ENDS OF THE EARTH

Galaxy Girl - Book Three

by Kate Christie

Copyright 2022 by Kate Christie. Second Growth Books,
Seattle, WA.

Cover photo:
Wil Stewart on
Unsplash.

All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to
other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
organizations, events, and incidents are either the products of the
author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual organizations, persons (living or dead),
events, or incidents is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgments

As always, I offer my sincere gratitude to my
trusty early readers: Kris and Charley. A huge thanks also to the
editor for book three, Marcelle W. Any errors in the following
pages are mine alone.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About the Author

Patreon Supporters

Chapter One

Ava
stood on her office balcony, gazing out over Seattle’s waterfront
and the curved expanse of Puget Sound almost too bright to look
upon as it reflected the slowly setting sun. When she’d moved to
Seattle earlier in the year, Ava definitely hadn’t expected so much
sunshine. Was this an off year, or was it simply climate change?
She felt the familiar shudder of horror wash through her
body—the planet’s sixth mass extinction event was well under
way!—and blinked, trying to push away her existential panic.
With her mother and brother on the loose, there were more immediate
fish to fry.

Wait. Was that Kenzie and her multicolored
bodysuit shooting past the Ferris wheel? Ava squinted, wishing she
had her girlfriend’s enhanced senses. But even if the mercurial
flash had been Kenzie zooming along the waterfront, she was gone
now.

Ava continued to scan the sky, a frown
tugging at her brow. She was not a fan of Kenzie’s insistence on a
regular patrol schedule, especially now. If Ava’s brother and his
murderous minions wanted to find Seattle’s increasingly famous
alien superhero, they would only have to set a trap between five
and seven on any given weekday evening, as Ava had pointed out too
many times now to count. Kenzie, however, refused to vary her
schedule. The residents of Seattle appreciated knowing when the
Galaxy Duo would be airborne, and Kenzie wasn’t about to risk an
increase in crime just because Sentinel was out there somewhere
probably planning something nefarious.

“As soon as you give terrorists power over
you, they’ve won,” Kenzie had argued a few nights earlier, quoting
every action movie ever. It had been all Ava could do not to roll
her eyes, but she somehow managed to keep her response to a
disapproving sigh. Staying respectful even when you disagreed with
someone might not be part of the Westbrook ethos, but then again
Ava didn’t feel much like a Westbrook these days.

It wasn’t that she believed caving to shadow
threats was ideal. But despite Kenzie’s insistence to the contrary,
a sizable gray area existed between giving terrorists power and
changing up a routine to protect yourself. And anyway, Sentinel
wasn’t the only group gunning for the Galaxy Duo. In addition to
dozens of smaller anti-alien extremist groups, the federal
government wasn’t keen on alien vigilante squads. Kenzie and
Panopticon may have formed a mutually beneficial partnership, but
in Ava’s opinion, not being predictable was simply smart.

Behind her, the intercom on her desk buzzed,
and she turned away from the railing. Despite the late hour, she
had one last meeting to get through this evening. A longtime member
of Hyperion’s board was in town from New York and had requested a
“chat,” and since she served at the pleasure of the board, she
couldn’t very well say no.

“Ned Anderson is here, Ms. Westbrook,” her
assistant’s disembodied voice announced.

Ava punched a button on her phone. “Thanks,
Rose. Please send him in.”

He swept into the room, his stride commanding
even now as he neared his seventieth birthday. “Ava,” he said,
extending his hand. “How the heck are you?”

Ava braced herself for the usual businessman
squeeze, in which a man in a suit and tie tries to assert his
dominance by reducing the hand of a lesser being to dust. As soon
as the requisite mauling was over, she turned toward the wall that
housed the Visiting Executive Entertainment Bar, the liquor cabinet
her mother had installed behind a secret panel. It was after five;
why wait to drink? Not like Ned would turn her down.

“What can I get for you?” she asked, pressing
the button that revealed the bar.

“Whiskey neat.” Ned lowered his girth onto
the couch. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Ava offered a polite smile and focused on
pouring their drinks. In addition to finding herself a new
assistant, she had recently replaced her mother’s cold,
uncomfortable furnishings with warmer, comfier fixtures. Kenzie had
helped pick out the new paint colors and had insisted on testing
the replacement chairs and couch. All came with Galaxy Girl’s
express approval—not that Ava would be broadcasting that fact.

“My mother’s taste has always been more
spartan,” she said as she handed Ned his drink.

He grimaced. “That’s one word for
Amelia.”

Ava lifted her glass to her lips to hide her
frown. She was furious with her mother right now, it was true, but
that didn’t mean she wanted to listen to other people speak ill of
Amelia. As the scent of the whiskey wafted upward, she hesitated.
What was that smell? She couldn’t quite—

“Wait!” she said, snaking out her free hand
to stop Ned from taking a sip.

He reared back, pinning her with an offended
glare. “Excuse me!”

Ava’s mind raced. “I forgot—we received
notice from our suppliers that there had been a recall on this
batch.”

Ned lifted his glass, taking an audible
whiff. Then, nose wrinkling, he handed the drink back to her. “If
that isn’t a metaphor for your mother’s management of this
company,” he said, broad, florid face still arranged in an
expression of mild disgust, “then I don’t know what is.”

Ava barely heard his caustic comment. She was
too busy replacing both glasses on the bar and pushing the button
to return it behind the panel. Who had access to her office? And
who knew about the secret bar? Her mother’s face swam before her,
but she blinked hard. It couldn’t be her, could it? This was more
Nick’s style. It had to be him. At least, she hoped it was him.
Otherwise, she would have to reconsider everything she knew about
her family.

She glanced at the windows, suddenly aware
how vulnerable she was before the thin wall of glass. Anyone with a
long-range scope could keep tabs on her easily from a number of
nearby buildings, if they wanted to. And what about a drone?
Hyperion offered a number of models capable of delivering a
payload. Jesus. How had she ever believed herself safe
here?

“Ava,” Ned said, actual concern tingeing his
voice. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” She forced a smile as she
settled at the other end of the couch. At least seated here, she
wasn’t as vulnerable. The opaque guardrail around the balcony
offered a modicum of protection from all but the tallest of
buildings. “Now, what did you want to talk about, Ned?”

Somehow, she made it through the conversation
that followed: a discussion of stock prices, investor complaints,
industry rumors, and competitor moves, all with her mother’s recent
actions front and center. Ava’s hands were still shaking when she
saw Ned out, though, and the door had barely closed when she
selected a familiar name from her cell phone contacts.

Pick up, pick up, pick up, she
thought, pacing away from the floor-to-ceiling windows with one arm
folded across her midsection.

Sloane answered after only a few rings.
“Ava?”

“Yes. Can you come see me?” she asked. “I’m
at work.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“Yes, but—can you just get here as soon as
possible? And can you bring Mika, if she’s available?”

Sloane paused. “I can do that. What about
Kenzie?”

“No. And please don’t tell her I called
you.”

“Is that really a good idea?” Sloane asked,
her tone indicating her opinion on the subject.

“Just for now.”

Ava didn’t want to keep secrets from Kenzie,
but at the moment, she needed Sloane and Mika to help her figure
out her next steps without her superpowered girlfriend having a
panic attack in the background. Given the likelihood that Ava’s
office was bugged, the last thing any of them needed was Galaxy
Girl showing up from her patrol in a tizzy over another
assassination attempt.

Another assassination attempt, a voice
inside her head whispered as Ava hung up the phone. God. What had
her life become?

Cognizant of the windows, she dropped back
onto the couch. Her first impulse was to text Bea, Madi, or
Angelica. But texting wasn’t entirely secure, and she didn’t want
to bring danger to their doors. Instead, she hugged herself and
pulled up Instagram. Perhaps scrolling through travel videos and
nature photography would keep her distracted from the terrible,
inescapable fact that someone close to her wanted her dead. Nick
had often accused her of being an “alien sympathizer”—blasphemy to
him, particularly since their father’s murder—and the last time
she’d seen him had been from the witness stand at his trial when
her testimony had helped put him away. But always before now she’d
managed to convince herself that there were some lines even a
Westbrook wouldn’t cross; that it was his supporters—or
enemies?—trying to harm her, not her brother himself.

But now—well, she wasn’t sure she believed in
that imaginary line anymore.

Instagram failed to distract her from the
hardening pit in her midsection, but fortunately, she didn’t have
to wait long. A quarter hour after Ned had left, Rose buzzed
through on the intercom. “Ms. Westbrook, reception says there’s an
Agent Shepherd from Panopticon here to see you?”

Ava moved to the desk and pressed the send
button. “Yes, that’s Kenzie’s sister.” It hadn’t taken Rose long to
deduce that Kenzie had free access to Ava’s office and person; she
might as well know that Sloane came as a package deal. “Please have
security escort her up. And then, really, Rose, you should go
home.”

“I don’t mind waiting until you—”

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Ava said, her
voice as gentle as she could manage. Given the circumstances,
probably not very gentle.

After a moment, Rose said, “Thank you, Ms.
Westbrook. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Ava echoed, hoping it was
true. “And thank you, Rose. I appreciate all of your hard work
getting up to speed.”

“Of course. Good night, Ms. Westbrook.”

“Good night.”

Ava turned away and began to pace the office.
Was this the right decision? Should she have embroiled Sloane, a
longtime Panopticon agent, in Westbrook family drama? Sloane had
made no secret of her mistrust of all things related to Nick and
Sentinel. How would she react to this situation?

Ava wasn’t going to lie. Seeing Sloane and
Mika all but burst into her office a few minutes later, their
movements confident and their expressions concerned, was a huge
relief. Not as big a relief as seeing Kenzie would have been, but
for now, #AgentDetective (as Matt had nicknamed them) were exactly
what Ava needed. When Mika tugged her into a warm hug, she let go,
finally, tears of reaction blurring her vision as she clung to the
shorter woman.

“I would ask how you are,” Mika said, “but
you look even paler than usual, so…”

Ava managed a slight laugh, mostly for the
sake of any hidden surveillance devices. “I’ve had better
days.”

“Apparently. Come on. Let’s sit down.”

With a shaky nod, Ava allowed herself to be
guided to the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said, swiping at the tears
trying to wend their way down her cheek. “I’m fine. Everything’s
fine. I appreciate you both being here.”

Mika sat down beside her, hands warm against
Ava’s. “Can you tell us what this is about?”

“Bandal rum,” she said, her lips almost numb.
Was she in shock? Maybe she should drink something warm, like tea.
Definitely not whiskey, she thought, and barely squashed a
hysterical giggle.

Sloane stepped closer, gaze sharp. “What
about Bandal rum?”

Rising, Ava moved to the hidden bar and
pressed the release button, clenching and unclenching her hands as
the panel slowly slid away, revealing the whiskey bottle and two
half-full tumblers.

“Voilà,” she said, waving at the drinks.
“Smell for yourself. I think my brother is trying to send me a
message.”

Sloane made it to the bar first. She sniffed
one of the glasses, grimaced, and held it out to Mika. While her
girlfriend took a cautious whiff, Sloane asked, “Why do you think
your brother is to blame?”

“The timing, for one. Also, Nick has always
loved dramatic irony, and—” she raised her voice slightly for any
hidden transmitters—“what else would you call poisoning an alien
sympathizer with off-world alcohol?”

“Your security team is solid, judging from
the escort we received,” Sloane said. “How could your brother get
to you here?”

Mika’s frown matched Sloane’s, and Ava could
almost see their mental gears spinning in unison. According to
protocol, Sloane and Mika would have been escorted to the executive
elevator by a pair of armed guards—former special ops agents—and,
once they reached the executive floor, would have checked in with
another guard. In theory, the system should have prevented most
people from entering or leaving her office.

Ava shrugged, hugging herself again. “I don’t
know. That’s why I called you. I’m not sure who to trust.”

“Who at Hyperion has regular access to your
office?” Mika asked.

Ava ticked off the list on her fingers: her
current assistant, her former assistant, her security team, her
mother (though probably not at this juncture), other members of the
executive team, and the custodial staff.

“That’s a lot of people,” Mika said.

“Victoria, our CEO, isn’t here right now, if
that helps. She’s working from the New York office for the rest of
the summer.” Victoria, she was fairly certain, wanted to spend her
weekends at her house in the Hamptons, thus the move. But good
riddance, as far as Ava was concerned. The less she saw of her
mother’s cousin, the better. She was pretty sure the feeling was
mutual, judging by the lack of anything other than essential
contact Victoria had sought even before heading back to the New
York office.

“Okay.” Sloane nodded decisively. “So, let’s
work the case.”

She and Mika exchanged a look that seemed
almost too private, and Ava looked away. They totally got off on
investigating cases, didn’t they? She could see the attraction.
Science was all about solving puzzles, too, and working on a puzzle
with someone required a certain level of intimacy. Still, she stood
by her decision not to involve Kenzie at this juncture. The last
thing they needed was her girlfriend beating down the door—or
worse, Galaxy Girl beating up Hyperion’s janitorial staff or
security personnel. Ava wanted to keep this as quiet as possible.
Since no one had died from ingesting the alien rum, she thought she
might even succeed.

Mika pulled out her phone and selected the
recording app. “Why don’t we start by going over the sequence of
events.”

Ava described the late meeting, trying to
keep her voice steady as she remembered how close Ned had come to
swallowing the poisoned whiskey.

“I don’t suppose your guest was an
off-worlder, by any chance?” Sloane asked.

“No. He was a longtime friend of my mother’s,
actually, before turning on her in the press last week.” To her own
ears, her voice had lost some of its shocky quality. Now anger was
beginning to rise inside her, dark and heated.

“Good thing you recognized the—” Sloane
froze, her eyes on Ava.

Clearly, she had just realized what Ava had
already sussed out: The would-be assassin had chosen a poison that
Ava recognized because she was dating an off-worlder. Coincidence,
or unsubtle hint that Sentinel knew Ava’s girlfriend wasn’t
human?

Mika glanced between them. “What am I
missing?”

Sloane shook her head at Mika, eyes full of
warning—apparently, she too realized the room wasn’t secure—and
glanced back at Ava. “Do you think your brother meant to harm
you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Could it have been a warning, then?”

“Maybe.” She moved back to her desk to shut
down her laptop. The sooner they were out of here, the better.

“Any idea where he might have gotten a hold
of alien rum?” Mika asked.

Ava eyed Sloane. “I feel like you could
probably answer that one better than I can, Agent Shepherd.”

Sloane fidgeted under Mika’s enquiring gaze,
and interesting. Did Mika not know how free her girlfriend
was with the contents of Panopticon’s evidence locker? Actually,
that tracked. Mika didn’t seem like she would approve of Sloane
“borrowing” certain off-world items for her little sister’s
enjoyment.

“You’re not going to tell me what I’m
missing, are you?” Mika asked.

“Not here,” Ava said, gesturing at their
surroundings meaningfully.

“Fine. But as you said, the choice of alcohol
does seem deliberate.”

And not just because Nick considered Ava a
traitor to the family cause. She glanced at Sloane and saw her own
fears reflected in the other woman’s eyes. If Nick—and by
extension, Sentinel—knew that Kenzie wasn’t human, did that mean
they knew she was Galaxy Girl? Worse, had they guessed that she was
Zattalian, an all-powerful unicorn among Earth’s off-world
refugees?

Sloane shook her head and ground out,
“Goddammit! I told her what could happen if
she—”

The dark, twisted core of Ava’s anger drove
her to stare Sloane down. “If she what? Got involved with a
Westbrook?”

Sloane stared back, her own brow furrowed,
until Mika touched her elbow. Then Sloane’s shoulders fell and she
veered away, heading to the window to redirect her gaze out across
the city.

Ava took a breath, trying to recenter
herself. Sloane wasn’t her enemy, and she didn’t deserve her anger.
Ava glanced outside too, checking again for Kenzie’s masked figure
racing the seagulls. The twilit sky was hazy now, lights flicking
on in neighboring buildings like the fireflies Ava remembered from
summering with Bea’s family in the Hamptons. After a childhood in
the city, she’d been amazed by how, when traversing a country road
at night, nearby fields would light up in response to the vehicle’s
lights. She’d always wondered what message the headlights had
transmitted—and what the field of insects had signaled in
answer.

They didn’t have fireflies here on the West
Coast, as far as she could tell. But as a bonus, there were
significantly more queer people and off-worlders.

“All right, then,” Mika said, moving closer.
“I think we have enough to get started. We’ll see what we can turn
up, okay?”

“Okay.” As they hugged, Ava whispered, “Check
my security team.” She slipped her hand into Mika’s jacket pocket
and dropped the Post-it note with the IP address and password they
would need to access her security server. She only hoped it would
be enough.

Mika squeezed her a bit tighter. “Got it.”
She stepped back and offered a reassuring smile.

“Do you want us to walk you out?” Sloane
asked.

“Actually, that would be great,” Ava said,
and hurried to finish packing up. The last thing she wanted was to
be alone right now in her mother’s old office, the room awash with
the eerie reddish-orange glow of sunset.

As she sat in the back of the Range Rover a
few minutes later, Ramón occasionally stealing glances at her in
the rearview mirror, Ava hoped she had done the right thing by
looping in Kenzie’s sister and her girlfriend. Now, she just needed
to tell Kenzie what had happened. They were supposed to meet for
dinner, which meant Ava should have time for a shower. It would be
her second of the day, but after the evening’s events, she could
use the relaxing warmth of her new apartment’s steam shower. Maybe
it would even chase away the chill that had taken up what felt like
permanent residence along her spine.

Her brother’s face flashed before her,
triumphant and taunting, followed by her mother’s, dour and
disapproving. Maybe it hadn’t been them at all. Perhaps the
would-be poisoner had been a stranger motivated by political
fervor. One could hope, couldn’t one? Then again, as her father had
been fond of saying—an Albert Camus reference, if Ava wasn’t
mistaken—holding out hope was as foolish as despairing was
cowardly.

No wonder her family was so dysfunctional.
Amelia and the General had both possessed startlingly little
emotional intelligence.

Ava rested her chin on her upraised hand and
closed her eyes, trying to push away memories of the
Thornton-Westbrooks. She didn’t need them. In fact, she was
significantly better off without her brother and even, perhaps, her
adopted mother playing an active role in her life. Somehow, though,
that didn’t make their betrayal any less painful.

If only feelings could be reasoned with.

Chapter Two

Kenzie didn’t mean to eavesdrop on her sister
and Mika’s conversation. It just sort of happened. One minute she
was out patrolling the city and enjoying the sunset over Puget
Sound, the cry of seagulls and the blast of ferry horns echoing
over the usual traffic noise, and the next she’d spotted Mika’s
motorcycle cutting through downtown, Sloane holding on behind her.
They were going well above the speed limit, which was typical for
Sloane but not so much for Mika. Curiosity—and mild alarm—piqued,
Kenzie dipped closer, allowing her enhanced hearing more freedom
than she usually did. If Sloane or Mika were in trouble…

Even with her super hearing, Kenzie only
caught bits and pieces of her sister’s ranting: “Didn’t I say
nothing good would come of this?” And, “Fucking Romeo and
Juliet bullshit.” And, “Kenzie was happy for
like, ten minutes, and now this happens.”

Before Mika had properly parked her bike
outside Panopticon, Sloane was already stalking away, helmet under
her arm and curses falling from her lips. She only stopped when
Kenzie landed with an audible thud on the sidewalk beside her.

“What do you mean, now this happens?”
Kenzie demanded, hands on her hips. “What happened, Sloane?”

Sloane looked to Mika for help, but she only
shrugged as she pocketed her keys and approached them. “Um,” Sloane
said, dragging a hand through her short hair, “I really don’t think
I should be the one to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Kenzie said, feeling her
blood pressure rise commensurate with the panic flooding her brain.
“Is it Ava? Oh my god, is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Sloane said, hands rising in a
placating gesture. She held Kenzie’s gaze. “She’s okay, I promise.
But there was an incident at Hyperion, and she asked Mika and me to
look into it.”

“What kind of incident?”

Sloane looked at Mika again, who responded
with a subtle nod. Lowering her voice, Kenzie’s sister said,
“Someone spiked the booze in her office bar with Bandal rum.”

Sloane had barely finished her sentence when
Kenzie launched herself skyward. She didn’t remember consciously
deciding to fly. One moment she was on the ground outside
Panopticon and the next she was blurring through the city toward
Belltown. She’s okay, she told herself fiercely. Sloane had
promised. But another thought followed immediately: For how
long? Even now, Ava could just as easily be cold and
still, her heartbeat silenced, her empty body being prepared for
burial beneath the Earth’s surface. Or being readied for the fires
of a crematorium, because hadn’t she said that she planned to be
cremated when she died?

Oh, god, when she died…
Kenzie dropped a few feet in midair before recovering and pushing
onward even faster.

New plan: She was going to get Ava and take
her to Vancouver right now, and Ava would have to stay there until
Kenzie determined that Hyperion was safe. No, that Seattle
was safe. Because if Sentinel could reach Ava at Hyperion with its
ridiculously strict security protocols, they could reach her
anywhere.

Even as one part of Kenzie’s mind plotted
Ava’s “extraction,” as Sloane would have called it, another part
tried to reason with her non-responsive pre-frontal cortex. Ava was
her own person and would not look kindly on being kidnapped. Kenzie
had no right to disregard her autonomy. Moreover, her personal code
of conduct prevented her from abusing her powers in such a way. At
least, in theory.

She was almost to Ava’s condo when she
remembered she wasn’t allowed to come in hot in daylight unless it
was an emergency. Then again, didn’t attempted murder count as an
effing emergency? Reluctantly, she veered toward the closest safe
roof. In moments, back in her normal clothes with her hair in a
messy jumble around her shoulders, she was half-flying,
half-sprinting to Ava’s building, where she leaned into the buzzer
and waited impatiently for Ava to answer.

The fact that she didn’t respond was hardly
reassuring.

With her back to the building, Kenzie drew in
a breath and closed her eyes, extending her senses outward to track
the heartbeat that lulled her to sleep most nights. There.
She opened her eyes and used her enhanced vision. Ava was on her
way home, only a few blocks away now. Kenzie could wait for her.
She could.

She couldn’t wait. Too rattled to remain
still, she raced down the street toward the corner where Ava’s
Range Rover was about to appear, arm already lifted to flag down
the car.

Ramón drove past her at first, but then the
brake lights flashed and Ava rolled down her window. “Don’t say
anything,” she whispered under her breath.

Kenzie heard the warning perfectly and stood
where she was, hands clenched in her jacket pockets.

“Darling, I thought we said we’d meet at my
place?” Ava said.

Kenzie noticed Ramón’s gaze fixed on her in
the side mirror and forced a smile. “It’s such a nice night,” she
said, “I thought we could walk. Besides, I had the best interview
today and I couldn’t wait to tell you about it.”

Ava’s laugh sounded rueful. “I’ve had quite
the interesting afternoon myself. But I need a shower. Can the walk
wait?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful. Hop in.” Ava’s smile held a hint
of tension as she put the window back up.

Ramón unlocked the door, and Kenzie slid
inside. “Hi, Ramón.”

“Kenzie.” He nodded at her in the rearview
mirror and guided the car back into traffic.

Ava’s gaze still held a note of warning, so
Kenzie merely gripped her hand as Ramón parked the car in the
garage and radioed to the security team waiting upstairs. Then he
escorted them to the elevator, keeping his eyes directed outward at
the shadowy garage as they waited for the elevator car to
arrive.

As the doors slid shut on Ramón’s back,
Kenzie whipped toward Ava. “What happened?” she asked in a furious
whisper. “Sloane said someone tried to poison you at work! Why
didn’t you call me?”

Ava rubbed her forehead as if one of her
infrequent migraines was threatening. “I didn’t want to interrupt
your patrol. I was going to tell you over dinner.”

Kenzie hesitated, torn between anger and
empathy. Ava should have called her, shouldn’t she? But she looked
so worn down that Kenzie couldn’t in good conscience berate her.
Besides, she wasn’t angry with Ava. She was furious with the person
who had spiked Ava’s office stash.

She sighed and scooted closer, her touch on
Ava’s arm tentative. “I’m sorry. I got scared.”

Ava looked at her, eyes damp and vulnerable.
“I was going to tell you, I promise.”

Kenzie nodded as the doors slid open. “I
know.”

Two security guards waited in the entryway,
and a mask descended over Ava’s face as the two men stood up
straighter. “All quiet?” she asked, her voice brisk.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the younger man while his
partner unlocked Ava’s door.

“Make sure you get your dinner break in.”

He smiled. “We will.”

Kenzie gave him a short nod and brushed past.
For a security guard, he was a little too quick to smile for her
taste.

Inside, Ava kicked off her heels and hung her
blazer and purse over the back of a nearby chair. “Are you
staying?” she asked, padding toward the kitchen. Her voice was as
withdrawn as the look on her face, which made Kenzie pause. She
wanted to drop in on Sloane and Mika at Panopticon and see what
they were up to with the investigation. But if Ava needed her…

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you until
later,” Ava said, untucking her blouse from her dress pants as she
moved through the kitchen. “All I really want is to take a long,
hot shower.”

Kenzie bit her lip. But what if Nick’s goons
had followed Ava home? What if something else happened, and Kenzie
wasn’t here to save her? On the other hand, Ava didn’t seem to want
her company, and her security team was just outside.

“If I go downtown for a little while, will
you be okay?”

“Yes,” Ava said, turning to face her. “I’ll
be fine.” In the low light of the hallway, the shadows beneath her
eyes—worse since Nick’s escape—looked even darker.

“Promise?”

Ava sighed, gazing past her. “I can’t make
that kind of promise, Kenzie, any more than you can.”

“No, I know.” Why was it so difficult to
figure out the right thing to say? “Do you want me to pick up
dinner?”

Ava turned away again and continued to the
bedroom, where she flicked on the light. “I don’t care.”

“Hey.” Kenzie caught up to her beside the
dresser she’d helped Ava pick out from the Pottery Barn catalog.
“Can I at least give you a hug?”

Without a word, Ava turned and let Kenzie
enfold her in a careful hug, her face cool against Kenzie’s neck,
her arms twining loosely around Kenzie’s waist. They were as close
as two people could be, and yet, in that moment, Ava seemed as
remote as a star.

“I love you,” Kenzie murmured into her hair.
“I’m so glad nothing happened to you.”

Just for a moment she thought she might have
said the right thing as Ava softened in her arms and exhaled, low
and long. But then she was pushing away, her walls shifting back
into place.

“See you later,” she said, dodging Kenzie’s
gaze.

Stung but trying not to feel it, Kenzie
turned and left the way she had come.

The sun had mostly set, so she used the cover
of darkness to blur to an alley and strip down to the Galaxy Girl
costume she hadn’t taken the time to change out of earlier. Then
she dropped her clothes at a safe roof not far from Ava’s apartment
and flew to Panopticon, where she landed on the upper balcony and
waited for the security guard to let her in.

The director had granted her official access
to non-classified floors. This meant Kenzie could speed through the
building without setting off alarms. Using her enhanced senses, she
soon found Sloane and Mika in a conference room near central
command, where Sloane was somehow still going off on “Nick effing
Westbrook” and “the whole GD anti-alien movement” while Mika and
Rodriguez, another super-gay Panopticon agent whose first name
Kenzie was fairly certain she’d never learned, peered into a
laptop.

“I mean, seriously,” Sloane was saying as
Kenzie paused outside the conference room, “how do they not realize
that most of these people are refugees just looking for a safe
harbor?” Mika must have given her a look, because Sloane added,
“What?”

“I’m having a hard time reconciling this
version of you with the one who was ready to shoot that Pendran on
Capitol Hill.”

“Oh.” Sloane cleared her throat. “I guess I
just needed to be educated.”

“In more ways than one,” Mika said.

“Gross,” Rodriguez said at the exact same
time Kenzie muttered, “Ew.”

Clearly, that was enough eavesdropping. She
turned the knob, startled when she discovered the door was locked.
She could have broken it easily, but that would have led to an
inordinate amount of paperwork. Instead, she knocked. “Agent
Shepherd? It’s, um, Galaxy Girl.”

She felt incredibly stupid referring to
herself that way, but what could you do. Here at Panopticon, she
was supposed to be the friendly neighborhood vigilante, not
Sloane’s sister and definitely not Ava Westbrook’s girlfriend.

The door flew open. “What are you doing
here?” Sloane asked, her non-verbal cues indicating her feelings
about this decision.

“I heard about the trouble at Hyperion and
wondered if I could help.”

Over Sloane’s shoulder, Kenzie noticed
Rodriguez watching the exchange with narrowed eyes. Was her voice
modulator working? It better be. Otherwise, the super-gay,
super-smart Panopticon agent wasn’t going to be fooled for
long.

Sloane gritted her teeth as if trying to hold
back a yell—she totally was, Kenzie knew—but she held the door
wider and waved Kenzie inside. “Fine. Your skills might come in
handy. But you have to listen to what I say. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” She couldn’t stay that long,
anyway. An hour, maybe two, tops. By then, she was hoping Ava would
want some company—not to mention, food. Ava might not be hungry,
but she needed to eat.

As she watched the trio research a list of
Hyperion’s security department employees, Kenzie realized why Mika
and Sloane had asked Rodriguez to help. She was a total tech stud,
finding back doors into site after site while the other two took
notes and brainstormed motive and opportunity. Mika had once said
that her favorite part of an investigation was assembling the big
picture that all the small details created. Sloane, meanwhile,
seemed happiest when the dogged pursuit of evidence resulted in a
confrontation with a suspect and a chance to use one of the
Bureau’s many weapons, half of which were literally out of this
world. Add in Rodriguez’s mad techie skills, and they had a badass
crime-fighting team even without Kenzie’s superpowers.

The Hyperion server Rodriguez gained access
to contained contact and biographical data on every member of Ava’s
security team, almost all of whom were former Navy Seals, Army
Rangers, or intelligence operatives. As a reporter, Kenzie was a
little envious of Rodriguez’s ability to poke around wherever she
wanted. She wasn’t the only one, either. Mika pointed out that SPD
would have had to wait hours or even days to obtain a judge’s
permission to investigate a suspect’s private data, but Panopticon
agents didn’t seem overly concerned by the American legal process.
With probable cause established, Rodriguez could simply start
infiltrating bank accounts and cell phone records.

Kenzie could see how that freedom of access
would be important when innocent people were in imminent danger,
but law enforcement agencies ran the risk of becoming all-powerful,
despotic organizations if they were allowed to operate without
oversight or restrictions. That was why the Alliance suffered from
so much bureaucracy—the insane amount of checks and balances in
place could make for slow progress in some matters, but an
organization as powerful as an intergalactic union of sentient
beings couldn’t afford to ignore the dangers of despotism. Anyone
who’d ever watched Star Wars knew that.

Without the standard legal hoops to jump
through, the investigation ran smoothly. By the time the hour and a
half Kenzie had allotted herself had passed, the trio of humans had
a pretty good idea who the mole on Ava’s security team was.

“Don’t arrest him without me!” Kenzie said,
backing away from the table that took up half the conference
room.

“Where are you going?” Sloane asked,
frowning.

“I’m just going to grab a bite to eat,”
Kenzie said over her shoulder, already blurring away.

Behind her, she heard Mika say that she could
use a dinner break, too. Rodriguez agreed. Thank goodness humans
needed food as much as she did.

Kenzie didn’t have time to wait for a meal to
be prepared, so she swung by the downtown Whole Foods, ignoring the
gawks and gapes (not to mention the photos and video recordings)
she inspired in her Galaxy Girl outfit as she stacked a dozen sushi
trays in a bag and then waited impatiently to check out. She kept a
wad of cash in a hidden zipper pocket for just such an emergency.
As Sloane had pointed out, her identity wouldn’t stay secret for
long if she whipped out her credit card.

Ten minutes later, she was back in the
elevator to Ava’s penthouse, watching the numbers light up in what
felt like slow motion. Finally, the bell dinged, and she stepped
out only to come face-to-face with the smiling young guard from
earlier. After her visit to Panopticon, she knew considerably more
about him: he’d done ROTC in Utah before ending up in the Rangers,
had been honorably discharged after two tours of Afghanistan, and
wasn’t as young as he looked. At least he wasn’t the one who had
betrayed Ava—as far as they knew.

“I come bearing sushi,” she said, holding up
the bag when Ava opened the door.

Her girlfriend looked considerably softer and
warmer now, dressed in black fleece pants and a gray wool
turtleneck sweater. Her hair was still damp from the shower and
curled around her shoulders in the way Kenzie loved, and her skin
had taken on a rosier hue. Even her eyes seemed warmer as she gazed
at Kenzie with a slight smile.

“Of course you do,” Ava said, but her tone
was affectionate.

“I got you a dragon roll.”

“Well, in that case…” Ava held the door wider
and waved her inside.

Soon they were seated at the breakfast bar
divvying up sushi containers, the gas fireplace flickering in the
background. The condo’s track lighting could be overly harsh, but
the floor lamps Ava had picked out created a softer, cozier
atmosphere.

“So,” Kenzie said around a mouthful of
edamame, “nice shower?”

“It was. What about you? Did you go back on
patrol?”

“Not exactly.” She hesitated, trying to
decide how much to share with Ava, but then she remembered how it
had felt to learn after the fact that Ava’s life was in danger. In
this case, honesty was the best policy. As Jane liked to say, lies
breed faster than rabbits. “Actually, I went to Panopticon to see
how the investigation was going.”

“Panopticon?” Ava sat back from the breakfast
bar. “What the hell? I was trying to avoid getting my father’s
people involved. That’s why I called Sloane to begin with.”

Kenzie blinked, momentarily distracted by the
thought that her sister used to work—albeit indirectly—for Ava’s
father. “I think the investigation is off the books. They’re only
working with one other agent. Oh, and me.”

Ava stared at her, and gradually, Kenzie
noticed, her tense grip on her chopsticks began to ease. “Must have
gone over well when you showed up.”

“I mean, I don’t wanna brag, but it was
pretty spectacular.”

Ava laughed as if in spite of herself, and
Kenzie took that as a win. Not that she wanted Ava to repress any
negative feelings, but laughter was healing, and Ava could use all
the healing energy she could get.

Kenzie filled her in on the case as she
steadily demolished her share of the sushi, which even Ava could
admit was “decent for a grocery store.”

“Are you going back after dinner?” Ava
asked.

Kenzie’s head tilted. “I don’t have to,” she
said, though it pained her to make the offer. Part of her worried
what might happen to Sloane and Mika if she wasn’t with them when
they went to question the suspect. After all, they had taken the
case as a favor. But another part of Kenzie worried that something
could happen to Ava if she wasn’t here to protect her—a fear that
seemed to have taken up semi-permanent residence in her brain.

“It’s okay,” Ava said, touching her hand.
“I’d rather you help your sister than babysit me. Just let me know
what you turn up.”

“Fine. But I wish there were two of me. Then
I could be in two places at once.”

“I’m not sure my heart could take that.
Anyway, think of how your sister would worry.”

Kenzie’s phone gave a telltale buzz. Speak of
the devil… She kept her hold on Ava’s hand as she checked the
message: “Sorry, I can’t make it for dinner,” her sister had
written, which was code for Get your ass back here now.

“Sloane?” Ava asked.

“Yep.” Kenzie blurred her empty take-out
dishes to the recycling bin in a drawer near the sink and made
quick work of the cleanup. Then she blurred back to Ava’s side and
tugged her into a hug. “See you later?”

Ava pressed a kiss to the corner of her
mouth. “Yes, please.”

She tasted of avocado and shrimp tempura, and
it was all Kenzie could do to pry herself away from Ava’s warmth
and the condo’s comfortable coziness. She would be back, she
promised herself as she waved at Ava from the doorway.

#

It really was incredible what you could
accomplish when not required to adhere to state or federal law. By
eight o’clock they were sitting in an unmarked car outside the
suspect’s house, and by eight thirty they were back at Panopticon
interrogating him in a holding cell. Mika kept commenting that she
had never been involved in an operation that was so fast and
efficient—and so thoroughly unconstitutional. Kenzie couldn’t
really say the same. Being a vigilante necessarily meant operating
outside the law. But as a reporter, she agreed with the
sentiment.

The suspect—Christopher Blake, according to
Hyperion’s records—confessed readily, something else that didn’t
often happen in mainstream police work, judging from Mika’s start
of surprise.

“Was anyone hurt?” Blake asked, his voice
anxious even as he regarded them with flat, resigned eyes.

“No,” Mika answered. “Ms. Westbrook
discovered the poison before anyone could drink it, so you’re only
looking at attempted murder charges. Still, you’re facing serious
time. Do you want to tell us why you did it?”

“I would, but I can’t,” he said, his eyes the
same dull gray as he stared straight ahead, shoulders stiff, fists
clenched.

“Let me guess.” Sloane entered the
conversation for the first time. Her eyes and voice were softer
than Kenzie would have expected. Playing good cop seemed the
opposite of her usual approach: punch (or, as appropriate,
shoot) first and ask questions later. “You were contacted by
an intermediary and given a set of instructions you were told to
follow, and if you didn’t, a loved one would die.”

Blake’s eyes widened just a little, and
Kenzie detected the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.

Rodriguez leaned forward. “And after planting
the poison, you wiped the security tape so there would be no record
and then you altered the on-site server log.”

He looked at Rodriguez, his gaze a little
less blank. “How did you know that?”

In the course of the evening, the
investigation had turned up information about the fail-safes in
Hyperion’s security system, including a remote backup server that
only Ava and her head of security had access to. But they weren’t
going to tell Blake that.

Rodriguez smiled coolly. “All in a day’s
work.”

It wasn’t quite ten when Kenzie nodded at
Ava’s guards—a new team for the night—and knocked on the penthouse
door, only to find it open a crack. Heart quickening, she hurried
inside and followed the sound of running water to the master
bathroom.

Ava glanced up, soap suds clinging to her
skin, a well-worn headband holding back her unruly hair. “You’re
here. That was fast.”

“Why was your door unlocked?” Kenzie
demanded.

Ava blinked at her. “Because you texted to
say you were on your way back.”

“Oh. Right. But…” Kenzie stopped herself. If
Ava felt secure with the extra security cameras in the condo’s
lobby, garage, and elevator, not to mention the armed guards
stationed outside her penthouse, then far be it for Kenzie to burst
her bubble. She had a feeling that the results of the investigation
would do just that, anyway.

“I’ll be out in a second,” Ava said, and
began to rinse her face the way she always did, slowly and
methodically, one quadrant at a time.

The mildly OCD way Ava washed her face at
bedtime was one of the quirks Kenzie had discovered in the many
nights they had spent together. As she headed out to the living
room to wait, the thought struck her that she might never have had
a chance to watch Ava wash her face again, and she stopped in the
center of the room, staring unseeingly at the picture windows that
overlooked Seattle Center and the Space Needle. If the Bandal rum
had found its target, Kenzie might be here alone in Ava’s condo
tonight, thinking of the last time she had seen Ava, the last time
she’d held her, the last time they’d kissed. How none of those
things would ever happen again. How life, for Kenzie, would never
be the same.

She closed her eyes as memories of the
asteroid storm flared, blasts lighting up against her eyelids as
particle collider after particle collider exploded in small,
oxygen-deprived bursts. She knew what it was like to lose family,
and she never wanted to feel that again. Yet here she was
surrounding herself with people whose lives were tenuous, their
daily survival questionable. What was she doing? Why was she living
here on this backward planet with people who seemed always one step
away from death? Who had decided Earth would be good for her and
vice versa, when all evidence pointed to the contrary? Maybe her
Alliance caseworker was one of those self-righteous Wingarian monks
from the Andavian system who believed in forcing their belief in
non-attachment on everyone around them.

Bastard. She’d never liked Wingarians.
No doubt the enmity was mutual.

She didn’t hear footsteps approach, so when
Ava stopped beside her and touched her arm, she almost leapt
through the ceiling. Literally.

“You okay?” Ava asked.

Kenzie took a calming breath, but she still
felt dizzy. “I think that’s my line,” she said.

“It can be mine, too.”

The next breath shuddered out of her. “I
could have lost you today.”

She heard Ava sigh, felt her weave their
fingers together. “Yes.”

Kenzie flinched at the brutal honesty. “Ava,
I don’t know if I can…”

Ava pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay,” she
said. “Nothing happened. I’m here.”

But for how long? Kenzie wanted to
ask. Only she knew Ava couldn’t answer that question any more than
she could.

She buried her face in her girlfriend’s hair,
inhaling the delicate lavender of her face scrub and the floral
scent of her expensive perfume. She was here. She was safe. Kenzie
would do anything to make sure she remained so.

Ava pulled back. “Would you like a cup of
tea?”

Kenzie nodded. “Yes, please.”

A little while later, with Ava seated beside
her at the kitchen island and a cup of blueberry tea warming her
from the inside out, Kenzie offered an update on the
investigation.

“Blake poisoned the whiskey?” Ava
repeated. “Really?”

“Sloane and Mika
think he was blackmailed into helping. Honestly, he seemed relieved
that no one got hurt.”

Ava nodded, cupping her mug of tea in both
hands. “Any idea who he was working with?”

“Are you asking for ideas, or do you want to
know about evidence?”

“Both.”

“No evidence,” Kenzie said, “but I think all
of us agree that this has Nick’s figurative fingerprints all over
it. Not only because he just got out of prison, but because he has
motive, opportunity, and access, to quote Mika.”

Ava sighed and dropped her forehead onto her
arms. “God, my brother is such a dick!”

“If the rhyme fits, why would you
acquit?”

A laugh shook Ava’s shoulders, and she lifted
her head, mock glaring at Kenzie. “Excuse you, I am trying to feel
sorry for myself over here.”

Kenzie held up her hands. “I saw an
opportunity and I went for it.”

“That’s what she said.”

“And by she, I assume you mean me and
not some other woman, right?”

“I always mean you,” Ava said in the sultry
tone that was guaranteed to get Kenzie hot and bothered.

Was it inappropriate to want to make love to
your girlfriend only hours after she survived a murder attempt? But
no, Kenzie decided, leaning forward to press her forehead against
Ava’s, it was the only reasonable response.

“Is this okay?” she murmured, pressing kisses
against Ava’s cheek.

“More than okay.” Ava wrapped her arms around
Kenzie’s neck and tugged her closer. “Take me to bed, please.”

The ache in her voice matched the ache in
Kenzie’s heart, and she rushed to comply.

