Sanctuary

by Caryn Lix

“And me,” said Rune.

  Slowly, Tyler raised his hand. “Me,” he whispered. I shot him a surprised glance, but he was fixated on Cage, his jaw trembling in determination.

  The other prisoners stared at their feet. Even Kristin seemed reluctant to speak.

  Cage nodded. “That’s more than enough. The rest of you head to the cells for now. Don’t worry,” he added, raising his hands at their grumbles. “We’re not locking anyone in. We just need to get organized. That’ll be easiest if we have some space.”

  The prisoners filed out of the room, until only the seven of us remained. Tyler cleared his throat. “I thought you might need me,” he said. “Because maybe I can sense the . . . the monster’s thoughts or something. But if you don’t want me to . . .”

  “No,” said Cage. “We’ll gratefully take your help. And don’t worry. We’ll keep you safe. But let’s avoid the word ‘monster’ for now, huh? We only have the word of a frightened kid for that, and I’d rather not create a panic.” He took Rune’s hand. “Also, you’re not coming.”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously. It was the first time I’d seen Rune angry. “The hell I’m not.”

  “You can’t. You have to be here in case something goes wrong with the system. The last thing we need is Sanctuary reestablishing control and venting the prison airlocks or something. I need you on the system. Maybe you can even get Sanctuary’s weapons functioning and keep them from targeting us.” He squeezed her hand. “Please, meimei.”

  “What’d I tell you about that?” she muttered, but she broke eye contact and nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  Matt frowned. “You’re leaving her here all alone?”

  “I’m hardly alone,” Rune pointed out. “You’re in more danger than I am.”

  “I know, I just . . .” Matt stared at the tops of his shoes, scuffing them on the floor. “Maybe I should stay with you. Just in case.”

  I caught Cage smothering a grin. “If you think it’s necessary.”

  “No,” Rune replied firmly. “I appreciate the thought, but I’ll be fine. Cage needs you more than I do.” She hesitated. “Take care of him for me.”

  Matt raised his head, his expression gentle. “You know I will.”

  “Matt?” Cage asked. “Is your power working right now, even with all the heightened emotions?”

  “I think so. Of course, I know everyone in the sector, which is nice.”

  Rune pushed him teasingly. “It doesn’t matter if your power’s working. You’re always nice.”

  “Oh God,” Mia grumbled under her breath. “Can we please get out of here before this gets any more sickeningly sweet?”

  Cage chuckled. “We’ll stop in at the other three prison sectors, just to check on the situation. Kenzie will take us through the prison door into the station proper. We’ll scout weapons, access the command center, and figure out what happened to her mother. From there, we’ll be in touch.”

  Rune hugged him fiercely. “Be careful,” she said. Then, to my surprise, she hugged me, too. “Be careful,” she repeated. “And you take care of my brother too, okay?”

  “I will,” I promised.

  She retreated to stand by the server room and caught Cage’s eye. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t open that door unless you’re sure it’s us.”

  “We won’t.”

  Cage nodded. “Let’s go.”

  We faced one more obstacle in the corridor: Anya, wrapped in a thin blanket, her face pale and drawn. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered. “Why can’t you stay here?”

  Alexei picked her up like a toddler. “We have to get out of here, kotyonok. It’s the only way to keep us all safe.” He set her down behind us, dropping to place his hands on her shoulders and look her in the eyes. “Ya vernus. Ya obeshchayu.”

  She glanced at Mia, who gave her another one of those rare smiles that transformed her face. “You go find Rune and stay with her, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the girl softly. “Don’t forget. You promised you’d come back.”

  “I always keep my promises,” Alexei assured her.

  She scampered down the hall, and with her went our last excuse. I looked to our crew: Mia with her sharp mask of indifference, Alexei hovering behind her as always, Cage’s tired but determined expression, Matt’s thoughtful eyes, Tyler’s trembling legs. I was about to unleash this group on the station, and it would cost me my job, my future, and maybe even my freedom.

  So why couldn’t I bring myself to care?

