by Caryn Lix
My chest lurched. I’d been so excited by the possibility of an escape that none of this had occurred to me. I’d imagined dying, of course, but as terrifying as that was, it was better than starving to death on this planet. I had not considered the realities of what came next.
Reed scowled at him. “You’re a cheerful sort, aren’t you?”
“He’s only being honest,” Matt replied quietly. He glanced at Cage, rolling his fork over in his hands. “And he’s not wrong.”
Cage shrugged. “Just like you weren’t wrong when you told me Sanctuary was designed to be an inescapable prison. We still broke out.”
Matt snorted. “That wasn’t exactly an unqualified success, was it?”
“No, but we couldn’t predict the aliens.” Rune’s voice was quiet, but it seemed to strike Matt like an anvil. It was one of the first times she’d spoken to him, and she instantly had his undivided attention. “The escape was a disaster, but we did escape. If we hadn’t tried, we’d have died in our cells. And if we don’t try now, we’ll die in a new Sanctuary.”
Priya shook her head and drained the last of her water. “I don’t disagree with you, but Hallam’s got a point. We need a plan B.”
“Plan B better not entail staying here,” Jasper snapped.
Priya glared in return. “You are not the only one with family back home, okay? No one wants to stay here. We’re simply considering the realities of the situation.”
For a second I thought Jasper would fire off an angry response, but then Rune laughed softly. “Are you guys really going to fight about this?” she asked. “For once, we all want exactly the same thing. We’re alive. We’re together. And we have a chance of getting off this planet. Can’t we just lean into that for once?”
Cage and I exchanged frowns. It was clear he was thinking exactly what I was: we might not be alive much longer.
But Rune’s words seemed to calm Matt and Jasper. “Sorry,” Jasper said. “I’m on edge thinking about my family, that’s all.”
Matt shrugged. “You haven’t said anything we aren’t thinking. And Hallam’s not the most tactful guy.” He elbowed his new friend, who grinned, showing all his teeth.
Imani rolled her eyes and shoveled the last of her rice into her mouth. “So what do we do now?” she asked. “This was lunch. We have time to kill. Eden doesn’t want to talk to us about the mission. Do we just stand around? Take a nap?” She laughed self-consciously. “It’s been so long since I’ve had nothing to do that I’m not sure how it works anymore.”
“Well, we could do nothing,” Cage replied in the long, slow drawl that said something was going on in his head. “Or …”
Rune groaned. “Don’t play mysterious, gege.”
He laughed, eyes sparkling. “We could try to learn more about what’s going on here.”
A grin spread across Mia’s face. “Now that’s more like it. What do you have in mind?”
“Mia, your job should make you happy. Disappear and snoop around. Listen in. See what you can find out, especially if you can get behind this curtain.” He nodded. “Take Rune with you. She can be quiet and won’t give you away, and I want her to examine the tech around here, see what, if anything, they have working.”
Alexei scowled. “And what shall I do, O imperious leader?”
Cage nodded toward a group of boisterous, well-muscled soldier-looking types. They were hanging out near Eden and keeping a careful eye on us. “See if you can make some new friends. I get the sense they’ll respond to you better than anyone.”
Alexei shrugged noncommittally, but he was already scrutinizing the soldiers, his mind working. Cage pressed on: “Imani and Reed, there must be a medical facility here somewhere. You have every excuse to get in there. Scout the place. If we have injuries, we might need to know exactly what supplies they have and how many of them we can access.”
“And me?” Jasper asked.
“You, me, and Kenzie will see who we can get to talk to us. Try to gather more information about this place.”
Priya arched an eyebrow. “I notice you’ve left us out of your little plot.”
Cage frowned in what seemed to be genuine surprise. “I thought you’d have your own plan, to be honest.”