“I love you,” Kenzie said a little while
later as she pressed Ava into the mattress, already thinking about
how she was going to torment Ava until she begged for release.

“I love you, too,” Ava said, her voice raspy
and low, her fingers curled into Kenzie’s biceps as if she would
never let go.

Honestly, Kenzie would be okay with that.
More than okay, even.

But while sex might temporarily drive away
her sense of impending doom, even the bliss of multiple orgasms was
no match for the worry plaguing Kenzie. She was still flushed and
breathing hard, still spiraling down when she found herself
thinking of Vancouver again, of the anonymity that the Taammeni
headbands offered. It wasn’t too late. She could still sweep Ava
away to safety. Once they put some clothes on, of course.

But then she remembered that bodily autonomy
was a serious thing, and how Ava guarded hers the most of anyone
Kenzie had ever met. She could no more steal Ava away from Seattle
against her will than she could track down Nick and end his life in
cold blood. Which was to say she could, but she wouldn’t
allow herself to cross that line. She turned on her side away from
Ava, hiding her face in a pillow. Ava’s pillows were the softest
ever because she was a billionaire, one who could take care of
herself—except when it came to her murderous family,
apparently.

“What’s wrong?” Ava asked, rubbing her
back.

“I have to tell you something,” Kenzie found
herself admitting.

“Good or bad?” Ava’s voice was drowsy, or
maybe merely exhausted.

“Not the best. Promise you won’t be mad?”

“How can I promise I won’t be mad if I don’t
know what you’re going to tell me?” Ava asked, infuriatingly
rational despite her evident exhaustion.

Kenzie had no argument for this. Sighing, she
turned to face Ava. “I thought about taking you to Vancouver
earlier and leaving you there. You know, until I could make sure
you were completely safe.”

Ava stilled. Then she said, “Kenzie, you
can’t do that.”

“I know. You’re still here, aren’t you?”

“I’m no damsel in need of rescuing, either,”
Ava said, invoking the phrase Kenzie had used after Antonio had
tried to ruin Game Night.

But Kenzie didn’t give the response she knew
she was supposed to. Instead, she told the truth. Or, her
truth, anyway. “You kind of are, though.”

“No, I’m not.” Ava moved closer, peering into
her eyes. “You know that, right?”

“Umm…” Kenzie gazed back at her, taking in
her beautiful green irises that changed color depending on the
lighting, her clothing, her mood. They were as ephemeral as Ava
herself, a quality that simultaneously fascinated and worried
Kenzie. “I think we should agree to disagree on this one.”

“Whatever.” Ava shook her head and rolled
away.

“Ava,” she said, scooting closer. When she
didn’t get a response, Kenzie wrapped her arms around her
girlfriend’s frame and tugged until they were spooning. Ava
did need to be protected, just like Kenzie sometimes needed
protecting, too. “I love you,” she whispered, pushing aside Ava’s
thick hair to rest her chin on her shoulder.

Ava softened slightly against her. “I love
you, too,” she whispered back, folding her arms over Kenzie’s.

The sound of traffic drifted up from the
streets below as usual, but that wasn’t why Kenzie couldn’t fall
asleep. Every time she closed her eyes, a rush of chaotic images
swept over her. And since Ava was already upset with her, Kenzie’s
brain decided on its own that she might as well go all in because
she found herself saying, “There’s something else I have to tell
you.”

Ava stiffened again, not enough that a human
would notice, but then Kenzie wasn’t human, was she?

“It’s not a big deal,” she added, “or, I
guess it sort of could have been, but I didn’t actually go through
with it so that makes it less of a big deal—”

“Kenzie. Just tell me.”

Right. “Okay. I’m not proud of it, but
I considered paying your brother a visit in prison. To, you know,
make sure he could never hurt you again. Ever.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. More than once, actually.” She should
have, too. If she had, then Ava wouldn’t have found Bandal rum in
her whiskey, and Kenzie wouldn’t have to worry quite so much about
her safety. Although, if Ava had found out Kenzie had murdered her
brother in cold blood, they probably wouldn’t still be
together.

“Please don’t kill him,” Ava said. “I know
he’s terrible, but he’s my brother.”

“I won’t,” Kenzie said, trying to convince
herself she meant it.

“Thank you. I do get why you would fantasize
about something like that, though.” Ava hesitated, and then,
unexpectedly, she offered up her own secret to the warm,
comfortable darkness: “I thought about shooting the man who killed
my mother. I even took my father’s gun to his apartment over
Christmas break my senior year at Deerfield.”

Kenzie could feel how tense Ava had grown in
her arms, barely breathing, her limbs rigid. “You did?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t shoot him. I just watched
him get drunk in front of his television and then I drove
home.”

“What stopped you?”

“Honestly? He was kind of pathetic, and I
decided he wasn’t worth breaking the law or my own moral code
for.”

“Cool,” Kenzie said, and then winced at her
own awkward response.

It wasn’t cool, not any of it—except maybe
the part where they trusted each other enough to share such truths.
But could Kenzie be trusted on this one? Killing Nick might go
against everything she believed in, but if Ava hadn’t recognized
the scent of the alien rum, if she had consumed enough to send her
system into shock or, worse, had actually died, would an intangible
moral code be enough to stop Kenzie from tracking Nick down and
ending his life? She was pretty sure she knew the answer to that
question, and it definitely wasn’t cool.

Visions of broken bones and ruptured blood
vessels dancing in her head, she closed her eyes and gathered Ava
closer. Gradually, incrementally, Ava’s heart rate slowed and her
breathing evened out as Kenzie held her, senses attuned to the
woman in her arms and to the sounds of the city around them. At
some point Kenzie would sleep. At some point she would have
to sleep. But that point probably wasn’t going to come tonight.

Like it or not, admit it or not, Ava needed
watching over. And that was what Kenzie intended to do.

Chapter Three

Ava paused outside Sloane’s house. The last time she’d visited this
block, she and Kenzie had made out against a tree before Ava headed
to New York and Kenzie faced down her parents, who very much did
not approve of Ava and Kenzie kissing. Somehow, Ava doubted their
opinion had changed. But had Sloane’s? Today’s brunch invitation
seemed to indicate that Kenzie’s sister was at least more
supportive of their relationship than the elder
Shepherd-Hendersons.

“You okay?” Kenzie asked, hand poised to
knock on her sister’s front door.

“Of course,” Ava said, smiling in a way she
hoped was reassuring.

Kenzie had asked her that same question half
a dozen times a day in the week since Nick’s failed assassination
attempt, and by now, her concern was starting to feel a bit
oppressive. Ava wasn’t okay, nor was she sure when she might be.
But she’d agreed to brunch because she owed Sloane and Mika for
finding the mole in her security team. Jack, her local chief of
security, had instituted protocols to make sure there would be no
repeat. Ava hoped he was right. Even Nick should be afraid to
tangle with the older man, who was rumored to have taken part in
the operation to capture Osama Bin Laden.

Mika answered the door and greeted Ava and
Kenzie with hugs before leading them back to the kitchen, where
Sloane was glaring into the oven as if personally affronted.

“I’ll just…” Kenzie said, gesturing at her
sister.

“Please,” Mika said. “Ava, can I get you an
Irish coffee?” When Ava hesitated, Mika held up a whiskey bottle
with an expensive label. “I promise it’s safe. The seal was still
on until about a half hour ago.”

Kenzie glanced over at them, her glower
indicating that the joke was too soon, but Ava pretended not to
notice. “That sounds great,” she said, forcing another smile. She
had been alone so much lately—or alone with Kenzie—that her social
skills felt a bit rusty. Perhaps alcohol on an empty stomach would
make her a decent brunch guest. Bea, she felt certain, would
approve.

Mika poured a spoonful of brown sugar into
Ava’s coffee mug and added a generous slug of whiskey, topping off
the concoction with what looked like genuine whipped cream. Then
she held up her own drink, already half gone. “Cheers!”

“Cheers.” Ava clinked Mika’s mug and took a
sip. The whipped cream was sweet, the dark roast the perfect
temperature, the whiskey just the right strength. Her insides
instantly warmed, and she gave Mika a genuine smile. “Well
done.”

“Thanks. Given that you have a family
connection to Ireland, that feels like a huge compliment.” When
Ava’s eyebrows lifted—she didn’t recall mentioning her Irish roots
to Kenzie’s sister and her girlfriend—Mika leaned closer. “I’m not
sure you appreciate just how much Kenzie talks about you.”

“All good things, though,” Kenzie called,
eavesdropping shamelessly. Then, as Sloane elbowed her, she turned
back to help.

While the sisters worked on the menu, Mika
led Ava out to the covered patio where a restaurant-grade heater
made the early summer morning warmer than it otherwise would have
been. New York would have been sticky and hot by mid-morning, but
Seattle’s climate offered neither heat nor humidity this early in
the season. Ava was starting to appreciate that fact. With Kenzie’s
encouragement, she’d even picked up a couple of lightweight fleeces
from REI, one of which she was currently wearing.

“Green to match your eyes,” Kenzie had
suggested, holding up the jacket in question and leaning in to kiss
her sweetly right there in front of goddess and country.

Kenzie might be new to women-loving-women
relationships, but she didn’t seem to flinch away from public
displays of affection the way some newly queer people did.
Probably, Ava thought, being a Zattalian among humans loomed as the
greater difference in her mind.

“Anyway,” Mika said as she took a seat on an
Adirondack chair near the heater, “Kenzie said you own a working
farm in Ireland.”

Ava nodded. “It’s a sheep farm, and it
belonged to my biological mother’s cousin. The estate agent
suggested I sell it, but my mother grew up visiting that farm every
summer, so I decided to lease it out instead. There’s a lovely
family living there now, and I visit sometimes to see to repairs
and generally soak up the atmosphere.”

“At which point you ride a four-wheeler.”

Kenzie really did talk about her. “Of
course,” Ava said, grinning over the top of her mug.

“Man, we totally need to have a Shepherd
sisters-plus-partners trip to the UK at some point.”

Given the constant current threat of Ava’s
crazy family wreaking death and destruction, she couldn’t even
begin to imagine a time when she and Kenzie would be able to take a
lesbian double-dating vacation to Ireland.

The conversation shifted to Antonio’s news,
shared at a recent pub night: He had finally earned his pilot’s
license after months of lessons and training, and now he wanted to
fly them all out to San Juan Island some weekend for lunch and
sightseeing. Kenzie, however, had been spying on his lessons—“To
make sure you were all right!”—and when she’d described a solo
training flight where it had taken him three passes to land the
plane, the rest of the Super Friends suddenly realized that all of
their upcoming weekends were booked.

“I was just practicing,” he’d insisted, his
face red, while Kenzie stuck out her tongue at him.

Ava sipped her coffee. “Kenzie doesn’t
forgive easily, does she?”

“Actually, Sloane says she forgives people
who hurt her almost too quickly,” Mika said. “But Antonio messed
with you, and Kenzie is much more protective of the people she
loves than she is of herself.”

Ava frowned, tracing the rim of her mug.
Kenzie’s demonstrated lack of self-preservation was not Ava’s
favorite trait, but without it, Galaxy Girl would be nowhere near
as heroic.

“Have you seen the TikTok videos of
off-worlders coming out?” Mika asked, seeming to follow her train
of thought.

Ava nodded. The sheer proliferation of
#outofthisgalaxy posts was inspiring, and Ava couldn’t help but be
proud of her girlfriend for inspiring a younger generation to step
out of the shadows and claim their identity proudly. And yet, the
backlash was just as real. “Have you heard about the attacks on
off-worlders?”

“Two steps forward, one back… But at least
we’re moving in the right direction.”

Not if Ava’s family had anything to say about
it. But she only nodded and took a fortifying sip of her coffee,
wiling the alcohol to spread its chemical warmth throughout her
body.

The food issues were soon resolved, and as
Ava sat down beside Kenzie at the farmhouse-style table in Sloane’s
formal dining room, she had to admit that her earlier worries about
spending time with Kenzie’s sister had been for nothing. It was
nice to be looked after. With Kenzie’s enormous appetite, meals
required an inordinate amount of planning. Ava had grown tired of
takeout recently, but she didn’t often have time to prepare the
amount of calories Kenzie required. Having Sloane tackle that
particular challenge on a weekend morning felt like a genuine
treat.

“What are you two doing for the Fourth?” Mika
asked as she unfolded the cloth napkin beside her plate.

Ava stole a glance at Kenzie. “We were
planning to head to LA to hang out with Bea, but—”

Kenzie’s gaze snapped up from her plate.
“What do you mean we were planning to go to LA?”

Ava tried to swallow down her defensiveness.
“I’m just not sure this is the right time. Work is busy and after
last week, I think I might want to stick closer to Seattle.”

Kenzie was frowning at her, and yes, Ava
could see the wisdom of having this conversation privately before
airing it in front of Kenzie’s sister, but it was a little late for
that. Sloane had already perked up.

“If you guys are sticking around, that means
you can come up to Bellingham with us,” she said.

Jane and Benjamin, Ava knew, threw an annual
Fourth of July barbecue for their friends and neighbors. Somehow,
she doubted she was invited.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Kenzie said,
scoffing at her sister.

Sloane scoffed right back. “Why not? Mom and
Dad will be on their best behavior in front of the neighbors, and
you guys would only have to be there a couple of hours. It’s the
perfect plan—maximum benefit with minimal risk.”

Sloane had a point, Ava could admit—much as
it pained her to do so.

Kenzie glanced at Ava. “I don’t know,” she
said, her tone less certain now. “We’ll have to see.”

Ava hoped her existential dread wasn’t
emblazoned on her forehead in neon lettering. With Amelia’s
betrayal so fresh, she didn’t think she could take being
rejected—again—by Kenzie’s mother.

Sloane lowered her fork. “But—”

“The fireworks show should be amazing from
your new place, Ava,” Mika said, casting her girlfriend a look of
admonishment.

“Totally,” Kenzie said. “The fireworks
actually shoot off the Space Needle. Talk about up close and
personal.”

“How are you settling in to Belltown?” Mika
asked.

Grateful for the subject change, Ava
described the upgrades she’d made to the condo since moving in:
adding remote-operated window blinds throughout; installing dimmer
switches in the living room and hallway; and hanging artwork, some
of which Kenzie joked was “on loan” from the New York
apartment.

“Dang, how many properties do you own?” Mika
asked, her smile teasing.

“Including the new place? Three,” she
admitted, swirling the melting cream around in her coffee cup.

“Well done, Kenzie,” Sloane said, holding up
her hand for a high five.

To her credit, Kenzie ignored her sister’s
gauche—to Ava’s sensibilities—gesture. Or maybe she was simply too
enamored with her food to notice. Hard to know which with
Kenzie.

“You know,” Ava said, glancing at Mika,
“you’re welcome to stay at the beach house in Malibu whenever. I’m
hardly ever there.”

“Thanks,” Mika said, her words for Ava but
her smile for her girlfriend. “Maybe we’ll take you up on it.”

Ava hoped they would. It was the least she
could do after what they’d done for her… But not every action
required an equal reaction, she reminded herself as she took a bite
of quiche. Mika and Sloane had helped solve the Case of the
Off-world Rum, as Ava had taken to thinking of it, because Kenzie
cared about her and it was work at which they both excelled. They’d
seemed genuinely glad to help and had explicitly stated that they
didn’t want any type of reward for their efforts, but Ava hadn’t
really believed them. She’d been raised in a family that operated
within a transactional relationship system, as her old therapist
had called it. That meant she was trained to expect reciprocation
in most situations, especially those in which she gave or received
assistance.

She could still hear her father’s deep voice
intoning, “Promises make debts, and debts make promises. Don’t
forget that, Ava.”

Damned Westbrook ethos. It was a harder
pattern than most to unlearn, she had found over the years.

But even her father’s long shadow couldn’t
overcome Ava’s enjoyment of brunch with Kenzie. Her girlfriend’s
pleasure in the food before them was contagious, and her gaze was
as gentle as her touch as she offered Ava strawberries and smiles
in equal measure. Even Sloane seemed softer, kinder, as they
lingered over coffee and stories of their friends and co-workers.
This meal felt like a welcome break from the chaos that lurked just
beyond the warm, safe confines of Sloane’s house. Even the sounds
of the city seemed remote here atop Queen Anne, and Ava caught
herself daydreaming about a sunlit house of her own, with a yard
and a garden and a porch swing where she and Kenzie could… Oh. So
not a house of her own, but a house of their own.

Ava was still pondering the thought when Mika
retreated to the refrigerator and, with a flourish, brought out a
cake, its cream-colored frosting decorated with tiny orange
carrots.

“Carrot cake?” Kenzie’s eyes widened. “I
didn’t know we were having cake!”

Sloane leaned in toward Ava. “The trick to
getting Kenzie to eat her vegetables is adding sugar and hiding
everything under frosting.”

Kenzie rolled her eyes at her sister as she
helped herself to a large piece of cake. “It’s really good,” she
said around her first bite, smiling at Mika with frosting in her
teeth.

Ava tasted her slice. Kenzie wasn’t wrong.
The cake was quite good.

“Thanks,” Mika said. “I've been working on
the recipe. Your sister says your family takes their cakes very
seriously.”

“I was telling her about the unofficial
competition at the Fourth of July party,” Sloane said, giving
Kenzie a meaningful look.

Kenzie’s smile slipped. “Don’t, Sloane.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t bug me about the party or I’ll take
this whole cake and fly out the window,” Kenzie said, lifting the
cake platter in her free hand and holding it above the table.

“If you do that, then you won’t ever know
what second dessert is,” Sloane said, shrugging as if the idea
didn’t bother her in the least.

Second dessert? Was that like second
breakfast? Apparently, Kenzie wanted to know, too, because she
placed the cake platter back on the table.

“It’s cool,” she said, faking a laugh. “I was
just joking! Obviously.”

“Uh-huh.” Sloane smiled around a bite of
carrot cake. “Sure you were.”

Mika caught Ava’s eye, and they exchanged a
look that Ava was pretty sure communicated a shared fondness for
their girlfriends’ sibling rivalry. Could have been worse, as Ava
knew from personal experience.

A moment later, the peace of the morning was
shattered as a series of cell phone notifications sounded. Sloane
reached her phone first, and before Ava could do much more than
share a concerned look with Kenzie, the Panopticon agent was
setting aside her napkin as she rose.

“Come on,” Sloane said to Mika, whose mouth
had turned down at whatever she’d read on her own screen. “I’ll
drive you.”

Kenzie held out a hand. “Wait! What’s going
on? Can I help?”

“Sorry, Kenz. Police business,” Sloane
said.

Kenzie was standing now too, food forgotten
as Mika disappeared into the hallway. “But you’re not a police
officer!”

“I’ll let you know if we need you, okay?”
Sloane glanced at Ava. “I’m sorry about this. Feel free to stay and
finish the cake.”

Ava, who had grown up with a father on active
duty, nodded. “Be safe.”

“Thanks.” Sloane grasped Kenzie’s shoulder
for a brief moment. “I promise I’ll be in touch if we need you,
okay?”

Kenzie pursed her lips, her nostrils flaring
slightly. “You better.”

Mika strode back into the room, leather
jacket and gun holster in place. “Let’s go,” she said, her demeanor
just as changed as Sloane’s.

With a silent wave, Sloane followed her
girlfriend from the room. Ava heard the garage door open, followed
by the roar of a motorcycle zooming away. Meanwhile, Kenzie stood
in the middle of the kitchen, her body so tense it almost seemed to
be vibrating. Was it fear? Worry? Apprehension? Probably, Ava
thought, all of the above.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No.” Kenzie’s head tilted, eyes glazing
over, and Ava realized that she was trying to tune her senses to
whatever it was that had brought brunch to such an abrupt end.

Ava’s purse was draped over the back of her
chair, and she reached for her phone. Twitter could be a hell site,
but it was handy in situations like this. Before she could navigate
to local news, Kenzie gasped.

“What?” Ava asked.

Kenzie blinked at her. “The police are saying
there’s an alien riot on Capitol Hill. I have to go.”

“An alien riot?” Ava echoed, as stunned as
Kenzie looked. As far as she knew, there had never been so much as
a peaceful demonstration by Earth’s off-worlder community. Her
brother’s image flashed before her, and her fists clenched.
Sentinel.

Kenzie was already moving toward the patio
door. “Do you want to stay here, or do you want me to take you
home?”

“I’ll stay,” Ava said, mainly because she
knew that if there really was a serious situation threatening the
city, her security team would rush her off to a secure location the
second she showed her face downtown.

“Okay.” Kenzie paused at the sliding glass
door, frowning at Ava with the same worried look that had plagued
her all week. “Will you be all right on your own?”

“I’ll be fine. But Kenzie, you can’t fly
without your suit.”

Kenzie’s smile was grim. “They’d have to be
able to see me to figure out who I am. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

A moment later, Kenzie blurred into the sky
so quickly that Ava’s human eye couldn’t track her. Just like that,
she was alone in Sloane’s house.

The urge to snoop, she realized as she stood
in the quiet kitchen, was strong. She’d grown up in a family that
believed in the survival of the fittest, and she’d learned that
knowing more about your adversaries was always advantageous. Not
that Sloane was her adversary, exactly. Anyway, she also understood
that as a Panopticon agent, Kenzie’s sister probably liked to bring
her work home with her, which meant she might well have
surveillance cameras hidden around her living space.

What Ava wouldn’t have given to have been
born into a less technologically advanced time. Those pioneers on
the Minnesota plains had no idea how good they’d had it in a world
without camera phones or GoPros mounted on drones. Of course,
dysentery and hypothermia were unpleasant in their own ways, and
colonialism, misogyny, and racism hadn’t exactly made life easy,
especially for indigenous people. Right. Maybe surveillance culture
wasn’t so bad, after all.

To distract herself from her current
surroundings, she focused on her phone again, scrolling through a
few threads on Twitter discussing the “alien riots” on Capitol
Hill. Apparently, a police officer had attempted to arrest an
off-worlder on a charge of breaking and entering, and the
off-worlder and their neighbors had not reacted well to the
officer’s show of force. Reinforcements were called, rocks and
broken bottles were thrown, and riot officers were currently
amassing in Seattle’s queer neighborhood, all but guaranteeing a
terrible outcome. And there was absolutely nothing Ava could do
about it other than worry about Kenzie and the others currently
rushing to join the fray.

Resolutely, Ava set aside her phone and
surveyed the kitchen, noting the dirty dishes in the sink and the
crumbs littering the counter. A washcloth rested at the corner of
the sink, so she rinsed it out and set to work. She liked cleaning.
Or, maybe she didn’t like it, exactly, but the process
offered multiple payoffs. Besides being a worthy method of
distraction from stress, her frequent cleaning jags benefited
whatever space she happened to occupy. Bea, however, was more
hedonistic (according to Bea), and liked to accuse Ava of being a
neatnik.

As if Ava would ever find that particular
moniker insulting.

“Alexa,” she said when the sink was clean,
“play ’90s R&B for girls’ night.”

As Sloane’s Bluetooth speaker system belted
out Mary J. Blige’s soulful tones, Ava turned to putting away the
leftovers and loading the dishwasher. When that was done, she
checked the cabinet under the sink for soap. But as she peered into
the cabinet’s dim interior, she froze. Was that—could it be? She
leaned closer. It was! A package of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, one of
her absolute favorite-ever cleaning tools.

“Oh, this party is on,” she said. Because,
yes, that was how she rolled when her brunch companions absconded
to risk life and limb for the safety of strangers.

By the time another half hour had passed, the
kitchen was beginning to shine. Ava had taken breaks here and there
from her compulsive cleaning, even sitting down at one point to
watch a video of Kenzie in her Galaxy Girl suit speaking to a small
crowd of disgruntled off-worlders. They were outnumbered at least
two to one by a counter-protest made up of humans who had
“spontaneously” appeared at nearly the same time as the riot
police. Ava didn’t mind admitting that she blinked back tears as
she listened to her extraordinary girlfriend galvanize the crowd of
off-worlders with messages of hope and faith. This whole situation
smelled like a setup meant to cast aspersion on the alien refugee
community, but Kenzie’s courage and unswerving optimism were one
hundred percent genuine. She suspected the crowd knew that too,
because shortly after Kenzie’s speech, both sides stood down and
went their separate ways.

Galaxy Girl had struck again, saving
Seattle’s humans and off-worlders alike. Ava only wished she could
see her brother’s face when he realized that his latest stunt had
backfired. Actually, scratch that. She had no desire to see her
brother’s face ever again.

“Are you magically erasing my sister’s
kitchen?”

The voice made Ava scream a little as she
whirled from scouring the refrigerator handle. “Kenzie! Don’t do
that!”

Framed in the patio doorway, Kenzie laughed
and held up her hands. “Hey, don’t let me stop you. Looks like
you’re on a roll. I just have one question.”

Ava set her hands on her hips, channeling
superhero pose to chase away the memory of her embarrassing shriek.
“What’s that?”

“Did you find second dessert yet?”

“Oh my god, you’re such a dork.”

“That’s not what Twitter says.” Kenzie winked
at her. “Seriously, though, did you?”

“Don’t you wish you knew.”

Kenzie gasped. “I can’t believe you would
betray me like this!”

“Slow your roll,” Ava said, and opened the
oven door to reveal her discovery.

“Wait. Are those cinnamon rolls?”

“They are.”

Kenzie blinked heart eyes at her. “Noice! And
nice pun, too.”

“We aim to serve,” Ava said with an
exaggerated wink.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“It’s just a saying.”

“Oh, right. I knew that.”

Over the tray of homemade cinnamon
rolls—another of Mika’s brunch contributions—Kenzie filled Ava in
on what she knew about the events on Capitol Hill. The off-worlder
the police had attempted to arrest had insisted they were innocent,
claiming that the human who accused them was lying. The police,
however, were giving the human witness more credibility than the
accused off-worlder, which had happened before in similar cases.
Only in the past, the refugee community hadn’t felt empowered
enough to protest.

Kenzie paused in demolishing her third
cinnamon roll. “Do you think it’s my fault they took to the
streets?”

Ava considered her response carefully. “I
don’t think it’s your fault, exactly, but I do think that
you may have inspired them to stand up for themselves. That’s not a
bad thing, Kenzie.”

Her girlfriend hunched her shoulders. “I
don’t know. Someone could have gotten hurt today.”

“Yes, but they didn’t, thanks to you. I saw
your speech, by the way, so trust me when I say you’re definitely
the reason the crowd dispersed.”

Predictably, Kenzie downplayed her role in
the peaceful resolution, but Ava pulled up the video thread on
Twitter to respectfully disagree. When Kenzie scrunched up her face
and winced, Ava relented. She didn’t particularly like to watch
herself on video, either.

Ava had just set her phone aside when Sloane
strode into the kitchen, Mika at her heels.

“You guys are still—wait, did you have second
desert without us?” Sloane looked outraged, and Ava couldn’t hold
in a snort of laughter.

Kenzie froze. “Um, I’m sorry?” she mumbled
around a mouthful of cinnamon goodness.

“It’s fine,” Mika said. “Besides, what did
you expect, honey? We left your sister here with one of her
favorite brunch items warming in the oven.”

Kenzie swallowed her overly large bite and
pushed the tray towards her sister. “We saved you some rolls.”

“Only because we got home in time,” Sloane
said.

Kenzie didn’t argue. “Any news from
Panopticon?” she asked as Sloane set about making a fresh pot of
coffee.

“Nothing I can tell you.”

“Aw, come on.”

“As long as you remain a vigilante operating
outside of the law, there’s only so much I can share with you,”
Sloane said with the self-righteous air of an older sister who
didn’t have to tell her little sister anything if she didn’t want
to.

Mika slid into the seat beside Kenzie,
already munching on a gooey roll. “I can fill you in,” she said,
ignoring the look her girlfriend shot her, “but there really isn’t
much to tell. We’re still working the B&E case, and until it’s
closed, any information we might be able to share is limited.”

“Do you think the suspect is guilty?” Ava
asked.

Mika shrugged. “As much as I would like to be
able to trust my colleagues, I think we all understand how police
departments work. It might be that anti-alien forces are behind
both the allegations and the confrontation this morning.”

“But why would they…” Kenzie’s voice trailed
off. “Oh. Got it.”

Her shoulders slumped, and Ava wished there
was something she could do to make everything better. But that
would involve foiling Sentinel’s plans, and at this point, she had
no idea how to do that.

“Enough shop talk,” Sloane announced as she
dropped down beside Mika and reached for a roll. “I think it might
be time for a little couples Cranium. What do you say? Are you two
brave enough to take us on?”

Ava trotted out the smile she routinely
employed to intimidate her professional competition. “Bring it,
Shepherd.”

“Oh, it has already been broughten,” Sloane
said, exchanging a no-look high five with her girlfriend.

Kenzie scooted her chair closer again, her
frown smoothing out. “You guys are going down.”

Ava winced while Sloane groaned, and even
Mika recoiled slightly.

“What?” Kenzie glanced around the table.
“What did I say?”

“You should probably ask your girlfriend
later,” Mika said. “Another cinnamon roll?”

Kenzie nodded, her latest faux pas taking the
back burner to cinnamon-laced sweetness. Ava hoped that her brother
and his minions never figured out how food-motivated Seattle’s
resident superhero was. Otherwise, Kenzie might be in trouble.

The thought of Nick going after Kenzie cast a
momentary shadow over the scene before her, but Ava blinked it
away. She was here with Kenzie now, and they were both safe. That
was not something she intended to take lightly. Sentinel might
continue to operate in the shadows, but at some point, they would
make a mistake and reveal themselves. When they did, Ava would be
ready.

In the meantime, Ava and Kenzie had some
Cranium ass to kick. Because the Westbrooks weren’t the only family
with a corner on sibling rivalry. Fortunately, the
Shepherd-Hendersons had long since designated Game Night—Game
Morning?—as their preferred method of mutual destruction. Clearly,
Ava had been born into the wrong family.

“You okay?” Kenzie asked during a break in
the good-natured bickering.

“I’m good,” Ava said, and pressed a kiss to
the corner of Kenzie’s mouth, tasting the sugary goodness still
lingering there. “You?”

“Same.” She smiled into Ava’s eyes, her own
expression more genuine now, and then her eyes flicked down to
Ava’s lips. And that was all it took, just a look laced with
promise, to get Ava’s body thrumming.

If all went well, she thought, Sloane and
Mika wouldn’t be the only ones going down today. Ava was so going
to enjoy explaining Kenzie’s faux pas to her. Much, much later, of
course. Right now, there were games afoot, and Ava fully intended
to live in the moment—especially if the moment included securing
bragging rights over Sloane Shepherd.

Chapter Four

The days leading up to the Fourth of July were exhausting in a way
Kenzie hadn’t experienced since she’d first started working as
Galaxy Girl. Only a day after the short-lived confrontation on
Capitol Hill, a masked assailant used a black-market alien weapon
to kill a police officer, and the simmering tension reignited.
Mika’s unit suspected the cop killing was the work of anti-alien
terrorists because the officer had been a vocal alien sympathizer.
So far, though, they hadn’t been able to uncover any evidence that
would tie the attack to Sentinel or any of the other splinter
groups emboldened by Nick’s escape to rear their ugly heads.

Somehow, Seattle was fast becoming a
political lightning rod for pro-alien and anti-alien protests. Ava
kept insisting that it wasn’t Kenzie’s fault, but Kenzie couldn’t
help worrying that her decision to take to the skies of her adopted
city was putting more people at risk then it was helping.
Skirmishes between the two sides took place nearly every day that
week, and between Panopticon and ECM, Kenzie was on duty around the
clock foiling violent outbursts and then writing stories about
them. Hyperion was similarly slammed. When Ava wasn’t networking
with local NGOs to mitigate the growing chasm between humans and
aliens, she was at her home computer working on “tracking down
Nick,” which was all the information she would share with Kenzie.
And yes, Kenzie could have used her powers to discover what Ava was
up to, but there was this pesky thing called ethics. Anyway, they
had barely seen each other all week, so enhanced snooping wasn’t
even an option.

Now, the day before the anniversary of
America’s hard-won independence, Kenzie couldn’t escape the sense
that things were spiraling out of control. Overnight, it felt as if
the city had become dangerous, their existence precarious. Cell
phone and email chatter about violent responses to aliens had
spiked since the first showdown on Capitol Hill, and the
authorities seemed to constantly be one step behind the extremists.
Instead of preventing attacks, they were stuck putting out fires
left and right. All of these small uprisings felt like some sort of
prelude. The question was, the prelude to what?

“Aargh.” She groaned, leaning against the
cubicle wall near Matt’s desk during a rare quiet moment at ECM.
“What happened to peace on Earth, goodwill to men?”

“Well, technically, I think
the Westbrooks would argue that those lyrics only apply to humans,
so…” Matt frowned.

“What?” Kenzie glanced over his shoulder but
saw only a screen full of characters that might as well be Egyptian
hieroglyphics. He was looking into server logs leaked to Reddit for
a story about the growth of online anti-alien extremist groups, and
Kenzie had been pestering him for information for days to no avail.
Maybe the Alliance’s language program for Earth should be modified
to include computer languages. They wouldn’t take long to learn,
and talk about a handy skill to have in both of her jobs…

“It’s nothing.” He flicked a sideways glance
at her. “I thought you were going to Ava’s?”

“I am.” D’aman had offered to cover her usual
patrol because Ava was making her dinner tonight. Then—assuming the
city didn’t melt down in the meantime—they were going to meet
Sloane and Mika at a lesbian-friendly bar for a drink with a few of
Mika’s queer friends.

“Well, then,” Matt said, his voice hearty,
“you’d better get going before another emergency pops up.” He
smiled at her and then looked back at the screen, shoulders
hunching slightly.

The humans in her life appeared to believe
she was oblivious, but while she might not be an expert at reading
human expressions, she wasn’t an idiot. Matt was hiding something,
which meant it was time to implement Project WWSD: What Would
Sloane Do.

“You’re right,” she said, keeping her eyes on
the screen so that her usual tells wouldn’t give her away. “It’s
been nonstop around here lately. I’m just glad Sloane finally told
me what was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know.” Kenzie gestured at his
computer.

Matt’s eyebrows shot up. “She knows?
But of course she does. What did she say? Did she tell you if they
know who’s doing it?”

Kenzie paused. “I don’t think they know for
sure.” Surely this fishing expedition was transparent. And to
anyone else, it probably would have been. Fortunately, Matt wasn’t
anyone else.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “The fact that
terrorist groups are obtaining off-world weapons from someone
inside Panopticon can’t be good for morale.”

What?

Kenzie—and everyone else in the world,
probably—had suspected there was a mole at Panopticon passing
information to Sentinel, but actively funneling off-world weapons
to Sentinel operatives? That would indicate Panopticon was
compromised to a degree that, frankly, made Kenzie feel ill. Why
hadn’t Sloane told her? Then again, it was possible Sloane didn’t
know anything about it. But if Redditors knew, then it stood to
reason that her sister did, too. Alia, what if something had
happened to Ava the night Kenzie had delivered her to Panopticon?
She had trusted Sloane to look after her girlfriend, but what if
the infiltrators had gotten Ava alone? To think that Kenzie might
have played right into their hands…

Matt peered up at her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She smiled—because that was what
she had trained herself to do when she was upset or hurt, or simply
so full of anger and fear that she couldn’t tell one from the
other. “I have to go, Matt. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Ava was hosting a fireworks-viewing party at
her condo, and Kenzie had been looking forward to it all week. Now,
though, she was once again tempted to spirit Ava away from Seattle
to keep her safe. Canada might not have fireworks on the Fourth of
July (they’d celebrated Canada Day earlier in the week) but at
least in Vancouver she could be certain that Sentinel—the group
that wanted Ava dead and was apparently once again enjoying the
support of the most powerful alien watchdog organization in the
world—wouldn’t be able to find them.

“Okay,” Matt said, still eyeing her with
concern. “See you tomorrow.”

She smiled distractedly, and then she was
forcing herself to walk at a normal speed to the elevator. She knew
she should take time to calm down, to gain control over emotions
already elevated from too little rest and too much stress, but all
at once she needed to see Ava to make sure that
nothing had happened to her since their last text exchange. Ever
since the Bandal rum incident, she’d been checking in on Ava more
than usual, mostly from a distance to preserve Ava’s sense of
privacy. But right now, she couldn’t wait until their dinner
date.

As she sprinted—fast for a human but slow for
a Zattalian—across the handful of city blocks that separated ECM
from Ava’s condo, she blinked away tears. It was stupid to cry,
stupid to feel sorry for herself and Ava, both of them caught up in
events they couldn’t control. She slowed as she approached Ava’s
building, focusing her enhanced vision upward. Through the walls
she could see Ava in the kitchen, singing along to the Indie
station on Pandora as she made dinner. She was beautiful and
vibrant, dancing in her fuzzy slippers around the granite island,
hair loose, glasses slipping down her nose. Kenzie blinked, relief
coursing through her. She’s okay. But the terrible
thought that had been shadowing her lately followed
immediately: for how long?

Ava’s security team allowed her up to the
penthouse, where she found her girlfriend leaning against the
kitchen counter waiting for her, a smile on her lips. “Hello,
darling.”

The pet name was still new, but Kenzie
couldn’t quite bring herself to smile back the way she usually did.
“Hi,” she said, and pecked Ava’s cheek before ducking past her to
do a circuit of the apartment. Using her enhanced vision, she
scanned the space for listening devices or other Panopticon tools
of the trade, relieved when she didn’t find anything.

“What are you doing?” Ava asked when she
returned.

“Nothing.”

Ava’s brow lifted. “Want to try that
again?”

Kenzie fidgeted slightly, trying to stay
calm. Or maybe become calm was more accurate, but
that was definitely easier said than done. As a black ops
organization, Panopticon’s powers were far-reaching, as Kenzie had
recently witnessed. Nick wouldn’t have to kill Ava to get revenge
for her role in his trial. Instead, he could have one of his
buddies at the Bureau fabricate evidence against her, and Ava would
be locked away in a dark hole for the rest of her life. Not that
Kenzie would ever let that happen.

Ava’s frown deepened. “Seriously, what’s
going on?”

“I—” She stopped and paced toward Ava, then
detoured to the granite island. Too agitated to sit, she toyed with
the cushion on one of the stools. “I was doing a sweep of your
apartment.”

“Since when do you do that?”

“Since I found out Panopticon is supplying
Sentinel with alien weapons,” she said, all but glaring at Ava.
Which was unfair, because it was hardly Ava’s fault that her family
members were determined to be the most extreme anti-off-worlders on
the planet, but Kenzie had never claimed that her emotions were
rational.

“Oh. I see.” Ava’s expression smoothed out,
and she folded her arms across her chest, looking away from
Kenzie’s accusing gaze.

Defensive posturing, Kenzie thought,
remembering her early ECM training. She tried to run through the
de-escalation tips that had been drilled into her—stay calm;
speak in a low, modulated tone; don’t stare the other person
down—but the sound of her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears
drowned out nearly everything else.

“Why don’t you seem surprised?” she
asked.

“Because I’ve suspected for some time that
might be the case.”

“Is that what you’ve been working on that you
refuse to talk about?”

“It’s related, but no, not exactly.” Ava
leaned back against the granite island, her expression wary.

Kenzie took a breath, but the extra oxygen
didn’t prevent the irrational anger from rushing along her nerve
endings. “You know, when we said no more secrets, I thought
we both meant it.”

The whoosh of air that escaped Ava’s lips
sounded to Kenzie like the embodiment of exasperation. “I did mean
it. But if I tell you what I’m working on, can you promise that
information won’t make it back to your sister and Panopticon?”

A voice inside Kenzie’s head noted that Ava’s
question was entirely reasonable. But then the image of Ava reduced
to ashes—like Kenzie’s parents, like her friends, like the entirety
of her fleet—flickered before her, and she bit out, still glaring,
“You could have at least given me the benefit of the doubt!”

Ava’s raised eyebrow and pursed lips were
easy enough to read. And she was right; Kenzie was crap at keeping
anything from her sister, and she couldn’t say for certain that
Sloane wouldn’t report Ava’s findings to her superiors. Kenzie
didn’t think she would, given she’d never reported her own sister’s
alien status, but she couldn’t guarantee how Sloane would react.
And if Panopticon really was compromised… Still, Kenzie wasn’t in
the mood to be reasonable. She was tired and scared, and her blood
sugar was definitely lower than it should be. Fists clenched, she
took a step forward almost involuntarily.

Ava’s flinch was barely perceptible, but even
without her enhanced vision Kenzie would have noticed it. She
froze, and then she backed away, squeezing her eyes shut against
the sudden press of tears. After all this time, after everything
they’d said and done, Ava was still afraid of
her. This was why Kenzie didn’t let herself get
angry, why she smiled constantly and tried to keep people at a
distance. Because if she felt too much, if she lost control, she
might hurt anyone who got too close.

She opened her eyes, unsurprised to find Ava
watching her with a face carefully devoid of any expression. Why
had she come here when she was upset? She knew better. All it would
take was a simple loss of control, and she would become a worse
threat to Ava than Sentinel would ever be. Ava trusted her in a way
she didn’t trust most people, and if Kenzie betrayed her the way
the rest of her family already had…

“I have to go,” she said.

Ava held out a placating hand. “Wait. Let’s
talk about this, Kenzie.”

“I can’t.” And with that, she turned and
bolted for the door.

Behind her, she heard Ava mutter under her
breath, “That’s what I was afraid of.”

She didn’t stop to find out what Ava meant.
Instead, she slipped out of the apartment, smiled blindly at the
security guards, and ducked into the emergency stairwell, where she
proceeded to run down all thirteen flights to the ground floor.

The urge to fly was overpowering, but she
forced herself to follow her sister’s protocol. The summer solstice
had just passed, which meant the skies over Seattle would be light
for hours yet, and she couldn’t risk being spotted so close to
Ava’s building. Grinding her teeth until it felt like she should
only have nubs left, she found her way to the nearest safe roof and
changed into her Galaxy Girl suit. She didn’t pause to think or
breathe, merely shot into the sky and raced the wind, away from
Ava, away from Panopticon, away from everyone and everything
threatening to break her. She went up and up and out and out until
she was skimming the treetops of the Cascade Mountains, where there
were no lights and no sound and, best of all, no human
beings.

She landed at the top of a familiar rocky
peak and collapsed onto the hard earth, where she folded her arms
beneath her head and looked up. Out here, a hundred miles beyond
the city limits, the sky seemed huge overhead, the setting sun
casting orange rays from the west while the eastern horizon already
hinted at night. Kenzie squinted through the upper limits of the
atmosphere, filtering out the orange light to detect the waxing
moon. She sighed, relaxing into the dirt as silence settled over
her.

