He piloted the ship into a valley, toward a dark shadow Cora had mistaken for a cave, which turned out to be a docking port. Heavy metal doors fixed with intricate Mosca locks opened with a rumble as Bonebreak evened out the ship for entry.
“I can smell roast cave rat already,” he said happily.
As the doors opened, they plunged into the deep of the mountain, and the view screen went black. Bonebreak hummed to himself as they flew into the blackness, seemingly untroubled about the absence of light.
“I already radioed in from the outer atmosphere,” he said. “My brother will be waiting for us in the terminal. Expect to be filled with delicious foods—we are a hospitable race even to lowly humans and apes.”
Cora rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips too.
The ship landed.
The hatch opened, and Bonebreak took his bag and jumped down. Willa helped Anya and Cora down. She blinked in the darkness. There were no lights or guides to show where they were going, only the faint glow of what seemed to be glowworms or bioluminescence up high.
“Bonebreak?” she called. She could hear him humming ahead. “Wait! Turn a light on.”
“Light?” His voice was disembodied in the darkness. “What light?”
Cora reached out in front of her to avoid bumping into anything. “How are we supposed to see where we’re going?”
Bonebreak grumbled to himself as his footsteps returned, and she felt his glove on her shoulder. “I forgot about humans’ poor eyes. Our masks give us the ability to see in the dark as well as in the light. My brother will have some extra masks for you. Until then, link hands, and I will guide you.”
Cora gagged at the thought of having to wear one of the Mosca’s reeking masks. Willa slipped her hand in Cora’s, and Anya took the other one, and they started walking. Cora couldn’t help noticing how eerily still Anya’s hand was, clutched in her own.
She gave Anya’s fingers a squeeze. “It seems like you’re doing better. With the tremor in your hand, I mean.”
Anya’s hand suddenly went rigid. “It . . . comes and goes,” she said. “I’ve been sleeping better, and that helps.”
A cold premonition ran down Cora’s back. Sleeping better? Would that really make a difference on a physical impairment? And yet she hardly knew the girl, not really. She certainly didn’t know the details about how exactly the Kindred drugs had affected her.
“I’m glad,” Cora said.
The temperature was cool and damp, a blessing after Armstrong’s blistering desert. Bonebreak stopped, and she heard more complicated locks opening and then a few formal-sounding Mosca exchanges between shadowy figures she could barely make out in the bioluminescent light. And then gloved hands were on her, patting down her body like an inspection. The mystery hands found Lucky’s journal before she could stop them, but whoever the Mosca inspector was flipped through it with little interest and handed it back to her.
And then Bonebreak’s voice rang with joy. “Ah! Brother!” In the faint light, Cora could make out the vague shape of another hunchback Mosca embracing Bonebreak and something like smaller people skittering all around, hunchback too, breathing heavily through masks. One of them spoke foreign words in a high-pitched voice, and with a start Cora realized the little shadows were Mosca children.
“Here.” Bonebreak shoved something into her hands, and she heard him do the same for Anya and Willa. “Goggles. They belong to my brother’s children, but the young have good eyes. They can see well enough in the dark without them until we get back to their home. Also your puny heads are so small that our regular masks would probably fall off your faces.”
Hesitantly, Cora felt the shape of the goggles. They were thick, round lenses with a strap that felt fleshy and stank something awful. She tentatively slid them over her head and then jumped as some kind of machinery automatically turned on. The goggles started vibrating, the lenses rotated, and the apparatus clicked loudly.
Suddenly, she could see.
She nearly jumped again. They were standing in a room the size of a train station lobby. It even reminded her of one, with something that looked like a digitized timetable on the wall and low benches in the center built for the Mosca’s hunched frames. There were a dozen Mosca scattered throughout the hall, waiting by doors, standing by something that looked and smelled like a restaurant.
And the children! She tried hard not to recoil. She’d never seen a Mosca without a mask before. The children’s faces without masks or goggles were wrinkled, with heavy eyelids and unnaturally large eyes and almost no nose at all—no wonder they didn’t mind the stench. Yet at the same time, there was something almost endearing about their oversized features.
