by Caryn Lix
“They’re familiar, though.” He nodded, his chin brushing my ear. “But I don’t see the Big Dipper—and with that, we’ve reached the end of my knowledge of astronomy.”
I laughed, but a chill ran through me. I didn’t see the Big Dipper out there. I didn’t see any familiar stars, but to be honest, for someone who lived among them, I’d never spent much time on Earth gazing up at them. “Did Rune tell you her theory?”
“About some sort of metaphysical connection between similar races across the void?” He shrugged. “As with most things Rune says, it makes no sense and is probably true.”
I frowned and chewed on my lower lip. “I guess it would explain how much this place is like Earth.”
“A postapocalyptic horror-vid version,” Cage agreed. “But at least there aren’t any goddamn aliens here.”
The chill deepened, settling into my heart. Because there had been aliens here, once upon a time. Oh, I knew what Cage meant, and I agreed: I was quite happy to have found somewhere without ravenous monsters bent on murder or assimilation.
But I wasn’t quite as sure as Cage seemed to be that the place was deserted, and I didn’t know why. There wasn’t any evidence, not really, not even if you counted Hallam’s mystery assailant or the howls in the desert. It was just a feeling, like someone watching me. Part of me even now had to resist the urge to jump up and do a spot check, make sure all of my friends were present and accounted for, maybe even forcibly move them in here where I could keep an eye on them. “I hate it here,” I confessed softly. “I wish I’d taken us anywhere else.”
“Yeah?” Cage nuzzled my neck. “Like the inside of a volcano?”
I giggled in spite of myself. It wasn’t particularly funny, but I was ready to laugh, to relax. “No. That wouldn’t be ideal.”
“A thousand miles under the sea?”
“Not there, either.”
“I don’t think this place is so bad.” His fingers came to my chin and tipped my head back so I was leaning on his shoulder, twisting to stare into his eyes. “Not altogether.”
I allowed myself to trace the lines of his face, to smile. “It has its high points,” I allowed, and then his mouth was on mine and finally, finally, we had the time and space to explore each other without fear, without anything stalking us, without Mia or someone barging through the door and shouting about the latest disaster.
The temperature grew steadily colder and we closed the window, moving to a bed Cage had already stripped of its dusty linens, replacing them with reasonably clean blankets. We tangled our bodies there and he rolled me beneath him, his body pressed against mine, our mouths searching for each other in a tangle of tongues and teeth, until it felt like nothing, ever, could hurt me again.
SEVEN
THAT BLISS LASTED ALL THE way until morning, when a series of thumps, screams, and shouts jerked me out of a sound sleep. I shot up at the same time as Cage and we gaped in mutual dismay at the wall as voices—Mia’s for sure, and Priya’s, and Hallam’s—echoed through the corridors. “It was nice while it lasted,” I sighed.
“More than nice.” Cage caught me in my arms as I twisted to grab my sweater from where I’d thrown it on the floor. He pulled me into a kiss.
I resisted for a second, then allowed myself to sink into his arms. “Don’t you think we’d better see what they’re going on about?” I murmured as his lips dropped to my neck.
“Later. They can handle themselves without us for—”
“Cage!” Jasper’s voice echoed through our apartment. I jumped to my feet as Cage flopped on the bed, covering his face in his hands. “Kenzie! You’d better get out here and I mean now!”
Cage let loose a rampage of Chinese swearing. He was not a morning person. Meanwhile, I’d already shoved my feet into my shoes, almost tripped over an untied shoelace, and yanked my curls into a ponytail. “I’ll cover for you,” I said, “but you’ve got five minutes at most.” I hesitated, then went back to kiss him. His arms came around me and he almost distracted me from whatever was happening in the hallway, but Mia started screaming and I groaned against his mouth.
Cage groaned too. “All right, I’m coming.” He rolled out of bed as I padded across the room.