Or, not silence exactly. The remote
wilderness was alive with insects and other creatures, their
scrabbling sounds accompanying the whisper of deciduous leaves in
the breeze. The shape of the rock jutting above her reminded Kenzie
of the natural sciences ship in her fleet, where the builders had
placed a model of Mount Farris—supposedly one of Zattalia’s most
recognizable peaks—in an atrium that was as tall as Ava’s condo
building. Kenzie and her friend Naz used to love to hike the trail
that led from the mountain’s base to its peak. In fact, that was
where he’d kissed her for the first time, only weeks before the
asteroid storm presumably killed him and everyone else they’d grown
up with. It had been clumsy and awkward like most first kisses, but
sweet, too, and she had felt so grown up in that moment.

At the thought of the space-bound home she
would never see again, the tears she’d pushed back earlier
returned, and this time she let them fall. She was so
tired of controlling herself, of worrying about the impact
her powers could have on the people she loved. Maybe she should ask
the Alliance to find an alternate placement for her, some other
remote planet where her powers wouldn’t make her stand out as much
as they did here. And if the locals had mastered intergalactic
travel and she could find a job on a ship headed for a different
part of the galaxy than Earth’s little backwater corner? Even
better. She dreamed sometimes of losing herself in the sheer
diversity of galaxies. The seven billion-plus humans currently
playing out their lives on this planet weren’t even pinpricks in
the broader fabric of the known universe.

By extension, neither was she.

The thought was as comforting as always, and
yet still the tears kept coming, until finally, eyes closed, she
called up the ancient forms of Min-Nal and meditated herself into a
state that passed for calm. Then she picked herself up with a weary
sigh and lifted off into the sky, drifting aimlessly beneath the
ghostly moon, just rising, and the steady rays of the setting sun.
Now what? She couldn’t hide out in the mountains; it was the day
before the Fourth of July and she had plans for the long weekend.
The thought of facing Ava after frightening her, though, was nearly
as appalling as the idea of going home to bed without seeing
her. Sloane. Clearly, she needed her big sister. So
what if it was date night? This was an emergency, and Mika could
deal.

Kenzie turned and headed back to the city,
leaving behind the hulking mountains and the small towns where only
a few lights shone against the encroaching darkness of night. In
contrast, the back of Sloane’s house was awash with light, the
patio lit up by string lights, half a dozen candles flickering in
the formal dining room where Sloane and Mika were currently eating
dinner, hands linked, voices slightly raised. Wait, were they
fighting? Kenzie paused in midair, concentrating. The teasing
challenge in their voices alerted her to the fact that they were
only bickering in what Kenzie had heard Matt call “the lesbian cop
version of foreplay.” And, ew, but accurate.

Fortunately, their clothes were on and they
weren’t even kissing—scratch that. At least their hands were still
above the table—damn it! She took her phone from her
bag and texted Sloane: “Incoming.” Through the wall, she saw her
sister reach for her phone.

The curtains billowed around the patio door
as she blew in and whipped off her mask. Then she blurred past the
surprised couple and deposited herself on the couch in the nearby
living room, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at the
blank television screen.

“Um, hi, Kenz,” Sloane said.

“Hi,” she said, voice grouchy. “Sorry to
interrupt.”

“No worries,” Mika said. “Can I fix you a
plate? We have homemade quesadillas…”

“No, thanks. I’m not in the mood.”

She could almost hear the gaze they must have
exchanged before they pushed back their chairs and headed her way.
Before she realized their intentions, both women dropped onto the
couch, one on either side of her, and enfolded her in a sideways
hug. Mika squeezed hard, the way Sloane always did when Kenzie was
like this, restless and upset and struggling to name the darkness
trying to overtake her. That meant they had talked about her
occasional dark moods, which was an alarming prospect. But just
then, the press of their warm bodies and the weight of their arms
looped over her shoulders was the opposite of alarming. They were
the only things keeping her from giving in to the urge to fly up
and away again, faster and faster until she blew through the sound
barrier—bans against supersonic flight over land be damned.

Sloane rested her chin on Kenzie’s shoulder.
“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she said, fidgeting with the ring
D’aman had given her.

“Everything okay with Ava?” Mika asked.

“No.” She felt both bodies beside her freeze,
their muscles tensing. “She’s fine. I’m just mad at her.”

“Ooh, trouble in paradise?” Sloane asked.

“Shut it. I’m mad at you, too.”

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t tell me someone at Panopticon is
arming Sentinel and all their freaky little splinter groups.”

“Oh. That,” Sloane said, sounding
sheepish.

“Why am I the only one who’s surprised?”
Kenzie whisper-shouted.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m a little
surprised,” Mika said.

It did not make her feel better, which she
was pretty sure her loud harrumph communicated.

“Come on, Kenzie,” Sloane said. “You know I
can’t talk to you about stuff like that.”

“That’s a load of hooey,” Kenzie said,
channeling Jane’s father. “You had me bring Ava there, and you
didn’t even warn me her brother’s thugs might be around!”

“She was never in any danger.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do, actually. I made sure Rodriguez was
with her at all times.”

“How do you know Rodriguez isn’t part of the
problem?”

Sloane scoffed. “As if.”

Kenzie glared sideways at her. She didn’t
really think Rodriguez was a Sentinel spy either, but until they
knew for certain who was, they couldn’t trust anyone.

Sloane changed tack. “Look, I hear that
you’re upset, and I’m sorry.”

“Apology not accepted,” Kenzie said, because
Sloane hadn’t sounded a bit sincere.

“Fair enough,” her sister said. “Do you want
some ice cream?”

“No. I told you, I’m mad at you.” She meant
to sound harsh, but her voice, still rough from her earlier tears,
came out more plaintive than she would have liked. She rubbed her
eyes. “Have you at least figured out who was behind the Bandal rum
attack?”

“Um…”

Mika leaned forward to exchange a look with
Sloane. “It’s probably Nick,” she said, her arm briefly tightening
around Kenzie’s shoulders. “Right, Sloane?”

“Probably. It’s consistent with his MO.”

Kenzie harrumphed again. “I’m still mad at
you guys for not calling me that night, you know. I could
have—”

“What,” Sloane said, “blown your cover? Made
sure everyone knows that an alien and a Westbrook isn’t just a
Twitter hashtag?”

“You didn’t—I wouldn’t—you can’t know I would
have blown my cover!”

Sloane gave her a mirror image of the
unimpressed look that Ava had earlier. “And you can’t know you
wouldn’t have.”

“Yes, I can!” She stood up and started to
pace the rug in front of the couch. “I hide things like it’s my
job, Sloane, because it is. I don’t think you realize how much
control I have to be under at all times on this freaking
planet.”

Sloane held up her hands. “Sorry. I was just
trying to protect you. We all were.”

“That’s condescending as hell, Sloane, and
you know it. You guys keep hiding things from me—important
things—because you think I can’t handle myself despite the fact
that’s all I’ve done since the moment the Alliance placed me here.
You have no idea what it’s like to be in my body on this
planet.”

Sloane stood up, too, her forehead creased.
“You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. I’m sorry, Kenzie, for
real this time. I should have done better.”

Kenzie stared hard at her sister, but she
couldn’t find any indication that the contrition Sloane now
projected was anything other than sincere. “Fine. But don’t do it
again, okay?”

“I mean, I can try, but I can’t promise.
Working for the government has major drawbacks when it comes to
transparency.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Mika said.

And while this wasn’t exactly what Kenzie
wanted to hear, at least Sloane was being upfront about the limits
to her honesty. Ava had been, too. At the thought of her
girlfriend, she sat back down on the couch and covered her face
with her hands. “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot.”

Sloane took her seat again, too. “Are we back
to Ava?”

“Yes. Duh. Try to keep up, Slo-mo.” But her
scathing delivery was ruined when Sloane poked her ear and she
giggled reflexively. She should never have told her older sister
that Zattalians had ticklish spots. “Stop it!”

Sloane smirked. “Sorry, not sorry.”

“Where’s Ava now?” Mika asked, bringing them
back to the topic at hand.

Kenzie bit her lip. “At her place. I
think.”

“You didn’t just take off on her, did you?”
Sloane asked.

“Maybe? I know, I’m a jerk.” She slid lower
on the couch. “Why didn’t you guys warn me how complicated dating a
woman would be?”

Mika’s laugh was soft. “It may be
complicated, but it’s worth it.”

“I just…” Tears welled up once again. Why
couldn’t everyone see what a mess she was? They looked at her like
she was this innocent, happy-go-lucky child half the time, when in
fact she had seen more of the universe, more death and destruction
and innate evil than most of them had ever dreamed
of. Except D’aman. But her human family and friends? They seemed
unable to comprehend that she understood the darkness in people’s
hearts more than they probably ever would.

Well, maybe not more than Ava, whose family
was made up of literal evil masterminds. Ava, who had smiled at her
with wonder in her eyes as the opening chords
of Hamilton rang out, who had bravely extolled the
virtues of Star Trek: Next Generation in the face of
Kenzie’s purist stance, who claimed to love her and yet was keeping
serious things from her even now. Maybe those two statements
weren’t as diametrically opposed as they seemed. Among Zattalians,
dishonesty was viewed in the same black-and-white, fixed lens
through which their people viewed almost everything else. But on
Earth, people believed in “good lies,” untruths offered to protect
someone else.

Maybe, for once, humans had a point.
Shouldn’t she give Ava the benefit of the doubt? Her sister, too,
for that matter?

“I love her so much,” she said finally.

“But…” Sloane’s voice was gentle.

“No buts. I just love her.”

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” Mika asked.

Kenzie glanced at her sister’s girlfriend.
“Completely. I can’t lose her too. I just…
I can’t.”

Mika nodded. “I know what you mean. Whenever
I see Sloane throw herself a little too enthusiastically at
danger—”

“Excuse you!” Sloane peered around Kenzie to
mock glare at her girlfriend. “I do
not throw myself at danger.”

“Yes, you do,” Kenzie and Mika said in unison
before Mika continued. “When she does that, I want to snap my
fingers and pause everything, rewind, go back and rewrite the
events that led to that moment. But we can’t do that. We don’t have
that kind of control. The only choice we have is whether or not to
keep moving forward.”

No control, Kenzie
thought, over who lives and who
dies. Stupid Lin-Manuel Miranda. Why were his lyrics so
applicable to her life?

“We’ll do what we can to keep her safe,”
Sloane said. “You and Ava aren’t alone in this.”

Kenzie clenched her fists. “But we can’t be
there all the time. You said it yourself—we can’t save
everyone.”

“No,” Sloane said, “we can’t. But that
doesn’t mean we stop trying, does it?”

Reluctantly, she shook her head. “No, of
course not.” The room was quiet for a moment, and Kenzie focused on
the music coming from the dining room. “What are you guys listening
to, anyway?”

“The Indigo Girls,” Mika said.

“Oh my god, you are so gay,”
Kenzie muttered, trying not to laugh as she realized Mika was
wearing a flannel shirt and jeans with an honest-to-goodness wallet
chain.

“Told you,” Sloane said, snickering.

“You did, but I had no idea.”

“What? Their harmonies are amazing,” Mika
insisted.

The indulgent look Sloane directed at her
super-gay girlfriend reminded Kenzie of the woman still waiting for
her—she hoped. “I have to go,” she said.

“You definitely do,” Sloane said, waggling
her eyebrows suggestively at Mika.

“Ew, Sloane!” But Kenzie was laughing as she
delivered the obligatory line.

They hugged her and kissed her cheeks while
she simultaneously thanked them, apologized for interrupting
dinner, and assured them she would see them later—preferably with
Ava. A moment later she was replacing her mask and departing in
what she knew probably looked like a blur to their average,
everyday human vision.

As she flew toward Belltown, the chaotic
fight-or-flight energy blessedly expunged from her system, she told
herself that Sloane was right. With all of them looking out for
Ava, the odds were definitely in their favor. And it wasn’t like
Panopticon was wholly compromised. There were plenty of agents like
Sloane who had joined the Bureau to protect off-worlders from the
American government. They hadn’t all suddenly disappeared, had
they?

Ava was still in the kitchen when Kenzie
reached her building, glasses on her nose, tablet open to the same
recipe as before. For some reason, the sight reminded Kenzie of the
evening she’d spied on Ava for the first time, unreasonably
thrilled that she was reading Jane Austen. So much had happened
since then, and yet Kenzie was still running at the drop of a hat,
still stuttering forward and back again in this relationship they
had both said they wanted.

The security guards announced her arrival, as
was protocol, and for a moment Kenzie wondered if she would be
invited inside. When the smiling guard from before opened the door
for her, she released a long breath. Ava had wanted her to stay and
talk, hadn’t she? Maybe it wasn’t too late to try that now.

She entered the apartment and kicked off her
shoes, but then she stood where she was in her socked feet,
uncertain if she should go any closer.

Ava glanced up from the stove, gaze
unreadable.

“Sorry,” Kenzie said, biting the inside of
her lip. “I should have texted. Can I—can I come in?”

“Of course.”

They were still watching each other from
across the room when the timer above the stove went off.

“Are you staying for dinner?” Ava asked.

“I would like to. Is that okay?”

“I invited you, Kenzie. That hasn’t changed.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned off the timer and
reached for a pair of brand-new oven mitts. Almost everything in
the condo was new, and Kenzie had tried to convince herself that
Ava’s willingness to purchase and outfit the apartment meant she
would be staying in Seattle. But really, it didn’t have to mean
that at all.

Rehearsing her apology in her head, she set
the table while Ava dished up salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic
bread, and asparagus. The food smelled amazing, and Kenzie could no
more stop her stomach from growling than she could keep herself
from bolting at the first hint of trouble.

Ava carried their plates to their usual spots
at the table. As she unfolded her napkin, Ava’s face was blank,
forehead smooth, but Kenzie could hear the nervous thrum of her
pulse, see the tension lining her shoulders. She hated that Ava
constantly hid what she was feeling. And yet, it was Kenzie’s fault
she felt she had to.

“I’m sorry I took off,” she said quietly.

“It’s okay. You came back.” Ava smiled a
little, but Kenzie could see the resignation in her eyes,
the oh, right, this again, behind her words.

“It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have gotten so
angry. You’re in a difficult situation and you’re only doing what
you think is best.”

“You have every right to be upset, Kenzie.
But I’m sorry—with your sister working at Panopticon, I just don’t
feel like I can tell you everything.”

“No, I get it. And I really am sorry about
before,” Kenzie repeated, trying to ignore the heavenly scent of
baked salmon drifting up from her plate. Food could wait. This was
important.

Ava watched her across the table. “Apology
accepted. As long as… You won’t fly off like that again, will
you?”

She scrunched up her face. “Like, tonight?”
she joked.

Ava reached out and flicked the back of her
hand where it rested on the table. But instead of pulling back
afterward, she wound their fingers together. “I’m sorry, too. I
don’t want to keep things from you. It just feels like the lesser
of two evils right now.”

“I understand. I don’t like it, but I get
it.” Kenzie glanced down at their joined hands. Ava was so fair, so
soft, while she was darker and definitely not soft. Their bodies
were designed for such different things.

“And I’m sorry my family are such
whack jobs,” Ava added.

“That’s not your fault. If we were
responsible for the actions of the people closest to us…” She
shrugged a little, picturing her parents and the fleet they and the
rest of the navigation team had failed to protect. No one was left
to investigate the accident, but if they had? She’d always wondered
who would have been blamed.

“Maybe not,” Ava said, “but it is some fairly
large baggage to bring into the relationship.”

Kenzie scoffed. “Um, yeah, it’s not like you
have a corner on oversize emotional baggage.”

“What a pair we are—you with abandonment
issues and me with family vendetta issues. It’s not exactly the
best combination, is it?”

“When you put it like that…” Kenzie cracked a
smile, relieved when Ava returned it.

“I told you before I’m tough, and I meant it.
I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, okay?”

Kenzie tightened her hold on Ava’s hand. “You
don’t know that, though. You have no idea what will happen in the
future.”

“Maybe not. But do you remember I told you
once that I don’t believe in letting fear rule us?”

Kenzie nodded, biting her lip.

“I meant it. I love you, Kenzie. I love that
you’re brave and selfless and a big old nerd. I love you even
though you refuse to see the genius of the Next Generation.
I even love that being with me sometimes scares the bejesus out of
you, because otherwise I might think you didn’t care about me as
much as I do about you.”

Kenzie looked over Ava’s shoulder, focusing
on the shiny tray that contained the skin of the salmon Ava had
baked. “Is that what you meant earlier when you said you were
afraid? That being with you would scare me so much I would run away
again?”

Ava leaned back in her chair. “I didn’t
realize you heard that.”

“Super hearing,” Kenzie said
apologetically.

“Right. Well, yes, that’s what I meant.” She
frowned. “You didn’t… Did you think I meant I was afraid
of you?”

Kenzie looked down at her plate. “No. Well,
maybe. I mean, I did get mad…”

“Oh, sweet girl.” Ava released her hand long
enough to walk around to her side of the table and drop into her
lap. “I am not afraid of you. Are your powers sometimes
intimidating to me as a, what do you like to call me, puny
human? Yes, I’ll admit they are. But am I afraid
of you, Kenzie? No. Never. I know you wouldn’t hurt
me.”

That made one of them. “I want to say I feel
the same way, but I’m not sure I trust either of us right now. You
called my sister instead of me, Ava! You could have died from the
alien rum, and you called Sloane.”

“Because I was trying to protect you! Is that
so wrong?”

“I don’t know. How do you feel when I try to
protect you? Does it feel good, or does it seem like I don’t
respect you?”

Ava paused, her mental gears visibly turning.
And then she sighed and looked down, her fingertips smoothing over
Kenzie’s shirt collar. “Like you don’t respect me.”

Kenzie tightened her grip on Ava’s waist.
“Exactly. So can we agree that we’re going to include each other in
the big things from now on?”

“I mean, I can try.”

“Ava…” Sneaky humans and their danged
flexible morality.

Ava shook her head. “I know how that sounds.
It’s just, I’m not sure I can promise that. Can you honestly
promise me you won’t do something to keep me safe even if I don’t
want you to?”

Kenzie expelled a breath. Humans weren’t the
only sneaky ones. “Point taken.”

Ava leaned in and kissed her gently, her lips
lingering. “We don’t have to figure it all out tonight, sweetheart.
We have time.”

Kenzie hoped she was right.

Ava extricated herself from Kenzie’s grasp.
“Right now, though, I think we should eat. You look like you’re
about to pass out, and we can’t have that if we’re going out
later.”

Kenzie was too hungry to protest the implied
insult to her strength and fortitude. She barely waited until Ava
was back in her seat before scooping up a huge bite of salmon and
mashed potatoes and jamming it—holy Alia, finally—into her
mouth. And, wow, it tasted as good as it smelled. Better, even.

“Mmmm,” she practically moaned. “This
is amazing.”

Ava’s smile was affectionate. “I’m glad you
like it. Now, tell me about your day.”

With the weighty conversation behind them,
they ate slowly—or Ava did, anyway—chatting about their workdays
and recent developments in the humans vs. off-worlders standoff.
Ava watched with her usual amused smile as Kenzie put away a
veritable mountain of food, but over dessert, her expression turned
more thoughtful. While Kenzie ate her third slice of cheesecake,
Ava propped her chin on her hand.

“In the spirit of being more transparent with
each other, what if we share something about ourselves that we
haven’t mentioned before now?”

Kenzie shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Okay. Let’s see.” Ava tapped her chin for a
second. “I cheated on a chemistry test once because Bea dared me
to, but I felt so awful that I barely even looked at the cheat
sheet.”

“Aw, poor Little Westbrook. You can’t even be
bad when you try!”

“That nickname is not happening.”

“I don’t know. If Galaxy Girl can be Little
Shepherd, I think you can—”

“I’m serious, Kenzie. Not. Going. To
happen.”

“We shall see…”

“No, we shan’t. I believe it’s your turn to
share something that I don’t know about you.”

Kenzie squinted for a moment. “I don’t like
helping everyone. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to rescue sleazy
men or conservative people who say things like ‘God meant Adam and
Eve not Adam and Steve.’”

Ava nodded solemnly. “I fully support your
right to judge the people you rescue.”

“And sometimes I use my powers for evil. Like
the first time you came out with us to the pub—I totally tried to
eavesdrop on you and Antonio.”

“You knew he was being a jackass, didn’t
you?” At Kenzie’s nod, Ava added, “You were being gallant. I think
that’s allowed.”

“Gallant, huh?” She smiled a little,
imagining herself in a knight’s suit of armor. But no, it would be
too clunky to wear while performing feats of derring-do. Besides,
she didn’t need armor.

“My hero,” Ava said, her voice teasing.

She did like the sound of that, though,
Kenzie thought as she finished the last slice of cheesecake and
leaned back in her chair. “Oh my god, that was sooo good. Why don’t
you cook every night?”

“Not enough time, is there?”

“Good point.” Kenzie paused. “I know we
already talked about what happened earlier, but I just want to say
that I should never have come here when I was so upset.”

“It’s okay to get upset, Kenzie. You feel how
you feel, and like we talked about before, you get to take time and
space if you need it. I can’t promise not to be hurt, but I can
promise to let you go.”

“Really?” Kenzie stared at her. “That’s it?
You forgive me for taking off again just like that?”

Ava dabbed at her mouth with her cloth
napkin. “Again, you get to have your feelings. Besides, you weren’t
gone that long.”

“Here’s the thing—I love you, which you
already knew,” Kenzie said, holding Ava’s gaze. “But what you
might not know is that I’ve never loved anyone as
much as I love you, which means I’ll probably keep freaking out,
especially if I’m worried that someone might try to hurt you. But
you have my word that I’ll always come back to you, okay?”

Ava nodded. “Okay. And I love you too, which
I think you already do know.”

Kenzie leaned across the table, closing the
space between them. “Can I kiss you?”

“Please,” Ava whispered, reaching up to
cradle her face in both hands.

Kenzie realized that she must look a sight,
cheeks mottled and eyes bloodshot from her earlier crying jag, but
then she decided that what she looked like didn’t matter as Ava’s
eyes closed and their lips touched. She sighed, feeling their
breath intermingle, and then Ava pressed closer and flicked her
tongue just so, and Kenzie forgot to breathe at all. Ava was soft
and warm and smelled of cooking oil and lavender body wash, and her
mouth was hot and insistent. Kenzie let herself get swept into the
kiss, and the heat that rushed through her veins this time was the
good kind she had become increasingly accustomed to the longer she
and Ava were together.

Ava pulled away and checked her phone. “I
think we just have time for a quickie.” She rose and started toward
the hallway, smirking over her shoulder. “Come along, darling.
Unless you’re not in the mood?”

As if that was ever in question.

Kenzie sped after her laughing girlfriend.
They could always clean up the kitchen later. For now, she intended
to enjoy the time they had together. No doubt there would be time
enough later to worry about the people and things over which she
had no control—Ava included.

Chapter Five

“That’s our high school!” Kenzie said, her grip on Ava’s hand
almost painful as she pointed out the car window at what looked
like a newly renovated high school perched on the side of a gentle
slope, a sprawling parking lot and several well-tended sports
fields visible from the main road.

“Is that where you won States?” Mika asked
Sloane, who preened a little as she nodded.

“Yep. Number one in the state my senior
year!”

“Sloane played softball,” Kenzie told Ava as
the truck continued along a tree-lined parkway, headed toward
Kenzie and Sloane’s childhood home.

Ava smiled, but inwardly she was
face-palming. The latency in softball-playing lesbian youth was
(anecdotally) high; perhaps someone needed to do a study on the
connection between softball and sapphism. Kenzie’s mother was a
biochemist. Perhaps Ava could persuade her… She choked back a
semi-hysterical giggle at the idea, picturing the well-known
scientist’s face were Ava to propose such a study. It wasn’t like
she had anything to lose. Jane Henderson already viewed her as an
existential threat to her adopted daughter’s life, and honestly,
she probably wasn’t even wrong.

In the distance, Ava could see traffic moving
along the freeway south toward Seattle, and she wished suddenly
that she was there rather than ensconced in the back seat of
Sloane’s roomy truck receiving a tour of “the Ham,” as the Shepherd
sisters fondly referred to their hometown. How had she allowed
Kenzie to talk her into coming up to Bellingham for the
Shepherd-Henderson annual Fourth of July barbecue? She supposed
multiple orgasms the previous night after an entertaining evening
out with Sloane and Mika had something to do with it. When Kenzie
had blinked sweetly up at her this morning and asked if they could
please take a break from the chaos of Seattle and visit her
hometown, please, please, please, Ava had found herself
agreeing. Being asked to meet the parents before breakfast was
considerably more flattering than being deserted before dinner. At
least Kenzie had come back, and they’d gotten a chance to work
through some of their issues around secrets and lies—which Ava, as
a Westbrook, considered two very different categories.

While Kenzie teased Sloane about riding the
bench in high school, Ava used her free hand to open her purse and
surreptitiously check her burner phone’s notifications for at least
the tenth time during their ninety-minute journey up I-5. Nothing
yet from Angelica. Hyperion’s assistant security chief had recently
begun inspecting the company’s subsidiary locations that overlapped
with Labyrinth, the shady weapons reseller. Today’s target—the
third that Angelica and her team had investigated—was located in
West Texas.

As Sloane’s truck cruised past apartment
buildings advertising student rates, Ava realized they must not
have far to go now. Kenzie’s parents lived close enough to walk to
the university, if Ava recalled correctly. Wonderful. Soon she
would be sharing a small space with the people who had hated her on
first sight. Why was she doing this again?

“The arboretum’s up that road,” Kenzie said,
gesturing to a paved lane on the right. “There’s this really cool
tower at the top where you can see the city, the Canadian
mountains, even Mount Baker on a clear day.”

“Wait,” Mika said. “Sloane, is that the tower
where you and your high school boyfriend got caught having
sex?”

“Mika!” Sloane said, glaring at her
girlfriend as a blush climbed up her neck, turning even the tips of
her ears bright red.

“Ew!” Kenzie stuck her fingers in her ears
and began to hum to herself, presumably to block out any further
revelations of her sister’s sex life.

This seemed a bit prudish to Ava until she
imagined being trapped in a car with someone telling stories about
her brother’s sex life, and right. Perhaps not that prudish, after
all.

The truck soon crested a hill, and Sloane
guided the vehicle onto a street that offered peekaboo glimpses of
Puget Sound far below. Too soon, they were turning onto a narrow
residential street with large houses, no sidewalk, and a
territorial view of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands undulating
into the distance. Another short block, and they were pulling into
the driveway of a large Craftsman house on a quiet corner
overshadowed by a giant evergreen. Ava blinked out the window,
taking in the neat lawn and professional landscaping that reminded
her more of Boston’s suburbs than Seattle proper. She wasn’t sure
what she’d expected, but this East Coast vibe wasn’t it.

Kenzie leaned closer, quivering like an
excited puppy. “Ready?”

Of course she wasn’t. Nevertheless, Ava
pasted on a smile and nodded. Growing up in the Westbrook family,
she’d attended her share of uncomfortable social events. She’d also
faced down hostile boards more than once—especially lately. What
was a few hours at a neighborhood barbecue in sleepy,
out-of-the-way Bellingham? If things got too terrible, she could
always ask Kenzie to fly her home.

Ava had just stepped down from the truck when
the front door opened and Jane and Benjamin appeared. Benjamin was
smiling as they followed the slate path that arced toward the
driveway, but Jane’s gaze alighted on Ava and burned intensely for
a moment before shifting to Sloane and brightening. Ava faltered.
Jesus. Jane and Amelia were uncannily similar. But then
Kenzie appeared at Ava’s side, grasping her hand in her warm, solid
grip, and Ava glanced up into blue eyes that practically glowed
with love and affection.

Kenzie nodded down at her, and Ava nodded
back. This would be okay, she thought as they stepped toward
Kenzie’s childhood home. They would be okay, whether Jane
liked it or not.

#

Jane didn’t like it, that much was clear. But
as the warm, sunny day unfolded, Ava found that Kenzie’s mother’s
coldness didn’t affect her as much as she’d worried. There were too
many other good things to focus on—like Ben’s affable politeness,
Mika’s steady camaraderie, and Sloane and Kenzie’s obvious
happiness at being home on a bright summer day, even if their
mother was doing her best to cast a disapproving pall on the family
reunion.

The house was lovely, large and sunny and
well decorated with sculptures, paintings, and books. So many
books, in fact, that there was an entire library on the second
floor in a small room across from the bedrooms. The property hadn’t
cost much when Jane and Ben bought it a quarter of a century
earlier, Kenzie explained during a short tour, but now it was worth
enough to easily fund their retirement.

Boomers, Ava thought, rolling her eyes
to herself as they left the library. As a Millennial, she was
required to scoff at the older generation whenever the opportunity
presented itself.

Interestingly, Sloane’s old room retained
little of her personality while Kenzie’s appeared unchanged from
her teenage years. In fact, there was still the incriminating
poster of B-Dang hanging above her bed, an image Ava made sure to
capture in multiple photos while Kenzie laughingly tried to wrestle
her phone away. Or pretended to try, anyway. They both knew Kenzie
could have plucked the phone from her grasp in a flash if she’d
really wanted to. But Kenzie had never used her powers against Ava,
and Ava found that she trusted her not to. Mostly.

The night before, she hadn’t been able to
keep from flinching away from Kenzie’s anger. But that had more to
do with memories of her father’s temper than any fear of Kenzie.
More than once, the General had lost control in front of Ava,
breaking a cabinet or a wall or even, once, a glass he shattered
purposely at her feet in a fit of rage. Ava might trust Kenzie, but
she had learned at an early age never to trust anyone’s anger, not
even her own.

Finally giving up on wresting the phone away,
Kenzie flopped back on the bed, stretching out her long legs and
patting the space beside her. “Come here.”

Ava glanced into the hallway, but Sloane and
Mika had already wandered back downstairs, leaving them alone on
the second floor. Flushed from their wrestling match, Ava eased
herself onto the bed, sitting primly at the edge.

“Come here,” Kenzie repeated, her expression
shifting into that adorable pout of hers.

“Oh, all right.” Ava laughed as she rolled
into Kenzie’s side.

“Hi,” Kenzie said.

“Hi.”

“I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Neither can I.” Really, Ava had no idea what
she was doing here.

They gazed into each other’s eyes, sunlight
streaming in through the wall of windows overlooking the
neighborhood above Puget Sound, and Ava leaned in, her lips nearly
brushing Kenzie’s.

“Be honest,” she said. “You’re totally
wishing Bea was here right now, aren’t you?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind.” Ava pretended to
gasp, but Kenzie bridged the narrow distance to capture her lips in
a long, sweet, toe-curling kiss. Afterward, she leaned her forehead
against Ava’s. “You know I don’t want anyone here but you.”

Too bad her parents didn’t feel the same.

Fortunately, once the party started, Jane
didn’t have time to maintain hostilities. Instead, she morphed into
the perfect host, which allowed Ava to observe a different side of
her altogether. From a distance, of course.

One of the neighbors from down the street—a
retired music professor who was now in her eighties, according to
Kenzie—wasn’t very steady on her feet, so Jane escorted her to a
protected corner of the deck where Phyllis, the elderly musician,
could chat with Ben and Sloane as they worked the grill. Jane, all
warm smiles and reassuring hands, made sure she was settled with a
drink before moving on to the next guest, a young woman with a baby
on her hip and a toddler by the hand.

“Kenzie,” Jane called, not bothering to spare
Ava a glance, “some help?”

Kenzie squeezed Ava’s hand and ducked away,
leaving her and Mika on their own at the railing overlooking the
backyard and the beautiful view of Bellingham Bay, the verdant
chain of islands stretching away to the horizon. But Ava wasn’t
admiring the scenery. Instead, her gaze followed Kenzie, who gave
the new arrival a quick hug before dropping down to face the
toddler. As Ava watched, bemused, the dark-headed munchkin lit up
and launched themself at Kenzie, who caught them easily and lifted
them to her shoulders, all while making lively conversation with
the tired-looking parent. Kenzie looked so at home with the
adorable child on her shoulders that Ava felt her mind—certainly
without her permission—drift toward a fantasy she had not yet
allowed herself to entertain: a future family comprised of her,
Kenzie, and their child/ren.

Determinedly, she squelched the still-nascent
daydream. She refused to be That Lesbian who fantasized about
having children with the woman she’d been dating for only a few
months—even if the woman in question was the most beautiful person
she’d ever met, inside and out, and Ava was having a harder and
harder time imagining a future without her… But no. It was Too
Soon. Before images of Kenzie pregnant and glowing could solidify
in her mind’s eye—she would be soooo fucking beautiful—Ava
turned her attention back to the here and now.

Or tried to, anyway; but she was helpless to
prevent the pang that followed her momentary vacation from reality.
Even if Kenzie wanted a family with her somewhere down the road,
how could they possibly bring a new life into their world, shadowed
by danger as they were? Ava had more than a couple of assassination
attempts to her name, and Kenzie—well, if certain people found out
where she’d come from, they wouldn’t stop hunting her until she was
either dead or locked up in a cage in their lab. Or both.

“How are you doing?” Mika asked, nudging
her.

“I’m fine.” She took a long sip of the craft
beer Sloane had placed in her hand the moment she set foot on the
deck. “What about you? Kenzie said you’re Sloane’s first
girlfriend, and I know from experience how that can go.” She nodded
toward Jane, just re-emerging from the kitchen with a
crudités platter.

“She didn’t go for a gun the first time she
met me,” Mika said, “so I suppose that’s a good sign.”

Ava winced. “Kenzie told Sloane about
that?”

“Yep. In case you haven’t noticed, Kenzie
tells Sloane almost everything.”

“Sloane doesn’t seem inclined to do the same,
though.”

Mika shrugged. “Older sister’s prerogative.
But seriously, thanks for rallying today. It’s nice to have someone
here who’s as much of an outsider as I am. I’m not going to lie—gun
or no gun, Jane intimidates the hell out of me. But with you along,
I can pretty much fade into the woodwork.” She held up her beer
bottle, a crooked grin on her face.

Ava rolled her eyes and huffed out a laugh as
she clicked her bottle against Mika’s. “You’re welcome, I guess.”
Still, she knew what Mika meant. It was nice to huddle here with a
fellow outsider and watch the family barbecue unfold. Without Mika
there, Ava would have been forced to interact with strangers—not a
comfortable proposition these days, especially now that Nick’s
escape had launched their family squarely back into the public’s
crosshairs. The last thing Ava needed was some feckless
Bellinghamster—Kenzie’s nickname for her hometown brethren—taking
an illicit photo of her and broadcasting her current location for
the world to see. And, more to the point, broadcasting the location
of Kenzie’s childhood home.

The familiar fear returned, and she tried to
tamp it down. She wasn’t the biggest threat to the
Shepherd-Hendersons; Kenzie had claimed that role long before Ava
appeared on the scene. Her human family had known what they were
getting into when they’d agreed to adopt a child from Zattalia, and
apparently, they were comfortable with the risk. Or maybe they
simply believed in doing the right thing even in the face of great
danger. Ava could respect that about Jane.

Kenzie appeared at her side, the giggling
child tucked under her arm like an erstwhile football. “I told
Gabriel here that we’d play some tag. Don’t suppose I could
convince you to join us?”

As Gabriel beamed up at Ava, she pictured her
godson Rowan in a couple of years with the same mischievous grin.
If only she were lucky enough to live to see it. “I’d love to.
Mika?”

“I’m in,” Mika said, setting her beer on the
railing beside Ava’s.

Kenzie fist pumped, her smile matching the
adorable cherub’s. “Awesome!”

She paused by the grill to snatch a handful
of potato chips from Sloane’s plate before leading the way down the
short flight of stairs to the backyard, where Ava—the chief
operating officer of a Fortune 500 company—found herself running
and shrieking alongside her girlfriend, her girlfriend’s sister’s
girlfriend, and a stranger’s child, behaving for all the world as
if they were under attack by hostile Sentinel forces.

Except with more laughing, of course.

#

The barbecue was only just beginning to wind
down when Kenzie and Sloane pulled their parents aside to say
goodbye. To her absolute surprise, Ava found she was a bit sorry to
be leaving so soon. But the Super Friends, as Kenzie and Mika
insisted on calling their group of friends, would be descending
upon her condo in a matter of hours to watch the Fourth of July
fireworks from her patio, and she still had a thousand things to
do.

“Do you really have to go?” Jane asked, her
lips forming into a formidable pout.

Ava’s mind reeled. That was where
Kenzie got it?

“We do,” Kenzie said, her voice firm. “But
thanks for having us.” She slipped her arm around Ava’s shoulder
and tugged her closer, demonstrating who she meant by “us” in a
manner that Ava found a bit heavy-handed.

If Jane’s audible exhalation was anything to
go by, she did too. But she merely bared her teeth in a semblance
of a smile and nodded graciously. “I hope to see you again
soon—both of you.”

And though the last part sounded more like a
threat than an invitation, Ava nodded back. “Thank you,” she said,
her smile more gracious—she hoped—than Kenzie’s mother’s. “I had a
lovely time.”

She really had. The afternoon in Bellingham
had offered a brief respite from the intensity of their Seattle
lives, a relaxed moment in a slower-paced, pastoral setting where
they could enjoy each other’s company without worrying about being
called away at any moment. Plus, she’d gotten to see where Kenzie
and Sloane came from, and as a bonus, no one she’d met today had
accused her of being an anti-alien extremist in cahoots with known
terrorists.

As Jane grudgingly inclined her head, Ben
stepped forward to hug Kenzie. “You’re both welcome here anytime,”
he said, his voice warm. He caught Ava’s eye as he pulled back,
nodding at her, and she could have sworn he meant it. Given he was
the one who had kept Jane from leveling a gun at her the night
they’d met, maybe he did.

The ride back to Seattle was quieter, more
muted than the drive up that morning. While Sloane and Mika chatted
up front, the sound of the freeway made it feel like Ava and Kenzie
were in their own world in the truck’s back seat. They were barely
out of Bellingham when Kenzie undid her seatbelt and, ignoring her
sister’s disapproving look, slid closer to Ava and took her
hand.

“Thanks for coming,” she murmured, and
pressed a gentle kiss to the inside of Ava’s wrist. “I know it was
difficult for you, given Jane’s—well, given Jane.”

“She just wants to protect you,” Ava said.
“How can I fault her for that?”

Kenzie traced the lines on Ava’s palm with a
warm fingertip. “I can fault her for it,” she said, “if it means
she’s cruel to you.”

Cruel seemed like a stretch. Amelia
punishing her for the lone B+ she’d earned in middle school—gym
class, of course, for being unable to execute a perfect
cartwheel—by depriving her of dinner and telling her that her
developing curves indicated she could probably do with a little
less food, anyway… Now that had been cruel. And yet, she
knew that Amelia had experienced far worse at the hands of her own
parents, so shouldn’t that count for something?

She and Bea liked to say that the goal was to
lessen the harm each generation visited upon the next, little by
little. Even though their respective parents had failed in widely
divergent ways, at least they hadn’t submitted their children to
the same tortures their own families of origin had wrought upon
them.

The image of Kenzie with the tiny neighbor
child returned to Ava, and she allowed herself a moment of
self-indulgent fantasy. Kenzie would be an amazing parent, all
sunny sweetness mixed with a protective streak a mile wide. And
with her own years of therapy under her belt, might Ava not improve
upon the lessons of her own parents? After all, that wasn’t exactly
setting the bar very high.

She sighed and snuggled closer to her
invulnerable girlfriend, pillowing her head on Kenzie’s shoulder.
For now, she was happy to be heading back to Seattle, where they
would celebrate the anniversary of the admittedly flawed American
political experiment with their Seattle friends and family, far
from Jane Henderson’s disapproving stare. For now, sitting in the
back seat of Sloane’s truck as it hummed along I-5, Kenzie’s hand
in hers, Ava was content. Maybe even happy. Either way, she
would hold onto the feeling as long as she could because, like
other emotions, happiness and contentment were like water. They,
too, would flow away soon enough, no matter how desperately she
tried to hold on.

They were almost back to downtown Seattle—Mt.
Rainier looming impossibly high in the distance—when Ava’s burner
phone buzzed in her purse. Kenzie was leaning forward in the middle
seat reminiscing with Sloane about how they used to spend summer
evenings sitting outside their elderly neighbor Phyllis’s patio
doors listening to her practice impossibly complex symphony pieces
on her grand piano, so Ava peeked into her purse to check the
phone’s screen.

The briefest of text messages greeted her:
“Nothing.”

Damn it. She relinquished the burner
phone and gazed out the window, barely registering the city streets
slipping past. Four subsidiary locations down, nine to go. Surely,
they would find something that would lead to Sentinel. But it was
slow going with only her and Angelica working the investigation,
especially with the full-time jobs that kept them busy during the
week. Maybe they should branch out, enlist more people to help with
the search.

In the front seat, Mika was teasing Sloane
about her teenage goth phase, and Ava watched them, remembering how
easily they’d uncovered the mole in her security team. Angelica
would approve of them, she was pretty sure. If Sloane could be
convinced to spearhead a shadow operation within Panopticon—which
seemed more likely now that they knew how deep the agency’s
collusion with Sentinel ran—imagine what they could do by combining
Hyperion’s private resources with the reach of the federal
government.

“You okay?” Kenzie murmured, tightening her
grip on Ava’s hand.

Ava squeezed back. “I’m good. You ready for
the second party of the day?”

“The question is, are you ready?”

Ava wrinkled her nose as she thought about
the to-do list waiting for her on the kitchen counter. “Not even
close.”

“Good thing I know someone with superspeed,
then,” Kenzie said, puffing out her chest.

“If you start talking about yourself in the
third person again,” Sloane said, “I swear I will turn this truck
around, young lady.”

They all laughed, and Ava leaned into
Kenzie’s side as the truck skimmed over the Ship Canal Bridge,
almost two hundred feet above the Montlake Cut. Having a girlfriend
with superpowers really did inspire an incredible amount of
confidence.

Bring on the party, she thought. At
least this one wouldn’t involve anyone who would rather shoot first
and ask questions later.

