The Hunt (2 page)

Cora

CORA LET THE DRESS'S
smooth fabric fall through her hands
and settle on the floor in a pool of silk. “A second chance?”

She could guess what the 1930s-style dress meant. She knew about the Kindred's menageries—private clubs that re-created different time periods from Earth—where they dropped the emotional cloak they wore in public to let their pent-up emotions run wild. Less-desirable humans were kept there as servants and oddities for entertainment. Cassian had taken her to one to warn her about what happened to children who disobeyed. It had been called the Temple, an artificial Greek palace where drugged children in togas were made to perform tricks.

Why human places, human times?
she had asked him.

There is no society, nor habitat, better suited for the cultivation of experiences than the human world,
he had answered.

Now, she narrowed her eyes. “Putting me in a menagerie is hardly a second chance. It's further punishment.”

“I have little choice. The Intelligence Council cannot learn of your escape attempt. Fian convinced them that your enclosure failed due to technical difficulties, and that the remaining wards should be transferred to alternative facilities. Only Fian, Tessela, and Serassi know the truth.” He paused. “I have made an arrangement with Serassi in return for her silence. Fortunately, Fian and Tessela have always been sympathetic to our cause.”

“
Our
cause?” Cora shook her head. “I don't have anything to do with whatever you're planning.” Her mouth felt very dry, and she started to turn toward the water spout, but he rested a hand against her shoulder.

His eyes, black as they were, seemed to reach all the way into her head. “You have
everything
to do with our plan. A plan that has been in the works for nearly six hundred rotations—almost twenty human years. We call it the Fifth of Five, because if we are successful, humanity will ascend to the fifth intelligent race.” He ran a hand over the back of his glove, changing a setting, and then traced something onto the table. Two intersecting lines appeared, like a double helix, with five dots in the center. Whatever substance he was writing with only lingered a few seconds before disappearing.

“This is the covert symbol of the Fifth of Five. The first four points represent the current intelligent species: Kindred, Mosca, Axion, and Gatherers. The last one represents humanity. But we cannot raise humanity's position without you. I am not the first leader of the Fifth of Five initiative. Nor are you the first human we have set our hopes upon. Hundreds of Kindred have been involved in the clandestine effort to declare humanity's intelligence, spanning back generations. The irony is that you cannot even see that we are attempting to help you.”

She paced tightly. “Helping us? If you want to help, why don't you try finding out if Earth still exists.”

“The stock algorithm predicted POD98.6. That stands for Probability of Destruction ninety-eight point six percent—”

“Yeah, I know, chances are humans have destroyed Earth. But even if there's a tiny chance it's still there, it could mean everything to us. Our homes. Our families. Our entire world.”

He looked at her with eyes that revealed no emotion. “
This
is your world now.” He paused long enough to pick up the dress. “Take this. You will need it.”

HE LED HER THROUGH
the austere hallways that formed the public world of the Kindred's station. They passed walls that glowed with starry light, and a few open nodes like the one they had once used to board a transport, and then there was a rush of air and chatter as the ceiling opened into a three-story-high marketplace. Cora's feet slowed. She had been here before—to this very market, or one like it. It was mostly filled with Kindred vendors offering artifacts—human and otherwise—and a few hunchbacked Mosca traders with their eerie breathing masks and red jumpsuits. There was even a sole Gatherer, one of the willowy, monk-like eight-foot-tall creatures Cassian had once warned her never to look at directly.

Her eyes settled on a raised platform. It was a stage of sorts, maybe for auctioneering, about four feet off the ground. If she could distract Cassian, she could climb up there and hold a demonstration of her psychic abilities. Books and utensils from the market stalls would levitate at her command. Kindred would gasp. Fingers would point at her. And then they would have to reluctantly admit
that she and all humans
were
just as capable as they were, and that they would never be able to cage her again—

Cassian stopped.

“You forget that I can read what you are thinking,” he said. “A public demonstration of your telepathic abilities is not the way to achieve your goals.”

