Then, with a jolt, he remembered his agreement.
I left a valuable provision pack on that station, Bonebreak had said. If you were to use the tunnels to fetch me that pack, I would make it worth your while.
Mali’s attention was riveted to the ceiling. Leon subtly eyed the supply room. Whatever Bonebreak had wanted was in those crates. He glanced at Mali, who had her back to him, trying to convey some sort of message to Tessela across the hall with hand gestures. He glanced back at the crates and judged the distance. It would take him two minutes, max, to sneak in there and find the provision pack. He could do it right now, while they were stuck here anyway, and Mali would never even know. He took a quiet step backward. She didn’t hear him, her attention focused on Tessela. He swallowed hard and took one more step backward, peeking into the room.
No time, you idiot, he told himself. Arrowal might get through at any minute.
But . . . the crates were right there. It would take him literally seconds to grab the provision pack. He’d be an idiot not to, really. After all, he was doing this for Mali. Fetch me that pack, boy, Bonebreak had said, and I will tell you how to find your girl’s family. She would be grateful to you. You’d be a real hero, yes.
A hero. He’d gone and convinced everyone that he was a good guy, and dammit, that was a tough reputation to uphold. He pictured how Mali’s face would look when he told her that he had a way to find her family back on Earth. She’d throw her arms around him. Kiss him. Hell, maybe more. . . .
He swallowed, casing the hallway—no one was paying attention to him. He sucked in a deep breath and ducked into the supply room. His heartbeat thundered. He’d have to be fast. The bottom crate had four stacked on it, which Bonebreak hadn’t bothered to mention. Leon shoved into them with his reinforced shoulder until the top four toppled over. There was a crash of glass, the sound of wood shattering, and Leon cringed in fear that the sound would give him away, until he heard another volley of laser blasts in the hallway.
The battle would cover him.
But now he’d really have to hustle. He ripped open the crate.
Empty.
He kicked the crate, letting out another curse, and started to hurry back to Mali. But something made a strange hiss. When he peered back in the crate, the bottom had slid to one side. In it was a provision pack about the size of an apple.
Bingo!
He snatched the pack. Felt around the edges, trying to guess the shape. It was sealed. Whatever it was, it was hard, with something that felt like mechanical parts.
From the hallway, more laser pulses went off overhead, followed by Kindred shouts. Leon cursed. Really time to get back—Arrowal’s troops must have broken through. He shoved the pack into his jacket as he ran back to the hall.
“Leon!” Mali said, spotting him. “Where did you go?”
“Had to take a leak,” he called over the din.
Her face was redder than he’d ever seen it. Her eyes darted wildly. She was angry. Furious. She slapped a fist into his shoulder. “You idiot, I was worried about you!”
He grinned.
She rolled her eyes.
A deafening explosion shattered the station. The blast slapped him across the face, throwing him back against the wall. Smoke filled the hallway. Debris rained down from above, along with some liquid that had been piped through the walls.
His ears rang. He blinked, touching his face. For a second he was a tyke again in Auckland, just eight years old. His uncle had gone on another bender, come home to find him still awake and watching TV, and smacked him across the face hard enough to overturn his chair. Lazy good-for-nothing, his uncle had said. Just like your dad.
But as Leon blinked out of his daze, he saw dust and water, smoke and blinking lights. Not his uncle’s fist. He was on the Kindred’s station—not eight years old. Not back in his old life. Not a criminal anymore.
He staggered to his feet. A few Fifth of Five fighters were prostrate on the ground, unmoving, but others were getting up slowly.
Where was Mali?
He frantically began to search the wreckage. The walls were split open. Dimly, he realized that the blast had reopened the closed-off tunnels. Then he spotted her white Hunt uniform. She was facedown, not moving. Panic clutched at him as he scrambled over a fallen beam. Mali wasn’t made of steel like the Kindred. She bruised and bled.
“Mali!” he said, shaking her.
She opened one unfocused eye. Blood was streaking down a gash in her arm.
Another volley of shots went off overhead.
“Everybody down!” Tessela yelled. “They’ve bombed their way through! They’re coming in from above!”
