BACK IN HIS CELL, Lucky couldn’t sleep.
His mind juggled a dozen different thoughts. Worry that Cora and Leon would get caught, which was hardly an irrational fear given Leon’s track record. Worry that Anya would end up dead and the whole plan would fall apart. Worry that they wouldn’t be able to get Nok and Rolf out. And then worry that he’d completely screwed up everything by kissing Cora.
He cursed under his breath. That kiss had been a mistake. He should have stopped her right from the start. Hadn’t he learned anything? Cora was practically hypnotized by Cassian, despite what she said, and she always would be. How exactly was he supposed to compete with a guy who was mix of a billboard model and superhero? Besides, even though he’d told Cora that he wasn’t that same guy who’d gone crazy in the cage, he didn’t trust himself sometimes. The memories were too fresh of that awful night when he had led her up the stairs to their bedroom, taken her dress off slowly, and all the while thinking what they were doing was right.
Right. Well, he wouldn’t make the mistake of kissing her again, even if his thoughts did keep circling back to how soft her lips were.
He quietly dug through his few belongings until he found the notebook Dane had given him, and flipped through the pages haphazardly. He’d filled most of them with his worries. It helped to put them down on paper, night after night, when he couldn’t sleep.
His eyes skimmed over his last entry, from two days ago:
We repaired a hurt antelope today. Jenny and Christopher dragged it in around midday; it had been shot in the shoulder. The whole animal was quivering, its eyes darting back and forth. It was a new animal—I hadn’t seen it before. Pika said we should name it Sunflower, because when Jenny first let it outside, it stood in the sun with its head tilted toward it, and smiled a little. I told Pika that antelopes don’t smile. Pika said Sunflower does.
Now, he flipped to the very beginning. When Dane had given him the notebook, he’d noticed that a few pages were ripped out, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Everything in the Hunt was in disrepair. It hadn’t been until that morning, when they had framed Dane, that he’d found those missing pages in Dane’s cookie tin, stuffed between pocket squares.
Now he unfolded the pages, tilting them toward the faint light of the nearest wall seam, and read them again.
Manual Override Codes, Dane had written. In Case of Animal Emergency.
Lucky scanned through the list of codes and instructions. The Kindred had entrusted Dane, as Head Ward of the backstage area, with keys and a supervisory position. The most powerful of the powerless, Lucky remembered taunting him, and Dane’s smug retort: Not powerless. Not at all.
Apparently, he’d been talking about weapons.
Kill-dart guns, specifically, that Dane could access in the event the wild animals caused an uproar. It seemed the kill-dart guns were locked away in a hidden panel in the medical room, but the code to access it was written right here. Not letters or numbers, but a certain shape Dane needed to trace on the wall to make it open.
Lucky practiced tracing the same symbol on the dust of his floor until he had it memorized. He went to his cell door—he had left it cracked open when he’d come back in with Mali—and closed his eyes to listen. A few kids were snoring. One of the animals was chasing dream-rabbits in its sleep. He carefully pushed the door open, wincing in case the hinges squeaked, but they never did.
He stepped out slowly. The clock above the door indicated Night was three-quarters over already; Cora and Leon better hurry. The blue glow of the lights cast a cold look over the cell room. He passed by the fox’s cell, and the fox looked up at him curiously. He held a finger to his lips and took another step but tripped over a deck of cards.
The deck went skittering across the floor and he froze, one foot still in the air. Someone grumbled in her sleep on the upper level of cages. Was that Jenny’s cell? The blood rushed in his ears. . . .
“We aren’t idiots, you know,” a voice said.
He jerked his head toward Shoukry’s cell. The boy’s face loomed between the bars, and Lucky’s breath stilled. He could say that the lock of his door had broken . . . or . . .
“Don’t worry.” It was another voice, from the opposite direction, and Lucky spun to find Makayla looking out from her own cell. “We didn’t tell Tessela before,” she said. “We aren’t going to now.”
Snores came from the direction of Pika’s cell. She, at least, was still asleep.
“You mean you’ve known this whole time that we can get out of our cells?” Lucky whispered.
“Makayla and I caught on pretty quick,” Shoukry said. “Jenny and Christopher know too. It isn’t so surprising—there have been rumors for a while about kids gaining psychic abilities like the Kindred’s. Is it you, or Cora?”
Lucky hesitated, not sure if he could trust them.
“That’s what I thought,” Shoukry said. “Cora.”
“Dane didn’t know,” Makayla answered. “We made sure of it. Slipped a few slivers of the reverse revival pods in his dinner cakes so he’d sleep deeply. There are benefits to being in charge of the food.” She grinned in the shadows. “We know about your friend in the drecktube too. He breathes really loud.”
