Power inhibitors, I realized numbly. Mars Mining didn’t have Omnistellar’s fancy inhibitor chips, so they’d found another way to cut off our abilities. The heavy metal cuffs suddenly seemed to double in weight even as my mind raced through corporate technology. Some sort of injection, probably. Temporary. I hadn’t felt it, which meant the cuffs contained a numbing agent. That explained the lack of feeling in my wrists, which I’d attributed to the weight of the cuffs.

“You all right?” Cage muttered as the guard grabbed our elbows and propelled us forward.

I nodded. Cage glanced past me to Rune, but she stared straight ahead, her chin jutting forward, her muscles tightly corded. I shook my head at him, telling him to leave her alone. She looked stronger than I felt. Let her get through this however she could.

At that moment, though, Rune glanced at us and gave me a small smile. She turned to include Cage, and he smiled back. It was the tiniest movement of her lips, the slightest quirk of his, but it went so far toward calming my panic. In this moment, all barriers among the three of us melted away. It’s hard to focus on much else when you’re fighting to keep your head above water.

Yang removed her gloves and helmet, passing them to a random underling. She scanned her thumb and the door connecting the corridor to the tarmac slid shut behind us. She opened the next passageway, and we stepped into the headquarters of Mars Mining Incorporated.

I’d never been in Omnistellar Concepts’ headquarters in London, but I’d seen lots of other corporate facilities when my parents did intercorporate training missions. They’d led sessions for all the big security firms: New Earth, Sphinxhead, even the closest thing we had to a competitor, Surge Networks. Some, like Omnistellar and Surge, were immaculate, run by the book and according to strict regulations. Some were a lot laxer. But I’d never seen anything off planet before.

This was the city’s central hub. We were in a huge open area, all exposed metal and hastily welded pipework. But it had been designed with something more professional in mind. Faux leather couches, worn and patched now but good quality, lined waiting areas, and huge windows revealed Mars’s expanse on one side and the city’s flashing lights on another. A thin layer of red dust covered everything. They might have sealed Mars City in an atmospheric bubble, but apparently that didn’t stop the windstorms from doing their work.

Corridors branched off the main area in four directions. I scanned the signs overhead. They hadn’t bothered labeling them in anything but English, so I didn’t even need my powers to interpret TOURISM AND CORPORATE IMMIGRATION, MARS MINING AFFAIRS, MEDICAL, and SECURITY. Unsurprisingly, Yang led us and our escorts toward the last one. Dozens of people gathered in the main area, but none of them batted an eyelash at the sight of us. Obviously, arrests weren’t uncommon here. I assumed no one had noticed the huge alien spaceship on the tarmac, not to mention the resulting explosion. There was a reason they’d directed us to a landing site at the rear of the facility.