CAGE AND MATT SANDWICHED ME between them, Cage in front and Matt behind. I was torn between annoyance at the gesture and genuine emotion. Cage and I seemed to spend most of our time putting ourselves between the others and danger, but Matt, well, if he was looking out for me, it meant he genuinely did forgive me.
But neither of them could do much to protect me here. I was still reeling from the casual way Gideon put that bullet in Mia’s foot. I was pretty sure he’d kill me, or any of us, with the same expression on his face. This was not someone I wanted to cross. I realized now what frightened me in his eyes. They were soulless and empty, the reflection of someone who had gone too far and seen too much. I examined him out of the corner of my eye. He looked every inch a soldier, like the higher-ups I’d known at Omnistellar. I knew power and authority when I saw it. If I was going to keep my friends safe from this man, I’d have to keep Mia and Cage quiet. Questioning him wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Maybe we could find common ground, a way to put us on the same side.
I looked at him again and scratched that notion. Maybe it would have been possible once, but whatever Gideon had come through to reach this point, it had settled deep into his soul, eradicating everything but suspicion. I had no idea how we would break through to him.
We descended a long flight of stairs and emerged into …
“Is this a department store?” I asked dubiously.
“Keep moving.” Gideon shoved me between the shoulder blades, and I stumbled.
But Eden answered. “When we first got here, it seemed like the best choice to supply us for a while,” she said. “Now … everyone’s too scared to move on.”
“Everyone’s safe,” Gideon snapped.
“Safe doesn’t mean secure,” Eden replied, her voice calm and quiet in contrast to his vitriolic anger. “It’s temporary. It’s—”
“That’s enough, Cortez.”
She sighed, and I got the sense they’d had this conversation before. “Yes, sir.”
The overhead lights had long since gone dark, but some sort of lanterns stood at regular intervals, throwing the huge space into shadowy relief. What looked like a grocery area stood in one corner, large shelves blocked off by a series of curtains and blankets. Nearby, various counters still contained all the things people hadn’t considered worth taking: a smattering of toys, craft materials, gardening implements, and home decorations.
Was that movement behind one of the makeshift curtains? I didn’t have time to consider it before Gideon steered us in the other direction. Behind me, Mia gasped regularly, obviously in pain. After a moment, she quieted, and I risked a glimpse over my shoulder. Eden had levitated a few inches off the ground, taking Mia with her, and was guiding them forward without putting any pressure on my friend’s wound. Mia’s face remained stubbornly set, but I read the relief in her eyes, and almost against my will a wave of gratitude surged through me.
“Gideon, was it?” Cage craned his neck, giving the older man one of his brightest smiles. “Look, we should talk about this. We aren’t your enemies. We’re trying to survive, just like you.”
“Oh, we’ll talk.” Gideon guided us through what seemed like some sort of home repair area and led us behind the counter. He pulled a ring of old-fashioned keys from his pocket and opened a padlock on a heavy steel door, revealing a dark space behind it. He took Cage by the shoulder and shoved him inside. “I’ve got plenty of questions for all of you.” He gestured for Matt to follow. I made to go with them, but Gideon stopped me with an outstretched hand. He slammed the door and padlocked it. “This way,” he said.
I gaped at the closed door. For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to me that they might separate us, and desperation clawed at my guts. Every time I was apart from Cage, things went downhill—for both of us. We needed to be together. We all needed to be together. It was bad enough we’d split into two groups and I couldn’t help the others if they came after us. I had to be able to protect Cage and Matt. I needed to keep everyone safe, and how could I do that if we were locked in separate cages?
But Gideon wasn’t giving me the chance to make arguments. He grabbed me and shoved me along with such force I stumbled to my knees. I sucked in my breath as I slammed to the floor, unable to break my fall with my bound hands.
“Gideon.” Eden’s voice held a hint of warning.
Gideon spun on her. “You got something to say?”
I couldn’t see his face, but she stared at him for a moment, working her lower lip, before shaking her head. “No, sir. Just … again. They’re kids.”
“Kids,” Gideon muttered. He jammed his hands into his hair and pulled it so hard I winced on his behalf. “Kids. That’s how they get you. Sympathy. Kids.” He laughed, the sound unstable and brittle. “Kids. Remember when we went after the kids, Eden? The ones in the desert?”
“Gideon …”
“Remember how you convinced me to follow them into the night? They might need us, you said. Think of your …” He swallowed, his face white with rage, a scar along his cheek standing out in mottled purple. “So we went after them. Remember? Remember, Eden?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I remember.”
“And what happened next?”
She sighed. “The rest of their group jumped us from behind an abandoned car. They killed three of our people before we got the best of them.” Spreading her hands in supplication, she said, “But that doesn’t mean everyone who needs help is looking to trap us. These are the first people we’ve seen in years, Gid. This is our chance to learn what’s going on outside these walls, to—”
Without warning, he spun and smashed his fist through the glass countertop. I screamed and scrambled, dodging flying shards of glass. Instinctively, I rolled to my feet, crouched low and ready to bolt, but Gideon only stood staring at the blood coursing down his hand in dispassionate annoyance. “Now look what you made me do,” he muttered.
Eden closed her eyes briefly as if in pain. “All right. If that’s the way you want it. Let’s get these girls squared away and see to your hand.”
“Don’t you dare condescend to me.” He glared at Mia. “Are there more of you?”
Mia hesitated. Like me, she’d obviously realized that Gideon knew when we were lying, and not because he was naturally perceptive. But her stubbornness won out. She locked her lips in a line and jutted her chin forward.
