twisting it back into a fresh knot, looking even more powerful and deadly than she always had.
The other captured Kindred along the opposite wall were all glancing at one another, and if Mali had to guess, they were exchanging psychic messages.
“I don’t get it,” Leon whispered. “What’s going on?”
“Watch,” Mali said. “And wait.”
Mali’s heart thumped hard as Serassi moved behind the guard. The guard heard her a second before she attacked and he turned, but Serassi moved impossibly fast, knitting her fingers in the air as Anya had done. The Axion went rigid. Serassi continued to move her fingers. The Axion started moving in a swaying way, no longer in control of his own body. He took a swaying step toward the rear of the room, toward the wall that had been torn off. Then another. The captives moved back, letting him pass. Serassi guided him all the way to the end of the room, where the floor abruptly ended in a twenty-foot drop into twisting, sharp wreckage.
The Axion stepped off and fell to his death.
Serassi turned, staring at her hands. “I’ve never been able to do that before. Take control of another’s mind and command their body. The evolutionary jump worked.” She looked at the other Kindred prisoners with a steady gaze that meant they were exchanging messages telepathically. Almost as one, the other Kindred stood.
“You must still be quiet,” Mali said. “The Axion will hear you.”
“Let them.” Serassi glanced over her shoulder as the Kindred prisoners strode purposefully toward the door. “We’re done being captives. They aren’t stronger than us anymore, and they’re about to feel justice.”
The Kindred started spilling out into the central vestibule. Redrage joined them, and even the Gatherer prisoner. Leon grabbed Mali, holding her back, but he needn’t have bothered. She was too stunned by all this information, and the sensation in her body, to be able to fight yet. Was this happening to all humans, everywhere? To Nok and Rolf on Armstrong? Even to the ones back on Earth? They stopped at the door, watching as the surprised Axion tried to defend themselves from the Kindred.
The battle happened fast.
The Kindred were not vindictive. They were not bloodthirsty or after revenge. They were simply cold and efficient as they and their Mosca and Gatherer compatriots dispatched every Axion traitor in the room.
Throats sliced.
Skulls crushed through telekinesis.
“You know what this means,” Leon said. “This means the same thing is happening throughout the galaxy. To all the planets and stations with humans and Kindred on them. The Axion won’t last long.” He wrapped an arm around Mali’s waist. “It means we’re free now. We can go to Theta and get Anya back!”
She thought of Anya—the real Anya. She’d finally be able to repay her friend for all the times Anya had saved her life. And even better, she’d be with Leon. Together they’d rescue Anya, just as they’d freed Cassian. She smiled, thinking of being trapped in the shuttle’s lining with him, pressed so close. How she’d been so hesitant to trust him—to trust anyone.
Not anymore.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Wherever we go, we’ll go there together. I promise.”
And she believed him. “We could go back to our solar system. Learn if Earth is still there,” she said.
Leon looked down at her. The storm was making the structure shake violently, but Mali felt as though they were tucked away in some other place: the calm eye of the storm. She and Leon. And now there was a real future for them, where she might be able to find her family and return to the desert where she’d been born.
She laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“Despite your best efforts,” she said, “you couldn’t avoid being a hero.”
He rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth curled upward. “Keep that to yourself.”
They watched from the recess room as the Kindred soldiers dispatched the last of the Axion with deadly precision. Mali flexed her fingers. She had transformed into something new: a new type of human, one more capable and, she hoped, wiser.
“Everything is working out,” she said, but felt that pang of darkness. “Except Cora isn’t here.”
Leon hugged her close, rubbing a hand down her back. He didn’t need to offer reassuring words; they could feel each other’s sadness and gratitude for Cora’s sacrifice. No matter how much Mali knew Cora had done something world changing, she couldn’t shake her sadness.
“I can’t believe she’s gone.” She let out a sob. And then more. She’d cried so rarely. Was this what it meant to be human? To feel such sorrow?
Leon kept rubbing her back as she rested her forehead against his chest. Then his hand stopped, and she felt his breathing go still as footsteps approached.
Mali jerked upright, wiping away the tears.
Cassian stood in the ruins of the central vestibule.
Blood streaked down one of his arms. His fingers were shredded as though he’d climbed out of the jagged wreckage of the puzzle chambers with his bare hands. The lines of his face were heavy with exhaustion, but there was determination written there too, along with a sheen in his eyes—the evolutionary jump.
“Cassian, you’re alive!” she said.
