“All the more reason to get off the streets before we’re noticed,” Jasper explained patiently. “Come on. This way.”

“Are these casinos?” I asked as we proceeded along a side street. Here, too, an air of holiday cheer suffused the space. People dined at outdoor tables or sipped drinks while they talked and laughed. Conversation faded in our wake, shocked murmurs trailing us. We had a few minutes at best before someone called security, and security on Mars meant Mars Mining. With a tourist invitation, they’d charge in here without provoking so much as a whisper from Tourism Rouge.

Jasper shook his head, gesturing vaguely behind us. “Casinos are that way. Mars law. Everything has its own district. The theaters are over there, the casinos behind us, the more, um, sketchy entertainment on our right. We’re heading to the hotels.” He glanced both ways and ducked behind a very fake row of bushes, gesturing for us to follow.

Cage peeled some of the plasticky branches back for me and Rune, who gave him a reluctant smile. “Thanks,” she said softly. It was probably the first civil word she’d spoken to him since we’d left Sanctuary.

His expression betrayed his surprise, but a wide, genuine grin spread across his face. Catching my eye, he quirked an eyebrow, and I smiled involuntarily in response. It was hard not to smile at Cage when he beamed like that. He was the flip side of everything I’d grown up valuing. Was I attracted to him or to that? Did it even matter? I ran my fingers through my hair, wincing at the texture. Hey, if he could look at this without frowning . . .

The others followed us through. As soon as we left the streets, Mia vanished. I supposed I had to admire her restraint in not doing so in full view of the crowds of tourists. I’d sensed her twitchiness as we advanced, her desperation to escape the horde of watchful eyes.

We paused a moment to collect our breath in relative privacy. We were in a slightly tacky but still impressive park: fake grass surrounding a massive fountain where fish spit water to one another before it trickled down to a pond, complete with rubber lily pads. “Do I hear frogs?” I asked dubiously.

Jasper grinned and pointed. Following his finger, I saw a cleverly camouflaged speaker tucked into the leaves of a fake palm tree. Rows of plastic hedges surrounded us. At either edge of the garden, gates flanked a stone path. Even here, Mars’s telltale red dust settled over a good portion of the area, but robotic cleaners zipped around our feet, vacuuming it up quickly and silently. I could almost have been back on Earth.

Even as the thought crossed my mind, though, my gaze traveled up to where Phobos sat in the sky, a misshapen lump nothing like Earth’s moon. Deimos drifted nearby, smaller and dimmer but unmistakably a second moon. Once again, my stomach clenched at the sight. I was on Mars. It didn’t take away from the horror of what I’d been through, but it was a moment I could take in and enjoy just for what it was.