The Hunt

by Megan Shepherd

  She spun around, aiming the gun at Bonebreak. He came hissing to a stop, but then cackled. “That is Kindred technology. You cannot operate it.”

  “Try me,” she hissed back, hoping the lie sounded convincing, and jerked her head toward Anya’s unconscious body. “She moved you around like a toy, or don’t you remember? She isn’t the only with those abilities.”

  Bonebreak’s head cocked slightly, as though considering her words. Something warm seeped into her clothes; Lucky’s blood. It had rolled all the way to the other side of the ship, and her stomach lurched, but she forced her hand to keep the gun steady.

  “Yes. I remember.” Bonebreak’s voice turned hard. “But none of the rest of you are capable of telekinesis, or else I wouldn’t have gotten my mind back.” He chuckled to himself, a grating high-pitched wheeze.

  The blood thumped in Cora’s ears. He’d called her bluff. She tried pulling the trigger, but nothing happened. She prodded the inside of the gun with her mind, wrapping her thoughts around the intricate mechanics. If Anya had figured out how to fire it, then surely she could too. But Anya was a prodigy. A few sessions with Cassian and a pair of dice hadn’t prepared Cora for this.

  “Cora,” Nok said, low and warning. “Your nose.”

  Cora tasted the bite of her blood on her lips but ignored it.

  “I can fire it,” she insisted, spitting blood.

  Bonebreak snorted. “Then fire.”

  Her mind prodded and prodded. How did it work? Magnetics? Moving parts? She thought of the training steps: moving the dice, then levitating them. She had barely made it past nudging, let alone . . .

  Levitation.

  The last time she’d trained with Cassian, she’d levitated a die six inches. A far cry from a five-pound gun, but it was a starting point. Concentrating as hard as she could, she took her index finger off the trigger. Then her middle finger. The gun was heavy, but she gritted her teeth and focused. She removed her ring finger. Then—taking a deep breath—her pinky and her thumb.

  The gun hovered in the air.

  Cora was so shocked that she nearly forgot to breathe. “You see?” she hissed. “I do have abilities! I can fire this gun too; and I will, unless you get us back on course.”

  Bonebreak let out a surprised grunt, and her fears thundered in her ears. Did he sense the bluff?

  The ship was silent, save for the sounds of Nok’s labored breathing and a hum of machinery. Cora’s blood pulsed harder. It took every ounce of her concentration to keep the hovering gun aimed at Bonebreak. Her attention was slipping. Cassian said she needed to be able to levitate an object for thirty seconds, but only five or ten had passed, and her mind already ached. She couldn’t hold on forever. . . .

  Bonebreak sat heavily in the captain’s chair. He cracked his knuckles, then wiggled his fingers in the air, getting ready to operate the controls. When he spoke, his voice was light and jovial, as though all this had been a prank.

  “Earth?” he said. “No problem. I wanted to go to Earth anyway—didn’t I mention that?”

  Cora reached out for the gun a second before it fell. Her mind let go all at once, and she slumped over, trying hard not to reveal how much it had cost her. She wiped her wrist under her bleeding nose and collapsed in the second pilot’s chair next to Bonebreak, trying hard not to think about the boy on the floor.

  “Then get us out of here. Now.”

  42

  Cora

  THE SHIP GAVE A low rumble as it glided through space. For hours as they flew, the same image showed through the viewing screen: blackness with stars in the distance, the halo of a nearby moon on the right side of the screen.

  Bonebreak worked the controls wordlessly, lazily spinning a finger on a trace pad, occasionally flipping levers with his mind. If he was furious, it didn’t show. Everything is a whim for them . . . betraying a promise or keeping it, Cassian had warned. Cora just hoped Bonebreak’s calm lasted until they reached her solar system. In her own heart, calm was the last thing she felt.

  Once the others had realized that Lucky had died, they’d all fallen into denial, and then a sort of shock. Nok had helped her clean up the blood and drape a tarp they found in the ship’s facilities room over his chest. Now they all huddled near the captain’s chair, faces expressionless, no words exchanged. Cora stroked Lucky’s dark hair, picking out the dried crusts of blood, trying to ignore how cold his skin had grown.