She found herself smiling—was she actually starting to like the Mosca?
A grown Mosca, who she assumed was Bonebreak’s brother, patted her shoulder as though she too were a small child. “Little human childrens,” he said. “I am Ironmage. My brother tells me he has a deal with you. A lucrative deal. If you win the Gauntlet.” He let out a burst of laughter. “My brother was never bright. But come, get food just the same.”
He patted her again. Less like a child, she realized, and more like a dog.
“This is crazy,” she muttered. With the goggles on, Anya and Willa looked almost alien themselves, and Cora knew she must look just as strange.
A Mosca child excitedly pounced on her, pulling her along amid a torrent of giggles. “Come,” it said in slightly broken English. “I’ll feed you and give you a baths and take good care of you.”
Cora sighed and let herself be dragged along. Forget beating the Gauntlet. It would be challenging enough to prove humanity’s worth to a species who thought of her as nothing more than an overgrown puppy.
14
Cora
BONEBREAK’S BROTHER, IRONMAGE, TOOK them on a long underground train ride through the hollow mountains to a small city he told them was called Tern. Tall buildings rose like skyscrapers toward the ceiling of the mountain. The edifices were made of stone and metal and glass, but all cast in a reddish shade. Ironmage pointed to a building on the city’s perimeter, proudly declaring that his home comprised the tenth level—nearly the highest. Cora took off her goggles out of curiosity. Without them, the world beneath the mountain was almost entirely black, with only the faintest twinkle of glowworms like stars overhead.
As soon as they’d climbed the spiral ramps to Ironmage’s home, one of the children set a bowl of food on the floor in front of Cora; it was unappetizingly watery and brown and didn’t smell much better.
The child smiled as it patted her on the head. “Good human. You eat now.”
It set down another bowl for Anya but gave Willa a plate of food that at least resembled solids.
“Why do you get a real meal?” Cora asked.
Willa wrote on her pad:
The Mosca have always liked apes. We don’t walk upright either. They think that’s a sign of superior intelligence.
Cora rolled her eyes. Her stomach grumbled. She tilted the bowl to her lips, prepared to wince if the food tasted as bad as it smelled, and was pleasantly surprised to find it only mildly offensive.
“So, brother.” Ironmage sat heavily in one of the backless Mosca chairs surrounding a low table, where he and Bonebreak were eating something that looked far more palatable. If there was a Mrs. Ironmage, Cora hadn’t seen any sign of her. “You bring me presents. You bring me news of the outer galaxies. You bring me”—he motioned toward the humans—“this unusual business opportunity.”
“This could be the deal we’ve dreamed of since our youth,” Bonebreak said through his mask. “How often have you and I sat over hotmugs, talking about what would happen if humans were granted intelligent status? With their nimble fingers and their skill at lying, they’d be formidable trading partners. You said so once yourself.”
“I was drunk at the time,” Ironmage stated.
“It is more than a drunken dream now,” Bonebreak in
sisted. “If a human runner were to beat the Gauntlet, that human would wield incredible influence over her people. She would be a natural leader, the first human councilperson. She’d be able to set trade deals on behalf of all of humanity. And you and I”—Bonebreak’s voice brimmed with excitement—“we’d hold all the cards! First rights to trade deals! Exclusive bartering! We’d be rich, we’d even be famous . . . the runner would have sat on our own floor!” He swept out a gloved hand to motion to Cora and her friends.
Ironmage eyed them closer, no expression showing behind his mask, but Cora got the sense that as tempted as he was, he was still skeptical. “Which one will run?”
“The older girl,” Bonebreak said.
Ironmage stood. He lumbered over to where they sat, crouched down on his weak knees, and prodded Cora’s arm. “She is rather puny. Perhaps if she had months to improve her strength, but the Gauntlet begins in less than six days.”
“Six days?” Cora sputtered. “I thought we had seventeen!”
