“HALLAM,” I SAID, PROBABLY LOUDER than I should have, pressing against the comm device as if I could somehow prod it into better functionality. “Hallam, answer me.”
Nothing.
I raised my head to meet Cage’s panicked eyes. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know. I got Reed without any trouble, but Hallam’s not responding.”
Cage and Matt both took a step forward, but Alexei raised his hands. “Let’s not panic,” he said. “There could be any number of explanations for why the team’s gone silent.”
“Yes,” said Cage sharply, “the most likely among them that they’re being stalked by aliens.”
But now Matt shook his head, apparently recovered from his initial reaction. “Hallam’s not going to let anything happen to them,” he said. “You guys don’t know him like I do. Trust me. They’re safe.”
“This wouldn’t be Hallam’s stupid idea of a joke, would it?” Mia demanded.
Matt scowled. “Hallam’s a pro. He might be hard to deal with, but he wouldn’t put the mission at risk. And speaking of the mission, we need to keep looking for a way through this place.”
Cage’s eyes flashed. “No, what we need to do is get back upstairs and find out what’s happened to my sister.”
“Cage,” said Mia quietly. “I get what you’re saying. But if we abandon the mission here, we abandon the mission entirely.” She turned to me. “Tell Reed to take his team and check on Rune and the others. Warn them they might be walking into trouble.”
Cage took a step toward her. “Who put you in charge?”
“You did, when you started acting on emotion instead of logic.” Mia spun on him. She managed to keep her voice at a whisper, but she was clearly furious. “And don’t you dare lecture me about little sisters, Cage. Because you know I would have given anything to save my own, and you know how much I care about Rune. But this time, the mission comes first. For all our sakes, we have to keep going.”
Cage seemed to deflate a bit, but he still looked to me, as if hoping for support. I closed my eyes and considered. If we retreated, went in search of Rune, we’d probably be too late to help. And we wouldn’t be able to come back. Even if we got upstairs and nothing was wrong, we’d have wasted time during which the aliens might have recognized our presence.
I pressed against my comm. “Reed, it’s Kenzie. Rune’s team has gone silent. We need you to backtrack and find out where they are and what’s happening. Report as soon as you know something.”
Reed’s panicked voice responded: “What do you mean, silent?”
I swallowed my annoyance. He was scared and tired, exactly like me. “I mean what I said. We’re going to keep moving forward, but the three of you should retrace your steps and find them.”
Priya snapped something in the background, and then Reed returned, more subdued. “All right. Just be careful, okay?”
“You know it,” I said, managing to keep my voice normal even though Cage was glaring at me now. “And seriously, Reed. The second you find anything, okay?”
“The very instant,” he agreed, and cut his comm.
Cage spun and yanked open the door behind him without warning, causing all of us to suck in our breaths and jerk our weapons upright. But there was only an empty corridor, yet again.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Matt snarled, still in a whisper.
Cage glared at each of us in turn. “You all wanted to keep the mission going. Apparently I’m overruled, so I’m moving on.”
I grabbed his arm. “Getting all of us killed isn’t going to help your sister,” I told him in a low voice, trying to cover my own anger. Cage wasn’t often reckless, and he’d picked a hell of a time to start. “You didn’t get your way this time. Suck it up. Priya and Jasper can get to Rune faster than we can anyway. And also to Hallam and Imani. You remember them, right? They’re up there too.”
Cage gawked at me like I’d struck him, and I had to work not to apologize. I did soften my voice, though. “I know you’re worried about your sister. We all are. But if you want to be a leader, you have to act like one even when it’s inconvenient.” I nodded over my shoulder at the others. “We need a leader right now, Cage. So lead us.”
He hesitated a moment longer, but I already saw the fight draining out of him. “I’m sorry,” he said to me. Then he raised his head and repeated to the others, “I’m sorry. I just … I imagined Rune with the aliens, and I guess I lost it for a minute there. You guys deserve better.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt replied. “You want to make it up to us, help keep us alive.”
