by Caryn Lix
Or at least would. As long as she never discovered I’d killed Matt. What would someone who gave her friendship so carefully and her loyalty so completely say about that?
Before I could follow that train of thought to its disturbing conclusion, they emerged from the room, clean and dressed. “Food!” said Mia brightly, as if I hadn’t shouted that at her a few minutes before. She dove for the table and stacked items seemingly at random on a plate, Alexei right behind her.
“All right,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm and unemotional, to put Matt and the aliens and my father behind me. “Now that everyone’s here, can we please figure out how we’re going to get into a Mars Mining facility and destroy an alien spaceship that everyone is watching?”
* * *
An hour later, I sat at the window in my darkened bedroom and stared at the bustle of tourists below. “We’re all going to die,” I said.
“Probably.” Cage settled himself awkwardly beside me, and we gawked at Mars’s bright lights. After a moment, he asked, “Have you ever been on another planet before?”
“No. You?”
“Once or twice. We worked some jobs on Mars.”
That was a natural opening, but the words stuck in my throat. I wrapped my arms around my legs and leaned against the wall, staring out. Somehow, the sea of people below gave everything a distant feel, and I found the courage to say, “Cage. Back on the ship, you told Rune you’d killed for her before.”
He was quiet for a long time. “Yeah,” he said at last, very softly.
“What did . . . I mean . . .”
I watched his reflection as he sighed, raking his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Kenz. Rune and I did dangerous operations for dangerous people. Sometimes guards came at me and the only way to keep myself safe, to keep Rune safe, was to take them out.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
I laughed, choking on the sound. “You’re serious? You’ve killed so many people you can’t even count them?”
“That’s not what I meant.” A sharp edge entered his voice, and he leaned into my field of vision. His face sank in shifting shadows, the tendons on his neck standing out with tension. Talking about this wasn’t easy for him. “Real battles aren’t like training. You don’t always know what’s going on. Everything’s dark and chaotic. Sometimes I knew I’d killed someone. Sometimes I was sure I hadn’t. Often I simply didn’t know. I’d knock someone down and they’d bang their head and I could only hope they’d be all right. I didn’t have time to stop and check. Not if I wanted to get myself and my sister out alive.”
I retreated as far as the window seat allowed. Cage’s words made sense, and I got it. I could understand how circumstances might make things difficult. But to not even notice that you’d flat-out killed another human being? “I might not have been in any real battles, but I’m pretty sure I’d notice if I killed someone.” I heard the edge in my voice, raging just outside my control. I’d always reacted poorly to anything that felt like condescension. I didn’t mean to do it now, but I couldn’t seem to break the habit. And besides, it was true. I still remembered stumbling over to Matt, the blood soaking his shirt, his sightless, staring eyes.
After, I reminded myself. You noticed that after the alien died. At the time it had just been triggers and chaos and fear.
“I did notice, Kenzie. The first time. It gets easier.” He stared outside, his face silhouetted and somehow mournful in the half-light. “God help me, but it does.”
“When did the first time stop hurting so much?” I whispered, a bitter taste on the back of my tongue. “I still wake up every night with . . . with his blood on my hands. I still hear that gun in my dreams. I haven’t gone a single day without thinking of Matt since Sanctuary.”
Cage reached for me, his expression lost in shadows, but I shook my head and wrapped my arms more tightly around my legs. “We have to tell the others,” I said flatly.
“We’ve had this conversation.”
“No, I’ve had this conversation, and you’ve told me what to do.” A tinge of bitterness entered my voice. I’d just left Omnistellar behind. For the first time in my life, I was free: no corporate rules, no parents monitoring my every step. Just Cage, and I didn’t need his control any more than I needed anyone else’s. “But I’ve made my choice. I’m going to be honest with them.”
He sighed. “When? Tonight? That’ll work out great, what with us planning to take on Mars Mining. We need everyone to trust us right now. We can’t afford to have them second-guessing.”
