“STOP!” I SHOUTED, PLUNGING INTO the crowd. The wisp of white vanished into a sea of people, and I shoved after it. That wrist communicator was my last link to home, to my father, to my friends, to my family. I might be conflicted about talking to my dad, afraid of what I’d discover, but I sure as hell couldn’t afford to lose it.
I stumbled over someone’s feet, colliding with a decidedly hostile group of men. One of them stepped in front of me. Without stopping to think, I drove my elbow into his ribs. He doubled over, grunting, and I ducked under his friend’s arm, charging past the crowd.
I put on a burst of speed, bulling my way through the market. A trail of shouted anger marked my wake until I emerged into the stairwell.
I peered down the stairs, blinking. Hordes of faces peered back at me, probably wondering who and what had caused all the fuss. But I didn’t see the thief. Unless he’d ditched his clothing and casually blended in with the crowd below? Desperation made my head swirl. How would I ever find him?
Someone shouted behind me, and I winced. So much for keeping a low profile. I was going to have the entire marketplace on my heels in a second. I needed to get out of here and hope I found Cage later. Otherwise he’d have to rescue me from some sticky situation, assuming I survived long enough. And if that was the case, I’d have to deal with him muttering about how he’d warned me to stay put. My fists tightened involuntarily. No, I would find a way to save myself.
My gaze settled on a grated panel against the wall. Sanctuary didn’t have large ventilation ducts like this, or at least I didn’t think it did. But then, I’d learned that a lot of Sanctuary was hidden behind smooth walls and civilized veneers. Obsidian was an older model, with everything in the open.
The voices behind me grew louder. I risked a glance back. The man I’d elbowed pushed his way through the crowd, a sizable following behind him. I didn’t have much time to make a choice.
Did the grate look askew?
If the thief hadn’t gone into the vents, I at least hoped my knowledge of Sanctuary would give me an edge in dodging any pursuit. Besides, the men looked too big to crawl through ductwork. I lunged for the grate, yanked it aside easily—too easily, giving me hope I wasn’t the first person to crawl through here today—and dove forward, squirming along on my elbows without bothering to pull the grate into place behind me.
And not a moment too soon. A roar erupted, and the vent shuddered as someone lunged against it. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw a huge, leather-bound arm groping around the entrance, nowhere near my feet. Allowing myself a sigh of relief, I pressed onward. Definitely the right choice.
My satisfaction quickly faded, though. I’d plunged into a vent on an unfamiliar prison station. Who knew where it led? It could be a dead end, leaving me no choice but to shamefacedly climb back to the entrance and hope my pursuers weren’t waiting on the other side.
Not to mention that the vent was pitch-black. Without my wrist monitor, I had no way to illuminate the passage. After I crept around the first corner, I was completely blind. A moment of panic assailed me, like the alien ship times a thousand: pitch-black, cramped, terrifying. For a second, I was sure I heard the soft drag of alien tails on metal.
“Damn it, Kenzie, keep it together,” I whispered out loud. The aliens weren’t on Obsidian. If we’d destroyed that beacon in time, they were searching for their comrades somewhere far, far away.
Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be back. They had to know their harvest had failed. If they didn’t, they’d figure it out soon enough. The realization washed over me as I dropped my head to my clasped hands, my heartbeat echoing so loud it reverberated off the metal walls.
Destroying the beacon hadn’t saved us. The aliens would be back. Was there anything we could do to stop them?
Maybe. With time, with information, we might be able to do something. And if nothing else, destroying that beacon had bought us time. How much, I didn’t know. Maybe days. Maybe months. But we had time, time to plan, time to think. Omnistellar, for all their malice and apparent Machiavellian tendencies, employed some of the best scientists and researchers in the world. All I needed to do was survive the current situation long enough to get in touch with my dad, make him listen to me, make him believe me. And then Omnistellar could take it from there.
Omnistellar would have to take it from there. I wasn’t a weapons specialist, just a guard. No, not even that. An anomaly. A fugitive. I had information, and I had to convince them it was real. From there I’d let the company do what they did best. And they would. We would survive. Everything would be okay in the end.
The air was cool and carried a vague scent of oil, machinery. Nothing like the warm, humid depths of the alien ship. There were no aliens here. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. I sank my fingers into the slick metal and pulled myself forward.
