SUNLIGHT AND HEAT SPILLED INTO the room along with a massive quantity of sand as the wall slid apart, revealing a long, sloped incline. It was covered in dirt, most of which cascaded into the room, covering my feet to my ankles. That must have been why we couldn’t see it from outside—years of sand had settled into the crevice, blocking it from the human eye.
But it was a way out, and a big one, clearly designed for the vehicles. We’d found our escape. Now all we had to do was wait for the jeeps to charge, drive back to the city, beat the location of the missile storage out of Eden, and find a way to defeat Karoch. “No problem,” I whispered out loud, semihysterical laughter welling inside me.
“What?” Cage pulled me against him with one arm and grabbed his sister with the other.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, but I couldn’t help smiling. Finally, something had gone right.
“You did it. Both of you.” Cage kissed first my cheek and then Rune’s. She laughed and shoved him away, and he let her go to pull me in closer. “If nothing else, you saved us from walking through that desert. And if Hallam can get the other jeeps working, we might have a hope of getting out of here before the aliens find us.”
We set ourselves to organizing the place. Hallam worked on the jeeps. Now that we’d activated the power, it functioned without Rune’s intervention, running on a backup charge. “It just needed a boost,” she explained, her voice distant, already immersed in the computer system—or what she could access, since she said the garage didn’t exactly link to the most important files. The rest of us scavenged the weapons, emergency supplies, and armor while the jeeps charged.
After a while I drifted back to Rune’s side. “Any luck?”
She slammed her hand against the console in frustration. “I’m in the system. The power’s still functioning, so I don’t have to maintain contact now that I’ve turned it on. That should make it easier, but I’ve hacked through all the security and still … nothing. This network isn’t what you’d expect from a military installation. It looks like a child installed it. No rhyme, reason, or organization.”
“Want someone else to take a look?” I suggested without much hope. If Rune couldn’t find the missiles, no one else stood much of a chance. Still, she was tired, and fresh eyes might help.
But she shook her head, her jaw set in a grim line of determination. “A computer’s never beat me yet, Kenzie. I’ll be damned if this one is the first.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Okay. Just … don’t wear yourself out, all right? Remember, we have the vehicles now. We can make our way to the city, grab Eden while she’s out for supplies, and get the answer that way.”
“As much as I’d like that …” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes glazed over. Her fingers, which had been flying over the keyboards, melded with the hardware up to her knuckles.
“Rune?” I asked nervously.
I was about to call Cage over when her eyes flew open and she jerked upright. “I found it,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Even though it was what we’d wanted, a cold feeling of foreboding seized my heart. “What?”
“I found it!” she shouted, loud enough to bring everyone running to her side. “Eden’s missile storehouse. It’s about a hundred and fifty miles from here.”
“Rune, that’s fantastic.” I swallowed the strange reluctance and leaned over her shoulder, examining the map displayed on the screen. “If we can head straight there without going through Eden …”
“We can’t seriously be considering this,” Imani objected. “Setting off a massive explosion? I mean, how do we outrun something like that?”
“By skipping the dimension,” I replied grimly. “That’s the plan, right?” And praying we were far enough from the city not to affect Eden and her people. Eden might deserve it. The children did not.
“How do we activate these bombs?” Matt asked.
“Leave that to me,” Rune said softly. But she wasn’t meeting his eyes, and something about her demeanor seemed off. I looked to Cage, who frowned and shrugged. What was worrying Rune? Had she discovered something in the system, something she wasn’t telling us about?
I opened my mouth to ask, but Priya cut in. “You’re absolutely certain Karoch has the ability to move between dimensions? And that you can borrow its power? Because if not, we’ll be walking into a trap with two choices: kill the creatures and ourselves in a bomb blast, or let them tear us to shreds.”
I reoriented on her. “The first part? Definitely. Karoch is the source of their power, the physical embodiment of what they are and can do. It’s their center. And it’s the thing that lets them move between dimensions. As for the second, well …” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “That’s less certain.”
