I ground my teeth, Mia’s hand tense on my ankle. I didn’t dare open my eyes to see how close the hunters were. Instead I pictured the docking bay, focused on the sensation I got when another language became clear to me, trying to imagine the bay in that same vivid detail and draw it toward me, rather than myself toward it.

The wall gave way beneath my hands. My eyes flew open in surprise and the metal shimmered in front of me, but my broken concentration quickly solidified it. Footsteps pounded nearby. I ground my teeth together, shut my eyes, and forced myself to concentrate. I knew I could do it now. All I had to do was reach.

The hunters shouted in surprise. Someone shoved me, and I flew through the blinding portal, landing on my knees and elbows on the docking bay floor. More shouts of surprise greeted us. Apparently even on Obsidian, it wasn’t normal to see people dive through bright circles of light in walls.

I twisted to see the rest of the crew stumble through seconds before the portal resealed itself, much like the entrances on the alien ship. They stared at me in amazement. “I didn’t know you did that,” Rune gasped.

“Talk later,” ordered Mia, scrambling to her feet. She looked sallow, and she staggered on her bad leg, as if the escape had exhausted her. “They’ll be right behind us. Get moving!”

As if on cue, the airlock door hissed. Alexei hauled Reed and Rune to their feet. Mia and I caught Imani between us and took off with Jasper on our tails, not sure of where we were heading, only knowing we needed to escape the hunters. “Make for a crowd!” Mia shouted. “They won’t risk shooting into it!”

“You sure about that?” I demanded. We rounded a corner, shouts behind us.

We couldn’t outrun trained bounty hunters. Alexei, Mia, Jasper, and I might have managed it, even with Mia’s limp, but we couldn’t abandon the other three. Still, I didn’t have a better plan. If we escaped the docking ring and reached the station proper, it might buy us time to come up with something.

A blur of motion in front of us and the man with the cracked tooth landed in a crouch, dropping straight out of the air, his stun gun aimed in my direction. I skidded to a halt before I crashed into him, my eyebrows shooting up my forehead. “How . . . ?” I whispered.

He grinned. “Did you think you were Earth’s only anomalies?” He targeted me. “Let’s make this easy. Stop where you are.”

Another blur of motion and Priya landed beside him, pivoting with the grace of a dancer. Her legs barely buckled under the impact as she vaulted over us. “Show-off,” she said.

The man laughed. “We were going to catch them anyway. I simply expedited it a bit.”

“What part of inconspicuous do you fail to grasp, Hallam?”