What the hell . . .
Anya was gone. The girl had simply vanished. No, not vanished. Changed. A completely different person stood where she had been standing, dressed in Anya’s same white Temple menagerie clothes, a few inches shorter than Anya so that the pants hem brushed the ground. It was a man. He was about four feet tall, painfully thin, the bones of his face especially pronounced—with the telltale white stripe in his hair.
An Axion impostor.
“Shit!” Leon yelled.
Mali and Cassian spun around, going rigid as soon as they saw the spy dressed in Anya’s clothes.
“Anya . . . ?” Mali started, but Leon pulled her away from the Axion.
“It isn’t Anya!” he said. “It’s one of those damn spies—Willa figured out how to expose them.”
The Axion tossed a look over his shoulder, judging the distance to the door.
“Don’t think about running.” Cassian strode to the door and slammed it shut.
The Axion’s eyes darted back and forth, his face scowling.
“How long have you been posing as her?” Mali demanded. “Where’s the real Anya?”
“Kill me and you’ll never know.” His grinning lips pulled back over graying, uneven teeth. “You’re too late, anyway. This plan has been generations in the making. We have forty lightships heading to the Gatherer home planet as we speak, and another hundred hunting down their mobile rovers. Twenty of our fastest cruisers are headed for Drogane and the other Mosca planets.” His cruel grin stretched wider. “We’ve already assumed control of four Kindred stations, including station 10-91. Its attempts to resist were pathetic. All those who fought us were killed.”
Leon’s stomach shrank. He thought back on the battle, Tessela and Fian fighting against the Axion intruders. His mouth felt suddenly very dry. Were they really dead? He swallowed down a lump.
“They could have gotten out,” Cassian said, as though reading his thoughts. “They could be on a cargo shuttle to Armstrong.”
“Armstrong?” the Axion sneered. “Then they’ve only bought themselves a few more hours.”
Mali gripped his shirt hard, shaking him. “Why? There’s no reason for you to attack Armstrong. It’s just humans and dust.”
“There are reports,” the Axion said slyly, “of evolved humans who can use telepathy. That’s the third phase of our plan—destroy any human settlements that show signs of evolution.”
Leon sucked in a breath. Ellis had been telepathic. Maybe there’d been others, too. He bit back the worry rising in his throat. Nok and Rolf were on Armstrong. And Makayla and Shoukry too, and all the kids and animals from the Hunt, assuming their ship made it.
“Christ,” he muttered, briefly closing his eyes.
The Axion started to let out a snicker at the distraught expressions on everyone’s faces, until Leon strode up and slammed a fist into his grinning mouth. The Axion’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“Leon!” Mali said. “He’s the only one who knows where Anya is!”
“I didn’t kill him,” he argued.
Cassian stood over the Axion’s unconscious body. “This is bad. If the Axion have already spread as far as he says, then there isn’t much that can stop them now. We might be the last hope. And if he has been posing as Anya even as far back as Armstrong, he knows everything. He must have told the other Axion that we’re on to them.”
“He couldn’t have been posing as Anya as far back as on Armstrong,” Mali said. “I was with her the entire time.” Mali turned to Willa. “Anya left with you.”
Willa’s eyes widened. She scrawled a quick message on the back of one of her papers.
Theta.
“Theta?” Mali said, and then her expression went flat. “That’s an Axion fuel station, isn’t it?”
Willa nodded. She scrawled more.
Anya went inside, and when she came back she was acting different. I tried to warn Cora. But Anya convinced her it was just the Kindred’s drugs.
“That was weeks ago!” Leon said. “She’s been a spy this entire time?”
“We need to consider what this means and what to do about it,” Cassian said.
Next to Leon, Bonebreak suddenly let out a snort of surprise. When Leon turned, the provision pack was open, and Bonebreak held a roughly spherical object with a glowing blue ring around it.
“What the hell is this?” Bonebreak said.
They all turned to him. Cassian and Serassi immediately went stiff. Cassian’s voice was tight. “That,” he said, “is a bomb.”
Bonebreak squealed and tossed the orb to Leon.
“Shit!” Leon said. “What am I supposed to do with this thing?”
“It’s ticking,” Cassian said in a rush. “It must have been triggered when you opened the pack.”
“That spy who posed as me was planning on getting you killed, boy!” Bonebreak said. “He got you to pick up a bomb that would blow up in the ship, killing you and Mali and Cassian before you could get back here. He didn’t think you’d resist opening it!”
Cassian’s lips moved silently, counting the ticks. His voice was urgent. “Ten more seconds until it goes off.”
Willa and Mali and Bonebreak all leaped back. Leon glanced at the door. His arm was too wounded to throw, but he could run. He could make it to the central vestibule, at least far enough to protect his friends. . . .
As if sensing his thoughts, Bonebreak cursed.
“Idiot humans.” He snatched the bomb out of Leon’s hand and started charging toward the door to the vestibule.
“Brother, no!” Ironmage yelled.
Leon gaped. His heart was thumping hard, his adrenaline pumping. What was that stupid Mosca doing? If Leon knew anything about the black market trader, it was that he’d sooner let them all blow up than risk his own life to save even one of them.
“Bonebreak, what the hell?” he yelled.
“I always liked you, boy,” Bonebreak called. “Never thought I’d die for a weak human childs, but at least you could smuggle with the best of them. Break some bones for me, boy. Break some bones!”
Leon stared, agape, as Bonebreak ran toward the dais. That crazy Mosca was actually, for the first time in his life, going to do something heroic. The other delegations turned in surprise, not yet having noticed the bomb. Bonebreak turned back just once. He nodded toward his brother, touching his chest in a sign of solidarity.
Leon took a single, stumbling step forward. “Bonebreak, no—”
With a sudden blast of light, the central vestibule shattered into a chaos of smoke and fire.
32
Cora
CORA AWOKE IN A cornfield.
Her back was flat against black soil as she blinked into a blue sky. A gentle wind blew the ripened stalks, making a rustling sound like whispers.
Whispers.
She sat upright, crying out, and clutched the sides of her skull. She must have passed out when Fian pushed her back into the puzzle chambers. Voices flooded between her ears like a deafening roar. There had to be a mistake. This couldn’t be what Serassi had intended. What if she’d been lying? What if Serassi had been one of the Axion in disguise and the injection was meant to kill her?
The ground rocked violently and Cora was thrown to her side. She cried out as she slammed into the ground. Her head rang. Half dazed, she looked around, but the cornfield was intact. Had it been the storm outside? Or had it just been in her head, the effects of Serassi’s drug? She tried to stand, but her muscles were spasming, and she collapsed back to the ground. She had to get out of this cornfield . . . this puzzle. Her friends were facing a danger none of them had anticipated. The Axion’s takeover would mean the end of freedom for all species.
The breeze rustled more cornstalks, and Cora doubled over and clamped her hands over her ears. Confusing sensations flooded her body. Her hand seemed to reach out on its own. She grabbed it with her other hand, staring at it. The fingers twitched strangely.
Her nails clawed against her own palm. Her muscles started spasming harder as her vision changed: first it took on a red tint, then a gray one.
Was this a panic attack?
Was she dying?
Fear blackened her mind as a series of visions assaulted her. Driving a tractor through rows of corn with wrinkled old hands. Chasing a little boy through a corn maze. Planting seeds in freshly tilled earth.