Chapters (48)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Copyright
“Yeah, that didn’t exactly go off flawlessly.”
Mia glanced at Imani with what, for Mia, passed as guilt. “I guess not. But we survived, and we’re here, and we’re going to survive this, too.”
I nodded, letting her determination inflame my own. “You’re right. This isn’t the time to quit. Let’s share what we know and—”
At that moment, a buzzer rang through the room. We all jerked upright as the front door rattled. “Hide!” Cage growled. He grabbed my arm and swept me along with him, raising a blast of dust as he pulled me behind the crates seconds before the door swung open.
EIGHT
CAGE SHOVED ME INTO A corner, physically shielding me. Even in the tension of the moment, I registered the strength of his body against mine, and an uncertain thrill raced down my spine. Resolutely burying it, I peered around a crate. Imani, Rune, and Jasper crouched behind a similar stack opposite us. Alexei and Reed had ducked behind their own crate, which barely hid Alexei’s broad shoulders. Mia, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
Loud voices reached us, and I winced. It wasn’t the guards from the prison, so that was something. But we were dealing with at least three miners. Mars Mining wasn’t the best corporation in the solar system. They didn’t offer a ton of perks to their citizens, and they weren’t exactly a political powerhouse. But they were on the map with their proprietary dome technology, the only reason cities even functioned on places like Mars or Jupiter’s moons. That meant that even without paying their citizens particularly well, they tended to attract people with ambition. My mom always said Mars Mining was a corporation to watch. They weren’t much now, but she said if we gave them a decade unchecked, they’d rival Omnistellar in power, and people who saw the winds shifting that way were willing to put up with a lot to get in on the ground floor. Mars also attracted loyalists—not of the Omnistellar brand, which was its own unique type of fanatical, but loyalists all the same. The corporation might not bind their hearts, but the community did. People who lived on Mars viewed off-worlders as trouble, a perception Mars Mining didn’t exactly discourage.
Which meant that when all was said and done, I’d rather not attract miner attention. We could take them down, of course. We had a stun gun on our side, not to mention Alexei, Jasper, and Mia. But I didn’t know when they were expected to check in or who their disappearance might alert.
Now I prayed that Mia followed my thinking and waited them out. She was useful in a fight but completely unpredictable and unreliable outside one. My temples throbbed. I’d never had to deal with this kind of uncertainty before. Omnistellar had clear rules and regulations to govern any situation, and sometimes I really missed knowing exactly what to do. People like Cage and Mia, though, wouldn’t have stuck to the rules even if they’d known they existed.