  “How long until we get to our galaxy?” Rolf asked Bonebreak quietly.

  Bonebreak flipped another lever. “Settle in. I hope you brought snacks.”

  Rolf’s fingers tapped anxiously against the floor. “This trip is very risky, when we do not even know if our planet is there.”

  “It’s there,” Cora said softly.

  “How are you certain?” Rolf asked.

  “A boy named Chicago overheard the Kindred talking about the algorithm having been changed. Cassian looked into it for me.” She pressed her lips together, thinking of that awful scene of him tortured. “He said there’s almost a seventy percent chance humans haven’t destroyed Earth.”

  Rolf reflected on this for a moment. “Almost seventy is not one hundred.”

  Nok placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s not about the numbers. It’s about faith.”

  Cora kept stroking Lucky’s hair. She still clutched the gun in her other hand—just to remind Bonebreak who was in control. The tear in the back of her head was throbbing, low and dull, but persistent. She glanced over her shoulder. Mali had laid Anya flat and was rubbing the girl’s feet with a circular motion that she explained promoted blood flow. Leon had removed his Kindred uniform and managed to reset his shoulder himself, and was now sewing up a wound on his arm with the Mosca’s black thread.

  Cora kissed Lucky on the forehead and then drew the white tarp over his face. She scooted back against the wall and squeezed his journal tightly.

  Mali watched her from across the room.

  “Did you know about this?” Cora asked, holding up the journal.

  Mali nodded. “I hear him writing sometimes. At night. It was a gift from Dane.”

  Cora sat in the second pilot’s chair, ignoring Bonebreak’s smell that kept the others away. Her mind turned to riding in a car, years ago. Her father behind the wheel, her head on the cool glass window, as they drove home from a political fund-raiser. The night he’d had too much to drink. The night that she had lied to protect him, which had kicked off a series of events that had led to this very moment.

  Squeezing Lucky’s journal, she let her chest rise and fall.

  They were going home—but at a heavy cost.

  A sob started to crawl up her throat again. She felt herself on the verge of shattering, and knit her hands together to keep them from shaking.

  A fantasy played out in her head:

  Lucky, alive and well, appears at her side, looking worn out but stable as he drags a weary hand through his hair. “Did we actually . . . did we actually do it?” His eyes sparkle.

  “Yeah,” she whispers, smiling. “Yeah, we did.”

  His grin mirrors her own. He lets out a breath, shaking his head like he still can’t believe it. “I just . . .” He lets out a laugh. “I can’t . . .” He raises his hands in wonder.

  Cora grasps his hands, squeezing tight. She meets his eyes. “I know. We’re going home.”

  He pulls her out of the chair, wrapping his hands around her back. She leans into his chest, breathing deep. “How are we going to explain where we’ve been?”

  “We pretend we don’t remember.” His breath is reassuring as it whispers against her ear. “And we’ll have each other. You and me. We’ll make sure we remember.”

  Bonebreak let out a garbled sneeze beside her, and Cora flinched out of her fantasy. Coldness started to creep back in as she glanced at the tarp. Shakily, she opened the notebook. In addition to Dane’s instructions about the weapons, Lucky had written his own thoughts in it too, and she imagined those long
sleepless nights backstage, all the fears and hopes that must have been running through his head.

  Today I brought a gazelle back to life. . . .

  Cora trained again today with the Caretaker. She won’t talk about it. . . .

  I keep thinking tomorrow will be my birthday. No, tomorrow. No, tomorrow . . .

  And then:

  How can we just leave them all behind?

  She slammed the journal closed. Panic was crawling up her throat again, as his words kept ringing into her ears. This is our place. This is our cause.

  She picked at her lip, looking out the viewing screen at the stars hanging in the blackness. One of them might be their sun. One of them might even be Earth. It was out there, waiting. She could feel it. But why was there that little nag in the back of her head?

  “How many humans are on the Kindred’s stations?” she asked Bonebreak.

