The Hunt

by Megan Shepherd

  His sum came out all wrong again, and he scribbled out the bad equation.

  Think, he told himself. Concentrate.

  He folded his legs underneath him on the couch like he used to do, slouching down into himself, letting one hand twist knots in his hair. His mom had called this his genius-at-work pose. It let him free his mind, concentrate on nothing else.

  He scribbled out another sum. Wrong again.

  His back ached, but he ignored it. He chewed on the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. Why couldn’t he solve it? In the cage, he’d been able to solve even the most challenging math problems in the toy shop. Once, after a full day of sledding, and then swimming in the stream, he’d been so flushed with confidence that he’d even solved the puzzle on the jukebox.

  He sat up. That was it!

  All those years at home, slouched down, he had thought the key to genius was to focus only on the mind and ignore the body. But maybe that weakened everything. Maybe the key was letting the mind and body work together.

  He started pacing. Nok looked up, raising an eyebrow as he reached his hands over his head, shaking out his arms, jogging in place a little.

  “Serassi isn’t watching,” Nok said. “You don’t have to make up weird behaviors right now.”

  “Not weird behavior,” he said. “Weird thinking.”

  He felt blood flow into his feet, which had gone to sleep tucked under him. He drew air deep into his lungs and let his shoulders fall back.

  If the bottom integer . . .

  If the negative sum on the right-hand side . . .

  And then he laughed.

  He fell to his knees and scrawled out a sum, and then blinked. His hands started shaking.

  It matched.

  “I . . . I did it,” he said, and then scrawled a few more numbers. “The conversion. I figured it out. We’ve been here, let me see, one hundred fifty days. Which means if we conceived on the day Serassi told us, that means Sparrow is due in, um”—he snatched up one of the parenting books to consult—“approximately one hundred thirty more days. That means we have enough time to figure something out, right?”

  Nok chewed on her lip, snatching the parenting book from him. “But it isn’t just until the baby is born. It’s until the fetus can survive outside the womb. This book says that happens at twenty-three weeks. How many days is that? Shit, carry the two . . .”

  The smile faded off Rolf’s face. “One hundred sixty-one days. Which means we only have eleven days until they could take Sparrow.”

  “Eleven?” she said. “That’s no time at all!”

  “You’ve got to come up with more lies. Make them think we’re invaluable enough to keep around indefinitely, even after the fetus is viable.”

  Footsteps sounded from the shadows. Nok tensed and Rolf let her go quickly. Was Serassi already returning? One of her assistants? Nok dried her eyes on her apron, forcing a smile, picking up the dirty dishes from dinner in a rush.

  “Maybe after we finish doing the dishes, we can work on the crib more,” Rolf said loudly, with forced cheeriness.

  The footsteps came closer.

  A figure loomed out of the shadows. As big as a Kindred, but not moving as stiffly. Nok turned back to the dishes, but Rolf squinted into the light.

  The figure walked through the seating area but stopped halfway. He just stood there. Didn’t sit. Didn’t take notes.

  Finally, a voice cut through the shadows.

  “Bloody hell, what are you two idiots playing at?”

  The figure came forward, and the lights of the house reflected on Leon’s smirking face.

  Rolf started. “Leon?”

  Leon jumped up on the porch, stepping right into the kitchen. “I’ve been all over the damned station looking for you two, and you’ve been playing house this whole time?” He shook his head, but then sniffed the air. “Is that meat loaf?”

  Rolf gaped.

  Leon being here could mean only one thing.

  Cora must have sent him. Cora must have some new plan up her sleeve, and not a second too soon. This time, Rolf wanted in.

  19

  Cora

  THE DRECKTUBE TUNNELS WERE even worse than Cora had imagined.

