by Caryn Lix
Or, whispered a tiny, treacherous voice in my head, it might even be Dad. Maybe he’d heard what happened and rushed back. Maybe he’d changed his mind on Earth and returned early.
Either way, I’d probably just given away my own rescue. Well, I’d already screwed up and told them the code. Now I had to play my hand. “We’ve had reports of attacks in this area,” I confessed, lowering my eyes. “We received a security alert last week. With the fiftieth anniversary of the probes coming up, the company’s been worried.”
“So, alien space pirates?” Matt asked dryly. “That’s what you’re going with?”
Mia shrugged. “No worries. We can always have Tyler check to see if she’s lying.” I winced—I had completely forgotten Tyler. Judging from the satisfaction on Mia’s face, that was exactly what she’d suspected.
Cage leaned against the wall and shook his head. “I believe her about the code’s meaning, if not the . . . alien space pirates.” He managed to put just the right touch of sarcasm into his voice to evoke every sneer and condescending chuckle I’d ever faced from older guards, and I scowled. I had so not used the phrase “alien space pirates.” “Rune, can you stop the alarm now?”
“I can,” I said. “If you’ll let me.”
Everyone stepped aside so quickly it was almost comical. I dropped the appropriate codes into the computer, assuring it I was aware of the situation and dealing with the problem, and the blare faded into blessed silence. “Why didn’t my mom stop it sooner?” I wondered out loud. If it was a rescue, why would she let the alarms alert the prisoners?
Rune flushed. “Um, I disabled the alarms throughout the rest of the station. I didn’t want to give anyone a heads-up if we triggered something down here.” She hesitated. “Kenzie, could the alarm be a malfunction?”
I shrugged helplessly. “A few hours ago I’d have said no. But you’ve been messing around in the system. Maybe you caused some damage.”
Rune rolled her eyes in response, and Matt flexed his shoulders. “Let’s assume it’s a breach until we know otherwise,” he said, and frowned at me. “I don’t suppose you can tell where the breach is happening? Or that we can trust you to tell us the truth?”
“I might, but I’d need more computer access. As for telling you the truth, well, like the girl said: you can always check.”
They hesitated, and Rune sighed. “What’s she going to do, tell her mom she’s a prisoner in sector five? She already knows that. Let her take a look.”
They all glanced subtly at Cage, which would have been a helpful hint if I hadn’t already figured out he was the ringleader in all this. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay. Mia, will you go find Alexei? He was pretty dead to the world when I took over your watch; he might’ve slept through the alarm. We can check out the problem once Kenzie pinpoints it.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Matt stubbornly.
Cage grinned at him. “Of course you are. Don’t be ridiculous.”
I took Rune’s place at the computer, tuning out the boys’ good-natured ribbing behind me. Taking a deep breath, I ran my hands over the keys, pulling up blocks of code. I searched Sanctuary’s systems, looking for something out of place, and if I could get away with it, I was going to send a message to Mom. Yes, she knew I was a prisoner in 5, but she didn’t know the rest. She didn’t know they’d cut out their chips, Rune controlled the computer, and they planned to use me as leverage to escape—and she didn’t know about the alarm.
It was surprisingly easy, even under Rune’s watchful eye. By necessity, I had several screens going. I opened a few more for misdirection, and I moved the text of the message around until I could send it under the guise of trying to connect to the command center. I knew I’d fail to connect—the command center was the one area of Sanctuary with absolutely no remote access—but it looked like a legit effort. I kept my message short and terse, both out of necessity and because I had nothing to say to Mom at the moment. I’d act professionally, get a message to my commanding officer. My mother I would deal with later.
That accomplished, I turned my attention to deciphering the alarm and soon found myself frowning at the computer in disbelief. This couldn’t be right, could it? “Okay, I’ve got it,” I said slowly, interrupting a whispered conversation behind me. Cage came to gape at the screen, obviously baffled by the code. Rune folded her arms and chewed on her bottom lip, her dark eyes worried. “There’s some sort of hull breach in sector four.”