A long silence followed. “Great,” said Matt at last, but without heat.
“You got a better idea?” Cage asked, as if he genuinely hoped for a positive response. I didn’t blame him. I wanted just about any other possibility too.
But no one did, and eventually we all agreed to spend a few hours resting while the vehicles charged, then get moving once the sun went down. Hallam figured he could get three vehicles running, which meant we wouldn’t be crammed in. And there was even food of a sort: dry emergency rations and some kind of weird pouches of clear fluid we gambled were water, and which did indeed seem to quench our thirst.
Mia, bristling with weapons, declared herself our guard and climbed the rope hand over hand. Cage gawked after her and shook his head. “I’d better at least bring her some water and something to shade herself,” he said, pulling a camouflage ball cap out of a locker.
“Planning to climb the rope, gege?” asked Rune.
Cage flashed her a brief grin. “I think I’ll use the door.”
Matt sidled up beside me. We both craned our necks, staring at the gaping hole in the ceiling where Mia had disappeared. “You think she’ll be okay?” I asked.
Matt sighed. “Mia’s Mia. Give her time. Keep out of her way. It’s all you can really do.”
I peeked at him from of the corner of my eye, trying to ascertain how much he was willing to discuss. “Are you okay? I mean, you’ve been through a lot. More than any of us, maybe.”
He scrubbed his hands over his shorn head and forced a smile. “Well, it’s better now that we’ve stopped hunting you. Getting your insides ripped apart, dying over and over, it takes a toll. Legion’s were the first friendly faces I saw after that whole experience, and they took care of me. I bonded to them pretty quickly. When they said we had to hunt you down, I didn’t feel like I could argue. Plus … well, I was angry. I didn’t understand what happened.”
“And now?”
“Now, I guess I do.” He shrugged. “Which isn’t to say I’m happy about it, but … it’s life, right? It happens. You suck it up and move on and hope things get better.”
“Well, they can’t get much worse.”
He winced. “Why would you say that?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Matt, we’re about to set off an explosion in an alien dimension in the hopes of destroying creatures who might be brutalizing everyone and everything we know and love at this very moment. We’ve already lost dozens of people, some …” I swallowed hard, closing my eyes for a moment. “Some more recently than others. I mean, seriously. I don’t think I’m tempting fate when I say this is about as bad as things get.”
“There’s always more to lose, Kenzie … ,” Matt said softly.
I sighed and looked around at the rest of my friends. He wasn’t wrong. Switching to a lighter topic, I said, “Right now I feel like I’d give almost anything for a big bowl of ice cream, a quiet air-conditioned room, and the latest issue of Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5. I downloaded it on my comm, but I never got to read it.”
“Rune could probably charge the battery.”
I sighed and displayed the gaping hole in my wrist. “I had to throw it away. It was … corrupted, for lack of a better word. It’s okay. I can wait until we kill the aliens to find out what happens to Yumiko. It’ll be my incentive for getting through alive.”
Matt laughed, not unkindly. “That’s your incentive?”
“Not like I have any family to go home to,” I said, sounding more bitter than the flippant tone I’d intended.
Matt nodded seriously. “That’s a big part of why I teamed up with Legion, you know. My family.” He tapped his arm. “Synthetic. Cybernetic core. Strong as hell.” His finger moved to his temple. “Enhanced vision. Better hearing. Pneumatic goddamn Achilles tendons. Even my lungs and heart were upgraded. So if I get away from this life, I can make sure my family stays safe. That’s all I care about now.”
I folded my arms and examined my scuffed boots, ideas racing through my head. “You’re right,” I said at last. “That’s all that matters.” And my family now? It was these people—Cage and Rune, Mia, Jasper, Reed, Imani, and even Legion, all of us bound together by trauma if not genetics.
Matt gave my shoulder a half pat, half punch, and wandered off toward Hallam while I made my way into a corner. I watched everyone: Imani and Rune playing some sort of card game with what seemed to be half a deck, Priya and Jasper dozing in chairs, Reed interjecting himself between Matt and Hallam, apparently as much a fan of car engines as he was of spaceships.