#

She should have known Sentinel couldn’t
resist the optics of the Fourth of July. They stuck to the East
Coast, however, opting to sabotage fireworks shows in D.C., New
York, and Boston—the only cities that “truly mattered,” as Amelia
had long been known to opine. No lives were lost, according to the
AP wire, so it was more of a midlevel operation than a true
assault. The main impact was that the fireworks show in each of the
target cities ended in a hail of explosives that alternately
spelled out “Sentinel is Watching,” “Earth First,” and the
ever-popular “ETs Go Home.” All in all, it was one of the least
violent actions Sentinel had taken, the Super Friends agreed as
they drank beer on Ava’s patio and waited for the Seattle show to
begin.

“This has Amelia’s fingerprints all over it,”
Ava told Kenzie. They were sharing a love seat on the patio that
faced the Space Needle, Ava’s legs draped over Kenzie’s lap, and
once again she was grateful for an opaque patio railing that
shielded the occupants from all but the tallest of nearby
buildings.

“You think so?” Kenzie asked, one hand warm
and heavy on her calf.

“Totally. It’s elegant but restrained, as far
as terrorist operations go.”

By now, the thought of Amelia joining
Sentinel no longer felt like a shock. Ava had already known their
mother supported Nick’s political position, at least in theory.
Amelia hadn’t been subtle in enabling his “heroic efforts to save
humanity,” as she’d described Nick’s brand of Earth-first
terrorism. Ava should have anticipated that Amelia would give up
any chance at a future of her own to make sure that her “darling
boy” could rewrite his story on the world stage.

“You okay?” Kenzie asked.

The question was becoming a refrain that Ava
didn’t like, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
“Fine. Ooh, look, I think they’re starting!”

She wouldn’t have put it past her mother to
target Seattle’s fireworks show just to send her insubordinate
daughter a message, but she needn’t have worried. The show went off
without a hitch, each explosion more colorful than the previous one
until the grand finale, which went on longer than Ava expected.
Honestly, it was a decent little show, perfect for a small city
like Seattle.

The Super Friends stayed until shortly after
midnight, and then they all—everyone except D’aman, that is—joked
about being old fogies and needing to get home before they turned
into pumpkins. This led to an amusing series of questions from the
off-worlders in their midst about Earth magic, age, and garden
vegetables, and by the time the confusion had been resolved and
everyone except Kenzie had headed out, Ava was ready to fall asleep
standing.

Kenzie’s superspeed really did come in handy.
With her blurring about the penthouse, the post-party pickup took
minutes rather than hours. Even then, Ava was barely awake when she
fell into bed. Meeting Kenzie’s parents on the same day she hosted
her first Super Friends party and her mother engineered a
national terrorist attack had left her exhausted.

“I just wish I had a normal life with normal
problems,” she told Bea the following morning during their
semi-regular Sunday morning phone date.

“Don’t lie,” Bea said. “You would be bored
off your ass in half a day.”

“What about a less dangerous life, then?”

Bea’s voice softened. “Now, that I could get
behind. When are we going to see you? Rowan misses his auntie.”

“I miss him, too,” she said, swiveling her
recliner to stare out at the cloudy sky. There would be no glimpse
of Galaxy Girl this morning. Kenzie and D’aman were helping a local
marine preservation group clean up Independence Day litter from the
Elliott Bay shoreline. As Kenzie had said, both the environment and
the off-world community could use the boost.

“It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight, you
know,” Bea said.

“Don’t tempt me. I really shouldn’t visit you
guys right now. It doesn’t feel safe.”

“Why? Do you think Sentinel is plotting
something more nefarious than hijacking fireworks shows with
juvenile marketing slogans?”

“Don’t you?”

“Probably.” Bea paused, and when she spoke
again, her voice was low. “Be careful, A. I couldn’t—I
wouldn’t…”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Ava wished she could pull
her best friend into a reassuring hug. “You know me. I over-worry
about things I can’t control.”

“I know. But if anything happens to you, your
mother and brother will have the Dangs to deal with.”

“Those are fighting words,” Ava teased.

“Dang straight.”

“That’s not what she said…”

Bea laughed. “On that note, I gotta wake
Rowan up from his nap or he’ll never sleep again. Keep me in the
loop, okay?”

“I will,” she said, even though she had no
intention of telling Bea anything that could put her in harm’s way.
The less Bea knew, the safer she would be, and Ava needed Bea,
Rowan, and James to stay safe.

After they hung up, Ava decided to clean her
apartment, but Kenzie’s whirlwind cleaning shtick after the party
had left the penthouse almost pristine. And since Ava regularly
used manual labor to soothe her nerves, there was barely even a
dusty shelf to be found. That meant she was alone with her phone
and her thoughts, waiting for Kenzie to come back for lunch.

She tried playing a word game on her phone,
but her thoughts insisted on returning to her mother—specifically,
to their final visit together. Had she missed any obvious
indications that Amelia was involved with Sentinel? But she
couldn’t detect anything from this vantage point, other than the
usual push and pull on her emotions that a visit from her mother
engendered.

At this point, Ava had lived away from the
Thornton-Westbrook mansion longer than she’d resided in it. Given
the distance, she now possessed a clearer view of Amelia’s tools of
psychological torture, as she and Nick had jokingly called their
mother’s habit of pulling them close and then pushing them away.
Though Nick was the Golden Boy, he’d suffered nearly as much as
Ava. More, possibly, because while she had fading memories of her
biological mother to cling to, Nick only had the one mother.

His relationship with their father hadn’t
been easy, either.

“You’re too sensitive,” Ava remembered their
father saying, shaking his head as Nick would dig in his heels
about something that seemed inconsequential to the General’s world
view. “Buck up, son. Sensitivity only makes you vulnerable to
exploitation.”

Ava didn’t think Alexander meant to be harsh.
He was just away so much that he barely seemed to know how to
interact with either of them. If Ava ever had children of her own,
she would cut back on the amount of time and energy she dedicated
to work. She didn’t want her children to wonder if they were loved;
if they mattered to their parents at all.

It still surprised her sometimes that she
could picture herself having children. As teenagers from
dysfunctional families, she and Bea had sworn they would never
reproduce.

“I don’t want to fuck anyone up the way my
parents fucked me up,” Bea would say as they lay on the roof of
Deerfield’s science building, sharing a joint and taking turns
gazing at the stars through the powerful refractor telescope Ava
had convinced Alexander to donate to the school’s Astronomy
Club.

“Me, neither,” Ava always agreed.

Somewhere along the way, though, they had
stopped wishing quite as fervently for childless futures.

Her sophomore year at MIT, Ava took a
sociology elective that focused on American family structures, and
suddenly, she found she better understood the Thornton-Westbrooks.
She was the family scapegoat for Amelia’s pain, the physical
manifestation of Alexander’s emotional and physical infidelity.
Nick, meanwhile, was the child Amelia poured her love and attention
into, molding him into what she viewed as the best of herself and
her husband combined. Unsurprising then that the two of them would
be embroiled in some twisted Machiavellian plot to avenge
Alexander’s death.

They weren’t even that wrong about the alien
menace facing Earth. Kenzie had told Ava about her people’s history
with enslaving different alien races. And it wasn’t just Zattalians
who abused their power, she’d admitted to Ava late one night when
neither of them could sleep. There were other aggressive races out
there capable of intergalactic travel. Just because Earth was
currently viewed as a backwater outlier by the rest of the universe
didn’t mean it always would be.

What Nick, Amelia, and Sentinel had gotten so
badly wrong, in Ava’s opinion, was their approach to
Earth’s planetary defenses. Killing or banishing all off-worlders
was clearly not the moral—or efficient—way to combat a demonstrably
evil few. Besides, there was an entire universe of threats lurking
out beyond the Earth’s atmosphere: asteroids, black holes,
electromagnetic storms, dark matter, and comets, to name a few. Add
in localized threats of climate change, nuclear weapons, and
overpopulation, and any year could be Earth’s last. Shouldn’t they
all spend whatever time remained being good to the people they
loved and doing what they could to improve Earth’s chances at
survival?

But instead of working on green technology
innovations or methods of delivering clean water to global
communities in need, Ava was forced to think about her mother and
brother and their extremist views, to wonder what their next move
would be in this real-life chess match she seemed to have no choice
but to play. Kenzie and D’aman were amassing a cult following that
extended beyond Seattle, beyond America even. Ava’s intuition told
her that at some point, Sentinel would come after Seattle’s Galaxy
Duo—and her, too, once again. In fact, the spiking of her office
whiskey was probably the first volley across her metaphorical
ship’s bow.

Wait—was Hyperion the ship? And was Nick the
dread pirate coming for her, the do-gooder captain? She wished she
could say that this was where the metaphor broke down, because
her as a shining light against evil? Gah. When
had such a thing even become possible?

Except she knew when: right about the time
she fell for an off-worlder moonlighting as a superhero.

The battle was apparently on, Ava thought,
closing the word game on her phone. And if the dread pirate was
coming after her ship, she would do well to rally the troops. Or
was it raise the fleet? Obviously, she made a better
engineer than soldier. Sailor? Either way, it was probably time to
join forces with the only military types around she knew for
certain she could trust.

She found her burner phone in a drawer in the
bedroom and put the call through. “It’s me. I think we should move
you out here sooner rather than later.”

Chapter Six

With her Wednesday pre-dinner patrol nearly
complete, Kenzie was dreaming about a huge tray of sushi from Shiro
when her Galaxy Girl burner phone’s text notification went off.
That was weird. Everyone who had the number would know she was on
patrol right now. She paused in midair and fished the phone out of
a hidden zipper pocket.

“PoS here. Come in hot,” the message said,
along with an unfamiliar address on the east side of Capitol Hill.
PoS was the code name Sloane had chosen for herself. The initials
stood for Panopticon Sister, but Sloane enjoyed telling the other
Super Friends that it stood for something more profane.

Crap, Kenzie thought, angling
northwest across Mercer Island and flying so fast she could barely
make out her surroundings. Was Sloane all right? Had a Panopticon
mission gone wrong? Had she been captured, or could this be
a trap? Despite her apprehension, Kenzie forced herself to pause a
respectable distance from the target, comforted when she saw Sloane
sitting at a dining room table in a strange house on a dead-end
street across from the U-W arboretum. Seated around the table were
Ava, Mika, Matt, Antonio, and a person Kenzie didn’t recognize.

Wait. Matt, Antonio, and Ava? Was this
an intervention? Kenzie knew her sister and girlfriend both hated
her fixed patrol schedule. Maybe they’d decided to join forces to
convince her to change it up.

And Sloane said she had control
issues.

“You, too?” said a voice beside her, sounding
as bemused as she felt. D’aman, of course. Who else could
sneak up on her in midair?

“Did Sloane tell you to come in hot, too?”
she asked. When they nodded, Kenzie shrugged. “Then I guess we
should give them what they want.”

Behind the Galaxy Guy mask, she was pretty
sure D’aman smiled.

A moment later they dropped into the backyard
of the house, their arrival sheltered from outside view by the
combination of a tall fence and a steep, terraced yard. If this was
a safe house, it was a very good one. Not that Kenzie knew much
about such things.

The back door opened, and Sloane ushered them
inside. “Come on. Hurry up.”

Rolling her eyes, Kenzie blurred past her
sister. Inside, she stopped near the dining table to face the
assembled group. “What’s going on here?” she asked, folding her
arms across her chest and standing a little taller.

They did not get to tell her how to be a
superhero, damn it. She was the one with the powers, not them.
Well, maybe not all of them, she amended as her gaze fell on
the unknown person who, it seemed, might be a shapeshifter.
Kenzie’s enhanced vision picked up the telltale appearance of a
faint, shell-like coating between the stranger’s outward appearance
and inner matter. They stared back at her, gaze sharp as if they
knew exactly what she was doing and didn’t appreciate the invasion
of their privacy.

“Come sit down,” Ava said, patting the open
chair beside her.

“I’d rather stand.” If they were going to try
to blindside her, then she was going to try to make it as difficult
for them as possible.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Sloane said,
dropping into her chair at the head of the table. “Sit down. And
take off your mask. You, too, D’aman.”

Kenzie and D’aman exchanged a long look.
Is it safe? she sent to them.

I can’t be certain, they responded.
Do you think we should trust your sister?

“Stop doing that,” Sloane said.

Kenzie ignored her. I’m not sure, but I
hope so.

Good enough for me. D’aman removed
their mask and moved toward the open seat beside Mika.

Ava reached up and grasped Kenzie’s arm,
squeezing gently. “Sit with me. Please? I promise everything will
become clear.”

“Fine,” Kenzie said grouchily. She pulled off
her mask and settled in the proffered seat, huffing. But in truth,
it was hard to stay angry when Ava was looking at her with heart
eyes.

“Okay,” Sloane said, “let’s do this. Why
doesn’t everyone say who they are and where they’re from?”

Kenzie was tempted to make a disparaging
comment about icebreakers, which she knew her sister hated with a
passion. Instead, she sat back and listened. She knew everyone
except the burly shapeshifter, who turned out to be Angelica,
assistant chief of Hyperion’s New York security team.

“I thought you said nothing happened in New
York?” Kenzie said to Ava.

Her girlfriend shrugged, avoiding her pointed
stare. “Nothing did, thanks to Angelica.”

Kenzie blew out another exasperated breath.
No wonder everyone said business executives couldn’t be trusted.
The art of doublespeak was probably an actual MBA class, like
pretending to be injured must be at European football clubs.
According to Antonio, anyway; Kenzie didn’t really know much about
soccer. She’d never been able to play sports without risking
blowing her cover—and, more than likely, leaving carnage in her
wake.

“Are you sure we can trust her?” she asked,
her voice still low.

Ava nodded, short and sharp. “She’s on our
side.”

Kenzie hoped she was right, because Angelica
now belonged to a very select group of people: those who knew the
Galaxy Duo’s true identities.

Once the greetings were over, Sloane moved on
to the point of the meeting. “Mika was kind enough to rent this
house for the next couple of weeks for us. It will provide our
out-of-town visitor with a home base and the rest of us a central
location where we can conduct any necessary business.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenzie said. “What kind of
business are we planning to do together?”

“We’re pooling resources to go after
Sentinel,” Ava said. “Angelica and I have certain information, but
we lack the personnel to engage in a robust investigation. Sloane
and Mika have offered to help out—under the radar of their
respective agencies, of course.”

“A shadow op? When did you decide this?”
Kenzie asked, frowning at her sister.

Again, Ava responded. “On Sunday.”

“Sunday—you mean while I was cleaning up the
waterfront?”

Ava’s chin tilted up in a manner Kenzie had
learned signified defensiveness.

She should be defensive. Once again,
she and Sloane had made an important decision without consulting
Kenzie. Was she just supposed to be happy they were including her
now? Actually, maybe this proved that Sloane had finally learned to
trust Ava. That development would be worth Kenzie’s current surge
of FOMO—fear of missing out.

Better than being lectured about our
patrol schedule again, D’aman thought at her, the message
accompanied by a haze of orange, the color D’aman used to signal
amusement during telepathic exchanges.

And yes, they had a point. A very good point
indeed.

“But why are they here?” she asked,
pointing at Matt and Antonio.

Her best friend puffed up his chest. “It
appears my reputation as a techie precedes me.”

“And I have investigative skills and
extensive knowledge of online databases,” Antonio said.

“Your tech skills are passable at best,
Greenie,” Sloane said. “You guys are here because you already know
Kenzie’s identity, and she probably would have told you what we
were up to anyway. Oh, and also because you’re the only pilot in
the group, Santos.”

“Excuse me? Passable at best?”

Kenzie always forgot how shrill Matt’s voice
could get if he was suitably outraged.

“Plus we promised Matt an exclusive once we
find what we’re looking for,” Mika said.

As Matt’s outrage abated, Kenzie tried to
decide if she should feel jealous about that last bit. But no. She
wrote about the Galaxy Duo more than she should. It would be smart
to cast a wider net, even if that net only stretched to her best
friend’s desk on the other side of their shared cubicle wall.

“What about Rodriguez?” Kenzie asked,
remembering how the fearsome lesbian trio had made quick work of
Ava’s would-be assassin.

“I thought about including her,” Sloane said,
“but for now, I’d rather not expand the group. We can always bring
her in later if we need to.”

“Who’s Rodriguez?” Matt asked.

“A certified tech genius,” Kenzie said,
making a face across the table at him.

He clutched the front of his button-down.
“You wound me.”

“Better than slaying you,” Sloane said. “Now
that we’ve all been introduced, let’s get to work.”

Getting to work consisted of moving
downstairs to a nearly windowless daylight basement room where
Sloane, Ava, and Matt proceeded to argue about the best arrangement
of the impressive array of tech equipment awaiting their usage.
Kenzie and D’aman stayed out of the way, content to think snarky
thoughts at each other while Antonio played a game on his phone and
Mika chatted with Angelica about live music spots in Manhattan.

Finally, Matt and Ava arranged two chairs in
front of a dual display.

“Did you bring the files?” he asked.

“Right here.” Ava fished a portable hard
drive out of her handbag, plugged it into the USB slot Matt
indicated, and typed in the password. And then another password as
she navigated into a secure folder. And then one last password as
she reached the final folder.

“All those passwords—” Matt began.

“Randomly generated by an algorithm of my own
making,” Ava said as she clicked through the folders.

Behind her, Kenzie couldn’t help saying,
“Ava’s superpower is being super brilliant.”

Sloane snickered. “Okay, whipped girl.”

“No, she’s right,” Matt said earnestly.
“Like, Ava is officially a genius. Google it.”

Antonio scoffed a little without looking up
from his phone. He had been less of a jerk toward Ava as the weeks
slipped past, but he was still a hetero dude who clearly perceived
that his place in Kenzie’s life had been usurped by a woman he
didn’t trust.

“I can hear you guys, you know,” Ava said.
Her cheeks were pink, but Kenzie knew she liked having her own
personal fan club, especially given the way people usually
responded to her family name. “Anyway,” Ava added, “I’ve
managed to unencrypt a dozen or so worksheets so far. But the rest
appear to be encrypted with—”

“Different algorithms?” Matt asked, his voice
wry.

“Well, yes. Unfortunately.”

“What’s unfortunate is that brilliance runs
in your family,” Angelica said, placing a third chair beside Ava’s
and peering at the nearest screen.

“Wait, are these Amelia’s files?” Kenzie
asked.

“Yes. Or, her assistant’s, anyway.”

“Wow,” Kenzie said, touching her girlfriend’s
shoulder. “Thank you. These could really help.”

Ava glanced back at Kenzie. “You don’t have
to thank me. This is my fight as much as it is yours.”

“I know. But still.” She squeezed Ava’s
shoulder, trying to convey through touch her sincere belief that
turning over evidence of Amelia’s potential wrongdoing to a federal
agent deserved recognition—especially if that federal agent
happened to be Kenzie’s sister.

“Do you have everything you need?” Sloane
asked, bringing the conversation back to the work at hand.

“Yep,” Matt said, and started typing a string
of code that Kenzie could only half concentrate on with Ava so
close.

“All right, then. We’ll leave you to it.”

D’aman sent Kenzie a thought: Should we
share our findings?

Yes?

They held up a hand. “Before we part ways,
Kenzie and I have some information to share.”

It didn’t take long to bring the team up to
speed on the infinity drug, as Kenzie and D’aman had taken to
calling it, and its manufacturer’s infiltration of the off-world
refugee community.

“We think it’s connected to the riots,”
Kenzie added. “The timing is just a little too coincidental.”

Sloane stared at Kenzie, hands on her hips.
“This is serious. Why did you keep it to yourselves?”

Kenzie gave her sister a look, but it was
Mika who said, “For the same reason we’re meeting here, honey. No
one trusts the Bureau right now, and for good reason.”

Sloane expelled an irritated breath. “Fine.
Do you have digital records or other information that Matt and Ava
could see?”

D’aman nodded and headed for the stairs.
“I’ll be back in a hiffy.”

“It’s jiffy,” Kenzie called after
them.

For once, someone else was tripping over a
strange American idiom. Where did the word jiffy even come
from? Did it have anything at all to do with peanut butter? Humans
might be odd, but Americans really took the bake.

Sloane and Mika started after D’aman, but
Kenzie lingered, FOMO threatening again. She could be helpful,
couldn’t she? There had to be some way her powers could assist in
the search for Sentinel hideouts.

Ava glanced over her shoulder. “We’ve got
this, babe. Come get us for dinner in a little while, okay?”

“I thought you had a marketing meeting
tonight.”

“I cancelled it. There are more important
things than product announcements, you know.”

Kenzie pretended to gasp. “I mean, I
knew that. I just wasn’t sure that you did, Ms. Hotshot Corporate
Executive.”

At that moment, Sloane circled back and
attempted to push Kenzie toward the stairs. “Come on, Ms. Hotshot
Vigilante. Don’t you have a patrol to get back to?”

Even though a human’s touch felt like a fly
landing on her skin, Kenzie allowed herself to be herded away
because Sloane was right. She did have work of her own that needed
attention. The city couldn’t very well save itself, could it?

D’aman returned in time to take off again
with her from the safe house’s sheltered backyard. Soon the two of
them were gliding together over the University District, chatting
about the surprise taskforce Sloane and the others had sprung upon
them.

“Do you think it will make a difference?”
Kenzie asked.

“I think collaborating with a trusted team is
always better than working alone,” D’aman replied. “Look at
us.”

Their point was emphasized by the incident
that unfolded a few minutes later on I-5 just north of Greenlake. A
driver who appeared to be suffering a medical incident was
careening through rush hour traffic. Kenzie and D’aman were alerted
by car horns and audible screams, and in moments they were upon the
scene. Kenzie picked up the battered, still charging SUV and moved
it to the relative safety of a nearby parking lot, holding it still
while she reached inside to turn off the ignition. Then, while
D’aman put out a car fire on the freeway and began to check for
injuries, Kenzie flew the unconscious driver to the nearest
hospital before returning to the scene to help D’aman.

“A hotshot vigilante’s work is never done,”
D’aman said as they helped first responders clear the scene.

“So true,” she agreed, lifting a now-empty
electric car and placing it on the shoulder to await a tow.

#

Dinner that evening at the safe house felt
more like a party than investigative work. That was probably
because everyone in the room had known at least one other person
present for a handful of years minimum—except for Mika. But as
Sloane’s girlfriend, she easily met the unofficial intimacy
requirement.

Over burritos, chips, and guacamole from
Chipotle, the conversation flitted from one topic to another:
Manhattan traffic; Seattle weather; Hyperion stock prices, which
were finally plateauing after a tough couple of weeks; Seattle
Sounders rankings; robot combat leagues (again); and, finally, the
investigation. All the data pointed to Kenzie’s worst nightmare: a
concerted, well-planned, multi-faceted attack by Sentinel and other
extremist groups using the dark web to organize and spread their
message of hate.

“Yes, but what’s their long-term goal?”
Kenzie asked. She was on her third veggie burrito, with a fourth
still awaiting her attention. “Like, do they really think they can
convince the Alliance to stop the refugee program?”

“They can if refugees refuse to settle on
Earth,” Mika said, her tone grim.

D’aman nodded. “That’s true. It has happened
before.”

Their comment was received with a ripple of
surprise and, in Kenzie’s case, a wave of fear. If the Alliance
abandoned Earth, what would happen to her beautiful, complicated,
adopted home? But she knew exactly what could happen. She
would never forget the history lessons her Zattalian tutor had made
her learn about planets who chose independence rather than
assimilation by the Alliance. Unless they were much farther
advanced than Earth—which still lacked an interplanetary defense
agency, for Alia’s sake!—they ran the risk of falling prey
to any number of invaders interested in the resources the planet
had to offer.

Despite the ravages of climate change, Earth
still possessed a diverse array of natural resources. The amount of
water on the surface of the planet was unusual. The only thing that
had kept Earth from being plundered before now was its location far
from most of the civilized areas of the Universe. As soon as it had
been charted, the Alliance had named it a protected planet under
its galactic development policy and stationed observers nearby to
prevent infiltration by galactic pirates. But if humans rejected
the Alliance’s presence and refused to abide by interplanetary law,
the Alliance would cease to take an active role in protecting
Earth, thereby leaving it to the vicissitudes of
“independence.”

“We can’t let that happen here,” Kenzie said,
her voice louder than she intended. All eyes flew to her, and she
looked down at her plate, dismayed by the sight of her pulverized
burrito in her clenched fist, ground into an unrecognizable mash of
shredded tortilla and crushed beans. Images of barren fields and
dried-up ocean floors flashed through her mind, and she shoved away
from the table, only just remembering to temper her strength.
“Sorry, I—I’ll be right back.”

Silence followed her to the first-floor
bathroom, and she stepped inside, closing the door and leaning her
back against its solid surface. Eyes closed, she tried to breathe
through the panic flooding her system. Why were human beings so
intent on harming themselves and others? She would never understand
their impulse to kill each other, let alone the desire to harm
aliens. Oh, she understood emotional impulsivity. She might descend
from an advanced civilization that had been around for hundreds of
thousands of years longer than modern humans had existed, but that
didn’t mean she was immune from the occasional primitive impulse.
She even understood why other civilizations raided each other for
planetary resources—the universe only contained so much real
estate. What she didn’t understand was the casual hatred and
tribalism that led humans to plot out warfare as if it were some
interesting game. People were not chess pieces, and yet Earth
leaders behaved as if they were, moving them this way and that
despite the destruction that rained down upon their troops—and
civilians—from those who perceived their actions as a clear and
obvious transgression.

Why did humans plot to destroy each other
over the course of months or years? What made the people of this
planet care so little about one another? Why didn’t they respect
their world and every living being on it?

But that wasn’t fair, she knew. So many more
people helped their neighbors and loved their families and worked
to improve their communities than the few who spent their lives
plotting evil acts. It was just that the ripples of kindness were
harder to perceive than the ripples caused by bombs and missiles.
She should know—the combined noise of grief and despair drowned out
the individual sounds of love and caring every single day, even in
a relatively safe, privileged city like Seattle. If she hadn’t
learned long ago how to refocus her senses, she would have gone
insane by now.

She looked down at her hands, still covered
in the remains of her last burrito. Well, more insane, maybe.

A knock sounded on the door, and she heard
Ava’s soft voice. “Kenzie? Are you okay?”

She pushed away from the door. “I’ll be out
in a second.” As she turned on the water and set about cleaning up
the mess she’d made, she listened to Ava’s footsteps hesitate
before receding. Good. A kind gesture right now would break her,
she was pretty sure.

Hands clean and face under control, Kenzie
returned to the table and took her seat. Sloane gave her a familiar
look of concern. Kenzie nodded shortly at her, because what else
could she do? She couldn’t very well admit she was worried that
this beautiful planet they called home would become a smoking,
dried-up hunk of calcified rock not because of human-caused climate
change but because Sentinel was trying to force the Alliance’s hand
without actually grasping the consequences of such a misstep.
Kenzie and D’aman might understand the dangers of galactic
independence—and possibly Angelica, though Kenzie still wasn’t sure
what planet the New Yorker’s family hailed from—but it wouldn’t
help to terrify their clueless human counterparts.

Ava’s touch on her hand startled Kenzie, and
she barely restrained herself from pulling away. “You okay?”

Kenzie breathed in slowly, inhaling the scent
of Ava’s expensive shampoo, the unique signature of her
custom-designed perfume, and nodded. “I’m okay,” she said, willing
her ever-present panic and anxiety to recede to manageable levels.
She turned her hand over and fit her palm to Ava’s, and the warmth
of Ava’s touch helped as it always did to slow her breathing, to
lower her blood pressure, to flood her mind with a sense of safety.
It was an illusion, she knew, brought about by hormones engendered
by touch, but really, wasn’t fear and anxiety just as much of an
illusion? “Thanks,” she added, glancing up into Ava’s eyes, exuding
such genuine concern that it almost felt like a second touch
against Kenzie’s skin.

“Of course.” Ava leaned into her side for a
moment before turning her attention back to her taco salad.

No one commented on Kenzie’s burrito
accident, and soon laughter returned to the table as Mika
challenged the group to a “joke-off,” which Kenzie hadn’t even
known was a thing. Mika began the proceedings with a raunchy cop
joke, and Sloane followed with a biology joke she’d been telling
for years. Kenzie offered up her favorite math one-liner, while
Matt (predictably) told a computer joke, D’aman shared an allegory
no one really seemed to get but that everyone smiled along with
politely, and Angelica told a funny story about New York traffic.
Then, finally, it was Ava’s turn.

“Mine is kind of long. Is that okay?” There
were nods all around, and Ava cleared her throat. “So a tourist
walks into the restaurant at the top of the Empire State Building
and orders a drink. He strikes up a conversation with a man seated
at the bar, and soon the other man is telling him that the Empire
State Building has a feature that only locals know about: if you
jump out the bank of windows facing east, the wind is so intense
that it carries you back up and in through the restaurant
window.

“Naturally, the tourist refuses to believe
the story until the other man offers to prove it, and then he
watches in amazement as the New Yorker falls from the window and
reappears a moment later. Not just once, but twice.”

At that point, Kenzie suspected she might
know where this was going. Across the table she saw a twitch of
recognition in Matt’s expression, too, and he widened his eyes at
her. She isn’t really… Kenzie could only shrug helplessly
and wait for the punch line.

“Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to
tell his friends back home about his big city adventure,” Ava
continued, “the tourist downs his drink, walks to the window, and
steps out—and promptly falls to his death. Meanwhile, back in the
restaurant, the bartender shakes his head and says, ‘Wow, you
off-worlders are mean drunks, aren’t you?’”

Ava sat back, that same small smile tugging
at her lips, and the table was silent. Kenzie could hear Angelica’s
inhaled breath… of outrage? Or was she trying to hold back a laugh?
Matt looked like he might faint, Antonio was glowering at Ava,
D’aman was impassive as ever, and Sloane was watching Kenzie, her
face lined in concern.

Then Mika laughed out loud. “Oh my god, that
is fantastic! I can’t believe I’ve never heard that one before.
Kenzie, have you?”

“No.” She glanced around the table. Sloane
was smiling at her girlfriend now, Angelica and D’aman were both
shaking their heads good-naturedly, and even Matt was smiling in a
semi-shocked way. Antonio was the only one still frowning. “But, I
mean, human alcohol doesn’t affect most off-worlders, so it’s not
really all that realistic.”

Boos rained out around the table, and Kenzie
grinned, ducking the rain of paper napkins lobbed her way. She
glanced at Ava, who was watching her with eyes that danced with
laughter, and in that moment, in that strange house at the edge of
the arboretum, she realized she felt at home in the exact way she
had despaired as a newly-orphaned intergalactic refugee of ever
feeling again.

She would do anything to protect this family
of hers, she realized, gazing around the table at her sister and
their friends. Sentinel wouldn’t win. How could they, when she and
D’aman and Sloane and Mika and Ava and Angelica and even Matt and
Antonio were here to stop them? Sentinel wouldn’t succeed, and
Earth wouldn’t fall. Kenzie would see to that—or die trying.

For now, she pushed thoughts of death and
dying away and reached for her fourth and final burrito. Now was
the time for laughter and love, family and friendship, beans and
rice. Just, perhaps not necessarily in that order.

Chapter Seven

When a crash sounded from her living room in
the wee hours of Saturday morning, Ava sat bolt upright and reached
for the gun in her bedside table. Then a familiar voice called,
“Don’t worry, it’s just me.”

Ava exhaled in relief and replaced the gun in
its hiding spot, her heart rate settling. Kenzie appeared a moment
later, pulled back the sheets, and slipped in beside her, dressed
only in the boy shorts and tank top she kept in the dresser drawer
Ava had reserved for her.

“Sorry, I tripped over the coffee table.”

That didn’t bode well for the coffee table.
It wasn’t like Kenzie to trip over furniture, though. Break
whatever got in her way in the throes of passion—like Ava’s former
headboard, for example—sure, but randomly destroy a stationary
object in the middle of the night? Not so much.

“Are you okay?” Ava asked.

“I will be.” Kenzie’s voice was heavy with
exhaustion, and her hair smelled of something Ava had a feeling she
should recognize.

“What happened?”

“Sentinel apparently recruited a whole, um,
colony I think they’re called, of Bircadians to disrupt shipping
containers on the waterfront. Which is strange because I’ve always
heard Bircadians are pacifists. Not the ones D’aman and I met
today, though. They were super feisty. Pretty sure I came close to
blowing out my powers.”

Ava stared at her. “What did you just
say?”

“Bircadians are usually pacificists?”

“No, about blowing out your powers. Is that
even possible?”

Kenzie sat up beside her. “Not all the way.
I’m just super low energy. I ate a couple of pizzas on the way
here, though, and with a little sleep, I should be as good as
new.”

Mind reeling, Ava scooted away from her. She
couldn’t protect a powerless Kenzie. “Why would you come here?”

Her pout was visible even in the dim light
that filtered in around the edges of the blinds. “Because I missed
you. I don’t sleep as well anymore without you.”

Which was… okay, it was sweet.

Ava checked the clock. It was almost five,
and she knew she’d never get back to sleep now, especially not with
a powered-down Kenzie dozing beside her. “Come on,” she said.
“We’re going to the safe house. I wanted to get an early start,
anyway.”

“Ava!” Kenzie flopped back on the bed. “Why
are you like this?”

She smiled and shifted on top of her
girlfriend, calling on a proven tactic. “If we go now, we can fool
around in the guest room before Angelica wakes up…”

Kenzie lifted her easily and was back in her
superhero suit in seconds. So much for low power. “Well? Are you
coming?”

Ava bit back the retort at the tip of her
tongue and slipped out of bed to get dressed. With Kenzie’s powers
on low, her apartment felt less safe than usual. A thought occurred
to her. Nick was always trying to find off-worlders’ weaknesses and
exploit them. But what if Ava tried to do the opposite—bolster
their weaknesses, as it were, to protect them from Sentinel? And by
“them,” of course, she meant Kenzie. The General had always said
Ava possessed a sharper mind than her big brother, but she wasn’t
sure that was true. Though, for whatever reason—genetic
predisposition, hormonal factors, brain chemistry—she did appear to
be less prone to delusions of grandeur and, well, straight-up
mental illness.

A handful of hours later, while Kenzie slept
safely in the safe house’s guest room, Ava and Matt ran a
proprietary version of Hyperion’s codebreaking software through its
paces. While they waited, Ava spun in her chair and said, “Do you
know if Sloane is here?”

Matt glanced away from the screen. “I think
she’s working in the garage. Why?”

“I wanted to chat with her about a couple of
things.”

“Like?”

“Like private things,” she said, eyeing him
coolly as she rose.

“Oh, of course, you betcha.” He nodded,
sending a nervous grin her way.

Sure enough, Sloane was in the makeshift lab
she’d set up in the attached garage, bent over a microscope and
jotting down notes that appeared to be in shorthand. Ava spared a
glance at the high-end stereo microscope on the table. With its
trinocular head and integrated LCD tablet, it was impressive, but
not as advanced as her own lab equipment back in New York.

“What’s on your mind, Westbrook?” Sloane
asked without looking up.

Ava hesitated. She was a dominant driver and
so was Sloane, which meant that honesty was always the best
policy—even if the matter was somewhat delicate. “I understand that
Kenzie can blow out her powers.”

That got her attention. Sloane straightened,
eyes narrowing as she folded her arms across her chest. “Who told
you that?”

“Kenzie.” Duh.

One of Sloane’s eyebrows lifted. Which,
interesting—that was one of Ava’s go-to intimidation tactics, too.
“And?”

“And I have some questions about her
physiology I was hoping you might be able to answer.”

“What kind of questions?” Her tone was
neutral enough, but Ava sensed the steel underneath.

Inwardly, she sighed. Weren’t they past all
of this? But Sloane, she knew, had been Kenzie’s protector
since—well, forever. It was understandable that she would have
difficulty trusting a member of the very family who had decided to
invest their considerable intellectual and financial capital in
trying to hunt down and destroy off-worlders.

I’m not like them, Ava’s brain
automatically supplied. But Sloane knew that or she wouldn’t have
agreed to work with Ava outside of Panopticon’s reach. “I’m
wondering if you know of a way to trigger different systemic
responses.”

“Why?” The steel was even more prominent in
Sloane’s tone now.

“Because she’s one of the highest profile
off-worlders in this hemisphere, and if my brother hasn’t guessed
where she’s from yet, it’s only a matter of time before he
does.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true.”

“Not wanting something to be true doesn’t
make it so,” Ava said, the sharpness of her tone matching Sloane’s.
She held up a mollifying hand. “At least trust me to know how my
brother’s mind works.”

After a moment, Sloane shrugged. “Fine.”

“Okay. So, in my opinion, it’s only a matter
of time before he and Sentinel go after Kenzie. And when they
try—”

“If they try.”

“—It would be nice to be prepared.”

Sloane stared at her. “What do you have in
mind?”

“I don’t know enough about her physiology.
That’s why I’m hoping we can brainstorm some ideas together. I’m a
firm believer that two brains are usually better than one.”

Sloane nodded slowly. “I guess that makes
sense. I have another hour or so to go with these samples. I can
come find you after that.”

Ava would take it. Even if Sloane didn’t
fully trust her, she thought as she retreated from the garage, at
least Kenzie’s sister recognized that the best way to fight an
enemy was from the inside. No one in the world knew Amelia and Nick
better than Ava did. Finally, something good might come from the
family dysfunction she had never quite managed to leave behind.

#

Unsurprisingly, given her family pedigree and
her own academic background in science, Sloane was up to the
challenge. While Kenzie slept on a few rooms away, Ava and Sloane
sat at the safe house’s dining table and riffed on cortisol,
adrenaline responses, Zattalian neurotransmitters, and other means
of protecting Kenzie should Sentinel somehow manage to blow out her
powers. Sloane gave as good as she got. Perhaps even better, which
made sense seeing as she had been working in the field of alien
biology significantly longer than Ava had been dating an alien.

It was—nice, Ava decided, working
together like this. Refreshing to meet someone who could keep up.
Kenzie’s science prowess was inarguable, but Ava always got the
feeling she was holding back. Zattalian technology was so far ahead
of Earth in terms of—well, everything that Ava
sometimes imagined Kenzie must feel as if she was living among the
Zattalian equivalent of Neanderthals.

Assuming Zattalia had had such an
equivalent.

“I’ve also been thinking of some ways to
augment the suit,” Ava said when the conversation finally
paused.

Sloane glanced up from the page where she’d
been jotting notes. “Oh, really.”

“Sorry,” Ava said, belatedly remembering that
Sloane had helped design Galaxy Girl’s outfit. “I don’t want to
step on your toes.”

“No, it’s fine. Anything to keep Kenzie
safe.”

“Okay. Good.” She paused, choosing her next
words with care. “I know it’s difficult to get past the Westbrook
name sometimes, but I really do love her, you know. That’s the
reason I’m here.”

After a moment, Sloane nodded. “I know. And
she really loves you, too. As crazy as it sounds, maybe a Westbrook
and an off-worlder working together is exactly what this country
needs. Maybe even the world.” Abruptly, she stood up and became all
brusque and professional again, almost as if she regretted allowing
Ava even a brief peek behind her usual mask. “All right, then, I
should get going. Those Bircadians really did a job on the
waterfront last night. We’re going to be cleaning up for a
while.”

Ava stood beside her. “Right. I should
probably check and see if Matt needs anything, anyway.”

Before she could turn away, Sloane reached
out and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you,” she murmured in Ava’s
ear, arms tightening briefly around her waist. “For looking out for
our girl, I mean.”

“Of course,” Ava murmured back, swallowing
against the sudden tightness in her throat. Our
girl.

Maybe Sloane really was beginning to trust
her. Wonders, apparently, never ceased.

#

On Monday night, Ava once again jolted awake
in a panic, this time to the sound of a whispered, “Hi.”

“Hi,” she managed, blinking slowly in an
effort to force her nervous system to calm down. Kenzie had managed
to slip into her bed this time without waking her, a thought that
did not please Ava. “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh, are you?”

“I’m fine. Glad you’re here.” Even if her
entrance left something to be desired.

Slowly, the day came back to Ava. The news
had overflowed with reports of a concerted effort by anti-alien
terrorists to infiltrate local government buildings. She hadn’t
seen Kenzie since their hurried lunch break, had only received a
single two-word text from her—“I’m okay”—after Seattle television
reports showed her taking a hit from a large caliber rifle that,
according to the reporter on the scene, apparently used cop-killer
bullets designed to pierce even the strongest armor.

Kenzie slipped her arms around Ava and
started to pull her closer, but then she froze, her breath leaving
her body in a strangled whoosh.

“What is it?” Ava asked. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Kenzie’s eyes were closed, and
she was practicing the deep breathing Ava had witnessed on several
occasions. Min-Nal, Kenzie called it. Sometimes they
practiced together on the balcony, Ava working through her morning
yoga routine while Kenzie lay on a mat nearby and did—whatever this
was.

Ava suddenly remembered the close-up of
Kenzie’s face after she’d been shot outside the Seattle Municipal
Building, and she reached for her girlfriend’s tank top, slowing
her movements when she heard Kenzie’s sharp intake of breath.
Normally, she loved Kenzie’s abs, but now as she shifted the loose
material upward, she had to hold back her own gasp. Kenzie’s
midsection was a purple and green mess, tinged with yellow around
the edges.

“How are you hurt? Did you blow out your
powers again?” she asked, her voice unnaturally shrill.

“No,” Kenzie said, calm and patient. “But
that gun today had alien tech that packs a much harder punch. It’s
okay, though. I’m already healing. By morning, I should be back to
normal. If you can call it that, heh heh.”

Ava recognized her cue to joke back, to allow
humor to smooth over the sharp edges of the fear they both lived
with day in and day out, but it was the middle of the night and
she’d awakened scared again, and she just couldn’t bring herself to
joke back. She did let Kenzie tug her closer, however; accepted the
semi-apologetic kiss to her forehead; rolled onto her side and
slipped her arms around Kenzie from behind, careful to avoid the
mottled skin of her ribcage. Sometimes Ava could be the big spoon,
too.

They settled down together, Kenzie’s heat
seeping into her and driving out the chill of fear. It wasn’t just
the sound of someone creeping through her apartment that had set
her nerves jangling this time. It was the knowledge that Kenzie
wasn’t as impervious as Ava liked to pretend, and worse—Sentinel
seemed to be figuring out that fact, too.

