LEON WATCHED CORA ENTER the Gauntlet with a sick feeling in his stomach. He hated the Gauntlet’s claustrophobic rooms, and the central vestibule was the worst. All those monitors giving off a sickly light, that low hum that worked its way into his head until he thought he’d go crazy. Even worse was the way the four Chief Assessors stared so passively at the monitors’ scrolling lines of coding, as though they were watching a weather report, not Cora’s life-or-death progress. Now she was in there again, the portal door sealed shut, enduring God knew what. Puzzle five could be killing her. The injection Serassi had given her might have fried her brain. She could be writhing in pain, and those damn judges would just stare.
Mali rested a hand on his shoulder, as though sensing his worry. “There’s nothing we can do for her. Cora is on her own until the next break.” She dropped her voice. “Besides, we have our own puzzles to solve. Willa thinks she may have discovered something.”
Leon glanced over his shoulder toward the Mosca recess room, where Cassian was standing in the doorway, staring coldly at Fian as though he were fantasizing about shaking the Axion until his disguise melted off. A sentiment Leon shared.
“Come on,” Mali pressed.
Leon reluctantly returned to the recess room. Anya had left to see if she could overhear anything useful from the other delegations, but the Mosca and everyone else were congregated around the back wall, where Willa was scrawling on paper.
Leon looked over their shoulders at the note.
I learned much about the Axion while they were experimenting on me. They are sensitive to high-pitched frequencies—which is why the Intelligence Council ordered that their genetic implants be set to emit certain tones. But frequencies can do more than just announce when one is disguised. A high-enough frequency would disrupt Axion brain waves to the extent that they would no longer be able to shape-shift at all. It would force them into their true appearance.
Murmurs spread through the room as the various Mosca and humans read Willa’s note.
“So we’d know immediately which ones are impostors,” Leon said. “And then we arrest the bastards.”
Serassi gave him an exasperated look. “It is naive of you to think it would be so simple.” She went to one of the monitors, reached behind it, and extracted some equipment. She set it down on the desk in front of Willa. “Though it is still a good idea. Can you build a frequency emitter from this?”
Willa examined the wires, then started attaching them to the monitor’s speaker.
The speaker suddenly let out a high-pitched squeal, and Leon made a face. “Try not to shatter all our eardrums in the process, okay, Queen Kong?”
He caught sight of Bonebreak coming in from the facilities room, looking over the coded monitor with its scrolling data. Anya hadn’t yet returned, and the others were distracted with Willa’s project. For a second, he was alone with Bonebreak.
“Listen,” he said in a low voice. He quietly reached for the provision pack that he had stashed in his inside jacket pocket. “I know we’ve got bigger problems right now, but I got the delivery for you.”
Bonebreak barely glanced at him. “Eh? What are you going on about, boy?”
“The special delivery,” Leon whispered more urgently. “From the station. The provision pack you asked me to pick up.” He opened his jacket, revealing the package.
Bonebreak tilted his head in a bewildered way. He scratched at his chin beneath the mask as his gaze went between Leon’s face and the package.
“Come on, mate,” Leon urged. Sweat was starting to break out on his forehead. Any minute Willa might look up from her work, or Mali might turn around, and the last thing he wanted was to be caught smuggling when he was supposed to be a goddamn hero. “If you don’t want it anymore, too bad. We had a deal. I risked a lot for this.”
Bonebreak grabbed the lapels of Leon’s jacket and pulled him into the corner, to the side of the monitors where they’d have some privacy. “Listen closely, boy. I have no idea what you speak of. I requested no pickup. I made no deal with you.”
“Yes, you did! An easy job, you said. On Armstrong, right after Nok killed the sheriff and all hell broke loose.”
“On Armstrong?” Bonebreak sputtered. “As soon as that sheriff was killed, I ducked behind the dais to to save my own skin, like any sane creature. I most certainly didn’t search you out for a chat.”
“Then who did I make a deal with?” As soon as he’d spoken the words, it struck him. How, at the time, Bonebreak had seemed to disappear and reappear on opposite sides of the tent almost instantaneously. “Oh, shit.” He swallowed. “An Axion.”