  Frigid, thin air crept up the folds of her pajamas as she crawled behind Leon on the rough-hewn ground. She’d snuck out of her cell as soon as the others had fallen asleep, tiptoeing to the door and knocking softly, half surprised that Leon had actually kept his word when he swung the door open for her, and even more surprised when he said he’d found Nok and Rolf in some giant dollhouse. Now, as he led her toward the Temple menagerie, her knees were already red and raw; thank goodness she wore a long dress during the day, because she didn’t know how she’d explain scraped knees to Dane in the morning.

  “Gotta watch out for the traps,” Leon explained over his shoulder. “Almost sizzled me a few times, but I’ve learned their tricks now. It’s the packages that are the real danger. If you hear one coming, get out of the way. Hurts like hell if you get hit with one. What do you call it, again? Making things float around?”

  “Telekinesis.”

  “And you can really do that, eh?”

  Cora kept crawling. She had told him about unlocking the cell door, and about the dice, and now she felt self-conscious. “It’s weird, I know.”

  He snorted. “No way. Wish I could throw things around with my mind. Ooh, undress girls just by thinking about it. And stealing would be so much easier. . . .”

  “Monsters.”

  She stopped crawling abruptly. It was the same odd whisper as before. Her forehead broke out in sweat despite the frigid tunnel.

  “Please tell me you heard that voice,” she said.

  “Voice?” Leon frowned. “You feeling okay?” He twisted around and reached out, swiping his finger under her nose. It came away with blood.

  She pinched her nose distractedly. “It’s . . . nothing. Let’s just keep going.”

  “That’s a lot of blood.”

  “Keep going.” Her voice was sharp.

  Leon muttered something under his breath as he paused at a few doorways, consulting his markings. “So let’s say you can break this Anya girl out of her cell with your telekinesis badassery. Where exactly is she going to camp out? I’m guessing there isn’t a nice secret room for her in the Hunt.”

  “Um, no. But I did have one idea.”

  At her hesitation, he turned around, eyes hooded. “No.”

  “Leon, she has to stay with you. There’s nowhere else.”

  “I’d rather cuddle up with Kindred guards.”

  “It won’t be forever. Just until after I’ve run the Gauntlet. A week or two, tops.”

  “Are you kidding? That is forever.”

  Cora let out a sigh, rubbing her hands over her face. If only the air wasn’t so thin, maybe she could think better. Leon was the kind of guy who would take a bribe, but she didn’t have any money or food or anything. What could she offer him?

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “Think about something you really want.”

  “More psychic shit?”

  “I need to practice mind reading.”

  He grumbled a little, but closed his eyes. She concentrated on probing into his thoughts. She sensed something colorful and bright, flashing lights that almost reminded her of the arcade back in the cage. But there was something else there, deeper. A face.

  Her eyes flew open. “I knew you liked Mali!”

  He cursed. “I wasn’t thinking about her. I was thinking about Assassin’s Creed.”

  “Yeah, but not deep down. I can tell what you really want, way more than video games.” A slow smile stretched across her face. “If you helped us out, I’m sure Mali would be very grateful.”

  He scowled deeper, rubbing his head as if he didn’t like the idea of her crawling around in his thoughts. But after a second, he asked, “How grateful?”

  “Well Anya is like a little sister to her. And if it was my sister you
were rescuing . . .” Cora thought for a minute. “Maybe second base?”

  He snorted, and then turned around and started crawling again. “Whoring out your friends now, sweetheart? Remind me not to make any promises on your behalf. Don’t worry about it. Mali would probably just knock me out anyway. I’ll babysit your psychic brat. That’s what friends do, eh?”

  Cora smiled.

  “Could have used your psychic powers when I was trying to find out which door led to the Temple,” he continued. “Took me forever to figure it out. I staked them all out for days until I overheard someone say something about Zeus in the last one.”

  They crawled to the last doorway, and he pointed to his chalk drawing.

  “What’s that supposed to be, a goat?” she asked.

  “Goat? It’s clearly a Greek Minotaur!” He grumbled as he wiped away a stray chalk mark. “If I had some proper paints, maybe charcoal pencils . . .”