“Not tonight.” I hated the truth in his words, but I accepted it. “Soon, though. They deserve the truth.”
A long silence stretched between us. When Cage finally answered, he directed his gaze outside, and his voice was suspiciously even. “I can’t stop you if that’s what you’ve decided.”
“No, you can’t.” I hoped he realized that. “I’m not your sister, and I’m not your subordinate. I’m your . . .” Your what? “Your friend,” I settled on at last, and when he turned back to me, the quirk of his eyebrow visible even in the dim reflected light, a smile brushed my lips. “Maybe more,” I allowed. “But either way, you can’t make choices for me. You just can’t.”
“I don’t mean to. But you said you didn’t want me to lie to you, and I’m trying to be as honest as I can here. I think telling the others is a bad idea. Rune and Matt had something between them. I’m not sure what, but I know how deeply she feels. She’ll be devastated by this. Mia, who knows how she’ll react? And I don’t want them blaming you. None of this was your fault. You saved our lives, Kenz. Saved them over and over again, and that stray shot was nothing but bad luck. It wasn’t like my past, where I took people down knowing full well I might kill them. You were trying to save Matt’s life.” He sighed, standing his hair on edge again, threading his hands through it and leaving them there. “I guess . . . I see you beating yourself up over this every day and night. I don’t think you need anyone adding to your guilt, that’s all.”
My heart melted slightly. “I appreciate that,” I said softly. And I did. Cage was right. I blamed myself for Matt’s death. But was that any less than I deserved? Intentional or not, I had killed him. He might have survived the alien if not for me.
As for Cage’s past, well . . . I had my answer. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it wasn’t as innocuous as I’d hoped. I should ask for specifics. I should press him for details. “My dad’s on the Omnistellar ship,” I told him instead. It was the coward’s way out, a safer topic, but still one I desperately wanted to discuss.
Cage blinked, surprised. “You talked to him?”
“At the prison. He called.”
“You okay?”
I smiled without quite meaning to. Cage always cut through the noise and got to the heart of a problem. “I will be. It was weird. He was really angry. And so was I.” Too angry, I realized. Or maybe not. I had a right to be angry. But I shouldn’t have lost control before I got answers, not when so many questions lingered between us.
Speaking of angry . . . “Mia still has that gun,” I said, thinking out loud. A shiver went through me. I’d fired guns so many times in my life, at training camps, at target practice. I’d never been fantastic at it, but it had always seemed like a game. I’d known on an intellectual level that guns were weapons, of course. Designed to kill and nothing else. But it didn’t seem that way until Sanctuary. “Can you convince her to give it up?”
Cage hesitated. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I think it’s making her feel safe. Mia won’t just get mad and shoot someone, Kenzie. And that gun might come in handy.”
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll let her keep it and just hope she doesn’t kill anyone.” Like I did. But Mia was a better shot than me. Hopefully she wouldn’t screw up. And hopefully I’d never find myself in a position where I needed to take that gun. The thought sent a chill down my spine. Could I do it? If I had to grab
that gun to defend myself or one of my friends, would I even be able to close my finger around the trigger? “Carrying that gun opens the possibility of someone dying. Or after killing countless people, does that not matter to you?”
Cage glared at me. “You asked for honesty, and I’m trying to give it. You’re not helping.”
He was right, but I didn’t have an apology in me. A long, angry silence lingered between us, long enough for me to regret my words. “We should get some rest,” he said at last. We’d decided to let the hunt for us die down for a few hours before we attacked, and I’d managed to recharge my comm device. Jasper reclaimed his from his sister too, so we had a way to communicate. We’d both set alarms for four a.m. We’d judged it the best time to attack. It also gave us a few hours to sleep, as we were all exhausted. No one had rested well on the alien ship, and I didn’t exactly count my semiconsciousness after getting zapped with stun guns as restful.