An angry rumble came from behind Bonebreak’s mask. “One of those bastards had the gall to pose as me, and you were too dumb to tell the difference?”
“Hey!” Leon snapped. “It was chaos and he sounded just like you. Smelled just like you, too!” But as soon as he said those words, he realized it wasn’t true. The Bonebreak he had spoken to in the tent had lacked the Mosca’s trademark odor.
Bonebreak shook him again. “What did you tell him? Did you say anything that will get us killed?”
Leon’s mind turned back to the deal he’d made with the trader. “I, uh, might have told him about the plan to rescue Cassian from the station.”
Bonebreak hissed his displeasure.
“But listen, what harm did it do? The plan worked. He couldn’t have been impersonating you for more than a few minutes, tops. We got Cassian and the Axion didn’t stop us. So no harm, no foul, right?”
For a second, Bonebreak was silent. Then, very slowly, his eyes dropped to Leon’s jacket. “That depends, boy, on what is in that package you so obediently stole for our enemies.”
Leon swallowed. He pressed a hand to the provision pack, feeling the hard edges. How had the Axion impersonator even gotten the package into the crate? It must have been one of the Axion already on the station, the one the fake Bonebreak had been communicating with. He slowly pulled the package out, holding it by the corner as though it were contagious. Bonebreak recoiled as well. On the opposite side of the room, Willa’s emitter released an even higher frequency.
“Open it,” Bonebreak whispered.
“You open it.”
Bonebreak hissed a string of curses as he snatched the package out of Leon’s hand and tried to tear at the edge, but he was unable to get it open. With a frustrated growl he pulled a knife out of his pocket and sawed at the corner.
Leon caught a flash of movement as the recess room door opened. Anya slipped in quietly. “I’m back.” Her face looked grim. “I didn’t find out anything useful. The Axion didn’t say much about their . . .”
Willa adjusted the emitter’s dial again, and a high squeal burst through the room. Leon clamped his hands over his ears, wincing. He was about to call to Willa to shut the damn thing off when he caught sight of Serassi’s face.
She was staring at Anya. Or, rather, the place where Anya had been standing.
What the hell . . .
Anya was gone. The girl had simply vanished. No, not vanished. Changed. A completely different person stood where she had been standing, dressed in Anya’s same white Temple menagerie clothes, a few inches shorter than Anya so that the pants hem brushed the ground. It was a man. He was about four feet tall, painfully thin, the bones of his face especially pronounced—with the telltale white stripe in his hair.
An Axion impostor.
“Shit!” Leon yelled.
Mali and Cassian spun around, going rigid as soon as they saw the spy dressed in Anya’s clothes.
“Anya . . . ?” Mali started, but Leon pulled her away from the Axion.
“It isn’t Anya!” he said. “It’s one of those damn spies—Willa figured out how to expose them.”
The Axion tossed a look over his shoulder, judging the distance to the door.
“Don’t think about running.” Cassian strode to the door and slammed it shut.
The Axion’s eyes darted back and forth, his face scowling.
“How long have you been posing as her?” Mali demanded. “Where’s the real Anya?”
“Kill me and you’ll never know.” His grinning lips pulled back over graying, uneven teeth. “You’re too late, anyway. This plan has been generations in the making. We have forty lightships heading to the Gatherer home planet as we speak, and another hundred hunting down their mobile rovers. Twenty of our fastest cruisers are headed for Drogane and the other Mosca planets.” His cruel grin stretched wider. “We’ve already assumed control of four Kindred stations, including station 10-91. Its attempts to resist were pathetic. All those who fought us were killed.”
Leon’s stomach shrank. He thought back on the battle, Tessela and Fian fighting against the Axion intruders. His mouth felt suddenly very dry. Were they really dead? He swallowed down a lump.
“They could have gotten out,” Cassian said, as though reading his thoughts. “They could be on a cargo shuttle to Armstrong.”