Gideon shrugged, pulled his gun, and targeted her other foot.
Oh, for God’s sake. “Yes!” I shouted, because Mia was almost certainly willing to get shot again to prove a point. She was the only one left with me, and if I couldn’t take care of the others, I could at least protect her ungrateful ass. “There are more of us.”
“Older than you?”
I winced, seeing where he was going. “Some of them,” I said cautiously. “But—”
“There. You see?” He waved his wounded hand in Eden’s direction, splattering blood on the floor. “They’re a decoy. We need to watch for their friends, because they won’t be far behind. You see to that. I’ll get answers from these two.”
Eden seemed to hesitate. “I can talk to them, Gideon. Why don’t you go and … ?”
“And what? Leave you to be lied to? Don’t be stupid. I’ll take them from here.”
Eden examined us momentarily, then shrugged and carefully returned Mia to the ground. “Yes, sir. I’ll get a crew together and set up a perimeter. Let me know what you learn.”
I watched her receding back with something like panic. Eden wasn’t exactly a friend or an ally, but she seemed a lot more stable than Gideon. I didn’t doubt he would kill either one of us at the first sign of a lie.
He wasn’t particularly gentle in hauling Mia forward. She exploded in a string of cursing as she stumbled on her injured foot. I caught her to keep her from toppling, pressing my shoulder into her so she could lean on me. She resisted for all of a second before half collapsing against me, which told me she was in more pain than she’d let on.
Gideon still clutched that gun in his hands. It wasn’t anything I recognized, not one of Omnistellar’s fancy weapons or one of the more common cheap brands I’d seen used on Obsidian. I guessed it made sense—a lot was the same here, but not everything. If Rune was right, if we’d connected with this race across space, maybe even time, some things were bound to get lost in the translation. For instance, I didn’t recognize the lanterns along the perimeter. They looked like flickering flames, but closer inspection revealed them to have a bluish light that definitely wasn’t natural. I had no idea what they were or where they’d come from.
Could Rune be right? Was it even possible that somehow we had a bond with this race, with these people? And if that was the case, would it make it easier to reason with them or harder?
Gideon didn’t give me any more time to examine my surroundings. He ordered us forward, and we shuffled along. Mia was heavier than she appeared. “Mia, for once in your life,” I whispered through gritted teeth, “don’t piss him off. And whatever you do, don’t lie to him.”
She shot me a scowl that clearly said coward, but I was past caring. “You want to die here?” I snapped, only barely managing to control my volume. “You want Alexei to find your body full of holes? You think it’ll bring him peace knowing you died telling pointless lies?”
She hesitated. I’d chosen the right track, going after the only thing capable of fazing her. She wouldn’t have cared if I’d tried to make her save her life for her own sake, but I knew the thought of Alexei stumbling over her corpse would stop her short.
Mia didn’t answer me, but she also sagged a bit more, as if the fight had gone out of her. We staggered to another bolted door and stood aside while Gideon unlocked it. I did briefly consider disappearing and running, but I realized that even if Mia’s injury let us escape, Gideon would go after Cage and Matt in retribution.
He forced us into the room. There was no illumination inside, but the lanterns spilled enough light to reveal some empty storage shelves and a narrow space, maybe ten feet long and six wide. It was barely smaller than a prison cell on Sanctuary, I realized with a pang.
Gideon filled the doorway. “Just so we’re clear,” he said, “if one of you lies to me, I’ll kill the other. Then I’ll go repeat the same exercise with your friends and bring the surviving one back here until no one’s left. And I’ll kill the rest of your people when they arrive.”
I managed to turn a hysterical laugh into a cough. “You’re going to do that anyway.”
Gideon crouched, resting his arms on his knees. I thought he was considering me, maybe appraising me. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. Give me the truth, and I won’t kill anyone unless I have to. I’ll take them prisoner, lock them up with you until we decide what to do next. I can’t promise that won’t mean your deaths. But I won’t execute them on the spot. Tell me a single lie, though, even a hint of a gasp, and I’ll slaughter every single one of them the second they show their faces.”
Mia scowled. “You have a low opinion of our friends.”
“They won’t know what they’re walking into. I’m MACE. You know what that means?”
She sagged against a shelf, barely keeping herself upright, all her weight on her left foot and hands. “Short for emaciated?”
“Macro Adversarial Crisis Extraction,” Gideon replied coldly.
He seemed to be expecting a response. “We’ve never heard of MACE,” I told him at last, honestly.
Gideon sighed, obviously hearing the truth. “I guess you would’ve been in diapers when the Blast happened. But trust me, I’m not someone you want to mess around with.”
I blinked. Was this my chance to forge a connection? “So you were a soldier,” I said, keeping my voice carefully emotionless. I wasn’t sure what would set him off. Even too much interest might do it.
“That’s one word for it.” His flat, cold eyes slide over me. “We went deep into enemy territory and extracted assets. Once the Blast hit, we found a new job. We went places no one else went. Most of us died. We accomplished nothing, but we kept trying. Over and over, we kept trying.” He snorted. “For all the good it did us.”
“What happened?” I asked.
I’d tried to keep my voice neutral, but it was as if I’d triggered a reaction. His head snapped up and his nostrils flared and he snarled, “Nothing good. All you need to know is that I’ve seen countless people die and killed almost as many, and I’m not scared to do it again. I do keep my word, though. So make a choice. Tell me how many of you there are, what abilities they have, and when we can expect them. Or try to lie … and see what MACE really means.”