“Yeah.” Cage raked his hand through his hair. “That’s a good plan.”
“So let’s put it into action.” Mia drew forward, a rifle clutched in her hands. I could almost see her itching to disappear, but she jerked her head forward. “Let’s see if we’ve got another room of aliens—and whether there’s any way to destroy them.”
We advanced along another corridor and found ourselves in a wide room full of tanks. I recognized them at once, even though they were a different structure than the ones on our alien ship. “They’re stasis pods,” I whispered.
Cage drew up to one and peered inside. “Sleeping aliens,” he confirmed.
It probably said something that this came as a relief. Only weeks ago, Cage and I had recoiled in horror at the discovery of sleeping aliens. Now, I was simply grateful they weren’t awake and pursuing me.
“Find a way to shut off their life support or something,” Mia commanded.
Cage scowled at her. “Do not start pressing buttons at random. The last thing we want to do is wake them up.”
I nodded in agreement, but there weren’t any buttons to push. Aside from the sleeping aliens, the room was almost completely empty.
We explored the rest of the floor, finding more drifting harvesters, more stasis tanks, and absolutely nothing of use. Of course, we could have tried setting fire to the room, or smashing the tanks, but either option would make a lot of noise, risk waking the creatures instead of killing them, and probably alert the other aliens.
So instead we beat a hasty retreat and descended to level fourteen, where we found another floor of sleeping harvesters. Floor fifteen held another room of silent, still hunters, and once again we quickly backtracked.
There were only two floors left to go.
The sixteenth floor was different. There were two doors, one on each side of the hall. Behind one we heard a calamitous riot: smashing, cracking, shrieking aliens. We exchanged glances.
“What is going on back there?” I demanded in a whisper.
“Let’s not find out,” replied Mia darkly. “There’s only one floor left below us. I say we check it out and get the hell out of here. If whatever Eden wants is behind this door, well, she’s out of luck.”
Something smashed into the other side of the wall, making us all jump. That was all the incentive we needed to get our feet moving, scrambling down the stairs. What the hell was going on up there? The aliens we’d seen so far were silent and still, almost as if they were in stasis themselves. They’d been waiting, not active. Something was happening to aggravate the creatures. Instantly I thought of Rune, and ice-cold terror pumped through my veins.
Suddenly Matt, who was in the lead, stopped short. “Something’s weird,” he said. “I think this leads into a big open area, not a hallway. We should be careful.”
“Weapons out,” Cage agreed. We drew close together and proceeded as silently as we dared. Before long I realized Matt was right: the area below us was a huge, open hangar of sorts. We couldn’t see much of it in the flickering of Matt’s and Cage’s flashlights, of course, but they angled the illumination to reveal some sort of complex machinery and …
“There!” I whispered. “In the corner! It’s Eden!”
Sure enough, Eden and her entire team stood stock-still in a far corner next to what looked like an exit. Her eyes met mine, and she shook her head frantically.
My heart dropped.
At the same moment, my comm device crackled. “Kenzie? Kenzie, are you there?”
I clapped my hand to my ear even though there was no way for the aliens to hear her voice. Turning aside, I spoke in a whispered mumble, keeping my free hand over my mouth. “Rune? Thank God you’re safe. I thought Hallam had your comm. You—”
“Kenzie, listen to me.” Her voice carried such urgency I clammed up at once, ignoring the way Cage and Matt closed in on me, as if they could listen in on my conversation if they just got close enough. “You have to get out of this bunker, and you have to do it now.”
“Rune, we’re seventeen floors down. And we haven’t been attacked. Everything is—”
“Kenzie, I do not have time to explain this to you. I will tell you everything later, but for now, trust me: you need to get out. And you need to do it without coming back upstairs. Do you hear me?”
I looked at Cage and Matt, and my gaze drifted to Eden below.
Getting out was going to be more difficult than we’d anticipated.