Genetically engineered from birth, Karin Makos’s powers have made her the Alliance’s most wanted person. With her sister still missing, and only a cryptic notebook left behind for clues, the mystery of her past is going to take a lot more time and resources than they have to unravel it.
And there’s a bigger problem looming. Keeping their promise to heal Ethan’s stepfather and the rest of the people on the Ozark puts them right past Caishen station and its Alliance allies—and there might be another force on their tail.
After the crew split apart on a wild chase that puts Karin in the hot seat, it’ll take all of their strength and ingenuity to bring them back together. With enemies gathering in the wings, a desperate, heavy-handed station commander hard on their tail, and the Shadows an ever-present threat, they must race against the odds and scramble to fight their way out.
An Excerpt from Chapter 3:
This is a stupid idea. A really stupid idea that’s going to end up with us all locked in some Alliance prison and me strapped to a gurney, waiting for medical experiments.
The light from the main hallway made her shadow twist and dance on the wall as she paced. They’d arranged to meet in the Arcin-17 complex, a forty-level conglomeration that had been architecturally lashed together through the sprawl near the northern edge of the Hegir-Nuna island, where the coastline started to curve into the mountains, and Marc had left her down an unlit hallway in one of the complex’s many retail deadzones. Boarded and shuttered shops lined the corridor, their sales and fliers long out of date, the windows beyond their security gates dark and coated with dust. Karin’s fingers twitched as she passed two stubbed-out cigarettes lying on the floor.
Guess the cleaning bots didn’t come this way much. If at all.
A distant shout made her look back to the mouth of the hall, anticipating Marc’s return—he’d only left a few minutes ago—and she paused her walk to give the hallway a good listen.
Nothing.
She shook her head again. Then, realizing how hopelessly cliché the action was, she re-adjusted the hood of her borrowed jacket to hide her face and moved farther into the hallway, avoiding the corridor’s single camera.
Arcin-17 was privately owned, which meant that its security was also privately owned. Due to some gray-area businesses that operated here, the complex’s owners had fought to keep it that way. It didn’t mean that the complex wouldn’tco-operate with the government. Even Marc admitted that the likelihood of them co-operating in their apprehension sat close to one-hundred-percent—but it provided one extra layer to ward off pursuit.
Besides, they hadn’t chosen it for its security protocols. They’d chosen it for its layout.
From its inception, it had never come even remotely close to what anyone would call straightforward or clean-cut. Each of the seventeen founding companies had hired its own architect and, for the most part, had then proceeded to not talk to each other about plans. The result combined a warren of hallways, theaters, two theme parks, three swimming pools, dormitories, the Hegir-Nuna branches of two universities, and more than five hundred restaurants, shops, and stalls into a tight-fitting, labyrinthine maze. One could spend an entire day in just one company’s section. Hell, she didn’t even know where the second theme park started, though she had seen one of the roller coasters loop through a walkway before.
In short, it was an excellent place to get lost in. And Marc had already broken the lock on the access door at the end of the hall.
They just had to heal Senton’s people and run. Simple, right?
Except for the part where Senton probably had the backing of the Alliance military behind him and planned to spring a trap on them.
The more she thought about it, the likelier it seemed.
But then, she had always been a pessimist. Or, well, she had been one since she and her sister had murdered themselves to freedom.