I yanked open the door to find chaos. Priya, Hallam, and Matt stood guard in front of what they’d dubbed the common area, the apartment at the end of the hall. Alexei, Mia, and Jasper faced off against them, while Rune, Imani, and Reed hovered helplessly in the background.
Rune spotted me and shot to my side, grabbing my arm and dragging me forward. “Hurry,” she said. “Before Mia kills someone.”
“What is going on?” I demanded, inserting myself between the two groups.
The full force of six glares turned on me. “These Omnistellar puppets,” Mia spit, “won’t let us at the supplies we salvaged.”
Priya laughed coldly. “These criminals,” she returned, “have already taken more than their fair share.”
I recalled my dinner with Cage and winced inwardly. How much had we selfishly consumed in our quest for a date? “Priya, what are you talking about?”
She slammed her fist into the wall, making me and Jasper jump. Even Matt started. “Our supplies are almost half gone!” she snapped. “Not even you people could eat them all in a single night. You have to have hidden them somewhere.”
“Wait a minute.” That was Cage, coming up behind me. “Let’s calm down and talk this through. I can tell you exactly what I took from the room yesterday, and it amounted to about nine tins and some water. Mia, Lex?”
“A bit more than that,” said Alexei grudgingly. “I am not a small boy.”
I grinned at the understatement, biting my lip because I didn’t think my amusement would go over well at the moment.
Jasper spoke without prompting. “The rest of us took about the same. There’s no way that’s half of what we gathered.”
“Of course it’s not,” Hallam drawled. He leaned against the wall and rested his hand on the hilt of his knife, just in case we hadn’t noticed it. “You took a lot more than you’re admitting, and the proof is in your rooms. Priya, say the word and I’ll … ?”
Fear stabbed through me. “Exactly how much is missing?” I whispered.
To my surprise, it was Matt who answered. “At least half. Maybe more.”
“And was anyone on guard in the apartment last night?”
“We didn’t think we needed to be.” Priya scowled at each of us in turn. “Our mistake.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I … Let us in there. We can see for ourselves and figure this out together.”
Again, Matt spoke, his voice soft and calm after the chaos of the last few minutes. “It can’t hurt, Priya. They’re not going to take anything while you’re watching. And …” He left the sentence unfinished, but our eyes met, and I didn’t need any powers to read his thoughts: And it’s possible we’re not alone here after all.
Priya hesitated, glaring at all of us, but after a moment she turned and stomped into the apartment. I nodded my gratitude at Matt and he gave me a small smile. Something inside me released. He might not be my best friend, but he wasn’t holding a grudge, at least not right now.
We’d stacked our supplies in the middle of the room, and I skidded to a halt, staring in horror at the tiny mound of food and, more importantly, water. There were only a dozen bottles left, and we’d gathered three or four times that many.
A surge of doubt hit me. Mia hadn’t taken it, had she? I could see her doing it. She was a thief, after all, a self-professed expert in the art. I didn’t think she’d do it to make trouble, but she might think she was protecting us, shielding us from exactly this sort of takeover by Legion.
I scrutinized her and dismissed the thought. I’d decided to trust these people, my friends, the only family I had now. Mia wouldn’t steal, at least not from us. She would have told me, or at least Cage. And that was what I was going to believe, because belief was a choice, and faith in someon
e had to be embraced as firmly as faith in anything else.
I went to the window as the others argued behind me. With Mia and Hallam in the mix, you were pretty much guaranteed a volatile conversation. I tried to tune them out as I examined the window. It had been locked at one time, but the bolts had long since rusted away, and it gave easily to my prodding fingers, barely making a sound as it slid open.
I leaned outside.
“Anything there?” Imani spoke at my ear, leaning past me. I caught a sideways glimpse of the worry in her eyes as she followed my gaze.
Directly below us was a rusted fire escape. “This looks sturdy enough to climb,” I said.
Imani nodded. “And if you did, you’d be right outside this window.”
