CORA WENT INTO A different alcove to change into the gold dress, and when she came out, the dancing girl had finished onstage. The girl now slouched on a stool at the end of the bar, gulping water from a cloudy glass, shaking her head at something the Kindred guest on the next stool said. Cora recognized him as the one with the eerily sunken eyes. He produced a golden token from his pocket; it flashed in the lantern light. The dancing girl hunched further, massaging the muscles around her hurt knee, but then sighed and took the token. The Kindred patted her on the head as one would a dog.
Cora’s stomach turned. In the cage, she had been constantly observed, but there had been walls. The Kindred could watch but not touch. Here, there were no walls. Nothing to stop the Kindred from doing whatever they wanted to their human pets. And judging by the bandage on the dancer’s knee, and the scraggly haircuts on the others, the Kindred weren’t particuarly interested in their pets’ welfare.
Cassian motioned to the empty stage.
“I’m supposed to start singing now?” she asked. “Already?”
“This isn’t like your previous enclosure. There is no adjustment period. Here you sing, or you starve.” He held out his hand to help her up, but she ignored it and stepped onstage. Her bare feet crunched over sand grit and something uncomfortably sticky. She lifted the gold dress’s hem, trying not to look too hard at the stains on the stage.
“What am I supposed to sing?”
“Whatever you like,” Cassian answered. “We do not create music; to us, it all sounds alike. Pleasant but vague.”
She stared beyond the microphone at the tables that were now cast in shadows. When she shaded her eyes, she just made out the dancing girl with her arms around the Kindred guest, the two of them dancing slowly in the center of the room.
Cassian started for the door.
“Wait,” Cora whispered, covering the microphone. “You’re just going to leave me here?” He was a monster, yes, but a monster she knew.
“My responsibilities as a Warden did not end when your enclosure failed. We are in the process of introducing new wards to that facility. Younger ones this time, taken from regulated preserves where they have been raised. There is hope they will adapt better than your cohort did, as they have never known Earth. We will have to suspend Rule Three until they are older, but it is an acceptable sacrifice.”
“You mean they’re just children?” she asked.
He nodded.
Her stomach turned again.
“You do not believe it is morally correct to take children,” he concluded. “If you don’t like it, then work with me to change the system. Consider what I’ve told you. This place will”—he looked around at the dirty floor—“give you needed perspective. You will soon realize that I am correct. If you have any hope of bettering your life, the Gauntlet is the only way. I will return when my duties allow to see if you have changed your mind.”
She didn’t answer. He wove among the tables and then disappeared back into the warren of tunnels through the asteroid to his life, to his job, to his responsibilities that weren’t her.
For a moment, the lodge was silent. The spotlights shone in her eyes, and she had to blink to see around them. The boys at the bar and the girl dancing with the Kindred guest were watching her.
She tapped the microphone and coughed at the cloud of dust.
It looked vintage, like the kind radio announcers in old movies spoke into, and yet there were no wires. An artificial reconstruction, just like the spotlights shining in her eyes, and the smell of sticky-sweet drinks being served at the bar. She shifted in the gold dress, unused to how it hugged her body.
Before her, the Kindred audience was cast in shadows. More had arrived, and now the sounds of a dozen guests waiting filled the silence. All were dressed in artificial human clothes. The only exceptions were two Kindred soldiers in black uniforms, heading out toward the savanna. Sweat trickled down her back as she cleared her throat again.
“Wishing on a star, never thought I’d come this far. . . .” Her voice reverberated around the corners of the room louder than she’d expected. The two bartenders stopped what they were doing and turned in surprise, like they hadn’t heard real singing in years.
“Across the night sky, never knowing why . . .”
The sounds of a vehicle roared in the distance; chairs squeaked as the Kindred guests twisted toward the savanna, more interested in the most recent hunt than in her song, and for some crazy reason, this angered her.
“Wanting to stay strong, surrounded by monsters . . .”
She knew she was pushing it, but they ignored her. Apparently, Cassian was right: for all their brilliance, subtext in song was lost on them.
The gong sounded, signaling a returning expedition. But then it sounded again. And again, haphazardly, as though someone was falling against it. Someone shouted, though Cora couldn’t make out the words. A few of the guests jumped up and ran to the French doors to see what had caused the commotion. She stood on her tiptoes at the edge of the stage, trying to see over the guests’ heads.
And then, suddenly, the guests parted. The two uniformed soldiers she’d noticed earlier came striding up the veranda stairs with a human boy between them. He was tall, with medium-brown skin and short hair, and he wore a safari uniform with leather driving gloves and, dangling around his neck, a set of driving goggles.
“It isn’t time yet!” he yelled, as he fought against the guards. “It’s too soon!”
Cora threw a look to the bartenders, who watched apprehensively, not making a move to help the boy. Three other kids came up the savanna stairs, including the same scrawny-limbed boy and girl as before, their safari uniforms caked with even more dust, eyes just as wide as they watched the boy being dragged off.
The boy locked eyes with the blond bartender. “Dane! Tell the others. We’ve all been lied to and—” One of the guards jabbed a device into the boy’s side and he slumped, unconscious. The two guards dragged him to a red door behind the bar. One of the bartenders started to follow, but the other one—Dane—held out a hand to stop him.
For a second, the entire lodge was silent.
Cora looked around in confusion, hoping for an explanation. The guests seemed shaken but not entirely surprised. They whispered among themselves, faces wearing exaggerated masks of pity for the boy.
A dishrag flew at her, and she jumped.
“Sing, songbird,” the bartender named Dane commanded. “Distract them.”
But she could only stand there, lips parted. No sound came from her throat. No lyrics came into her head. It was too much, all of it. To be abandoned here, thrust onstage, witness to whatever awful thing had just happened to that boy. And on top of everything, who was Cassian to say that she was supposed to set humanity free?
Dane rolled his eyes and jerked his head for her to step off the stage. He put on some recorded music and ordered the dancing girl to get up there. As soon as she did, the guests seemed to forget about the incident, returning to their drinks and conversations and slow dances.
“You’ve got ten minutes to pull yourself together,” Dane threatened Cora. “And then you sing when I tell you to sing.”
The guest with the sunken eyes had been close enough to hear their conversation. His head was cocked in her direction now, as though he could see straight into the offstage shadows where they stood. He smiled slightly.
She hugged her arms, feeling cold despite the humid air, until a hand reached out from the shadows and pinched her.