IT SEEMED LIKE FROM THE moment Cage and Alexei took me captive on Sanctuary, I’d faced a series of nothing but impossible choices. Still, this was by far the worst. Was it wrong to save us? To betray my friends, give Gideon their abilities, their names? If I didn’t, we’d die.
But was it worth it? Should I instead sacrifice us to save everyone else? Would I even save them? Or was Gideon not exaggerating his skills and abilities? I didn’t know what MACE was, but he’d seemed to expect it to have an impact, which meant it was probably like Legion or Omnistellar—a force to be reckoned with.
I made my decision in a heartbeat. We didn’t have a choice, not really. And so I told him everything. I listed off the members of Legion, my remaining friends, and their abilities. I told him where they were and that they would almost certainly come after us. I tried to leave information out, but he didn’t let me. His questions came quick and relentless: Did they have training? Were they armed? What sorts of strategies did they use?
And throughout it all, I couldn’t lie. I became paranoid with the need to tell the truth, because the slightest slip would mean Mia’s death, and I was not going to let anyone die, not one more of my friends, my family.
At last Gideon nodded thoughtfully and departed without a word of reassurance, slamming us into total darkness. He did free our hands before he left, the sole concession he made as he ignored my frantic questions and stormed out of the room. The only sounds were our breaths: mine harsh in my chest, Mia’s ragged with pain and, probably, anger.
“Mia,” I said at last, forcing the words through a constricted throat, “I’m sorry. I …”
Mia sighed. “Let’s stop apologizing to each other, all right? I don’t know what the right call was here, and that’s rare for me. My instinct says we should have kept our mouths shut. But then I think of Cage and Matt in the other room, and Lex, and …” Her voice trailed off. “Well, whatever the right thing was, this is what happened. We’ll have to deal with it, and hope the others are smart enough to spot an ambush.”
I sagged in relief. I’d been terrified of being trapped with a furious Mia determined to stoke the fires of my guilt. But she’d changed in the last few weeks too, I realized. She was still Mia: unpredictable and temperamental and violent. But she’d gentled a bit, relaxed into herself since we left Sanctuary. Alexei had mentioned she was mildly claustrophobic, that prison had been extra hard on her, and …
Claustrophobic. Oh God. “Are you okay in here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice mild.
Mia sighed. She didn’t even pretend not to know what I meant. “If I can handle climbing through the vents in Obsidian, I can handle a storeroom. The bigger problem is my foot.”
“Can I …” I choked off a laugh. “I was going to say take a look at it. I don’t know. Prod at it?”
“Why not? It can’t hurt much more than it already does.” There was a clatter as she let herself finally sag to the floor along the shelves, and I groped my way to her side, crouching at her feet. I reached out hesitantly until I found her leg and loosened the buckles on her boot, prying it off her foot. Mia sucked in a gasp of air but made no other protest.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” I cautioned. Because Mia wouldn’t. And the last thing I needed was to make her injury worse.
“That Gideon,” she remarked, almost conversationally. “He’s a piece of work, huh?”
I shuddered involuntarily. “And I thought Legion was bad.”
“Legion is a bunch of smug arrogant bastards. I think Gideon is actually out of his mind. Maybe he wasn’t before, but situations can break people, you know?”
Did I ever.
Was that what happened to my parents, I wondered? Once upon a time, would they have laid down their lives for me, for each other? Turned their backs on Omnistellar? Had passing years and a constant war of attrition decimated their spirits until only the Omnistellar soldier remained? And if it hadn’t been for Cage and the prison break, would the same thing have happened to me?
I ground my teeth. It wouldn’t happen, though, not to me, and not to my friends. No matter how many times we fell, I’d pull us to our feet.
And on that note … I ran my hands lightly over Mia’s flesh. She sucked in her breath when I reached the wound, and blood spilled over my hands. “Sorry,” I whispered. And then my questing fingers bumped something protruding from her flesh and she didn’t gasp, she screamed.
But I didn’t move because hope had surged inside me. This felt like some sort of projectile. Not a bullet, then, which meant … “I think I can remove this,” I said.
“Should you?” Somehow, Mia was not only conscious, but coherent. “Actually, never mind. I don’t care. I want it out.”
I nodded. We needed Mia as mobile as possible, which precluded weird darts in her feet. Besides, if we ever got our hands on some light, I wanted to see this thing. I prayed it was only a projectile and not something injecting toxins into her system.
“Hang on.” Mia rummaged around and then pressed something into my hands—the scarf she’d been wearing around her neck. “For the blood,” she sighed, sounding more resigned than scared.
Which was good, because I was plenty scared for both of us. I hated blood. If I was going to do something like this, I was very happy to be doing it in the dark.
