Her hand pressed against her mouth, holding in a silent exclamation. She didn’t know how he’d made stars appear with his mind alone, but she didn’t care. Nor did she mind the ache that spread through her head, the same familiar ache that came whenever they manipulated the environment. She had missed the stars too much to care. It was like seeing old friends after too long apart. She had painted stars on her bedroom walls when she was twelve. She used to climb onto the roof and watch stars appear on the horizon. Making wishes. Picking out the constellations.
Her fingers drifted from the necklace to the black marks on her neck. Orion. She thought about Lucky, and that brought a stab of pain. She tried to think instead about how she never wished upon a star for this. Maybe back home she would have spent her life as an outsider, torn between two worlds. But nothing, especially not fake stars in a fake sky, was going to change the fact that he was her captor and she his prisoner.
She was done being caged.
This couldn’t be her life. Four walls made of endless trees and mountains and a ceiling made of limitless sky, and a man with black eyes who thought giving her the stars could make this world real.
“Mali might have taught you some tricks,” he said, “but you cannot hide your thoughts from us forever. The Warden knows you are attempting to find the fail-safe exit. He knows you refused Boy Two’s sexual advances. His researchers are collecting observations, Cora. If you continue down this path, he will soon have enough data to build a case to remove you, whether the twenty-one day mark comes or not.”
She ran a nail over her lips, taking in his words, and then dropped her hand when she remembered Lucky saying that habit had made him want to kiss her. “Is that why I get more tokens for solving the same puzzles? Why he only plays my song on the jukebox, and why the others don’t get food anymore, but my plate is full?” She swallowed. “Why is he trying to drive a wedge between me and the others?”
He stood abruptly. “You do not know what you are talking about.”
She stood too, moving to face him. “You’re trying to break us, aren’t you? That’s why you’re messing with us. That’s what the headaches are about. It’s the rumors that Mali told us about. Human evolving. You’re trying to push our minds to the limit. You want to see if we can be perceptive, like you can.”
“The researchers do not need to test that. We know you cannot be perceptive.”
“I know that too!” She grabbed his arm. “But you’re just the Caretaker. The hired help. You don’t know what the Warden might be planning—but you could find out. You owe us that. If you believe in your mission to take care of us, and I think you do, then you have to defend us even from your own kind.”
He pushed her hand off his shoulder. It was rough, a gesture of anger. He was leaving her on her own, just like Lucky had.
With an angry cry, she lurched for the rematerialization apparatus. If he wouldn’t find out, she would. But just as her fingers closed over the smooth metal, a hand gripped her shoulder, hard enough to sear her with pain, and then she was flying through the air. The air exploded from her lungs as she connected with the ground. She pushed back to her feet, head swimming, and lunged for him again.
“Stop.” His command was sharp, not at all regimented. Cora ignored him and scrambled against his chest to grab the apparatus, as he tried to stop her without inflicting damage. His knee pressed against her chest, pinning her to the snow that seeped through her white dress, just hard enough that she couldn’t breathe.
Her throat burned. Was this it? Was he going to turn her over to the Warden for this final act of defiance?
Suddenly, his knee was gone. Air rushed into her lungs just as he grabbed her wrists, pulling her close.
“Let me go,” she managed to choke.
“No.” His grip tightened. He reached for the apparatus on his chest, the very thing she had wanted. “You still do not comprehend the magnitude of the danger you would face outside of the life we have given you. You are only safe here, under my care. It is not a kind world, Cora, beyond the walls.”
From somewhere even deeper than her fear, deeper than her gasping lungs, curiosity whispered. What was out there, beyond the walls? She didn’t want to be curious, but how could she not be? This was the stuff of legends, and gas-station tabloids, and dreams. This was the truth about the universe.
He clenched his jaw in a gesture that looked startlingly human, as if this was actually hard for him. Sweat broke out on Cora’s skin.
“Are you turning me in to the Warden?”
“No.” He pulled her closer, so they were only inches apart. “I am going to give you what you want. Answers. And when you see what is beyond the walls, you will not be so anxious to disobey us anymore. You will find that life here—life with me—is far superior to anything out there.”
Her heartbeat throbbed in her veins. “Life with you?” she echoed.
The muscles in his throat constricted. “Life in the environment, watched over by me.” His hand tightened over hers.
Pressure consumed her.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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31
Cora
WHEN THE STATIC-LIKE PRESSURE ebbed away, Cora opened her eyes.