by Caryn Lix
And there it was again. A shape, slipping between two buildings and darting across the street. Matt gasped on my left, letting me know he’d seen it too.
Our thief was back.
TEN
I HELD MY BREATH AS the figure skirted the edge of the building, then leaped onto the fire escape with surprising speed and agility. It was impossible to tell more about them from this distance. It was dark, and they were wrapped in some sort of cloak; they crouched there a moment, little more than a sliver of darkness in the night. Then they darted up the steps without making a sound.
“Impressive,” Mia murmured.
I nodded my agreement, shifting to my feet slowly and quietly, shaking the feeling back into my legs. I rolled the stiffness from my neck and checked to make sure I was still maintaining the invisibility around us—other people’s powers would never come quite as naturally to me as they did to their owners.
The group of us moved, steadily and silently, staying close together, hugging the middle of the road. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling exposed in the glaring moonlight, even though I knew the thief couldn’t see us. I resisted the urge to reach for the others, to make sure they were still there. For a moment the world receded and I was suddenly, bafflingly aware that I was on the surface of an alien planet, in a ruined city. Was it only months ago I’d spent my days wandering around Sanctuary, dreaming of my Omnistellar future? That I’d had two parents and all the security in the world? That my biggest concern was the next issue of Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5 and whether the creator would wrap the story up the following year? Life had changed in the time it took to fall asleep at night.
Someone made a soft noise, I wasn’t sure who. But it pulled me out of my reverie and directed my attention to the stairs, where the cloaked figure descended, a full backpack slung over their shoulder. I peered at the person. I’d wondered why none of us heard them the night before, and even from twenty feet away, I almost lost them once or twice. How could they stay so quiet on the rusted metal stairwell?
I sucked in a breath. Because they weren’t walking on the stairs. They were floating on air.
Of course. This was Liam’s world, and that meant anyone left here had powers and strengths we couldn’t imagine.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on that, because Cage found my hand and squeezed it, and we slipped forward. After a moment, Mia’s long, hard grasp closed over my elbow on my other side, binding us together. We stayed as far back as we dared, and I still thought we were too close. The night was deathly silent, and our footfalls on the pavement, while soft, seemed to echo all around me. The thief wasn’t making a whisper of sound, and I was terrified they’d hear us. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to lose them—every now and then they vanished in the shadows and my throat clenched.
“Matt?” Cage whispered the second time it happened.
“I can see the heat signature,” he replied, his voice a ghost in the night. “And I can sense them up ahead. Don’t worry. My fancy new cybernetics will track them from a distance, even if my power doesn’t.” There was a trace of bitterness in his tone, but his fancy cybernetics were definitely coming in handy right about now. I’d clamored to go on this mission because I couldn’t stand the thought of my friends out of my sight, of waiting around helplessly while they took a chance, but this was actually the best possible team to send after the thief. Mia’s stealth, Cage’s speed, Matt’s enhanced senses, and my skill with languages—not to mention my newfound ability to copy everyone else’s talents—imbued me with confidence. For the first time in a long time, we had the drop on someone. We weren’t being stalked by alien monsters or running from bounty hunters. We were still hiding, but it was by choice, because we were in control. That was a heady sensation, and some of my crippling pain and fear lifted at the thought.
I wasn’t stupid. We were still trapped here. My family was still dead. The aliens were still out there. But for the moment at least, we were—maybe for the first time—finally free. No one knew where we were, not even us, and that meant they couldn’t come after us. If nothing else, we were free of Omnistellar.
And we had one another, and I would make sure it stayed that way, no matter what stupid risk I had to take next.
“Keep track of the way we came,” Mia murmured as we followed the thief along a city street. It had been a pretty straight shot until now, when we left the wide-open throughway and were venturing into smaller, darker alleys.
“I’m on it,” Cage replied softly. He’d grown up in alleys and slums and always seemed to have a good sense of direction. That was a positive, because I was used to strictly structured corporate facilities. In other words, I was already lost.
