COMPLETE SILENCE GREETED MY SUGGESTION. Then Mia snorted loudly. “You’re joking.”
“Why?” Cage demanded.
“Because it doesn’t work that way, genius.”
“Have you tried?”
“Oh, for the love of . . .” Mia threw up her hands in disgust. “Yes, I’ve tried. My invisibility affects me and a limited range of things touching me. My clothes, for instance. I can make your hand invisible if you stand close and keep it on my shoulder. Is that useful to you, Cage?”
I glanced over my shoulder nervously. So far, I’d heard no signs of pursuit, but Mia was really loud. And those guards had to be back there somewhere. “Have you tried since we left the alien ship?” Her silent scowl was answer enough. “Will you give it another shot? Please? Humor me? I’ll . . .” I tried to think of something to bribe Mia. What did she like? Violence? Chaos? Guns?
Guns. My heart stuttered in my chest, but I forced the words out. “I won’t say another word about that gun in your waistband ever again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s almost worth it. Almost.”
Cage sighed heavily. “Mia . . .”
“Oh, fine,” she said. “Sorry, Jasper.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. Jasper shrugged, his dark gaze boring into me rather than her.
Mia shimmered and vanished. Her voice came from nowhere, more hollow and disembodied than usual. “See?”
“Mia,” said Imani, her voice strangled, “his arm disappeared.”
A long silence followed, during which we all stared at the place where Jasper’s arm should be. “Weird,” he said in seeming fascination, flexing the muscles in his shoulders. “I still feel it, but I don’t see it. Mia, do you not see yourself when you’re invisible?”
“Shut up,” she replied. Another long moment passed—and then Jasper faded out of existence.
“I’ll be damned,” said Reed. “I did heal myself.”
Alexei frowned. “Mia mine, how are you doing that?”
“How the hell should I know?” She and Jasper both reappeared, and for the first time since I’d met her, Mia didn’t appear confident. Her eyes were wide, and her hands trembled. Without her characteristic brashness, years slid away. I never thought of Mia as a teenager, someone my own age, but now she looked it. I didn’t even know how old she was. She could be years younger than me.
Mia turned to Alexei, her voice a bit quicker and higher than usual. “What’s going on, Lex?”
He shook his head, and I frowned, working things through. “Something happened. I don’t know what, but our powers are increasing.” Or at least, some of our powers. What about mine? “This could be the thing that turns the tide in our favor,” I continued, my excitement growing. “Increased powers that Omnistellar doesn’t know about? That’s exactly what we need to—”
“Oh, that’s fine for you,” Mia snarled with such ferocity I retreated a step. “With your month-old powers and your sheltered Omnistellar past. But it’s different for us. Our abilities are part of who we are. How would you feel if you woke up and your eyes were suddenly a different color?”
I gaped at her in disbelief. “Mia, your power didn’t change. It got stronger. How is that not a good thing, especially in this situation?” And do you have any idea, any, what I would give to have your problem? Not to mention the fact that, once again, Mia was setting me apart, tossing me to the side, making sure I knew she didn’t fully trust me. Maybe no one did. I was still different from them, not Omnistellar, but not fully an anomaly, either, at least not in their eyes. Where did that leave me?
If she realized she’d hurt me, Mia didn’t show it. “Stronger, weaker, it’s still something happening to my body that I can’t control. Sure, it might be useful now. But what if this is just the beginning? What if my powers keep changing? How am I supposed to predict anything if I can’t even predict my own abilities?” Her hands clenched into fists, her arms steel bolts of tension.
Cage raked his hands through his hair, standing it on edge. “I hear you, Mia. But for now, can we focus on using the resources available to us? Please?”
She hesitated a moment, and something clattered in the distance. We all froze. It was probably nothing. “I’ll be right back,” said Mia, and vanished.
“Great,” I snapped. Her comments strained me more than I wanted to admit. They drove home the fact that even though I’d thrown myself fully in with the others, they hadn’t accepted me. I wasn’t one of them, and I sure as hell wasn’t Omnistellar. Tension edged along my neck, creeping up my skull and setting off a pounding headache behind my eyes.
“Give her a second,” Alexei said calmly.
