“I . . . yes. Yes, they will,” said Rune.

My head shot up at the hesitation in her voice, and I winced as pain ricocheted through my skull. “But?”

“But how long will it take them to realize the corporation isn’t following through on its word? And how long do we have?”

I closed my eyes, my worst fears surging to life. Every second of that hell on Sanctuary—I might have to live it again. And the chances of the exact circumstances that had allowed our survival happening again were almost nonexistent. “Even if the aliens don’t get here before Mia, Omnistellar might. They’ll have advanced weaponry, elite soldiers . . . Mia and Alexei will never get through them to free us. At best, they might destroy the ship. And that’s if Omnistellar doesn’t buy it and transport it off planet.”

Rune climbed onto the bench beside me, drawing her knees to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. Once again, she fixed her gaze on her feet. “Do you think we activated that signal when Mia vented the aliens into space?”

I winced. I’d been avoiding that possibility. Mia and Cage had made the decision to send hundreds of sleeping aliens to their deaths. I hadn’t agreed with them, but I’d understood their logic. Rune, on the other hand, considered their actions little better than murder. “Maybe,” I allowed. “But maybe not. Maybe the ship activated the signal for some other reason. A remote call, for instance. Or it could activate automatically if the ship goes so long without checking in. We can’t know.”

Rune nodded. “I’ve never been mad at Cage for this long,” she said softly. “I hate it.”

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. The words I didn’t want to say hovered on my lips: Then why don’t you just forgive him? Then again, why couldn’t I? I bit them off, but she heard them anyway. “It’s not only that he was willing to kill them,” she said, resting the side of her head against her knees to look at me. “It’s the way he talked to me. The way he yelled at me. Like I was a child who couldn’t understand what needed to be done. Cage has always been protective of me, but he’s never treated me like an incompetent before.”

I sighed and stared at my fingers, the skin dry and splintered after weeks in space. Rune gave me her confidence so easily, with such trust. Did I dare return the favor? I wanted, so badly, to tell her the truth about what had happened with Matt. If anyone was going to believe me, it would be Rune. She didn’t have a vengeful bone in her body.