“Then we’d better find them,” Hallam replied grimly. “Because that’s on the first floor, where you think the attacks originated. And there’s a hallway of aliens between us and them.”

The four of us hesitated momentarily, none of us in a hurry to move despite the need for haste. Were the aliens lingering outside? I wondered if I could use my new powers to help us. The others seemed to be out of range, but Priya, Matt, Hallam—they had abilities too.

Priya’s words echoed in my head: for now. I sized her up, debating how far to trust her. She’d turned on me before, the second we escaped the aliens. Chances were she’d do it again. I set my jaw. If it became a matter of life and death, I’d reveal that my powers were changing too. Until then, the less they knew about my abilities, the better.

Priya sighed and nodded to Hallam, who withdrew a laser rifle from its holster across his back. “Ever fired one of these?” he asked me.

I stared at it for a moment, then set my jaw and took it, my hands only trembling a bit. No more regrets, I reminded myself. Make your choices and move on. “I can manage,” I said, carefully avoiding Matt’s gaze even as it burned into my neck. I didn’t need telepathy to know where his thoughts must have traveled.

He nodded. “Shoot at one of us, even by accident, and I will kill you.” The emphasis on “accident” made it clear it wasn’t a casual reference. “You got it?”

A thousand replies sprang to mind, but I settled for, “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Good.”

We turned to face the door, and Priya grinned unpleasantly. “Then let’s kick some alien ass.”

FORTY

I LET LEGION TAKE THE lead as we stepped into the hall. Say what you wanted about them, they were good. Professional. They’d lost two teammates in as many hours, but you’d never know it by Priya’s and Hallam’s expressions. Matt hadn’t quite mastered their inhumanity, and twitches of emotion kept clawing their way into his eyes, but he resolutely stanched them. Trying to live up to his new friends, muttered a sarcastic voice inside my head.

Hallam crept into the hall first, big gun at the ready. He glanced both ways. “Clear,” he whispered.

We followed. Finn’s body was nowhere to be seen, but a massive splotch of red marked where he’d fallen. I tried not to stare.

The aliens had left the bodies where they’d dropped in the command center. Why drag Finn away? He was an anomaly, of course. Maybe they continued to harvest after all? But even as the thought occurred to me, I dismissed it. Anomaly or not, no way Finn had survived four sharp blades through the chest. His lungs, his heart, all must have punctured instantly. They’d taken the body for some other reason, even if only to mess with us. Had they done the same to the bodies on Obsidian? Or were they piled together somewhere like the command center, someplace they’d thought was safe and gathered for protection? I shuddered at the thought.