“I told them,” she replied, her chin jutting out in defiance. “What was I supposed to do? Let them send Aliya to that place on her own?”

I started to say something else, apology or question or I didn’t know what, but a sound caught my attention. I turned to find Cage, Mia, and Alexei in the doorway, none of them looking particularly happy. “Where’s Reed?” Cage asked, taking in the scene.

Jasper stretched and leaned forward. “If he got his way? Dismantling this ship piece by piece and pocketing the components. What’s going on?”

Alexei rubbed his face and took Mia’s hand for support. She let him. Aside from the times Mia was in danger, this was the least composed I’d ever seen him. “There are things I should explain.”

A shrill screech tore through the room, jerking Rune awake with a cry and sending the rest of us cringing to the floor, hands over our ears.

“Sorry!” came Reed’s voice, hollow and disembodied over the ship’s loudspeaker. “Oh man. Sorry, everyone. That was too loud.”

“Reed,” Mia growled in the same tone she would have used if she’d spotted a cockroach scurrying under the couch.

Liam shouted something in the background, and Reed said, “Yeah, yeah, I know! Delicate machinery! Got it!” He cleared his throat. “Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are about to dock on Obsidian. All interested parties, please report to the cargo bay. That is all. Over and out. Signing off, farewell, and—ouch! ” A scuffle came over the loudspeaker, abruptly dying in another, mercifully less shrill, screech.

Silence.

The moment would have been comedic if not for Alexei dominating the scene, his face a mask of some unreadable emotion. I scanned Mia and Cage for clues, but no one gave anything away. “Alexei,” I said, “what’s going on here? If we’re walking into danger, you’d better let us know.”

He smiled grimly. “Oh, it’s danger, all right. Obsidian is my family’s station.”

SEVENTEEN

ALEXEI EXPLAINED AS WE RUSHED for the cargo bay. “My family is powerful in Russia. Powerful on Earth. Not corporate powerful, but the other side, the side the corporations don’t touch.”

Organized crime, in other words. I bit my lip to keep from judging. After all, I’d spent seventeen years blindly believing every lie Omnistellar fed me. I tried not to leap to conclusions anymore. “It wasn’t a life I was interested in leading,” Alexei continued, “even before my parents and my brother were killed in a . . . terrorist attack.” He glanced at Mia, almost imperceptibly, and suddenly I remembered she’d been in prison for domestic terrorism.

She was framed, Cage had told me.

Was she? Unbidden, my gaze also slid to Mia.

She caught my look and muttered a curse. “Are you going to ask if I did it?”