“IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA, I’m all ears,” I said, sitting up a little straighter.
“My idea is named Eden. I think she knows Gideon’s lost it. Did you see the way she reacted to him? And she helped me on the way down here. If we can get her alone for even a second, we might be able to talk her around.”
I frowned, considering the idea. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “It’s one thing not to like the man’s tactics. It’s another to betray him for a bunch of strangers. And we still don’t really know anything about this place. They obviously have other people here.”
“Well, that’s plan B, anyway. Plan A is to search this damn room. Help me up.”
“Are you kidding?” I gaped at her in disbelief, even though I couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see me. “Mia, you’re hurt. You need to stay still, to rest, to—”
“What I need to do is get the hell out of here. Get me on my feet. Or do I have to do it myself?”
I shook my head. There was no point in arguing. Mia was used to getting her own way, and she would have it now, too. I stood and reached down, clasping her elbows and heaving her to her feet. Aside from a quick intake of breath, she made no complaint. “Where’s that dart thing?” I asked.
“In my pocket. I might be able to use it as a lockpick if we can find an exit.”
“All right. I’ll go left and you go right. Let’s start with the perimeter before we stumble around the middle of the room.”
As I inched to my left, feeling along the cold brick walls, searching for a window or an exit or who knew what, a wave of déjà vu assaulted me. I’d done the same thing on Omnistellar’s ship, searching the infirmary for a flashlight. Except then I’d been alone …
No. Not alone.
There’d been aliens in the room with me. Waiting. Breathing. Hunting.
At once I became convinced something was behind me, a presence, a darkness, a shadow. I spun, pressing my back to the wall, my heart hammering so loudly it threatened to overwhelm my senses. Get a grip, I snarled at myself furiously. There is nothing and no one in this room with you. No one but Mia. “I haven’t found anything yet,” I managed to say out loud. God, I needed to hear Mia’s voice, to know I wasn’t alone.
“Me either. Keep searching.”
My heart rate slowed. Just those four words. Mia was with me. I wasn’t alone.
I groped along the walls and found nothing but more cement. Soon Mia and I met up again, our hands brushing against the metal door. “This thing’s padlocked from the outside,” she said, rattling the handle. “I can’t pick a lock I can’t get my hands on.”
“That means we have to check the rest of the room, huh?” I shook my head. “What do you think we’re going to find?”
“I don’t know, but …” Her voice trailed off. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, but then I heard it too: footsteps in the distance. “Hurry,” she whispered, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. We settled against the wall again, Mia grunting in pain as she put too much pressure on her foot.
There were a rattle and a clack, and then the door opened. Hardly any light spilled in, but it seemed like the force of the sun after total darkness, and I winced, throwing my arms up to protect my eyes.
After a moment I adjusted to the dimness and was able to properly observe the situation. It was Eden, carrying a lantern in one hand, a bag in another. There was someone else behind her with a gun drawn. “I’ll just be a minute,” she told him, entering the room and closing the door behind her.
We examined each other with mutual interest. Mia’s words kept echoing in my head. Could we work on Eden? Convince her to help us? “I brought you some food and water,” she said, tossing the bag in our direction. I noticed she was careful not to get too close. “There’s some first aid stuff in there too, and a lantern. I figured you might need it.”
“Thanks,” I said. Mia said nothing. She was letting me take the lead, presumably aware that diplomacy was not her strong suit. I wished Cage were here. He’d talk circles around Eden, probably have her cheerfully agreeing to defect in a matter of minutes. “What about our friends? Cage and Matt?”
“I took them some food and water too. They’re okay.”
I inspected her. Was she telling the truth? Could Gideon have hurt Cage? Could she be lying to gain my cooperation?
Or … was there a way I could tell?
Swallowing hard, while Mia and Eden talked in the background, I closed my eyes and reached for power.
I brushed past Eden, her floating ability soft swirls of pink and gray, past someone else in the corridor, a guard whose power I couldn’t know. Did I dare grab an unknown ability? No, I realized: Gideon knew what I could do, and he wasn’t stupid enough to leave someone guarding me if I could make use of their powers.
But Gideon himself … where was he?
I stretched further, not even sure what I was looking for, and then suddenly I had it: something solid and red and brown shot through with shimmers of white. I wrapped myself in it and my eyes flew open as I repeated my question, cutting off whatever Mia had been saying: “I want to hear you say it again, Eden. Cage and Matt. Are they okay?”
She quirked an eyebrow at me. Did she know what I was up to? But whether she did or not, she replied: “I told you, they’re fine. No one’s touched them.”
Her answer settled my stomach, gentle and reassuring. Truth.
“And …” I swallowed. “What about our other friends?”
“No sign of them yet.” She hesitated, then said, almost unwillingly, “Gideon’s thinking of taking the fight to them if they don’t show up soon.”