One of the Mosca children giggled. It waddled over with a contraption of wires and blinking numbers. The child rearranged the wires expertly, programmed in some numbers, and then handed it to her. “Here, little human.”
Cora looked down at the numbers on the contraption. The first column said 5.9, the second said 17.1.
“A time conversion clock,” Bonebreak explained dismissively, as if such highly technical electronics were child’s play. “Each day here is about three on your planet. There are roughly seventeen human days until the Gauntlet begins.” He turned back to his brother. “And she is strong enough. If size mattered in the Gauntlet, those stumpy little Axion would never have passed it. She’s fast, and you haven’t seen what she can do with her mind.” Bonebreak set down his drink and pointed to it. “Girl. Levitate this drink.”
Ironmage’s children watched in awe, little mouths agape to reveal uneven teeth. Cora rolled her eyes. He might as well have asked her to play fetch.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the drink. She let her thoughts reach around the cup and the handle like fingers.
Lift, she commanded.
The children clapped their hands together. Cora opened her eyes. The cup hovered three inches off the table. Slowly, she let it lower, even gave it a little spin before it landed. The children cheered. She smiled. All that practice during quarantine had paid off.
Ironmage stared at her in disbelief. “Well!” he said at last. “You weren’t lying, brother. I’ve heard the rumors, but I’ve never seen that.”
“She has been trained by a Kindred. She might not look like much, but she meets the requirements. And that ape has run the Gauntlet before. She can give us important insight.”
Willa huffed in disagreement, but Bonebreak only waved away her objection.
Ironmage rubbed his chin, nodding. “This could work. . . . Yes. It’s possible. Not probable, of course. She’ll probably go mad like the others and die within the first few puzzles. I give her a handful of hours at most. But if it did work . . .” He cackled in delight, rubbing his hands together at the thought of imagined riches.
A handful of hours?
“How long does it last?” Cora asked. “The whole Gauntlet from start to finish.”
“It varies, little childs, it varies. Some runners complete puzzles in ten human minutes. For someone relatively weak like you, I would imagine each puzzle would take several human hours.”
She ignored the insult. So if there were twelve puzzles, she should expect the Gauntlet to last about twenty-four hours. A full day.
She motioned to the darkness beyond the windows. “Am I going to have to wear these goggles the whole time?”
“Oh, no, little childs. The Gatherers are blind as cave worms, and the Axion and Kindred as well. The Gauntlet happens above-ground, on the surface. The module ship lands in a valley close to Tern; there are tunnels to connect it. The delegates bring their own ships that interlock to the Gauntlet module. They don’t set foot underground. Afraid of the dark.” He made a disgusted sound. “All together, it forms a small compound. The Gauntlet module, with its twelve chambers, is the centerpiece. Around it are smaller modules that serve as the central vestibule, recess rooms, and control compartments.”
“Cassian said there was a formal registration process.”
Ironmage dismissed that with a wave. “Bah. Perhaps there is when the Kindred host the Gauntlet. I am not surprised they would make it as complicated as possible. We Mosca care nothing for such formalities. Once the weather cooperates, we throw the runners in and it begins. It is no more formal than that.”
“How many runners will there be? And of which species?”
Both Ironmage and Bonebreak were silent for a moment. Bonebreak scratched his chin awkwardly. “Well,” he said. “One. You.”
Cora nearly choked on the last of the gruel. “I thought there were normally more than that. At least five or six.”
Ironmage took a hefty sip of his drink. “Runners don’t like to travel all the way to Drogane. Can’t imagine why.”
“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the smell,” Cora muttered. “Or the general complete disregard for any law and order or, you know, lamps.”
Ironmage shrugged. “What does it matter how many run?”
“It matters,” Cora said, “because this means all eyes will be on me. The Kindred Council member Arrowal has been trying to sabotage me this entire time. And Fian has been helping him. This makes it easier for them.”