  FIFTEEN

  IT FELT LIKE SANCTUARY HAD turned against me. Now the soft hum of its mechanics seemed ominous as we proceeded up the stairs, our feet clanging against metal. Within a few seconds, Mia disappeared. That, at least, was par for the course.

  I opened the door to sector 3 and found it empty. No hull breach this time. Simply . . . silence. We walked through in search of survivors, but there was no Anya here, no one hiding in the gym or beneath a console in the server room. Even without conversation, it didn’t take an anomaly to sense the emotional turmoil: Cage’s growing tension, Alexei’s taut muscles, Tyler’s naked fear. A few times Matt whispered something to Cage, who shook his head in response. The two boys drew nearer together, outdistancing the others, and I wondered how close they really were. Alexei and Cage were clearly good friends, but Cage and Matt had an easy trust of each other that made me think they’d known each other much longer. As I watched, Cage chuckled and draped his hand on Matt’s shoulder. Matt shoved him aside, grinning, a forced smile that didn’t quite manage to dissipate the tension.

  A forced smile instead of asking what we were all thinking: Where was everyone?

  Cage took a moment to contact Rune, who confirmed what we already suspected: no life signs throughout the sectors.

  We found the same situation in one and two.

  The mood grew steadily grimmer as we progressed through the levels. “Why?” Tyler whispered as we emerged from sector 1. “Sectors one through four, but not five. Why?”

  No one had an answer, although one occurred to me: maybe something entered in sector 4 and worked its way up.

  Until now, we’d all stuck to human terminology. Someone else was on the station with us. But Anya had not described a someone. She’d described a something. Four legs, she’d said. A tail. Had a particularly vicious poodle found its way into sector 4? Or . . . or was it finally time to consider another possibility?

  Humanity once wallowed in the blissful view that we were alone in the universe. The probes’ arrival half a century earlier had shattered that thinking. But since then, we’d had no contact with aliens of any kind. We’d explored the solar system, colonized the moon, Mars, and some of the moons around Jupiter, set up space stations and interplanetary corporations—all without a hint of life from outside our boundaries.

  In the fifty years since the probes, we’d come to think of them as a one-time encounter with creatures we’d never truly meet. But Colonel Trace’s debriefing after the drill echoed in my mind. Sure, now I realized that Rune had engineered the whole thing. Trace, though, seemed to suspect increased security from the Omnistellar AI as the fifty-year anniversary of the probes approached. Why? What did she know that I didn’t?

  Aliens?

  If they were hostile, if they wanted us dead, why send us a device that gave powers we could use against them? I glanced around at the others, wondering what would happen if I voiced my fears out loud.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself, answered Tyler in my head.

  I screamed. So did just about everyone else, jerking to attention, weapons brandished. As they realized nothing was attacking us, they gaped at me in disbelief.

  I fumbled for words, pointing at Tyler. “He . . .”

  Cage groaned. “Tyler, stay out of people’s heads!”

  The boy had the decency to flush. “You think really loud. I didn’t mean to listen. You were, like, projecting or something.”

  A crack resounded through
the corridor, and Tyler jolted forward. Mia materialized. “You do that again and I’ll kick you down these stairs. You follow me?”

  “Yes!” he yelped, hands clamped around his face as he cringed away from her. “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly, my brain reeling because Mia, of all people, had leaped to my defense. It was hard to gauge the seriousness of her threats, though, and I didn’t want to risk her actually murdering him. I wasn’t thrilled to find Tyler prowling around my brain again, but this time seemed different—less invasive, more like brushing against someone in a crowd. “He just startled me. Let’s keep moving.”

  And not talk about aliens. Tyler’s objection—nervous, skinny little Tyler keeping his head when I was losing mine—made me more embarrassed than ever about my suspicions.

  Of course, I’d been suspicious about the drill in the first place, and I’d turned out to be right about that. . . .

