32.

Cora "YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO come until after lights-out," Cora whispered through the slats in the drecktube door. "Anyone could have heard you."

"You worry too much." Leon cracked the drecktube open, sniffing the air. "Hey, you wouldn't have any more of those cake things, eh?"

"We barely have enough to keep ourselves from starving." Commotion sounded from the cell room, and she cursed and dropped to all fours. "Scoot over. Let me in there too."

She crawled in and gasped when he turned toward her. Dark, splotchy bruises marred the untattooed side of his face, barely visible in the glow of the bluelight track.

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing to worry about, sweetheart. A tussle."

"Did Bonebreak do this? I thought you said we could trust him."

"Don't worry about it. I'll slap some makeup on and look good as new." He flipped his hand to dismiss it, but he'd started sweating again. "Anyway, listen. I got big news. He has a ship."

"What?"

"I saw it by accident. He'll crack every bone in my body if he finds out I told you, but I'm c.r.a.p at keeping secrets, especially big ones."

She slumped back against the drecktube wall in shock. "You mean we could go home?"

He let out a snort. "I didn't say he'd take us. I just said he had a ship."

"But he's a businessman."

"So you try negotiating with him."

She rolled her eyes, but her head kept spinning with the possibilities. Could they really go home after the Gauntlet was over? a.s.suming she beat it, humanity would be freed. No more cages, no more rules. They could go home and not a single person could stop them.

"I want to know everything you can find out about that ship, short of getting yourself murdered." Footsteps sounded outside the grate, and she went silent. "Listen," she whispered. "The Gauntlet's almost here. We can't wait any longer to get Anya."

"I told you," Leon said. "There's no backstage in her menagerie."

"Ca.s.sian gave me a temporary removal pa.s.s so we can go in through the main doors. I don't know how we'll avoid being seen by any Kindred-" She c.o.c.ked her head suddenly. "Wait, what did you say before, about your bruises? You said something about makeup."

"It was a joke, sweetheart."

"No!" She sat up so fast she nearly banged her head on the top of the tube. "That's it. Only Kindred can get into the Temple menagerie, right? Think about how Roshian was able to pa.s.s as a Kindred. The weight lifting. His height. And you're even bigger than he was."

Leon looked down at his chest and flexed his muscles.

"We get the disguise kit from Roshian's quarters," she said in a rush. "We can make you look like one of them. You can just walk right in there and get Anya."

Leon looked at her like she'd gone crazy. "The hostess chick will read my mind and know I'm a fake."

"Then we'll do it after hours," Cora said. "The hostess won't be there. There'll just be the one off-duty guard who oversees all the menageries. You just flash the temporary removal pa.s.s and the guard won't ask questions. It logs the visit, but by the time anyone checks the record, you'll be long gone."

Leon scratched the back of his head. "What about those magic doors?"

She paused. He had a good point. It wouldn't look good if he approached a door and it didn't slide open automatically. "I'll have to come too," she said at last. "We'll pretend I'm another ward you're taking to the medical officer. I can open the doors ahead of you, so no one will be able to tell it isn't you doing it."

Leon muttered something under his breath about lipstick and then reached into the back of his waistband and took out a handgun. "Well, at least we have this."

Cora ducked at the sight of it. "Jesus!"

"Relax. It only works for the Kindred. Mali swiped it off Roshian's body after he tried to kill you. But it can still be good for show. My dad did nineteen armed robberies back home and never once had to fire. People get freaked out if you just flash a gun around."

"I guess we can use any advantage we can get. I'll come back tonight."

He saluted her with the gun. When she climbed out of the drecktube, two feet were waiting for her. Her heart raced until her eyes traveled up to a face framed by s.h.a.ggy dark hair.

"Lucky," she breathed. "I was afraid you were someone else."

He crouched down. "You have to be more careful."

"I know. Leon's a bad influence." She told him about their plan, and he rubbed a hand over his chin.

"You really think Leon can pull it off?"

"It's our best shot."

"Then I want to come with you. And Mali too." Lucky dropped his voice, though it was just the two of them. "I still don't trust him."