We exchanged glances as the others carried on arguing behind us. Suddenly I was exhausted. Why was nothing ever easy? It was bad enough I’d stranded us on a desert wasteland in the middle of God knew what solar system in order to escape the vicious aliens who’d killed my parents and the explosion that would have killed everyone on Obsidian. We had to have yelling and fighting and now, probably, a new enemy, someone or something stalking us once again through the night.
Imani laid her hand on my arm. “Maybe this is a good thing,” she said quietly. “If there are people here, maybe they can help us. Maybe they have a way off the planet.”
“And haven’t taken it?” I indicated the wasteland with a sweep of my hand.
“Maybe they don’t know there’s anywhere else to go.”
I spared her a smile. Imani always looked for the best and usually found it, and just now I wanted to hug her for giving me at least a slightly more positive way to view things. Instead I squeezed her arm in return and turned back to the room, where at least a few people had noticed our distraction.
“Kenzie?” said Rune. “What’s up?”
“This window opens easily,” I said without preamble, “and there’s a fire escape right outside. If Hallam was right, if he was attacked in the restaurant yesterday, then maybe whoever it was followed us here and stole our supplies last night.”
Hallam snorted. “Followed us without me noticing? I don’t think so.” But he also shoved past me to stare outside.
“Heat signatures?” asked Priya.
Hallam tapped the side of his head, presumably doing something to the cybernetics Omnistellar had jammed in there, and frowned. “It’s too hot. Nothing lingering. And I don’t see any trails. But … that doesn’t mean the girl’s wrong.”
Priya clenched her fists, clearly waging an internal war with the words “I told you so.” She won, but, by the looks of it, barely. “That settles it. Someone else is on this planet.”
“That settles nothing,” snapped Mia. “We still don’t have any proof of anything.”
“Mia,” said Matt quietly. “Someone took half our supplies. It was either you, us, or someone else. I know it wasn’t us, and I don’t think it was you.”
She drew up short, maybe as much because it was Matt doing the talking as anything else. “Did you sense something?” she asked.
I blinked. I’d almost forgotten, amid all of Matt’s new abilities, his base power: an awareness of life, of other living beings in the vicinity.
But he frowned and shook his head. “Of course, I wasn’t looking. I didn’t think I had a reason.”
Cage nodded. “Listen,” he said, his voice carrying that familiar ring of charismatic authority. “If anyone, for any reason, took anything out of this room other than what they’ve already admitted, I’m going to ask you to speak up. For everyone’s sake.” A long silence stretched among us. I scanned the room, meeting everyone’s gaze in turn: Jasper’s quiet determination, Mia seemingly at war with herself, Matt staring at his feet, Reed observing with something like amusement …
“I didn’t think so,” said Cage at last. He turned to Priya. “I’m willing to believe you and your people when you say you didn’t take or hide any of the supplies. Can you give us the same courtesy?”
She hesitated. “You’re criminals we were ordered to hunt,” she said at last, but without fire. “It’s hard for us to move out of that mind-set. We’ve been Legion longer than we’ve been anything else … well, most of us.” She glanced at Matt, who still didn’t meet her eyes.
“We worked together on the ship,” I reminded her. “We had a common enemy who’d taken things from both of us. And we still have a common enemy: Omnistellar. They were going to betray you just like they betrayed me. Betrayed humanity.”
“Not to mention the enemy closer at hand,” said Cage, jerking his head toward the window.
Priya nodded. “You’re right. Let’s call a truce. No more grumbling at each other, no more suspicion. From now on, we work as a team.”
EIGHT
WE’D NEVER HAD AN OFFICIAL leader. Sometimes it was Cage, sometimes it was me, and sometimes Mia or Alexei seized control. Legion, on the other hand, was accustomed to following Priya’s commands, and it showed. When she spoke, they leaped to attention. “We need to establish round-the-clock watches,” she said now. “If someone comes back for our supplies, we catch them in the act.”
“What we need to do,” Imani interrupted, “is find out who they are and try to talk to them, not imprison them. This isn’t Omnistellar. They’re probably trying to survive, just like us.”
