“NO.” I GAPED AT HER, my jaw working frantically even though only one syllable emerged. The truth of what she said—all the signs I’d tried to ignore—piled up in my mind, but I waved them aside in desperate denial. “No no no …”
“I was afraid of this,” Imani murmured. “It was too familiar. Too neat. The odds against another culture like ours, speaking a language like ours, with people like ours, randomly spawning even close to home …”
“Liam didn’t travel through time,” I insisted hoarsely.
“No, he didn’t.” Rune was still glaring at Eden, but she spared a sympathetic glance for me. “Kenzie … he traveled through dimensions.”
Dimensions. “No,” I repeated. “Rune, I used his ability. Over and over again. And it never threw me into another dimension!”
She lifted her hands helplessly. “I can’t explain it, Kenzie. It’s possible his power had evolved to allow him to travel through space and dimensions, and you only tapped the dimensional ability in that moment of desperation. Or … maybe you were skipping dimensions, but over such tiny distances the changes were negligible.”
The world swam. “You mean I could be several dimensions away from where I started?”
“At this point none of us are where we started. This planet might be called Wreithe here, but it is Earth. The tech hasn’t changed; the time hasn’t changed. Alternate dimensions are the only possible explanation.”
I met Cage’s gaze, and my knees gave out. He had me before I hit the sand, tipping my head between my knees. “Breathe,” he murmured, the words ghosting over my ear. “Imani …”
Imani’s hands landed on my back, soft and reassuring, contrasting the stronger pressure of Cage holding me. Warmth flowed from her touch, easing whatever damage I’d taken in the facility. A pain I hadn’t noticed in my stomach relented, and my world stopped spinning as the wounds on my arm knitted themselves together.
But I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of that. I raised my head to meet Cage’s eyes. “We’re trapped here after all,” I whispered. “There’s no hope of anyone finding us. No hope of getting back.” Unbidden, I searched the area for Jasper. He appeared, if anything, worse than me; he was on the ground, head buried in his hands, elbows propped against his knees. Reed and Rune knelt beside him, Reed talking quickly while Rune rubbed his back. Mia was still staring off into the distance, and Legion had regrouped, their faces three identical masks of dismay. Not even their fancy training hid it this time.
Cage shook his head, but I’d seen the alarm on his face, and the quick flash of rage that followed. He pinned Eden with his glare.
She shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry I misled you.”
“Lied,” said Hallam, clearly and distinctly. “You lied. Let’s not sugarcoat it.”
“Call it what you want. I did it to save a lot of lives, and I’d do it again.”
I staggered to my feet, leaning on Cage for support. “How did you know?” I snarled.
“I didn’t know, but I guessed.” She sighed, leaning against one of the crates, scraping her dark hair off her neck. “The similarities you spotted between our worlds only had one explanation. We’ve been looking for alien life for a long time, and we’ve never found it. What we did find was something else: other dimensions. Worlds that existed along ours. We were even able to peer into neighboring worlds—yours, and a few others. With that knowledge, it didn’t take our scientists long to realize that the zemdyut were crossing dimensions, not space. They aren’t aliens at all. Or if they are, they’re not from this universe.”
My head spun. All along. She’d known all along. And on the heels of that, another realization: although she’d let us ramble on, Eden herself never used the word “alien.” It was always zemdyut or “creatures.” She hadn’t just known, she’d manipulated us with practiced ease. Her story about shielding their planet from outside intervention … God, why had I ever fallen for that?
Because, I realized. Eden had been convincing. She’d known about our world, about the corporations. And … I’d been so eager to believe the worst of Omnistellar, so desperate to find a way home, that I’d overlooked the signs. Or made excuses for them. We’d all done it to avoid this moment: this crushing sense of defeat and despair as the utter bleakness of our situation finally dawned on us.
Or maybe … Had I identified too much with Eden? Encouraged the others to trust her because I saw too much of myself in her, because I wanted to believe that my mom and dad could have changed, that our destinies weren’t locked in stone? I ground my nails into my palms. I’d told Cage to trust Eden. How much of this was my fault?
“I don’t care about any of this,” Priya barked. “Just tell us what we need to know. Is that Karoch thing real? Was there actually a ship in the base?”