As we ventured farther into the city, we slowed even more, not out of fear of losing our target, but because we’d hit an area full of obstacles. The tall buildings blocked much of the moonlight. The area we’d claimed as our own was relatively clear and clean—surprisingly so, now that I came to think of it. This part of the city, on the other hand, was not. Debris littered streets, and twisted vehicles lined the sidewalks. I bumped into something heavy and metal at one point, maybe a trash container, and bit my lip to keep from screaming in shock. There were rustles in the corners, although those could have been my imagination. We stepped on what felt like broken glass or crushed stone, and shadows ghosted along the walls, making me think of aliens lurking around every corner.
By now I’d completely lost track of our quarry, but Mia’s grasp on my elbow remained firm and confident, so I assumed Matt was leading her. I was doing the same to Cage, so I sure hoped Matt knew where he was going. Otherwise, we were wandering around blind.
A few minutes later, Mia tightened her grip, warning me to stop, and I tugged on Cage’s hand. “What’s up?” he murmured, barely audible.
“The thief went in there.” Matt might have gestured, but we couldn’t see him. “And then I lost track of them. I can’t see heat signals through buildings, but no one’s come out since.”
“In where?” I asked, trying to keep my voice quiet.
“Sorry. Big building on the corner.”
I scanned my surroundings and located a two-story building spreading over nearly an entire block. “If the thief’s in there, they aren’t alone.”
“Matt?” asked Cage.
“Yeah. At least one other life-form nearby, and more in the area.”
My fingers drifted to the dagger on my belt. “I don’t know about this,” I said. “I mean, this is someone trying to survive, exactly like us.” I felt the others sigh as much as I heard them, and I bristled. “Pissing off everyone we meet hasn’t worked so well for us this far. We blasted those aliens into space, and look where it got us. A horde of monsters chasing us through Obsidian. I’m not saying we should turn around and go home; I’m only suggesting we try a more diplomatic approach.”
“I’m not planning to march in there and start stabbing,” snapped Mia. “This is reconnaissance as much as anything. If we can do this nicely, we will. But keep in mind that they stole from us.”
I bit off a sharp reply about Mia being one to talk about theft. We’d just come to some sort of understanding. Why make trouble between us?
Cage’s arm slid over my shoulders. “You’re both right,” he said quietly. “Reconnaissance, not attack. But be ready to defend yourself.”
I sighed and squeezed his hand against my arm. “I’m ready,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We approached the building carefully. I started for the front door, but the other three swiftly disabused me of that notion, Mia scoffing heavily as she scouted for a side window. Again, I was left scowling—invisibly, but still. So I didn’t have their experience with breaking and entering. I had trouble seeing that as a character flaw.
After a moment, Mia’s soft voice flowed from the darkness, and a window shuddered open. “Let me scout things first,” said Matt. Mia must have stepped aside, because a moment later he said, “It’s all clear. Some sor
t of storeroom by the looks of things. It’s pitch-black, so it’s hard to tell anything else. There are two life-forms very nearby, but they’re not in here. Watch your step. It’s a bit of a drop; let me help you down.”
There was a soft thud, presumably of Mia landing in the room. Cage eased me gently forward, and I groped blindly until I found Matt’s extended hand. He held on to me while I scrambled over the windowsill, then lowered me and let me go. I hit the ground with a jar that resounded through my elbows, but I wasn’t hurt. This must be a sort of basement, the ground significantly below the window.
I moved out of the way, and once more I was standing by myself in complete blackness, the only light the dim glow of the window above. Presumably Mia was nearby, but of course I couldn’t see her, probably couldn’t have even if we’d been visible. My chest tightened and my breath came in gasps. Not this again. Ever since the darkness and claustrophobia of the alien ship, the place we’d been trapped in for so many weeks, ever since the aliens stalked me through Obsidian, dark silence was not my friend.
