He raised an eyebrow. “The Warden did instruct me to take you to a menagerie. And as you recall, I did take you to one. The Temple. I fulfilled his orders—I just didn’t leave you there, drugged and caged.” She thought she saw a flicker of dark amusement cross his face. “Never let it be said that my kind does not excel at finding loopholes.”
He picked up the square glass and the bottle, but hesitated. “The Warden recommended that I take you to a menagerie called the Harem. It is located on the seventh sector—an area frequented by disgraced Kindred and Mosca traders. They go through human girls quickly there. It is a place I do not think you would like to go. I would certainly not enjoy having to leave you there.”
He was implying using girls for sex, or worse—things she couldn’t even imagine. It made the childish tricks in the Temple seem positively innocent. What had she done to make the Warden hate her this much?
Cassian pointed toward the sitting room. “Sit. Please. I would not like to spend the little time we have arguing.”
Cora made her way into the sitting room. It was barren, save for some metal crates pushed against the wall and a book tossed on top of the crates, dog-eared and worn. Peter Pan and Wendy. An artifact from Earth. It was the only thing at all in the entire room that had any glimmer of personality. Cassian picked up the book quickly and dropped it into one of the metal crates.
The bare room reeked of desolation. “Do you all live like this, so spartanly?”
“Yes, though not by choice. There is not an abundance of resources in space. Dust and rock and light can only power so much. We live a frugal life out of necessity. The technology used to create your environment works only within certain confines and requires a high amount of carbon. We could not create such luxury for ourselves.” He traced another pattern on the wall. A small tray emerged, which served as a table for the glass and square container. He poured a sharp-smelling liquid into the glass and took a deep drink.
“What’s that?”
“Alcohol, made from fermented lichens.”
“You have alcohol?”
He glanced at her with a flicker of amusement. “Every society in the universe has invented alcohol—even some lesser species, such as your own. Intoxicants are prohibited, in general, outside of the menageries. But we are allowed to keep one container in our quarters, in case of difficulty controlling emotions.”
She grabbed the glass out of his hand, downing the contents, wincing as it burned her throat in a way her mother’s expensive wine never had. She held out the glass for more. “I’m definitely having difficulty controlling my emotions.”
Cassian hesitated—clearly he meant the drink for himself, not her—but then refilled her glass. She took a slower sip, letting her heavy eyelids sink slightly. The room was quiet, too quiet, and she cleared her throat. “What did you mean when you said that the algorithm didn’t make a mistake, but you did?”
He dragged a crate over as a makeshift chair. “It is protocol to monitor the stock algorithm’s selections before the transfer from the native environment to the artificial one. I performed the required period of observation on the other Girl Two. She would have been suitable.” He looked down at his hands. “I continued to monitor Boy Two simultaneously. He was performing a research operation on one of your networked computers. He found an article from the previous year about your father’s employment. You were standing in the picture. Boy Two’s emotions were very strong. Impossible to ignore.”
Lucky had said he looked her up on the internet every few months at his library, hoping for news that would make him feel better about playing a part in her time in juvenile detention.
That whole time, Cassian had been watching?
“He felt intense guilt,” Cassian continued, “which was perplexing, since he had not directly wronged you. He felt curiosity too, and very strong attraction, though that only made his guilt increase. I began to observe you as well. Call it . . . curiosity. Your experience with captivity was somewhat unusual in a female of your age and your intelligence. Such resilience is highly desirable to us, after what happened to the previous cohorts.”
She swallowed. Her hand still felt dry from the femur bone.
“You had other traits—physical attractiveness, a quiet demeanor, an emotional strength—that would make for an interesting pairing with any of the three males selected. I already knew Boy Two would be more than interested in you. So I went against the stock algorithm. I selected you myself. The Warden strongly disapproved, but I argued that your resilience would make you highly adaptable to an environment such as this.”