Cage slid off the window seat and glanced at the bed. “Offer’s still open. I can sleep on the couch.”
I sighed. Part of me wanted that. Send him away. Use the time to reflect, to be by myself. But no matter how much we fought, Cage and I had always stretched out side by side on the alien ship, and even if we didn’t touch, I appreciated his warmth, the reassurance of his presence.
“I don’t know what’s going on between us,” I told him honestly.
He sighed. “Neither do I. For what it’s worth, my feelings haven’t changed. I still care about you. A lot. It’s just been hard, with everything that’s going on.”
“You can say that again.” I gave Mars one last look, then turned to glance over my shoulder at his face, alternating red and white in the reflections of the lights outside. “You can stay,” I said, and his answering grin dwarfed all the brightness behind me.
ELEVEN
MY ALARM JERKED ME FROM a sound sleep a few hours later. I shot straight up in bed, disoriented and confused. I’d gotten out of the habit of waking to an alarm, and out of the habit of sleeping on anything soft or comfortable. I jabbed the alarm into silence and took a moment to thread my fingers through my hair, calming my racing heart. Since Sanctuary, I hadn’t had a single night of dreamless sleep. I’d hoped the new setting, away from the alien presence, might help. But it hadn’t. The aliens stalked me in my dreams, and as always, it ended with Matt’s lifeless body at my feet, the gun trembling in my hands as creatures closed in from all directions.
Cage groaned beside me and pulled a pillow over his head. We’d fallen asleep fully clothed but close together. Sometime in the night I’d apparently piled most of the blankets and pillows between us. I hoped that wasn’t a metaphor. “Get up,” I muttered, shaking off the vestiges of my nightmare.
“Why?”
“Because it’s time, and because I’m not waking Mia. That’s why.”
He clenched the pillow more tightly around his face. “Is that my life’s only purpose? As a Mia buffer?”
“It is today.” I nudged him until he tumbled to the floor, grumbling under his breath as he climbed awkwardly to his feet.
Something clattered outside. We both froze, staring at the door. “That was just Jasper getting up,” I whispered, my heart hammering in my throat. “Right?”
“Right.” But Cage whispered too. Slowly, he grabbed his shoes and tugged them on. I did the same.
We both listened intently. No further sound came from outside. If it was one of the others, surely they would have said something by now? Made some sort of noise? “Stay back,” said Cage, tiptoeing toward the broad double doors.
I hesitated, but after a moment I moved out of his way. I still didn’t love him telling me what to do, and there was probably nothing there. But if there was, Cage’s speed gave him a much better chance of dodging bullets than my ability to understand languages.
I grimaced. Of all the powers to wind up with . . . sure, it had come in handy on the ship, but it wasn’t much good in life-or-death situations, and lately, those seemed to occupy the bulk of my day. I’d never been the strongest or fastest in my classes, but I’d always been in the top five. With the other anomalies, I kept getting pushed out of the way. I remembered a gangly, sarcastic boy at a three-month training camp. He was always at the bottom of the class and just seemed to get angrier and angrier about it. At the time I’d scorned him, but now I was starting to empathize.
Cage eased the door open a crack, leaning to one side. He angled his head. “What do you see?” I asked, my voice barely loud enough to qualify as a whisper.
He held up a hand in my direction. An agonizing moment passed, every silent heartbeat an eternity. Finally, Cage turned back to me, shrugging—
And a bullet shot through the gap where he’d just been standing, cracking into the wall above the headboard.
I gaped at it in openmouthed disbelief. Cage, more accustomed to shootouts involving actual bullets, slammed the door and flew across the room, tackling me to the floor on the other side of the bed. From this vantage point, the bullet wedged in the wall jutted into my line of view. It was bigger than most bullets and had a familiar shape. “I think it’s a tranquilizer,” I said with some relief.
