Mitzi scrambled down from her perch. As long as Nic’s ship hadn’t woken them—and it looked as though it hadn’t—the Cymics would be in a sort of hibernation, where they slept while they waited for noise or movement. Normally, Mitzi would have treated it as a stealth mission and snuck through the passageways, but her team was too untrained to know how to be stealthy. That meant their best chance probably lay in moving as quickly as they could and completing the job in the shortest space of time. If they were fast, it might be possible to get off the planet before many of the parasites even knew they were there.

“Everyone stay close. Adam, you keep up front with me, so I can keep an eye on you. Skye, Franc, stay at the rear and cover our backs. I need you guys to stay alert. If you see or hear anything move, let me know immediately. And remember, if something comes towards you, you’re going to want to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“It’s emptier than I expected it to be,” Adam said as he jogged forward to stand beside his leader. “Almost… too empty.”

“Cut the dramatics.” Mitzi waited for her ducklings to line up in the correct formation; the three riskiest members—Mir, Eoin, and Ellen—would be shielded between the more reliable. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best she could do. “From what my colleagues have told me, the Cymics prefer to be in their native forms when they’re not trying to infiltrate stations… and their native forms like to be underground, where it’s dark and quiet.” She walked briskly, leading them through the easiest path amongst the rubble, trying to pick out the streets as she headed for the large black ex-tower.

“And water,” Nic added.

“Wait, I thought they could survive without drinking?”

“Yeah, this is new. I just heard about it this morning. They can live without water for… well, the scientists reckon a really, really long time, but given the choice, they seem to prefer to congregate around damp areas.”

“Good to know.” A bank of rubble blocked their path, extending too far to either side to walk around, so she started to climb over it. It had once been a garage; there were buggies, all of them damaged, buried under the bricks. One vehicle’s nose poked out of the debris like an iceberg bobbing in the ocean, and as she stepped around it, she felt her blood run cold as she saw it had been torn in half.

“Stay close,” she repeated, even though her team was huddled so tightly that they would bump into her if she stopped walking.

They went down the other side of the collapsed garage, using the metal supports and exposed pipes to keep their balance. Mitzi found the suit increasingly easy to walk in. Her body was slowly becoming used to its movements being exaggerated, and she was learning how much energy it needed to use to get the response she wanted. It had been disquieting at first, but the suit’s boosts were saving her a lot of energy. On the ground, Mitzi quickened her pace into a light jog and was delighted to see that her team was able to keep up with her.