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Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE
  42. FORTY
  43. FORTY-ONE
  44. FORTY-TWO
  45. FORTY-THREE
  46. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  47. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  48. Copyright

“But we have to decide what to do,” Cage agreed. The others regarded him with a deference they never showed me, and I stifled a wave of annoyance. He’d led them for a long time, after all. It made sense that they trusted a fellow prisoner more than a guard who’d oppressed them, even if I had turned out to be more like them than I’d ever guessed—or been willing to admit. Still, I’d saved everyone’s lives on Sanctuary. The least they could do was give me the same attention they offered Cage. “Alexei’s right,” he continued. “The only way to throw them off our trail is to destroy this ship, and we don’t have the means to do that, do we?” He turned to Rune, clearly addressing his question to her, but she folded her arms and glared at the wall.

I sighed internally. The last thing I needed right now was to referee a game of chicken between angry siblings. “Rune?” I demanded.

She addressed her response to me, not Cage. “I checked for any kind of self-destruct mechanism as soon as I got us moving. I couldn’t find anything. Even if all the aliens die, the ship continues. As soon as it goes a few days without manual input, it veers off and returns to wherever the aliens came from. And it carries a full record of everything that’s happened to it.”

Once again, I closed my eyes. Everyone knew what Rune’s words meant, but no one wanted to admit it. I pictured the other kids on this ship. Some of them were your basic teenagers. One was barely more than a child. But some of them, more than enough, were unpredictable. They were criminals before their arrest, and years of imprisonment on Sanctuary had done nothing to improve their self-control or social skills. The alien attack, and the following weeks of what was essentially another prison, hadn’t helped either. When they learned about this, I had no idea what they’d do or if we could control them.

Well, no one else was going to say it. As much as I’d tried to leave the guard behind, I kept embracing that role. Someone had to think responsibly. “So, we either keep going with this ship broadcasting our signal, not to mention our solar system’s, to the aliens, or . . .” A sinking feeling rose in my chest, and I fought it down. After everything we’d been through, after our daring escape . . . “Or we find a way to destroy it from outside.”

Cage nodded, his thoughts already mirroring mine. “And the only way we can do that . . .”

“Is to turn ourselves in.”

THREE