CAGE SHOVED ME INTO A corner, physically shielding me. Even in the tension of the moment, I registered the strength of his body against mine, and an uncertain thrill raced down my spine. Resolutely burying it, I peered around a crate. Imani, Rune, and Jasper crouched behind a similar stack opposite us. Alexei and Reed had ducked behind their own crate, which barely hid Alexei’s broad shoulders. Mia, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
Loud voices reached us, and I winced. It wasn’t the guards from the prison, so that was something. But we were dealing with at least three miners. Mars Mining wasn’t the best corporation in the solar system. They didn’t offer a ton of perks to their citizens, and they weren’t exactly a political powerhouse. But they were on the map with their proprietary dome technology, the only reason cities even functioned on places like Mars or Jupiter’s moons. That meant that even without paying their citizens particularly well, they tended to attract people with ambition. My mom always said Mars Mining was a corporation to watch. They weren’t much now, but she said if we gave them a decade unchecked, they’d rival Omnistellar in power, and people who saw the winds shifting that way were willing to put up with a lot to get in on the ground floor. Mars also attracted loyalists—not of the Omnistellar brand, which was its own unique type of fanatical, but loyalists all the same. The corporation might not bind their hearts, but the community did. People who lived on Mars viewed off-worlders as trouble, a perception Mars Mining didn’t exactly discourage.
Which meant that when all was said and done, I’d rather not attract miner attention. We could take them down, of course. We had a stun gun on our side, not to mention Alexei, Jasper, and Mia. But I didn’t know when they were expected to check in or who their disappearance might alert.
Now I prayed that Mia followed my thinking and waited them out. She was useful in a fight but completely unpredictable and unreliable outside one. My temples throbbed. I’d never had to deal with this kind of uncertainty before. Omnistellar had clear rules and regulations to govern any situation, and sometimes I really missed knowing exactly what to do. People like Cage and Mia, though, wouldn’t have stuck to the rules even if they’d known they existed.
There was no sign of Mia as the miners advanced into the warehouse, not giving any indication that they noticed anything amiss. Two men and a woman approached, joking and chatting, checking crates against something on their tablet. Cage’s chest convulsed against me with each breath, and my fingers turned white as I clutched the edge of a box, frantically scanning for anything that might reveal our presence and coming up empty. We were safe—for now.
But what if they didn’t leave? They wouldn’t come in merely to check one crate. Whatever they were doing, they’d make their way through the whole warehouse, which meant sooner or later, they’d find us. I closed my eyes, fighting for a plan. I hadn’t fled a secured prison only for some errant miners to capture me.
I gauged the distance to the doorway. If we stayed quiet, we could escape without alerting them and make our way to safety, wherever that might be.
I twisted in Cage’s arms. “Hey,” I whispered, and he turned, brushing his cheek against mine. “If we—”
A crack of electricity and a yelp of pain erupted from the other side of the crates. Without thinking, I shot to my feet in time to see the female miner pivot as her companion went down. Before she made a sound, a burst of stun gun fire, seeming to originate from nowhere, struck her in the back, and she collapsed too. The third miner met my eyes, his gaze wild. “What . . . ?” he managed before he joined his friends in the dirt.
“Mia!” I shouted, fury overwhelming common sense.
She appeared with a shimmer and arched an eyebrow in my direction. “Yes?” she asked.
“Where did you get that?”
“From Imani.” She returned it to the other girl. “Here. Thanks.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.
Mia produced a revolver from her waistband. “You’d rather I used this?”
I closed my eyes against a wave of revulsion. “I thought we agreed to leave that on the ship.”
“Why would we? It has seven shots yet. It’s useful.”
Useful for killing people. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. How was I supposed to explain my sudden, irrational terror of that gun? It was the gun I’d held in my hands as I targeted the alien, when my shot went wide. Matt’s face suddenly appeared before me, his blond hair streaked with red, his eyes wide and staring. Because I’d missed. And I’d missed in the worst way possible.
“Kenz,” said Cage softly, a hint of warning in his tone. He was the only one who knew about Matt, and the only one who could follow my thoughts at the sight of the gun.
Somehow, I managed to keep my voice calm and steady. “Mia, there had to have been a better way to deal with this situation.”
“Sure there was. I could’ve killed them.” She tossed her head, her greasy dark hair reflecting the red of the dirt. “Are you seriously going to pussyfoot around this mess? We have one goal here: to destroy the alien ship. If we have to take out a few guards to do it, I’m not going to shed any tears.”
“Those weren’t guards,” said Jasper coldly. “They were miners.”
I tried to remember and drew a blank. “Jasper, did you grow up here?”
“I did.” He leveled Mia with a dark, challenging glare.
She shrugged. “Friends of yours?”
“No.”
“Do they need to be?” Reed demanded. “If we start killing people, we’re exactly what the corporations say we are.”
Mia ignored that, keeping her focus on Jasper. “You loyal to Mars Mining?”
“No. My family is part of Tourism Rouge.”
“Then what does it matter?” she exploded, jabbing an accusatory finger in his direction. “Why are we even discussing this? I didn’t kill them! They’ll wake up in an hour with a headache like Kenzie’s. Is that really such a bad thing? You guys better grow up. There’s no way we’re going to destroy the ship without hurting someone. Maybe even killing them.”
“She has a point,” said Imani softly.
My jaw dropped, and I spun on her. She shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not on board with killing anyone. But if those things arrive, they’re not going to share my scruples. I mean, I know it sounds awful, but if it comes down to a few dead guards versus an entire planet?”
