It wasn’t much of a plan. Most of them probably didn’t have contacts on Mars, and they didn’t have credit chips or anything else on which to survive. I knew all of that. But it was the best chance I could offer, and no one disputed it.

I returned to the front as Mia shimmered out of existence. I winced. I’d never get used to her habit of turning invisible whenever the urge struck her, even if, as now, it was planned. “I can’t think of any more excuses to delay,” I said to Cage.

He examined my face, pulling in his bottom lip. “We’ll be fine,” he said. Did he feel as assured as he sounded? I envied his confidence. “I trust Mia and Alexei. They’ve got our backs.”

Alexei nodded, giving me one of his rare smiles, and flexed the muscles along his shoulders. “See you soon.”

I faced the smooth black plastic of the ship’s exit. Even though the ship had provided us with refuge after we’d escaped Sanctuary, it had never felt like home. It was too alien, too bizarre. I wasn’t sorry to see it go, even if it meant turning myself over to the authorities. The ship had never been a destination. It was a place between permanence, even between identities. I still hadn’t found my next home, but this certainly wasn’t it. “Here goes nothing,” I said, and jammed a screwdriver into the exit slot.

The black material shimmered and flowed, re-forming itself into an opening about ten feet above our heads. Earlier, Imani and Cage had rigged a rope ladder to make it easy to vacate the ship. But over twenty people needed to escape behind us. Mia and Alexei had been vague on the details of how exactly they planned to accomplish that, and when pressed, Mia muttered something about playing it by ear and creating a distraction. I just hoped it would be big enough to give them the time they needed.

I waited for Mia to exit the ship ahead of me. The ladder swayed with her movement. Once it stilled, I caught a rung, a makeshift plastic bar I hoped would support Alexei’s weight, and crawled after her.

I emerged on top of the alien ship and got my first view of Mars. My eyebrows shot up in amazement, and in spite of the situation, I took a moment to stop and stare. My family had lived all over Earth before we moved to Sanctuary, and we’d vacationed once or twice on a luxury star cruiser. But I’d never set foot on another planet. I’d never admitted it to anyone, but Mars had always fascinated me. It had the same allure as Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5: someplace with mystery and danger left to uncover. Humans had walked the surface of Earth for millennia. We’d only colonized Mars in the last fifty years, and aside from a few scattered mining camps, there was only one real settlement: Mars City, with its strange mix of tourist attractions, mining homes, and corporate research facilities.