“Did you kill Gideon because he was acting erratic or because you wanted to be in charge?” I added. A murmur rose among her soldiers, and I laughed, the sound high and almost hysterical to my own ears, as if coming from someone else. “Oh, she didn’t mention that? Yeah. She shot him because he wouldn’t let us into your base. Part of her grand plan, I guess.”
“That’s enough,” Eden snapped.
“Is it true?” demanded one of the soldiers. His face was hidden behind his mask, but he sounded young. “Did you kill Gideon?”
“To save these people. To save us.” She glared at us. “Yes. I did.”
“To save us?” One of the soldiers stepped forward. “Or to save yourself, Eden? Because not two months ago, you told me Gideon was a problem. You said we might have to get rid of him.” Another murmur went up through the crowd.
Eden’s expression barely changed. “I thought I could trust you.”
“You could. But that was before I realized you murdered our leader in cold blood.”
“It wasn’t in cold blood. He attacked me. It was self-defense.” She looked to me as if in appeal and then, obviously realizing I had no intention of helping her, she closed her eyes and passed a weary hand over her face. “Listen, Gideon knew about these supplies, but he’d become so frightened he didn’t dare leave the base to get them. And he wouldn’t let me, either. If he’d kept leading us, we all would have been dead in months. And now? Now we have supplies to keep us going. I didn’t want to kill him, but he was paranoid. He was seeing zemdyut around every corner, starting to see enemies in our ranks, and he was going to get us killed!”
“And what happens when one of them is ‘going to get you killed’?” Priya jerked her head at the soldiers, and they exchanged uneasy glances.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Eden snarled. “I did this to protect them.”
“We can talk about this later.” Eden’s soldier eyed her with suspicion but then shifted his anger to Priya and me. “This isn’t the place or time. We have to get these supplies back to the city.”
The soldiers hesitated, then stepped into line, but a ripple of discontentment shivered through the ranks. Good.
Eden fixed me with a glare. “And for what it’s worth, most of what I told you was true enough. Karoch, I hope, died in that base. The ship should have been in the hangar. I don’t know where it went. I didn’t lie to you any more than necessary.” She picked up one of the boxes. “We have enough supplies to carry us through whatever we do next. You’re welcome to join us. We could use your skills, and it’s the least I can offer considering—”
Mia, who had remained silent and motionless through all of this, moved with sudden speed and grace, pivoting like a dancer and drawing her gun in a single motion. “Mia!” Rune shrieked, flying at her. They collided just as Mia pulled the trigger. Her shot went wide, whistling past Eden’s head. Eden’s eyes narrowed, the blood draining from her face as she grasped how close she’d come to dying. In the same instant, her soldiers drew their guns and trained them on us—but Priya and Hallam were already on Mia, disarming and restraining her.
She showed no inclination to fight, apparently aware she’d missed her chance. She slumped in Hallam’s arms, eyes fixed on her feet.
Eden took a step backward, her face twisting in a series of rapid-fire emotions: guilt and anger and fear and sorrow, all mixed up in a show that would have been comic if it weren’t so grotesque. At last she retreated and, without another word, strode off into the desert, her crew at her heels.
We watched them go in silence. Sweat pooled at the base of my neck. I was trembling so badly I barely kept my feet. My eyes stung and my vision blurred, whether with tears or sweat I didn’t know. Cage’s hand tightened over mine, but it was small comfort here in the middle of the desert on an alien planet where we were all going to die, and probably soon.
“We have to get out of the sun,” said Priya at last.
Mia wrenched free of Hallam and stalked across the sand. She sat about ten feet from the collapsed warehouse, resting her arms on her knees, staring at it.
I exchanged glances with Cage. “You want to talk to her?” I asked softly.
Cage snorted. “I don’t think she’s in the mood.”
“If she just sits there, she’s going to die,” said Priya bluntly. “We’ve already been in this heat too long. I suggest everyone ditch their armor. We’re not likely to need it. Keep the weapons. Ration what water you have left.”
“And then?” snorted Jasper. He, like Mia, was still sitting in the sand, blinking at his feet. “We make it back to town and what? Scavenge for whatever supplies Eden missed? Raid her people and let all those kids die so we can eke out a few more days of life? What’s the goddamn point?”