I examined her face in the shadows. She didn’t look much like Rita, but they really did have a similar accent, the same lilt to their voices. It made it easier to talk to her, somehow. And it didn’t hurt that I could tell she wasn’t lying, Gideon’s power hovering on the edges of my consciousness. I got the sense he was just in my range and I might lose his power any second. “We’re trying to survive, same as you.”
“We all prioritize our own survival.” She sighed. “And it’s not just my own. We have people here. Families. Children. There’s a whole little society, three or four dozen of us. And we’re running out of supplies. So I’m sorry if it seems like we were pillaging your take, but I wasn’t about to watch a five-year-old girl starve.”
True. I thought of Anya, the child we’d left on Mars. Was she okay? Had the aliens attacked the planet? A wave of guilt washed over me. I’d barely even considered her since Obsidian. “I understand,” I said, and I did. “But we don’t have to do this. We can work together. We aren’t your enemies, Eden.”
“I can’t know that.”
“But you can.” I stared at her. Did she seriously not get this? “Gideon. He can ask us and he’d know if we lied, right?”
“Yes,” she said, but slowly, and Gideon’s power sent a tingle of warning down my spine. There was something more to it. Abruptly her eyes cut to Mia. “How are you? Doing okay?”
“Fantastic,” drawled Mia acerbically. “I guess I’m lucky your pal only shot me in the foot.”
“The thing is, you are.” Eden fiddled with the edge of her braid. “Gideon, he’s … he’s a good man.”
I waited for the answering buzz from Gideon’s power, but nothing came. I cursed inwardly. Gideon must have moved out of range, and he couldn’t have picked a worse time.
Of course, neither could Mia. “He’s insane,” she said bluntly.
Eden shot straight up, and I knew Mia had said the wrong thing. “He’s been through more than you can possibly imagine. He’s the only reason we’re all still alive, the only one who’s kept us going these last eight horrible years. Without him we’d all be dead.”
“I get it,” I said quickly, struggling to fix Mia’s mistake. “You owe him. I’ve been there. But he’s not the same now, is he? Things have changed.”
She hesitated again, but I got the sense she’d been wanting to say these things for a while. That maybe Mia and I seemed safe, since we were outsiders … or since we’d be dead soon, if she knew something we didn’t. “He’s been through a lot,” she repeated softly. “But you’re right. He’s changed. The old Gideon might have listened. This one … he’s …” She swallowed. “He’s lost his nerve. He thinks if he can keep everything controlled, keep us caged like animals in a zoo, we’ll be safe. He doesn’t understand that we’re going to run out of supplies sooner rather than later. If he has his way, we’ll all sit here in safety until we starve to death.”
“Can’t you do anything to stop him?” Mia demanded.
Doubt flickered in Eden’s eyes. “Gideon was different at the beginning. Stronger. A force. He saved every soul in this building. He’s personally pulled me out of harm’s way on three separate occasions. Convincing people to turn against someone like that, even when he’s behaving erratically … no one wants to betray the man who saved them. Including me.”
“He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?” I asked it quietly and without emotion. I’d already long since assumed that was the case, and Eden’s silence did nothing to convince me otherwise. I didn’t need Gideon’s power to know the truth of this one. “He can’t afford to let us join, not if you’re low on supplies. He doesn’t know us. Are you okay with that? With murdering a bunch of people for no reason?”
“I wouldn’t …”
“You might like us if you got to know us,” I suggested, forcing a smile I didn’t feel. “We’re not such bad people. We’re hardworking, and we’re brave.”
“I know. And I appreciate the risk you took, raiding the outer neighborhoods. I just …”
“Wait.” I exchanged glances with Mia, who shrugged. “What do you mean, the risk we took?”
Eden considered us for a long moment. Then she grabbed a crate, pulled it over, and sat down. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine. Where the hell did you come from? Because it sure wasn’t from around here.”
I bit my lip, debating how truthfully to answer. But then … I wanted Eden to trust me. That had to go both ways. Besides, what was she going to do with the information? “I have no idea where we came from,” I said at last. “Or maybe I mean I don’t know where we are. Or both. We were on a spaceship, and it was about to blow up. I … borrowed someone’s power and reached for someplace safe, somewhere far away from the ship.” Somewhere to help us defeat the aliens, I added to myself ruefully. Apparently, my subconscious had ignored that part of my request. “And … we woke up here. We’re from a different planet, a different solar system. Nowhere close, I think.”
I expected disbelief, but she only stared at me a moment, then nodded slowly. “That actually tracks,” she said. “It explains why you don’t know things you should. You’ve survived by sheer luck, you know.”
“We don’t know,” I said, fighting to keep my frustration under control. “We don’t know anything.”
“It’s why we stick to the city center. The outlying neighborhoods, they’re the territory of the creatures we call the zemdyut.”