Soon Kenzie was snoring, each inhale hitching
slightly as if it hurt to breathe. Ava was exhausted, but she
didn’t want to go back to sleep just yet. Late-night visits were
some of the only quality time they got together, and even then
“quality” seemed a stretch. Every time Kenzie slipped into her
apartment, Ava shot up in bed, her system suddenly on full alert.
Once, she’d actually let loose a small scream, quickly stifled.
Kenzie had rushed to her and pulled her close, stroking her hair
and shushing her until her heartbeat slowed and her breathing
calmed. But that night, Ava had struggled to fall back asleep. She
was pretty sure Kenzie had noticed, too, because the next morning
she’d asked, her eyes vulnerable, if maybe she shouldn’t come by at
night anymore.

“No,” Ava had assured her, reaching for her
hand. “I know I freak out every time…”

Kenzie smiled a little. “You really do. Which
freaks me out every time.”

“I know.” Ava gazed down into her mug. “It’s
a Westbrook thing.”

“And here I thought PTSD was a Zattalian
thing.”

“Can’t it be both? But honestly, while I may
not be able to help how I react in the middle of the night, I
really do want you here. I sleep so much better when you’re beside
me.”

Kenzie nodded, serious again. “Me, too.”

“So, you’ll keep coming? Even if I scream
again or, like, try to shoot you?”

“You have a gun in here?” Kenzie glanced
around, squinting, and Ava could tell each time her gaze tripped
over a different concealed weapon.

“It’s a Westbrook thing. Don’t worry, I’m
trained and licensed.”

“Good thing I’m bulletproof,” Kenzie
muttered, and Ava could tell she was barely preventing herself from
reciting gun violence statistics and/or safety tips about keeping
firearms in the home. Then, all at once, the crinkle in her brow
had disappeared and she’d started laughing.

“What?” Ava demanded.

“You and Sloane are so alike sometimes, it
isn’t even funny.”

There were worse people to be compared to,
she supposed.

Now, in the dark of her bedroom, Ava snuggled
closer and rested her cheek against Kenzie’s warm shoulder. It was
hard to remember what her life had been like just a few months
earlier when she’d slept alone every single night. Back then, she’d
never quite allowed herself to fully relax if she could help it.
But with her own personal superhero in her bed more often than not,
she’d gotten used to lowering her guard, and now she routinely
enjoyed four or five hours of deep, restful sleep.

Sometimes when she awoke in the morning,
Kenzie was still there wrapped around her like a koala, and they
could greet the day lazily, with kisses and hugs and shared pots of
coffee. Other days Kenzie was gone before she even woke up, or Ava
was the one rushing out to an early meeting. On days like that, she
felt like she spent the rest of the day trying to catch up, until,
usually at some point in the middle of the night, Kenzie would
crawl in beside her and she would finally relax once more.

It was a bit frightening how dependent she
had let herself become on another human
be—another person, she corrected herself. She no longer
thought of Kenzie as an off-worlder. Oh, she knew intellectually
that her girlfriend was from another corner of the universe. It was
kind of hard to miss, what with the flying and the super strength,
not to mention the general imperviousness. But when Kenzie held her
close in the dark of night, Ava no longer noticed their
differences. She only felt how they were the same, frightened and
joyful and loving and in love, their hearts beating for each
other.

She hoped it could stay that way, even if she
knew it probably couldn’t.

Admittedly, Westbrooks weren’t known for
their overdeveloped sense of optimism, but even without Nick’s
personal vendetta, things seemed increasingly out of control. Even
before the Fourth of July, Seattle had been bubbling over with
xenophobic vitriol. There had been an uptick in recent months in
Internet chatter geared toward violence, hatred, and exclusion.
Even though Ava knew these particular tensions had been lying
beneath the surface all along, just waiting for a seismic shift to
send the plates grinding against each other, it still somehow felt
like a switch had been flipped, and now humans and off-worlders
were at each other’s throats. While the flash points may have been
there for a while, Sentinel had brought them into the light. News
cameras were suddenly focused on any sign of tension, words were
being written by the thousands, hate crimes were on the rise, and
Seattle was starting to feel like New York all over again before
Nick and Sentinel’s other leaders had been arrested.

In her arms, Kenzie twitched restlessly.

“Shh,” Ava whispered, kissing the soft downy
hairs at the back of her neck. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

“Ava?” she whispered, adorably
sleep-confused.

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed into Kenzie’s warm
skin.

“Yay. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Ava replied, pressing more
kisses against her shoulder.

If only they could stay like this.

But even as the thought formed in her
consciousness, the seconds were slipping away into minutes, minutes
accruing into hours, the Earth revolving steadily—so impossibly
quickly—about the sun, with the moon a silent witness in a sky
she knew still felt foreign to Kenzie.

There was no stopping time. No changing what
had been, and certainly no way of predicting what would be.
Although, maybe that part wasn’t quite right. Ava was a Westbrook
and Kenzie was a Zattalian, and so they would not sit back waiting
to see how events shook out. They would act, boldly and
confidently, because the only thing you could do in the face of
darkness was shine your light as intensely as possible and hope
that it would be bright enough.

She closed her eyes and channeled
Picard. There’s a way out of every box, a solution to every
puzzle; it’s just a matter of finding it. They would find
the way out of the box Sentinel—her mother and brother—seemed
determined to paint them into. Ava and Matt would crack the rest of
Amelia’s files, and she and Sloane would develop tech that would
keep Kenzie safe. They would save the world because that was the
only viable choice.

Ava closed her eyes and burrowed carefully
into Kenzie’s back. They would be fine, they absolutely would.
Maybe if she told herself that enough, she’d even believe it.

Chapter Eight

Kenzie glanced around the squad room, taking
in the figures bent over desks, gathered at the coffee pot on one
counter, interviewing witnesses to a variety of crimes. Lately,
with the surge in extremist assaults, there were almost too many to
keep track of, Kenzie knew. But that wasn’t why she and Sloane were
here.

Her sister’s girlfriend was sitting on the
desk of an officer Kenzie recognized: Alfonso Ortiz. With massive
shoulders, large hands, and a soft belly, he looked every bit the
former college athlete he’d been before he decided to pursue a
career in law enforcement. As Kenzie watched, Sloane caught Ortiz’s
eye and put a finger to her lips. He gave a subtle nod, and Kenzie
smothered a snicker as Sloane crept up on Mika, who was gesturing
wildly as she spoke to her fellow detective. Kenzie caught a
reference to “stonewalling” and “totally compromised,” and then
Sloane was on the smaller woman, goosing her from behind.

“Hold on there, handsy girl!” Mika exclaimed,
laughing.

And really, Kenzie could have done without
that image burned into her brain. She cleared her throat, catching
Mika’s eye.

“Both Shepherd sisters? To what do I owe the
pleasure?”

“We were in the neighborhood,” Sloane said.
“Hey, Ortiz.”

“Yo, 007.”

“Seriously, what has both of you visiting
Seattle PD?” Mika asked, heading over to her desk where her
messenger bag waited.

“We had a breakthrough,” Kenzie
announced.

Sloane gave her a look that clearly said,
Not here, idiot, and Kenzie rolled her eyes as her sister
tugged Mika out of the squad room and onto the twilit street where
her bike waited illegally at the curb.

“What kind of breakthrough?” Mika asked.

“You know how Ava and I have been struggling
with Zattalian neurotransmitters? Well, Kenzie here texts us an
hour ago and asks if we’ve thought about ghrelin, the hunger
hormone. If we can convince her hypothalamus that her insulin and
blood sugar levels—”

“Slow down,” Mika said, accepting the helmet
Sloane handed her. “You know I don’t speak nerd.”

“Basically,” Kenzie said, accustomed to
explaining complex topics in layperson’s terms, “they figured out a
way to manipulate my nervous system to jump-start my powers in case
I ever need a boost.”

“Holy smokes! That is big. Way to go, babe.”
Mika started to lean forward, probably intending to kiss Sloane,
but she stopped and glanced around as if remembering where they
were. “And on that note, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Soon they were taking the circuitous route
Sloane had developed to the safe house, Sloane and Mika on their
motorcycles, Kenzie riding behind her sister, arms clasped about
Sloane’s waist. Kenzie had just finished work, too—both as a
journalist and as Galaxy Girl—and had reminded Sloane that she was
fully capable of finding her own way to the safe house after her
patrol. But unless she was flying, Sloane had responded, she would
be riding.

Whatever. Kenzie was the one with super
senses. If anyone tried to follow her, she was pretty sure she
would notice, no matter what Sloane thought. Still, she had agreed
to allow herself to be chauffeured to the Hall of Justice, as she’d
taken to calling the house across from the arboretum, mostly
because it was fun to race through the city on the back of Sloane’s
bike.

She threw out her arms as they climbed
Capitol Hill, her head tilted up to the sky. “I’m the king of the
world!”

“Nerd,” her sister said over her shoulder,
but there was obvious affection in her voice.

Ava was waiting for them, no less than three
pots of pasta with sauce simmering on the stove and half a dozen
baguettes warming in the oven, the scent of butter and garlic
wafting through the partially open oven door.

“I love you,” Kenzie announced as she peered
into the oven, her mouth watering.

“Are you talking to me or the food?” Ava
asked.

“Both.” Kenzie straightened and pulled Ava
into her arms. “How was your day?”

Ava kissed her cheek. “Good. How about
you?”

“Also good.”

While Ava dished up the meal she’d prepared,
Kenzie regaled her with stories of her day. They’d decided that
cooking was safer than ordering out—not to mention less expensive,
which Kenzie, for one, cared about—so now they took turns making
dinner for whomever was at the house on any given night. Today was
Thursday, which meant everyone would probably be present. There
might even be enough food for Kenzie and the rest of the
team.

When the pasta was ready, the Super Friends
gathered around the dining room table. The gas fire was
flickering—another cool, cloudy summer day in the Pacific
Northwest—and as conversation flowed along with the red wine Ava
had supplied, Kenzie felt it: the warmth of contentment lapping at
her soul. She knew she probably shouldn’t acknowledge it because
that was when the universe had a habit of slapping her upside the
head, but she couldn’t help it. With the team united and chipping
away at Sentinel’s secrets, every problem suddenly seemed
surmountable. Sloane’s brain power had always been impressive, and
Ava’s even more so. If Nick had even an iota of his little sister’s
intelligence… But she pushed the thought away, clinging to her
latent happiness.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one feeling
it. Across the table, Mika shifted closer to Sloane and murmured,
“I love you, Shepherd.”

Kenzie hadn’t meant to hear her. She also
didn’t mean to hear Sloane’s breath catch. Wait. Was that the first
time Mika had declared her love? If so, Kenzie hoped her sister
responded better than she had the first time Ava had spoken
those three tiny, powerful words.

She watched as Sloane leaned away from Mika
just enough to gaze into her eyes. “I love you too, Hansen,” she
said softly.

Kenzie bit her lip, trying to hold back her
grin as Mika smiled, dimples flashing. “Whew, that’s a relief! For
a second there I thought you weren’t going to answer.”

“You surprised me!”

“In a good way?”

“In the best way.”

Mika turned back to her meal, and Sloane
glanced up, catching Kenzie’s eye. They might not be psychic,
but Kenzie could almost hear her sister’s thoughts: Mika loves
me! She grinned back at Sloane and nodded. Of course she did.
Why wouldn’t she?

Sometimes super hearing wasn’t all that
bad.

After dinner, Sloane slipped away to “analyze
more samples” while Kenzie and Ava did the dishes, ruining Kenzie’s
plan to corner her sister. But as soon as the dishwasher door
closed, Kenzie pecked Ava on the cheek and made her way out to the
garage. Sloane had her back to the house, eye pressed to the scope
viewfinder, and yet somehow, she seemed to sense the moment Kenzie
paused in the doorway.

“Stalker,” Sloane said, not looking up from
her microscope.

Kenzie huffed. “How do you always do
that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Kenzie smacked her arm, and Sloane lifted her
head, wincing. Served her right. Teasing a superpowered off-worlder
was rarely a good idea, but did the threat of bodily harm stop
Sloane Shepherd? In Kenzie’s opinion, not often enough.

Sloane pushed her stool back from the table.
“Have it your way. It’s because you breathe loudly.”

“I do not!”

Sloane smirked. “Mouth breather.”

“I am not—oh, forget it.” Kenzie flopped down
on a stool. It was her turn to wince as the wood creaked
alarmingly. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. What’s up, Kenz?”

“Are you serious right now?” After a moment
of Sloane staring at her, eyebrows raised, Kenzie exhaled noisily.
Mouth breather—check. “Come on. You know why I’m here. That was the
first time, wasn’t it?”

“The first time what?”

“That Mika told you she loves you!”

“Oh, that,” Sloane said with studied
nonchalance. Then she smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling in
happiness. “Yeah, it was.”

“OMG!” Kenzie launched herself at Sloane and
nearly crushed her in an enthusiastic hug.

“Easy, killer,” Sloane said, laughing.

Kenzie immediately set her down and held her
at arm’s length. “Sorry, did I hurt you? I got a little
excited.”

“I’m fine. I was thinking more of the lab
equipment, to be honest.”

Which was fair. “My goddess, it took you guys
long enough!”

“We can’t all have insta-love like you and
your lady love.”

“Sloane!” She stomped her foot against the
concrete garage floor, relieved when the surface remained free of
visible cracks. “You promised you wouldn’t use that phrase
again.”

“My bad.” But Sloane was still smiling
giddily. “Can you believe that six months ago, neither of us had
any idea we were about to fall in love, or that it would be with a
woman?”

Kenzie laughed. “I’m not sure who’s more
surprised: us or Mom.”

At the mention of their mother, Sloane’s
smile dimmed slightly. “I’m sorry she’s being such a massive pill
about Ava.”

Kenzie shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll come
around.” She was sure of no such thing, but Ben always said that
hope took just as much energy as pessimism and yet felt better
along the way. Lessons on being honorable and doing the right
thing, meanwhile, had come from Jane’s side of the family.

“Anyway,” she added, not wanting to ruin the
moment, “how’s the research?”

“Good. I think we’re really onto something
here with the ghrelin idea.” She waved at the microscope, where a
slide contained a sample of Kenzie’s blood obtained from the soft
tissue of her cheek—one of the only places her blood could be drawn
using Earth-based technologies. Members of the Alliance knew how to
render Zattalians vulnerable, but Earth was not an Alliance planet.
So far, the number of humans who understood Zattalian biology had
been kept to a minimum.

The conversation shifted to Sloane’s research
methods, and they chatted for a few minutes about sulfhydryl groups
and covalent bonds. Like their parents, Sloane had long counseled
Kenzie to hide her natural affinity for math and science.
Zattalians were a large-brained humanoid species several hundred
thousand years older than modern humans, and if other people
realized how much farther advanced Kenzie’s intellect was compared
to the average human, her cover might be blown. Right now, though,
Sloane seemed eager to listen to her ideas, and Kenzie found the
conversation stimulating in a way she didn’t usually get to.

“Ooh, bond stability,” Sloane said, reaching
for her notebook. “That reminds me of an idea I had earlier.” She
bent her head over the worktable, scribbling notes on an already
cramped page.

And just like that, Kenzie understood, the
conversation was over. She cleared her throat. “We’re still having
Game Night tomorrow, aren’t we?”

“You betcha.”

“Good. I think everyone could use the break.”
She started to retreat, but then she paused. “By the way, I’m glad
you’re finally getting a chance at love. You deserve to be
happy.”

Sloane glanced up, smiling softly. “I could
say the same about you.”

“Well, duh.” Kenzie winked. “Too bad you and
Mika are going down tomorrow night!” And then as
Sloane lifted an eyebrow at her word choice, Kenzie remembered the
last time she’d invoked the problematic phrase. Dang it. She
blushed and backed toward the door. “That’s not—I didn’t—ew,
Sloane!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

Kenzie rolled her eyes and blurred back to
the living area, following the sound of her girlfriend’s heartbeat
downstairs to the office where Ava, Matt, and Angelica were poring
over a US map. Kenzie glanced over Ava’s shoulder, taking in the
red tacks that constituted sites that had been visited and ruled
out, yellow tacks for sites that had been ruled out for other
reasons, and green tacks for sites that had yet to be visited.
There were at least a dozen red tacks spread out across the
country, but only three yellow and two green ones.

Kenzie waited for a lull in the conversation
to ask, “Do you guys want me to check out the last two?”

Ava frowned at her. “No. I told you, we
need—”

“—to be subtle,” Kenzie finished. “I know. I
can be subtle.”

Matt snickered. When Kenzie glared at him, he
straightened. “Oh, were you serious?”

She almost told them that she’d trailed
Angelica and her team on their last mission. She’d stayed far away,
of course, knowing that Ava would be furious if she allowed herself
to be seen. The investigation relied on Angelica’s shapeshifter
abilities and had no room for what the Xandilan called Kenzie’s
“penchant for destruction.” Which—okay, Kenzie could admit that
this description of her physical self wasn’t entirely off. She was
also highly recognizable. If Sentinel saw her snooping around, they
might realize that their secret location had been discovered. And
if they moved their operation to an entirely new site, the Super
Friends would be up a creek without a paddle, as Matt had pointed
out.

For humans, Kenzie understood, this idiom
described a challenging situation that would likely not yield a
positive outcome. That was why she’d hovered well out of the range
of detection while Angelica and her team infiltrated the industrial
site outside Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the grounds had been
empty, and the machinery looked as if it hadn’t been used in years.
Another red tack for the map.

“At least let me do a flyby of the sites you
ruled out,” Kenzie said. She gestured at the yellow tack nestled
beside a lake located in a national forest in Idaho, only a stone’s
throw from Spokane. “That one’s an easy two-minute flight for me,
tops.”

Ava wavered; Kenzie could tell by her
expression and her biometrics. She understood why, too: they were
approaching the end of the investigation, and so far, they’d found
nothing substantial to go on. But in the end, Ava looked to
Angelica, who gave an unsubtle shake of her head.

“It’s probably not a good idea,” Ava said.
“Anyway, there’s nothing there except a cabin and a couple of
sheds—okay for a small meeting, sure, but not a facility that could
host more than a handful of people. We’re looking for something
significantly larger and far less remote. Whatever they’re doing
requires personnel, equipment, and resources, which means paved
roads at the least.”

Kenzie sighed. “Fine,” she said, and turned
away. “If I’m of no use here, then I guess I’ll go do an extra
patrol.”

Even she could admit that her self-pity was
over the top, but it was difficult to be the only one on the team
who didn’t seem to have a purpose. Even D’aman had gone along with
Angelica on the last few site visits. Shapeshifting came in handy
when it came to infiltrating a secret terrorist organization.

“Kenzie…” Ava half-rose from her seat.

But Kenzie didn’t give her an opportunity to
talk her out of her grouchy mood. Instead, she blurred upstairs and
out into the backyard, where she took advantage of the sight lines
to launch herself straight up into the sky.

At least the people of Seattle appreciated
her. The non-xenophobic ones, anyway.

#

Kenzie’s rumination on xenophobia seemed
prophetic. Less than twenty-hours later, in the middle of her usual
evening patrol, she heard voices crying out somewhere near the
waterfront, accompanied by the sound of fists and feet striking
metal. What in the world?

She had almost cut her patrol short for Game
Night, and as the cries for help pierced her consciousness, she was
tempted to call in the disturbance to Seattle PD and let them
handle whatever was happening. But then she heard what sounded like
a young girl’s voice join in the cries, and she realized that Game
Night wasn’t going anywhere. These people, on the other hand, might
be in real danger.

In moments, she had narrowed her senses onto
a slice of the Seattle waterfront where large orange cranes loomed
over stacks of shipping containers, recently arrived from a variety
of locations both domestic and international. If there were people
trapped inside a shipping container, that likely meant undocumented
immigrants, abandoned by whatever entity had seen fit to smuggle
them to Seattle inside a metal shipping crate.

The memory of her own slow journey across
space in a craft half the size of these containers flashed through
her mind, and she increased her speed, blurring to the site. In a
matter of moments, she had isolated the sounds to a black shipping
container lying directly beneath a smaller crane, and then she was
bursting through the unlocked outer doors to find a second, smaller
crate inside the first. She tried to X-ray the contents, but it was
dark, and metal could be difficult to parse.

“Stand back! I’m going to get you out!” she
shouted, mollified by the silence that fell inside the smaller
container.

Taking a centering breath, she focused her
strength on prying open the doors—and then gasped as the world
tilted and she fell into the container. The doors slammed behind
her at the same time that a thousand clarions went off, accompanied
by bright lights flashing from every direction. She closed her eyes
and covered her ears, struggling to stay upright as the container
spun. Which way was the door? Which way was up? She couldn’t get
her bearings, couldn’t figure out what was happening.

She tried to stay still, tried to establish
some sort of order out of the chaos, tried to breathe deeply and
not panic. It was just a shipping container—an empty one, as it
turned out. She should be able to bust her way out. But as her fist
connected with a metal wall, she realized that this wasn’t steel.
This metal didn’t give. In fact, her fist ached where she’d made
contact. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the lights and
sound, trying to think. There was only one metal that she knew of
that was dense enough to withstand her strength, and it shouldn’t
have been available anywhere on Earth. Scratch that—anywhere in the
Milky Way. Could she actually be trapped in a box made of
Vercurium? A spotlight glanced off the nearest wall, and sure
enough, the metal gave off a neon-green sheen. It was
Vercurium.

As panic and darkness swept over her, she
suddenly recognized the low, familiar sound underpinning the
chaotic clarions: the hiss of a gas jet like the one on Ben’s
barbecue. What the actual… But she lost the rest of the sentence as
she pitched headlong into unconsciousness.

#

Even before Kenzie became aware of the
strange sensations flooding her system, she heard the steady hum of
an airplane engine, the low rumble of voices, the clink of chains
and buckles. Everything was muffled, like when she used the
Gamemendon ear plugs D’aman had obtained for her when she first
arrived on Earth. She wasn’t wearing ear plugs, though. Memory came
rushing back—the Vercurium box within the shipping container; the
light and sound assault; the whoosh of gas; the terrifying slide
into unconsciousness, not knowing if she would reawaken. The inside
of her mouth stung, and she realized with a start that they must
have injected her with something.

They? Who on Earth even knew what
alien substance would act as a sedative on her system? Or that
Vercurium would trap her as surely as steel would a human? She
tried to lift her hands to her eyes, which didn’t seem to want to
open, but she couldn’t. And suddenly she understood. She was
secured to some sort of cot or bench, her body restrained by bonds
of the same metal that had trapped her inside the shipping
container. It was definitely Vercurium. But who could have gotten
their hands on the alien metal?

Sentinel. It had to be them. For a
group that claimed to hate off-worlders, they seemed to have an
awfully impressive off-world supply chain. Assuming they were
behind the infinity drug, of course—and Kenzie would have bet…
well, not her life. Not at this juncture.

Ava’s face swam before her, wearing that
frown she got when she was worried about Kenzie’s safety. Sloane’s
accusing scowl wasn’t far behind. Don’t keep a regular patrol
schedule, Ava had said. They’ll set a trap for you,
Sloane had said. Damn them both for being right. Why hadn’t she
listened to them? The answer was obvious now: sheer arrogance.
She’d believed her off-world powers protected her more than they
evidently did.

In a panic, she thrust her consciousness
outward: D’aman! Help! D’aman! But only silence greeted her,
both inside and outside her mind. She had no idea how long she had
been unconsciousness, how long the plane might have been in the
air. They could be over the middle of the Pacific Ocean by now—or
over the middle of North America, for that matter. Surely Sloane
would be able to track her suit sensors. That was the whole point
of them, after all—to provide a trail for Sloane to follow should
Kenzie go missing. She narrowed her hearing, trying to detect the
faint hum of the transponders built into her suit. But there was
nothing. Had they removed them? Or maybe her captors had disabled
them somehow? Sloane’s voice came back to her: These little guys
are tough. They can survive anything—except, maybe, a direct hit
from an EMP.

Kenzie ground her teeth together to prevent a
groan from escaping. Shit, shit, shit. Sloane couldn’t track
her and D’aman couldn’t hear her. What was she going to do? There
was always the signal ring, but that required two hands. Anger and
fear flooded her system with stress hormones, and she fought the
urge to struggle against her bonds. As long as her captors thought
she was unconscious, she had a valuable advantage. Whatever they’d
given her had dampened her powers but hadn’t extinguished them
entirely. Her hearing was still too sensitive, and her vision…
Swallowing hard, she focused her vision on the insides of her
eyelids. As soon as she picked up a slight movement of external
light, she zeroed in on it the way she’d taught herself to do in
high school when even AP math and science bored her so completely
that she’d taken to secretly experimenting with her less readily
apparent abilities.

Like seeing through her own skin, for
example.

As the airplane sped through the night sky,
stars winking out of reach, Kenzie took in her surroundings. She
was trussed up like a death row prisoner, bound to an ambulance
gurney, her Galaxy Girl outfit intact—except for her mask. They had
removed her mask, which meant that they knew what she looked like.
Did they know who she was? Oh, Alia, no. If they knew her
identity, that put everyone she cared about at risk.

This was her worst nightmare. Not only was
she powerless and at the mercy of anti-alien extremists, but
Sentinel was only one step away from rounding up—or
worse—her unsuspecting family and friends. Her family and
friends, who were probably waiting for her to show up at Game
Night.

She pushed the thought away, trying to focus
on the present moment. She could still make it out of this alive;
she had to believe that. Dwelling on the danger she and everyone
she cared about were in would not help. Instead, she took a
steadying breath and used her enhanced vision to take in her
current surroundings. The camouflage-clad men strapped into jump
seats around her were military in bearing and exuded a particular
sort of cockiness that, according to Sloane, was mostly a cover for
anxiety.

“Not so powerful now, is she?” one said from
near her feet, and she focused briefly on his face. He was small
and dark-haired, with what passed for a mustache shadowing his thin
upper lip.

Why? she wanted to ask
him. Why do you hate me? But she knew the answer.
More than any perceived differences between their species, more
than any potential threat to humanity she supposedly represented,
these men—and others like them—hated the power she possessed to
make them afraid.

With effort, she remained motionless as the
plane cruised farther and farther from Seattle, resting her X-ray
vision frequently as whatever they had given her continued to sap
her energy. She had been awake for half an hour or so, if she had
to guess, when the plane slowed and began its descent. From her
vantage point she couldn’t see the ground, only the clear night sky
untouched by light pollution and the hulking shape of dark
mountains as they dropped lower. She kept her gaze locked on the
stars until she heard the splash of water against the landing gear.
Water. That meant they were in a float plane, like the ones that
regularly took off from Lake Union.

Suddenly, Kenzie had a pretty good idea where
they had taken her—a fat lot of good the knowledge would do
her.

Far too soon, the assault team was unloading
her gurney from the plane. Kenzie let her head loll “naturally” to
one side. The landscape beyond the perimeter was dark, but she
narrowed in on the mountains on the horizon. She made some
calculations based on the night sky and had to restrain herself
from reacting at the confirmation. Sentinel had brought her to the
cabin in Idaho, the one the Super Friends had ruled out sight
unseen. She was well and truly on her own here.

“Is she still unconscious?” a voice that
sounded familiar asked from just out of her line of sight.

“Yes, sir,” the man with the pathetic
mustache said. “She hasn’t moved at all.”

The first speaker moved into Kenzie’s line of
vision, and she only just prevented herself from reacting.

“Good,” Nick Westbrook said, his lean face
impassive. “Let’s show our guest to her home for the duration,
then.”

The words were as chilling as the tone, and
Kenzie barely suppressed a shiver as she realized that Ava’s
brother was indeed behind her kidnapping. It’s okay,
she reassured herself. Sloane will find me. Ava and the
others will come for me. And yet, she couldn’t help but wonder
if they would get the chance. Kenzie wasn’t just an upstart alien
vigilante. She was also Nick’s sister’s alien girlfriend—assuming
Sentinel had connected the dots. It felt like too much to hope they
hadn’t.

Ava…

Resolutely, Kenzie pushed thoughts of Ava
away, focusing instead on her immediate surroundings as her gurney
was wheeled through what looked like an industrial door built into
the rocky hillside behind the log cabin. The entrance hadn’t been
apparent from the satellite photos the team had studied. Though the
site’s footprint had seemed negligible at first glance, Kenzie had
a bad feeling about what might lay belowground. The cargo elevator
waiting at the end of a short corridor only increased her dread,
especially when it began carrying them several stories below the
Earth’s surface. The mountain’s thick walls would prevent the
detection of thermal images and other chemical signatures. This was
not good. Not good at all.

When the elevator stopped, the Sentinel
agents guided her gurney down a longer, concrete-lined corridor.
Metal-lined too, she soon realized, except for the doors, most of
which sported narrow, rectangular windows. She glimpsed
off-worlders strapped like she was to hospital-style beds in a
handful of rooms, and she barely refrained from recoiling when she
caught sight of the tiny form in the next-to-last cell. Sentinel
was kidnapping alien children now? Beside the
child was a woman wearing a white coat and a neural disruptor like
the kind Sloane had told her Panopticon used when interacting with
telepathic off-worlders, and suddenly Kenzie realized that Nick and
the agents around her gurney were wearing them, too. She had been
so intent on analyzing the facility that she hadn’t noticed until
that moment. Did that mean they were holding
a telepathic alien child?

The last room on the hall had been prepared
for her, judging by the additional security required to open it.
Nick placed his palm on a reader beside the door, and then leaned
his head into the grip so that his right eye could be scanned. The
door clicked with a noise that seemed loud to Kenzie even without
her full powers, and then they were wheeling her inside and letting
it fall closed again. Clearly, they weren’t taking any chances.

Kenzie tried her X-ray vision on the walls
and ceiling, but every visible surface of the small, cell-like room
had been encased in multiple layers of metal that would take her
some time to punch through even at full strength, with an actual
mountainside beyond. She swallowed hard. She
was not going to feel claustrophobic. She
absolutely wasn’t.

Except that she probably was.

She let her vision blur out, relaxing
slightly as her eyelids blocked the sight of her prison cell. Thank
Alia for that. And then a wave of cold water struck her face—so
incredibly cold without her powers to ameliorate the discomfort—and
her eyes shot open as she gasped and sputtered. She didn’t require
as much oxygen as humans, but Zattalians still breathed air, not
water.

“I see you’re awake, Galaxy Girl,” Nick
announced. “How good of you to join us.”

“As if you gave me any choice,” Kenzie said,
still spitting water. But Nick had used her vigilante name; that
seemed like a good sign, didn’t it?

“Kind of had a feeling you wouldn’t come if I
extended the invitation.” Nick turned, running a hand over the
contents of a laboratory cart.

“Where are we, anyway?” Kenzie asked.

“Nice try, Galaxy Girl.” Nick pulled the cart
closer to the bedside. “Such a transparent attempt to get me to
reveal our location. I honestly don’t see what my little sister
sees in you.”

Kenzie blinked. “What she—I don’t know what
you’re talking about. We’re not—”

Nick’s eyebrow rose in almost exactly the
same way Ava’s did when she was teasing, and the sight made Kenzie
feel even more ill than the sedative coursing through her system.
“What? You and Ava aren’t friends?”

His emphasis on the last word combined with
the way he was staring at Kenzie—as if she were a mindless insect
rather than a sentient humanoid—indicated that Sentinel understood
that an alien and a Westbrook were more than just a hashtag. Jane’s
voice echoed in her mind, the argument so well-worn she sometimes
heard it in dreams: “Keeping your identity secret protects
you and the people you care about.”

Damn it. Damn it all to hell.

A smirk—again, creepily familiar—broke across
Nick’s face. “Now that I have your undivided attention, we should
get started. While my men claim they weren’t followed, we both know
your kind don’t fight fair.”

“Her kind” weren’t currently torturing
innocent people inside a mountain bunker, but she didn’t waste her
breath pointing this out. Nick was already attaching electrodes to
her temples and fiddling with a dial on a machine. And then, all at
once, Kenzie’s nerve endings exploded as electromagnetic energy
surged through her system. She couldn’t help it—she cried out, her
voice almost immediately hoarse and ragged as her body tried to
block the pain and failed.

And then, through the fog of pain and the
unknown drug cluttering her consciousness, she heard something:
“It’s okay, you’re not alone.”

The voice was small and reedy, but Kenzie
stopped shouting as she focused on it.

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself!
I’m Klon Rae. Is this okay? I mean, you seem like you need
help…”

Was this part of the torture?

“No. I’m a prisoner too,” the voice
explained, and an image penetrated Kenzie’s consciousness of a
narrow face with a nose and no eyes or mouth—a Markalian in
miniature. All at once, she understood: the alien child next door
was trying to communicate with her. “I saw them bring you in.
You’re Galaxy Girl, aren’t you?”

Kenzie closed her eyes and let the pain wash
over her, remembering Sloane’s instructions to relax into
it. Fighting pain does nothing except make your muscles
hurt more. With difficulty, she formed a single thought and
sent it out. “Yes.”

“I knew it! Are you here to rescue me?” Klon
Rae asked.

“No.”

“Oh.” The ethereal touch on her mind receded
for only a moment before returning. “Still, now that you’re here,
you’ll find a way to save everyone. I know you will.”

Kenzie heard movement beside the bed and
opened her eyes in time to see Nick smile cruelly and turn the
dial, intensifying the pulse. The surge broke through the tenuous
hold Kenzie had on her mind, and as she fell into red-tinged
darkness, she heard herself crying out, “Lalu!”

Mother.

#

It was odd, she thought an indeterminate
amount of time later when Nick finally left her, aftershocks of
energy still shuddering through her frame every so often. She
hadn’t called out for her mother in years, not since shortly after
she’d arrived on Earth.

“Sorry!” the voice in her head said. “I miss
my mom, and I probably transferred that feeling to you. I’m not
very good with my telepathic abilities yet. I think that’s why they
took me and not one of my brothers or sisters. Oh! Sorry again. I
forgot to ask to initiate contact. May I converse with you in this
way at this time?”

Kenzie closed her eyes, remembering a
Markalian visitor to her family’s ship when she was a child. Like
Kreedilans, the Markalian people observed strict rules on when and
how to communicate with non-telepaths, and as such were considered
among the politest emissaries in the universe. Or, at least, the
adults were.

“I give you my blessing to converse in this
way at this time,” she sent back, visualizing each word as if on a
blank wall.

“Wait—you know the greeting? You weren’t born
on Earth, were you?”

A memory of her fleet in flames as her pod
raced away through the asteroid storm flickered into Kenzie’s mind,
and she felt her young neighbor pull back.

“Sorry,” Kenzie said. If she wasn’t so worn
out by Sentinel’s torture device, she might have even felt
guilty.

“No.” Klon Rae’s thoughts were more subdued.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think of that.”

“It’s fine. May I ask how old you are?”

“Ten in Earth years.”

“When did Sentinel take you? And why?”

“It’s been at least a week, I think…”

“A week?” Kenzie repeated, visions of
Nick’s torture cart flaring inside her mind.

“Don’t worry, they haven’t hurt me like you
and the others. I’m not completely sure why I’m here, except it has
something to do with you and my father. Do you know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Okay.” The girl seemed disappointed, and
Kenzie got the feeling that her father was her biggest hero. “Well,
anyway, they let me out for walks every day, though only for a
short time. They don’t want me to absorb so much solar energy that
I return to full strength.” She paused. “If you’re not here to
rescue me, then why are you here?”

“I was captured,” Kenzie admitted, allowing
the memory of the attack to filter through. “But if I had known you
were here, I definitely would have come sooner.”

Klon Rae projected an image of a smiley
emoji. “I know you would, Galaxy Girl. I believe in you.”

Tears pricked Kenzie’s eyes as she stared at
the wall that separated her from the Markalian child. She wasn’t
sure that belief was deserved. She couldn’t even help herself, let
alone any of the others. What if she never saw Sloane again? What
if she never saw Ava again?

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to
make you cry.”

“You didn’t. Really.”

“I miss my family, too.”

“I bet you do. Tell me more about them. How
did you come to be on Earth?”

As the little girl responded, Kenzie lay
back, willing her enflamed muscles and joints to relax. Klon Rae’s
story wasn’t unlike her own. The planet Markal had faced
destruction too, when a despotic ruler tried to declare himself
emperor and threw the planet into civil war.

“The rebel forces saved Markal, but my
grandparents lost everything in the battle for the capital and
decided to move to Earth.”

Kenzie tried to remember the powers that
Markalians possessed in addition to telepathy: size manipulation,
immense strength when human-sized, cloaking—different from
shapeshifting—so that they appeared human to onlookers,
teleportation, and wasn’t there something about the ability to
absorb the qualities of objects they touched?

“We can also project any item we touch with
extreme force. Or, at least, my older brothers and sisters can. I
can communicate with my mind, but I’m not able to do much else
yet,” she said, sounding glum.

“I’m sure you’ll learn. You probably just
need to grow a bit more.”

“Yeah.” She perked up. “I was kind of worried
I might not get the chance, but now you’re here I’m not worried
anymore!”

Which was—good. It was good that this child
had faith in her because knowing Sentinel as Kenzie did, it was
going to take a good deal of faith, not to mention luck, for them
to make it out of this mountain alive.

Kenzie had more questions, she knew she did,
but she could feel sleep tugging at her. Which didn’t make sense at
all. How could she sleep when Nick and his goons might return at
any moment to torture her? When they could go into any of the rooms
on this hall and inflict physical and psychic injury on the
inhabitants? She pulled at her bonds even though she knew it was
pointless; tried to gather the energy to see through the ceiling
and the layers upon layers of rock and earth overhead, to blur out
of this bed, this room, this horrible place. But it was no use. She
was helpless.

“You’re not helpless. You can think,” Klon
Rae told her. “At least, that’s what my mother always says.”

Kenzie felt a wave of sadness roll over her,
and she wasn’t sure if it belonged to her or the child next
door.

“I’m sorry,” Klon Rae said once again,
answering her unspoken question.

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said, blinking back hot
tears. They would drip into her ears and itch uncontrollably,
another torture to be endured. “I’m sorry, too.”

Chapter Nine

When Ava arrived at the safe house twenty
minutes late for Game Night to find everyone but Kenzie already
there, she felt a frisson of fear skate across the back of her
neck. Then she caught herself. It didn’t mean anything that
Kenzie’s patrol should have ended a half hour earlier. She had
probably just stopped for food. She was fine. After all, she was
Galaxy Girl.

“Have you guys heard from Kenzie?” she asked,
forcing her voice to sound light.

Mika and Sloane exchanged glances.

“No,” Matt said. “We were hoping you
had.”

Ava pulled her phone from her purse and
checked her messages. Right before her patrol, Kenzie had sent
“All hail Game Night!” in her usual formal/nerdy style,
followed by half a dozen emojis it would take too long to
interpret. But the pair of texts Ava had sent Kenzie half an hour
earlier remained unanswered. Unread, even.

“Where are you?” she typed as Sloane
came closer to read over her shoulder. “She probably got distracted
by a car accident or a mugging,” she said aloud, more to make
herself feel better than because she thought it was true.

“Right,” Matt said from his spot on the couch
beside Antonio, his knee jumping spastically. “Remember that time
she stopped to direct traffic when the power grid went out?”

“I don’t know,” Sloane said. “I don’t like
this. Maybe we should track her suit.”

“I think we should,” Antonio said. For once,
his blasé expression was missing, replaced by obvious concern.

The safe house television was tuned to the
local news, but Ava only half-paid attention as she stared at her
phone, willing Kenzie to respond. Maybe she wasn’t answering
because she was currently flying cross-town. She would drop into
the backyard at any second, wouldn’t she? Ava glanced longingly at
the backyard in question, and then she hit the call button. Except
the call never went through. Instead, the special alert she’d
programmed for Galaxy Girl-related news went off.

Sloane and Mika’s phones went off too, and
then Matt was saying, “Guys, look! It’s Kenzie!”

On the flat-screen television that took up
most of the living room wall, the local news anchors were
interpreting a “recently obtained” grainy video submitted by a
viewer on Twitter. Ava watched, heart pounding, as footage showed
Kenzie flying into a shipping container on the Seattle waterfront
that promptly rose into the air, spinning riotously from a crane.
The news show fast-forwarded the tape until the moment when the
crane dropped the container to the ground and a team of masked,
black-clad operatives converged on it.

“No!” Ava gasped, covering her mouth with one
hand.

But as she watched, the operatives removed
Kenzie from the container on a gurney, her body bound tightly with
metal coils. Was she even alive?

“Sentinel,” Sloane said, the word a
snarled curse. She was already moving toward the front door, Mika
close behind.

“Where are you going?” Ava asked, her
thoughts jumbled by the cold sensation crawling up her spine. She
shivered, and then she shivered again. Kenzie had been taken.
Kenzie might not even be alive. No! She couldn’t think that
way.

Sloane’s eyes were steely. “Panopticon. We
can track her from there.”

“But they could be the ones who took her!”
Ava argued.

Sloane nodded. “And if they are, they’ll have
left a trail. Either way, we need Rodriguez on this one.”

“I’m coming with you,” Ava said, scrambling
to follow.

“What about us?” Matt asked, cracking his
knuckles.

“Yeah,” Antonio said. “What do we do?”

D’aman stood beside Angelica. “You can work
with us from here. If anyone finds anything, they let the others
know. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Sloane said over her shoulder,
pausing at the front door to pull on her gun and holster.

And then they were bolting out into the warm
summer night, a single thought Ava could almost hear echoing in the
minds around her: Get her back. Get her
back. Get her back.

#

The frisson of fear became a wave as they
raced downtown to Panopticon. Sloane guided her motorcycle almost
recklessly through Friday night traffic, and Ava clung to her,
fingers wedged as deeply into the agent’s belt as she could manage.
Mika kept pace behind them, pushing her bike to its limits, too.
But it didn’t matter how fast they went, a dark voice at the back
of Ava’s mind whispered. Kenzie was already gone.

As Sloane screeched her motorcycle to a stop
in the employee lot, Ava took a breath. Into the lion’s den. But
there was no choice. Sentinel had a head start on them. As Sloane
had said, they would need Panopticon’s almost limitless resources
if they were going to find Kenzie.

MacIntosh, Sloane’s boss and, not
incidentally, the man who had brought Ava in for questioning the
night Nick escaped from prison, was waiting in the central control
room when they arrived, arms folded across the front of his black
agency shirt while he examined the bank of monitors hanging over
the command center. He did a double take when he saw Ava and Mika
trailing Sloane in their orange visitor’s badges, but he didn’t
comment.