A sudden memory intruded, and a totally inappropriate giggle escaped my lips. “Sorry.” I hastened to explain. “It’s just … this is the second time I’ve had to pull something out of you.”
“Don’t remind me,” Mia muttered. On Sanctuary, she’d been the first to encounter the alien creatures, and one of them broke a claw off in her side. Cage and I had worked together to remove it, even though I’d been on the verge of unconsciousness the whole time. I really wished I had him here now.
I drew a deep breath. No point delaying. Without warning her, because what good would it do, I grabbed the object and jerked with all my strength.
Mia cried out as it came free. I carefully set it aside and pressed the scarf against her foot, hoping it was doing a good job of stanching the blood. I kept the pressure steady as I wrapped the scarf around her and tied it as tightly as I dared.
“Let me see that thing,” she gasped.
I lifted the projectile and ran my fingers over it. It was sticky with Mia’s blood, but otherwise small, and I didn’t think it was a dart after all. “It almost feels like a tack,” I said dubiously. It had a long, wickedly sharp tip and a rounded blunt end.
Mia took it and must have examined it herself. “It’s like a projectile knife,” she remarked.
It actually was like a dart, I reflected, just like one you’d use to play games. Not a tranquilizer or anything. Or at least I didn’t think so. Who knew? “This place is so much like Earth, but we don’t have any weapons like this.” I’d gotten used to seeing the similarities. I wasn’t accustomed to the differences.
If Rune was right, if we’d somehow connected with this race, would that allow for these differences? Or did this point to another explanation? But what? We obviously weren’t on just any alien planet. The similarities couldn’t be ignored. But neither could the differences. I needed to get out of here, to talk to Rune, to … “Where are we?” I said out loud, wishing Rune were here to answer.
“You brought us here,” Mia pointed out, although she didn’t seem particularly angry.
I sighed and slumped beside her, close enough for our arms to touch. I wasn’t sure how she’d react, but in the darkness I craved any human contact, even hers. And she must have felt the same, because she didn’t recoil.
We sat together in the black, Mia breathing a little too steadily, like she was trying to control her pain and claustrophobia, me fighting a thousand different fears and imaginations. The darkness was too much like the alien ship, overwhelming me with horrifying memories, and with nothing to distract me, I was thinking about my parents again. My mom and dad, Omnistellar loyalists, gone now forever. I bit hard on my lip to keep my emotions under control. I’d lost so many people along the way. I wished I could do something, anything, to bring them back. But they were gone, and I only had one choice left: to keep my remaining friends safe and alive and strong.
“What were your parents like?” Mia said suddenly, as if she’d been reading my thoughts. “Before all this. I’ve always wondered what it must have been like growing up in a totalitarian corporate dictatorship.”
I snorted. “That actually describes Omnistellar pretty well … but not my family. The thing is, until you took me hostage, Omnistellar was simply part of our lives, and we didn’t think about the rules much. Things were … easy. Structured.”
“Did they love you?”
That caught me off guard. “I think so,” I said at last, the words dragging out of me like they were weighted, caught in my throat. “My dad, for sure. He was more cheerful. More friendly. My mom … she mostly seemed proud of me when I succeeded at the company. But she sometimes had this smile she …” My throat swelled, and I turned a sob into a cough. “I don’t know, Mia,” I said at last. “My dad might have been misguided, but he tried to save me. My mom didn’t even do that much. And it’s not like I can ask them about it.”
I thought she nodded. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No. I don’t mind talking about them. It’s just … it’s hard, you know?”
“Tell me about it. At least you had parents. My dad is God knows where, and my mom hasn’t said a word to me since I was arrested. Even before, it was mostly drunken yelling.” She laughed sharply. “I assume she blames me for my sister’s death. Which is ironic, since she was the one unconscious on the couch when those thugs dragged Shannon out of the apartment.”
Mia’s life had been the exact opposite of mine, a life of poverty and theft and manipulation. “We all blame ourselves for the things that have happened,” I said at last, slowly, exploring the words as I spoke them. “Me for letting Omnistellar dupe me. For shooting Matt. For not convincing my dad to listen. You for your sister. For shooting my … my dad.”
“For a lot of things, Kenzie. You have no idea.”
“I don’t have to,” I said, the words gaining strength as they spilled out of me. I felt the rightness of them somehow. “Because I know you. I know who you are now, and I’ve seen you at your best and your worst. You’re better than you think, Mia. You’re my friend, whatever you think of me.”
“Oh, Kenzie, shut up,” she said in disgust. “Of course you’re my friend too.”
She could have slapped me and provoked less shock. There was no of course about it. Until recently, I’d been pretty sure Mia hated me. I had to resist the urge to hug her again. “Well,” I said wryly, “now that’s settled, so … what do you say we work on escaping?”
Mia chuckled, stronger, more like herself. “Now that sounds like a plan.”