by Caryn Lix
Alexei Danshov. Did these two know each other somehow? I glanced at Mia, but she was staring at the floor. Cage, the only other person Alexei might have confided in, shook his head in confusion. Liam, meanwhile, drew himself up and faced off against Alexei, ignoring the bigger boy’s clear malice.
Why had Liam pulled us off Mars? Trying to make up for abandoning his family? And where had he come from? How far away? How fast did the aliens travel? Rune and I hadn’t uncovered anything faster than our typical engines on the alien ship, but that didn’t mean much. We hadn’t been on it long enough to decode all its secrets. “Hey,” I said, before Alexei and Liam started chest thumping or something, “you still haven’t explained the most important thing.”
For a moment I didn’t think it would work, but then Liam shook his head and broke Alexei’s stare. “What’s that?” he asked, gathering the remnants of his persona around him like a cloak.
“Why are you dressed like a nineteenth-century pirate?”
Liam burst into laughter. “I’m a fashion icon,” he said, grinning.
“You have a cutlass,” replied Imani pointedly.
“It’s useful.”
At that moment, Alexei shot to his feet and stomped up the staircase. Liam moved as if to follow, but Mia rose at the same time. “I wouldn’t,” she advised, chasing after Alexei.
Liam scowled after them. “What if they wreck something?”
“They won’t,” Cage assured him. “I mean, probably. Almost definitely.” He hesitated, taking in our dubious expressions, and raised his hands in defeat. “All right. Maybe I’d better go too.”
SIXTEEN
AN HOUR LATER, I SAT with Rune, Jasper, and Imani in a lounge on the main level of the ship. Creature comforts surrounded us: VR games, prepackaged snacks, holoscreens, and just about everything else. But the closest we’d come to using any of them was grabbing a few sodas from a fridge.
Well, okay. I’d borrowed a tablet and quietly downloaded the latest issue of Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5. I wasn’t callous enough to read it right now, but its presence in my wrist chip felt like an old friend had dropped by to say hello. Even though I much preferred reading on a tablet, I’d use the holoreader if necessary. Almost everything in my old life had gone up in a puff of smoke. Nothing I’d believed in mattered anymore. Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5, though, that I could hold on to. More than ever, actually, since Yumiko’s battles against evil corporations now had an edge of reality.
What we mostly did was pace. Alexei, Mia, and Cage were still missing. Reed had spent so much time drooling over the ship’s controls that Liam had offered him a reluctant tour. And the four of us were waiting.
I hated waiting.
Rune semi-dozed on a sofa, and Jasper and Imani stared out opposite windows. I hesitated, torn between Imani’s hollow expression and the two unread episodes of RMDG5, but my human side won out. I dropped onto a seat by Imani. “You okay?”
She nodded without looking at me. We sat in silence for a few minutes, gazing at the stars as they slid silently away. I tugged at my braid, nostalgia surging. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed this view while we were on the alien ship.”
She smiled tiredly. “Try three years in a cell.”
I rested my head against the window. There hadn’t been accusation in her voice, but part of me itched to apologize all the same. I resisted the urge. I’d promised myself after we escaped Sanctuary that I wasn’t going to take the blame for Omnistellar’s ills anymore. They’d locked my friends in cells, but they’d done the same to my mind. The chip planted in my arm without my knowledge, without my permission, left a part of me permanently behind bars. “My dad is on the Omnistellar ship,” I told her now, still staring at the stars. Was Dad doing the same thing? “That’s going to be an awkward reunion.”
“You’re not on your own there.” She hesitated. “I lied, you know.”
“What?”
“To my parents.” She blinked heavily, holding back tears. “I was so desperate to talk to them I didn’t even consider what I’d say about Aliya. When they asked me how she was, I lied. I said she was fine. I said we’d sent her to a family on Mars with another girl from the ship.” She closed her eyes, and tears slid over her cheeks. “Why did I do that? I’m going to have to tell them the truth sometime. And it will be twice as painful for them now.”
My heart lurched sickeningly. I relived the moment I’d found my mother’s body dangling from chains . . . my desperate search for a heartbeat. I heard Rita’s screams as the creatures tore her to shreds. I saw the life drain from Tyler’s eyes as the aliens dragged him from our hands.
