I CLOSED MY EYES. I was out of patience with this guy, and so I was surprised when my voice only sounded weary. “Come with you where?”
“Does it matter? I have a ship.” He arched an eyebrow. “At any rate, I’m leaving, not waiting around for Mars Mining and their buffoons to take me captive. You lot can follow or stay put.” He turned and strode away from the flaming debris.
We exchanged frantic looks. Where was he going? Should we follow? What choice did we have? “Wait up!” Cage called, making the decision for us, and we broke into a run.
I skidded to a halt as we rounded a corner to find the pirate opening the hatch on a Titan 365 Racing Ship. “Whoa,” I said. “That thing must cost—”
“A million credits,” Reed finished. His eyes shining, he took a step forward. “At least. With an acceleration that leaves the competition in the dust.”
“Would you like to get in? Or did you want to stand there admiring it?” Mia brushed past us, and we all put on a burst of speed. We weren’t out of the woods yet.
“How do you know they won’t just shoot you out of the sky?” Cage demanded as we scrambled onto the ship. We found ourselves in a barren cargo hold, kind of a letdown compared to the Titan’s flashy exterior. Reed, who did not appear to share my disappointment, hovered over the control board like a kid examining his Christmas gifts.
The pirate thumbed the controls, and the doors slid shut. “My ID signal is messed up and I can’t seem to fix it,” he sighed heavily. A chair appeared from nowhere, emerging from the cargo hold floor, and he sank into it, hauling the safety straps over his chest. Reed drew nearer, peering over his shoulder in what he probably imagined was an inconspicuous manner. “Sometimes it projects that I’m Omnistellar security. No one wants to shoot until they have the details. Risks an interstellar incident, you know? By the way, you might want to hold on to something.”
Cage grabbed an overhead rack with one hand and Rune with the other, and I braced myself between him and a stack of crates. We were just in time. Reed hadn’t been kidding about this thing’s acceleration. I wasn’t sure Mars Mining would have time to demand identification, even if they hadn’t been busy dealing with the inferno Alexei had left in their docking yard. The ship’s ID must have already been keyed to pass through the dome, because it didn’t incinerate us. In fact, we blasted out of there so fast the gravity pinned me to the wall and Cage to me, sending the air whooshing from my lungs.
Mia shouted a few inventive curse words from across the room, where she, Alexei, and Jasper clutched at Imani, who hadn’t grabbed anything in time. Reed had made no attempt to brace himself, apparently too fascinated by the controls. He was paying for it, lying on the floor clutching his head, but I didn’t feel too sorry for him and his newly discovered healing abilities.
The ship’s acceleration became almost painful, yanking my skin taut against my bones. The muscles in Cage’s arm tensed as he pulled away from me, but it was like trying to fly. You can’t fight gravity after a certain point. The pressure on my lungs increased, both from the g-force and from Cage’s weight. Right when I thought I would pass out from the lack of oxygen, it released with a recoil that sent all of us spiraling into the cargo bay. Our momentum carried us upward. We were weightless.
“Whoops,” said the pirate cheerfully. “Restoring artificial gravity in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The gravity kicked in with a whoosh, and I tumbled to the floor, fortunately landing feetfirst. Cage clattered beside me, less lucky. He swore loudly as he landed on his shoulders, but he also rolled neatly to his feet and gave me a cocky grin. I shook my head in response, fighting a grin of my own.
We collected ourselves, everyone coming to terms with the last few minutes. “Did they even ask for your ID?” Imani asked at last, her voice weak. I glanced over to find her healing a cut on her arm. It looked painful, but she didn’t appear fazed.
“Nope. Guess their attention was elsewhere.” The pirate chuckled.
“Fantastic.” Mia crossed the room in three steps, her face a barely contained explosion of rage. “Then I think it’s about time you answered some questions.”
He pivoted in his chair, unstrapped himself, and leaned back, folding his long, lanky legs at the ankle. “It’s not enough that I just saved your lives?”
“Actually, no, it is not. So, let’s start with the basics. Who are you, why did you help us, and where are we going?”
The rest of us gathered behind her. Mia might be overly aggressive, but she asked reasonable questions. For all we knew, this guy was some sort of Omnistellar bounty hunter who’d smuggled us out of Mars to turn us in. We might have leaped from the frying pan into the fire.