“What’s the status on Galaxy Girl?” Sloane
asked, her voice far calmer than Ava would have been able to make
her own.

“Her suit trackers went silent. We’re
checking camera footage from the area, and there’s a team on site
analyzing the situation.”

“Have they found anything?”

“Only that it looks like they used helium to
render her unconscious.”

Ava frowned, clasping her shaking hands in
front of her. Helium was colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Kenzie
wouldn’t have even known she was being gassed until it was too
late. For a human who breathed in pure helium, loss of
consciousness would set in after only a handful of seconds. For
Kenzie, it would have been longer, but not much. While she
apparently didn’t need as much oxygen as humans, she obviously
needed some, and once helium replaced the oxygen in her lungs…

“Is there any indication that she was still
breathing?” Mika asked, her voice just as calm.

“No,” MacIntosh said. “But the assumption is
that she’s still alive. Otherwise, why would they take her with
them?”

To experiment on her! Ava wanted to
shout. Did none of them remember Nick’s previous crimes against
Earth’s off-world community? But she couldn’t say that in front of
Sloane. She pictured Kenzie as she’d been the night before, lying
in bed beside her in the ambient glow of late-night Seattle tracing
her fingertips over Ava’s skin, reverent, adoring. She couldn’t be
gone, just like that. She couldn’t.

And yet, of course she could.

“Right,” Sloane said, nodding. “Where’s
Rodriguez? I’d like to go over some ideas with her.”

Her boss eyed her. “I need a word first,
Shepherd.”

Sloane stiffened, and Ava wondered if she was
thinking the same thing: Had Panopticon figured out that Galaxy
Girl was, in fact, Sloane’s sister?

They walked away a few paces, and Ava watched
as MacIntosh said something, his expression grim. Sloane’s gaze
shot to Ava. So, not an identity reveal, then. Something, rather,
to do with the Westbrooks. Ava sighed to herself. She wasn’t even
surprised anymore.

They returned to the command center, Sloane’s
shoulders even more ramrod straight than before. While she wouldn’t
look at Ava, her boss didn’t have the same problem.

“Miss Westbrook.” MacIntosh inclined his
head, his expression inscrutable. “Where were you an hour and a
half ago?”

She frowned slightly. “In my office at
Hyperion. Why?”

“We received this from an anonymous source.”
MacIntosh nodded at a tech, and the nearest screen lit up with a
video.

The picture was dark and blurry, the vantage
point distant, but Ava could clearly see herself through her office
window seated at her desk in either the same pantsuit she was
currently wearing or a similar one, phone pressed to her ear.
Accompanying the image was an audio track that appeared to match
the call.

“Are you in position?” asked a voice that
even to Ava’s ears sounded like her own.

“Yes, we’re in position,” an unidentified
male responded.

“And we have a deal? You won’t hurt her, will
you?”

“No, we won’t hurt her.”

“Okay. Do it.”

The screen went dark and all eyes, including
Sloane’s, immediately went to Ava. She folded her arms across her
chest, pulse racing as she stared back at Sloane. “You can’t
honestly believe that’s me setting up Galaxy Girl.”

Sloane shook her head. “No. I mean…”

What was she thinking, that Ava had done this
to somehow protect Kenzie? Or maybe Amelia or Nick had threatened
someone else, and Ava had gone along with the plan because she felt
she had no choice? Ava could have told Sloane she would never trust
her mother or brother to keep up their end of any such deal. From
personal experience, she knew there was no honor among alien-hating
Westbrooks.

“You have to admit it sounds incriminating,”
MacIntosh said.

Ava ignored him, focusing on Kenzie’s sister.
“Sloane, you of all people know that I wouldn’t do something like
this.”

“But that is your voice, isn’t it?”

“It might be. The reality is that in my line
of work, I have conversations almost daily that go something like
that.”

“So, are you saying the conversation
happened, but that it had nothing to do with Galaxy Girl?”
MacIntosh asked.

“It’s possible,” Ava said, tossing her head.
They were wasting time, which was clearly what her brother and his
goon squad wanted. “But to be honest, I don’t recall that specific
conversation.”

“How convenient,” MacIntosh said,
snorting.

Sloane’s gaze narrowed, and Ava could almost
see her keen mind ticking through the evidence. Nick Westbrook’s
little sister. Amelia Thornton’s daughter. The person
Kenzie trusted most in the world—other than her own family, of
course.

“Nothing about this is convenient,” Ava said.
“Let’s remember Sentinel has tried to kill me more than once, shall
we?”

MacIntosh looked unimpressed. “Tried
being the key word.”

“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Mika
said. “We just need a little time to investigate where the tip came
from. Can you give us that?”

Ava hesitated, feeling her bravado fail in
the face of Mika’s kind words and matching expression. “But I could
help find her. I need to help find her.”

“And you’ll get that chance. Won’t she,
Sloane?”

Mika’s elbow colliding with her side appeared
to jump-start Sloane into action. “Yes, of course. But in the
meantime, Rodriguez, can you show Miss Westbrook to my lab?”

Ava felt her cool, collected COO mask fall
into place. “Once a Westbrook, always a Westbrook. Is that it,
Sloane?”

“For your sake, I sincerely hope not,” Sloane
said, biting off the words with a savagery that finally offered a
glimpse into her frayed emotional state.

Ava was gratified to catch the disappointed
look that Mika gave her girlfriend, but that didn’t stop Sloane
from nodding shortly at Rodriguez, who returned the gesture and
waved Ava ahead of her toward a hallway that branched discreetly
off the control room.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” Rodriguez said
in a low voice as she led Ava through the impossible maze that made
up Panopticon’s interior.

Ava shot her a glance. Why would Rodriguez
apologize to her? Wait, Rodriguez was the one who had helped
investigate the tainted whiskey in her office, wasn’t she?

“I know you and Galaxy Girl are close,”
Rodriguez added.

Fricking frack. Panopticon’s resident
lesbian tech genius had better be on their side, because
apparently, she’d somehow figured out that Ava and Galaxy Girl were
a thing. If she also knew that Ava was dating Sloane’s sister,
well, then. Identity reveal—check.

Sloane’s lab here at Panopticon was a good
deal more impressive than the workstation she had set up in the
safe house garage. Ava couldn’t help assessing the equipment as
Rodriguez directed her to the desk area in one corner,
automatically calculating the worth of the assorted scopes,
tablets, and other scientific machinery. Rodriguez leaned against a
concrete pillar, and Ava reluctantly took a seat, trying not to
think about what might be happening to Kenzie in a room like this
at this very moment. Was she alive? Was she in pain? Was she
frightened?

Ava closed her eyes and tried to clear her
mind so that she could focus on her meditation mantra—om mani
padme hum—trying to picture each word against a black backdrop,
vanishing slowly one by one into a well at the center of the
shadowy landscape. She hadn’t meditated enough recently, and it
showed.

They didn’t have long to wait, fortunately.
Ava had only made it through her mantra a handful of times when the
door opened to admit Sloane and Mika. Ava looked up as they
entered, and as she registered the reassuring smile on Mika’s face,
her dread eased slightly.

Sloane sat down facing Ava. Then, to Ava’s
utter shock, the brusque agent reached across the desk and touched
her hand. “I’m sorry about before. I just get a little…”

“Crazy at the thought of something happening
to her?” Ava nodded, swallowing against the lump in her throat.
“Me, too.”

“We’ll find her,” Mika said, pausing beside
Sloane with her hand on her shoulder. “We will, you guys. We just
have to put our heads together. After all, that’s what Sentinel is
afraid of, isn’t it?”

A phone chimed, and Rodriguez reached for her
pocket. A second later, she nodded at the door. “Do you guys need
me? Because I think Mac, um, could, like, use my help.”

Ava frowned at the agent’s twitchiness. Had
Kenzie made an unwitting conquest of the stoic agent? The superhero
vibe was hard to resist, as the thirsty hordes on Twitter amply
demonstrated.

Sloane’s mouth twisted in displeasure, but
she only said, “Go.” As the door closed behind Rodriguez, she
glanced from Mika to Ava. “All right, then. Let’s put our heads
together. But not here.” She gestured at the walls. “Smoke break,
anyone?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Ava said.

Outside on a dark concrete patio overlooking
downtown Seattle, Sloane turned on a noise machine app on her phone
to cover their words. Then she actually pulled out a pack of smokes
and offered them up.

Why the hell not? Ava reached for one,
lighting it with hands that still shook, she noticed with slight
irritation. She took a puff, careful not to inhale deeply. Her
lungs wouldn’t be happy with her if she did.

“So?” Sloane asked, holding her cigarette
with practiced ease.

“So, she has to be close,” Ava said.

“Why do you say that?” Mika asked. She had
refused a cigarette, but at least she didn’t seem to be judging
them for needing a hit of nicotine.

“Because I know my brother. He wouldn’t want
to wait too long to gloat over such a victory.”

“All right,” Mika said. “Assuming you’re
right, where do you think he’s taken her?”

“Well,” Ava said slowly, “there are only a
few locations left to check out, and out of those, only two are on
the West Coast. Not counting the yellow tacks.”

“Maybe we should count the yellow tacks,”
Sloane said.

Mika nodded. “I don’t think we should rule
out any potential site within a thousand-mile radius.”

“All right, then,” Sloane said. “Ava, you
coordinate with the others to investigate the remaining sites fast,
but from a distance, okay? This is now a hostage situation, and we
don’t want to trigger a reaction that will get Kenzie into any more
danger than she might already be.”

Assuming she was still alive. The
words went unspoken, but Ava had a feeling Sloane and Mika were
thinking them, too. “Will do. What about you guys?”

“We’ll go check out the extraction site.
Right?” Sloane added, glancing at her girlfriend.

Mika nodded. “Absolutely.”

They ground out their half-smoked cigarettes,
leaving them in a concrete ashtray that Ava noticed was overflowing
with butts. Secret agenting was tense work. Lately, she’d been
getting a closer look than she’d ever wanted at the agency her
father had founded. Still, she would willingly work with Panopticon
every minute of every coming day if it meant they would find Kenzie
faster.

As long as they found her.

#

D’aman, Matt, Antonio, and Angelica were way
ahead of them. They’d already narrowed down a list of sites to
check within a five-hundred-mile radius, and assured Ava that they
had no intention of getting close enough to set off any alarms.
Even Angelica, who had shown a special flair for mimicking workers
at previous sites, agreed to keep her distance.

They were still working on the plan when
Sloane texted Ava: “Extraction site clean. Meet us at your
condo?”

“Why?” she typed back.

“Mika has a theory.”

Antonio drove Ava to Belltown, the drive
tense and silent. Ava barely thanked him, but even so, he waited
until she was safely inside before pulling away from the curb. Mika
and Sloane were waiting for her, and Mika explained her theory on
the elevator ride to the penthouse. Three months earlier, her team
had arrested an off-worlder with telekinetic powers who had been
selling specialized surveillance devices on the black market. Mika
was worried that Sentinel might have gotten their hands on similar
materials.

As soon as Ava’s security team let them into
the condo, the detection device Mika had brought from work lit
up.

“It’s built on Comulan specs,” Mika
explained, pointing the narrow tip at a nearby painting.

That meant nothing to Ava, but Sloane nodded
as if her girlfriend was making perfect sense. They were a good
match, those two. Like her and Kenzie… Ava blinked away the
thought.

Mika moved closer to the painting, moving the
detector like a Geiger counter. “There,” she said.

“Where?” Ava asked. There was nothing there
as far as she could tell.

Sloane aimed her own device—a mini-EMP with
limited range that she had promised Ava wouldn’t affect any of her
appliances—at the spot Mika indicated and pressed the trigger. A
moment later, they all leapt back as the previously invisible
object fastened to the frame suddenly regained its normal size,
several inches long by a couple of inches wide.

Ava was happy to note she wasn’t the only one
to reach for a weapon. But the small surveillance device soon
stabilized, and they snickered sheepishly as they put their guns
away. Ava could only imagine how they would tell this story in the
future: Remember the time we tried to shoot a tiny camera?
Her laughter faded, realization setting in. How long had Sentinel
been watching her? And Kenzie—how long had they known she was
Galaxy Girl? Ava and Kenzie had been careful, of course, but here
in her home where her security team ran regular sweeps, they had
been more relaxed. What conversations had Sentinel overheard? Had
they watched her and Kenzie dancing, kissing, making love?

“Why didn’t my security team find this?” she
asked.

“In the SPD case, the Markalian suspect
cloaked his devices with an energy field that only an off-world
piece of equipment could detect. I’m guessing that’s the same
situation here.”

Ava nodded and swallowed hard, willing the
surge of bile to stay in her stomach where it belonged.

Sloane and Mika worked efficiently as they
swept the rest of the condo, and by the time they’d finished, they
had discovered four more tiny wireless cameras hidden throughout
the penthouse. Sloane bagged four of the devices to take back to
Panopticon for their techs to analyze. The remaining camera,
however, Mika zipped into a pocket on her leather jacket.

“What’s that for?” Ava asked.

“I thought I’d take it to a friend, see if
she can point us in the right direction.”

“Are you sure?” Sloane asked.

“She knows most of the aliens in the city,”
Mika said. “Besides, D’aman said we can trust her, right?”

“Who are you guys talking about?” Ava asked,
irritated. She had never enjoyed being left out of a strategy
session, not even as a child.

“You’ll see,” Sloane said cryptically.

In the parking garage, they pulled their
helmets back on, kick-started the motorcycles, and headed across
town toward Capitol Hill. Ava pressed her face into Sloane’s
leather jacket and inhaled deeply, trying to focus on her mantra,
but she kept seeing the cameras strewn about her apartment,
especially the one above her bed. The things she and Kenzie had
done to each other, the things they’d whispered, the way they’d
cried together and lain soft and quiet, certain they were alone,
convinced that their words and actions were private. And all the
while her brother’s goons had been watching and listening, probably
laughing and making fun and so much worse as Ava and Kenzie
went about their life together in her home.

Home. Would the condo ever feel like
that again? Not if they didn’t bring Kenzie back safely. Then
again, if Kenzie was gone, really gone, Ava wasn’t sure
anyplace would ever feel like home again. She blinked back the
tears that accompanied the thought. She didn’t have time to cry,
damn it.

On a block crowded with bars, co-op lofts,
and rainbow flags, Sloane and Mika parked their motorcycles and
motioned Ava toward a familiar restaurant. This was the same place
where she and Bea had gone to experience Seattle’s own speakeasy,
located above the restaurant and accessible only via a narrow
stairway off the main dining room.

But they weren’t here for custom cocktails.
Mika led the way to the bar at the back of the restaurant, nodding
to the host and a couple of servers who clearly recognized her.

“Good evening,” Mika said to the bartender,
an older woman with leathery skin and dark eyes.

The bartender raised a brow. “You here to
talk?”

When Mika nodded, the older woman whistled at
a man chatting up one of their customers. “Louie, I’m taking a
break.” The man nodded and went right back to his companion, who
giggled and tossed her hair in a way that made Ava want to slap
her. Didn’t she know that Kenzie was missing? How could she just go
about her life as if terrible things weren’t happening all over the
world?

Ava made herself take another calming breath
as the older woman led them to an office at the back of the
restaurant. It wasn’t large, but it was quiet as soon as the door
closed.

“So, it’s true,” the old woman said,
unsmiling. “Those bastards have our Galaxy Girl.”

Startled, Ava glanced at Mika.

“Yes,” the detective said. “Martalla, this is
Ava.”

“I know who she is.” Martalla eyed Ava for a
long moment, unblinking, and then she leaned back a bit, nodding as
if a question had been answered. “How can I help?”

Sloane glanced around. “Is this room
secure?”

“It’s safe,” Martalla said as she waved them
to a couple of chairs in front of the desk that barely fit inside
the room. “Neuro-shielded, so even telepathic customers can’t
listen in.”

They didn’t sit. Mika placed the bagged
camera on the desk and explained where and how they had found it.
“We were hoping you might be able to help us track down whoever’s
helping Sentinel.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Martalla said,
“but I can try. Okay if I remove it from the bag?”

Mika nodded.

Ava watched as Martalla held the camera, eyes
closed, head turning slightly like she was listening to something.
What was she doing?

Mika leaned in. “Martalla is Kreedilan, like
D’aman. She can track different energy signatures more effectively
than any device we have on Earth.”

Another telepath? Ava had often wondered if
she would know if someone was eavesdropping on her mind. Judging by
the Kreedilan’s nod of satisfaction when Mika had introduced them,
Ava realized that nope, she wouldn’t have any idea.

When Martalla opened her eyes, Sloane leaned
in. “Did you find anything?”

“I think so. The cloaking and miniaturization
process you described are consistent with the powers of the
inhabitants of Markal.”

“That’s what we thought,” Mika said. “But I
thought we arrested the last Markalian in Seattle. Do you know of
others in the area?”

“I could take you to one who lives not far
from here. If you want my assistance, that is.”

“We do.” Sloane paused. “But why are you
helping us, exactly?”

“Sloane,” Mika hissed, echoing Ava’s interior
monologue. Why was Sloane trying to piss off their best lead to
Kenzie?

“I’m serious, Mika.” Sloane glanced back at
the Kreedilan. “Panopticon would lock you up in a heartbeat for no
reason other than where you come from.”

That was news to Ava. She’d thought
Panopticon existed to protect Earth from rogue aliens, not
bartending ones who were simply trying to live their lives. She
supposed she really ought to know better by now.

“I’m not doing this for your barbaric
Bureau,” Martalla said, her lip curling in a universal sign of
distaste. “I’m doing this for Galaxy Girl. She’s brought hope to
our community, and if I can help her, I will.”

“All right then,” Sloane said. “Lead
away.”

That was how they ended up at a shabby
apartment building at the edge of one of Seattle’s seedier housing
projects. Martalla rapped sharply on a second-floor door, eyes
narrowed and head tilted. The door opened almost immediately,
revealing a creature—no, Ava corrected herself,
a person. She tried not to recoil, but it was
difficult. The Markalian’s skin was yellow-orange and their ears
were pointy, but the truly disturbing part of their visage was that
they lacked eyes and—a mouth? Ava couldn’t help wondering how they
could eat and drink. Or, for that matter, see.

Unexpectedly, an answer sounded inside her
head: We absorb energy directly from the sun, and our ears
both hear and see.

Beside her, Ava saw Mika’s gaze flick to the
Markalian’s ears. Had she heard the off-worlder’s response,
too?

Good evening, Plio Kan. I hope it’s not too
late to call upon you.

Ava tried not to flinch as she realized
Martalla was broadcasting her thoughts on the same intra-neural
network as the Markalian. Just as she did whenever she was
around D’aman, Ava tried to keep her thoughts neutral. She would
hate to give the off-worlders an inadvertent show.

Apparently, Sloane was struggling with the
same issue.

“Agent Shepherd,” Martalla said. “Please
redirect your thoughts. They’re becoming distracting.”

“I’m sorry,” Sloane said, her face reddening.
“So, so sorry.”

Mika bit her lip, clearly trying not to
smile. “It’s okay, hon. But go sit on the stairs and sing the
birthday song in your head, okay? We’ll fill you in.”

“Fine,” Sloane huffed.

As Sloane retreated, Ava wondered why Mika
knew so much about telepathic aliens. Was it just because of her
job? But no. Kenzie had said something about Mika dating an
off-worlder before Sloane, hadn’t she?

Kenzie…

Ava straightened her shoulders. Kenzie might
be in a Sentinel torture chamber at this very moment, and Ava was
worrying about what a pair of strangers might think about her
thought patterns? She refocused on the conversation, hoping against
hope that Martalla’s hunch would pay off.

Plio Kan, it turned out, was a fount of
helpful knowledge. They examined the camera and confirmed that it
had indeed been “enchanted”—apparently there was no direct
translation available in English—by a fellow Markalian, and even
gave them the address of the only other people from their planet
that they knew of in Seattle. As Martalla led them to the house,
Ava could feel hope building in her chest. But when they reached
the address Plio Kan had provided—a run-down trailer on a property
half a mile from Plio Kan’s tenement—it was eerily silent. Either
no one was home at the moment, or…

Martalla did her head-tilt motion. “I’m
sorry, but the family that lives here left sometime within the last
few days.” She paused. “Not all of them, actually. There is one
mental essence that has been absent longer than the others. And…”
She frowned. “It belongs to a child.”

Mika snapped her fingers. “Leverage.”

Sloane and Ava both glanced at her, but it
was Kenzie’s sister who asked, “Meaning what?”

“Meaning no matter what planet someone’s
from, if you hold a gun to their kid’s head, they’re liable to do
whatever you tell them to.”

“That would explain the anguish I feel
hanging over this place,” Martalla said, her frown matching
Mika’s.

Sloane’s phone buzzed. “It’s the Bureau,” she
said, and put the call on speakerphone.

“We looked at the cameras you found,” the
tech said, “and discovered they don’t have a very wide range. Like
only a few hundred feet, at most.”

Sloane’s eyes locked with Ava’s. “They were
broadcasting to someplace inside the building?”

“Looks like it. Or a very close
neighbor.”

Ava hunched her shoulders, grabbing her
elbows as she realized that Sentinel operatives hadn’t just been
watching her and Kenzie sleeping. They’d been doing so from
somewhere very close, possibly even within her building. Bile rose
again, and she forced it back down. This night just kept getting
worse and worse.

Sloane ended the call and glanced at
Martalla. “Is there any chance we could borrow your services a
little longer?”

“Certainly,” the Kreedilan said, and smiled
in a way that reminded Ava of D’aman when they were trying to make
a joke. “As long as you allow me to teach you some thought-cloaking
techniques. The parade of naked ladies is a bit much.”

Ava found herself almost smiling as Mika
smacked Sloane’s arm. Thank goodness for meditation and
mindfulness. Although in her case, the images parading through her
mind were more graphic in a murdery sort of way than sexual. When
she got her hands on her brother and his cronies… She pushed the
violent images away, humming “Happy Birthday” to herself.

Kenzie would be okay. They would find her,
and she would be fine. She had to be.

#

Ava sat on the patio at the safe house, a
glass of wine in hand as she stared out across the backyard. They
might not have found Kenzie yet, but they had done some good
investigative work tonight. D’aman and Martalla had teamed up to
begin doing flybys of the facilities left on their list, and
Angelica was analyzing the data from the hidden camera Sloane had
confiscated.

Ava’s only real concern was that the camera
Sloane had chosen to keep was the one they’d found stashed in the
condo’s master bedroom. While she was grateful that random techs at
Panopticon wouldn’t be ogling her and Kenzie at their most
intimate, she was less pleased that someone she was close to would
be viewing their deeply personal moments. Fortunately, Angelica had
assured her, the computer could do most of the analysis. The only
time the auto-filter would flag content for manual review would be
if it heard certain words or phrases. Or if it couldn’t tell what
was being said—which, actually, nope. Ava wasn’t going to
think too closely about that.

At least Antonio wasn’t involved. Or Matt.
The idea of Kenzie’s work friends knowing what either of them
sounded like in bed… Yeah, that wasn’t happening anytime soon.

God damn Sentinel. This was how you
destroyed people, chipping away at their sense of safety and their
right to privacy. The only good thing about Nick and Amelia’s
approach was that it might mean they didn’t intend to kill Kenzie.
Amelia at least would probably rather return a broken Galaxy Girl
than give the other side a martyr, which Ava could handle. Broken
people could heal. Dead ones couldn’t.

She closed her eyes. She was exhausted, but
she wasn’t tired. How could she sleep when Kenzie was out there,
waiting for them to find her? How could she rest when she knew that
Kenzie was in the hands of people who thought of her as an object,
an it, rather than a living, breathing person? Activity
helped. As long as she kept moving, searching… But now, sitting
here without a to-do list, she was overwhelmed by images of
Kenzie being tortured. She couldn’t stop seeing the woman she loved
being injured by the people who had raised her.

She was tamping down the urge to call for her
corporate jet to fly into the night on D’aman’s heels—she really
could do it, that was the worst part—when Sloane emerged from
inside. She dropped onto the patio chair beside Ava, a microbrew in
hand, and sighed loudly.

“This fucking sucks. I should be out there
looking for her.”

Ava held up her glass. “I was just thinking
the same thing.”

Sloane knocked her bottle against the glass a
bit too aggressively, but neither of them said anything. They just
sat in the dark yard nursing their drinks and waiting for their
favorite off-worlder to drop onto the grass with a bone-rattling
thud that never came.

A little while later, Mika found them.
“Sloane, are you sure you should be out here? If they know who she
is, then they know who you are, too.”

Sloane glanced at Ava. “That’s exactly what
our mother always worried about.” Her gaze swung to Mika. “Jane
managed to infect you, too, huh?”

Her girlfriend rolled her eyes and perched on
the arm of Sloane’s chair. “Believe it or not, I came up with that
one on my own.”

Ava knew that Sloane had video chatted with
Ben and Jane earlier after the footage of Galaxy Girl being
captured had gone viral. The elder Shepherd-Hendersons had agreed
to lay low someplace other than Bellingham, just in case. The last
thing Sloane and the team needed was to worry about their safety,
too.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sloane said. “No place
is safe, Mika. No one in this world is safe, not ever.”

“I know that, and so does Kenzie. But that’s
why we have you. You always come through.”

Sloane shook her head, grimacing, and Ava
could tell that trying to sit still was crushing her. Kenzie had
once said that Sloane’s job had long been to protect Kenzie. She’d
given up so much for her adopted sister, Ava knew. Not being able
to find Kenzie right now must be killing her as much it was
Ava.

“We’ll get her back,” Mika said, pushing
Sloane’s hair back from her face. “We will.”

Ava watched them, her chest tightening as she
remembered the times she and Kenzie had comforted each other. There
had been a lot of comfort needed, given the constant controlled
chaos of their lives. The near misses were adding up, but they were
nothing compared to seeing Kenzie carried off in that helicopter.
Why did all of this keep getting harder? It was as if Ava was
already filled to the brim with terror from her own experiences,
from Kenzie’s battles with angry off-worlders twice her size, and
this new lament, piled on top of all the others, created a crushing
mass of terror, anger, grief.

“What if we’re too late?” Sloane whispered,
giving voice to Ava’s worst fear.

“We won’t be,” Mika said, strong and
certain.

Ava closed her eyes, wishing more than
anything that she could press her cheek against her own
girlfriend’s chest and listen to the reassuring beat of her heart,
feel the silk of her skin that was just a bit too smooth to be
human. Maybe if she wished hard enough for a miracle, it might
happen. For just this one single moment in time, it couldn’t hurt
to believe in something larger than science.

Alia, she prayed, sending her thoughts
up and out into the same night sky that stretched over Kenzie,
please help her. Please keep her alive. Please.

There was no answer, of course; no great
rumble of a voice from on high, no boom of off-worlder feet landing
nearby. Ava hadn’t expected an answer, but still, deep inside her
heart, she had hoped for one.

She opened her eyes and took a gulp of wine,
shaking her head slightly at her own foolishness as she swallowed.
Magical thinking wouldn’t help get Kenzie back. Unfortunately, she
wasn’t sure what would. She slumped in the patio chair some
stranger had picked out and exhaled slowly, trying to clear her
mind of the anxious thoughts threatening to pull her under. At
least if she had to be still, she could rest. After all, they were
going to find something; it was only a matter of time. And then
Kenzie would need Ava to be sharp, like a knife unsheathed against
her family of origin.

Alia willing.

Chapter Ten

Her captors didn’t let Kenzie sleep long.
When another blast of cold water woke her, she realized that a hose
in the ceiling had been positioned directly above her head.

“Wake up, Super Freak,” an unknown voice
said, reverberating from a speaker in the corner of the room where
a CCTV camera lurked. “No sleeping. It’s against the rules.”

Super Freak—how original. Why couldn’t
the anti-superhero crowd come up with new insults?

Klon Rae remained quiet, and Kenzie hoped she
was asleep. Left alone with her thoughts, she practiced Min-Nal for
an indeterminate time, unsurprised when the ancient form failed to
calm her mind. Next, she tried to catalog the assorted equipment in
the room, some of which she recognized but most of which she
didn’t. She had read through some of the articles about Sentinel’s
first round of alien kidnappings, and the torture devices in this
facility, with their blend of sadistic cruelty and technological
innovation, had Nick’s signature all over them.

The water came on twice more that night, and
at last Kenzie gave up trying to sleep. Instead, she kept her eyes
open and concentrated on the forms of Min-Nal. When that failed yet
again, she transported herself someplace nicer—mentally, not
physically; even if she could have teleported, she, like Klon Rae,
was too depleted by exhaustion and hunger to try. In her mind, she
pretended she was back in Vancouver with Ava, sleeping late at
Bea’s client’s condo, wandering the city in disguise, preparing
meals, showering together… Anytime her thoughts veered toward the
X-rated variety, she quickly redirected them. If Klon Rae woke up
and tapped into her thoughts, she didn’t want the child to be
scarred for life.

Although, now that she thought about it, that
risk probably came with the territory of being a telepath.

The only time Kenzie left the room was to be
escorted in Vercurium chains to a nearby bathroom where she
couldn’t even find the energy to care that a guard made her leave
the door open while she relieved herself. By the time Nick returned
(the following morning? it had to be), Kenzie’s head felt thick
from the combined effects of limited sleep and the drug they had
injected her with after her late-night bathroom break.

“We meet again, Galaxy Girl,” Nick drawled as
he swept into the room. “Or should I say Kenzie?”

She rolled her eyes, exhaustion lending
credibility to her feigned indifference. “Am I supposed to be
surprised you know my name?”

Even without super hearing, Kenzie would have
heard Nick’s quick intake of breath. But he didn’t say anything as
he pulled a stool closer in a movement that reminded Kenzie of
Sloane zipping about her lab at Panopticon.

Sloane… She must be out of her mind
with worry by now. At least she had Mika and D’aman and the boys to
look after her. Kenzie was Ava’s main support system in Seattle.
Maybe Beatrice would hear about the situation and fly in to look
after Ava. But even if she did, Sloane had better be looking out
for Ava, too. If Kenzie managed to survive this mess only to
discover that her friends and family hadn’t been there for her
girlfriend…

“Want to see what this next device does?”
Nick asked.

His calm focus scared her more than anything
else, but she lifted her chin. “No, thanks.”

He ignored the comment as he fastened a
neon-green metal band—more Vercurium—across her forehead and wound
a sleeve that resembled a blood pressure cuff around her arm. When
he flicked a switch on the small rectangular box that both items
were attached to, nothing happened at first. But then a feeling of
intense grief oozed through Kenzie’s system like the emotional
equivalent of tar, blackening everything it touched. She fought the
effects, trying to picture Ava’s face smiling up at her from the
bed beside her, alight in mid-morning sunshine, happy and full of
love; Ava snuggling into her side on her patio as they watched the
sun set over the Olympics; Ava whooping in joy as they flew
together above the Salish Sea coast, bodies close, hearts
closer.

“Evidently the low setting doesn’t work on
you,” Nick said, frowning. He manipulated the controls again, and
suddenly Kenzie’s memories shifted: Ava in the sights of a sniper’s
rifle; Ava being shot at in the backseat of a car in New York; Ava
sipping poisoned rum and falling to the ground where she lay,
frothing at the mouth as convulsions rocked her frame.

Wait. Kenzie tried to stop the memory,
to hold it up for closer examination. That hadn’t actually
happened, had it? Ava had smelled the alien rum in her decanter.
She had called Mika and Sloane, and they had captured the
perpetrator, a member of her own security team. Hadn’t they?

Another “memory” popped into her mind, vivid
and complex in color and detail, one in which she could only watch
as a car came out of nowhere and struck Ava in front of her condo
as she crossed at a green walk signal. Kenzie tried to intervene,
but her feet were sluggish and heavy, and it was already too late.
She dropped to her knees and gazed down upon Ava’s bloody body,
listening for a heartbeat she already knew she wouldn’t find.

“Nooo,” Kenzie groaned, struggling against
the bonds holding her in place. She had to get away, away,
AWAY…

“How the mighty have fallen,” Nick said,
watching her writhe in place. “This is why our enemies shouldn’t
underestimate us.”

“It’s not real.” Klon Rae’s voice sounded
suddenly in Kenzie’s mind. “Look, there aren’t any shadows. These
are only movies your brain’s creating from the things you worry
about the most.”

Kenzie stopped struggling and closed her
eyes. Sure enough, there were no shadows, no depth of field, no
natural light. The supposed memories were two-dimensional.

“I’ve seen them use this machine on the
others,” Klon Rae told her. “They call it a memory modifier. Don’t
worry. Nothing you’re seeing is real, Galaxy Girl.”

Kenzie blinked her eyes open and stared back
at Nick. Rage consumed her, taking the place of the tarry grief
trying to smother her inside her own mind. “Nice try,” she said,
spitting out the words. “But your little toys don’t work on
me.”

“We’ll see about that, Galaxy
Girl.” Nick cranked the dial higher.

“Klon Rae, leave my mind!” Kenzie managed to
send as images began to roll over her.

“But—”

“Now!” She sent the thought as forcefully as
she could and hoped that her young friend had listened as false
memories assailed her, one after the other: of Ava consumed in
flame, twisting and burning; of Sloane, shot by an alien weapon,
bursting into ash; of D’aman and Jane and Ben and Matt and Antonio,
all dying terrible, painful deaths, one after another, until Kenzie
was dizzy from the blood and the gore, the horror of her worst
fears come to life.

It isn’t real, she chanted inside her
own head. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. Over and
over, she muttered the phrase until she was shouting the words so
loudly that Nick turned off the device and slapped her into
submission. Kenzie lay back panting, the taste of blood on her
lips.

“It isn’t real,” she repeated, her voice the
strike she couldn’t deliver, “and neither are you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Nick forced
Kenzie’s mouth open for the needle that had been lying in wait on
the tray.

Kenzie gasped as the unknown drug raced
through her, forcing the air from her lungs. Her sight dimmed, and
she wondered if she would awaken this time. Wondered, again, if
this might actually be the end.

“Galaxy Girl!” Klon Rae’s panicked voice
sounded her in mind, and then nothing more.

#

“Are you there?” Kenzie thought, staring at
the wall. She had come to a few minutes earlier, the water even
colder than she remembered as she choked and coughed.

It was a moment before she felt the gentle
probe, another before she heard the subdued response. “I’m here.
Are you okay?”

“Yes, thanks to you.”

“You saved yourself,” Klon Rae said. “You’re
stronger than the others, you know.”

“Am I?” She thought for a second. “I think
when you survive a major loss, it makes you realize you can get
through almost anything. There’s a human saying for that: ‘What
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

“I’ve heard that,” Klon Rae said. “I don’t
think I knew what it meant until now, though.”

“I wish you didn’t have to learn what it
means at all.”

“Me, too,” Klon Rae thought. “Was it your
family you lost? In space, I mean?”

“It was my whole fleet,” Kenzie said, trying
to keep her mind blank.

“Oh.” The response was small again.

“I’m glad you’re here, though, Klon Rae.”

“You are?”

“Of course. Every superhero needs a
sidekick.”

“Could I really be your sidekick?”

Kenzie summoned the energy to send a smiley
emoji to her young neighbor. “You betcha.”

“My brother Klar Nee is going to be so
jealous! He saw you stop a car accident near his school once, and
he hasn’t shut up about you since. Just wait ’til I tell him about
this!”

Kenzie only half-listened as the girl went on
about her siblings and their degree of allegiance to Galaxy Girl
and Guy, Seattle’s local superheroes. Where was D’aman now? Did
they know she was missing? They must. Thoughts of D’aman led to her
Zattalian family, and she realized that the memory modifier hadn’t
tortured her with reenactments of the asteroid storm, hadn’t
conjured up images of her mother dying, her father blown apart, her
childhood friends and their families incinerated as the fleet’s
hyperdrives melted down. Was it because those memories were real?
Or was it that her grief over those losses was as resolved as grief
could ever be? That part of her life was long since gone, and
though it echoed in her memories, though she still missed her
family and friends and the future she had thought awaited her, the
pain had become a scar that she carried on her heart, no longer the
open, weeping wound it had been when she had escaped certain death
in her pod.

Her family was here on Earth now—Ava, Sloane,
Jane, Ben, D’aman, Matt, and even Antonio. They were her loved
ones, her family, her home. Zattalia was distant in more ways than
one, and by whatever means it used to evaluate brain activity,
Sentinel’s malevolent device had recognized that fact. A stupid
machine had figured out something about her that not even Kenzie
had fully recognized herself.

Maybe she should thank Nick, after all, for
torturing her to the point of an epiphany. She imagined his face if
she said as much, and then her imagination supplied the likely
outcome: Nick, in a cold rage, filling her holding cell with the
odorless gas from the waterfront until there would be no
possibility of recovery.

For now, probably best not to anger him.

#

The hours fell away—sleep deprivation,
hunger, injections, claustrophobia—until Kenzie was on the edge of
delirium. The only things that stopped her from losing her mind
entirely were the practice of Min-Nal and the presence of Klon Rae.
When their captors took the child for a walk a few hours after the
second round of torture, she kept her consciousness linked to
Kenzie’s through the hundreds of feet that separated them. Kenzie
closed her eyes, feeling the wind on Klon Rae’s face, smelling the
freshness of grass and dirt in the air aboveground, warming to the
sensation of sunlight. She felt the strength returning to the
child’s system as if it were happening to her own, and for a moment
she almost thought she could break her bonds.

She didn’t try. Instead, she opened her eyes
and gazed at the wall blankly. She didn’t want to give Sentinel any
reason to suspect the telepathic link between her and Klon Rae.
Nothing good would come of that.

“Thank you,” she thought when the child
returned to her concrete cell. “That was lovely.”

“The mountains here are pretty. Do you know
where we are?”

“I do.” Kenzie sent her a detailed aerial
image of where they were in relation to Seattle.

“So far?” Klon Rae said, and Kenzie could
feel her dismay like an almost physical wave.

“It’s not that far. Not relatively,
anyway.”

“Maybe not if you can fly or teleport
yourself.”

For a child Klon Rae’s size, a few hundred
miles must feel insurmountable. “Can you not teleport even a
little?”

“My mother says I’m not supposed to try. It
can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

That made sense. Scrambling your neurons and
protons and then reassembling them seemed impossibly complex to
Kenzie, who could do neither. “What about telepathy? How far is
your range?”

“I don’t know. Not very far, though. You were
hard to reach during my walk. It took more energy than I expected.”
She yawned, or at least that’s what it felt like in Kenzie’s
head.

“Klon Rae, don’t do anything to jeopardize
your health! I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.”

“I’ll be okay. Besides, I like talking to
you. I was really scared before you got here. It wasn’t safe to
talk to anyone, you know? But then you came, and I knew right away
I could trust you.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because you’re Galaxy Girl. Besides, I can
read minds, remember?”

Kenzie only just bit back her snort of
laughter. To be seen laughing shortly after enduring torture would
raise a few Sentinel eyebrows. Unless they thought she was cracking
up? Nah. She wasn’t that good of an actor.

“Promise me you’ll conserve your energy,
little one. I might need you to break us out of here.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m really not.”

Klon Rae paused. “Do you have a plan?”

“Not yet. But I’m working on one,” she
thought as confidently as someone who was strapped down and
suffering from a variety of ill effects could manage.

#

“My mother says memories feel so real because
your mind actually relives the experience,” Klon Rae volunteered
after Nick’s third visit.

This time the torture had taken the form of a
device blaring horrifically at a frequency only Zattalians could
hear. Kenzie had instinctively retreated into her mind, wrapping
herself in a memory of the immense silence that was one of her
favorite parts of floating at the very top of Earth’s
atmosphere.

“That’s true,” Kenzie said. “That’s why
people with powerful imaginations can survive months or even years
in solitary confinement.”

“Is that really what Earth looks like from
above?”

“It really is.”

“It’s so beautiful! I can see why my
grandparents wanted to come here.”

“Even now, when humans are trying to get rid
of anyone who’s not from here?”

“I don’t know. My parents say that most
humans—and most other aliens, too—have love in their minds. There
are just a few who have been so, like, hurt by pain or fear that
they can’t feel any other way. Like that man who keeps hurting
you.”

This reminded Kenzie of one night when she
and Ava had been discussing their families and Ava said she felt
sorry for Nick, since he couldn’t help being mentally ill. Kenzie
wondered if Ava would still feel the same when she found out what
her brother was up to in this facility. Assuming Ava ever found
out, an eventuality that depended on Kenzie at some point
walking/flying/punching her way out of this underground house of
horrors.

Something else occurred to her: “Can you see
inside their minds even with the neural disruptors?”

“Sometimes. They have to charge them at
night, and some of the batteries don’t last as long as the
others.”

“And they don’t know you’re listening
in?”

“As long as I don’t try to communicate with
them, no. At least, not so far.”

“Huh,” Kenzie thought.

“Huh what?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

#

It was the end of her second day without food
or sleep when Amelia Thornton walked in, a laptop under one
arm.

“Good evening, Galaxy Girl,” she said, her
voice smug.

“Wow, it’s so great to finally meet you.”
Kenzie tried to sound stronger than she felt. “I mean, I’d hoped it
would be at brunch or maybe even dinner…”

Amelia released an irritated breath. “My son
was right. Your arrogance is quite breathtaking.”

Kenzie nodded at the laptop. “Are you going
to challenge me to a game of Overwatch? Because I have to
warn you—I’m pretty good.”

Amelia ignored her quip, but Kenzie could
feel Klon Rae’s amusement rippling through her mind.

“At the first sign of trouble, you’re out,
right?” she thought at her off-world eavesdropper.

“Right.” But it was a little too quick, a tad
too agreeable.

“I’m here because it’s time you know the
truth,” Amelia announced, her eyes glittering with what looked like
triumph. “Ava never actually cared about you. She’s been working
for us all along. In fact, not only did she help break her brother
out of prison, she also provided the intelligence we needed to
apprehend you.”

Kenzie blinked, and then she shook her head.
“You’re lying. This is just another attempt to break me. A pretty
pathetic one, actually. As if you would ever consent to your
daughter dating an off-worlder.”

“Wait a minute,” Klon Rae thought, her tone
scandalized, “you’re dating this lady’s daughter?”

Kenzie wondered briefly if the child was more
shocked that Galaxy Girl was dating a human, a woman, or Amelia’s
offspring.

“The mom thing, duh!”

Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “Just like the rest
of her family, Ava is a good soldier for the cause. What is truly
pathetic is that you allowed yourself to believe that someone as
brilliant as my daughter could care about you. Doesn’t the truth
make more sense: that Ava was merely playing you?”

