Page 29

I wrestle in the arms of the guards, but they’re painfully strong in a familiar way. Dread rushes into me with sickening effectiveness. “What did you do to him?”

They don’t answer me. I don’t expect they ever will. The insignia on their uniforms says Abr, but I can’t imagine that company would escort troublesome players into stone tunnels through an illegal portal.

Elix staggers to his feet and manages to get a bloodied hand around my waist. The guards don’t seem to care we’re walking together. He leans on me and tries to put himself upright on his own.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Lean on me.”

He rests his head on my shoulder. “Drug.”

My lip stings with a fresh split from a guard’s fist. His eyes find it, and tears form.

“I’m alright, for now. I’m more worried about you.”

“Silicon.” He licks his lips. “Magnesium. Titanium— Moon.”

Elix’s eyes roll back. His nostrils flare. “Hyperjet engine fuel.”

The lights up ahead blaze bright enough that I have to squint, even in the dimly lit tunnels.

“I love you,” he mumbles. “Can’t feel my legs.”

A ramp drops from the back of a stealth ship, and my worst suspicion is solidified. Atop the deck stands someone I never wanted to see again.

“No.” I slow, and resist the guards that pull me toward him. “Fuck you!”

“Love you too, sis. Welcome home.”

Cazir stands aboard the ship, dressed in furs with no honor badge. Beneath his misleadingly soft exterior is a high-tech suit for spacewalks. I can see the shield shimmering over his body.

My stomach clenches, and I’m suddenly thankful I didn’t have time to eat between mating with Elix and joining the laser tag game.

Elix looks from me to the man atop the platform before he stumbles and collapses on the ramp.

I try to stop and help him, but the guards separate us. Two drag him up the ramp. I kick the closest to me in the shin and bite the second in the wrist. But they don’t drop me. Instead, they grip me harder and cart me into a seat, where they strap me in with security belts that won’t respond to me if I fight them. The guards wear gloves that must contact the locks to permit them to open. I remember father’s security well enough.

The ramp closes as they sit Elix across the fuselage from me, a guard to each side. They belt him in, and he doesn’t fight it. Elix hugs himself in the dim yellow light of my brother’s black chrome ship and rests his head against a support rail.

I glare at my brother as guards bind my wrists. He saunters by me, gold in his teeth, a diamond in his ear. Red tracework frames his eyes like that of Lingon, and suddenly everything starts to make sense. This whole time, I think he’s known right where I was.

“What do you need me to find this time, prick?” I sneer.

He sucks on his gold teeth and sneers at me. “After Dad died—”

“He was never my father.”

His upper lip curls. “Our family vault is behind a puzzle wall. It requires someone who knows the language to open it.”

“Get a translator.”

“I did.” He shrugs. “Had to kill him, though. Tried to trick me and escape. That’s why I brought motivation.”

My brother jerks his head toward Elix.

Hatred burns hot in my chest. “If he dies, I will make sure your death is slow if I am given the chance.”

He laughs. “You won’t get one.”

But I slipped his watch once before. I am stronger now and smarter, too. All you have to do is give me an opportunity. And with his arrogance, he doesn’t always see the weaknesses in his systems.

We rocket out of a moon, into space. I lean forward and notice the map on the screen. We’re on the edge of Sol Federation territory, in an unpatrolled dead zone. There aren’t any satellites or spaceports out here. If we call for help, it will just be a signal that pings emptiness until someone comes within range. And most of the time, the people who hear the call are not the ones you want answering it.

A belt of a hundred small moons orbits a massive red planet, from what I can see where I sit. My brother’s pilot takes us through them and to the red planet below. It’s a rough ride down, turbulent. Elix is jerked back and forth. His eyes are closed, but he finds the support rail with a hand and steadies himself. He’s hanging on, just barely.

“What did you give him?” I ask.

“What does it matter?” My brother grabs an apple from a drawer and watches the descent from behind the pilot’s seat while he eats. “You don’t get him back until you’re done.”

“Won’t matter to me if I get him back, but he’s dead.”

“Venom was supposed to kill him,” he bitterly replies.

I look at Elix and see him crack open an eye and find me.

“What kind?”

“Why all the questions?” My brother picks up a crate and throws it at me in one of his typical tantrums.

“Cobra, from my home,” one of the guards says with pride as he kicks his feet out like killing another person is just a walk in the park. “Caught it and drained it myself.”

“Shut up!” My brother flings the apple he eats at the guard’s head.

The man catches it with ease and finishes eating the apple. It’s the first sign I have that my brother isn’t the real boss.

“Must pay you pretty good to put up with his shit,” I remark.

The guard gives me a cold look, and I sense he is not loyal to my brother, but he’s not arrogant enough to break his cover.

We dock in a hangar built deep into the rocks. As we set down on the floor, I notice someone in the co-pilot’s seat that I don’t remember my brother working with before. He’s got a laptop strapped to his chest and carries a bag of tech over tactical armor and weapons harnesses. I catch the image of a cameradrone on his screen before he closes it and packs up.