“Wait, what?” Cage drew up behind me, uncomfortably close. His arm brushed mine as he leaned in, sending an unfamiliar shiver down my spine. I quickly withdrew. “What about the prisoners?”
I shook my head. “I can’t say for sure—the computer won’t register their life signs because it shut down all systems to protect itself after the breach.” Of course, it also wouldn’t register them if they were dead. Inhibitor chips stopped transmitting when life signs terminated. No point going into that little detail. “But I can tell you, even if it’s some sort of freak accident—like they blew something up, or an object collided with the station—Sanctuary will seal any breaches in a matter of seconds. Unless they were completely taken off guard and killed in an instant, everyone should be fine.”
Cage shook his head, his jaw set. “Should be isn’t going to work for me.”
“What’s not working now?” Alexei asked, rolling his shoulders as he entered the room. Mia ducked under his arm, took a disinterested glance at the computer, sniffed at me, and collapsed against the wall, all in a single breath. Behind them, Matt pulled Rune aside and whispered to her. She shook her head, and he sighed, raking his hands through his hair.
“Something’s going on in sector four. Kenzie here thinks Sanctuary will take care of the prisoners.” The sarcasm dripped from Cage’s voice. “But we had the power to release them and we chose not to, so it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re okay.”
It took me only a second to make up my mind. “I’m going with you.”
Cage stared at me like I’d suggested he hand me a gun, and Mia actually laughed. “Are you joking? No. You go back to your cell and stay there.”
“Why on earth would you want to come?” Matt demanded, seeming genuinely perplexed. “Trust me, no one is going to be happy to see a guard uniform.”
“So give me something else to wear.”
Mia snorted. “No chance. I like being able to spot you in a crowd.”
Of course she did. I glared at her. “Look,” I said. “I know the system, I know the layout, and I’ve got the codes. Unless you’re taking Rune with you as backup, you’re going to need me if something goes wrong.” They didn’t seem convinced, and I hesitated. I didn’t want to betray Omnistellar, but I also didn’t want to see prisoners hurt. Where did my loyalties to the company end and my loyalties to humanity begin? Every nugget of truth I gave them about myself was against company regulations, but if there was a chance I could help, I had to take it. “On top of that, I want to make sure everyone’s okay. I have basic first aid training. If anyone is injured, I might be able to treat them.”
“Really,” said Mia coldly. “You’d help a bunch of lowly prisoners?”
I frowned at her. “People are people. I’ll help anyone who needs it.” I remembered Rita cautioning me not to think of them as people. Well, screw that. Prisoners or not, anomalies or not, they were people, and they were my responsibility. After all, we had medical facilities on the station for a reason. Not even Omnistellar could object to this, right?
Cage held up a hand. “Mia? You got a problem, say so now.”
I was sure she would laugh in his face. Instead, she leaned back and scrutinized me. After a while it got uncomfortable, and I glanced at Rune, who shrugged.
Mia shook her head. “No. Bring her along.”
My jaw hit the floor. Of all the people I expected to back me up, she was the last. I didn’t think her motivations were friendly, either, but I wasn’t about to complain since she’d just handed me
my goal. Instead, I nodded. Mia just huffed and disappeared.
“Mia,” Cage snapped, rolling his eyes. “Grow up. All right. Matt, Alexei—Mia, if you can hear me—meet at the sector entrance in five minutes. Kenzie, come with me.”
Alexei, and maybe Mia, filed out of the room, leaving us with Rune and Matt, who resumed their whispered argument. Cage started to say something, but Matt held up a finger without even looking in his direction. Smothering a laugh, Cage beckoned, and I followed him to his cell, where he gestured for me to sit on the opposite bed.
“Okay,” he said. “Why are you really coming with us? Because I’m telling you right now, if you’re plotting some sort of escape, get it out of your head. The sector four prisoners will tear you apart. They don’t know me, and they’re not going to listen if I tell them to stand down.”
