by Caryn Lix
My heart gave one final beat and went still.
The area ahead was full of aliens.
Hunters, by the looks of them: taller and stronger and more muscular than their harvesting compatriots. At a glance, there were at least two dozen just milling around. Not even that, I realized: just standing there, frozen, like the ones I’d encountered in the medical bay on the Omnistellar ship. They’d stood there, too, until the moment they scented me.
And on that thought, one of them raised its head and sniffed.
It was like being trapped in a slow-motion loop, watching the most horrible episode of Robo Mecha Dream Girl ever, praying with all my might for the alien to turn back, lower its head, look away.
But it angled itself directly toward us and sniffed the air again.
A low purring emerged from its throat, and a collective stir ran through the hunters.
And then Alexei had my arm and was pulling me along the corridor, out of sight, moving as fast as we dared without making a sound. I realized Matt and Cage were retreating too. We scrambled down the hallway, guns raised, everyone shaking so badly I didn’t trust a single person’s aim, and each second I expected the aliens to come charging along the hall in front of us.
But they didn’t, and a minute later we were in the stairwell, Alexei easing the door closed again.
For a long moment we all stood and gaped at it in silence, and then Alexei whispered, “Mia?”
She shimmered into existence at his shoulder, and for the first time in my memory, Alexei glared at her. “I didn’t know where you were.” He was whispering, but his voice was sharp, clipped, each word a strike of precision. “Whether we were locking you in with those things. Don’t do that again.”
For once Mia had no argument to give. She only nodded.
“There was alien tech in there.” I closed my eyes, wishing I could unsee it. “I recognized it. Just like what we saw on the ship.” The consoles had wrapped around the room, occupying the space that had probably belonged to military computers in the facility’s previous life. In places, I’d still spotted human-looking keyboards and screens wedged between the strange alien screens.
“We’re not sending Rune in there,” Cage growled.
Matt scowled. “Of course we’re not. We have to keep going farther down and look for somewhere safer she can connect.”
Or we could just get the hell out of here. The words hovered on my lips, unspoken. I wanted so, so badly to retreat up the stairs. To leave the building entirely. But we had a mission, and if we didn’t complete it, we’d be trapped on this planet for the rest of our short lives. Cage beckoned and we followed, heading to the next level down. We kept our weapons drawn, and every two steps I twisted to check for pursuit, but nothing followed.
We’d lucked out. The aliens hadn’t realized we were there, or hadn’t been sure.
I hoped. There were other, more sinister explanations, but if I even began to consider them, my throat closed, so I pushed them aside and forced myself to face the problem at hand—which right now was just putting one foot in front of another and getting down those stairs.
We reached the next landing without incident, and my breath came a little easier. “Okay,” Cage whispered, so softly we could barely hear him. “I think we’re safe. Kenzie, can you radio the support teams? Tell them what we saw and to wait for more information.”
I nodded and relayed his comments, starting with the second team, the one most likely to be directly behind us. Reed said his team was on level nine and promised to take a position on eleven, ready to warn us if they saw activity below.
Hallam didn’t answer.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“HALLAM,” I SAID, PROBABLY LOUDER than I should have, pressing against the comm device as if I could somehow prod it into better functionality. “Hallam, answer me.”
Nothing.
I raised my head to meet Cage’s panicked eyes. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know. I got Reed without any trouble, but Hallam’s not responding.”
Cage and Matt both took a step forward, but Alexei raised his hands. “Let’s not panic,” he said. “There could be any number of explanations for why the team’s gone silent.”
“Yes,” said Cage sharply, “the most likely among them that they’re being stalked by aliens.”
But now Matt shook his head, apparently recovered from his initial reaction. “Hallam’s not going to let anything happen to them,” he said. “You guys don’t know him like I do. Trust me. They’re safe.”
“This wouldn’t be Hallam’s stupid idea of a joke, would it?” Mia demanded.