And of course, I saw Matt . . . my friend Matt, lifeless on the floor because of my misaimed bullet.
To my horror, answering tears welled in my own eyes. I swallowed them firmly and laid a hesitant hand on Imani’s. Her fingers closed over mine and squeezed tightly. She tugged on her ear, gaze fixed on the window. “Sorry, Kenzie,” she said after a moment. “I know you’ve lost a lot too. It’s not only me.”
“We’ve never talked about it.” I took a deep breath of air, ignoring the tremble of my lungs around it. “Our families.”
“I guess I felt everyone’s awkwardness whenever they looked at me. I knew they were thinking about Aliya, even if they couldn’t bring themselves to say it. When I was with you, it was different. You had your own grief, your own pain. Not like you didn’t care about Aliya, but you didn’t look at me and wonder what to say. It was nice to just hang out.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I slid closer and tucked my arm around her shoulders. “And for what it’s worth, I get why you lied. I wasn’t exactly honest with my dad, either.” I could have contacted him from the ship before my battery died, let him know I was okay. I’d chosen to let him suffer. Whether because, like Imani, I was afraid and didn’t know what to say, or because on some level I’d wanted him to experience the same pain and betrayal as me, I didn’t know. I didn’t dare consider the question too closely. “When the time comes, we’ll figure out what to tell your parents. I’ll help you if I can. Okay?”
She nodded, tipped her head onto my shoulder, and then quickly wiped the tears away with her knuckles. “Okay.”
Awkward silence stretched between us. “So,” I said, desperate to break it. “Hunting?”
She laughed through her tears. “I know. Not what you’d expect from a belle, but . . .”
“Belle?” I stared at her, taking in her delicately shaped eyes, perfectly formed lips. “You were a beauty belle?” Conversations from the ship drifted back to me: Imani analyzing my facial structure, my skin tone, talking about beauty blogs. I’d known she followed them, but I hadn’t realized she had her own.
“Top five hundred,” she returned defiantly. “My beauty channel was the most watched in Egypt two years running. I was sponsored and everything.”
I continued to gape, trying to imagine Imani running makeup tutorials. I mean, yeah, she was beautiful, and I’d noticed her habit of healing blemishes and hangnails, but . . . “What happened?”
“Omnistellar happened,” she replied, unable to keep a bitter edge out of her voice. “They found Aliya, and I couldn’t let them take her. We spent almost a year on the run before bounty hunters caught us.”
“And they put you on Sanctuary?” I asked. “How did they know you were an anomaly too?” Imani’s power didn’t lend itself to easy notice.
“I told them,” she replied, her chin jutting out in defiance. “What was I supposed to do? Let them send Aliya to that place on her own?”
I started to say something else, apology or question or I didn’t know what, but a sound caught my attention. I turned to find Cage, Mia, and Alexei in the doorway, none of them looking particularly happy. “Where’s Reed?” Cage asked, taking in the scene.
Jasper stretched and leaned forward. “If he got his way? Dismantling this ship piece by piece and pocketing the components. What’s going on?”
Alex
ei rubbed his face and took Mia’s hand for support. She let him. Aside from the times Mia was in danger, this was the least composed I’d ever seen him. “There are things I should explain.”
A shrill screech tore through the room, jerking Rune awake with a cry and sending the rest of us cringing to the floor, hands over our ears.
“Sorry!” came Reed’s voice, hollow and disembodied over the ship’s loudspeaker. “Oh man. Sorry, everyone. That was too loud.”
“Reed,” Mia growled in the same tone she would have used if she’d spotted a cockroach scurrying under the couch.
Liam shouted something in the background, and Reed said, “Yeah, yeah, I know! Delicate machinery! Got it!” He cleared his throat. “Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are about to dock on Obsidian. All interested parties, please report to the cargo bay. That is all. Over and out. Signing off, farewell, and—ouch! ” A scuffle came over the loudspeaker, abruptly dying in another, mercifully less shrill, screech.
Silence.