A hopeless silence settled over us, because that was the thing: no one could answer him. What was the point? Liam was dead. As far as I knew, no one else had the power to jump dimensions. We were trapped here. “Maybe we can still get off the planet,” I said at last, although my voice rang hopeless and dull in my own ears. “Maybe there’s somewhere else we can go. Mars, or—”
“You really think Eden hasn’t considered that? Besides, the spaceship was supposed to be in there, remember?” Jasper jerked his chin at the fallen base. “Next idea?”
My chest constricted. “You’re not helping,” I said sharply.
“Yeah, well …” Jasper flopped back in the sand. “Somehow I’m not in the most optimistic mood.”
“Enough,” Cage growled.
Jasper shot to his feet, his dark eyes flashing, apparently ready for a fight. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I upsetting our illustrious leader? Or leaders? No one’s in charge around here because no one knows what the hell to do next. Or am I wrong?” He glared at Priya, at Cage, at me. “Come on. Tell me. What’s our plan?”
“Jasper, stop,” said Imani. “You told me once that we have to keep going. Well, now I’m saying it to you. We can’t just give up. We can’t—”
“Oh, Imani, stop. There’s no point anymore. Can’t you see that?”
“If we’re going to lie down and die, fine,” said Matt. “If not, Priya’s right. We need to get out of the sun.”
The argument built and I backed away, unable to do anything but shake my head. Jasper wasn’t wrong. Give up and die wasn’t much of an option, but what other choice did we have left?
I cracked open my chest plate and peeled off the armor, and for a moment even the hot desert wind felt wonderfully cool against my parched skin. I dropped the armor on the ground at Rune’s feet.
I blinked. I hadn’t even realized she was beside me.
“Kenzie,” she said quietly. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head, turning my back on the brewing argument to focus on my friend. “No. Pretty far from it, actually. What about you? What happened?”
“After you warned us about the aliens … well, whatever they are … guarding their tech, I retreated to the military tech facility on the fifth floor and accessed their network. The human network, I mean. I thought that if I got into the system itself, I might be able to break into the creatures’ system, since it seemed to have merged with the human one. That it might be easier to understand. That’s how I learned the truth about where we were and how Eden had lied to us. The center was a sort of Faraday cage, though, and it blocked our comm frequencies. We didn’t know about that part until Reed’s team came charging in full of panic. And then we heard the creatures moving below, and we looked down the stairs and …” She shuddered. “There was a group following you. I hacked the cameras and found another coming up to meet you. And a third in the basement. I tried to create a distraction by setting off an alarm in a room on the sixteenth floor. It worked to a degree. A bunch of creatures flooded in there, and I locked the door behind them. But I had to release the system to power down, and we left the room to warn you before things got worse.”
“You did good,” I said tiredly. “It’s too bad it turned out to be for nothing.”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Rune peered thoughtfully over my shoulder, and I realized she’d drawn me some distance away from the others. “I did actually manage to connect to the alien network. I did exactly what Eden wanted.”
My eyebrows shot up as I examined the worry on her face. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t a clear good-news situation?”
“Because it’s not. I told you I managed to hack into the alien … I don’t know. I want to say system, but that feels wrong for what I accessed. I didn’t understand much of it, though. It was a jumble, and of course, the language was unfamiliar. So I did what I could, which was grabbing a tablet and programing a back door into the alien network. They have a rough version of internet, and as long as I don’t get too far from the base, as long as something is still intact down there, even a flicker, I should be able to access it. Not that it accomplished much. Understanding that system is virtually impossible.” She hesitated again. “For me.”
“Right.” I rubbed my face tiredly, feeling sweat and dirt smearing beneath my fingertips, not caring. “Okay. Let me take a look at it. I’ll see what I can do.”
“It’s not so simple.” Rune forced what she probably thought was a reassuring smile. “Kenzie … I think the only way to interact with the system is for you to do what I do. Bond with it. Enter it completely.”
I stared at her. “So what you’re telling me is, we have a chance of getting some new information, but it’s probably nothing, and most of the aliens who supplied it are dead anyway, and the only thing I have to do is supernaturally merge with an alien computer system to check it out.”
“That’s about it, yup.” She shrugged. “Except for one little detail. The aliens aren’t all dead, Kenzie. There are more of them spread out beneath the ground, far more. Now you see why I wanted to talk privately.”
I closed my eyes as yet another headache pounded behind my eyes. Why was nothing in my life ever, ever easy?