They were a disjointed, mismatched, ragtag bunch of survivors, and I loved them so much it set off a physical ache in my stomach.
Eden had tried to kill them. She’d succeeded with one of us. I closed my eyes and gave myself permission to recall every detail of the base beneath the sand: Alexei’s arms spread wide, the tension radiating across his face, the way he’d passed Mia to Cage. I’d never seen him turn on Mia, not even to restrain her. But I knew Mia, and there had been no other way to keep her from marching pointlessly into death alongside him. And if I knew that, well, Alexei knew it all the better.
Cage came in through the door, his hair hanging limp in his face, his normally bright eyes dull and hooded. He scanned the room for a moment, blinking as his vision adjusted, and when his gaze landed on me, it softened. He crossed the room to sit beside me. “How’s Mia?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know. She’s talking to me again, but she won’t discuss Alexei or what happened in the base. If I bring it up, she changes the subject or shuts down completely. She did take some water and promised to come in if she gets uncomfortable, so … that’s something?”
“You know what happened wasn’t your fault, right?”
Cage shrugged, and I realized that was exactly what he thought. “I mean, she’s not wrong. I carried her out of there.”
“You saved her life.”
“She didn’t want it to be saved.” He smiled slightly. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it again. I’m just saying I don’t feel great about taking that choice away from her. But it’s what Alexei wanted, and …” He turned away, cupping the back of his neck as if simply saying the name pained him.
“How long did you know Alexei?”
He shrugged again.
“Cage?” I pulled him around in time to see him wipe away tears, and my own eyes welled in response. “Cage. Come here.” I wrapped my arms around him, and he tightened his grip on my arms, holding me almost painfully. His whole body trembled. I pressed my face to his, and our tears mingled in a silent, painful trail of grief.
We clutched each other, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t cry anymore. Cage was right to hide his sorrow. We couldn’t let the others see us like this, not now, not with so much riding on what came next. We had to stay strong for a little longer. And I was getting good at that, after all the death I’d seen. “You’d think it would stop being so awful,” I whispered, half to myself.
“Losing someone you love?” Cage drew back just enough to wipe at his eyes. “I don’t think it ever gets easier. I don’t think it should.”
He was right. The pain meant we were still human. The creatures hadn’t succeeded in transforming us into them, not yet.
Speaking of which … “We created them,” I said dully.
Cage didn’t even pretend to misunderstand me. “Well, not us, exactly.”
“Humans created them. Or … reanimated them. To use in a war.” My face twisted of its own accord, my grief coalescing into fury. “A stupid war that no one even remembers because there’s no one left to remember it.”
“You think Omnistellar wouldn’t have done the same? That was their whole goal, right? Get their hands on alien tech, stay on top of the game.” He examined my expression and sighed. “I’m not saying that to make you feel worse. I’m just pointing out that where you have people, you’ll always have a few assholes willing to sacrifice everything if it means keeping a step ahead. So yeah, humans created them. Does it really matter? It doesn’t change what they are or what we need to do next.”
“No,” I agreed softly. “All it does is make the losses a little harder to bear, knowing that in a sense we’re responsible for them.”
“Kenzie, I …” He closed his eyes in apparent frustration.
I tilted my head, examining the drawn angles of his face, the lines that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t we all?”
“You didn’t answer me,” I pointed out. I nudged him over to curl against his side. “You’re right, Cage. Wherever the zemdyut came from, whoever created them, it doesn’t change what we need to do next. Or what you need. Rest. Let everyone take care of themselves for a while.”
“I could say the same to you.”
“I’ll sleep if you will.”
He hesitated a moment, and then a smile tugged at his lips. “Deal,” he said. He pulled me in for a kiss, slow and soft and warm. We were both too tired for it to hold any real fire, although as always, his touch awakened something in my heart, in my stomach, even in the tips of my toes. And then he pulled me in against him, and I nestled in and closed my eyes and finally, finally, let everything fade to silence.