Priya almost smiled. “Yours is as good as any.” She nodded at Hallam and Matt. “See if you can get any information on what sort of weaponry they’ve got around here. Help Alexei chat with the soldiers. Me, I’ll talk to Eden, press her for information on the alien stronghold.” She examined me appraisingly. “While you’re scouting around, learn anything you can about Gideon. I don’t trust Eden’s appraisal of him. You say she had no choice about killing him, but she still pulled the trigger on her superior. I want more facts than we have.”
Somehow she’d managed to turn Cage’s operation into her own, and I winked at him to say I’d noticed. He gave me a rueful smile in return. “We’ll meet after supper and share what we learn.”
Mia stretched, her joints popping in a way that made me wince. “Beats sitting around all afternoon.”
Cage caught my eye and winked, and I smiled in spite of myself. Why not? I’d been a prison guard, a fugitive, an anomaly. Might as well add spy to the list.
TWENTY-THREE
BEING A SUPERSPY WAS BOTH more boring and more difficult than it initially sounded. First of all, no one really wanted to talk to us. We had the most luck with the children, but they also possessed the least useful information, and their parents tended to drag them away with suspicious glares. After a few hours of intensely trying to engage people in conversation, we’d learned Gideon was well liked among his people, that they were mourning his loss, and that they blamed us for getting him killed, although they were foggy on how, exactly, we were at fault.
Midway through the afternoon, Jasper begged off, pleading a headache. The shadows behind his eyes made me think he might not be lying, and he staggered a bit as he headed for the tents. “He’s damn scared,” I said, half to myself.
“Wouldn’t you be?” Cage raked his hand through his hair, standing it on edge, and even in this awful situation, I found myself gaping at him, still unable to believe he was quite real. I reached out and ran my finger along his jawline, and his lips quirked into a smile.
“I don’t have any family left to worry about,” I whispered. It wasn’t totally true. I had some cousins and an aunt and uncle on Earth. We weren’t close. We used to be when we were young, but once my family started moving around, well … I hadn’t seen them in years. But I wanted to protect them if I could. Still, my own losses were fresh in my mind.
Cage pulled me against his chest. We were standing in a corner of the tent town, and people were watching us, but I didn’t care. Cage must have, though. He glanced both ways, then took my hand and tugged me along after him.
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
“Damned if I know,” he replied, so cheerfully a smile cracked through my grief.
We ducked through the hanging blankets marking the edge of the fake town and into the abandoned, dystopia-esque department store, which was dark and bleak and not particularly friendly but at least afforded privacy. Then Cage pulled me in against him, his hands settling on my arms, my shoulders, my back, featherlight touches that drew me in. “I thought you could use a minute,” he said. “That we could use a minute. Kenz, we haven’t really had a chance to talk about your dad, but—”
“Let’s not.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and held tight. “I don’t want to think about death. Not now. Not anymore.”
“You’re not going to die,” he replied gently.
“No one’s going to die. Not if I can help it.” I swallowed hard. “But then, I’ve never really been able to help it, have I? Cage … If we die in this fight …”
“We won’t. Trust me, okay?”
“Will you stop with the act for a moment?” I pulled back and glared at him through a sea of tears. I got what he was trying to do. But it was just me and him now, and
I wanted Cage, not the cheerful boyish leader directing his friends through a sea of desperation.
He examined me for a long moment, and then, piece by piece, the mask peeled away. He smiled, but the cheer didn’t extend to his eyes, where his fear and exhaustion and worry bled through. “All right,” he said, stroking his thumb over my jaw. “If we die in this fight …”
“If we do, I just want you to know that I …” I choked on the words. “That I really care about you. We’ve been through more together than I ever thought possible, and you’ve never let go of me, not once.”