"He told me something that might change your mind." She glanced toward the door, making sure they were alone. She told him about the ship in hushed excitement, about what it could mean and where they might go. But his eyes didn't light up the way hers had.

"What's wrong?" she whispered. "I thought this was what we all wanted."

"What about the Gauntlet?" he said. "And proving humanity's worth?"

"That hasn't changed." She pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how this conversation was getting derailed. "All I'm saying is that after the Gauntlet is over and we've won freedom for all these people, we'll have choices. The Kindred won't be able to stop us from going home, and now we might have the means to do it."

But his eyes stayed dark. "What about Pika and Makayla and everyone? Will they be able to go back with us too?"

She blinked. "I don't know how big the ship is-"

"And what about the other humans in the other menageries? There are hundreds. Maybe more. And there are other stations too."

"I get what you're saying." She tried to keep the tension out of her voice. "But I never agreed to take everyone home. Isn't freeing them enough?"

At her exasperation, his expression softened. "I'm not trying to give you a hard time. What you're doing takes a lot of bravery. But when you made the decision to run the Gauntlet, you made a decision to stand up for humanity. That doesn't end as soon as the last test is finished. You can't flip the system on its head and then walk away to let everyone else pick up the pieces."

She wasn't sure what to say, so she paced tightly, trying to process his words.

"I know that isn't easy to hear," he continued. "I made a commitment too, to take care of these animals. As much as I miss home, I can't break that commitment just because I want to sleep in my bed again and eat a real pizza."

"Home is about more than that," she said testily. "And you know it."

"You're right-we have everything on Earth. Family. Friends. But there's one thing missing there."

"What's that?"

He paused. "Something worth fighting for."

Cora dropped her hand from the bridge of her nose and, for a second, felt a little dizzy.

His face softened. "Listen, I didn't mean to-"

"Haven't we been through enough?" she interrupted. "Ca.s.sian picked us because we were all misfits back home. Our lives were broken. Your mother's death. My time in juvenile detention. Nok being trapped by that London agency, and Leon's family in prison, and Rolf's parents' expectations. And what do we get for all of our suffering-locked in this prison for the rest of our lives."

She was suddenly aware she was shouting, and dropped her voice. "You can't ask us to sacrifice more. We need this. After we win the Gauntlet, we'll have a chance to go home and make lives for ourselves that are a little less broken."

Warm tears had gotten netted in her eyelashes. She pushed them out roughly with shaking hands. Lucky's face was unreadable; only his eyes gave any hint of what he was feeling.

"I don't want to stay here, Lucky." Her voice broke.

He drew her into his arms. She pressed her face against his chest, surprised at how fast his own heart was beating. "I know," he said. "We'll see how it goes, after the Gauntlet. We'll see how much chaos there is, how people deal with freedom. I'd never deny you a chance to go home if that's what you really want, and I wouldn't ask anyone else to give that up either. But just so you know"-he pulled back to look into her face-"I'm staying."

She jerked back in surprise. "Lucky, be reasonable."

"I'm serious. Working with these animals has reminded me of who I used to be. I went a little crazy in the cage, I know, but I'm not that person now. I've taken responsibility for these animals, and that might not seem like a lot, when you're trying to free our whole species, but that's dozens of living creatures who need me. I can't run away from them. I don't want to. I'm staying where we're needed, whether you beat the Gauntlet or not."

Cora had so many things to say, and yet couldn't seem to speak a single one of them. For the rest of the day, his words swirled in her head as she sang distracted songs while the others went about their work, a little more cheerfully now that Dane was gone. Christopher and Mali didn't get into any fights. Shoukry slipped some sugar and lemon into Cora's water as a treat. Makayla even jumped onstage and sang a song with her, though her voice was terrible.

The whole time, Cora couldn't shake Lucky's words.

Where we're needed.

SHE WAS STILL TRYING to put their conversation out of her head when it was time to meet Leon that night. Most of the animals had fallen asleep quickly, and the other humans too. She focused on opening her cell's lock, ignoring how her pain was worsening, and the images of Roshian screaming in pain.