“Then they can scavenge, just like us. No one steals from Legion and gets away with it.”
“From us,” returned Jasper sharply.
Priya sighed and closed her eyes. Her lips moved as though praying or counting or mumbling a mantra. “Okay,” she said at last. “What do you have in mind?”
Cage slipped in easily. “The round-the-clock watch isn’t a bad idea, but I suggest we go a step further. Let’s set a trap. Do some really obvious scavenging today. Then, when our thief strikes, we follow.”
Priya rolled her eyes. “Great. All ten of us chasing after someone in the desert. Sounds like a plan.”
“Not all eleven of us,” said Mia. She shimmered and disappeared. When she spoke, her voice was clear and disembodied. “Me, because I can move quietly and unseen. I can probably keep two other people invisible without too much effort.” That was a new bit of her power, the ability to make others invisible. Contact with the aliens seemed to have altered our DNA, made us stronger, given us greater abilities—or at least, some of us. Others were still waiting to see what, if anything, would happen.
“So who goes with you?” Rune asked.
“I do,” said Alexei at once.
“No,” Mia replied, slipping back into the visible spectrum. “You stampede around like a wild elephant. Sorry, Lex.”
He shrugged, giving her the tolerant smile he seemed to reserve specially for her, and accepted that without argument.
“Matt,” said Priya decisively. “He’s the quietest of the three of us, he can sense people before they sneak up on you, and his implants give him additional abilities. He’ll be useful.”
“And me,” said Cage. “If we find something, I can return and warn the others in a fraction of the time it would take someone else.”
“And me,” I said.
Mia frowned. “I can only handle three of us.”
“Except I can mimic your ability,” I reminded her. “At least if I’m near you. And more importantly, if you find someone who speaks another language, I’m the one with the best shot at communicating with them.” And of course, I had no intention of letting any of my friends wander into danger without me at their side. Not this time.
Mia scowled but didn’t answer. What was her problem, anyway? I’d thought we’d mended things between us and she’d forgiven me for my role in Matt’s apparent death. Maybe not. Maybe that was a temporary truce caused by the alien attack. I sighed. I was tired of trying to keep Mia straight.
Cage nodded. “Me, Matt, Mia, and Kenzie.” He flashed a grin at Matt. “Just like old times.”
Matt smiled reluctantly. “Except we didn’t usuall
y pal around with the prison guards,” he said, but although his words sent a spike of annoyance through me, they held no real heat, and he didn’t seem angry.
“Fine,” said Priya. “Hallam and I will do some scavenging now. Anyone who wants to join us, feel free. We’ll gather a nice big pile of temptation for tonight—or at least I hope we will. Matt, Cage, Kenzie, and Mia will lie in wait, which means you should rest up today.”
“I’ll come scavenging,” Rune volunteered. “I was able to power those tablets Reed found last night, but there wasn’t much on them. I want to check for any other electronics and see if they have more information.”
“If you’re talking electronics, I’ll come too … er, in case anyone gets hurt,” Reed amended quickly, grinning when Rune rolled her eyes at him.
I glanced around the room, weighing my options. Priya had said we should rest up. She was right. But if Reed and Rune were headed out … Hallam and Priya were more than capable of protecting them, I knew that, but still.
Mia nudged Alexei and nodded at Rune and Reed. He sighed. “Yes. I will come too.”
Relief surged through me. Alexei, I could trust. If he went along, I was probably safe to stay behind.
“I think that’s enough,” said Priya. “We’ll head out now and return in a few hours.”
They advanced in one direction and the rest of us scattered. Mia slipped through the door, and I frowned after her. Enough was enough. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Cage.
He must have read my mind, because his eyebrows flew up in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to have a conversation.” I smiled. “Don’t worry. If she attacks me, I’ll make myself invisible. Power leech, remember?”
He grinned in spite of himself. “Just … don’t rile her up too much. Things will be awkward enough tonight.”