by Caryn Lix
The girl gasped. “Cage—what happened to your nose?”
“She did. Which is why you’re not going anywhere with her. Not alone.”
“I need her in the server room.” She linked her arm firmly with mine. “She isn’t going to hurt me. Are you?”
I faltered. Because the thing was, if I saw an opportunity for escape, I would hurt her. She didn’t seem like much of a threat. But she was on Sanctuary, so no matter how cheerful and friendly she seemed, she was still a violent criminal. The Hu twins, I recalled from their files, were in for corporate espionage of some kind. At least they hadn’t murdered anyone. If Cage was in charge, and that seemed to be the case, maybe I could reason with him.
But not if I hurt his sister.
I’d hesitated too long. Cage nodded. “That’s what I thought. I’m coming with you.” He gestured around the room, his voice rising. “The rest of you—this isn’t a social gathering. You all have jobs to do. Get to it.”
The prisoners retreated, muttering under their breaths. Danshov crossed to a pretty girl with iron-straight dark hair who actually hissed at me when we passed. The elusive Mia Browne.
I stayed close to the twins as they led me through the prison. I knew they were dangerous, but neither of them seemed prone to random fits of violence, which was more than I could say for some of the others. At the same time, I glanced around, memorizing the layout—the cells, the cramped entertainment area clearly doubling as a mess hall, the (currently locked) entrances to the gymnasium and the work area.
The server room door stood wide open, and I entered ahead of the twins. They flanked the door behind me, fencing me in. “Listen,” I said. “Cage, right? That’s what they called you.”
He nodded. “This is my sister, Rune.”
Not the name on her file either, but I didn’t care. I’d call them the king and queen of England if it got them on my side. “Cage and Rune. Got it. I’m Kenzie.”
“We know,” said Rune. “We’ve seen your file.”
That caught me off guard for a moment, but I refused to be derailed. “Okay. Great. Listen, I’ve seen your files too, and I know you’re both smart people. Too smart to think a plan like this has any chance of success. What’s your endgame here? There’s no way off this station. There aren’t enough shuttles to transport all of you, and both of our shuttles are off station at the moment anyway. Right now the station commander—”
“Your mother,” Cage interrupted, his eyes glittering.
I counted to five in my head. How was he so calm in the middle of this bedlam? “Yes, my mother. You only have a few minutes before she vents the entire sector. But if you stop this now—if you convince everyone to return to their cells—we can make this go away. I’ll talk to my mom. I can’t promise you’ll get off with no consequences, but I can tell you your cooperation will go a long way toward making things better for you.”
“Your mom’s not going to vent the sector. Not with you inside.”
“She doesn’t know I’m inside,” I lied. The cameras, assuming they were working, would tell her everything she hadn’t figured out from our aborted communication.
“She will soon.” Rune crossed to the server unit behind me. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes—and plunged her arms elbow deep into the circuitry.
I screamed and scrambled backward into Cage “Take it easy,” he said, holding me an arm’s length away, presumably in case I attacked again. Smart boy. “She’s fine.”
She didn’t look fine. Rune’s head fell back, her eyes rolling into her skull until they were pure white. Her mouth hung open, her jaw working as her body spasmed. “She’s electrocuting herself !” I cried.
Cage radiated heat. His hands seared my shoulders right through my sweater, his grip somewhere between restraining and reassuring. “Why would you care if she was?”
I twisted to face him. He didn’t release me but let me turn, and I jutted my chin in his direction. “In spite of what you seem to think, I don’t take some sort of sadistic pleasure in seeing anomalies suffer. I just don’t want you to hurt anyone else.”
His expression turned thoughtful, as if he were actually considering my words. “She’s bonding with the system,” he said at last. “It doesn’t hurt her. Trust me.”
I snorted my opinion of that, and a near smile touched his lips, although he replaced it so quickly I might have imagined it. A second later, Rune gasped. I turned back to see her tear her arms free of the panel, leaving not the holes I expected but an intact circuit board. She gasped again, resting her hands on her knees as she drew in gulps of air. “Okay,” she said. “Cameras are down throughout sector five, but we have communication with the command center whenever we want it. She won’t be able to block us.”