With each advance, I probed ahead, making sure the vent didn’t suddenly drop into nothingness. I groped along the walls on either side, too, dreading the moment I’d find a branch and have to make another choice. None came, though. A new terror enveloped me: the inevitable dead end. There was no way to turn around in the close quarters, the walls brushing my arms, the roof against my head. I’d have to crawl all the way backward.
Sweat dripped from my forehead. How much time had passed? Long enough for Cage to worry? Long enough for him to follow me? He wouldn’t be that dumb, would he?
Yes. Yes, he would. I stifled a curse and redoubled my efforts, my fingers sweat-slick against metal.
I rounded another corner and blinked against sudden light. Relief surged in my chest as I pulled myself forward, my bruised knees and elbows banging against the walls. A grate loomed in front of me. I threaded my fingers through it and shoved with all my might.
It didn’t budge.
Of course it didn’t. “Hey!” I shouted, throwing caution to the wind. I rattled the grate as hard as I could, metal clanging in echoing reverberations. “Hey!”
A face appeared in front of me—an all-too-familiar face, one I was coming to hate. “You!” I shouted.
“You,” Liam groaned in response, leaning against the wall to glare at me through the grate. He was wearing a white cloak over his pirate garb. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Why won’t I . . . ?” My brain short-circuited for a second. “You stole my comm!”
He grinned, a flash of teeth gone before I’d properly registered it. “Precisely. Fair and square. Now crawl back to your hole, little girl, and—”
I slammed my hand into the grate. Pain reverberated all the way to my elbow, but I got the satisfaction of seeing him jump in surprise. “I’m not going anywhere,” I seethed. “Not without that device.”
He scowled. “Well, then I hope you enjoy your new life in that vent.”
We glared at each other, at an impasse. I craned my neck to see around him, revealing a tiny alcove resembling nothing so much as a maintenance shaft, but he’d clearly converted it to a home, with a crumpled pile of blankets in the corner. A crate with a fluorescent lantern illuminated the space. I couldn’t see more from my position.
I regarded him a moment through the grate. “Nice place you’ve got here,” I said at last, fishing.
He didn’t respond, but his eyes narrowed. Encouraged, I pressed on. “I’m guessing this isn’t exactly an official setup. I’m not sure how rent control works on Obsidian, but this looks pretty off the books.” I raised my eyebrow, as if a thought had occurred to me. “Hey. Maybe I can trade the location of your little hideout for a ride off this station.”
“Damn, you’re an annoying piece of work.”
I grinned in spite of myself. “So I’ve been told.”
Liam hesitated, then swore and reached up, doing something to the grate. He pried it loose, letting it dangle from a corner. Unbidden, he extended a hand.
I took it, letting him help me down from my perch. “Thank you,” I said, stretching my sore back. Something popped in my spine, and I grimaced.
We stood there awkwardly a moment. I glanced around the room, a tiny space no more than five feet square, barely high enough to stand. There were two other grates in the walls, and an open maintenance hatch stretched between them. It looked like a good base from which to squirrel around the station stealing stuff. It was messy but not uncomfortably so. He’d arranged crates and blankets as rugs and furniture. It wasn’t even dim, at least to my eyes. Of course, I’d spent the last month on a spaceship designed for blind aliens, so what did I know?
“This is where you live?” I asked dubiously.
Liam scowled. “If you must know, I have a lovely set of quarters very near Grigori Danshov. This is where I go to do things I don’t want him to know about. And if you tell him about it, he’ll kill you, then me. Now go.”
“Not without my wrist monitor.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Liar.” I glared at him. “You didn’t have time to get rid of it. Why’d you take it in the first place?”
“Why do you think? So I could turn you in to Omnistellar and claim the bounty.”
Temper surged in my throat, but I swallowed it, forcing myself to be calm and rational. “If you wanted to do that, why not do it on Mars?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted one. It’s nice tech.”
I glanced at his wrist. “You’re telling me you’re cozy with the people who run this station and they couldn’t get you a black-market comm unit?”
Something beeped from a computer at the back of the room. Liam rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he sighed heavily. He crossed to the computer and deftly withdrew my comm unit, tossing it in my direction.
My heart flip-flopped right along with that shiny bit of silver, but my reflexes held true, and I snatched it out of midair. I closed my fingers over it, willing my breath to return to normal as Liam casually blanked his screen, but not before I got a glimpse of what it contained.
“Those are my comm logs!” I grabbed him, swung him around, and slammed him against the wall before he drew any of his fancy weapons. I’d been suspicious of Liam from the beginning, but now . . . “You’re spying on me, and you’re going to tell me why!”