Cage’s face was grim and taut above me. “If they surrender us to Omnistellar and leave that ship’s signal functioning, they might as well put a bullet in our skulls. It’d be quicker.” He raked his hand through his hair, his body braced above mine. No more shots came from the other room, and no more noise. “They’re being quiet so they don’t wake the others.”
The others . . . of course. “Get off me,” I muttered, shoving him so he rolled aside. As Cage rose on his elbows to peek over the bed, I activated the comm link embedded in my wrist.
Jasper answered a moment later, voice only, and a voice thick with sleep. “I’m up,” he muttered in the least convincing lie I’d ever heard.
“Good,” I whispered, “because there are people with tranq guns in the main room.”
That got his attention. “What?”
“Shh! We need to get out of here. Can you give them something else to worry about?”
“You bet. Wait just a minute.”
Across the room, the door slid open. Cage dropped to his belly and growled, “We don’t have a minute!”
“Under the bed,” I whispered, pulling him after me as we slid beneath the massive frame. This bought us a couple of seconds at most. There weren’t a lot of hiding places in the room, and if these were security professionals, even if they weren’t Omnistellar, they were bound to find us. But maybe those seconds would be enough for Jasper to take action?
I muted my comm device so Jasper wouldn’t give us away if he called. Cage’s broad chest pressed against my back, one of his hands cupping my arm as if he could shove me somewhere safe if we were discovered. Unbidden, my thoughts returned to Sanctuary, where Cage and I had huddled under my bed as an alien stalked through the room. He’d clutched me as if he could shield me from its claws, and we’d both trembled, white-lipped and petrified, until it clattered away. Bile rose in my throat at the memory. My breath came in short gasps, my heart racing. My God, if we couldn’t stop the signal, if we couldn’t—
A loud crash reverberated through the suite.
Someone bellowed. Feet stampeded. Cage and I slid from under the bed in time to see a figure in a black suit bearing the Mars Mining logo dash out the door. Cage grabbed my hand and half tossed me into the air, catching me and breaking into a run—a full-on, superpowered burst of speed that plastered my skin to my skull and left my eyes watering. A second later, we were in the corridor. “I’m going back for Rune!” he shouted, vanishing before I responded.
Damn it! I paced the hallway, searching my training for answers. What did you do when you faced an unstoppable force that outnumbered and outarmed you? Especially when you had no idea where your compatriots were. Omnistellar hadn’t given me any answers. They’d always led me to assume I’d be on the unstoppable side.
A burst of flame from
the suite told me Alexei was awake and moving. A second later, Cage returned, dropping Rune and Imani in front of me. Alexei, Jasper, and Reed bolted after him. “Go!” Jasper yelled. “Make for the service door at the end of the hall!” He pulled the doors shut behind us and blasted them, crumpling them against each other, effectively locking the Mars Mining goons inside for the moment.
“Wait!” Imani cried. “Mia!”
Mia shimmered into view behind her, blood dripping from her bottom lip. “I’m here.”
Alexei scowled. “He hit you.”
“I hit him back, and he’s not getting up.”
“What is wrong with you?” Reed screamed. “Run!”
The doors behind us shook. Cage blasted across the hall, Jasper racing full tilt behind him. A scan of Jasper’s thumb opened the service exit. Other doors opened behind us, curious tourists glancing out and exclaiming at the commotion.
We clambered into the stairwell, Jasper in the lead. “Your family must have called them,” Mia accused as we raced down the stairs.
“Never!” Jasper snarled.
“We weren’t exactly subtle in getting here.” I shouldered past Mia and raced after Jasper. “Now that Mars Mining knows we’re alive, they’ve almost certainly broadcast our info to bounty hunters. We could have been spotted by just about anyone on our way to the hotel, and from there it’s just a matter of getting Tourism Rouge’s permission to bio scan for a big group of teens.” Mars was a great place for collecting bounties, and a great place to vacation after you claimed one. I cursed myself for not considering it sooner. Mars Mining would have flagged our names, or at least those of us they knew about, the second we escaped.