Matt scowled. “Hallam’s a pro. He might be hard to deal with, but he wouldn’t put the mission at risk. And speaking of the mission, we need to keep looking for a way through this place.”
Cage’s eyes flashed. “No, what we need to do is get back upstairs and find out what’s happened to my sister.”
“Cage,” said Mia quietly. “I get what you’re saying. But if we abandon the mission here, we abandon the mission entirely.” She turned to me. “Tell Reed to take his team and check on Rune and the others. Warn them they might be walking into trouble.”
Cage took a step toward her. “Who put you in charge?”
“You did, when you started acting on emotion instead of logic.” Mia spun on him. She managed to keep her voice at a whisper, but she was clearly furious. “And don’t you dare lecture me about little sisters, Cage. Because you know I would have given anything to save my own, and you know how much I care about Rune. But this time, the mission comes first. For all our sakes, we have to keep going.”
Cage seemed to deflate a bit, but he still looked to me, as if hoping for support. I closed my eyes and considered. If we retreated, went in search of Rune, we’d probably be too late to help. And we wouldn’t be able to come back. Even if we got upstairs and nothing was wrong, we’d have wasted time during which the aliens might have recognized our presence.
I pressed against my comm. “Reed, it’s Kenzie. Rune’s team has gone silent. We need you to backtrack and find out where they are and what’s happening. Report as soon as you know something.”
Reed’s panicked voice responded: “What do you mean, silent?”
I swallowed my annoyance. He was scared and tired, exactly like me. “I mean what I said. We’re going to keep moving forward, but the three of you should retrace your steps and find them.”
Priya snapped something in the background, and then Reed returned, more subdued. “All right. Just be careful, okay?”
“You know it,” I said, managing to keep my voice normal even though Cage was glaring at me now. “And seriously, Reed. The second you find anything, okay?”
“The very instant,” he agreed, and cut his comm.
Cage spun and yanked open the door behind him without warning, causing all of us to suck in our breaths and jerk our weapons upright. But there was only an empty corridor, yet again.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Matt snarled, still in a whisper.
Cage glared at each of us in turn. “You all wanted to keep the mission going. Apparently I’m overruled, so I’m moving on.”
I grabbed his arm. “Getting all of us killed isn’t going to help your sister,” I told him in a low voice, trying to cover my own anger. Cage wasn’t often reckless, and he’d picked a hell of a time to start. “You didn’t get your way this time. Suck it up. Priya and Jasper can get to Rune faster than we can anyway. And also to Hallam and Imani. You remember them, right? They’re up there too.”
Cage gawked at me like I’d struck him, and I had to work not to apologize. I did soften my voice, though. “I know you’re worried about your sister. We all are. But if you want to be a leader, you have to act like one even when it’s inconvenient.” I nodded over my shoulder at the others. “We need a leader right now, Cage. So lead us.”
He hesitated a moment longer, but I alrea
dy saw the fight draining out of him. “I’m sorry,” he said to me. Then he raised his head and repeated to the others, “I’m sorry. I just … I imagined Rune with the aliens, and I guess I lost it for a minute there. You guys deserve better.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt replied. “You want to make it up to us, help keep us alive.”
“Yeah.” Cage raked his hand through his hair. “That’s a good plan.”
“So let’s put it into action.” Mia drew forward, a rifle clutched in her hands. I could almost see her itching to disappear, but she jerked her head forward. “Let’s see if we’ve got another room of aliens—and whether there’s any way to destroy them.”
We advanced along another corridor and found ourselves in a wide room full of tanks. I recognized them at once, even though they were a different structure than the ones on our alien ship. “They’re stasis pods,” I whispered.
Cage drew up to one and peered inside. “Sleeping aliens,” he confirmed.
It probably said something that this came as a relief. Only weeks ago, Cage and I had recoiled in horror at the discovery of sleeping aliens. Now, I was simply grateful they weren’t awake and pursuing me.
“Find a way to shut off their life support or something,” Mia commanded.
