Free The Hunt by Megan Shepherd Page B

“We’ll think of something else.”
    But Cora didn’t answer right away. She picked up a deck of cards Chicago had left behind and riffled through it anxiously. She hadn’t touched a deck in months—not since Bay Pines detention center—and the shuffle felt comfortably familiar.
    â€œShe might be onto something,” Cora argued. “They already think we’re criminals. Maybe that’s what makes us smarter than them—we aren’t restrained by logic and rules. We can be clever. We can cheat. They can’t.” She held the deck tightly in her hands. “This way, we don’t have to trust Cassian. We can betray his trust this time. I’ll let him train me; I’ll let him submit me for registration, but there’s no way I’m going to actually run. The minute I stand up in front of the testers, I’ll cheat my way to freedom. For all of us.”
    Upside down, Mali smiled.
    In the darkness, Cora could feel Lucky’s gaze searing into her. She remembered the kiss they’d shared beneath the boughsof the weeping cherry tree. She had thought she could love him then, but that was before she knew the truth about his mother’s death and her father’s crimes. Before the cage had twisted him into someone who thought life in an elaborate zoo was paradise.
    â€œI still don’t like it,” Lucky said. “But I definitely don’t like the idea of you going through tests that could rupture your brain, or get you eaten by a lion, or mangled in some physical test.”
    She bit hard on the inside of her lip. She could smell the rankness of the cell block. Unwashed kids, sick animals, and, beneath it all, the tang of blood.
    All night, she toyed with the deck of cards like it was a rosary, whispering prayers and fears and hopes as she shuffled. At Bay Pines, she’d had a cellmate named Tonya who everyone called Queenie because of the queen of hearts tattoo on her shoulder. Queenie’s mom had been a sous-chef in Las Vegas, and her dad a card counter at the blackjack tables. He had taught Queenie and her brother to count cards and he’d put them on his team. It wasn’t illegal, at least not technically. But there had been an argument with another patron. Accusations of more serious cheating. A fight that resulted in two card dealers in the ICU and Queenie sent to juvie.
    But were you really cheating? Cora had asked.
    Queenie had snorted and tossed a jack of spades at her bed. Of course we were.
    Queenie taught her how to hide spare cards in the loose folds of her khaki uniform. It had started out of boredom, two insomniacs locked together in a cinder-block room until the seven-a.m. bell, but then, after two Venezuelan girls beat up Cora in the library, it became necessary. She needed protection, and for that she needed extra commissary credits, and to get them she neededto win at cards. Cheating had been dangerous then, and it would be even more dangerous now. But a thrill raced up Cora’s nerves every time she imagined taking the Gauntlet and twisting it on its head: proving humanity’s intelligence not through the Kindred’s system, but through her own.
    But that meant doing the one thing she’d sworn she’d never do, the thing she couldn’t stomach even the idea of.
    Trusting Cassian again.

11
    Cora
    AFTER A FEW DAYS, Cora discovered why no one bothered with the shower: the water was ice-cold, and besides, who was there to stay clean for, when the low lights of the Hunt hid all the grime? She learned the hard way that she had to fight her way first thing in the morning to the feed room, or she’d get only crumbs. Already, not even a full week in, she had bruises from being elbowed by the others.
    â€œTake this.” Mali thrust a threadbare blanket at her, just before the clock clicked to Showtime. “You are cold last night. I hear you shivering.” She frowned and scrunched up her face. She