Rune and Reed both shook their heads, but the others went strangely silent. I drew another deep breath. I expected Alexei to follow Mia’s lead, and I didn’t really know Jasper. But it troubled me to see Imani and especially Cage yield to her logic. It troubled me even more that I kind of understood her point. “All right,” I managed in a reasonable tone of voice. “I get what you’re saying. I do. And if we have to knock out a few guards, that’s fine. But can we please leave violence as a last resort? There are always unintended consequences. We don’t know who’s waiting for these people, or who will come looking for them. And when they regain consciousness with those headaches you mentioned, they’re going to report us.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” Cage said. I spun to glare at him, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying Mia was right. Hell, I’ll be honest: I don’t know what’s right anymore. Not sure I ever did. But what’s done is done, and we need to get out of here and destroy that ship. Fast.”
The sense of his words registered. How far away were the aliens? How fast could they travel? Would they set off in immediate pursuit of the ship once they received the signal? Would they even receive it? There were too many questions and not enough answers, and no one, apparently not even my father, was going to listen. Whatever we did, we had to do ourselves.
That realization went a long way toward steadying me. I took in the faces around me: Alexei introspective, gazing at the floor. Reed uncomfortable and obviously in some pain. Imani nervous and frightened, but resolute. Rune and Jasper thoughtful. Cage calculating. And Mia, of course, the picture of determination. I envied her single-minded sense of her own rightness. Mia never seemed to question anything. I might not agree with every action she took, but she did act. On some level, I respected that. “Cage is right,” I heard myself say.
Mia rolled her eyes. “Cage is right?”
I grinned. “Okay, sorry. You’re all right. Our primary focus right now is destroying the ship before Omnistellar shows up.” Or the aliens do. But saying that wasn’t going to help anyone. They were all thinking it already, and I didn’t need mind-reading abilities to know it. “Jasper, you’re most familiar with Mars. Any suggestions on where we can go?”
He sank his teeth into his bottom lip and stared into the corner, nodding absently. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I have an idea.”
“Okay. Then for now, let’s get somewhere safe. We can discuss a plan later.”
Without another word, Jasper edged open the door, peered outside, and glanced over his shoulder. “It’s clear. Let’s move.”
“I’ll help you,” Alexei offered, giving Reed his arm. Reed took it gratefully, his face a mask of pain. “Power or no, we should see to that. Mia mine, can you check for a first aid kit?”
Mia scrambled onto a stack of crates. Before my astonished eyes, she vaulted onto the balcony of the warehouse, her hand barely grazing the rail as she flipped over it. A moment later she reappeared carrying a small red case. “Found one,” she said.
Alexei nodded. “Bring it with you, please. We’ll help Reed when we reach safety.” He glanced at the smaller boy. “Are you all right until then?”
“I’ve made it this far,” said Reed with false bravado. Sympathy pains shot up my leg. I’d sprained my own ankle at a training camp when I was thirteen, and I didn’t have fond memories of the experience. “Hopefully Jasper doesn’t plan to have us walk too far.”
Imani came to Reed’s other side, offering him a rueful smile. “You only heal others, and I only heal myself. Between us, you’re the only one we can’t help.”
“Life has a stupid sense of humor,” Reed agreed succinctly. “You can let go now, Lex. I’ll lean on the pretty girl instead.”
Imani glanced away to hide her flush, and Alexei snickered quietly, heaving Reed more heavily against him as he started into the streets.
As we trailed Jasper, Cage drew up beside me, jamming his hands in his pockets and whistling tunelessly under his breath. The sun was setting, sending Mars into shadowy relief, strange half-light and shadows everywhere. In spite of myself, I paused a moment, spellbound. This was my first time on another planet. I’d been in plenty of ships, plenty of prisons, and just about every continent on Earth. But here I was standing on Mars.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Cage doing the same thing. He glanced at me and grinned. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t apologize. It’s . . . beautiful.” And it was. Even taking into account the shantytown and the metal and the dust and the dirt. Mars was raw in a way Earth wasn’t. Sure, Mars City was pretty much the epitome of pillaging the land and debauchery, but the city only covered a very small area. The bulk of Mars remained unmined. Untouched. And even though right now I only saw the same teeming mass of humanity you’d find on Earth, I sensed Mars pressing in on all sides.
It was hard to get a reliable estimate of Mars’s population. The criminal underworld kept sneaking people in, and Tourism Rouge tended to shuffle their people among their many destinations at will. Still, even with tourists and illegal inhabitants, there couldn’t be more than a couple hundred thousand people on Mars, fewer than anywhere I’d ever lived—except, of course, Sanctuary.
“Mars City reminds me of Taipei, without all the water,” Cage said softly, hands still in his pockets. “The very rich”—he nodded toward the gleaming lights of the tourist center ahead of us—“the very poor”—he indicated the shantytown surrounding us—“and the unseen.”
Cage and Rune had been part of the unseen, the criminal element working below the surface. Exactly how strong was the criminal presence on Mars? According to the corporations, it was nonexistent, but we all knew that wasn’t true. Even diehard company loyalists acknowledged that there was some crime on Mars, largely accepted by the miners because it benefited them—the criminals made sure it did—and ignored by the tourists because it never became dangerous enough to interfere with a wild vacation. Did Cage know more about it than I did?
I almost asked, but the look on his face—dreamy, calm, and almost boyishly enthusiastic—trapped the words in my throat. This was a side of Cage I didn’t often see. And why would I, when we were constantly on the run from aliens or arguing about whether to tell the others that I’d murdered their friend?
That thought intruded on the peaceful moment, guilt bringing a lump to my throat and making me notice the others drifting ahead. “Hey,” I said softly. “We should get moving.”
Cage nodded and gave me a smile, some of his confidence settling into place even as the wide-eyed boy lingered behind it. And that moment left a warm feeling in my heart, a sense that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay after all.