Cage scowled at her. “Do not start pressing buttons at random. The last thing we want to do is wake them up.”
I nodded in agreement, but there weren’t any buttons to push. Aside from the sleeping aliens, the room was almost completely empty.
We explored the rest of the floor, finding more drifting harvesters, more stasis tanks, and absolutely nothing of use. Of course, we could have tried setting fire to the room, or smashing the tanks, but either option would make a lot of noise, risk waking the creatures instead of killing them, and probably alert the other aliens.
So instead we beat a hasty retreat and descended to level fourteen, where we found another floor of sleeping harvesters. Floor fifteen held another room of silent, still hunters, and once again we quickly backtracked.
There were only two floors left to go.
The sixteenth floor was different. There were two doors, one on each side of the hall. Behind one we heard a calamitous riot: smashing, cracking, shrieking aliens. We exchanged glances.
“What is going on back there?” I demanded in a whisper.
“Let’s not find out,” replied Mia darkly. “There’s only one floor left below us. I say we check it out and get the hell out of here. If whatever Eden wants is behind this door, well, she’s out of luck.”
Something smashed into the other side of the wall, making us all jump. That was all the incentive we needed to get our feet moving, scrambling down the stairs. What the hell was going on up there? The aliens we’d seen so far were silent and still, almost as if they were in stasis themselves. They’d been waiting, not active. Something was happening to aggravate the creatures. Instantly I thought of Rune, and ice-cold terror pumped through my veins.
Suddenly Matt, who was in the lead, stopped short. “Something’s weird,” he said. “I think this leads into a big open area, not a hallway. We should be careful.”
“Weapons out,” Cage agreed. We drew close together and proceeded as silently as we dared. Before long I realized Matt was right: the area below us was a huge, open hangar of sorts. We couldn’t see much of it in the flickering of Matt’s and Cage’s flashlights, of course, but they angled the illumination to reveal some sort of complex machinery and …
“There!” I whispered. “In the corner! It’s Eden!”
Sure enough, Eden and her entire team stood stock-still in a far corner next to what looked like an exit. Her eyes met mine, and she shook her head frantically.
My heart dropped.
At the same moment, my comm device crackled. “Kenzie? Kenzie, are you there?”
I clapped my hand to my ear even though there was no way for the aliens to hear her voice. Turning aside, I spoke in a whispered mumble, keeping my free hand over my mouth. “Rune? Thank God you’re safe. I thought Hallam had your comm. You—”
“Kenzie, listen to me.” Her voice carried such urgency I clammed up at once, ignoring the way Cage and Matt closed in on me, as if they could listen in on my conversation if they just got close enough. “You have to get out of this bunker, and you have to do it now.”
“Rune, we’re seventeen floors down. And we haven’t been attacked. Everything is—”
“Kenzie, I do not have time to explain this to you. I will tell you everything later, but for now, trust me: you need to get out. And you need to do it without coming back upstairs. Do you hear me?”
I looked at Cage and Matt, and my gaze drifted to Eden below.
Getting out was going to be more difficult than we’d anticipated.
TWENTY-NINE
I PUSHED PAST MATT AND Cage to advance another few steps. Eden made a slashing motion at me and pointed into the darkness.
We angled our lights, and we saw them.
A horde of aliens. Not one, or ten, or twenty, but dozens of them, all hunters. They were amassed around the perimeter of the room, not moving, not doing anything. Just standing. Waiting.
All the air seemed to vanish in a heartbeat. “Why’s she still standing there?” Mia hissed, staring into the pit below at Eden and her soldiers. “What is she doing?”
“Maybe she thinks if she moves, they’ll attack,” Matt replied dubiously. “The more important question is, how the hell do we get out of here?”
Something echoed in the halls above us, and I craned my neck. “Rune said not to go back up,” I whispered. “I think they’re not attacking because they’re waiting for reinforcements.”
“They don’t need reinforcements,” Mia returned. “They’re waiting for us.”