  I shook my head. If Tyler didn’t think aliens were a possibility, I could just imagine trying to convince the others. And I wasn’t convinced myself. Anya wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what she’d seen. But there was someone who would be able to give us a much more complete view of what was going on, and that was my mother.

  Assuming she was still alive.

  I clamped down on that thought before it could go any further, fighting down a sick twist of betrayal and grief. Mom was alive. She was. I just had to find her.

  We reached the top level, and I hesitated, staring at the door. This was my last possible second to back out, and seventeen years of training echoed in my head: the company first and always.

  Mia popped into existence. “Hurry up,” she snapped.

  I glared at her. “I’m not sure you get what’s happening here. After I open this door, I’ll have broken every law, every oath I took when I became a guard. My future will be ruined, and worse, I’ll have committed treason, which I’m pretty sure carries a life sentence. So do you mind if I take one freaking minute to think about what I’m doing?”

  “For what it’s worth, you can say we forced you,” Cage said quietly. “None of us would deny it, whatever happens. We appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “It won’t make any difference. You heard my mom. No matter what you do to me, my job is to resist and stand my ground. After this, my life is over.” I scowled at each of them in turn, and even Mia shut up. Shaking my head, I spun toward the console and began the long series of scans and codes necessary to unlock the door.

  The exit slid open with ease, and I shivered and led them into the station proper. As soon as the door closed behind us, Mia vanished. “That girl really likes to be invisible,” I muttered. Her constant disappearances were starting to wear on my nerves.

  Alexei shrugged. “It works to our advantage. She scouts ahead, warns us of danger.”

  “Yeah, except I’m the one who knows the way.”

  Another shrug. Tyler, Matt, and Cage, presumably sensing my mood, lingered behind me. I led them through the corridor to a weapons locker and went through the same rigmarole with my code. Inside we found two stun guns and a collapsible baton, not exactly a wealth of weaponry. I holstered one of the stun guns and gave Cage the other, and Matt took the baton. Alexei and Mia seemed content with their makeshift pipes, and Tyler clearly hoped to never wield a weapon in his life.

  Cage caught up to me as we stalked through the halls. “Calm down,” he said under his breath.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because if there is someone on this station, we need to take it slow and make sure we don’t wander into their arms. That’s why.” He grabbed me and pulled me back. I tensed, but there was nothing dangerous in his expression—on the contrary, it was a little too understanding. “I know you’re upset, but take a second, okay? We’re not going to do your mother any good if we get ourselves killed before we find her.” He hesitated. “Have you given any thought to what you’re going to say when we do find her?”

  I shook my head, suddenly very tired, but I noticed and appreciated that “when.” “Mom turned her back on me. She was willing to kill me to stop you from escaping. I’m not going to let her die, but I don’t have any illusions about her protecting me from Omnistellar if I play dumb. So I won’t betray you, if that’s what you’re asking. I told you, the second I opened that door, I threw my lot in with yours.” Cage reached out like he wanted to touch my face, but he dropped his hand with a glance at our audience. My skin tingled as if he’d made contact, and I shook my head. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll take a few deep breaths or something.”

  This time he did touch me, squeezing my arm. “We’ll do everything we can for your mother,” he said. “Promise.”

  I believed him. He hadn’t lied to me yet—except when he told me he was going to hurt me, and I was willing to let that slide for obvious reasons—and my exhausted mind couldn’t cope with any more stratagems or tricks. Besides, I didn’t have much choice about trusting him. I really had thrown myself in with this ragtag band of prisoners. My allegiances switched when Mom betrayed me. It just took my brain a few hours to catch up.

  Maybe it had even started before that, I realized—the moment I started talking to them. Rita had been right. Thinking of the prisoners as people wasn’t just a bad idea. It was dangerous.

  Matt nudged my shoulder as we progressed through the corridors to where the blast wall had descended. I’d completely forgotten about it, and it was gone now—part of Rune’s plan, I suspected, to shepherd me into the prison. “We appreciate what you’re doing,” he told me.

  I swallowed a lump of bitterness. “Are you a corporate citizen, Matt?”