  He shrugged. “A few thousand.”

  “And animals?”

  He thought for a moment. “Double that.”

  Cora knit her fingers together harder, thinking. The Kindred’s tattoos on her palms flashed. Even now, they had their mark on her.

  She wiped at the marks on her fingers, wishing she could rub them away, especially the ornate one on her ring finger. Why had Cassian altered her markings, if not to make some twisted declaration of love with a ring? She kept rubbing. There was more than black on her hands. There was blood there, too.

  She remembered Cassian’s final words. This is where you give up, Cora.

  She squeezed her fingers together harder. She had never really noticed before that the way her fingers interlaced formed a sort of natural zigzag. Strangely, the black lines of the markings at the bases of her fingers matched up, too. They met at the same place her fingers met, forming a zigzag exactly opposite the one formed by her fingers.

  She drew in a sharp breath.

  It made a double helix—the symbol of the Fifth of Five.

  And the circular symbols at the base of each finger, which she had dismissed as incomprehensible coding, formed a series of circles in the center of that double helix. And maybe the symbols were true coding—after all, all the other humans had something similar—except for the larger circle on her ring finger that no one else had. She’d accused Cassian of designing it like a diamond ring. But now she saw the truth.

  The double helix.

  Five circles in the middle.

  The last one—the one on her ring finger—radiating not like a diamond, but like a star. The fifth star. Humanity.

  She clenched her hands together to hide the markings and pressed her fists against her mouth. All this time she had thought the markings were some elaborate puzzle, Cassian still manipulating her, and it was a puzzle. But it wasn’t about twisted ideas of love, like she and Lucky had thought.

  It was a message of hope.

  A promise.

  I believe in you, Cassian had said. In all humans. Your species has the capacity for such rich emotions; selfishness and greed, yes, but also truth and forgiveness and sacrifice. When you believe in a cause, nothing can stop you. If anyone deserves to be the fifth intelligent species, it is you.

  She pictured that final image of him strapped to the table. A pain started somewhere beneath her ribs, and she shifted in the chair, but it didn’t go away. She gripped the edge of the control panel, searching the stars for the pinprick of light that might be Earth.

  She had earned home, hadn’t she? She needed home, didn’t she? But, Lucky’s voice whispered in her head, does home need you?

  She let out a shaky breath. Lucky had been delirious. It wasn’t fair of him to hold her to impossible standards. Noble missions were for people like him. Like her father.

  She looked down at the secret symbol on her hands again.

  Cassian, who had risked so much already, had risked this small defiance too.

  Over her shoulder, she saw Nok and Rolf holding hands, in silence. Mali was still massaging Anya, who had started to mumble. Lucky’s tarp was so terribly, tellingly still.

  She clenched his notebook. Did he truly believe that their purpose was back on that station?

  Did she?

  An overwhelming wave of panic gripped her. She ran a hand over her forehead, shaking her head back and forth. This was crazy. The only factors they had working in their favor were a cache of dart guns and a few humans who’d covered for them before. And yet, wasn’t that what it meant to be human? To take chances that weren’t always logical? To not give up, if there was even the slightest hope?

  She spun around in the chair. Leon frowned at the look on her face. Mali stopped rubbing Anya’s feet. Nok and Rolf blinked with grief-stricken eyes.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Cora blurted out.

  Her voice caught up to her all at once. She cleared her throat and looked back at her knit fingers that displayed the Fifth of Five symbol.

  “I think we should turn around.”

  THE SHIP PITCHED SHARPLY to the side without warning. Cora’s head connected with the control panel with a starburst of pain. She reached out a hand, feeling for the wall. The others were yelling, but her ears were ringing too loudly to hear them. The ship pitched again and her foot connected with something large as she tumbled to the ground.

  The ship abruptly righted again.

  “What are you doing?” Nok yelled at Bonebreak.

  “Girl says turn us around,” he answered. “I turned us around.”

  “We need to discuss this first!” Rolf said.

  Cora blinked through the black dots until her vision began to clear. There was a pale shape in front of her with sweat-soaked hair. Her stomach clenched—she had tripped over Lucky’s body.