The dark pool of his eyes softened, and he cast his gaze aside, sighing as if afraid of what came next. “Kenzie. I …” He pulled me in even tighter, and his arms trembled. “When I think about how we met, I’m amazed you even talk to me. I know we haven’t known each other too long, but … I love you, Kenzie. And you don’t have to say anything,” he added in a rush, drawing back to examine me with something like fear in his eyes. “I know that’s a weird thing to throw at you right now, but—”
I stood on my toes, grabbed the sides of his face, and pulled him down to me, kissing him thoroughly. Within seconds I’d forgotten our impending doom, forgotten everything but Cage, the width and length and breadth of him consuming my soul.
When at last we broke apart, my eyes were wet. “I love you, too,” I said. “I mean, I love all of you. Even Mia. But I really love you.”
His face broke into a smile, and for a single moment nothing else mattered: not the hostility of our surroundings, not the aliens or the giant creature they surrounded, not the fact that we were an eternity from home.
And then the moment broke, and we were us again, mired in the same hell where we always seemed to find ourselves. But somehow things were different all the same.
* * *
The euphoria chased me all day. It was in every smile Cage offered, in every brush of his hand against mine, in every accidental touch. It warred with a half dozen other emotions: grief and terror and suspicion, guilt and anger and exhaustion.
After another tense meal, we all crammed into our tent, everyone except Hallam. Briefings bored him, he said, and he’d rather lounge on the linoleum outside. Actually, I suspected Priya had ordered him to keep a watch and make sure no one got too close to our tent, but I wasn’t about to dissuade him. It was a good idea. I should have come up with it myself.
I sort of trusted Eden. She’d defended us, even to the point of turning on her mentor. But if my parents had taught me nothing else, they’d shown me people can have complicated motivations. My dad, for example. He’d genuinely believed he was protecting me by leaving all my friends to die, by sending Legion after me, even by summoning the aliens to our solar system. So even if Eden had good intentions, I wasn’t going to embrace her as family quite yet.
The tent didn’t exactly fit all of us, so Mia was sitting on Alexei’s lap, I was crammed against Cage, and Matt and Rune were painfully close. Neither of them looked too upset about it, though. In fact, from the way they kept exchanging glances, I was starting to suspect they’d executed their own little mission earlier that day. I made a mental note to ask Rune about it later.
“These people have absolutely nothing to say,” Mia reported. “I wasted my whole day drifting around invisible. I can tell you who’s cheating on who, which families are taking more than their fair share of rations, and who suspects who of snooping through their tent. That’s about it.” She shrugged. “Gideon’s name came up once or twice. He was sort of a folk hero, but … Eden wasn’t lying about how he’d changed. People were getting nervous. No one’s dared to say it, but I think they’re relieved he’s gone.”
“The soldiers are surprisingly well armed,” Matt added. “If guns could take those creatures down, they’d have done it by now.”
“The aliens have some sort of adaptive shielding,” Cage reminded us. “I used a sword to kill one of them, but the next time I attacked, it blocked me somehow. That’s why Eden needs the information. You can’t kill these things, or at least, not many of them. You can only ever run.”
“Unless you have a warehouse full of missiles,” Mia added. “Eden mentioned that, too. She even said it was nearby.”
“And that she couldn’t transport them. Get the idea out of your head, Mia. We’re not blowing up the planet.”
The only one with anything more substantial to offer was Rune. With Mia’s help, she’d swiped a tablet. “They’ve got someone with the ability to charge batteries,” she said, raising it for us to see. “It must come in pretty handy. I think it’s the only reason they have light and hot food. The battery on this one ran down fast, but as long as I’m in contact, I can make it work. I was able to get a bit of information about this world. Kenzie was right. It’s scarily similar to ours. Even lots of the history seems the same—wars and stuff. I mean, it’s not identical, but it’s way too close to be a coincidence.”
“What’s the planet called?” Imani asked.
“Wraith.”
“Wraith?” I demanded.
“W-R-E-I-T-H-E,” Ruen spelled out. “But at this point, yeah. Wraith is close enough.”
“So what does that mean?” I demanded, spreading my hands in desperation. “It’s an alien planet almost exactly like Earth, not only in terms of technology and language and inhabitants, but history? How is that possible?”