He gave a single nod. “Come with me. This isn’t over yet.”
Mali frowned as she and Leon pushed to their feet. “You mean the battle?”
“The battle will continue until the Axion are defeated—but in the meantime, we have something just as important to do.”
Cassian motioned for them to follow him as he stepped over the uneven floor. His movements were quick, anxious. Mali scrambled behind him as he led them through the devastation of the central vestibule, toward the place where the portal door had once been. Now it was broken, crumpled in on itself, the opening crunched to only a foot high. Cassian dropped down to his stomach to crawl through.
“We’re going into the puzzle chambers?” Mali asked in alarm.
“Yes, and we must hurry,” Cassian said, “before the storm does any more damage.” He was already crawling through the narrow space. His head disappeared into the chamber, then his torso, then his feet. Mali glanced at Leon.
He shrugged and dropped to his stomach.
They followed Cassian through the damaged portal door. Mali’s heartbeat thumped as she spilled out into a room with gridlike panels on the walls, the ceiling halfway torn off, lights flickering. Her breath stilled. She knew the puzzles were over. Yet for years she’d heard rumors about the Gauntlet, and she still expected some shocking illusion to appear at any moment.
“We’re going after Cora, aren’t we?” she asked.
Cassian nodded. “This way.”
“But she’s dead. Serassi saw it on the monitors. It was real. It had to be or else the evolutionary jump wouldn’t have happened.”
“It was real,” Cassian confirmed as they climbed through a maze of identical chambers, each one more devastated than the last. The wreckage sliced Mali’s hands, bruising her knees as they dropped down from trapdoors and crawled through broken wall seams. Sparks snapped and popped as the storm continued to rage outside. “Cora did sacrifice herself,” he continued, moving quickly to try to beat the storm. “She fully believed that she would die when she jumped, which is what the morality puzzle required.”
He shuffled through a torn wall seam, then dropped to his knees, leaning over something on the floor. Mali and Leon pushed their way through the seam behind him, spilling out into another wrecked puzzle chamber. Mali froze.
“Cora,” she breathed.
Cassian was leaning over Cora’s body. She lay in a puddle of dark liquid that was slowly draining from the cracks in the chamber’s floor. Her blond hair, soaked, clung to her pale skin. Her Gauntleteer uniform was tangled around her lifeless limbs. She wasn’t breathing.
Mali looked away with a quick inhale.
“It’s okay,” Leon said, rubbing her shoulder. “She knew what she was doing. It was her choice.”
Hesitantly, Mali glanced back at Cora’s body. Cassian was lifting each of her eyelids, then feeling along her skull as though to check for broken bones. His movements were quick, anxious.
Mali frowned. “She’s dead, Cassian. She isn’t breathing.”
Cassian parted Cora’s teeth to look inside her mouth, then quickly picked her up in his arms, carrying her back to the broken wall seam. “You are correct,” he said. “She is not breathing.” He squeezed through the wall seam with Cora’s body and then hurried back through the course they had taken through the Gauntlet wreckage. “But it doesn’t mean she’s dead.”
Mali drew in a sharp breath as she ducked under a fallen beam. “She’s alive? How?”
But the storm had made another beam fall, blocking their path. Cassian changed course and plunged into another chamber, then stepped carefully over a shattered wall panel and bent down to open a trapdoor in the floor.
It revealed a dark pit.
This was not part of the official module.
He grabbed a few sets of goggles hanging from a hook. “Put these on so you can see.” He pulled one pair over his own eyes and then climbed into the pit. Mali and Leon hurried to do the same. The temperature was cool. Storm water made the stone walls slick, but the floor was well trodden.
A cave.
When she came around the corner, unused to the red tint that the Mosca goggles gave everything, she stopped.
A small cavern had been converted into a makeshift medical room, with a bed and beeping equipment. Cassian laid out Cora’s body on the bed and began hooking up the equipment, affixing sensors to Cora’s arms, pressing a tube into her throat. Thick blue liquid started to flow out of the tube.
Slowly—impossibly—Cora’s chest rose and fell.
Mali ran to the bed.
“What is this? How is this possible?”
The anxious set to Cassian’s expression eased. He leaned over the bed, blood still trickling down his arm, and rested a gentle hand on Cora’s forehead. Her chest rose in another breath.
He looked at Mali and gave a weary smile.
“Cora taught me how to cheat,” he explained. “And I paid very close attention.”