“What do we do?” Matt demanded, scanning the area. “If we go up, the creatures get us. If we go down, they attack. If we stay here, we’re sandwiched between them.”
“The only choice that doesn’t result in certain death is down,” Cage said. I gawked at him. How did he sound so calm, so self-assured, even as the tendons in his neck stood out with fear and his hands trembled on his gun? “Somehow, we have to get ourselves and Eden’s people through that door.”
Alexei leaned over the railing thoughtfully. “Matt,” he said, “do you have infrared in those fancy cybernetics of yours?”
“Sort of. I can’t see through walls, but I have heat sensors. Did you spot something?”
Alexei beckoned him over. “What’s that?”
“It looks like a fuel source,” said Matt dubiously.
Alexei nodded. “That’s what I thought too. Perhaps something vulnerable to fire.”
“What about the ship?” I half pleaded.
Alexei spread his arms. “Do you see a ship here? I suspect Eden lied to us about that. But even if she didn’t, we have to consider our immediate survival. And if that means destroying the entire base—and the creatures with it—well …”
“No,” said Mia sharply. “Even I can see you’d have to be standing right beside whatever that is to create enough heat to get through its shielding. Don’t you dare.”
“I could improvise a fuse, given time,” said Alexei, still reflective.
Something screeched in the darkness above us, and we froze, then lurched into motion, ignoring Eden’s warning as we crept down the stairs. We kept a watchful eye on the perimeter of hunters, but they didn’t move a muscle, like animatronics in stasis mode at a theme park.
“What are they doing?” I whispered. I knew I should keep silent, but the statue-like creatures held me so on edge I could barely breathe. I only knew they were breathing by the occasional flex in their muscles. “They have to know we’re here.” We’d been talking. Breathing. Shuffling around. They knew about us, had to, so why weren’t they acting?
The others shook their heads. We hit the bottom of the stairs and started toward Eden and her soldiers, who remained motionless near a pile of boxes.
We’d taken about five steps when, from somewhere above us, another alien screamed. I spun just in time to see a hunter fly over the edge of the railing, landing maybe ten feet behind us, its jaws split wide to reveal its long, glistening fangs.
As if on cue, the other aliens seemed to wake. They didn’t lunge, didn’t attack. Instead they uncoiled. That was the only word to describe it. It was like their limbs loosened, like something switched them on, their focus shifting to us, their muscles tightening for action.
“That’s not good,” Cage muttered, nestling his gun tightly against his shoulder. I mimicked his actions, pressing my back to his, and the others fanned out in a loose circle. We were surrounded.
But the alien focus on us gave Eden the space she needed. As I watched, she moved ever so slowly, shifting a step toward the stack of boxes. The aliens didn’t seem to notice. I remembered how Mia and I tipped the boxes in the hangar on Sanctuary, what felt like a hundred years ago, providing the distraction that allowed us to escape. God, I hoped Eden had a similar plan.
But I didn’t have more than a few seconds to spare for Eden, because the aliens drew in, forming a tightening circle, hissing and spitting. The sight of so many of them awake together at once almost sent me cringing to the ground. The damage just a few of them had caused on Obsidian, on the Omnistellar ship we abandoned … what hope did we have against so many? None at all. Not unless Eden helped us, unless Alexei somehow sparked a flame that took them out all at once. And preferably didn’t take us with it.
I clenched my fingers on my gun but didn’t fire.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Matt whispered.
“They aren’t sure where we are yet,” Cage replied, his voice low, almost imperceptible. “They’re not in a rush. They’re closing in.”
At the same moment, three more hunters dropped from above. They landed outside the ring, and I shifted my gaze to make sure Eden was okay …
And froze.
She was carefully, slowly, handing boxes to her soldiers. They’d formed a sort of bucket brigade, passing the boxes down a line to the final soldier, who would shoulder their burden and ease out of the door. There were already only five soldiers left.