Shit. Lucky knew Leon would be trouble.
“Whatever you and Cora and Mali are planning,” Makayla asked, “is it going to get us out of here, maybe even home?”
Lucky looked in the direction of the drecktube. “That’s what we hope. It’s a long shot. But if Cora can—”
“Don’t say it,” Shoukry said. “The less we know, the better. The Kindred have ways of extracting information from your mind that involve lots of tubes and lots of pain. Just, whatever you’re planning, don’t stop. I’ll cover for you the best I can.”
“I will too,” Makayla whispered.
“And me,” another voice said, probably Jenny’s. “And you can count on Christopher too.”
Lucky blinked into the darkness. He had told Cora that they couldn’t leave the others behind, and now he was certain. All this time, the others had been watching out for them. He wasn’t sure how to express how much their trust meant, so he settled for a nod of thanks.
He moved faster now, knowing the others were on his side. He passed by Cora’s empty cell, and then he was in the hallway. He didn’t need to worry about being quiet, but he was all too aware of the ticking clock.
There was less light here; he could barely make out the shape of the medical room. By memory, he walked forward with his hands out until he reached the supply cabinet. He pushed it away from the wall and felt for the seams of a secret panel. When he thought he’d figured out its location, he traced the symbol from Dane’s instructions.
Something beeped. The panel clicked open.
Behind it was a drawer. He held his breath as he reached in. His fingers brushed something cold and metal. A gun. He counted ten smaller ones and at least three bigger ones, though the drawer went back quite far. He took out one of the smaller kill-dart guns. It was heavier than he had expected. Or maybe that was just the weight of his guilt for not telling Cora about this. But Cora was unpredictable, and so were Mali and Leon. That Kindred-made pistol Mali had stolen was only useful for show, which had secretly relieved him. Cora and Mali and Leon working with firearms couldn’t possibly end well.
He cradled the kill-dart gun in his hand, taking a deep breath. He had no intention of using these weapons against any Kindred, or against any humans either. He kept thinking of that day when he’d been about to heal the zebra and had been reminded of that sick horse on his granddad’s farm.
Sometimes just surviving isn’t enough, his granddad had said.
He put the gun away quickly and closed the panel door. At the time, he had thought of killing the animals as a cruel sort of kindness. One that he’d like to avoid at all costs, if possible. Hopefully he’d find another way to save them. Maybe if Cora did beat the Gauntlet, he’d be granted more authority, and could take the animals away from the menagerie and care for them properly. But in case the worst happened, he’d rather put every single animal out of its misery with his own hand than force them to continue this sick cycle of pain. As for the other kids, well, they could each make up their own minds. If it got bad enough, or if someone was wounded very badly . . . a quick and painless option could be good for them too.
He felt through the darkness for the door, and then was back in the cell block—moving faster now, glancing at the clock—and into his cell. He pulled the door all the way closed. The lightlock clicked on, casting a glow over the crumpled journal pages in his hand. He slid them into his journal and sank to the floor.
Someone was still snoring, but now Lucky knew it was probably just an act. All these nights while he had lain awake, the others probably had too.
He kept his eyes going between the hallway and the clock.
Cora didn’t have much time.
The fox nudged against the bars again. He petted it, a little hard, but the fox didn’t seem to mind, or to notice just how feverishly, in that moment, he hated himself for what he one day might have to do to it.
His mind raced, and he knew there’d be no sleep for him. He grabbed up the journal and the pencil nub, and started writing to get it out of his head.
The others know. All this time, they’ve been protecting us. . . .
His pencil paused. He caught a glimpse in the faint light of the markings on his hand; coding that designated him as a human only suitable for menagerie work.
Maybe Cora is right about what happens after the Gauntlet. It isn’t fair to ask people who have already been through so much to give up a chance of going home. And god, I think about what it would be like, if we did get back. I’d walk into a grocery store and fill up three shopping carts with bacon and Pop-Tarts and soda. I wouldn’t join the army. I’d take over the farm—just me and the horses and the stars. And Cora—if she’d come.
He flipped a page.
But then—and here’s what I can’t shake—why does going home feel so wrong? And it does. It makes me sick to my stomach. The animals, the humans: we’re all marked the same way, might as well be brothers in captivity. I can’t picture a world where we’re free and they’re not. If it comes to it, I’ll do what I have to. But I hope it doesn’t. I hope Cora beats the Gauntlet. I hope she decides to stay.
I hope she decides to build a life here, where we’re needed.
Where I’ll be.