She opened Lucky's and Mali's cells too. Wetness dripped beneath her nose but she wiped it away, hoping the others wouldn't see. The three of them tiptoed to the feed room, then knocked twice on the drecktube door.

Leon shouldered it open. "Took you long enough."

They climbed in, crawling in a single line in the maze of tubes only Leon knew, until at last they arrived at Roshian's quarters. They were similar to Ca.s.sian's; so similar that Cora's thoughts, a little heady, kept swimming back to the night before. She had promised to forgive Ca.s.sian if he helped her. Part of her wondered if maybe that's why she was so anxious to board that ship and run. Not just to go back to Earth-but to escape promises she had made.

Leon pushed open a panel to reveal a hidden room. It smelled stale, like old paper. He flicked on a lamp. Inside were stacks of books, artifacts, and a dressing table. He dumped a box out on top of the table. "This is the stuff."

Lucky riffled through the box of supplies, lifting out a uniform.

Cora inspected the other objects. Black contact lenses. The tube of metallic paste that wasn't paste at all, but microscopic metal pieces. Papers and doc.u.ments marking Roshian as a Kindred, along with notes he'd meticulously kept of ways they spoke and their mannerisms. She handed Leon the contacts.

"Put these in. They have to cover your whole eye, not just the iris."

It was a hard black sh.e.l.l the size of half a golf ball. He groaned as he lifted his eyelid and jabbed the contact in with unskilled hands.

Lucky sighed. "Let me. My granddad wore contacts and was always getting them stuck." He fiddled around with Leon's eye, trying to find the best way to insert the lens, and finally figured out, after a lot of Leon's cursing, that he could slide it in from the top.

Leon blinked with his one black eye.

"Can you see?" Lucky asked.

"Yeah. Like sungla.s.ses."

He groaned again as Lucky jabbed in the other one. When it was done, he kept squinting and blinking, tilting his head to try to see out of the corners.

"The Kindred don't blink much," Cora said. "You have to practice showing no emotion."

"You try shoving these in your eyes and not blinking."

"I don't get how this paste works." Cora squeezed the tube, and the contents came out in a single thick blob.

Mali took it from her. "It is Axion technology. They use something like this to bathe but it is white. The pieces coat the body and attract dust and dirt like a magnet. Someone has modified this so that it clings longer and added small metal pieces to mimic Kindred skin."

"Roshian's file said he was a med student studying chemistry," Cora said. "Maybe he altered it himself."

Leon grabbed the paste from Cora's hand. He slapped it onto his bare arm and, at first, nothing happened. Then it slowly started to absorb into his skin, spreading like melted b.u.t.ter until his biceps was a shimmering copper color, then his forearm, then his shoulder. Once it was done, Cora eyed him eerily. If it wasn't for the rumpled clothes Leon was wearing, it might have been Roshian sitting there, or any of the Kindred.

"What does it feel like?" Lucky asked.

Leon shrugged. "Like I look like a sparkly idiot."

"No, it's good," Cora said. "It's believable. It covers your tattoos, and even the bruises."

Mali dumped the uniform in his lap. "Dress yourself."

Leon started unb.u.t.toning his shirt.

"The lotion doesn't seem to rub off," Cora said, rolling a dab of it between her fingers, "but I think it can be scratched off with enough pressure. I clawed Roshian and some of it came away with his skin. So try not to get into any fights. And think about how they walk so stiffly and solemnly, like you're in church."

Leon looked at her. "Uh . . ."

"How you think people act in church," she clarified. "I'll be with you the entire time. On the off chance there are still any guests there, they'll be uncloaked and only concerned with themselves. And here." She tucked the gun Mali had swiped into his uniform's holster. "Even if it's just for show."

Leon stared at himself in the mirror. "This is a really bad idea, you know that, right?"

Cora patted his shoulder. "Let's go."

He stood up, trying to move like a robot. It wasn't a bad transformation, Cora had to admit. Physically, Leon's size and strength were nearly the same as most Kindred's, and the shimmering lotion and black eyes completed it. It unnerved her, seeing a Kindred with the face of her friend. Then he spit on Roshian's floor, and Leon was Leon again.