All at once I became aware of Cage, his hands now relaxed on my arms, his face inches away. I jerked free and stumbled a few steps toward his sister. Realization dawned, slow and insidious. “Your power,” I remembered. “But how?”
For the first time, Rune looked openly hostile. She shrugged out of the top half of the jumpsuit the prisoners wore—hers had been unzipped, exposing the white tank top underneath—to reveal a makeshift bandage over her right shoulder. A spot of blood marred it, and Cage growled, pushing me aside. “You reopened the wound. What did I tell you?”
“Hard to take things easy when I’m up to my shoulders in circuitry.” She shrugged him off. “I’m okay, Cage.”
I could have run—Cage had left me standing in the doorway—but where was I going to go? At least a dozen prisoners waited in the corridor behind us, some of them decidedly more dangerous than the twins. “How did you remove that chip?” I demanded instead.
They spun on me. Cage brandished the jagged piece of steel he’d threatened me with earlier. “I used this,” he said coldly. “Alexei knocked my sister out, and I cut the implant out of her shoulder.”
I gaped at him. “The computer should have registered the changes in her vital signs.”
“It probably did. But she wasn’t near death, and the computer doesn’t particularly care if we’re in pain. Besides, that’s why we knocked her out. So her vitals wouldn’t race high enough to cause an alarm.”
I shivered. I’d never experienced an implant, but I understood the concept of fusing something directly to a person’s nerve endings. The idea was to prevent exactly this sort of self-surgery. “She woke up after a few minutes,” he continued conversationally. “It got harder after that, but not bad enough to trigger any warnings, apparently.”
My brain scrambled to catch up with what I was hearing. “You cut into your sister with a piece of jagged metal? That wound could be infected. She might have tetanus. Brilliant plan.”
His expression turned ugly. “We didn’t have much choice.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but turned to Rune instead. “Is the computer on our side?”
“More or less.” Rune sank against the console, her exhausted expression almost otherworldly in the dim lighting. “I still need a functioning guard code to access some of the systems.” She nodded at me. “That’s where you come in.”
“Absolutely not,” I replied flatly. I didn’t doubt this pack of monsters could torture the information out of me if they really wanted to, but I didn’t have to last long. As soon as Mom realized what had happened, she’d follow protocol and block my code—if she hadn’t already.
Cage shrugged, an unreadable expression flickering in his dark eyes. “Well, we don’t need your approval. It’s just . . . friendlier that way. Let’s head to the common room and get started.”
Something about his tone set my nerves on edge. Instinctively, I backed away as the twins surged forward. Cage didn’t even seem to notice. He caught my arm below the elbow and pulled me alongside him. I spat curses at him in my head, all of my training—not to mention my own natural defiance—rearing its head in outrage. Stay calm, I reminded myself. You’ve trained for this. Be Yumiko, Mecha Dream Girl. It wasn’t the first time I�
��d thought this. Whenever I got nervous, I found myself recalling relatable moments from RMDG5. Yumiko always said, Nanakorobi yaoki: “fall down seven times, get up eight.” It was good advice that had pulled me through some tough training situations.
Of course, Yumiko would have had a twelve-foot mech suit to stomp Cage with, but the point held. I drew a steadying breath and swallowed my rage.
Mia and Danshov—Alexei, I corrected myself. First names. Familiar terms. I needed to form a bond with these people, get inside their heads, maybe even earn their trust. I’d started on a bad note with my escape attempt, but it had been a necessary first effort. Perhaps the prisoners could even sympathize, given their situation.
Mia and Alexei were waiting on a threadbare sofa next to a vidscreen covered in clear mesh wire. A thin, nervous boy sat nearby, and another perched on a stool. “So,” said Mia in her faint Irish accent. “Did you get the code?”