“I don’t believe it. I know your daughter
better than you do, and she isn’t capable of what you’re
saying.”

Amelia laughed. “That’s rich. If you know her
so well, then I suppose you know she murdered her mother’s
killer?”

“That’s… she didn’t. She thought about
killing him, but she didn’t go through with it.”

“Is that what she told you?” Amelia pecked at
the keyboard and then turned the screen to face Kenzie. “Then
what’s this?”

Kenzie skimmed the PDF. It appeared to be a
court document that had been sealed due to the perpetrator being a
minor. Ava Westbrook, aged seventeen, charged with manslaughter in
the death of Martin Graylon, aged forty-two, on Christmas Eve a
decade and a half earlier—the very night Ava admitted she’d gone to
kill him. The document looked official, complete with the State of
New York seal and assorted signatures.

And yet… Kenzie shook her head again, the
movement making her dizzy. The injections were making it
increasingly difficult to think. “Ava wouldn’t do that. She’s not
like you or Nick.”

“If she isn’t a member of Sentinel, then how
would I know that you fantasized about killing my son in
prison?”

Not even Sloane knew that. Had Nick developed
a device that would allow humans to read minds? But no—that was
what Klon Rae’s father had done, wasn’t it? Read their minds and
passed the intel on to Sentinel?

“My father would never do that!” Klon Rae
practically shouted. Then, quieter, “I mean, I don’t think he
would.”

Kenzie tried to school her features, but it
was a struggle. She was just so tired of Sentinel’s cruelty, so
effing exhausted by their willingness to do
anything and everything to rid Earth of off-worlders.

“I don’t know how you know that,” she said.
“But Ava isn’t the one who told you.”

“How would I know about your biology if not
from her? That your cellular structure is suffused with specialized
cells whose function is the storage of energy in multiple formats?
Or that you can hear a whisper from five hundred yards away? That
you can survive without oxygen for up to ten minutes?”

Everything Amelia had just said was something
Kenzie had shared with Ava, almost word for word. Late at night,
Ava would stroke her fingers down her arms, across her collarbone,
along her chin and ask the questions whirling about her scientist’s
mind: “But how far can you hear a sound from?
But why are you so strong? But how can you fly without wings?”
And Kenzie, in love and secure in Ava’s love for her, had answered
every question.

Just because Amelia knew the answers Kenzie
had given didn’t prove that Ava was a double agent. It didn’t. Did
it?

Kenzie swallowed hard, pushing back at the
confusion lurking at the edge of her mind. She knew that was what
Amelia wanted—to make her doubt herself and, most of all, to doubt
Ava. Because if she couldn’t convince Ava not to trust aliens, then
maybe she could convince Kenzie not to trust her.

She forced herself to sound bored. “If you’re
trying to turn me against Ava, it’s not going to work. I mean, come
on. Could you be any more predictable?”

Amelia’s eyes narrowed to mere slits. “I am
not predictable. And while I understand why you might not believe
me, let’s see how you handle this.”

She struck a button on the computer and
turned the screen toward Kenzie, her eyes malevolent, her smile
predatory.

Kenzie wanted to close her eyes, but even
though the recording was blurry, the image was obviously Ava,
seated on the couch in her office, cell phone at her ear. Kenzie
couldn’t look away, not when she might not ever get a chance to see
Ava again.

“She has no idea that I’m going to take her
down,” blurry-video-Ava said, her voice low and—not
quite angry. Intense. “This is war, whether Kenzie
knows it or not. No one messes with my family and gets away with
it.”

Which—huh. It sounded like Ava, but it had
gone by so fast and Kenzie was so hungry she could practically hear
her stomach shouting at her…

“Okay,” she said, cutting to the chase.
“Let’s say she’s on your side. If you really wanted to prove it,
why not have her stroll through that door and tell me she never
loved me in person? Because for all I know, she was
talking about you or Nick in that video, and you just overlaid the
part where she said my name.”

Amelia snapped the laptop shut. “Don’t be
ridiculous. That isn’t—of course we didn’t…”

“Why sneak around then? That’s how you know
about my biology, isn’t it? You’ve been spying on us.”

Or having their Markalian spy do so. Klon
Rae’s range was impressive, and she was just a kid. Her father
would have significantly stronger abilities. Not just telepathy,
either, but teleportation and cloaking, too. No wonder Sentinel had
wanted him. A Markalian would make the perfect spy. She almost said
as much. Or maybe she did? She didn’t think so, but she was so
exhausted by now that she was having trouble differentiating
between what she was thinking and what she was saying aloud. She
laughed, her eyes falling shut. Since when had thinking become so
difficult?

“Galaxy Girl,” she heard in her head. “Hold
on. Please.”

“I’m trying,” she was fairly certain she
thought, biting her lip to keep the words—and more hysterical
laughter—from spilling out.

“Clearly you are delusional, Galaxy Girl,”
Amelia said. “You must be getting weak by now. Do you miss your
friends? Should I bring one of them to see you? Perhaps your
sister, Sloane? Or maybe that funny little man, Matt, is it?” She
leaned closer. “We could end any one of your so-called friends if
we wanted.”

Kenzie’s heart rate fluttered at the mention
of her family, but she held Amelia’s gaze. What had Sloane once
said? When facing a superior opponent, the best tactic was to try
to use their strength against them. “Poor Amelia and Nick. I’ll bet
you both got more than you bargained for, listening in. Did it hurt
hearing how she talks about you? Does it hurt knowing that the
child you raised would rather be with
an alien than anywhere near you?”

Amelia’s composure cracked. “How dare
you!”

“Says the pot to the tea kettle.” Kenzie
smiled, feeling a surge of power as Amelia turned and left the room
without another word. As soon as the door closed, she let her head
fall back against the gurney. That tiny act of rebellion had felt
so good, but she wasn’t going to be able to function much longer
without food. Where was Sloane? D’aman? Ava? Assuming she wasn’t
actually a Sentinel spy, of course.

Raised voices sounded in the corridor outside
her cell, and she used what remained of her flagging energy to
focus her enhanced hearing.

“—should just kill her and be done,” Nick was
saying.

“And I told you,” Amelia responded, “you’ll
hurt the cause if you do anything so extreme. This is not the way
to accomplish our goals. Changing public sentiment takes time and
patience, not poorly thought-out schemes. Capturing Galaxy Girl at
this juncture was a risk that only opens us up to increased
scrutiny.”

“Thanks for your recommendations, Mother, but
maybe you should stick to technology and let me handle
strategy.”

Kenzie winced. There was no planet on which
Nick’s words would go over well.

“Nicholas Alexander Westbrook, you listen to
me. Threatening to murder your sister’s girlfriend is absolutely
not the way to win people over to the cause!”

He seemed immune to her anger. “I still say
we should expose Ava for the alien sympathizer she is.”

“If anyone were to find out that a Westbrook
is involved with an alien, let alone Galaxy Girl herself, our
credibility would be undermined. It’s bad enough with this
kidnapping business you insist on pursuing. You know very well that
this type of behavior is what landed Sentinel in trouble last
time.”

“That’s your opinion,” he said. “That doesn’t
make it true.”

“Excuse me? When I liberated you from prison,
you promised to do things my way. How is this keeping your word?
Now, go. I will decide how to clean up your little mess before your
sister and her alien-loving friends track us down.”

“I’m telling you, there’s a very simple
solution: kill her.”

“Not unless you want to create a martyr for
the rest of the world to worship. Galaxy Girl is too well-known,
and your kidnapping stunt was far too public. Word of honor,
Nicholas…”

Their voices faded, and Kenzie pondered this
new information. Had Nick truly gone rogue to capture her, or did
Amelia’s power within the Sentinel hierarchy have limits? Would she
be able to stop her son from killing Kenzie? After all, he seemed
fairly determined. Time was running out. If Kenzie was going to
make it out of here alive, she needed to come up with a plan, and
fast.

She blinked up at the ceiling. What about
Coop, Sloane’s old boss and former mentor at Panopticon? He had
disappeared more than a year ago only to mysteriously re-emerge
during Nick’s prison break. Was he still working with Sentinel? He
had to be, didn’t he? Maybe he was a weak link she could exploit.
Assuming he had ever even cared about Sloane in the first
place…

She stared at the wall, trying to rest her
tired brain. She was going to need sleep at some point if she hoped
to think clearly about her current quandary.

“You were amazing,” Klon Rae said, her pride
practically shining through the wall between them.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. As your sidekick, I get to
say that, and you have to agree.”

Kenzie wanted to smile but she didn’t think
she could. Should? Same difference. Maybe. “Got it.”

“And don’t worry. She’s lying about your
girlfriend.”

She tried not to visibly perk up. “Could you
read her mind?”

“No, but I don’t need to. She’s totally mean,
and you’re you. Can you imagine having her as a mom?”

No, actually, Kenzie couldn’t. “I think I
have a plan,” she told Klon Rae.

“You do?”

“Sure.” To be honest, the pronouncement had
surprised her a little too, but then her subconscious could be like
that. “It involves you trusting someone you’ve never met, though.
Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” Klon Rae said, with no hesitation
whatsoever.

Ah, the beauty of youth, when they didn’t
even know what they should be wary of.

“I heard that,” Klon Rae said.

“Oh, sorry. Anyway, here’s what I’m
thinking…”

They went over the plan three times, tweaking
it until they had thought through multiple eventualities, and then
Klon Rae recited it back to her twice more.

“It’s perfect,” the girl announced, slurring
her words.

“It’s late, isn’t it?” Kenzie said.

“Erm, kinda…”

“Will you hear me if I sing to you?”

“I dunno. Wanna try?”

In response, Kenzie began to mentally sing
“Silent Night,” Jane’s favorite holiday song, humming along under
her breath. She wasn’t sure if Klon Rae could even hear her, but by
the end of the second verse the silence in her mind confirmed that
the girl had fallen asleep. As she had done the previous nights,
Kenzie soon retreated into a daydream, eyes open but mind
journeying back in time to a happier place. She and Ava had been
lying in bed, talking softly, when Ava asked how her cells stored
energy. Kenzie started to explain, but before she got very far, Ava
sat up, pulled a pen and notebook from a drawer in her bedside
table, and begun to write.

When Kenzie paused, Ava looked up. “Keep
going. I’m listening.”

“What’s that?” Kenzie waved at the pad of
paper Ava was busily scribbling in.

“A notebook.” As Kenzie continued to look at
her expectantly—because of course she knew it was
a notebook—she added, “I use it for keeping track of
ideas that come to me.”

“Ideas that come to you
in bed?”

“Yes. Well, in dreams, mostly.”

“You dream about technology? I had no idea
you were that gay.”

“Really, sweetheart, there were other clues.”
She smirked and went back to writing, pen moving across the page
with near superspeed. “You see, the number one problem with solar
power is that no one has figured out a way to make a solar cell
small and inexpensive enough to mass produce. Based on what you’re
describing, I think we’ve been approaching the issue all
wrong.”

“Oh.” Kenzie pursed her lips and tried to
swallow down her irrational hurt. She loved Ava’s passion, she did.
Just, at that moment, she would rather it be focused on her.

Ava glanced up, gaze narrowing. “Is this
okay?”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t.

“This could be really beneficial to Earth,
and I know you're all about saving the planet. But I would also
understand if you didn’t want me to pursue this. I don’t want you
to feel like an object, or some sort of science project.”

“I honestly don’t mind. In fact, it would be
a really cool project for us to collaborate on.” She scrunched up
her face. “Just, I don’t know. Maybe not right this second?”

Ava placed her pen and notebook back in the
drawer and turned to Kenzie, her eyes soft. “I’m sorry. I just got
really excited.” She slipped under the covers again and pillowed
her head on Kenzie’s shoulder.

“I know, and I’m happy you’re excited. It’s
just, I don’t get to see you all that much, you know?”

“I know. It never feels like we get enough
time together, does it?”

“No,” she agreed, her arms tightening around
Ava’s smaller, curvier frame. “But you’re right. If my body
chemistry could somehow help in the fight against climate change,
that would be amazing. It would feel like maybe there’s
a reason I got stuck in space for so long. Like, maybe there’s a
bigger reason that you and I met.”

She held her breath, worried she had put too
much pressure on Ava and their relationship. Kenzie knew that
Sloane and Ben and Jane believed she did everything excessively.
She cared too much about other people, she trusted too easily, she
had too much faith that the forces of good would overcome the
forces of evil. Sometimes she worried that she would overwhelm Ava
with the sheer magnitude of her feelings.

But then Ava smiled at her in the dim light
and wound their hands together. “For me, there doesn’t need to be a
bigger reason that we met. I’m happier with you than I’ve ever been
in my life. I love you, Kenzie Min Zat Shepherd.”

“I love you too, Ava Letitia Westbrook.”

“I can’t believe Bea told you that,” she
said, rolling her eyes. Then she leaned in, and Kenzie quickly lost
herself in the kiss that followed.

They hadn’t realized how lucky they were,
Kenzie thought now, dizzy with missing Ava. She could practically
smell her lavender body wash—which, maybe she really could;
sometimes she used it herself just so she would smell like her
girlfriend as she worked in her cubicle at ECM, or grabbed coffee
with Matt and Antonio, or sat in “their” booth at The Queen’s Ale
House, waiting for Ava to appear as if by magic. It always felt
that way when she first caught a glimpse of her: magical.

That was what was real, Kenzie reminded
herself. Ava loved her, she knew she did. She couldn’t fake her
body’s response; couldn’t fabricate her racing pulse or short
breaths; couldn’t falsify arousal or joy or softness. Despite the
fact that Kenzie would probably never completely understand human
beings, she knew this much: Ava loved her not in spite of the fact
that she was from another planet but partially because of it. Ava
loved their differences, just as Kenzie did, and loved even more
the places they connected despite being born decades and
light-years apart. Ava loved her, and that was why Amelia had tried
to convince her otherwise: because it irked her so deeply that her
husband’s daughter, a girl who shared her own son’s DNA, had dared
to open her heart to the very creatures Amelia blamed for the loss
of her husband and of the person her son had once been—perfect,
whole, unbroken.

What if she never saw Ava again? What if a
few nights ago was the last time they would ever have sex, ever
kiss, ever touch? What if they didn’t get a chance to say goodbye?
It couldn’t be over, not so soon. Not just like that.

To crowd out her growing anxiety, Kenzie
called up one of her favorite poems, “New Face” by Alice Walker. No
one on Earth had ever seen Kenzie the way Ava had, and vice versa.
That was the reality, not the dark fantasy Amelia had tried to sell
her. Amelia could hawk her vicious wares all she wanted, but Kenzie
wasn’t buying.

#

Just when Kenzie was beginning to think she
would need to come up with a new plan, Michael Cooper—Panopticon’s
former chief science officer—stepped into the room. He wasn’t clad
in camouflage like on the night of Nick’s prison break, but rather
he walked proudly in a black shirt and pants with a gun strapped to
his thigh. For a moment, he reminded her of Sloane—except that he
was here, in her cell, his biometrics presumably stored in the
security system outside her door as friend rather than foe.

No matter what happened, Sloane would never
turn as her former boss appeared to have done.

“Coop,” she said, eyes narrowed.

“It’s good to see you again, Kenzie.” He
glanced down at her Galaxy Girl suit. “I wish it were under
different circumstances.”

She almost said she knew the feeling, but
instead she watched and waited. As depleted as she was, it wasn’t
that much of a challenge.

“I hope you’ll hear me when I tell you to
stop antagonizing them,” he said. “I mean it. It’s for your own
good.”

She shook her head. “Seriously, who are you
and what have you done with Michael Cooper?”

His face, lean and tanned beneath a shock of
gray hair, hardened. “I’m right here. I’ve been here all
along.”

“And why is that?” she asked. “Why are you
working with Sentinel?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice.”

He shook his head, chiseled chin jutting
stubbornly. “I’m doing what I have to do to keep people safe.”

“From refugees? Have you hated us
all along?”

“No!” He lowered his voice, glanced up at the
camera in the corner, looked back down at her. “No, it’s not like
that. But not all off-worlders are like you. The Westbrooks—”

“Are murderers who experiment on innocent
people.”

“They’re trying to protect the planet.”

“By exterminating anyone who’s different? I
can’t believe you’re working with them.”

“It’s not that black and white.” His voice
dropped almost to nothing. “Labyrinth.”

Labyrinth? What was he talking
about?

He expelled an impatient breath. “I’m the one
who told Ava to look into Labyrinth.”

Had he, really? That was something, only
right now, Kenzie couldn’t find the energy to care. “Okay. Whatever
you say.” She closed her eyes and felt herself begin to spin
away.

“Kenzie.”

She jerked awake, blinking. “What?”

“I really didn’t have a choice. Please tell
Sloane that.”

She started to shake her head again but
stopped when the motion made her dizzy. “Did you know they
threatened to kill her? Amelia’s exact words were, ‘We could end
your sister if we wanted.’ Check the video if you don’t believe
me.” She watched his face darken. He didn’t look surprised, though…
And then it hit her, a bolt of clarity penetrating her fuzzy mind.
“They threatened Sloane, didn’t they? That’s why you’re here.”

He focused just over her shoulder and shifted
in place, fingers fidgeting with the snap on his holster. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, Coop. She never would have wanted you to
do this.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t
know what it’s like to sacrifice—”

“Everything? I don’t know what it’s like to
put my life on the line for strangers, to watch the people I care
about most do the same because it’s the right thing to
do?”

He held her gaze. “Maybe you’re right. I’m
sorry. We can’t all be heroes.”

That reminded her of Sloane, too. A wave of
homesickness washed over her, and she gazed up at her sister’s
ex-friend and mentor, wondering if she could—should?—trust
him. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see her friends and
family. Even more, she wanted to reunite Klon Rae with her
family. No matter what she’d told Coop, she didn’t really have a
choice, did she?

It wasn’t hard to manufacture the tears. She
was so tired and miserable that even though they’d only given her a
little water in the last few days, she made herself cry easily.

Coop’s face softened. “Come on, Kenzie.
You’ll be out of here soon, I know you will. You just have to stop
fighting them.”

“Okay,” she said, allowing defeat to suffuse
her words. “I will. Could you just—would you mind wiping my tears?
They keep sliding into my ears.”

He nodded. “I can do that.”

As he leaned closer, she turned her head
supposedly so that he could dry her cheek. With her face turned
away from the camera she whispered, “Turn off your neural disruptor
with the Markalian child.”

He paused incrementally, then dried her face
and pulled back. “Better?”

She nodded, eyes on his. But he didn’t give
anything away. It was possible he hadn’t even heard her.

Without another word, Coop turned and walked
out. Kenzie lay back, breathing hard. She could feel her own
heartbeat, faster than usual, far more stressed than she could ever
remember; could feel her blood rushing through her system, millions
of cells dying and multiplying inside her body every single second.
For some reason, the thought reminded her of how celestial bodies
were in continuous motion; how the universe itself was ever
expanding, everything in it moving rapidly, constantly, ceaselessly
away from everything—and everyone—else.

There was a metaphor there, she was sure of
it, but her mind was too slow to track the thought. Was this it?
Would Nick Westbrook be the actual death of her? She giggled, and
then stopped because there was a reason she wasn’t supposed to
laugh, wasn’t there? Oh yeah, Klon Rae. And death, too. Death
wasn’t supposed to be funny.

She wasn’t afraid of death, though. She’d
imagined it enough during her lifetime, faced it more than a few
times. Despite her years on Earth, she still maintained her
Zattalian view of death as a mere transition to another energy
state. Zattalians believed that each individual life was like the
Big Bang, only in microcosmic theory—the initial burst of
electromagnetic energy as atoms and molecules fused to form new
life, then the growth of the fetus marked by constant expansion
until the infant was born. Early on, the child revolved closely
about her parents—a dual or multiple star system, in most
galaxies—until she grew old enough to separate and explore the
universe on her own. At the end of her life, she transformed back
into electromagnetic energy, and the cycle would repeat. Again and
again and again, for how long no one really knew.

She didn’t fear death itself, not on her own
behalf. What she feared was never seeing Ava or Sloane or Ben or
Jane again, never getting the chance to say goodbye.
She feared leaving them as suddenly and violently as she herself
had been left. She feared what such a loss would do to each of the
people she loved and who, in turn, loved her.

“Do you think he’ll help?” Klon Rae
asked.

“I don’t know. I hope so.” Kenzie blinked as
she felt unconsciousness lapping at her mind. “Do you remember the
plan?”

“I remember everything you told me.”

“Good. Your family needs you, little
one.”

“So does yours.”

“Yes, but I’m Galaxy Girl, remember? They
always knew they could lose me.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Klon
Rae said, “I remember.”

Kenzie couldn’t fight the dizziness anymore.
“I think I’m going to try to sleep for a little while,” she
thought, not wanting to scare the child. “Goodbye, Klon Rae.”

A foreign, almost familiar phrase sounded
gently in Kenzie’s mind, followed by the childish image of a heart.
“Not goodbye. See you soon.”

She closed her eyes, and then the darkness
washed over her, so quiet and complete it almost felt like outer
space.

Chapter Eleven

Beatrice reached for Ava’s mug and slid it
out of reach. “The last thing you need right now is more coffee,
Ava. I have some weed, though. What do you say?”

Ava shook her head. She hadn’t slept much
since Kenzie had gone missing, and smoking weed would probably only
give her a paranoid fit. “Maybe if we get her back...” Fear settled
more heavily over her. Kenzie had been gone for more than two days
now, and the more time that passed, the less likely it seemed that
they would ever see her again.

“Of course we’ll get her back,” Bea said,
draping her arm over Ava’s shoulder. “I mean, come on,
she’s Galaxy Girl! Besides, the good guys always win,
right?”

Ava hid her face in her best friend’s silky
hair. “I’m not so sure of that.”

Bea had shown up in Seattle the previous
evening and refused to go back to LA despite Ava’s worries about
her “getting caught in the crossfire.” Bea claimed that Amelia and
Nick knew better than to mess with her—and she wasn’t all wrong.
Amelia had always seemed intimidated by the Dangs.

“That’s her inner racist,” Bea had commented
years earlier when Ava first mentioned it.

That was the first –ism Ava
recognized about her adopted family. Unfortunate, really, that so
many others had followed.

“Keep the faith,” Bea said now, her hug as
fierce as her voice. “We will find her.”

Ava didn’t bother to argue this time. What
was the point, really?

“Come on,” Bea added, rising and tugging her
away from the breakfast bar. “These stools aren’t made for
hugging.”

Ava allowed herself to be guided to the
couch, where they cuddled together more comfortably, Bea’s strong
musician’s arms around her, Ava’s head pillowed on her shoulder.
Bea was softer and less bony now that she had a child, a fact Ava
appreciated at moments like this. She pictured Rowan, with his
downy curls and dark eyes smiling up at Bea, and her eyes filled
with tears as they’d been doing ever since she’d first seen the
clip of Kenzie being bundled into the waiting helicopter.

She’d stayed at the safe house for thirty-six
straight hours, monitoring D’aman and Angelica’s forays with Matt
and Antonio taking shifts at her side. But after nearly two days of
searching, Ava had collapsed from what Jane—in town with Ben to
help any way they could—promptly declared a case of exhaustion.
Matt had driven Ava home, and Bea had arrived a short time later to
look after her.

Now it was Monday morning, and Ava was just
supposed to go to work and pretend that everything was fine, that
her world wasn’t in fact crumbling? She couldn’t do it. She
couldn’t face the shouts of the paparazzi, the stares of her
employees, the demands of her positon.

“Can we just stay here?” she asked, wiping
her tears with the sleeve of Kenzie’s U-Dub sweatshirt. Ava had
slept in it last night, Bea’s arms curled around her from behind,
and when she first woke, her girlfriend’s scent in her nose and an
arm at her waist, she had forgotten for a moment that Kenzie might
not even still be alive.

“We can absolutely stay here,” Bea said.

They snuggled on the couch as the sun rose
over downtown Seattle, where Galaxy Girl supporters had held a
candlelight vigil the night before. Watching the livestream on
television with Bea, Ava hadn’t been able to shake an eerie sense
of unreality. What if they never got Kenzie back? What if Ava’s
family actually killed her girlfriend? Leave it to
the Westbrooks to make even the homophobic rhetoric of the late,
terrible Fred Phelps and his demented “church” seem moderate.

But at least public sentiment seemed to
recognize that Sentinel had gone too far. After Galaxy Guy made an
appearance at the vigil, appealing to the public for information on
their partner’s whereabouts, multiple anti-alien activists had gone
on record condemning the unprovoked attack on Galaxy Girl.

“She’s an alien, yes,” a middle-aged white
man wearing the “Earth First” insignia on his hat and T-shirt had
said into a local reporter’s microphone, “but not the kind we’re
worried about. Galaxy Girl is a productive member of society, not
like the aliens who come to take our jobs and drain our planetary
resources.”

At that, Bea had snorted. “That’s white
people code for, ‘She’s okay because she looks like us and risks
her life to help humans.’”

Kenzie had said the same thing more than
once. Her anatomy allowed her to pass, which meant that humans
responded differently to her than they did to other off-worlders.
Moreover, they accepted her because she chose to use her powers to
protect them. That part had always bothered Ava—as if Kenzie owed
the people of Earth for daring to emigrate to their planet as an
orphaned, homeless youth.

More anti-alien commentators had joined in
the conversation from the network studio, most of them doubling
down on Sentinel for kidnapping Galaxy Girl, and all of them
calling for her safe return.

“Just because we’re pro-human doesn’t mean
we’re anti-alien,” an older woman insisted. “We want the best for
our own species, the species that god chose to put here, but we
don’t wish for harm to befall the Galaxy Duo or other good aliens
like them. The Westbrooks have taken the fight too far once
again.”

Unable to listen to such hypocrisy—as if
spewing modulated hate was somehow less damaging than what Amelia
and Nick were doing—Ava had turned off the television. Hearing
other people espouse such ideology only reminded her of her own
occasionally ignorant attitude toward off-worlders before she fell
in love with one.

Now, as the sun brightened over the city, she
wished she could escape the anxiety clawing at her stomach. Bea was
right about one thing—caffeine was only making her crazier.

They were still snuggling on the couch when
her phone dinged, the text alert strident in the quiet apartment. A
police siren—that meant Mika.

“Do you want me to check it?” Bea asked
softly.

“No, I’ll do it.”

But she didn’t move right away. If it was bad
news, did she want to know? Would this moment mark a liminal space
in her life, dividing time into a distinct Before and After? Not
knowing didn’t change reality, though. It only left her in the
proverbial dark.

Steeling herself, she lifted her phone from
the coffee table.

“Come downstairs,” Mika had written. “A car
is waiting at the curb.”

Bea was reading over her shoulder. “Oh my
god, do you think they found her?”

“I don’t know.” Damn Mika and her
cryptic messages! “Good news or bad?” she texted back, opting for
the voice-to-text function as she gathered her purse and pulled on
a baseball cap and sunglasses. The last thing she needed was for
the paparazzi to follow her. Presumably this was why the powers
that be—her money was on Sloane—had sent a car.

They were in the elevator—because Bea had no
intention of staying behind on this one—when her phone dinged
again. Ava held her breath and checked, and then turned the screen
to Bea who screamed a little and clutched her arm.

A thumbs-up. Mika had sent a thumbs-up.

#

The ride to the safe house was entirely too
slow for Ava’s liking. She sat in the back seat, knee jumping
spasmodically as the clueless Uber driver made small talk with Bea
and guided the Prius through the city. When at last they reached
the house near the arboretum, they found the entire team waiting
for them in the dining room.

Well, the entire team except Kenzie, of
course. Ava’s breath left her in a whoosh as she realized Kenzie
was still missing.

“Don’t look like that,” Mika said. “It’s good
news. We think we found her.”

“Where?”

“Idaho.”

Ava pictured the topographic map downstairs,
easily calling up a yellow flag perched at the edge of a remote
mountain lake. “You mean the fishing cabin?”

Sloane nodded. “D’aman, Angelica, tell her
what you told us.”

Before sunrise, the pair of off-worlders had
set up an observation point on the side of a mountain overlooking
the Idaho property the team had previously ruled out. Sure enough,
shortly after sunrise, a hidden door in the side of the hill behind
the cabin had opened and out had come a soldier accompanied by a
small child. A small Markalian child. D’aman had been able
to make brief contact with the child, Klon Rae, who confirmed the
existence of an underground detention facility. In the neighboring
cell, she told them, was none other than Seattle’s missing
superhero, Galaxy Girl.

“Is she okay?” Ava asked, the blood rushing
in her ears almost too loud to hear over.

D’aman and Angelica exchanged a look, which
didn’t help Ava’s heart rate in the least.

“What?” she demanded, her grip on Bea’s arm
tightening. “What aren’t you telling us?”

“The child was in constant telepathic contact
with Kenzie—until last night,” Mika said, her voice low.

Oh, god. Was she already gone? Ava
forced herself to breathe. Collapsing again wouldn’t help
Kenzie.

“Your brother has been torturing her,” Sloane
said, her bloodshot eyes grim as she stared at Ava. “Oh, and
drugging her, somehow.”

Ava flinched, and Bea crowded closer to her.
“That’s not Ava’s fault,” she shot at Sloane, protective mode
activated.

“Of course it’s not,” Mika said, casting
Sloane a meaningful look.

“What about my mother?” Ava asked. “Is she
involved?”

“She wasn’t at first, according to our
informant,” Mika told her. “But she’s there now.”

Ava nodded. That was good. Amelia would keep
Nick from doing anything drastic, wouldn’t she?

“We waited for Ava to get here,” Sloane said,
clapping her hands together. “Now it’s time to go.”

Ava looked at her, frowning. “Go where?”

“To Idaho.” Sloane’s body was tense with
suppressed energy. “We need boots on the ground ASAP.”

“We can’t just show up there,” Ava said. “Not
if you want to get Kenzie out of there alive.”

The rest of the team, who had begun to mill
about packing up gear, froze.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sloane asked, her fists clenched at her sides.

Bea rolled her eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.
She’s trying to protect Kenzie.”

Ava nodded. “And the rest of the hostages. If
we go in there guns blazing, they’ll kill everyone. Don’t you
remember Reno?”

During Sentinel’s previous wave of attacks on
refugees, the FBI had planned a raid on one of the splinter group’s
main research (read: torture) facilities in Nevada. But a
mole had informed Sentinel of the assault an hour before the
strike, and federal agents arrived to find the facility empty of
humans—and full of dead off-world captives who, autopsies revealed,
had been killed via lethal injection shortly before the raid.

“Ava’s right,” Angelica said. “We don’t want
another massacre on our hands. So, what do we do?”

“I have an idea,” Ava said. “Antonio, you
have a pilot’s license, right?”

Antonio looked startled, but he nodded.

“Where did you get it?”

“At a school at Boeing field.”

“Would you be able to rent a plane
there?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” he said, his brow clearing
as he seemed to realize what Ava was getting at. “I’ve done it
before.”

Bea nodded. “Great idea. Okay. So, Ava and I
will pay for the rental. The rest of you can figure out a plan on
the way.”

An hour later, their flight plan had been
filed and they were ready to take off. Everyone was there except
Jane and Ben. Kenzie’s parents had remained in Seattle, though Jane
had threatened to charter her own plane to Spokane when Sloane
called to share Kenzie’s suspected whereabouts. Fortunately, Ben
had talked his wife out of the plan—or so Sloane seemed to believe,
anyway.

Matt, who Ava was pretty sure didn’t have any
flight experience, rode up front with Antonio, who seemed more than
a little nervous at the controls of the small six-seater. But he
lifted off smoothly and they were on their way, racing east across
the Cascade Mountain range while D’aman flew nearby with Angelica,
communicating with the plane’s occupants telepathically. The trip
to Spokane only took forty-five minutes, and by the time they
neared Eastern Washington, they had agreed on the basics: D’aman
and Angelica would use their shapeshifting abilities to shift into
birds of prey. In their animal forms, they would get close enough
for D’aman to make contact with the Markalian child. Then they
would go from there. Perhaps there would be a chance to take out
the guards and infiltrate the facility, or maybe there would be an
access culvert or other back door into the mountain. Once they were
on-site, they could perform reconnaissance and devise a plan to
retrieve Kenzie and the rest of the hostages.

That Kenzie was alive, Ava couldn’t allow
herself to doubt. Amelia wouldn’t let anyone kill Galaxy Girl. Her
adopted mother could be casually homophobic and rabidly anti-alien,
sure, but she was also politically savvy in a way that Nick had
proven he wasn’t. Ava was more worried that Sentinel would move
Kenzie to another facility farther removed from Seattle. Maybe, by
now, they already had; that would explain the child’s lack of
contact with Kenzie. Ava held tight to Bea’s hand across the aisle.
Worrying didn’t help anyone, she knew. Whatever the truth was, they
would know it soon enough. Somehow, that didn’t settle her nerves
one bit.

The plane was on final approach to Spokane
when it happened. One moment the airplane was slowing and lining up
with the runway they’d been assigned, and the next, the air inside
the cabin took on an odd sheen, and complete silence fell, as if
someone had pressed a giant mute button.

Ava and Bea exchanged a worried look. Were
they under attack? But there hadn’t been any explosion, and they
were still descending at a controlled rate toward the ground. Then
Ava heard the unmistakable sound of a gun safety being removed,
followed by Sloane’s voice: “Who the fuck are you?”

At the back of the plane, in the aisle
between Sloane and Mika, there stood a yellow-orange being, nose
and ears twitching. A Markalian, Ava realized. Fingers crossed they
were friendly.

“I am Klon Par, father to Klon Rae,” the
Markalian broadcast in his people’s usual voiceless manner. “A man
named Michael Cooper contacted me a short time ago. You are here to
rescue Galaxy Girl, are you not?”

And just like that, the way forward took
shape.

By the time Antonio landed the airplane—it
only bounced a few times—and taxied to the private arrival hangar,
the plan was set. It wasn’t complicated. Klon Par would teleport
Mika, Sloane, Angelica, and D’aman to the original observation
point near the cabin, and then—

“Wait,” Bea said, frowning. “Did you say
teleport?”

“Yes,” Klon Par said. “That is how I made my
way onto your airplane.”

“Teleportation,” Ava repeated. “As in,
quantum entanglement?”

Sloane nodded. “Exactly.”

In the last couple of months, Ava had come to
accept that image scramblers, mind reading, and wingless flight
weren’t just the stuff of fantasy. Why not add teleportation to the
theoretical physics-defying mix?

“Let us continue,” D’aman said, and so they
did.

According to Michael Cooper, Klon Par’s
daughter would soon be brought to the surface for an afternoon
walk. Once Coop and the child were outside, Klon Par and D’aman
would shapeshift into their likenesses. Then, while Mika hustled
Coop and Klon Rae to a predetermined extraction point, the two
disguised off-worlders would return to the facility, leaving the
external door ajar as they did. Back on the containment floor, Klon
Par would teleport into Kenzie’s cell and extract her while D’aman
would work with Sloane and Angelica—who by then would have sneaked
in through the open door—to overpower any guards and set about
freeing the other detainees.

“And capture Nick Westbrook, of course,”
Sloane added, absolute murder in her crushed glass voice.

If anything went wrong, Klon Par would
teleport the team members back to the plane, with his daughter’s
safety understandably his first priority.

“But how will you transport the refugees back
here?”

Klon Par removed what looked like a toy van
from his pocket. “I will unenchant this.”

Ava’s eyes widened. It wasn’t a toy van, she
realized. It was an actual van whose size had been exponentially
reduced via Markalian enchantment. She only hoped it didn’t
unenchant on the airplane. Bea had paid a hefty deposit, not to
mention quite a bit of insurance, and while Ava fully intended to
reimburse her friend, she would rather not pay to replace the
plane. Even small six-seater Cessnas did not come cheap.

Only the team members involved in the rescue
operation ended up deplaning. That meant Ava, Bea, Matt, and
Antonio all waited on board, sipping cans of soda and munching
cookies they’d brought along as they waited for the plan to play
out to its inevitable end. Ava thought the previous few days had
dragged. Now, as they waited to find out who would live and who
would die—and who would tell their story, her mind unhelpfully
added—the minutes moved at a glacial pace. Even Bea, who had
incalculable experience distracting Ava from dark thoughts, was
quiet and worried at her side as they waited for the extraction
team to return.

The first sign that the plan had succeeded
came when, with a faint shimmer of air, Klon Par suddenly appeared
beside the airplane, arm in arm with Mika and (presumably) his
daughter.

“They’re back!” Matt fairly squealed, staring
out one of the windows.

Ava crowded in beside him, holding her breath
as Mika lifted her gaze to the Cessna, appearing to search the
windows. When her eyes found Ava’s, she lifted her thumb and gave a
nod.

All was well. All was well. That meant
Kenzie was alive, didn’t it?

A moment later, the unenchanted passenger van
drove onto the tarmac. Just as it pulled to a stop, Angelica
visible behind the wheel, Ava became aware of a form in the air
coming closer. As it approached, she realized it was D’aman,
Sloane, and—Kenzie! They landed beside the van, and even
though she was battered and bruised, Kenzie was nevertheless well
enough to immediately embrace Klon Rae, her fellow captive and the
person who had made their release possible.

Technically, a voice at the back of Ava’s
mind whispered, the Markalians were also the ones who had made
Kenzie’s abduction happen, but whatever. Ava couldn’t hold that
against them, not when she knew her brother’s penchant for
extortion and threats of bodily harm. Besides, just then Kenzie’s
head lifted and her eyes met Ava’s, and the surge of relief that
flashed through Ava didn’t leave room for any other emotion.

Matt pulled her into a sideways hug, his
other arm looped around Antonio’s neck. “I told you we’d get her
back!”

Bea joined the hug, too, all of them
chattering happily. Kenzie, who had brought this odd group
together, was alive.

Ava didn’t plan
what came next. She simply moved, extricating herself from the
group and deplaning through the unlocked door. The drop to the
ground was considerable, but Ava didn’t care. She simply tumbled
down and sprinted toward Kenzie, who was leaning on Sloane. Ava ran
into her open arms, barely stopping short of slamming into her.

Even so, Kenzie’s breath released with an
audible “Oof!” as she clutched Ava to her, burying her face in
Ava’s hair. “You’re here,” she said, her voice hoarse and
cracked.

“I think that’s my line,” Ava said, holding
on as tightly as she could. In fact, Ava hoped Kenzie was prepared
to have an extra appendage, because Ava was never letting her out
of her sight again. She pulled back a little, her lips hovering
over Kenzie’s, only to feel her girlfriend pull away at the last
second. “Oh. Sorry.” She shifted, trying to put more space between
them.

“No, it’s not you! It’s just…” Kenzie lowered
her voice. “I haven’t brushed my teeth in
like, days.”

Ava couldn’t help laughing. “Oh, sweetheart.”
And then she kissed her, chastely, warmly, firmly.

“I love you,” Kenzie murmured.

“I love you, too.” Ava pressed her forehead
against Kenzie’s, inhaling her familiar scent, clouded now by
something chemically cloying and overly sweet. How had they drugged
her? How was that even possible? Then again, after the past
weekend, Ava had learned that the theory of Zattalian
invulnerability was more myth than reality.

“I love you three,” Sloane said, wrapping
them both up in a forceful hug. “Damn it, Kenzie,” she added, her
voice breaking in a way Ava had never imagined she’d hear, “you
can’t do that to me. You can’t just disappear.”

“I know. Trust me, I won’t if I can help
it.”

And yet, she couldn’t help it, could she?
Even as Ava held on as she tightly as she could, she knew her grasp
on Kenzie could only ever be tenuous. She didn’t know how long they
would have together. That was the thing about being human—and
Zattalian, too. Their powers did not include precognition, which
meant they followed time’s forward progression entirely at the whim
of fate. Ava knew she would die one day, and Kenzie too, but none
of them had any real control over the end of their life any more
than they’d had over the beginning.

That thought was enough to send her into an
existential spin—except that Kenzie was still hugging her, and the
Shepherd sisters were crying and laughing all over each other, and
then Mika joined them, and then Bea and Matt and Antonio too. And
while group hugs were not normally her thing, especially not when
the group contained Antonio, Ava would take all the hugs she could
get as long as Kenzie remained right where she was—safe in Ava’s
arms. These people were her family of choice and she was theirs,
even if Sloane and Antonio and Jane still worried sometimes about
her Westbrook name. That struggle was fair, as far as Ava was
concerned; after all, the same battle occasionally raged inside her
own head. But as long as the people who loved Kenzie tried to
accept Ava, that was all that mattered. They didn’t have to always
succeed; they just had to keep trying.

That was the meaning of family of choice,
after all—you chose to love and forgive and accept
each other. You promised to stick together despite the potential
presence of multiple nutcase relatives lurking in the
background.

Speaking of family... Ava pulled away. “What
happened to my mother and brother?”

“They both escaped,” Sloane relayed, her
bitterness momentarily overriding the shaky joy she otherwise
projected. “Amelia and some of their men used an escape hatch we
didn’t know about, and Coop says Nick left earlier for the facility
in Utah. He’s probably cleared out from there by now too,
though.”

Ava released a breath. “Damn it.” Sometimes
it felt like this nightmare would never be over.

“I’m sorry,” Kenzie said, resting her chin on
Ava’s hair. “I wish it had worked out differently.”

“We all wish that,” Mika said. “But the good
news is you and the other abductees are safe.”

That was something, Ava thought as she
continued to cling to Kenzie because—and Ava couldn’t emphasize
this fact enough—she was not about to be parted from Kenzie anytime
soon. Kenzie was back with them, safe, and Ava couldn’t stop
touching her hand, her arm, her cheek. She was here. She was
really here.

Somehow, impossibly, everything had turned
out all right. For now, anyway.

“Hey,” Kenzie
said, her voice still ragged with exhaustion, “this whole reunion
thing is great and all, but is there any way we could, I don’t
know, go home?”

This was an excellent idea, they all
agreed.

Still, it took a little effort to get
everything organized. Mika, D’aman, and Angelica volunteered to
stay behind with Coop, the rescued off-worlders, and the handful of
Sentinel soldiers they’d managed to detain. Sloane looked like she
wanted to protest, but Mika gave her a reassuring smile.

“Let me do this. I know some folks in law
enforcement out this way.”

