The Cage(21)

Then, just as suddenly, the pressure was gone. Lucky’s voice calling her name was gone.

But the stranger was not.

His hand still held hers, his skin against her skin, flooding her with that wild sensation she couldn’t name. They were no longer in the town square, but in a plain room. The only light came from seams in the metallic walls and radiated out like starlight.

The Caretaker released her hand. She fell backward, blinded by the starlight, elbow slamming into the hard floor. She scrambled into the corner. Her elbow screamed in pain, but so did every other part of her.

The Caretaker stood over her, speaking words she didn’t understand into a device on his wrist. His voice was rushed. The staticlike voice that spoke back to him in guttural bursts sounded furious.

She dared to peek between her fingers, like she had as a little girl watching a scary movie. A window was set in the wall in front of her, three feet tall and six feet long, but this one wasn’t liquid black and opaque. It was almost like a one-way mirror, cloudy but transparent, and beyond it Lucky and Leon and Nok and Rolf argued soundlessly in the grass. She pushed herself to her feet with shaky steps, cradling her elbow.

“This is how you watch us,” she whispered. “You can see us, but we can’t see you.”

The Caretaker paused in speaking into his wrist, and looked at her. A muscle twitched in his ropelike jaw. He had called it an enclosure, a habitat, but she knew better.

It was a cage.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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12

Lucky

LUCKY SHOVED ASIDE THE cherry tree’s weeping branches for the millionth time, but there was no sign of Cora. “She can’t just vanish!”

Rolf’s face was beet red, his fingers twitching frantically. “He took her, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t, actually. I have no idea what’s going on!”

Nok collapsed, burying her face in the grass. She sobbed in big racking shudders, clutching her head like it ached, smearing snot all over the grass. Jesus. Not that he could blame her—he’d nearly pissed his pants when that metal-skinned creature had appeared—but someone had to hold their shit together. Not that he was any type of leader, but in a group with a fashion model, a twitchy recluse, and a girl whose life he had ruined, he guessed he was the closest thing.

Leon cast Nok a disgusted look. “This isn’t the time for breakdowns, sweetheart. Get up!”

He kicked her.

“Hey!” Lucky shoved Leon, hard. “Don’t be a jerk.” Was everyone insane? The headaches had been bad enough. Now they were acting like terrified preschoolers, picking fights, throwing tantrums. “She’s scared, you bastard.”

Leon kicked her again, harder this time.

“Oh, hell no.” Lucky started toward Leon, but Nok pushed herself up from the grass, cheeks slick with tears. Hot anger twisted her mouth. Her knee connected with Leon’s groin in a satisfying smack that send him doubled over to the ground.

“Christ, woman! You trying to kill me?”

In response, she started kicking him harder with her long, bony feet. “How does that feel? You like that?”

Lucky exchanged a look with Rolf. He knew he should pull Nok away, but he had to admit that it was satisfying to watch. Nok gave him one more kick before Lucky grabbed her.

“That’s enough. Not that he didn’t deserve it.”

Leon rolled over, staring at the sky with glassy eyes. A husky grunt came out of his mouth.

Lucky released Nok. “Stop fighting for one second and let’s think this through. We need to find out where he took Cora. She couldn’t have just disappeared.”

Rolf shoved his spindly fingers through his hair. “Yes, she could. We’re not on Earth anymore. They can bend space and time. We don’t even know what they want.”

“They want us to sleep together!” Nok sank to the grass, next to the prostrate Leon, their earlier fight forgotten. “They want us to have babies so they can do god knows what, probably torture them or raise little human slaves.” Her face went white. “What if they eat them?”

Rolf crouched next to her and patted her back stiffly. “I’m sure that’s not the case. Otherwise they’d just eat us.”

Nok’s face went paler. Lucky let out a silent curse—Rolf was only making it worse. He rubbed his face, hoping to jar some sense into himself. He’d been looking right at Cora when she’d vanished. She’d tossed her head back to look at him one last time. The last time someone had looked at him with such fear in her eyes had been his mother, right before she died. He’d told Cora he’d been five years old when she died, not fifteen. He’d told her he hadn’t seen it, when he’d been in the very car. His mother had yelled out his real name—“Luciano.” Then squealing brakes and twisting metal. Rain and broken glass. Waking up disoriented in a hospital, attached to an IV. His dad there, still wearing his fatigues, eyes sunken from the flight from Afghanistan, saying the worst words in the world.