Cage closed his eyes for just a moment as if in pain, and then his features resettled into their characteristic cocky smile. “No. She refused to give it to us.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “What a shock. It’s not like anyone told you that would happen.” Then, without warning, she lunged forward, catching my throat and yanking me from Cage’s grasp. I jerked in surprise, jamming both my fists against her arm, but her fingers were like bands of solid steel. “I’ll get it out of her.”
“Be nice, Mia. You know there’s a quicker way.”
“Give me the knife. I promise it’ll be fast.”
Cage shook his head, although he didn’t move to detach her from my throat, where she was quickly cutting off my air supply. I pried at her fingers with my nails and sank them into her wrists as this second anomaly tried to choke the life out of me. Mia at least used her hands, but she didn’t even seem to notice my struggles.
“Stand down,” Cage ordered, a hint of sharpness entering his voice.
She hesitated a moment longer, her fierce eyes blazing mere inches from my own. At last, she snorted and shoved me aside. I clutched at my neck, gasping for air. I hadn’t been in serious danger of choking, but her grip was painful all the same.
Mia sauntered behind Cage, her fingers dancing over his shoulder, and rejoined Alexei, who slid a massive arm around her. Like Rune, they’d shed the top half of their jumpsuits. Mia had knotted hers at the waist.
“Who’s going to watch her while we do it?” Alexei asked, nodding in my direction.
Cage shrugged. “I will, at least until it’s my turn.”
“No. You’re the only one who’s done this before. You go last.”
“It’s not an experience I was looking to repeat,” he said with a grimace.
“Then it’s your lucky day, sport.” Mia turned to the tall blond boy on the stool. “I’m happy to cut on you for a while.” She produced the knife and wiggled it between her fingers. Cage’s eyes grew wide. He patted his pockets, then sighed in resignation as Mia’s smirk broadened.
The boy on the stool snorted. “Yeah, I think I’ll take my chances with Dr. Cage.”
“What’s the matter, Matt?” Mia winked. “Don’t trust me?”
His silence spoke volumes and was the first sign of sense I’d seen from any of them.
“Better do me first,” Alexei said. He stretched out on the couch, which someone had covered with a clean but worn sheet.
“All right. Rune, keep an eye on our guest.” Cage glanced at me. “There are prisoners all through those cells. You won’t get far if you try to run. And do I need to tell you what will happen if you hurt my sister?”
I brushed aside his concerns, my mind fixated on the scene playing out in front of me. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. What are you doing?”
They ignored me. Mia climbed on top of Alexei’s legs, extending the piece of metal that passed for a blade. Cage took it from her, and Matt came to the head of the couch and leaned forward, pressing all of his weight onto Alexei’s shoulders. He and Cage exchanged speaking glances.
“Ready?” Cage asked Alexei, who grimaced.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“I’ll try to make it quick.”
There was a flash of steel and a surge of crimson. I closed my eyes against the truth I’d tried to resist: they were cutting out their chips. That meant they needed their powers for something . . . and the only thing they’d asked for so far was my code.
A chill raced through my body, and my breath caught in my throat. What was going to happen when they asked me a second time with powers to back up their threats?
EIGHT
RUNE GRABBED MY ARM AS cage dug the knife into Alexei’s shoulder. For a moment we weren’t enemies, not prisoner and guard, but two girls united by the sight of something horrible. “You might want to look the other way,” she said.
But I couldn’t—it was like a grisly accident. Alexei sank his teeth into his bottom lip, his muscles quivering with the effort to remain still as Cage rummaged around in his body. “This is where it gets bad,” he cautioned.
A second later, Alexei howled in anguish. His massive body bucked, dislodging Matt and almost toppling Mia. Cage flew backward, the knife tumbling from his hand. “Damn it, Cage!” Mia hollered, clamping her legs around Alexei’s and heaving her full weight into his chest.
Matt scrambled for Alexei’s flailing wrists and pinned them, his limbs trembling with the effort. Cage grabbed the knife, gave it a quick wipe on his blood-stained T-shirt, and plunged it back into Alexei’s arm.
