by Caryn Lix
“We don’t have time to make new friends.” Tension radiated from the corded muscles on Mia’s bare arms. “We need to find the others before they get themselves killed.”
“Can you make us invisible?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. First of all, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to vanish where everyone can see us. But it also took a lot of focus to hold all three of us in the market. I don’t think I can maintain it with everyone moving around.”
The very fact that Mia was admitting she couldn’t do something made me accept her statement without question. “Then let’s just start searching.” It wasn’t my best plan, but I didn’t have anything better.
We set off through the docking ring. It was less busy than the rest of the station, but enough people lingered that we didn’t stand out. Some of them looked like workers you’d see at any spaceport, wearing overalls, fixing things, munching on sandwiches, once again reminding me of how powerfully hungry I was. I resolutely pushed that thought away. We had friends to save. I was not going to start lusting over reprocessed cheese.
But we clearly remained in a criminal hub. People huddled in groups, marked as gangs by clothing or tattoos or other distinguishing features. Someone shouted in the distance, but it was only two men arguing. They shoved each other, and we quickly moved on before we got caught up in something new.
We made it halfway around the docking ring before a glint of silver caught my eye. I threw out my hands, arresting Mia and Alexei midstep. “Wait,” I said. “Ahead of us and to the right. See that?”
They followed my gaze, and Alexei instantly drew both of us into a more sheltered area, assuming a casual position leaning against the wall. I saw the wisdom at once: standing in the middle of the room staring would only attract unwanted attention. I angled myself, blocking his very recognizable bulk. Mia glanced both ways and, satisfied no one was watching, shimmered into invisibility.
About fifty feet ahead, five bounty hunters gathered outside a door. Of course, the Silver Oni instantly drew my eye, making me bite my lip in annoyance. I also recognized Priya and her partner from the market. There were two others, a man and a woman, all clad in black, all armed. They seemed to be, if not arguing, at least intensely discussing something.
“Mia,” I said. She didn’t answer. I reached for her and, not to my surprise, came up empty. “She’s gone,” I said in disgust.
“She does that.”
“I wish she’d let us know now and then.”
“Not her way.” Alexei flashed me a grin. I smiled in spite of myself. Over the last few weeks Alexei had revealed himself to be a surprisingly gentle, kind, and even humorous person. You only had to look at his relationship with the little girl Anya to see it.
Which was why I didn’t understand his obsessive attraction to Mia, the virtual epitome of selfish aggression. But to each their own, I supposed.
Mia alerted us to her return by jabbing us in the ribs. I jumped and swore softly, glaring in what I thought was her direction. “They’ve got them on their ship,” she said without preamble. “They’re talking about who’s going to stand guard while they go and look for us. I don’t know how these people function. They’ve been arguing forever.”
I shrugged. Bounty hunter interpersonal relationships were neither my specialty nor my concern. “Okay, we wait until some of them leave. Then with a bit of luck we eliminate whoever’s left and free our friends. Simple.”
“Sure, simple. They’ll probably leave the door unlocked for us too.” Mia brushed past me, sending chills down my spine. “Okay, they’re on their way,” she said. “Lie low.”
I turned, although I positioned myself to watch their passage. Four of the hunters stalked past us. I didn’t see the Silver Oni among them, meaning that, by process of elimination, he’d stayed behind to guard the ship.
That was good. He would be armed and well trained, but there were three of us and only one of him. Even if there was somehow a sixth hunter, we held the advantage, at least in numbers. And we had our powers. Against their weapons and training, well . . . I still liked our odds.
We waited until they passed, and the Silver Oni retreated into the ship. All we had to do was get inside without him knowing, incapacitate him, save our friends, and escape before the other bounty hunters returned.
And just maybe, we would finally get a stroke of luck. “If we get on that ship and eliminate the hunter,” I said, “and if we find Cage, I bet Rune can hack the system, no matter what kind of security they have.”
Alexei stared at me in confusion for a moment before his jaw dropped, realization dawning in his eyes. “You’re not suggesting . . . ?”
“Sure. Why not? We need a way off this station. And there’s a perfectly good ship behind that door.”
Mia materialized, something like admiration in her expression. “Well, well, well. Look at Ms. Omnistellar Guard. No qualms about stealing an entire spaceship?”
“From people sent to capture us so they can summon those things back to Earth? No. Definitely not.” And to my surprise, it was true. I didn’t feel even an inkling of guilt at the idea. If it meant protecting humanity from aliens, I wasn’t about to balk at stealing a ship.
Alexei buried his face in his hands like he was in pain, but when he raised his head, he smiled. “All right,” he said. “What the hell? If we’re going to do this, let’s go big.”
Grand theft starship it was.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE DOOR TO THE SHIP was, of course, locked. Mia took one look at it and shook her head. “I can’t pick this.”
“It’s an airlock,” Alexei snorted. “How the hell would you pick it? We’d need Rune to hack the door panel.”
I pressed my hands to the door as if I could borrow a bit of Mia’s power, make it invisible, and see what was on the other side. “We could trick them?” I suggested dubiously. “Alexei, you know the station. Can you sound official? Convince them to open up?”