“Maybe I’m telling the truth and I care whether they live or die.”
“Uh-huh.” He examined me with an intensity that belied the sarcasm in his tone, his lips folded in a thoughtful line.
I examined the empty wrist slot where my comm device should have been. Cage remained completely silent, his gaze burning into me, and words spilled out of me unbidden. “A couple of years ago, I was babysitting my four little cousins. My parents used to send me to my aunt and uncle’s lake house for a week each summer. It was nice. Different. Anyway, one day Natalie—she was five—came running down the steps, tripped, and hit her head. There was blood everywhere, and all the other kids were screaming.” I swallowed, remembering the surge of panic, the raw terror as I forced my training to kick in. “She was okay, but . . .” But it had scared me. I remembered the screams, the blood on my hands, like it was yesterday. “I don’t much like to see children suffer,” I settled on at last. “Take that for what it’s worth.”
“A lot of children suffer on Sanctuary, Kenzie.” His voice was so quiet I had to lean in to hear him.
“It’s different.” Or was it? “They’re not being hurt. They’re . . . Either way, it’s not my turn to answer questions. You promised me answers of my own.”
Cage made a face. “Yeah, you did wring that promise out of me, didn’t you?” He sank onto the bed and braced his arms on his knees. He’d zipped his jumpsuit to cover the blood splatters on his shirt, but the edge of a tattoo peeked out of his collar. “I don’t have time for the long version, though.”
“So give me a snapshot.” I wasn’t letting him off that easy. In a desperate attempt to set my confusion aside, I was reverting to the company’s training, making my captors bargain and trust me. By getting Cage’s story, I managed both. And maybe I could convince myself that I was sharing bits of my own life with him for the same reasons.
He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end, and for a moment he didn’t look like my enemy—just like a teenage boy, overtired and out of his depth. I glanced away before my brain could go too far with that image. We were on opposite sides of a massive divide, and I needed to keep that clear in my mind.
“Rune and I were born in Taipei. Our mom died when we were babies. Taipei’s not a corporate city anymore—all the companies relocated to Hong Kong after the city flooded—so the gangs pretty much rule the street. Our dad belonged to one of them. As soon as we could walk, he put us to work picking pockets. Our powers manifested when we turned eight, and he couldn’t have been more excited. He sold our services to every criminal in the Taipei underground and made sure we were too afraid of him to disobey. Before long, someone realized our talents were wasted on street crimes, and they started using us for industrial espionage. After a few years, we got a better offer from a rival gang. Our father was making money. We weren’t. So I grabbed Rune, and we snuck away in the dead of night.” He grinned at my expression. “That shock you? Our dad saw us as commodities and nothing more, and I guess that’s what we were. Eventually, we decided if we were for sale, we might as well reap the profits. We didn’t grow up in your perfect world, Kenzie.”
My perfect world? I shook my head, thinking of the expression on Dad’s face when he left, the fact that my own mother was willing to sacrifice me to her precious regulations. I’d always thought I did have the perfect life: citizenship in the best corporation, parents who loved me and lived and breathed company loyalty, which all our schoolbooks said was the epitome of the human condition. But now I was realizing that my family was plenty messed up too. “You got caught?” I asked.
“Rune got caught,” he corrected. “She always played the more dangerous role. I can outrun almost any threat, and they kept me on the fringes to protect her. But Rune has to make physical contact with a company’s server to penetrate its firewalls, and depending on what she’s doing, she isn’t always aware of what’s going on around her. One night, we took on Omnistellar.” He caught the expression on my face and laughed ruefully. “Yeah, your precious company. We didn’t know what we were getting into. Their security overwhelmed us. I got away—but when I realized they had my sister, I went back for her. I knocked out a few guards before one of them got clever. He grabbed Rune, put his back against a wall, and held a knife to her throat.” He raised his head to fix me in place with his stare. “So I surrendered. And that’s our story. Everything you hoped it would be?”
