“You wish to find the fail-safe exit,” Mali said cryptically. “You cannot. The Kindred hide it with perceptive technology. It could be in this room and you could not see.” She stood, squinting through the dark sunglasses, and wandered to the jukebox.
Rolf leaned in, moving aside the potted geraniums. “You see? Escape is impossible. These are creatures who trade human body parts. We don’t want to go up against them. I’ll solve their puzzles, but you know what I’m going to do with the tokens I win? Buy the painting kit. Take up art. Enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll even buy the radio and listen to some music that isn’t this same aggravating song on repeat.”
Cora had never heard a cutting tone in Rolf’s voice before. The headaches must be making him as irritable as she was.
“So that’s it? You’re giving up?” When she was little, she’d always been the good girl, top of her class, the smiling face standing to the left of her father. Even in Bay Pines, when the gap-toothed girl punched her in the stomach, she hadn’t objected. But now . . .
She was done doing what everyone wanted.
“And you.” Cora spun on Mali. “They kidnapped you. You should hate them. Has the Caretaker brainwashed you or something?” Cora could barely keep the anger out of her voice, thinking of how a powerful creature like Cassian could do anything to a tiny girl like Mali. Four years old, and stolen away from her family.
At this, Mali’s startlingly clear eyes cut to Cora’s sunken ones.
“Cassian is my friend.”
“Your friend?”
Mali’s mouth twitched. “He saves my life three years ago.”
Cora looked down at her torn fingernails, piecing through Mali’s strange way of speaking, wondering how the man who imprisoned them could be the same person who would save a girl’s life. In the medical room, just for a flash, she’d thought that he was different from the other Kindred. Was he?
Mali approached slowly, lifting and lowering her sunglasses. She looked like a deranged ballerina in Rolf’s oversized military jacket. “Cassian is the Caretaker only recently. Three years ago, he is malakai—soldier paid to find and save humans kept by private owners. He finds me. He saves me.”
“You were in an enclosure like this one?”
“No—three years ago I am kept by a private owner. A bad owner. He sells me many times.” Mali brushed a finger slowly down the seam of Rolf’s military jacket, paying more attention to the woven threads than her story. “After Cassian saves me he takes me to a good menagerie. I am there one year and then I am in an enclosure like this but smaller for one year and then I am in another menagerie.” She paused. “This enclosure is not like the others. The Kindred set the days to different lengths here. They change the distances. The clothes here are strange.”
Cora leaned forward. “You mean they don’t mess with the other kids’ heads like they do ours? Why us?”
Mali was silent. Her face was a mask behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses, just like the Kindred, and then she pinched herself slowly on the shoulder. “There are rumors that humans can evolve to have perceptive abilities. That this is even happening now. The Kindred fear the day when humans are as capable as them.”
Cora straightened, glancing nervously at the others. “Evolving? Is there any truth to it?”
Mali paused. “I see nothing with my eyes but friends I trust tell me yes this happens. Perhaps the Kindred treat you different because they fear you are different. Here. In the mind.” She tapped her head. Her words lingered in the air like whispers of prophets. Then she sneezed and drifted back over to the jukebox.
Cora ran a finger along her lips, sorting through Mali’s words. A hand sank onto her shoulder, and she jumped out of her fog. Lucky jerked his head toward the doorway, and she followed him to where they could talk in private.
“Go easy on Nok and Rolf,” he said as soon as they were out of earshot. “They’re terrified, and everyone’s tempers are short. Leon too—why do you think he stormed out like that? He’s scared. At least here we’re safe. Beyond the walls . . . who knows.”
“Lucky, they’re talking about giving up on escape. That’s insane. We can’t spend our lives here.”
“We won’t. I have plans, remember? Retire at thirty-eight. Military pension. A beach somewhere with a beer and a girl who doesn’t mind me picking at a guitar with my bad hand.” He flexed his scarred knuckles. “Just give them a few days to calm down.”
“They only gave us twenty-one days and we’ve already wasted some of that time. We can’t let some headaches stop us.”
He took her hand in his reassuringly. “We won’t.”
Her face felt heavy, but she smiled. At least there was one other sane person around. Even if she’d only known Lucky a few days, she felt drawn to him in a way that had nothing to do with the constellation marks on their necks, and everything to do with his determination not to spend their lives as a sideshow.
“Um, guys?” Nok said.