“Armstrong?” the Axion sneered. “Then they’ve only bought themselves a few more hours.”
Mali gripped his shirt hard, shaking him. “Why? There’s no reason for you to attack Armstrong. It’s just humans and dust.”
“There are reports,” the Axion said slyly, “of evolved humans who can use telepathy. That’s the third phase of our plan—destroy any human settlements that show signs of evolution.”
Leon sucked in a breath. Ellis had been telepathic. Maybe there’d been others, too. He bit back the worry rising in his throat. Nok and Rolf were on Armstrong. And Makayla and Shoukry too, and all the kids and animals from the Hunt, assuming their ship made it.
“Christ,” he muttered, briefly closing his eyes.
The Axion started to let out a snicker at the distraught expressions on everyone’s faces, until Leon strode up and slammed a fist into his grinning mouth. The Axion’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“Leon!” Mali said. “He’s the only one who knows where Anya is!”
“I didn’t kill him,” he argued.
Cassian stood over the Axion’s unconscious body. “This is bad. If the Axion have already spread as far as he says, then there isn’t much that can stop them now. We might be the last hope. And if he has been posing as Anya even as far back as Armstrong, he knows everything. He must have told the other Axion that we’re on to them.”
“He couldn’t have been posing as Anya as far back as on Armstrong,” Mali said. “I was with her the entire time.” Mali turned to Willa. “Anya left with you.”
Willa’s eyes widened. She scrawled a quick message on the back of one of her papers.
Theta.
“Theta?” Mali said, and then her expression went flat. “That’s an Axion fuel station, isn’t it?”
Willa nodded. She scrawled more.
Anya went inside, and when she came back she was acting different. I tried to warn Cora. But Anya convinced her it was just the Kindred’s drugs.
“That was weeks ago!” Leon said. “She’s been a spy this entire time?”
“We need to consider what this means and what to do about it,” Cassian said.
Next to Leon, Bonebreak suddenly let out a snort of surprise. When Leon turned, the provision pack was open, and Bonebreak held a roughly spherical object with a glowing blue ring around it.
“What the hell is this?” Bonebreak said.
They all turned to him. Cassian and Serassi immediately went stiff. Cassian’s voice was tight. “That,” he said, “is a bomb.”
Bonebreak squealed and tossed the orb to Leon.
“Shit!” Leon said. “What am I supposed to do with this thing?”
“It’s ticking,” Cassian said in a rush. “It must have been triggered when you opened the pack.”
“That spy who posed as me was planning on getting you killed, boy!” Bonebreak said. “He got you to pick up a bomb that would blow up in the ship, killing you and Mali and Cassian before you could get back here. He didn’t think you’d resist opening it!”
Cassian’s lips moved silently, counting the ticks. His voice was urgent. “Ten more seconds until it goes off.”
Willa and Mali and Bonebreak all leaped back. Leon glanced at the door. His arm was too wounded to throw, but he could run. He could make it to the central vestibule, at least far enough to protect his friends. . . .
As if sensing his thoughts, Bonebreak cursed.
“Idiot humans.” He snatched the bomb out of Leon’s hand and started charging toward the door to the vestibule.
“Brother, no!” Ironmage yelled.
Leon gaped. His heart was thumping hard, his adrenaline pumping. What was that stupid Mosca doing? If Leon knew anything about the black market trader, it was that he’d sooner let them all blow up than risk his own life to save even one of them.
“Bonebreak, what the hell?” he yelled.
“I always liked you, boy,” Bonebreak called. “Never thought I’d die for a weak human childs, but at least you could smuggle with the best of them. Break some bones for me, boy. Break some bones!”
Leon stared, agape, as Bonebreak ran toward the dais. That crazy Mosca was actually, for the first time in his life, going to do something heroic. The other delegations turned in surprise, not yet having noticed the bomb. Bonebreak turned back just once. He nodded toward his brother, touching his chest in a sign of solidarity.
Leon took a single, stumbling step forward. “Bonebreak, no—”
With a sudden blast of light, the central vestibule shattered into a chaos of smoke and fire.