“Maybe.” Doubt laced his tone, and Mia promptly made an alternate suggestion. I barely heard it, though. Energy thrummed through my fingers, keeping all my attention on the door. I leaned against it, and the sensation grew stronger. Obsidian’s electronics at work, maybe? Probably. So why couldn’t I step away?
The buzzing grew almost painful. I recoiled, but something held my fingers fast, like I’d inadvertently glued them in place. “Hey, guys?” I said, but my voice sounded far away to my own ears, and if Mia or Alexei replied, I didn’t hear it. I stared at my fingers, expecting to see them sink into the metal. They rested there, looking entirely normal, but I still couldn’t move.
My throat clenched. My entire world narrowed to the door in front of me. The buzzing increased, and my vision tunneled. A flare of light shot across my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, and . . .
Suddenly I was on the other side of the door.
I gaped in disbelief. There was no mistaking what had happened. This was clearly the airlock leading to the ship.
I spun, every muscle trembling, and slammed my hand on the release for the airlock. The seal hissed, opening to reveal Alexei and Mia, their jaws hanging somewhere around their knees. “How . . . ?” Mia demanded.
I shook my head and the trembling grew stronger. The world gave a sickening lurch. A moment later Alexei had me in his big hands, easing me down against the wall. “Breathe,” he ordered.
I sucked in a gasp of air. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I just . . . I don’t know how I . . .” I squeezed Alexei’s wrists, their solid steadiness reassuring in the void of confusion. “What happened?”
“We don’t know, dorogaya moya. You were leaning against the door when light spread from your fingertips. It happened quickly. The light enveloped the door and you fell through, and it vanished.”
“Like I walked through the wall?” I managed.
“More like you opened a doorway through a door,” he corrected.
“But I don’t know how I did it. I
didn’t even try. I didn’t . . .”
“Our powers are changing, and it’s freaky,” Mia agreed, sliding the door shut. “But pull yourself together. We don’t have time to come apart right now.”
That was usually my line. Blood surged to my cheeks. After all, wasn’t this what I’d hoped for? A more dramatic power, something more useful? “I’m fine,” I insisted, struggling to my feet. Alexei kept his hands on my shoulders, but I gently shrugged them off. “I’m fine,” I repeated with more confidence than I felt.
What the hell had just happened? My ability let me understand languages, not create portals through walls. How were those things even related? So far everyone’s new abilities seemed like extensions of their old ones. I didn’t see the connection here.
I’d wanted a better power, sure . . . but I hadn’t stopped to think about what that might look like. Understanding languages didn’t make me feel so much like an anomaly, maybe because it wasn’t a visible thing.
Creating portals, though . . . No one would dismiss this power. My new ability would raise alarms. And so far, I’d only discovered that I could port through a single wall. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t expand my ability later, maybe even be able to leap to places some distance away. My earlier powers hadn’t represented much threat. Maybe that was why my parents were allowed to keep me, to chip me instead of surrendering me to Omnistellar’s custody. But now, what stopped me from walking into bank vaults—or into Omnistellar’s secure facilities? I was no longer Kenzie, a former prison guard with an innocuous power.
I was an anomaly. I was dangerous.
I managed to pull myself together enough to walk in a straight line, avoiding Mia’s gaze, very conscious of Alexei hovering behind me, ready to catch me if I collapsed. I forced steel into my spine. There was no way I was going to fall down again. For one, Rune needed me. For another, if Mia managed her powers’ morphing and changing, I could damn well do it too.
We came to the ship’s exterior door and found the airlock standing open. That wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility. Typically, you didn’t expect someone to breach the outer airlock to your ship in the first place. Still, I’d thought a team of bounty hunters might be a little more careful.
We let Mia scout ahead, invisible, in case the Silver Oni waited on the other side of the door with his gun drawn. But she returned after a few minutes, shaking her head. “I don’t see anyone, and it’s a pretty linear design. You guys might as well come along. Hang back and let me take the lead.”
She didn’t give us time to argue, disappearing again before I opened my mouth to protest. “Well,” I sighed, “I guess we’re going that way.”
“So it seems.” Alexei gestured for me to precede him. I wasn’t sure if he brought up the rear to protect me or monitor me. Either way, I wasn’t thrilled with the development.
And yet, a tiny part of me appreciated having him at my back. I’d never had anyone stand behind me, not ever. My parents were firm believers in the sink-or-swim philosophy.
I stopped short at the revelation. I might have lost my family, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t on my own.
“Kenzie?” Worry laced Alexei’s voice.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.” Nothing I wanted to talk about, at least not here or now.
The ship was small and dim, utilitarian, with lots of exposed ductwork and grating. There were signs that the people who inhabited it might be more professional than their prolonged argument indicated. Omnistellar would have approved of the neat racks of weapons storage, all carefully locked, unlike the ship, wrecking my ideas of appropriating a gun or two. The living quarters might be another story, but we hadn’t made it that far.
