The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,52

everything. The more tokens you arrive with, the more power you have. And all of this”—he shook the tin—“is going to set me up well, but I need more than money to be a king.”

Lucky clenched his fist so hard that his knuckles turned white. “Let me guess. You need subjects.” Now the gift of the notebook was making sense—Dane was trying to ingratiate himself.

“Not subjects,” Dane said. “Associates. Even with money, it won’t be easy to set myself up as a leader right from the start, with no one watching my back. But if I had someone loyal, someone I could trust, someone others inherently trust too . . . Someone who could work his way into Armstrong’s society and spread the word about how fair-minded and powerful I am.”

Fair-minded? Powerful? Lucky had a hard time keeping a straight face.

In the cell opposite them, the zebra had lain down. It was unnatural for a hoofed animal to lie like that, unless it was sick. The whole place felt infected.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” Dane said.

Lucky cursed under his breath. “You promise you can get Roshian to change my birthday?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it,” Lucky said reluctantly. “And in return, if we’re shipped off to Armstrong, I promise to tell people there whatever you want me to tell them.” He told himself it was an empty promise. His mind went to the carving that Chicago had made in the safari truck’s dashboard: 30.1. Which meant there was an almost 70 percent chance Earth still existed. Not much to hold on to, but something.

He heard another giggle as Pika returned from the storerooms, and he started to go.

“Not just yet,” Dane said, keeping his voice low. “Roshian’s going to ask for a favor in return, and I can’t spare any of my tokens.”

Lucky dropped his voice even lower. “There’s not much I can do from back here.”

“Maybe,” Dane said. “Maybe not. I think it all comes down to one question.” His blue eyes darkened. “You said this wasn’t about Cora. So exactly how close are you to our little blond songbird?”

22

Cora

“GOOD,” CASSIAN SAID. “NOW raise them again, higher.”

Cora let out a heavy breath, and the pair of dice fell to the table. They had been training almost every other day, and she’d had no idea how physically demanding levitation would be. At the start of their training, when it had been an effort just to nudge a die an inch across a table, she’d felt like her mind might rip in two. Now she yearned to go back to that simple dull headache.

Cassian reset the dice. The sounds of jazz music and clinking glasses filtered through the wooden screens of the alcove, distracting her, but not as much as her worries over Lucky. His birthday was in two days now.

She tried to put Lucky out of her mind and focus on Cassian’s dice. By her count, the Gauntlet was just days away from reaching the station. Then she would have three more days while the docking procedure happened. Six days in all—not much time. Were the other candidates, the Scoates and Conmarines and Temporals, desperately preparing like she was?

“Try it again,” Cassian repeated. “Higher. You must reach twelve inches and hold it there for thirty seconds before you will be ready.”

“I know. I just need to catch my breath.”

Cassian’s eyes flickered toward the screen. His hands kept flexing and unflexing.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer at first, but then he lowered his voice. “I have been debating whether I should tell you something.”

She raised an eyebrow.

He glanced in agitation toward the screen. “POD30.1. I have been looking into the algorithm’s prediction records. Usually they are stored in a database accessible to all Kindred with level-five and higher clearance. But the particular results regarding Earth have been flagged with a level-twenty clearance. I cannot access them. Only delegates can.”

“Fian’s a delegate.”

“Yes, and he has already reviewed the record at my request.” He blinked a few times too many. “There were . . . irregularities. The time stamp was off. Someone modified the results. It is possible—though not definitive—that Chicago could have overheard talk of this on a safari.”

“So it’s true?” She felt her eyes widening. “They lied about Earth being gone?”

“We know only that the record was tampered with. It proves nothing.”

But it could prove everything, she thought.

“Why would the Council tamper with it?”

“They fear humanity is at the precipice of evolution. The Council does not wish to compete with another intelligent species. But