A guard unstraps me and lugs me up with a firm hand around my arm. I stumble along with him as he leads me down the rear ramp. Elix and his guards remain on the ship.

My brother walks across the dusty stone floor to a hallway carved out in the rock and lit up by modern electric torches. He motions me after him.

I follow his lead by force through the corridors in a catacomb of tunnels riddled with pockets filled with bones. We finally end up at a dead end with a rune puzzle on a wall.

“Open it, and you can have your precious green man back.” My brother sticks out his tongue like the idea leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

“What happened to you?” I ask. “I remember you being so different when we were kids.”

He snaps his fingers and points at the wall. “I adapted to survive.”

I look at the runes, trying to pick out the words. “Who built this?”

“Someone Dad killed as soon as they finished. He never gave me the code.”

I chuckle as I recognize the symbols. “This is easy.”

He snarls at me. “Then open it.”

“Sure. Bring Elix to me, and I will.”

A guard rests the muzzle of his rifle on my temple. “Don’t push him. I do not hesitate.”

“I can always find another translator and another until—”

“We’re all dead?” I ask. “I don’t fucking care if you have whatever is behind that wall. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of Dad’s shit.”

“Good.”

“But you may want to know what this says,” I warn.

“Nope.”

“You’ll listen if you want to keep your head, fuck stick.”

He paces and growls as more guards form up behind us. “Just open it!”

“Whatever. It’s ancient Eshtint.” I approach the wall and read the message. “It says, ‘Those who are greedy will pay for their sins with their lives.’”

“An empty threat,” he says in denial.

“You’re an idiot for not addressing a threat, you know that?” I push in the blocks with the symbol of greed in the corner, and the door rushes with air.

“Greed—” I mutter, thinking to myself as the dust stirs in the hallway. “Greed is not humble. How does one survive without greed of some kind?” I scan the room, wondering where the trap is, what it is, and how I can avoid dying because of my brother’s recklessness.

“To be humble is to—”

I loathe my brother, but I still don’t want him killed for the sins of our father. Father corrupted him. If we’d stayed with Mom, he’d have had a chance to grow up to be the brother I used to know.

“Get down!” I shout, dropping to the floor and covering my head.

My brother gives me a wild look, then drops as wave after wave of spined arrows lance the air.

“You’ll have to crawl,” I say.

My brother points a gun at my face. “You go.”

I glance back but don’t see Elix or anyone else with us, just my brother and all of his guards.

I snake my way through the doorway under the arrows and find the shut-off blinking red inside the wall. There’s one more door inside. I can see it as the dust clears.

A muzzle presses against my head, and suddenly there are twenty men behind me, all dressed like the other guards.

“Want to run the gauntlet again?” Cazir asks, his gun swirling with light, igniter hot and ready to fire.

“Not really.”

“Open the last door.”

I walk up to it and see a pin code plus a palm scanner. “Do you know the pin?”

“Would I go to the effort to bring you here if I did?”

I walk up to the platform and find a tiny round hole in the wall facing me. It either has a camera in it or a tiny dart meant to kill me. I scan the area for other threats. I’m just a guinea pig.

I set my hand on the scanner, and Lock One blinks green. My father preferred to count down differently than others. With only four numbers, I make a guess. “Ten, nine, eight, one.”

The second lock turns green. Then a green bar swivels beneath my hand.

Loyalty scan.

I’m not loyal to my father. My heart rate increases. I have no way to know how such a thing could even be detected. The bar chart rises into the red, dancing higher as a timer ticks down. I want to pull away, protect my hand, but I don’t. I want Elix back. This is how I do it. I can’t run through thirty men and live to talk about it.

It hits zero, and I wince in anticipation of the result.

The door clunks and locks disengage, slowly opening to the cavern. I step backward, rubbing my wrist, grateful I still have my hand and my life.

Cazir’s men fall in line behind my brother.

I watch in disgust as my father’s treasure room opens to someone I once loved who now loves all the gold, tech, and weapons more than me. The men squeeze in closer for a better look.

I wish I was invisible, that I could just vanish and slip through the cracks in their security system. I wish I wasn’t here. I don’t want the gold that they gawk at, the augments, the missiles, any of it.

I need to find Elix.

With the men distracted, I keep my steps silent as the dust-churned air fills the space between us, hiding me, and then I turn and run.

“Hey! Where’d she go?”

Rust-brown clouds swirl behind me as I sprint toward the hangar.

Please be there. Please be alive.

I snatch up a rifle from a downed guard not smart enough to listen to me and duck during the arrow ordeal. As I run, I check the ammo and familiarize myself with the rifle’s three-round burst and safety switch. It’s what Elix would want me to do.

The only treasure I care about now is the one I can lose forever, the one that can’t be replaced.