  He signaled for her to be quiet as he shouldered the door open a crack, holding his breath so as not to be too loud. A tickle itched the back of Cora’s head.

  “Beware the monsters,” the voiceless whisper called. “Dancing through the halls.”

  Cora flinched. Dancing? Through the halls? Either she really was going crazy, or the person sending her those psychic messages was.

  Leon cursed and immediately pulled his head back in. “Shit!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the Temple for sure, but not the backstage area. It’s the main hall and there’s Kindred roaming all around.”

  Monsters dancing, Cora thought. Through the halls . . .

  Was someone sending her a warning?

  Tentatively, Cora peeked through the crack. It was the same shimmering Greek palace that she had visited with Cassian, only now she was looking at it from a different angle. Beyond the Kindred’s boots, she could make out the ten-by-ten-foot cells with lightlocks above the bars. If she strained her neck, she could see the last cell, Anya’s, and the girl’s sluggish hand sticking out between the bars—missing two fingers. The hand was waving languidly, as though conducting an imaginary orchestra of dancing monsters.

  Cora ducked back in.

  Could it have been Anya’s voice in her head?

  “She’s there,” Cora said, “but there’s no way we can get to her out in the open. We have to find the backstage area.”

  Leon rubbed the back of his head. “I know where the rest of these tunnels go, and it isn’t to the Temple’s backstage. Did you see how there were slots in their cells for passing things like food through? I don’t think there is a backstage in this menagerie.”

  Cora’s head throbbed. She felt moisture beneath her nose again and wiped it away. She peeked back through the crack. “So to get to her, I’m going to have to walk right through the menagerie, amid dozens of Kindred, and flash around abilities I’m not even supposed to have to unlock her door?”

  “And carry her out,” he said, eyeing her thin arms. “Don’t forget about that.”

  “So, basically, it’s impossible.”

  Leon closed the door and added a chalk mark that was a circle with a line through it, a symbol that looked like it marked certain doom. Then he patted her on the shoulder. “Good luck with all that, sweetheart.”

  20

  Cora

  THEY CRAWLED BACK TO the Hunt in silence. Cora’s lungs were burning, making her even more irritable. It felt like the tunnel’s walls were getting tighter, but it had to just be claustrophobia and uncertainty tangled up together. At least she wasn’t going crazy—yet. That voiceless whisper had definitely been Anya, warning her. But if that was the case, then why hadn’t Anya explained how they could break her out of the Temple?

  Maybe because she doesn’t know how, Cora’s own voice answered back.

  “I’ll come back each night,” Leon said. “Same system. Two knocks to say it’s safe, and I’ll open the door. Slip a note down the drecktube if anything changes. See if you can figure out some genius new plan in the meantime.”

  “Rolf’s the genius, not me,” Cora muttered, and then stopped abruptly. “Hang on. Rolf might be just what we need. He’s brilliant. And Nok’s a good schemer. Can you take me to them?”

  Leon scratched his head. “They’re in a crowded sector. Lots more shipments moving around. Last time I was there, I got caught between two crates that nearly dragged me into a cleaner trap.” But when she tilted her head, looking at him sweetly, he sighed. “You’re going to get us killed, you know that? Come on. It’s this way.”

  As they crawled, Cora thought of the last time she’d seen Rolf and Nok in the cage. They’d been in the middle of a fistfight with each other that hadn’t looked like it would end well. “You said they were doing okay, right?”

  “Okay? Are any of us okay? They were alive, that’s all I said. They were pretty freaked out the Kindred might take away Nok’s baby. They were holding on to some sad hope they could get home and raise the baby there. Whoa. Hang on. Death trap at twelve o’clock.”

  He pointed ahead to a place on the floor, but Cora saw nothing until he shone his headlight on it. A glistening, nearly transparent line. He carefully climbed over it, and then motioned for her to do the same.

  “Actually,” she said, “Nok and Rolf might not be so off base about home. Lucky found information that there’s a higher chance than we thought that Earth’s still there. Cassian is going to look into it.”