Something thudded in front of me and I sagged against the wall, fighting not to scream. “Cage?” I whispered.
He found me then, his body warm and solid in the darkness, and I went willingly into his arms, letting our invisibility cloak my weakness. “You okay?” he whispered in my ear, the brush of his lips sending a different kind of shiver down my spine.
“Yeah,” I replied, fighting a wave of embarrassment. I had to get it together. I was not going to become a liability on this team, and I sure wasn’t going to be told I couldn’t come on the next mission because I melted down whenever someone turned out the lights. “I’m good.”
There was a louder thump of Matt landing nearby. “Everyone here?” he asked.
“Right beside you,” I replied.
“Over here,” said Mia from across the room. “I’ve found an exit. Matt, do you have snazzy new ears, too? Want to tell me if you hear anything behind this door?”
“Sadly, they left my ears more or less human,” Matt replied sarcastically. “Only minor embellishments—not enough to hear through solid steel. But those life-forms are close, Mia. Next room’s as good a guess as any.”
“Shame about the ears,” Mia replied, and it was impossible to tell if she was joking or not. “I guess it’s up to me, then.” A moment of silence followed, and then she said, a tiny bit louder, “I don’t hear anything. I’m going to ease the door open a crack, so stay quiet.”
There was the soft scrape of the door opening, then my heart beating in my ears, and then the scrape again. “Either there’s no one there or they’re standing around being perfectly silent in total darkness,” Mia announced.
“There are people nearby,” Matt replied, his voice almost inaudible. “I can’t tell how close.”
“Okay,” whispered Cage. “Let Matt take the lead.” He released me from his embrace but kept my hand in his, and together we felt our way along what seemed to be metal shelves. I was careful to let my fingers dance over only the shelves. They were probably empty, or storing innocuous contents, but the darkness had me keyed up, and I really didn’t want any surprises.
We stumbled over something, and my groping hands caught the doorway. I tugged on Cage to let him know I’d found the way and eased into the open. “Everyone still here?” I whispered, my voice barely audible to my own ears.
“Here,” said Mia. “Let’s move toward—”
But I never found out where Mia wanted to go, because at that second, light flooded the room. After the darkness of the last few hours it was like a physical attack. I threw up my hands and must have dropped my invisibility in my rush to shelter myself.
A moment later someone grabbed me and forced me to the ground, slamming my head against the linoleum floor and wrenching my hands behind my back, securing them there with some sort of cuffs. As I lay blinking in what seemed like the beams of a million flashlights, Cage, Matt, and Mia squinted on the floor, in similar predicaments.
“So,” said Mia dryly, “seems like it was people standing around being quiet in the dark after all.”
Split across space. Time. The dimensions collide. The power interlaces.
Its attention is divided. The pull and power of the vengeance and the devouring and the hunt and the death. The drive to finish. The completion.
Some remains.
Some lingers.
Some is finished.
And yet all is one.
ELEVEN
“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO identify yourselves.” A man’s voice, sharp and crisp, cut through the haze. I twisted, trapped, panic surging in my chest, that same familiar terror of being caught in an alien net.
“Take it easy, Gideon,” someone replied in an accent that reminded me of my old friend Rita Hernandez. A lump surged in my throat. “They’re just kids.”
Whoever Gideon was, he didn’t seem to care if we were kids or not. He fumbled roughly at my belt, snatching away my dagger and holding it up to show whoever else was in the room. “Just kids, huh?” He kicked my ribs and I gasped, the air flying out of me in a whoosh. His foot smashed into the side of my face and stayed there, pinning me to the floor. I still couldn’t see my attacker, but I could see Cage, and his face was a mask of fury. There was no way to help me, though, bound as tightly as we were. “Who are you?” Gideon snarled. “Where did you come from, and why the hell are you sneaking into our house in the middle of the night?”