With an ear-shattering roar, Alexei heaved again. Cage managed to hang on, but both Mia and Matt went flying. Matt crashed heavily into the wall; Mia rolled on the floor. She shook her head, obviously dizzy from the force of the fall.
I couldn’t watch this, not for another second. I didn’t care what he’d done, what any of them had done. If they were removing that chip, they needed to hurry, because every heartbeat of this was agony to watch. I yanked free of Rune’s grip and threw myself over Alexei’s right arm, pinning it in place.
The others hesitated again but they weren’t in a position to argue. Matt grabbed the other arm and held fast, and Mia clambered over Alexei’s legs, her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed. “Hurry up!” she ordered.
“Yeah, ’cause I’m taking the scenic route,” Cage shot back, not even looking at her. He drew a deep breath and plunged the knife in a third time.
I braced for impact, but the violence of Alexei’s response still nearly dislodged me. I leaned all my weight into his arm, certain I was going to break his wrist. I didn’t even care at this point. He strained against my grasp, and I trembled with effort, sweat dripping into my eyes. How long could this possibly take? I was sure I’d been pinning him for at least five minutes, probably longer. . . .
All at once, Alexei went limp. “It’s out,” Cage announced, sinking back on his heels in exhaustion.
Alexei moaned. I released his arm, and he dragged his hand over his face, splattering blood as he did so. Mia sank onto his chest and closed her eyes, breathing heavily. Meanwhile, Cage slipped under Alexei’s shoulder with a bandage clearly made from someone’s torn bedsheet and bound the wound. Matt helped him, and the boys held a hurried consultation, glancing between me and Mia. I sank against the couch, too tired to care what they were talking about.
After a moment Cage nodded and headed for Alexei. To my surprise, Matt joined me on the floor. “Thanks,” he said.
I blinked, surprised that he’d even acknowledged me. Well. It was a good first start to building trust. “You’re welcome,” I replied, and he flashed me a quick, genuine smile that made his eyes sparkle, though his face was still gray.
We all sat a moment, catching our breath. Matt glanced over his shoulder at Cage. “Good job,” he said softly.
Cage forced a smile. “I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it, but I appreciate the thought. So. Who’s next?”
He had to be kidding. As if anyone would volunteer for . . .
“I am,” said Mia. She ga
ve Alexei a final squeeze and sat up.
Was she serious? After what I’d just seen, I’d rather volunteer for a full-frontal lobotomy. But she pushed Alexei’s legs off the couch and perched there as calmly as if she was about to receive a routine vaccination. A slight tension in her extended arm was the only sign of her discomfort.
Alexei slowly rolled up, shaking his head. “Sorry,” he offered.
Cage waved him off. “Hold on to Mia and we’ll call it even.”
“I don’t need anyone to hold me.”
“The hell you don’t,” Alexei replied bluntly, pulling her into his lap and closing his arms around her. “You’re tough, Mia mine, but not that tough.”
She sighed impatiently and gestured. “Get on with it.” Matt moved as if to take her other arm, but a blistering glare from her froze him in place.
“It’s all right,” Alexei said. “I can handle it.”
“I hope so,” Cage replied. I hoped so too, because there was no way I was getting near that girl, no matter how much she thrashed. I sank down on the floor again, exhausted.
To my surprise, Matt slumped beside me and shook his head. “Not looking forward to this,” he muttered.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “You don’t have to, you know.”
He smiled faintly, his gaze fixed on Mia. “And let her have all the fun?”
Mia clenched her fists as Cage made the initial cut, but like Alexei, she didn’t make a sound until he found the chip embedded in her arm. Then she screamed and thrashed plenty, but Alexei was true to his word: in spite of his wound, he kept her still enough for Cage to finish much more quickly than before.
Mia shuddered at the chip’s removal. She sat a moment, head resting on her hands, before jerking free of Alexei’s grasp. Snatching the chip from Cage’s hand, she hurled it to the ground, spat on it, and stomped it beneath her heel, blood trickling down her arm. A diabolical grin crossed her lips—and she disappeared, clothes and all.