“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.”