The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,108

empty-handed.”

“We don’t have any more money,” Cora said.

Bonebreak glanced around the room, rubbing his chin beneath the mask. “We could always chop up your friend. The dead one, I mean. He doesn’t need his body anymore, and I know a black-market dealer not far from here who—”

“No!” Cora looked horrified. “Don’t touch him.”

Bonebreak cocked his head. “Your hair, then. That will pay for fuel and landing fees.”

Bonebreak slid a knife out of his pocket.

“Deal.” Cora grabbed the knife and strode to the facilities room in the back of the ship, slamming the door behind her, as though she was afraid she would lose her resolve.

The slam reverberated, ending the conversation in the main section of the ship. Nok and Rolf looked at each other uneasily. Leon started picking at the shielding and thread on his shoulder.

Mali paced, fears rumbling in her mind. Part of her agreed with what Lucky had said. Every time she looked at the scars on her hands she was reminded of how much humans deserved better.

But trusting a Mosca wasn’t the way. The last time she had trusted a Mosca was back on Earth, when she had been four years old and watching the goats on the dunes near her family’s camp. A hunchback man in a strange mask had told her a goat had run away, but he could take her to it. Not long after, she had awoken chained to a stake in a Mosca marketplace.

If you have no owner, the Mosca had said, then I claim you for my own.

She paced over to Anya, arms folded tight. “I do not like this,” she whispered. “We have no private owner. We have no paperwork. There is nothing to stop Bonebreak from claiming us as his own property the moment we land on his planet.”

Anya thought about this for a moment. “Do you remember how we got away from that Mosca scum on station 3-06?”

Mali had been twelve years old. Anya only five, but already tough. They had been caged together by a private owner who had made them fight with other girls and a chimpanzee.

But then they’d figured a way out.

Mali nodded. “Yes. I must tell Cora. It is our only chance of ensuring that Bonebreak will not cheat us.”

44

Cora

THE SHIP’S FACILITIES ROOM had no mirror, but the walls were made of a dull reflective material that projected back a murky image of her face.

She looked awful.

The oversized safari clothes she’d grabbed hung limply on her frame. They looked almost like the plain khaki uniform she had worn in juvenile detention. Her eyes were red with lack of sleep, and her face looked gaunter. Her hair was a nest of long, tangled curls.

She squeezed Bonebreak’s knife in one fist and tilted her head to the left, so her hair spilled out to one side. She twisted it into a tight, thick coil that she could cut through with one slice, and set the blade against the outside strands.

It’s just hair.

But it didn’t feel like nothing. If she did this, it would trigger a new series of events. Bonebreak would take them to his brother’s planet. They’d have to figure out how to work with him—and she’d have to continue training, without Cassian now. This was more than one slice of the knife. This was, maybe, cutting off her last chance to go home.

Sadie with her floppy old-dog ears. Charlie’s bedroom that always smelled like gym clothes. The view of the woodpecker-holed maple tree outside her window.

The only way to know if home was even still there was to set the knife down and stay on this ship. The thought filled her with a new worry—had she decided to turn back because she couldn’t face the reality of what they might find? A nearly 70 percent chance wasn’t one hundred, as Rolf had said. Her heart thumped, hard. No. No. She could still feel the warmth from that sun. In her heart, she knew that Earth was still there.

She snapped her eyes open. Her reflection looked back at her with cold determination. Lucky, out of all of them, had been the one with a cause. And now it was her cause too.

She set the knife’s blade against her rope of hair, just below her left ear, and started to saw.

Someone banged at the door.

Cora cursed, the knife skimming away along with only a few strands of hair. “What? I nearly stabbed myself.”

Mali’s face looked back. In the shadows, her eyes were hooded, and the lines