The moment would have been comedic if not for Alexei dominating the scene, his face a mask of some unreadable emotion. I scanned Mia and Cage for clues, but no one gave anything away. “Alexei,” I said, “what’s going on here? If we’re walking into danger, you’d better let us know.”
He smiled grimly. “Oh, it’s danger, all right. Obsidian is my family’s station.”
SEVENTEEN
ALEXEI EXPLAINED AS WE RUSHED for the cargo bay. “My family is powerful in Russia. Powerful on Earth. Not corporate powerful, but the other side, the side the corporations don’t touch.”
Organized crime, in other words. I bit my lip to keep from judging. After all, I’d spent seventeen years blindly believing every lie Omnistellar fed me. I tried not to leap to conclusions anymore. “It wasn’t a life I was interested in leading,” Alexei continued, “even before my parents and my brother were killed in a . . . terrorist attack.” He glanced at Mia, almost imperceptibly, and suddenly I remembered she’d been in prison for domestic terrorism.
She was framed, Cage had told me.
Was she? Unbidden, my gaze also slid to Mia.
She caught my look and muttered a curse. “Are you going to ask if I did it?”
I stared at her a moment longer. Rune, Jasper, and Cage all watched me expectantly, although I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for. “I don’t have to,” I replied at last, realizing as I said it that it was true. Mia was violent and unpredictable and volatile. But she never meant to hurt anyone. I knew that now.
To my surprise, her mask wavered, something like vulnerability surfacing before she slammed it down. “I might disappoint you,” she said, so quietly I barely heard her.
My heart skipped a beat. Beside me, Rune stopped short. “So, you did it? You killed Alexei’s family?”
“They took my sister.” The words spilled out of Mia in a rush, her gaze fixed on the floor, her hand lost in Alexei’s grip. Imani tensed at the words. “Or he did. There was a man, someone who . . . who used me occasionally. Once he learned of my powers, he’d have me set things up for him, steal things, spy. That kind of crap. I went along with it because he paid me well, and I needed to take care of Shannon.” She swallowed hard. I got the sense she hadn’t said that name in years, that she hadn’t meant to say it now. But as always, she recovered quickly. “And maybe because I was afraid.” She met each of our stares in turn, bright, challenging, as if she expected we’d pounce on her admission of weakness.
But no one did. We all knew fear. Jasper moved toward her, but Cage gestured him back. “What happened, Mia?” he asked softly.
She sighed. “They wanted me to get my hands dirty, starting with Alexei’s family. There was a bomb. I was supposed to plant it on the top floor of their hotel and let it go off. I refused, obviously. But when I got home . . .” She took an unconscious step closer to Alexei, and he slid behind her, still holding her close. “Shannon was gone. No one knew where she was. My mom was never in any condition to notice anything. Even her youngest daughter being kidnapped, apparently. And then he called me. Caleb.” She put so much fury and hatred into the name, I didn’t have to ask who he was.
“Caleb wanted Mia to assassinate my father.” Alexei picked up the thread of her tale. “And also, me, my mother, and my brother. He threatened to kill Shannon if she resisted. So Mia went to the hotel, all the way to the penthouse. But when she saw my little brother . . .”
“I couldn’t do it,” Mia snapped. “All right? I didn’t want to kill anyone, even a notorious criminal like Lex’s dad. I certainly wasn’t going to murder a child. But in that moment of hesitation, I lost my invisibility, and Alexei saw me.” She glanced at him, and he slid a hand over her face. Turning her cheek into his palm briefly, she continued, “He followed me outside. He’d never seen another anomaly before. He was fascinated. He . . .” She looked at him with an expression I couldn’t read, something I’d never seen on her face before. “He knew what I’d been sent to do, and he didn’t blame me.”
Alexei shrugged as if dismissing the murder plot against his entire family. “My father was a horrible man. Many people wanted him dead. Besides, you didn’t go through with it.”
“No, but Caleb did. He suspected I’d fail him, so he had a backup in place. And he pinned it on me.”
“My father died in that explosion,” Alexei continued. “No great loss.” The tendons on his neck stood out. “But so did my mother. Vitaly, my brother. And for them, I needed revenge. Unfortunately, by that point . . . Mia did too.”