Leon pulled Mali closer to the collapsed beam, which afforded a small amount of shelter. Arrowal’s troopers began to drop down on ropes from the upper level, firing laser pulses as they came. Leon quickly went over a mental map of this level. The tunnels were open again. If he could just get them into the closest one . . .
“Target Arrowal!” Tessela yelled to her soldiers. “Take him out!”
Leon peeked over the beam. The Fifth of Five’s aim focused on a Kindred dressed in an official uniform who was coming down the ropes. An older Kindred, big as a tank. It had to be Arrowal. But with their primary weapons disabled, Tessela’s rebels could only use hand-to-hand combat or makeshift weapons made from fallen beams and pieces of debris.
Leon grimaced. This fight was going south fast. He grabbed Mali, despite her protests, and threw her over his shoulder. He kicked in one of the wall panels with sheer force and thrust her into the tunnel.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“What does it look like? Saving our asses. And just in case . . .” He grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her in for a kiss. Mali went stiff, surprised. Her lips were soft, and he relaxed into it. God, he could stay here. Forget the bombing. Forget the rescue mission. Just kiss her forever. But he pulled away and pointed down the tunnel. “Crawl. Fast. I’m right behind you.”
They started crawling as fast as they could. His ears still rang from the explosion. He stopped only when they reached a fork in the tunnels. He gulped air, trying to catch his breath, following his zebra-striped navigation marks, the symbol for the Hunt.
At last they made it to the menagerie’s entrance, and Mali pushed through the tunnel’s door, into the narrow area behind the menagerie’s bar. They stood up in the lodge. It was deathly silent. The lights were off. Dust coated the tables. It clearly had been shut down since the Fifth of Five had freed the kids and animals that had been imprisoned here.
They hurried through the red door into the backstage area. The rows of cells were empty. Open cell doors and overturned dishes of food spoke of a rescue that had happened quickly. He followed the directions Cora had given him to the hidden safe in the medical room. When he traced the symbol on the secret drawer and it opened, he looked at Mali with wide eyes.
Dozens of kill-dart guns were lined up in a row. Small, handheld ones. Bigger, riflelike ones with scopes. All of them deadly.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” he said.
Mali grabbed an old feed sack and stuffed the dart guns into it. “Come on. We are only one station beneath Cassian.”
They climbed back into the tunnels. The tight space made Leon’s skin slick with sweat that kept pouring down his forehead and stinging his eyes. They avoided a cleaner trap on level three and then climbed an incline to the next level.
“We’re close,” Mali said, pointing to a long tunnel with alcoves in the sides. “While we were fleeing, Cora and I hid in those alcoves when a package came past, and Cora spotted Cassian through a crack in the wall. Check the alcoves.”
They took turns checking each alcove for a hole or gap to peer through that might show them Cassian’s cell. Leon crawled from one to the next, touching his pocket surreptitiously to make sure Bonebreak’s pack hadn’t fallen out in the shuffle. He glanced at Mali. What would she think if she knew he was sm
uggling again? Would she believe that he was doing it for a heroic reason? For her?
“Over here!” she said.
Leon crawled to the alcove where she had her eye pressed to a gap in the panels. She pulled back and let him take a look. At first, the chamber beyond was so dark he didn’t see anything, but then his eyes adjusted, and he made out a body on the floor. There was no cot, no dresser, no tables. Just the figure, curled in on itself.
“It’s him,” Mali breathed.
Leon looked harder at the figure. It hardly looked like the Warden who had once towered over him. Curled in the fetal position, Cassian now looked vulnerable, weak. Leon actually felt sorry for the guy.
“We should break him out now, while he’s alone,” Mali said, tracing her fingers over the tunnel walls. “These panels are held together with a chemical sealant. It’s like wax. Too strong to break when it’s hardened, but if we could melt it, we should be able to loosen the panel enough to open.” She dug her nail into one of the seams, trying to pry it open. Her nail split and Leon winced.