Bonebreak scoffed. “We do not fear meddling by a few Council members. The Gauntlet cannot be sabotaged. Believe me, if one could cheat the Gauntlet, we Mosca would be the ones to figure out how. The Kindred have even tightened the regulations. A loophole was brought to the Intelligence Council’s attention, something about how a runner might be able to manipulate the Chief Assessors’ command inputs to approve a victory before the puzzles even began. The loophole was closed, the regulations rewritten.”
Cora felt the blood draining from her face. She had been the one planning on using that loophole to win.
“When the time comes, little childs,” Bonebreak said, “we will take you aboveground to the valley. You will see the Gauntlet modules for yourself. In the meantime”—he poked at her thin arm—“I suggest you work on building your strength.”
He said something in Mosca to the children, who jumped up and grabbed Cora and the others by the hands, pulling them toward a partitioned area of the great room that had been filled with big, ridiculous fluffy pillows.
“Good night, little childs,” one child said, standing on tiptoe to pat Cora on the head.
Once they were alone, Cora sighed and flopped onto a pillow.
Willa pulled out a piece of paper.
Isn’t nice, is it?
Cora swallowed hard. She was suddenly aware that everything the Mosca did to treat her and the other humans like animals, humans had done—and worse—to chimpanzees.
“Sorry,” Cora said quietly.
Willa huffed.
“Listen,” Cora said to Anya. “You heard what they said. What are we going to do now?”
“About what?” Anya asked blankly.
“About the Gauntlet!” Cora whispered.
Anya nodded quickly. “Oh, yeah. Right. Of course.” Her hands, tucked in her lap, were shaking with the tremor.
Cora turned to Willa and explained, “We were going to use that loophole to cheat it. It was Plan A. Take over the Assessors’ minds and make them approve my win before I’d even entered the first puzzle. But somehow, the Kindred found out our plan. It must have been Fian. When he betrayed Cassian, he must have told the Council.”
Willa wrote a note.
If cheating was Plan A, what’s Plan B?
Cora nearly laughed in panic. “Plan B,” she said, “was to run it for real. To actually try to win. But you heard Ironmage and Bonebreak. I’m not ready. My training with Cassian was interrupted. You said yourself I shouldn’t run.”
<
br /> Anya leaned forward. “But you have to run, Cora. I’ll help. We have seventeen days, that’s enough to finish your training. I can teach you to control your perceptive abilities better. And physical conditioning should be easy enough; there’s plenty of room to climb and run in the city.”
“Thanks,” Cora said, “but it’s the intellectual puzzles I need most help with. Letter and number puzzles have always been my weakness.”
She and Anya both looked sidelong at Willa. The chimp folded her arms obstinately until Anya batted her eyes and said in a sweet voice, “Isn’t that what the Axion did to you, Willa? Make your brain stronger?”
A grunt of unhappy affirmation came from Willa.
“Look at it this way,” Cora pleaded. “I’m going to run the Gauntlet with your help or without it. Nothing you say can convince me not to. But your advice could make all the difference. And if humanity is freed, animals will fare better too. I’ll make certain of it.”
Willa huffed and wagged her head side to side.
“You could even help set up a new system,” Cora pressed. “If I win the Gauntlet, you could have a real say in the way animals are treated. We could put in laws so that none could ever be experimented on like you were.”
At this, Willa paused. She wrote again.
This is beyond foolish. You will get yourself killed. But that is your choice to make.
Cora grinned. “I take this to mean you’ll help.”
Willa rolled her eyes but nodded.
“That just leaves moral training,” Anya said.
Cora took Lucky’s journal from her pocket. She flipped through the pages almost reverently, as if she could see him in his tight handwriting, smell him in the binding. In these pages, he had written his thoughts about how the Kindred had mistreated their human and animal wards and what he thought was right and wrong.
She stopped on a list he had made.
Granddad’s Code, it said. First: Do no harm. Second: Think about the good of the group over the good of the individual. Third . . .
Cora closed the book, squeezing it tightly. “I already have a moral coach,” she said. “Lucky.”
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