  “Me?” He laughed. “Hell no. American citizen through and through. My family lives on a farm in Nebraska. Totally without corporate sponsorship. Last time I talked to them, they were debating selling the land and moving to the city. It might not be corporate, but at least there are jobs there. The farm just doesn’t produce like it used to.”

  “They’re still talking about that?” asked Cage softly.

  Matt sighed. “I know. I told them what you said, that anything was better than a government city. But they don’t listen to me much these days, you know? Kind of the black sheep of the family.”

  The two boys fell into quiet conversation, and I tuned them out. Everything they’d just said made it clear: they couldn’t understand my dilemma.

  We pressed on toward the command center. A quick glance in the shuttle bay told me Rita had not returned. We were still trapped on Sanctuary.

  About fifty feet from the command center, a scuffling reached my ears, soft and almost indiscernible. I threw up a hand, stopping the others. “You hear that?” I whispered.

  The sound stopped at once, throwing fear over me like a bucket of cold water. I’d barely even spoken. It—whatever it was—couldn’t have heard me, could it?

  “What is it?” Cage murmured.

  I shook my head, drawing my stun gun and making sure I disengaged the safety. I beckoned the others forward and led them down the hall at a crouch. Where the hell was Mia? Part of me wanted to call Alexei, let him take the lead and block for us. But I knew the way, and more importantly, I was the guard around here. Omnistellar might have abandoned me, but its lessons still informed my core. Like it or not, this was my job. More than that, it was who I was.

  We rounded the corner but nothing was there, only the empty expanse of hall leading me on. Had the noise been my imagination? I wouldn’t be surprised. By now, even Sanctuary’s soft hums and thumps made me jump.

  Tyler bounced on the soles of his feet. “What was it? What did you hear?”

  “Nothing,” I said, ignoring the looks the others were exchanging. Think I’m imagining things if you want. I don’t care. I just needed to get to the command center, find Mom, and make sure she was okay. Then I could deal with everything else.

  I holstered the gun, scanned my thumb for entrance, and shouldered through the door before it even fi
nished opening. A quick scan of the room told me what I’d already suspected: my mother wasn’t there. Even though I’d known that would be the case, my heart plummeted into my boots, and I closed my eyes, taking a moment to compose myself.

  Mom was okay. She was. I just had to find her.

  The others entered in silent awe. This was their holy grail, the place they’d wanted to reach so badly that they’d concocted this ridiculous scheme. I hoped it was worth it.

  While they milled about in confusion, I settled into my station and called cameras on one screen, comms on another. “Rune, are you there?”

  She answered so quickly that she must have been sitting in the server room waiting. “Kenzie! Is everyone okay?”

  “We’re fine. I only have minimal camera access here. Is that your doing?”

  “Yes. Hang on a second.” Something released in the code, and full camera functionality leaped to life. “I still can’t get the station’s defenses working, though. They seem designed to target our chips, and I can’t work around it.”

  Disappointing, but not surprising. “It’s okay. Thanks, Rune. Let’s see what I can do on my end.” I set to work on the system, telling the cameras to scan for movement. One by one, lenses came to life, most of them in sector 5, a few in the command center. The prisoners gathered behind me, buffeting me with their nervous energy.

  Suddenly, something streaked past one of the cameras, too quickly to see what it was. We all tensed. “You saw that?” Tyler squeaked.

  “We saw it,” I said grimly, refocusing the screen. “That was near the medical bay, not too far from here.”

  Another camera flickered as something rushed by. “Where’s that?” Mia demanded.

  I swallowed. “Corridor between here and medical.”

  Another camera. Another step closer to the command center. It erased any doubt.

  Whatever it was, it was heading this way.

  And fast.

  SIXTEEN

  MY HEARTBEAT ECHOED IN MY ears as the thing drew steadily closer. Camera after camera flickered with movement. My fingers flew over the keyboard, searching for manual control of Sanctuary’s defenses. As soon as I pulled them up in one area, a screen flickered somewhere else. And then, all at once, the movement stopped.