“Let me try. This isn’t the first time I’ve broken into someplace I shouldn’t be.” He examined the sealed seams closely, feeling for the hardened waxlike sealant. Back home, he always carried a lighter. But here, what could he use to melt it? Flint from one of the menageries? Then he glanced down the hall at the cleaner trap they had so carefully avoided.
He smiled.
“Mali,” he said, “go wait for me in the next alcove.”
She gave him a worried look but did as he said. Once she was safe, he went to the cleaner trap and inspected the mechanics. The thin holographic laser, like a trip wire. The flame ports on either side of the tunnel. For a second, a shiver ran down his spine as he remembered finding the charred body of Chicago, one of the menagerie kids who had died caught in the trap’s fireball. He judged the distance to the nearest alcove, where he could hide out from the blast. It was six feet away. Too far to reach before the fireball would burn him alive.
He took off one of his shoes and crawled to the alcove.
Pressing his back against the wall, he weighed the shoe in his hand, hoping it would be enough pressure. “Mali,” he called. “Stay back!”
He threw the shoe at the laser trip wire.
The fireball erupted instantaneously. It happened so fast he didn’t even have time to fully take shelter in the alcove. Flames swept over the right side of his body, charring his skin. He let out a hiss of pain. Mali cried out in surprise from the next alcove down, and suddenly his worry for himself was gone. He clutched his burned arm, but his thoughts were on her. As soon as the flames subsided, he crawled into the tunnel, wincing at his burned, crackling skin. “Mali! Are you okay?”
Mali spilled into the tunnel too.
His eyes were already searching her for any burns, any bruises. But she was so small that she had managed to tuck her whole body into the shelter of the alcove. Except for a singed hem of her pants, she was unharmed.
Her eyes went to the cleaner trap, to the burned shoe, to his charred skin. “That was a stupid thing to do!”
“I think you mean brave.”
She sighed. “Stupid and brave.”
He grinned, then winced. Damn, his face hurt.
She moved aside to allow him room, and, together, they pressed against the panel. Sure enough, the fire had melted the sealant, and the panel crashed into Cassian’s cell. Leon cringed at the noise.
“Think someone heard that?” he asked.
“Of course they heard it. We must be fast.”
Mali dropped down into the darkened cell, and Leon followed. As she crouched beside Cassian’s curled body, Leon drew a kill-dart gun and, sidling up to the closed door, positioned himself to fire if anyone came through.
“How is he?” Leon said over his shoulder.
“Alive,” Mali answered. “Barely. Can you carry him?”
Leon looked at the Kindred doubtfully.
Suddenly, Cassian coughed.
“I can . . . walk.”
“Cassian!” Mali kept her voice low as she ran her hand down his arm, helping him sit up. Leon cast another doubtful look at the Kindred. He’d never been a fan of Cassian’s, but he had to admit, Cassian had saved their asses more than once. Now, he looked awful. He wore only black underclothes that covered his torso and hips, and the bare flesh on his arms and legs and neck were marred with dark bruises. His limbs looked shockingly pale.
“He can’t fit in the tunnels,” Mali said.
Leon cursed under his breath. He tightened his hold on the kill-dart gun. “Then we take the hallways and hope the fight on the bottom level has pulled all the guards away from here.”
Cassian tried to sit up. “Just get . . . to Tessela . . . Cora . . .”
Cassian’s normally black eyes were a glassy gray color that made Leon grimace. Mali tried to help him up, but he was too heavy, too disoriented. As soon as he put pressure on his scarred legs, he nearly collapsed again.
“Christ,” Leon said. “They really did a number on him.”
“Help me get him up,” Mali said.
Leon stowed the kill-dart gun in his waistband and went to help, throwing one of Cassian’s scarred arms over his shoulders and heaving him to his feet. Once they had Cassian up, he was able to inch along on his weakened legs. They approached the door, and before Leon could ask Mali to try to open it with her mind, it slid open.
Leon glanced at Mali. “Did you do that?”
She shook her head, then glanced at Cassian. “I think he did.”
But, delirious, Cassian didn’t answer.
They shuffled him into the hall. Leon’s pulse pounded in his ears. He checked both ends of the hallway. Left. Right. All the soldiers had been pulled away to the battle. The hall was empty.