I shook my head, not sure how to answer. I mean, they were criminals. Thieves. And Omnistellar didn’t take attacks lightly. But . . . did their crimes warrant a possible life sentence in a floating prison? “How long ago was this?”
He seemed taken aback by the question. “What’s the date?” I blinked, but told him. Cage nodded. “I lose track,” he explained. “We were thirteen. Almost five years ago.”
Five years on Sanctuary, starting when they were thirteen?
But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do anything to help them from in here. I still needed to escape. “Thank you,” I said. “For keeping your promise.”
Cage frowned, tilting his head and examining me like he’d never seen me before. For a second we faced each other across the tiny cell, tension building between us until it was almost physical. “How much do they tell you about us?”
I blinked. “I have access to your files, but . . .” Don’t think of them as people.
“Those files are skewed.” He held up his hand. “I know, I know. You don’t believe me. Not yet. But one day, I think you might.”
“That’s not very likely,” I replied softly. To my surprise, I almost felt sorry at the thought. I wanted to believe him, this dark-eyed boy with his wicked smile.
“You’re not at all what I expected.”
“You said that before.”
“Well, it’s true. I didn’t know many corporate citizens back in Taipei, but we grew up seeing them as the enemy. And you, with your glowing commendations and perfect test scores . . . I figured you’d be a brainwashed drone parroting corporate policy.” He leaned forward, draping his hands between his knees and looking up at me. “That’s not the case.”
I bristled at the suggestion that Omnistellar might have brainwashed me. Yes, my family followed the rules closely. But we had good cause for that. The rules existed for exactly this sort of situation—to protect me from people like Cage and his crew. I owed the company everything. “What’s your excuse for Mia?” I demanded, thinking back to her crimes. “Multiple charges of terrorism. Did you know that?”
“Mia was set up,” he replied bluntly. “And that’s all I’m going to say. It’s not my story to tell.” He reached out, and for a second I thought he was going to take my hand. For a second I thought I’d let him. Then he seemed to shake off the impulse. “We’d better get moving. Remember what I said, Kenzie—no one in sector four is going to be happy to see you. If you value your head, you’ll stick right beside me. Because if the prisoners in four don’t get you . . .”
“. . . Mia will,” I said dryly. “I get it.”
He flashed me a grin. I looked away quickly. I didn’t like it when humor transformed his face. It did something to him—made him simult
aneously less threatening and more likable, and I needed to maintain my vision of him as the enemy in order to plan my escape. “Let’s go,” he said.
We met Alexei and Tyler at the door. Rune and Matt stood behind them. “Mia?” Cage called. “You there? Ow,” he added. He spun, and glared into the emptiness as he rubbed his arm. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Alexei beamed. “She’s mad at you.”
“I can tell.” Cage dragged his hand over his face. “Fine, stay invisible. Just don’t get lost.”
Rune stepped forward. “I still can’t get any cameras in four. I don’t like this.”
“There’s a shock. You’re usually so happy when I put myself in danger.”
“Ha. Ha.” Rune poked him in the shoulder. “You have your knife?”
“If Mia hasn’t pickpocketed me again, then, yes.” He glanced around suspiciously but produced the small chunk of metal to show his twin.
Rune nodded. “Please be careful.”
He pulled her into a one-armed hug, avoiding the wound on her shoulder, and dropped an affectionate kiss on her forehead. “I will be. I have pretty solid backup.” He nodded to the two boys and, presumably, Mia. I noticed I wasn’t included in their number.
“I’ll look after him,” Matt promised.
Rune gave him a grateful smile and half stepped toward him, then caught herself with a glance at her brother. Cage only smiled and shook his head, but Rune still blushed. “I know you will,” she said.
We followed Cage into the corridor. I jumped at every sound, not knowing where Mia was or what she was doing. I didn’t know how the others stood it. They seemed completely unperturbed. They couldn’t be used to it, because none of them could use powers during their captivity. Either years in prison had messed with their instincts, or they trusted Mia a lot more than I thought wise.