He motioned toward Kindred guards posted on the upper level of the marketplace that she hadn't noticed before. “If you were to claim that humans have evolved, no one would believe you. They would ask for proof that you could not reliably demonstrate. You have the potential, yes, but not the mastery. And when you were not able to prove it, those guards would declare you mentally unstable and lock you away. Do you not remember what happened to Anya?”

Anya. The Icelandic girl Cora had seen trapped in the Temple, drugged and delirious.

“On a stage not unlike that one,” Cassian continued, “Anya once performed a fairy-tale play her private owner had written. She decided to alter the script. Instead of picking artificial flowers from a vase, she levitated them with her mind. I could not stop the Council when they came for her.” He lowered his voice even further. “Stubbornness can be an endearing trait, but it can also be your downfall. There is a way to get what we both want. Do not let your anger at me blind you to reason.”

His words only stoked her anger more. She could feel it growing inside her, and yet a memory pushed forward. Her older brother, Charlie, shaking his head after she'd fallen out of the oak tree at the edge of their property for the tenth time in a row. He'd dusted her off and said,
You know what stubborn means?
Cora,
eight at the time, had shaken her head, and he'd explained,
The
definition of stubborn is to know what the right thing to do is, but
not to do it anyway just to prove a point. And right now, you should
really just give up.

She clenched her jaw and looked away from the platform. “Okay. But this doesn't mean I'm agreeing to anything.”

He didn't answer. Silently, he led her through the marketplace, then down into roughly hewn hallways that cut through the asteroid core itself. These dank places made up the Kindred's private world: menageries, brothels, gambling halls—places where the Kindred could safely uncloak and seek the emotional thrills they craved. A row of doorways was dug into the rock, and in front of each doorway was a podium staffed by a young Kindred male or female.

“Hosts,” Cassian explained. “To greet their guests. Each door leads to a different menagerie. You're going to the Hunt.”

Cora held up the old-fashioned golden dress. “So what is that, some kind of Prohibition nightclub?”

“Not exactly.”

He said nothing more as they passed the first few doors. One host wore a leopard-print caveman's toga. One hostess looked like a Viking maiden. Another was dressed in a baseball uniform.

“The menageries have only recently opened for this rotation, so it is a relatively quiet time. There will not be many guests yet. They operate on a roughly terrestrial schedule of day and night, for the comfort of the humans who live here.”

Cora let out a smirk.
Comfort.
“How many human days make up a rotation?”

“The exact conversion rate requires complex algorithms,
as it changes based on a variety of astrophysical factors. Humans are incapable of this level of mathematics, but suffice it to say one rotation is equal to anywhere between one and two weeks.” He stopped at the sixth door. The hostess here wore what looked to be a safari uniform: khaki blouse with the shoulders cut out, thick leather belt, hunter-green skirt, with a pith helmet perched on her perfectly combed hair. Like all the hostesses, she wore glasses with eyes painted on the front, though Cora knew that behind them her eyes were uncloaked and almost as clear as a human's.

The hostess smiled stiffly at Cassian. “Welcome back, Warden.”

Welcome
back
? Cora had never imagined him playing dress-up in some club.

He inclined his head. “Issander.”

The hostess opened the door for them. Heat coated Cora's skin like a thick lotion. The air was muggy, as warm as the light that cast long shadows throughout the room. The calls of tropical birds reached her ears first, then other sounds: the roar of a far-off truck, low chatter and clinking of glasses, soft instrumental music.

“Be cautious.” Cassian nodded back toward the door. “The Council has watchers posted through the station whose job is to report back any unusual activity. Improper relations between Kindred and humans, humans disobeying the rules, that sort of thing. Their identities are kept hidden. I do not know if Issander is a watcher, but she is not sympathetic to our cause.”

“Won't that be a problem?”

“I have a plan for that.”