  Nok spun on her. “Are you crazy? Why would we go back?”

  Cora pulled herself back into the second pilot’s chair and gripped the seat tightly. “Just hear me out.” She spoke cautiously, knowing how unpopular the idea would be. “This is bigger than us. This is about proving that we’re more than the Kindred think we are.”

  Bonebreak chuckled.

  Cora threw him a sharp look. “Just keep steering.”

  “Cora is right.” It was Anya, her eyes cracked open, though her gaze still looked hazy. “Running away solves nothing.”

  “Says the girl who’s been drugged for years,” Leon muttered. “No offense, kid, but you have some catching up to do.”

  “Just because I was drugged,” Anya countered, “doesn’t mean I didn’t know what was going on. I saw it all. Every corner of the station. Even yours.”

  That shut Leon up.

  Cora went over to where Anya sat. “You can really tell what’s going on throughout the station, just with your mind?”

  “Not all the time,” Anya said, rubbing her forehead. “But when I was drugged, I could. The Kindred thought drugging me would dull my mind, but it just showed me how to unlock it in new ways.” She looked down at her trembling hands. “Even if it did leave me damaged.”

  Rolf pushed up from the floor. “You’re all forgetting the most important thing: it will be impossible to beat the Gauntlet now. We’ve missed it. Today is the day it began, and besides, guards will arrest you—all of us—if we go back.”

  Nok tucked a pink strand of her hair behind one ear. “Rolf’s right. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Cora tapped a finger on Lucky’s notebook, taking a deep breath. “There is something we can do. Lucky had codes to access a weapons cache. He was planning on using it after the Gauntlet to rescue the animals from the Hunt. But we can use it too.”

  “What, to fight?” Nok cried. “Six of us against a Kindred army? That’s crazy!”

  “There are hundreds of Kindred loyal to Cassian on the station too, already in place to launch a revolution. They’re called the Fifth of Five. We just have to get to them.”

  “So . . . you’re suggesting suicide,” Leon said. “For us and for them.”

  Cora threw him a look. “I’m suggesting we finish
what we started.”

  “And you think partnering with some rebels means we’ll be safe?” Rolf asked. “There’s a reason Cassian was doing all this secretly—he knew as well as we do that the Council doesn’t want humans on their level.”

  “Stop. Just stop.” Nok sank into the second pilot’s chair that Cora had vacated. “I understand that it isn’t easy to leave all those people back there, yeah? Maybe we could help them and maybe we couldn’t . . . but we can’t go back.” She pressed her hands against her abdomen. “There’s no way I’m having my baby there.”

  “She’s right,” Rolf said. “It’s one thing to ask us to risk our lives and our freedom, but you can’t ask us to risk our child’s too.”

  Cora paced, rubbing her aching forehead. She kept throwing glances at Lucky’s body, unable to believe he was truly gone. She slumped against the wall.

  “Ah, screw it.” Leon stood up. “I’m with you.”

  43

  Mali

  MALI LOOKED IN SURPRISE at Leon, who was still clutching his banged-up shoulder. “You are?” she asked.

  Leon jerked his chin toward Lucky’s body. “The Caretaker said we each were the best at something, right? You know, Rolf’s smart and Nok’s hot and I’m the most perfect physical specimen out of all the people in the world—”

  “I’m not sure those were his exact words,” Rolf muttered.

  “But then there was Lucky. He was supposed to be the moral one. And those first few weeks, I never got it. Moral? I don’t know what he did back on Earth, but it wasn’t bake sales, eh?” He rubbed his shoulder, eyeing the white tarp. “But now I get it. Giving up always sat uneasy with him. He was a fighter. He would have fought for this.”

  A strange sensation was happening inside Mali’s chest. She had never quite experienced it before; it was like her heart was not beating steadily when she looked at Leon. It was both uncomfortable and strangely pleasant at the same time.

  Was this how falling in love felt?

  Leon waved toward Nok and Rolf. “If you don’t want to help, fine. Stay on the ship.”