“Wait,” Cassian breathed. His voice was raspy, his lips split. He swallowed hard, then nodded toward another cell. “In there. We need him.”
Leon exchanged a look with Mali, wondering if they could rely on Cassian’s words. Mali nodded, and Leon slammed the heel of his hand on the controls. The door opened.
Mali gasped.
Another Kindred prisoner rose from the floor. There was a dark bruise ringing an injection site on his cheek and scars down one arm, though he wasn’t in as bad shape as Cassian.
Fian.
Leon pointed his gun at him. “Traitor!”
“Wait.” Cassian, eyes glassy, motioned for Leon to lower the gun, speaking between strained breaths. “We can . . . trust him. Fian is . . . loyal to me . . . and to the Fifth of Five.”
“Bullshit,” Leon said. “He turned on us. And he tried to kill us on Armstrong!” Even as he said it, he realized the timing didn’t work. How could Fian have been on Armstrong and at the same time been here, being tortured?
“That . . . was not Fian,” Cassian answered in his stilted voice.
Fian came forward, taking Mali’s place under Cassian’s arm, lifting his fellow Kindred with ease. “It is true,” Fian said. “I have been here for over eight rotations. The person you saw on Armstrong was the same one who incarcerated me, and later, Cassian. It was someone posing as me.”
Leon shook his head. “Look, mate, I posed as a Kindred once. I know what a disguise looks like, and that guy was you.”
“It wasn’t,” Cassian said. “The real Fian was here the whole time, badly wounded. The creature you saw . . . was an Axion.”
Leon wrinkled up his face.
“The Axion are shape-shifters,” Fian explained. “There are safeguards to prevent them from taking on someone else’s identity: they give out a high-pitched frequency when they’re in disguise that all intelligent species can hear. But the Axion impersonating me must have figured out how to silence his frequency. The same for Arrowal. The real Arrowal was killed long ago.”
Leon felt his head spinning. “But Tessela . . .”
“Tessela and the others do not know the truth,” Fian said. “I didn’t know myself until I was i
mprisoned here, and of course, I could not escape to tell anyone. It isn’t a war between cloaked Kindred and the Fifth of Five; it’s a war between Axion and Kindred. The real Fian and Arrowal were never trying to stop Cora. It was the Axion impersonators.”
“I do not understand,” Mali said. “Why do the Axion care if Cora wins? What bearing could the Gauntlet have on their war?”
“Because . . . aeons ago . . .” Cassian leaned against the wall, face flushed with exertion.
Fian explained for him. “Aeons ago, the Axion ruled the universe. But then the Gatherers also gained intelligence and developed the Gauntlet to give all species a chance. Fifty human years ago, the Mosca achieved intelligence. They didn’t like that the Axion were shape-shifters. Didn’t trust them not to pose as someone else. The Intelligence Council mandated that they maintain their true appearance or else emit a frequency when altered—it works through a genetic implant. The Axion accepted the ruling at the time.”
“Let me guess,” Leon added. “They were actually super pissed off.”
“To put it mildly,” Fian said. “Here, Cassian and I learned the extent of their plan. And their fury.”
Distractedly, as though fighting a bad memory, Cassian placed one hand over the oozing scars on his left arm.
Fian continued, “The Axion felt that, as the original intelligent species, they had granted everyone else freedom, and now theirs was being taken away. They set about a plan to retake their original control.”
“I’m afraid to ask how,” Leon said.
“They had to learn to hide their frequencies so that they could infiltrate the upper echelons of each intelligent species. At the same time, over the decades, they began to build an army. They produced ships in far greater numbers than ever before, claiming it was so all species could be better connected. Of course, the ships were actually a war fleet. But first, they knew they had to take out the Kindred.”
Mali’s eyes were wide. “Why not attack all the species at once?”
“We serve as the peacekeepers of the universe. We are the strongest physically, with the most integrated infrastructure, which makes us the only real militaristic threat to them. Take us out by infiltrating our leadership, and the other species would be easy to dominate. That is where the Gauntlet comes in.”
The Gauntlet Page 13