“Sure you do. You have a plan for everything.” Overhead, wooden beams rose thirty feet to form a thatched roof that
supported hanging lanterns. The lodge was open and airy, filled with teak furniture draped in exotic fabrics, with amazingly realistic statues of giraffes and zebras. Along one wall, two human boys shook cocktails behind a bar. Across from the bar, billowing floor-length curtains flanked French doors leading to a wide veranda where a savanna glowed beneath a setting sun. Cora stopped, stunned. For a second it all felt too real. When she had been a little girl, she'd loved sunsets like this. She and Charlie used to race each other across the yard, laughing, trying to reach the big oak tree at the edge of their property before the sun disappeared.

Cassian nudged her out of her memories.

She blinked back into the present, remembering that everything here was artificial, even the sun. “A safari lodge?”

“Yes. The Hunt. It is modeled after early colonial expeditions. Guests come here to experience the thrill of the safari. It provides an exhilarating rush of emotions, I am told.” He gestured toward the bar and lounge areas. “The lodge is where guests wait to depart for an expedition, or to relax after they return. Your job will be to entertain them while they wait.” He pointed to a stage by the bar, where a microphone stood. “Singing. Playing card games. Dancing with them. Whatever they request.”

The bird sounds came again and she scanned the rafters. “It's all simulated, right?”

One of the bartenders, a severe-looking boy with buzzed blond hair, gave her a long, unreadable look, but Cassian didn't seem to notice as he led her toward the veranda.

“Not entirely. The technology we use here is not the same as in your previous enclosure. There, creating realistic facsimiles that could be immediately altered required a large amount of
carbon. We reserve our carbon supplies for scientific pursuits, such as researching and observing lesser species. We would never expend such resources on entertainment. That is why everything here is real. Within reason.” He swept aside a curtain, showing her the wide expanse of the savanna. It seemed to stretch for miles, through grassy plains and around a watering hole. “The distance is an illusion, of course. This entire menagerie is, in actuality, not much larger than a single habitat in your previous enclosure.”

She noticed that the French door's curtain was frayed at the hem. On closer look, all the parts of the lodge that had appeared luxurious at first glance now looked threadbare. Half the chairs had been hastily repaired. The floor had cracks in it. She glanced back at the buzz-haired bartender. He was pouring a drink for the sole guest in the lodge, a Kindred who hunched stiffly over his barstool. The bartender had an air of refinement about him, but that might have just been his crisp jacket with gold trim, because when she looked closer his haircut was roughly uneven, and the back of his neck was dark with grime. He looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. He had coded marks just like hers on his palms.

She turned the dress over in her hand. The gold color matched the trim on the boy's jacket. An image flashed in her head of standing onstage, singing songs like a trained parrot.

At the end of the bar, one of the giraffe statues coughed, and Cora jumped.

“Wait, that giraffe is
alive
?”

“Yes. The animals are real. We are not only intrigued by humanity; all terrestrial life holds a certain fascination for us. As you are doubtlessly aware, there are no indigenous animals in space.”

The giraffe was small, probably a juvenile, and it looked sickly. It doubled over and coughed again, dripping thick drool on the Kindred guest's boot. The Kindred let out a low, guttural sound, and the second bartender, a boy with beautiful dark lashes around watery eyes, hurried over to clean up the mess. Slowly, as though he sensed her watching, the Kindred guest looked at Cora.

He had a beautiful face, like all of them, but it was twisted somehow, as if the bones beneath had been broken many times and re-formed in a way that reminded her of a tree knot. From his scowl she could tell he was uncloaked, but his eyes were so recessed that they still appeared entirely black.

A gong sounded from the veranda, and she turned. The sound of a vehicle roared.

“An expedition is returning,” Cassian explained. “Watch.”

Car doors slammed amid the sound of excited chatter from outside. A thin boy and a girl appeared on the veranda. They were dressed in rugged, dusty safari clothing, and Cora caught a glimpse of the same coded markings on their palms. The boy signaled to the blond bartender, who stepped onto the stage.