The man sighed and jumped to his feet. Up close, he wasn’t much older than us, maybe in his early twenties. He gave Mia a mock bow. “Liam Kidd, at your service,” he announced. “I helped you destroy that ship before it attracted any more of the aliens, which is a very worthy deed. And I am heading home, where, alas, we shall part ways. You’re on your own once we reach Obsidian.”
A resounding silence answered his pronouncements. Eyes shot open. Mouths worked furiously. For my part, I merely rolled my eyes. Obsidian was a fairy tale, a stupid story kids told when Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5 and the other anticorporate media didn’t fill their rebellion quota.
But then I caught sight of Alexei, his face twisted in a snarl. “We are not going to Obsidian,” he said, danger in his tone.
“What do you know about the aliens?” Rune demanded at the same time. “How do you know about them?”
Her question echoed in the cargo bay, maybe the most important question of all.
The pirate—Liam—sighed. “Let’s discuss this in a friendlier setting, shall we?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Alexei stepped forward. For the first time in a long while, I remembered him as he’d been when we first met: physically imposing, dangerous, and aggressive. His shoulders seemed to expand to fill the room, his eyes hard flecks of steel above a jaw so sharp it looked like it could draw blood. “Let’s talk about Obsidian, where we are not headed.”
“What’s Obsidian?” Imani demanded.
“A fairy tale,” I said irritably. “Alexei, you can’t believe that place exists.” Imani quirked an eyebrow at me, and I explained, “The story goes that Obsidian was an Omnistellar prison near Mars. It was an old one, housing dangerous criminals who didn’t belong on Earth—not anomalies, but murderers and the like. The prisoners overthrew it and now they control it. It’s said to be the only criminal-run space station in the solar system, but—”
“It’s real.” Alexei snarled.
“It is not. Omnistellar doesn’t make that sort of mistake.”
“Kenzie.” His voice softened. “I have been there.”
That brought me up short. Alexei didn’t lie. But how, why, would Omnistellar allow a place like that to continue? My former corporation might not be invulnerable as I’d once believed, but they were still the most powerful corp in the solar system, and not lacking in finances or resources. They would simply blow Obsidian out of the sky.
Unless . . . there was some reason they couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?
Alexei and Liam continued to argue, with Mia occasionally interjecting. Rune glanced back and forth between them, her mouth working as if she had something to say but couldn’t quite find the words. Finally, she turned to Cage in frustration.
He rose to the occasion, obviously jumping at the chance to mend some bridges between himself and his twin. “Hey!” he shouted. The other three spun on him with identical glares, and Cage folded his arms. “We can talk about where we’re going later. Right now, let’s return to Rune’s question: What the hell do you know about the aliens? And how do you know it?”
That got everyone’s attention, even drawing Reed away from the control board where he’d been hovering. Imani and I exchanged glances. We, more than anyone, knew what the aliens meant if they arrived. But then I caught Jasper’s worried expression, the way he gnawed at his lip, and remembered that his family was closest. If Liam had something to do with the aliens, if he brought them here, Jasper’s family was in the most immediate danger.
I shook my head. Liam had helped us destroy the ship. Thinking he was in league with the aliens was nothing but paranoia, my lingering terror nudging the corners of my psyche. But at the same time, we knew nothing about Liam. We’d jumped on his ship because it was that or imminent arrest. No, he probably wasn’t working with the aliens, but he could easily be Omnistellar. Or a bounty hunter. Or a murderer.
But one look at him brought me up short. All his forced confidence dissolved, and his face turned pale and drawn. Slowly, he sank into his chair. “I guess you have a right to know,” he said quietly. “You might as well take a seat.” Meeting Alexei’s frustrated gaze, he sighed. “Even in this ship, it’ll take us an hour to get to Obsidian. You’ll have plenty of time to argue about it before then. But may I ask where else you want to go? The only other location within range of my fuel is the planet we just left, and I suspect you’re about to become very unpopular there.”
I glanced at my wrist monitor to check the time. I didn’t know exactly when I’d spoken with my father, but I guessed about twelve hours had passed since then. Once Omnistellar arrived, “unpopular” would be an understatement.