Of course. Mia could throw a table at a waiter in a crowded restaurant and Alexei would find a way to excuse it. My teeth clenched, and words bubbled in my throat, stumbling over one another in their rush to escape.
“It’s okay,” said Cage softly, and Rune took my hand, not in warning or restraint but in support. It was enough to make me swallow the words. I still didn’t know where things sat between me and Cage, but we’d made some progress. He’d given me answers openly and honestly and that had to mean something. Rune, I loved without reservation. She was the sister I’d never had. I squeezed her hand gratefully and tried not to think about the fact that our entire relationship was founded on a lie. Sometime, and sometime soon, she’d learn the truth. Would she still be my friend once she did?
“Don’t take it personally,” Reed told me, breaking into my thoughts. “It’s just Mia being Mia.”
Jasper’s eyes took on a calculating look. “For what it’s worth, I’m very curious to see what my powers can do now.”
“And another healer could be useful.” Imani flashed me a smile. “With a bit of luck, maybe I’ll be able to heal someone else for once.”
“Mia isn’t angry at you,” Alexei added, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “She doesn’t like surprises. She’ll be back.”
Well, I could sympathize with her dislike of surprises, especially since Sanctuary. And the others’ support gave me a rush of strength, one I wasn’t sure I deserved. I caught Cage’s eye, and he shook his head in warning. It didn’t matter. As soon as we were out of danger, I was telling them the truth.
A moment later Mia did indeed return, her expression back to normal and a Mars Mining ID card clutched triumphantly between her fingers. Even in taking a moment to cope, she was working. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
An ID card wouldn’t get us into the more sensitive areas of the complex. If we’d been dealing with Omnistellar, it wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere at all. We had omnicards as backups to our retinal scans, but they were smaller and more secure than ID cards, which were issued to every company employee. Mars Mining spent most of their budget on their dome tech, though, and parts of the facility were still old-fashioned. Jupiter’s colonies, which had only sprung up over the last decade, used Mars Mining’s proprietary tech, and my mom used to say Mars Mining was on the way up because of that. The moons had their own corporation, Phantasmatech, but they relied on Mars Mining for their very existence. As Jupiter’s colonies grew, so would Mars’s royalties and prestige. For now, though, they were biding their time until their big windfall. Hence the ID cards, a cheap but effective method of controlling access to your facility—as long as no one stole them.
An ID card would at least get us through the front gate.
We crouched in an alley. The shadows grew lighter, hints of illumination edging across the Martian sky, Phobos still visible above. Much longer and we’d have miners leaving their homes, heading for work. I didn’t like to think what they’d do if they stumbled across us lurking outside Mars HQ. All I could do now was wait, though, until Mia and Jasper made their move.
I huddled against Cage, Reed on my left, his nervous energy infectious. He never stopped moving, always drumming his fingers against his thighs, quirking his head from side to side, or just blinking rapidly in thought. Cage, on the other hand, stayed still as a statue, his long, lean body relaxed and deceptively loose, even though I knew from experience he was coiled and ready for action.
Was his power shifting? Was mine? If it shifted enough, I might learn to communicate with the aliens. On Sanctuary, I’d tried to understand them and caught glimmers of meaning, and on their ship, I’d come to understand their written language with limited capacity. I imagined having the ability to talk to those things, to understand their thoughts as they flew out of the darkness and slashed us with their claws and—
Cage nudged me. “Relax,” he murmured, and I realized I was breathing in short, sharp gasps, my muscles so tense they ached.
I blinked at him in the shadows. “How are you so calm?” It wasn’t just what we were doing. Ever since Sanctuary, aliens snapped from the corners of my imagination.
“Experience.” He shrugged, then squeezed my arm. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got this.”
His confidence gave me a burst of renewed hope. As much as I’d always tried for self-reliance, it was so good to have someone else believe in me. “Thanks,” I whispered, knowing the word didn’t convey the depth of my appreciation.
He leaned in so close his lips almost touched my ear. “Kenzie, I . . . about what you said earlier. About Matt. I never meant to order you around, to tell you what to do. I only—”
As if on cue, my wrist comm gave three short buzzes against my skin, the signal I’d prearranged with Jasper. “That’s it,” I announced, cursing everyone’s timing. Talking with Cage would have to wait. “West wall.”