“It’s not.” Imani was chewing her lip thoughtfully. “I … I have an idea, but …” She shook her head, glancing at each of us in turn.
“Speak up, Imani,” Cage encouraged her. “If you think you know what’s going on …”
“I … no. I don’t know. That’s the thing.” She shook her head again. “Let me think it through a bit longer. I need to clarify it in my head before I give it voice.”
No one seemed very happy, but we couldn’t force her to share her ideas. My mind raced, trying to figure out what Imani had come up with, but I was simply too tired. One thing seemed clear: Eden wasn’t telling the truth, or at least not all of it. A nearby planet shielded against discovery, whose inhabitants watched ours? That explained some of the similarities in language and culture, but not the same history …
We dispersed on a tense note. We hadn’t learned much, and we were still at Eden’s mercy regarding whatever she planned for tomorrow. Cage fell asleep almost immediately after dinner, holding me clasped loosely in his arms as the lights in the store dimmed to mimic nightfall. I envied him his peace, his ability to sleep instantly, anywhere. He never seemed to suffer my insomnia and nightmares.
I lay awake for a long time, staring at the tent ceiling and listening to the other three breathe. Faces swam in front of me: Matt and my mom, Rita, my father. Even Liam, the alien we’d met on Obsidian, the man who’d been so terrified of the aliens he’d abandoned his own family to escape them, who’d betrayed us and then died in the explosion. It was his power I’d borrowed to get here. I wished I’d been able to reach him, to help him, too.
“Kenzie,” said Alexei quietly.
I jumped. “I thought you were sleeping.”
He snorted. “Not likely. These two are the ones who can sleep through anything. I’m the one who gets to lie awake worrying. Well, me and you, apparently.” After a long moment, he reached across the small space between our bedrolls. I fished my arm out of the blankets and took his hand.
His big grasp swallowed mine, and I remembered all the contact I’d had with Alexei since we’d met. He’d restrained me when he took me captive and argued in favor of knocking me out. That was hard to forget. But he’d also held me while Cage cut the power-inhibiting chip from my arm. He’d pulled me to safety on the alien ship. He’d clasped me against him when the aliens appeared aboveground. Alexei got a bad rap, between his massive size, his family’s criminal connections, and his destructive pyrokinetics. But thinking about it, I realized he was usually just there: a quiet, solid presence in the background, ready at a second’s notice to shelter any of us who might be in danger
.
I tightened my grip on his hand. “Thanks, Alexei.”
“For what?”
“For being my friend.”
He chuckled and spoke to me in Russian. “I never had many friends before I went to prison. You don’t when you’re part of a crime family. Cage and Mia were the first people outside my family I ever cared for. And I guess I developed a taste for it. Turns out I like people. And I like you, Kenzie. I’m sorry if I ever hurt you.”
“You didn’t.” I pulled free but rolled onto my side, facing him in the dark. “We are friends, right?”
He turned his head toward me, lacing his hands behind his head. “To say the least.”
“Then can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
I nodded toward Mia, snoring on his other side. “How the hell do you resist the urge to shake some sense into her at least five times a day?”
He laughed, still softly, as if he kept even his laugh gentle to avoid scaring people off. “Ah, Mia. It may be hard to understand, but … I would never want her to be anyone but who she is. No matter how impetuous and aggressive and stubborn she is. If nothing else, it makes life interesting.”
“Yes.” I snorted. “Because if there’s one thing we have to worry about, it’s being bored.”
Alexei laughed again. “Go to sleep, Kenzie. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, and you need to rest.”
“So do you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He propped himself up on his elbow, and although I couldn’t quite read his expression in the dim light, I got the sense he was studying me. “You and Cage carry a lot on your shoulders,” he continued quietly. “But at least he lets himself rest. It’s time you did the same. Let me watch over things tonight. You’re safe, I promise. Get some sleep.”