Liam’s words, or maybe the change in his demeanor, had the desired effect. Alexei sighed and retreated, taking Mia with him. Without asking, we gathered crates and boxes, anything we could find to sit on, forming a loose circle. Reed perched near the control panel, still seemingly more interested in it than in anything Liam said, but as for the rest of us, the pirate had our undivided attention.
I glanced at Liam’s pallid face. We were bullying him, exactly like the anomalies had done to me when they were prisoners and I was the guard. And just like then, the reasons made sense, the ends justified the means. But I remembered how it felt, being on the receiving end of that power game. “For what it’s worth,” I said softly, “thank you. We never would have made it off Mars without your help.”
Liam looked surprised, then gave me a grateful smile that instantly made me sure I’d said the right thing. “Thanks,” he said. “But really, my motivations were selfish, at least at first. I had to make sure that ship was destroyed.” His voice wavered, and he clasped his hands tightly, but not before I caught them trembling. I exchanged mystified glances with Cage. What happened to the overconfident jackass who’d mocked us into blowing up a spaceship?
Liam continued. “I picked up the ship’s signal a day ago on Obsidian. At first, I thought I was imagining things. It’s been years since I’ve heard anything on that particular frequency. I kept checking, though, every day, just in case. It became a matter of habit. When I actually heard something . . .” He focused on his shiny black boots. He sputtered a few words we couldn’t catch, but no one, not even Mia, pushed him, and after a moment he seemed to get himself under control. “I’d almost convinced myself I was safe. That I’d never hear that signal again. I wasted a couple of hours telling myself it couldn’t be real. By the time I came around to the truth, you were already heading for Mars, and I’d missed my chance to intercept you.”
“Intercept us,” said Imani softly. “Did you know who we were?”
Liam shook his head. “No, but I suspected. Earth already knew some of you had escaped Sanctuary, but they only had theories about how. When I saw that ship floundering around like a dying fish, I put it together, especially when you didn’t start attacking. I mean, I heard what happened on Sanctuary. No one mentioned the . . .” His voice trailed off, his face somehow going even paler, and he clenched his hands so tightly I thought he’d draw blood. “No one knew what really happened on your prison, but the timing couldn’t be coincidental. My first instinct was to try to contact you, but I reconsidered. I was pretty sure you were human, but what if I was wrong and I drew your attention? And even if you were, even if you could have been convinced of the danger of your transport, I knew the corporations couldn’t. They only see in credits. And they have a blind spot to anything that might interfere with the bottom line.”
“You can say that again,” muttered Jasper.
The rest of us remained fixated on Liam. “None of that explains how you recognized the signal,” Mia snapped. “Or what you know about the aliens.”
Liam took a deep breath. It caught in his throat. He shook it off and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And if you weren’t human, well . . .” He gestured to the pistol strapped to his belt. “That’s what this was for.”
“You obviously haven’t encountered those things,” I said quietly. “If you had, you’d know guns are all but useless against them.”
He stared at me for a minute. There was something strange in his eyes, something flatter, or maybe brighter, as if he had more colors than I expected to see in a human iris. “The gun wasn’t for the aliens,” he said at last.
His words settled over us with the weight of a shroud. Before anyone could ask any more questions, Liam rushed on. “I headed for Mars. One way or another, I had to know the truth. I called in every favor I was owed on Obsidian to hack the comms and figured out exactly who you were and what you’d gotten your hands on. The second I got the details, I knew you had the right idea: to destroy that ship. But I wasn’t sure you’d be able to do it before Omnistellar showed up, so I headed to the planet to make sure. I was monitoring Mars security, so I knew when you attacked, and we arrived on the landing strip at about the same time.” He gestured to a backpack at his feet. “I had some explosives with me, but you had a walking flamethrower. Once we destroyed the ship, I didn’t feel like leaving you behind at corporate mercy.”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and dragging my hands through my hair as I struggled to process this new information. It was too much to take in. Earth knew we’d survived Sanctuary? How? They should have assumed we’d all been blown up with the station. I opened my mouth to ask the question, but Liam wasn’t done yet.
“As for how I knew about the aliens,” he continued, glaring at Mia, who’d already opened her mouth, “I’d think that was obvious. They destroyed my planet.”