We split into two groups: me, Cage, and Reed to the left, Alexei, Imani, and Rune to the right. We were going with a quick and sloppy version of our original plan, and I had no idea if it would work.
I expected the wall to blow open in shards of metal, but instead it was more of a controlled disintegration. The material collapsed softly, scraps curling and floating away like paper caught in a flame. The resulting hole in the wall revealed Mia and Jasper, posed like action movie stars around the crumpled bodies of three Mars Mining guards. “Did you kill them?” I demanded.
I earned myself two identically dirty looks. “They’re unconscious,” snapped Mia. “Come on. Let’s move before more of them show up.”
This early in the morning, Mars Mining was virtually deserted, but red lights and blaring alarms warned that Jasper’s reorganization of the wall had not gone unnoticed. Rune dove for the nearest panel and jammed her hands inside. The alarms stilled, and nearby doors sprang open. “Should be clear,” she announced.
We ran through several hallways, following Rune, who had memorized the headquarters layout from a computer printout earlier that night. Before long, we reached familiar territory, returning to the landing pad. We were banking on the ship being too large to move and impossible for anyone but Rune and me to pilot. I had no idea what we’d do if it wasn’t where we’d left it.
It had better be where we’d left it. In spite of our desperation to destroy it, I thought of the alien ship as ours. We’d earned it. It was a profoundly ridiculous thought, but the idea of Mars Mining messing around inside our ship continued to rankle.
Two guards skidded around the corner ahead of us, weapons raised. “Hands up!” one of them bellowed.
Two sharp crackles sounded behind me, and the guards stiffened and collapsed.
I spun, mouth open, to find Imani lowering the stun gun. “Nice shot,” I managed.
She flushed. “Thanks.” A slight smile touched her lips. “My grandfather used to take Aliya and me hunting. I guess the principles are the same.” It was the first time she’d mentioned her sister in weeks, and her voice stuttered on the name. My heart ached for her. For all the time we’d spent together, Imani and I had never discussed our shared losses. Maybe it was soon time we did.
We had the presence of mind to relieve the guards of their weapons. I took one stun gun and Reed took the other. I was surprised how much better I felt with the gun in my hands. After what had happened with Matt, I never wanted to hold a real firearm again, but the stun gun was smooth and familiar. I could defend myself without killing anyone. I was instantly less dependent on the others, more in control, more myself. Omnistellar might have been behind me, but I hadn’t eradicated the guard from my system just yet.
Rune got us through the corridors without further incident. Relief suffused me at the sight of the ship on the tarmac. I’d forgotten how big it was, how alien. It seemed to swallow the light. A handful of guards surrounded it, but Imani, Reed, and I disabled them quickly and cleanly. I made Cage and Alexei haul them into the corridor, out of the blast range, assuming we managed to destroy the ship.
Alarms went off again. Someone had spotted us. Jasper raised his hands and wrinkled his brow, and the door crumpled in on itself. “That should buy us a few minutes. Now what?”
The original plan involved swiping explosives from the mines. Obviously, the midmorning attack on our room obliterated that idea. I’d had some vague idea of Alexei simply overheating the ship until it exploded, but standing in front of it, it was clear I’d been dreaming. It was too big, too sleek, made to withstand weapons fire in the vacuum of space. No amount of flames would damage it. “Maybe we can find where the signal is coming from?” I asked hopefully. “Destroy that instead of the entire ship?”
Rune shook her head. “I tried that when I first spotted the signal. If I’d found it, I might have been able to deactivate it.”
We all stood stupidly staring at the thing, and I cursed myself. The others relied on me to come up with something. They’d probably assumed I had a plan in mind when in truth, I hadn’t been sure we’d make it this far. What were we supposed to do now?
A heavy sigh came from the other side of the tarmac. We all spun, raising our weapons and targeting the area. “You’re surrounded by fuel,” came an annoyed voice, and a man strode around the corner of a nearby ship. “Use it to obliterate that pain-in-the-ass ship.”
We stared in silence for another moment before Cage found his voice and asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Excuse me,” he said, “but exactly who the hell are you?”