“Alexei’s father and uncle founded Obsidian almost a decade ago,” Mia broke in quickly. She obviously didn’t want to discuss the vengeance they’d taken, or what had happened to her sister. She didn’t need to. I remembered Alexei’s words on Sanctuary: Mia had a little sister. “They made it the interstellar hub for black-market deals and organized crime. Kenzie, you asked why Omnistellar allowed somewhere like Obsidian to continue. The short answer is, it suits their needs. If there’s something they don’t want to get their hands dirty with, Alexei’s uncle takes care of it. In exchange, they leave him Obsidian.”
Jasper let out a slow whistle. “And that’s where we’re going? A hub for organized crime run by Alexei’s uncle?”
Alexei nodded. “An uncle who may try to throw me out an airlock, yes. The Danshovs blame Mia for the attack. They believe the official line. And they think I am izmennik—a traitor. That I chose the girl who murdered my family over them.”
“Fantastic.” I turned to Cage. “Any bright ideas?”
“Hijack the ship?”
But even if he’d been serious, Rune was already shaking her head. “There’s no way we get anywhere but Mars without refueling, and even if we did, somehow I don’t think we’d be welcomed at any station with a stolen ship and warrants for our arrests. We’re going to have to dock on Obsidian. Alexei, can you reason with your uncle?”
Alexei snorted eloquently.
By now we’d reached the doors to the cargo bay. Alexei hesitated. “I hate to even suggest it, Mia mine, but . . . maybe you should stay on the ship.”
She shrugged. “I will if you want me to,” she said, uncharacteristically agreeable. “If you think you can trust Liam not to tattle. And if you think your uncle doesn’t already know I’m here. And if you think Obsidian doesn’t have the technology to scan the ship and notice someone left behind, and if you’re sure they’re not going to kill the life support while refueling or doing maintenance or—”
“All right.” Alexei scowled. “I get the point.”
As we reached the door, Imani suddenly stepped in front of Mia. The girls’ eyes met, and Imani seemed to falter. “Mia,” she said softly, wringing her hands as if trying to break her own fingers.
Mia hesitated, not looking at her, then nodded. “Thanks,” she muttered. That seemed to satisfy Imani, and we entered the cargo bay to find Liam and Reed arguing over something. Reed blocked the controls, arms spread wide, a look of terror on his face, and
Liam . . .
Liam stood in front of him pointing a pistol at his chest.
I’d barely registered the pistol before Mia raced across the room, catching Liam’s arm and shoving it into the air, stomping on his instep in the same movement. Alexei leaped to her assistance, but she didn’t need him: by the time he arrived, Liam was on the floor with Mia’s foot on his throat, the gun trained on his face. “Why don’t you go ahead and move?” she suggested pleasantly. Her every limb trembled with restrained violence, as if eager to compensate for her recent disclosures.
Liam scowled and sputtered something.
“Mia,” said Cage, “I think you’re choking him.”
She considered that for a moment, then stepped back, releasing him but keeping him in her sights. “Want to repeat yourself?”
Liam sat, gagging and choking theatrically. “Bloody hell.”
“What’s going on?” Imani demanded of Reed.
He scowled. “I said not to open the doors until all of you arrived. He said he was getting off this ship now. I told him to wait, and he pulled a gun on me.”
Liam sniffed daintily, rubbing his throat. “Well, joke’s on you, kiddo. That gun’s not loaded.”
Mia hesitated, then twisted her wrist to check. The second she did, Liam lunged for her. He encountered Alexei’s fist halfway through his leap and collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“It is so loaded,” Mia said crossly.
Alexei sighed and glared at Liam’s unconscious form. “Guess we’ll have to open the doors sometime.”
We quickly filled Reed in on what Alexei had told us. He responded with his characteristic optimism: “We have enough fuel to get us back to Mars,” he suggested.
“And what then?”
“I don’t know. Hide in the desert until we run out of life support? It’s sounding like the best option at the moment.”
Rune sighed and flicked her fingers toward the console. Gears shifted, and the doors slid open. The rest of us withdrew, weapons held loosely, ready for action.