How did bounty hunters live, anyway? My parents had always treated them with distant scorn. They served the corporations but lived outside them. Even though any bounty hunters working for Omnistellar were on exclusive contract with my old corp, they weren’t citizens. They didn’t have the rights and benefits of everyone else. My parents said that was because most bounty hunters were ex-cons: dangerous people who should be grateful for the opportunity to serve a purpose. I pictured the Silver Oni, and a chill raced down my spine. Who was that guy? And why did he have to wear that mask? Bounty hunters were frightening enough on their own. I’d never heard of one running around masked before.
I kept my eyes peeled for security cameras, but either they didn’t have them—unlikely, especially on a ship like this—or they were very well hidden. I only hoped the hunter was too busy with his captives to monitor them, or that if he did notice us, it would be after Mia noticed him.
A couple of seconds later, Mia appeared, her fist raised to halt us. She hesitated at a branch in the corridor, then consulted a nearby panel. “I think this leads to the holding cells,” she said.
A single glance at the display told me she was right. “Yeah.” I indicated the correct spot. “This is the ship map. We’re here. Holding cells this way. And at a guess, that’s where we’ll find the Silver Oni.”
“The silver what?”
“Kenzie has a cosplay fetish,” said Alexei dryly.
“I don’t . . . Never mind. The guy in the mask.”
“I’ll see him before he sees me,” Mia replied grimly. “Let’s get moving.”
She vanished again, and we resumed our trek, slightly faster now that we knew where we were going. I kept expecting shouts from ahead as Mia stumbled over the hunter, but nothing came. Worry kept my shoulders as stiff as boards. Where the hell was he? Flashes of silver kept catching my eyes, but they always turned out to be innocuous. Maybe the mask didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was a coincidence. After all, Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5 had lots of fans. It made sense some of them would be bounty hunters. Right?
We emerged into the holding cells, still with no sign of our silver-masked antagonist. A shimmer marked Mia’s return. A trio of reasonably large holding cells stood in front of us, each maybe twice the size of the cells on Sanctuary, with a single bench at the back and an actual private space I assumed contained a toilet. Rune stretched out on a bench with her head on Reed’s lap, Imani holding her hand. Jasper stalked across the cell, his arms taut bands of tension.
Reed’s face lit up when he saw us. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Nice of you to stop by.”
Jasper spun so fast he almost fell on his face. “Mia, thank God,” he said. I arched an eyebrow. Mia? But he was already gesturing to Rune. “They must have known her power. They zapped her with something. Reed and Imani are trying to heal her, but . . .”
“They didn’t zap her with anything,” I said irritably. Honestly. If you want to know about prisons, go to the former prison guard, not the invisible thief. “Or they might have, but it’s not inhibiting her abilities. See the cuff on her wrist?”
“It’s different from the ones we’re wearing. They slapped it on her when . . .”
“Uh-huh.” I crossed to a terminal, releasing a sigh of relief at the familiar visual programming. I called the prison controls, made sure there were no monitors, and shifted things around to open the door. At the same time, I deactivated all cuffs.
The force field between us and the prisoners vanished with a flash, and the cuffs popped off Rune’s wrist. A second later she sat up, moaning and clutching her head. “Ow.”
“Rune,” Reed gasped in relief, holding her arms and keeping her steady. “Are you okay?”
Her gaze flickered over the three of us, and worry crossed her face, hidden so quickly I barely caught it. “Where’s Cage?”
“He’s fine. His contact wouldn’t see us together, and we got separated.” At least, I hoped he was fine. Mia was right, though: there wasn’t much Cage couldn’t outrun. “What happened?”
Jasper slammed his fist into the wall, then stared at it as if he’d surprised himself. He said: “We went to the lower market and told people we wanted to work our way off the station, but everyone we approached stared at Alexei like he was the Grim Reaper. We sp
lit up so he’d stop scaring our contacts. I figured I could keep everyone safe, but the first person we talked to pulled a gun on us, and I realized it might be a bad idea to start rearranging matter on a space station.” He grimaced. “Bounty hunters?”
“Bounty hunters,” I confirmed. “Who will return any second. Do you know where the Silver—the jerk in the silver mask is?”
“No idea. Haven’t seen him in a while. Is he the only one on the ship?”
I nodded. “Rune, can you stand?”
She started to rise and staggered, wincing. Reed was at her side in an instant. “Here,” he said, pressing his hands to either side of her forehead.
Nothing happened visibly, but Rune instantly relaxed. “Oh, much better,” she sighed. “Thank you.”
“What did they do to her?” Alexei asked, frowning.
I retrieved the cuff from where it had fallen on the floor and turned it over in my hands. A tiny needle, almost invisible and completely painless when you inserted it, just like the inhibitor cuffs on Mars. “It releases a sedative. Either they didn’t have enough power-inhibiting cuffs and figured it was the best way to keep her powers quiet, or they thought she was the most dangerous of anyone.”
Rune laughed, but no one else did. She arched an eyebrow. “Me? Dangerous?”
“Your ability is the only thing that allowed anyone to escape Sanctuary in the first place,” I pointed out. “No one else can cause the havoc you can when you get going. If I were a bounty hunter, you’d be damn high on my list of people to keep under control.”
Her eyes lit up, and a smile touched her lips. “Thanks!”
Reed laughed. “Only you would take that as a compliment. Now let’s get the hell off this ship.”