I’d told them this was a bad idea. I winced, catching my breath. “Let’s talk about that,” I suggested. “But I’d rather not do it on the floor with your foot crushing my skull.” I wasn’t kidding, either. Whoever this was, he was grinding the bones in my face hard enough to make speaking difficult, and it took a solid effort not to let panic slide into my voice.
A long moment stretched into eternity. Cage’s jaw twitched furiously across from me, and I worked to keep my muscles still, somehow instinctively knowing that any show of weakness, of fear, would work on my attacker like the smell of blood.
At last the pressure on my face eased, and Gideon retreated into the shadows. Slowly—extremely slowly, and not only because I didn’t want to provoke him—I eased myself to a sitting position. The world swam, and I blinked back spots. “Thanks,” I said, more sarcastically than I’d intended.
As my eyes adjusted, I realized two big floodlights were aimed right at us. Cage, Mia, and Matt sprawled on the floor, all of them watching me. I flexed my hands. These were regular run-of-the-mill handcuffs, not the fancy ones Legion once used to inhibit our powers. Mia could have vanished. Cage could have run. Matt could have done any number of things, apparently. But everyone stuck around. Because they weren’t sure about their surroundings? Out of worry for the rest of us? Or because we needed to know what was going on?
That last part, at least, was true. As the others cautiously leveraged themselves to sitting positions, I peered into the shadows. I still couldn’t make out anything of my attacker or his companion, but Matt had specifically mentioned two people. We should have listened more carefully, I supposed. “My name is Kenzie,” I said, my fear for the others making me brash. I needed to keep his attention on me. “Kenzie Cord. We’re sneaking into your house, as you call it, because someone broke into ours, stole a stash of supplies, and made their way back here. As for where we came from, well … that’s a longer story.”
“We have time.” The woman advanced into the light. She had sharp, angular features, a long black braid, and well-shaped arms I couldn’t have achieved even if I stuck to Omnistellar’s rigorous training regimen. She was wearing loose black pants, boots, and a T-shirt, and over her shoulder was slung a familiar backpack. “You in charge?”
I risked a peek at Cage, who arched an eyebrow, and I almost smiled in spite of myself. Who the hell was in charge at this point? “No,” I said. “None of us are in charge. Not really. We’re just a group of people thrown together and trying to survive.”
“Us too.”
She lowered herself to her haunches. “I realize this wasn’t the kindest introduction, and I’m sorry. But we have to take care of our own.”
“So do we,” said Cage quietly. “Which is why if someone was stealing our supplies, we needed to know who.”
The woman sighed. “The other neighborhoods are tapped out. We didn’t—”
“Eden,” said the man sharply. “That’s enough.” He stepped into the light as well, revealing himself to be taller and thinner than I’d thought when he’d been grinding my face into the dirt. What there was of him was a solid line of muscle, though. He was exceedingly pale, even given the harsh lighting, and his shaggy brown hair hung in light eyes, eyes glinting in a way that unsettled something deep inside me. “This is an interrogation, not a cocktail party.”
Mia snorted loudly, and I winced. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet so far, and I’d hoped she’d stay that way. Somehow I didn’t think this guy was going to tolerate her usual bluster.
Sure enough, he spun on her, arching one of his eyebrows so high it vanished beneath his mess of hair. He didn’t say anything, though, only considered her for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “Eden, get Sarah and Emmett. First things first. You’re going to tell me your powers, and you’re going to tell me now. Lie to me, and I’ll shoot one of you in the foot. Do it again, and I’ll shoot one of you in the face.”
I recoiled. I didn’t get the sense he was joking. Eden shrugged and leveraged herself to her feet, retreating out of the way of any stray bullets.
“You’re bluffing,” Mia snapped. I closed my eyes, willing her silent. “How do we know you even have a gun?”
“Are you volunteering for the first bullet?”
“No,” said Cage quickly. He knew Mia as well as I did, and she couldn’t be trusted not to answer in the affirmative simply to see what would happen. “We’ll answer you, but answer me first. How do you know we have powers?”