  “That right?” Leon mumbled as he consulted his scrawled map.

  “Aren’t you more excited? We’re talking about Earth. It means that we could have a real future. If I beat the Gauntlet, no one could stop us from leaving this station and going home.”

  “Sweetheart, if you’ll recall, I never thought Earth was gone.”

  “But the Kindred’s algorithm predicted it.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never trusted nerds. I go with my gut, which always said Earth was there.”

  She crawled behind him, thoughts spinning. “Well, if it’s true, we’ll need a ship to take us there after the Gauntlet is over. Bonebreak must be have one, right?”

  Leon snorted. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’ve been asking around. Next ship won’t come for another forty years. I got him drunk one night, and he told me all about the last time they helped humans. Years ago, when the supply ships used to come more frequently, the Mosca made a deal with a group of humans to go back to Earth. That was back when the Kindred took mostly adults, and I guess they wanted the smartest ones. They ended up abducting savants, you know? The kinds who can multiply insane numbers in seconds, kind of like Rolf?”

  He wiggled his fingers in the air like he was working out numbers. “Well, the Kindred didn’t realize half those people are even smarter than them when it comes to numbers. The savants figured out how to override the system, got out of their enclosures, and faked their deaths. They found Bonebreak. He was just an underling at the time. His captain took the humans back to Earth in exchange for them screwing around with the Kindred’s food replicator. One hell of an expensive practical joke.”

  He paused to wipe chalk dust out of his eyes. “It’s crazy, but I actually remember my sister talking about it. She’s into crime books, you know? Said in the eighteen fifties there was this group of people who just appeared in South Africa—they were all crazy, said they’d been abducted by aliens.”

  “Eighteen fifties? How old is Bonebreak?”

  “Really old, I think. I’m scared to see behind that mask.”

  “And you trust him?”

  Leon snorted. “Our relationship is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I have something he needs—the ability to crawl through tunnels. He has something I need—protection from the Kindred guards, not to mention a bunch of vodka. So do I trust him? Sure, until he finds a different way to get what he needs.” He grinned. “But I’m not useless yet.”

  He pointed ahead to a chalk mark of a dollhouse. “See? Told you I’d find it again. Nok and Rolf are up here.�
�� Eventually the tunnel smoothed out and turned to metal, and then ended.

  Leon shouldered the gate open into a wide room, like a dark theater. When they crawled out, Cora saw a small house at one end—except one entire wall was missing. Leon led her close, a finger pressed to his lips. In the upstairs bedroom, Nok was getting dressed, and Rolf was toying with an old radio.

  “Hey!” Cora started toward them, but Leon threw a hand over her mouth.

  “Christ, sweetheart, shut up.” He jerked his chin toward a row of dark seating. At least ten Kindred were there, watching Rolf and Nok. She waited a heart-pounding moment, but none of them turned in her direction. They hadn’t heard her.

  “How are we supposed to get to them?” she whispered.

  “We wait. Rolf said they have artificial nighttimes when most go home. Serassi sticks around, but not all the time.”

  “I can’t wait. I have to be back in my cell in the morning.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

  Cora squinted at the house, trying to figure it out. Rolf was still fiddling with the radio. A guy like him probably knew Morse code, and she knew it too from those long classes in Bay Pines, where she and Queenie had sent each other silent messages with flashlights from across the room while the others watched rehab videos. She focused on the radio light. Turn off, she willed. Her mind probed around the circuitry. There was no amplifier, which meant she had to concentrate harder. Turn OFF. And for a second the light flickered, just like the lightlock of her cell, and then it turned off completely. Rolf frowned, but she quickly turned it back on.

  She did the same, but faster. Three times.

  S-O-S

  Rolf’s eyebrows knit together in hesitation. He looked like he was going to call down to Nok, but froze. He glanced at the watching Kindred, and then carefully turned the radio away from their eyes.