Sloane eventually acquiesced, though the look
she turned on her former mentor contained a clear warning. Coop had
offered to fill the authorities in on the mass kidnapping plot as
well as the rest of Sentinel’s operation, including the underground
plot Kenzie and D’aman had uncovered to spread the infinity drug
through Earth’s refugee community, but Sloane seemed unimpressed by
his belated offer of cooperation. Given that he’d allowed Nick to
torture Kenzie, he was lucky he was being turned over to the
authorities unharmed, as far as Ava was concerned.

In a relatively short time, Kenzie was dozing
in Bea’s former seat while Antonio guided the rented plane back
toward Seattle, Matt beside him once again in the co-pilot’s chair
at the front of the cabin. Ava held Kenzie’s hand across the narrow
aisle and chatted quietly with Bea and Sloane, who filled them in
on the operation’s details.

“She didn’t wake up at first,” Sloane told
them, her face drawn. “But then I gave her the hormone booster, and
she finally opened her eyes. So, thank you, Ava, for coming up with
that idea. My family owes you, big-time.”

Ava blinked back the never-ending tears,
thankful she and Sloane had found a way to work together to keep
Kenzie safe. “Anyway,” she said, brushing the dampness from her
eyelashes, “it sounds like Kenzie was lucky the Markalian child
ended up next door.”

“It might not have been luck,” Sloane said.
“Coop claims he made sure they were close enough to
communicate.”

“Huh.” Ava’s assessment of the traitorous
Panopticon agent shifted, but only a little.

“How old is this girl, anyway?” Bea
asked.

“Ten,” Sloane said. “We’ve got her whole
family stashed in a safe house back in the city. Turns out she’s
quite the Galaxy Girl fan.”

“Sidekick,” Kenzie said, her eyes still
closed. “She’s now my official sidekick. Alia,” she added,
“I’m hungry. I would die for a pizza.”

Ava squeezed Kenzie’s hand. “You cannot
mention the word die right now, Kenzie!”

“Right. Too soon. Sorry.”

“To be honest,” Sloane said, “Sentinel might
have overplayed their hand going after you. Even people who aren’t
fond of off-worlders expressed concern about them attacking you
without provocation. The anti-alien chatter has really calmed down
since last week.”

“Really?” Kenzie perked up a little.

“Really. It’s not world peace, by any means,
but there does seem to be a shift. At least outwardly.”

“You know,” Ava said, squinting as she worked
through the idea, “I could probably ask my PR department to issue a
joint statement with Galaxy Girl.”

“What kind of statement?” Sloane asked.

“One about a Westbrook and an off-worlder
working together to overcome differences? This might be the perfect
time for Hyperion to condemn Sentinel and emphasize the
commonalities among the people of Earth. Or maybe we could set up a
televised interview. I can think of a few anchors who would jump at
the opportunity to broadcast something like that.”

She imagined Nick’s face watching the
coverage and shivered a little. In satisfaction, not in fear, she
assured herself. Right.

Sloane and Bea were nodding, but Kenzie
rubbed her eyes, frowning. “Isn’t that sort of cynical?”

“It’s more political than cynical,” Bea said.
“But either way, it might be really beneficial.”

“I could talk to the Bureau, too,” Sloane
offered, “and see if we can get the director to issue a statement
of support. With Coop’s help, we might even be able to weed out the
moles in our midst. Oh, and maybe the mayor could make a statement.
She’s definitely a fan of yours, Kenzie.”

“What? She’s not! I mean, maybe, but only
because I helped her when her car broke down,” Kenzie said, ducking
her head. “She might not even remember me.”

“No one forgets their first ride with Galaxy
Girl,” Bea said, smirking.

“Ew,” Sloane and Kenzie said in unison.

Ava rolled her eyes, glad once again that Ben
and Jane had remained behind in Seattle, which Sloane had confirmed
when she called to let them know they were headed home—with Kenzie.
“I think you might be a tad more memorable than you imagine,
sweetie,” she said.

“Agreed,” Sloane said, flicking Kenzie in the
shoulder. Then she shook out her hand. “Damn it! Why do I always
forget how solid you are?”

Kenzie shrugged. “Beats me.” Her stomach
growled. “Hey, so about the food thing…”

“I’ve got it covered,” Sloane said, reaching
for her phone.

“And in the meantime,” Ava said, “we have a
few things to tide you over.”

Kenzie demolished the remaining cookies, but
she flinched when Bea offered her a bottle of water, opting for a
soda instead. The sugar seemed to perk her up, or maybe it was the
chocolate chips. Either way, Ava was encouraged to see her looking
a bit less peaky. Maybe there hadn’t been any lasting damage, after
all.

Physically, anyway.

While Kenzie dozed the rest of the way home,
Ava called ahead and arranged for a car to meet them at the
airfield, one that was large enough to fit a cadre of humans and a
sleepy off-worlder. The traffic through downtown poked along, and
Kenzie fell asleep yet again on the short trip to Queen Anne,
wedged between Ava and Sloane. Her body twitched occasionally, her
forehead furrowing again and again, and Ava rubbed her thumb over
Kenzie’s wrist, feeling her skittish pulse and wishing there was
something more she could do.

Bea caught her eye from the seat she was
sharing with Matt and Antonio. “Do you want me to head back to your
place?”

Ava hesitated, wondering if her apartment was
truly secure. “There, or a hotel.”

“I’ll start at your place, but I’ll let you
know where I end up.”

“I’ll get out in Belltown, too,” Matt said.
“I have a story to write. Might as well get started.”

“I’ll help you,” Antonio said, smothering a
yawn.

Ava had almost forgotten they’d promised Matt
an exclusive. What would his story include? Details of Galaxy
Girl’s capture and imprisonment? Descriptions of the underground
off-worlder torture chamber? She shivered. She wasn’t sure she ever
wanted to read it, actually.

Kenzie didn’t wake up when Bea, Matt, and
Antonio got out, nor did she stir when the car pulled into the lot
behind her own building. Carefully, Ava shook her awake. Kenzie
started, gasping, but Sloane shushed her softly.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re home,
Kenz.”

As if by magic (or possibly teleportation
since that was a thing), a delivery driver from Zeek’s met them at
the outside door with a stack of pizza boxes nearly taller than he
was. Jane and Ben were there, too, and Kenzie had barely stepped
out of the car when her adopted parents were on her, hugging her
tightly and murmuring over her bruises. She tolerated the
attention, but as soon as they released her, Kenzie relieved the
Zeek’s delivery boy of a box and opened it, shoving a piece of
cheese pie into her mouth.

“You’re my favorite human,” she told her
sister as Sloane tipped the delivery boy. “You and Ava, I mean. Oh,
and you too, of course, Mom and Dad.”

Sloane unlocked the outside door of Kenzie’s
building with her spare key and waved them inside. “You guys go
ahead. I’ll join you shortly.”

“Wait. Where are you going?” Kenzie asked,
her smile slipping.

Ava eyed Sloane anxiously, too. She wasn’t
sure she was ready to be alone with Kenzie and their parents, each
of whom now carried an armful of pizza boxes.

“I’m just going to swing by Panopticon.”
Sloane gave Kenzie a quick hug and started away, but she paused
beside the hired car to flash a gentle smile back at her sister.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be gone long.”

“Promise?” Kenzie asked, and suddenly Ava
could see in her the girl who had lost everything all those years
ago, frightened of being left again.

Nick had done that, Ava realized, rage
acidifying in her bloodstream. Her brother had reduced Kenzie to
this uneasy shadow of herself.

“I promise,” Sloane said. “I’ll be back
soon.”

“Come on, honey.” Jane looped her free arm
through Kenzie’s. “These pizzas aren’t going to eat
themselves.”

Distracted, Kenzie let herself be guided into
the building.

Ben held the door open for Ava, and she
stepped into the sunlit foyer. The elevator ride wasn’t as awkward
as she’d feared because of the sheer number of pizza boxes, and
soon they were all crowding into the fourth-floor studio where
Kenzie leaned against the kitchen counter, practically inhaling
pizza slices while Jane fussed about the kitchen.

“Here you go,” Jane said, handing Ava a
plate. “You must be hungry, too.”

Their eyes met, and while Jane’s smile still
held a hint of wariness, Ava recognized a peace offering when she
saw it. “Thank you.”

“Aw, look at you guys.” Kenzie’s eyes were
slightly glassy as she gazed between them. “Did my abduction bring
you closer?”

Jane busied herself with putting away the
clean dishes in the drying rack. “Ava was instrumental in getting
you back,” she said. “Your father and I won’t forget that anytime
soon.”

Ben squeezed Ava’s shoulder as he brushed
past. “We definitely won’t.”

Kenzie waggled her eyebrows at Ava, and then
she yawned, a giant bite of pizza nearly falling out of her mouth.
“Whoops. Can’t have you escaping, my pretty,” Kenzie mumbled,
munching on the rogue bite.

Ava shared a smile with Ben, who had begun
cleaning old takeout containers from the refrigerator. At least
Kenzie’s appetite seemed normal. Hopefully, the rest of her would
follow. But not immediately—after finishing off as many pizza pies
as she could, Kenzie became so sleepy that she almost fell
over.

“Bed,” she murmured, yawning again.

Ava nodded. A shower could wait. In fact, it
probably should, given Kenzie’s current state. Ava had never seen
her like this, and she wondered briefly if they should take her to
a hospital that served off-worlders. Sloane had checked her out
before they left Spokane, and Ava had been relieved to learn that
the effects of whatever drug Nick had given her were wearing off.
But what if there was something really wrong with her? What if she
had a stroke, or a heart attack, or some other medical
emergency?

“Can you help her get to bed, Ava?” Jane
asked, sliding her purse strap over her shoulder. “Ben and I want
to make a quick trip to Trader Joe’s. I trust you’ll text us if you
need anything?”

“Of course.” Ava hadn’t hoped for time alone
with Kenzie, but after the past few sleepless, terror-infused
nights, that was exactly what she needed.

Kenzie didn’t protest their leave-taking as
much as she had Sloane’s. She did, however, cling to Ava almost
painfully after the door closed behind her parents.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” she
asked.

“No, sweet girl,” Ava said, slotting her arms
around Kenzie’s waist. “I’m staying right here.”

Kenzie was wearing Sloane’s Panopticon hoodie
over her Galaxy Girl suit, and Ava caught a whiff of that same
sweet, cloying odor rising from her skin. A shower wouldn’t be
safe, but maybe… “Would you like to take a bath with me?”

“A bath?” Kenzie’s eyes widened in panic.
“Like, submerged in water?”

Ava squinted at her. “Um. Yes?”

Kenzie licked her lips, closed her eyes, and
nodded. “I guess it’s better than a shower.” Her eyes flicked open.
“Did you say with you? Meaning, you’ll be in the bath,
too?”

“Yes.”

Kenzie squared her shoulders. “I think that
would be okay. Yeah, let’s do it.”

There had to be a reason she was acting so
oddly about bathing, but Ava didn’t press. When Kenzie was ready to
talk about her experiences in captivity, she would. In the
meantime, Ava would do whatever she could to help her transition
back to regular life.

A little while later, Ava leaned naked
against the hard enamel side of the claw-foot tub, Kenzie reclining
in her arms, her back pressed to Ava’s breasts and belly, their
bodies mostly shielded beneath a tide of lavender bath bubbles.

“I love you,” Ava said, her voice echoing in
the narrow, high-ceilinged room with its shiny white beadboard base
and old-fashioned plumbing fixtures.

“I love you, too,” Kenzie said, her words
carried on a long sigh.

“Also, don’t ever do that to me again,” Ava
added, her arms secure around Kenzie’s body, her hands wedged
against slick skin.

“I won’t.”

But it was still an impossible promise, and
Ava imagined they both knew it. This moment was enough for now,
though: to be together quiet and warm here in this steamy bathroom
in Kenzie’s condo at the top of Queen Anne, within a few miles of
family and friends. They had gotten Kenzie back, and from now on,
Ava was putting her foot down—no more regular Galaxy Girl
patrols.

Nick and Amelia may have escaped, but for
now, Ava, Kenzie, and the rest of the Super Friends were safe. For
now, they were together, both of their hearts beating strong, their
lungs full of oxygen, their blood racing through their bodies at
impossible speeds.

At the end of the day, at the end of this
particular day, that was all that mattered.

Chapter Twelve

When Kenzie awoke in her loft, it took her a
moment to remember where she was. The brief sense of disorientation
reminded her of her early days on Earth when she would awaken from
deep sleep wondering what had happened to the steady hiss of the
ship’s ventilation system, why the radiation shields weren’t
blocking out starlight, where in the universe the fleet had landed
given that the perpetual sense of motion she had been born into was
markedly absent.

She hadn’t felt this strange sense of
dislocation in years, and as she lay in bed with her eyes closed,
she wasn’t thrilled to feel it now.

Memories came back slowly. Ava stripping off
her Galaxy Girl suit and bathing her, touch gentle and soothing as
Kenzie struggled against her newly conditioned association between
water and discomfort. Ava helping her up to the loft, dressing her
in soft cotton clothing, and tucking her into bed while the sun was
still high in the summer sky.

“You won’t leave me, will you?” Kenzie had
asked, hating her weakness.

But Ava didn’t seem to mind the way Kenzie
clung to her. She merely smoothed back her hair and kissed her
forehead as she leaned back, one shoulder resting against Kenzie’s
padded headboard. “I won’t leave you.”

Falling asleep hadn’t been a problem. Warm
and safe with a full belly, Kenzie had fallen into unconsciousness
almost alarmingly swiftly. But staying asleep? That was a whole
other box of wax. At some point after darkness had fallen, a
nightmare in which water was pouring into her nose and mouth
shocked her awake, and she bolted upright in bed, alone. The sound
of voices murmuring in the living room below gradually overcame the
pounding of her heart, and she lay back, listening.

“They must hate me,” she’d heard Ava say, her
voice low.

“Ben doesn’t hate you,” Sloane said. “Even
Jane doesn’t blame you. She blames me.”

“You? Why would she blame you for my
sociopathic family?”

“It’s complicated.” Kenzie heard the rustle
of clothing—a shrug?—and the sound of a smile in her sister’s tired
voice. “Mothers. What can you do?”

“I know, right?” Ava said. “Can’t live with
them, can’t kill them…”

Sloane burst out laughing, but Kenzie had
closed her eyes tightly against the sudden prick of tears. She
wasn’t a huge fan of dark humor, it was true, but that wasn’t what
was upsetting her. She just couldn’t shake the image of Amelia
Thornton— the woman who had raised Ava—staring at her with such
hatred. Ava’s mother might have stopped Nick from killing her, but
she’d only objected to the torture of off-worlders because it
didn’t suit her political goals.

How could Ava be who she was when Amelia and
Nick were who they were?

Kenzie understood that human offspring
weren’t clones of their parents any more than Zattalian children
were clones of theirs, but she also knew how a child’s family of
origin impacted their growth and development. Perhaps Ava was so
different from Amelia and Nick because to hear Ava tell it, she’d
been raised first by her biological mother, then by a nanny, and
finally by her boarding school classmates and teachers. In that
order.

Thank Alia Amelia and the General had
been such absent parents, really.

After the waterboarding nightmare, it had
taken a while for Kenzie to fall asleep again. Even then,
distressing dreams disturbed her sleep several times over, but each
time the sounds of Ava’s heartbeat beside her in bed and Sloane’s
quiet breathing from the living room below lulled her back into an
exhausted sleep.

Now it was midday again, according to her
bedside clock and the sunshine poking through gaps in her blinds,
and Kenzie couldn’t believe how long she’d slept. She lay
motionless, listening, and soon deduced that the apartment had
three occupants: Ava, Jane, and—was that Bea? Despite herself,
Kenzie smiled at the idea that B DANG WAS IN HER APARTMENT. The
flash of excitement died away quickly, though, and she forced
herself to push back the covers before malaise could overwhelm her.
She knew how to deal with trauma, and staying in bed stewing over
what had or hadn’t happened did not present a viable path
forward.

A floorboard creaked in the loft, and all
sound below ceased. She tried not to sigh in irritation, but it was
no use. A surge of crankiness twisted her lips and furrowed her
brow as she pictured what felt like too many people crowding her
studio. D’oh—she had apparently awakened on the wrong side
of the headboard, as humans liked to say. Her stomach growled
loudly. Maybe a meal would improve her mood. The
Shepherd-Hendersons had always preached that low blood sugar was
the family’s worst enemy, but that was because they hadn’t met the
Thornton-Westbrooks yet.

“Good morning, honey,” Jane called up.

“Morning.” Kenzie forced herself to sound
cheerful as she twisted her hair, still slightly damp from falling
asleep with it wet, into a messy bun. She was hoping that Sloane’s
magic booster shot, the pile of pizza, and a nearly full day of
sleep had restored her powers. Might as well find out. She held her
breath and leaned out over the edge of the loft, relieved when the
familiar pull of her powers responded as if nothing had happened.
Whew.

Below her, Ava looked up from the couch,
laptop seemingly forgotten as Kenzie floated down to the main
floor. Flight—check, Kenzie thought, relief surging through
her. She’d wondered if whatever Sentinel had done to limit her
abilities could be permanent, but it seemed as if the alien drug
was out of her system now, and her freakish body was back to its
freakish ways.

She blinked away the echo of captivity and
forced a smile at her girlfriend. “You stayed.”

“Of course I did. How are you feeling?”

“Um.” What could she say to that? “Better,”
she finally said. And it was true. Anything would be better than
what she’d endured the past few days. A flicker of memory—pure pain
as one of Sentinel’s devices set her nerve endings on what felt
like literal fire—threatened, and she squashed it fiercely, willing
her brain to stay in the present moment. There was no need to
relive those terrible moments, she tried to convince her lizard
brain. No need to burn the memories into her neural pathways; it
wouldn’t help protect her from a repeat experience. Being kidnapped
had been thoroughly out of her control, and if it happened again?
That would be outside her control as well.

Ava gazed at her, unsmiling, and Kenzie
wondered if she was the only one who noticed the faint tension
crackling between them. Nick’s actions had set something between
them to shaking, a minor earthquake that felt like it might grow
larger and more devastating if left unattended. The problem was
that Kenzie had no idea how to attend to it.

Fortunately, someone else did.

While Jane pressed fresh fruit and homemade
waffles (her favorite childhood brunch menu) on Kenzie, Bea offered
something else. “So I was thinking, a certain client of mine won’t
be back in their vacation condo for at least the next few weeks,
which I know because they’re recording a new album as we
speak.”

Kenzie swallowed a bite of fresh pineapple
that Jane had carved from an actual whole pineapple. It was a good
sign that she had managed to wield the butcher knife without
brandishing it at Ava, Kenzie supposed. “You mean…”

Bea nodded, eyebrows waggling significantly.
And, holy cow, would she make a lousy secret agent. That
meant something coming from Kenzie.

Ava’s head tilted. “Do you still have those
Taammeni headbands?”

“Sure do.” Kenzie lifted an entire waffle on
her fork. She had almost forgotten how much she loved Jane’s
cooking.

“Ew, I don’t want to hear about your sex
toys,” Bea said.

Against her will, Kenzie’s gaze flew to Jane,
who looked away just as quickly.

“Anyway,” Ava said, glaring at her best
friend, “we’ll talk about it and get back to you. Right,
Kenzie?”

She nodded, hoping no one would notice the
heat flooding her face. “Right! Yeah. Thanks, Bea. And also, shut
up.”

Bea stood up. “I’ll take that as my cue to
exit.”

“Oh. I didn’t—I was just joking,” Kenzie
said.

Ava rolled her eyes. “It’s not you. Her
flight is leaving soon.”

“Which is good timing, because my work here
is done.” Bea saluted Kenzie. “I’m glad you’re okay. Really.”

Kenzie stood up, wincing as she nearly
knocked her plate to the floor in her haste—all that beautiful
food!—and reached for Ava’s best friend. “Thank you for looking
after Ava.”

Bea hugged her back, her arms surprisingly
strong. Then again, she was an actual rock star. “I always will.
Ava and I are sisters, which sort of makes you my sister-in-law,
capisce?”

Kenzie’s face was so hot now it could
probably be seen from space. B Dang thought of her as her
sister-in-law? But that would mean Ava and Kenzie would be married,
which… She shoved away the thought. Too much, she told her
rogue brain. Too much too soon. Way too soon.

Or was it?

Ava smacked Bea’s arm and walked her out,
leaving Jane and Kenzie alone in the studio, afternoon sunlight
streaming in the half-open blinds, the windows cracked to let in
the breeze off the Sound and the melodic songs of birds flitting
through the trees and bushes below. Kenzie stared down at her
plate, shoveling fluffy waffle goodness and syrup-soaked kiwi into
her mouth. Jane drifted nearer to stand beside her chair.

“Is there anything else I can make you? Tea,
or a smoothie, or maybe an omelet?”

Actually, an omelet sounded good. But Kenzie
shook her head, not meeting her mother’s gaze. She could feel the
anxiety pouring off Jane, so different from the cold judgment she’d
exuded at the family barbecue a couple of weekends earlier. Or,
wait, had only a week passed since their trip up to Bellingham? Her
captivity had seriously messed with her sense of time.

A loud, grating sound assailed her ears as
Jane pulled out a chair, and Kenzie blinked rapidly, trying to
recalibrate her hearing on the fly. Looked like lots of things were
out of whack thanks to Sentinel.

“Sweetheart,” Jane said, folding her hands on
the table, “I owe you an apology.”

“No, you owe Ava an apology.” Kenzie waited,
expecting her heart rate to surge at her atypical criticism of her
adopted mother, but her system remained stable. She’d been waiting
a while to say that one.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jane’s
head drop and her fingers tighten. “I know. You’re right. She
barely slept while you were gone, and I realized I’ve been judging
her for the sins of her family.”

Kenzie recalled her own thoughts earlier.
Maybe it was too much to expect that they wouldn’t.

“I know you’re just looking out for me,” she
said. “And I get it, I really do. Especially after—” She waved a
hand over her shoulder in the general direction of Eastern
Washington. “But Ava isn’t Nick, and she isn’t Amelia. She’s
herself, and she’s important to me. Really important to me,
Mom.”

Jane appeared to brace herself. “Do you love
her?”

Kenzie met her gaze unflinchingly. “Yes, I
do. A terrifying amount, in fact.”

Jane nodded slowly. “Okay, then. I’ll do
better. I don’t want to lose you, Kenzie. And this weekend—” She
covered her mouth as her eyes filled with tears. “Your father and I
were so frightened.”

Kenzie looked down again, pushing a lone
blueberry around her plate. “I know,” she said, her throat
tightening. “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

The door to the hallway opened, and Kenzie
heard Ava approaching as Jane said, “Oh, honey, you have nothing to
be sorry for.”

Ava rounded the corner and stopped, her gaze
locking with Kenzie’s.

“But I do,” Kenzie said. “I refused to listen
to common sense. Worse, I acted like I was invulnerable. If I had
just listened…”

Ava started forward again. “Kenzie. It wasn’t
your fault. If anything, it’s mine for putting you in danger. They
went after you because of me.”

Jane stood up, one hand reaching for Ava but
stopping short. “My dear,” she said, her voice kinder than Kenzie
had ever heard in Ava’s presence, “what happened this weekend is no
more your fault than it is Kenzie’s. Let’s hold the actual
perpetrators responsible, shall we? Sentinel is at fault, I promise
you, and no one else. Especially not anyone in this room.”

Ava looked like she wanted to argue, and
Kenzie definitely did, but Jane was being nice to her girlfriend
for the first time ever. Kenzie wasn’t about to ruin the moment by
disagreeing, and Ava, it seemed, wasn’t either.

A key sounded in the lock, and the moment of
détente passed. Jane bustled toward the kitchen again. Her love
language had always been food, a fact that Kenzie had long
appreciated.

“That’ll be your father and sister,” Jane
said, and sure enough, Kenzie heard Sloane and Ben enter the
apartment, panting from the stairs and teasing each other about
being out of shape.

Ava caught Kenzie’s eye, and they shared a
half-smile that Kenzie was fairly sure conveyed multiple things:
gratified wonder at Jane’s shift in attitude (although Kenzie
supposed the near death of a child might make one reexamine petty
biases); a temporary agreement to disagree about whose fault the
whole kidnapping thing was; and a shared appreciation/simultaneous
irritation at how attentive the Shepherd-Hendersons were being.
Then Sloane was upon them, dropping her Trader Joe’s bags to clap
Ava on the shoulder and half-hug a still-seated Kenzie while Ben
smiled at them and went to press a kiss to Jane’s cheek.

“You’re awake,” Sloane announced, her voice
containing a note of false cheer that Kenzie recognized from the
pre-coming out years when her big sister had coped with her
self-hatred by drinking far too much.

Kenzie rose to enfold her sister in a proper
hug. “I’m good, Slo-mo,” she said. “And I’m sorry about
everything.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Sloane said, her voice
cracking. “I’m the one who made your suit and hooked you up with
Panopticon—”

“Oh my god,” Ava said. “Could we all just
stop being so freaking selfless? Jane’s right—this isn’t our fault,
not any of us. We’re the good guys, remember?”

Sloane pulled out of Kenzie’s arms. “Wait.
Did you just say that our mother was right?”

Ava bit her lip. “Um, yeah. I guess I
did.”

“What did I miss? I was only gone for an
hour.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Jane said, her
voice breezy. “Your sister has good taste in women. Now, who’s up
for a milkshake?”

They all were, as it turned out. They were
all up for a milkshake.

#

Eating could distract Kenzie for only so
long. Her milkshake was barely gone when she floated up to her loft
and pulled a clean shirt and pants from her closet. Underwear and
socks were harder to find, but eventually she realized there was a
stack of clean clothes in the basket at the end of the bed, hidden
under one of her favorite snuggly blankets.

“What are you doing?” Ava asked, poking her
head into the loft.

“Getting dressed.”

“Why?”

“I need to go to work. Otherwise, I’m going
to lose my job, and I can’t let that happen.”

Being Galaxy Girl allowed her to serve the
human and alien communities, and she was so grateful for the
privilege her powers gave her to do that. But working at ECM was
her dream for herself, Kenzie Shepherd, orphan and off-world
refugee, and she didn’t intend to give it up.

“You don’t have to worry,” Ava said. “Matt’s
covering for you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he told Aaron you guys are working
a story together, details to come.”

Kenzie made an impatient sound in her throat
as she unbuttoned the collared shirt and reached for her backup
Galaxy Girl suit. They were trying to help, she knew, but she was
already tired of the people closest to her treating her as if she
were made of glass. Tired of them looking at her as if she’d almost
died. She didn’t need the constant reminder of what had happened.
She just wanted everything to go back to normal.

Also, she needed a break from her studio.
While it was nowhere as small as her cell at the Sentinel facility,
she could feel the familiar creeping sensation of claustrophobia
starting to worm its way into her brain.

“What are you doing?” Sloane demanded when
she emerged from her loft.

Kenzie pulled on a long raincoat and stuffed
her Galaxy Girl mask in a pocket. “Going on a patrol. Gotta get
back on the horse sometime.”

Ava wrung her hands, Sloane shook her head
repeatedly, and even Jane appeared startled.

“Not by yourself,” Ava pleaded. “Call D’aman
and see if they can go with you. Please?”

Kenzie hesitated. She didn’t want to admit
it, but she was nervous to resume her Galaxy Girl duties. The suit
felt like a giant bull’s-eye now, like a challenge to any
anti-alien extremist to take a shot at her. The world had seen her
captured. They knew now that she was fallible, that she could
fall.

She glanced at her hand, noticing for the
first time that the sapphire ring D’aman had given her was missing.
God damn Nick. “Has anyone seen my phone?”

Ava gestured to the kitchen counter, and
Kenzie felt a surge of relief as she noticed her phone plugged into
the charging station Matt had set up when she first moved in. That
seemed like a lifetime ago now, back when she, Matt, Antonio, and
Sloane used to hang out every weekend at the pub—and sometimes
during the week, too—playing darts, challenging each other to
trivia matches, and drinking until they couldn’t seem to stop
laughing. She felt like a completely different person now, and not
just because she’d been kidnapped and tortured.

Tortured… It didn’t seem real, and all
at once, she didn’t feel real. Was gravity even a thing, or would
she float up off the surface of the earth and just keep going,
spinning like the matter in a spiral galaxy, all twisted gas and
hot young stars and lovely, invisible dark matter?

She opened her mind and shouted into the
void, “D’aman!” not even caring that she was battering any
nearby telepathic off-worlders with her rude screeching.

“Youngling. Are you well?”

The calm, directed thought punctured the
panic swirling inside of her, and she took a breath. “No.” The last
time she had communicated with anyone like this had been in Idaho,
with Klon Rae. How was the child, anyway?

“I am here.” Kenzie heard a rap from under
her feet—D’aman’s apartment didn’t have high ceilings, so they
probably hadn’t even needed to levitate. “And Klon Rae and her
family are well. They are going to stay in their safe house for a
little while longer.”

“Good,” she thought. One fewer thing to worry
about. “Will you go flying with me?”

“Yes. Give me two minutes.”

“Okay.” Okay. She could do this. She
could. “D’aman is on their way up,” she told her family, realizing
that they, of course, had not heard any of the conversation.

Ava stepped closer and took her hand, running
her thumb over her knuckles. “Are you sure about this?”

“Positive.” She lowered her voice. “I need to
get out of here. I need to fly.”

Ava gazed up at her, eyes searching, and then
nodded. “I understand. If I had your powers, I would fly away,
too.”

She seemed so sad, and Kenzie wanted to help,
wanted to fix everything that was wrong if it would release some of
the pressure she could see weighing Ava down. But she needed to
focus on getting herself back together before she could help anyone
else.

Sloane drifted forward and squeezed her
shoulder. “Putting on your oxygen mask, hmm?”

This was code they’d developed in their teens
that meant one of them needed some time or space. Or in Kenzie’s
case, time in space. Kenzie hadn’t really understood until
she managed to master her claustrophobia enough to take her first
airplane flight her senior year of college. As the flight attendant
acted out the pre-flight safety instructions, Kenzie began giggling
and couldn’t stop.

Now she only nodded. “Yeah.”

“Be careful,” her mother said from the
kitchen, where she and Ben were leaning against the counter,
holding tightly to each other.

“I will. I promise.”

There was a knock at the door, and Kenzie
gave the room at large an awkward salute. “That’s D’aman. See you
guys later.”

She didn’t wait for an answer before she
swept out of the apartment, hands jammed into her jacket
pockets.

In the hallway, D’aman—as Susan Cheng—slung
an arm around her waist and physically slowed her down. “Where’s
the fire, youngling?”

“In here,” she said, pointing at her
head.

“Ah. Shall we fly, then?”

“Please.”

They were across the street in a blink of an
eye, skirting the edge of the school playground to the corner where
vegetation grew up the chain-link fence and obscured the area from
view. Kenzie shed her raincoat and pulled on her mask, lining up
the eye holes. And then she exchanged a nod with D’aman and shot
into the air. In moments, she was high above the earth and steadily
climbing, D’aman’s quiet, calm presence at her side. The last time
they’d flown together, D’aman had been forced to carry her, since
she hadn’t yet recovered her powers. Now, though, Kenzie pushed
against gravity, relieved and thrilled as always when it gave way.
She flew faster and faster toward the outer ring of the atmosphere
where the air was thin and the curve of the earth was a beautiful
geometry equation falling away beneath her.

“Are you well?” D’aman thought at her.

“No,” she thought back. She came to a sudden
stop, suspended above the planet that had taken her in when she’d
lost everyone and everything, the planet that loved and hated her
simultaneously, the planet where there was no one else—not one
single person—like her anywhere on its surface. The beautiful,
hospitable, hostile planet that she loved and hated sometimes, too.
All of these things could be true at once.

D’aman took a moment to backtrack to her
location, but she closed her eyes and absorbed the stillness, the
quiet a blessed relief after the cramped busyness of her apartment,
the constant muffled sounds from Sentinel’s facility—terrified
cries and racing heartbeats, machines meant to harm and maim
hissing and whirring unnaturally, her own bones and joints starting
and stopping, creaking and groaning like the body of someone far
older. Up here, away from the planet’s surface, she could almost
pretend that she was in a ship drifting through space, her family
and friends nearby, her life safe and ordered as it had been before
the asteroid storm. Here at the top of the world, she could shut
out the noise, the animals and machines and geologic processes that
anchored her to this planet that still sometimes seemed unfamiliar.
At the edge of the atmosphere, she could feel more like herself and
less like a stranger in a strange land.

D’aman didn’t say a word, just hovered beside
her, their presence warm and comforting as ever. She would be okay.
She had been through worse—the loss of her entire fleet before her
eyes, the years of interstellar travel in a damaged ship, the
challenge of adapting to life on a planet that was too loud, too
bright, too everything she wasn’t. Compared to those experiences,
what were a couple of days being cooped up and subjected to regular
torture sessions by her girlfriend’s brother?

“It will take time,” D’aman said, their
thoughts rolling over her like a gentle breeze. “Go easy on
yourself. Trauma takes patience to survive and heal from. Give
yourself that time, Kenzie, yes?”

She opened her eyes and looked up into the
dazzling darkness of space, the sun warm on the back of her head,
the planet green beneath her. “Yes,” she said, and she thought she
might even mean it.

Chapter Thirteen

From Ava’s point of view, spending time with
people who unironically tossed around phrases like “moving the
needle” and “engaging core competencies” was one of the least
interesting parts of her job as Hyperion’s Chief Operations
Officer. She still missed her lab, but in truth, the COO role was
varied enough that it kept her challenged in a different way than
drilling down into a single project always had. If only she didn’t
have to listen to executives drone on about “forming, storming,
norming, and performing,” she often thought she might find her new
role more than simply tolerable.

The week after Kenzie’s successful rescue
operation was even more meeting-intensive than usual. There were
video conferences with Hyperion’s Asia and Europe counterparts at
vastly different times of the day, and in-person discussions with
various Seattle-based marketing and product development teams. And
yet, Ava didn’t seem to mind the time-consuming work conversations
nearly as much as before. She had glimpsed a world without Kenzie,
and everything else seemed so much better in comparison that she
barely rolled her eyes when irritating men in suits spoke in her
presence about “gaining traction” and “optimizing synergy.”

That said, she could admit that she very much
enjoyed invoking the phrase “tabling the conversation” at Friday
afternoon’s product marketing meeting—especially because she had
zero intention of returning to that particular conversation ever
again.

She was pretty sure that intention was
implied.

Ava had spent every night this week with
Kenzie—mostly at Kenzie’s studio, since Ava’s condo felt unsafe
despite her security team’s extra efforts to secure the space.
Sleeping in Kenzie’s loft felt safer somehow than anyplace else in
the world right now—and not just to her. Ava had little doubt that
the quiet space contributed significantly to Kenzie’s steady
improvement over the course of her first week back. Physically,
anyway. The occasional flicker of bleakness in her girlfriend’s
eyes told Ava that her mental health wasn’t quite as far along. Ava
felt exhausted, too, which was why she had proposed they take Bea
up on her offer of a getaway to the Vancouver condo this weekend.
Kenzie had agreed to go tonight, but only if they had dinner with
her family first. Ava had accepted the condition easily. They’d
been spending gobs of time with Kenzie’s family all week, and
besides, this would likely be the last Shepherd-Henderson
get-together for a while. Now that Kenzie was feeling better, Jane
and Ben were planning to head home to Bellingham.

The summer night was warm as Kenzie’s family
gathered for dinner on Sloane’s back patio, an event that was full
of laughter, family stories, and general camaraderie. Then the
elder generation packed up their car and said their goodbyes, which
included a last round of hugs for “our girls.” Ava flushed and
looked away when she realized Ben meant her, too. It had been a
long time since she’d had a father figure in her life.

The Subaru’s taillights had barely
disappeared down Sloane’s street when Kenzie said, “It’s dark
enough. Shouldn’t we get going, too?”

“Soon,” Ava said. “Sloane and I just have to
compare calendars.”

Her idea of a joint statement from Galaxy
Girl and the lone non-terrorist member of the Westbrook family had
been well received by multiple news outlets, including ECM, so
while Kenzie helped Mika clean up the kitchen, Ava and Sloane
opened a laptop at the dining table and set about finalizing the
announcement. Just as they were wrapping up, an email popped up
from Mayor Wu’s communications director that included a statement
of support for Galaxy Girl and the Human-Off-Worlders Alliance
(or HOWSA as Kenzie never seemed to tire of calling it),
a community action program that Hyperion and Mika’s unit at the SPD
were piloting to improve human and off-worlder relations in the
region.

“See, I told you Mayor Wu loves you,” Sloane
teased. “Or should I say Olivia?”

“Sloane!” Kenzie all but stomped her foot,
and Ava could suddenly picture them as teenagers arguing over whose
turn it was to use their shared bathroom.

“That reminds me,” Sloane added. “Katie
Carson has agreed to interview you two. Mask on and voice modulator
in place, of course.”

Ava wasn’t surprised that the famous media
magnate would be interviewing them. She’d gone to school with
Katie’s nephew, so it had only taken a phone call to obtain Katie’s
cooperation.

Kenzie, however, appeared gobsmacked by the
news. “Katie Carson? Seriously? You better not be joking,
Sloane.”

“Girl scout’s honor. The Queen of Media
herself said she would be more than happy to fly in to conduct the
interview here. I was thinking we could use your office, Ava? That
way, you two won’t have to appear in front of a studio audience,
which from a security standpoint makes me very happy.”

Ava shrugged. “Fine with me.” She had never
met Katie, but Drake Carson had been a good friend at Deerfield,
and Katie’s reputation as a master of spin preceded her. Besides,
Kenzie admired her work, so she couldn’t be all bad.

Kenzie was practically bouncing on her toes.
“Sounds awesome!”

“Great. We’ll aim for mid-week then. In the
meantime, you two are free to go,” Sloane said, closing the laptop
with a thud.

“Really?”

Sloane nodded at her younger sister, her
smile soft as it had been all week. “Yeah. You could both use a few
days away. Maybe even more than a few days?”

“Oh, no,” Ava said. “I’ve already spent
enough time away from Hyperion. The board is probably about to vote
me out as it is.”

Nick’s breakout and subsequent kidnapping
escapades had not been good for Hyperion’s stocks—something new and
different where the Thornton-Westbrooks were concerned. This was
not the time to take an extended vacation, no matter how much she
and Kenzie might need one.

Kenzie hugged her sister. “Thanks, Slo-mo.
Love you!”

“Love you, too.” Sloane glanced at Ava. “Be
in regular touch, yes?”

Ava nodded. “I promise.”

This was not the first time Kenzie’s federal
agent sister had made this request. In fact, she’d only agreed to
the getaway after Ava had given her the Vancouver condo’s address
and assured her that they would be disguised by the Taammeni
headbands anytime they ventured outside. Not that Ava was sure such
a masquerade was even necessary. Sentinel knew exactly who Galaxy
Girl was. The only thing keeping them from revealing her identity,
according to a conversation Kenzie had overheard, was that Amelia
feared the political fallout even more than she wanted to punish
Ava for her lesbian, alien-loving tendencies.

“What do you say, Ava?” Kenzie said. “Want to
ditch this popsicle stand?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They said goodbye to Mika, and Sloane walked
them out to the darkened backyard where Kenzie planted a kiss on
her sister’s cheek. “We’ll be back soon.”

“Promise?”

Kenzie held up her little finger. “Pinkie
swear.”

Sloane hooked their fingers together. “Good.
Although I would probably feel better if you never left again.” She
clearly meant it as a joke, but the comment came out more wistful
than amused.

“Same here,” Ava said, and then Kenzie was
pulling her and Sloane both in for a fast, hard hug.

Ava had lost count of how many group hugs
she’d endured since Monday’s rescue operation, but she didn’t mind.
Kenzie was back almost like she’d never been gone, and for that,
Ava would tolerate a thousand group hugs if necessary.

Really, though, she hoped it wouldn’t be.

#

The flight to Vancouver was warmer than their
previous outing and significantly less frightening. This time, Ava
relaxed right from the start and enjoyed every moment of cruising a
few hundred feet above Puget Sound, wending along the shoreline
toward British Columbia where mountains rose like dark behemoths
against the blue-black sky. Kenzie didn’t get lost this time,
either, and only an hour after they left Sloane’s house on Queen
Anne, they were seated in the hot tub on Bea’s client’s deck,
hidden behind a privacy screen. They’d been too busy the previous
trip to enjoy the hot tub, but this trip, they’d agreed, was all
about relaxation.

Ava was as close to Kenzie as she could get
without sitting in her lap. Not that she wouldn’t have, but Kenzie
was still moving more slowly than she usually did. Ava had asked
her if she was in pain, but Kenzie insisted it was nothing.

“Just a hangover from last weekend,” she’d
said as she stepped naked into the hot tub. “A couple of soaks in
this tub and I’ll be completely back to normal.”

The swirling jets did seem to be helping,
because for the first time since she’d appeared at the Spokane
airport hangar, Kenzie’s forehead was smooth and furrow-free. She
finally looked relaxed.

“So,” Ava said softly, “do you want to tell
me about it?”

And that was obviously the wrong thing to say
because Kenzie’s shoulders immediately hunched, the crease
returning to her brow. “I don’t think so. Not yet.” She hesitated.
“Is that okay?”

Ava swallowed down her disappointment. “Of
course, sweetheart,” she said, and ran her hand over Kenzie’s damp
ponytail. “Any chance you’re in the mood for a musical? The Book
of Mormon is showing tomorrow, and I could probably swing some
tickets.”

“Can we play it by ear? I’m not sure I want
to go out anywhere.”

“Of course. Staying in with you sounds
lovely, too.”

Kenzie smiled, but it wasn’t the same grin
Ava was used to.

She waited a few minutes and then tried
again. “I know you said you don’t want to talk about it, but is
there anything I can do to help?”

“You are helping.” Kenzie closed her eyes and
lifted her face to the sky, face half lit, half in shadows.

She was so beautiful, and so proud—too proud
to ask for help. Or maybe she just didn’t know how. Kenzie had
grown up female in an American family that had encouraged her to
hide her strength, her power, her spirit, from the moment she’d
arrived on the planet. Middle school was hard enough for Earth
natives. What must it have been like for a girl from outer
space?

“I love you,” Ava murmured, resting her chin
on Kenzie’s shoulder and inhaling her scent. Even under the smell
of soap, shampoo, and chlorine, she could smell that unique Kenzie
scent. The real thing was so much better than a faded
sweatshirt.

Kenzie turned her head and pressed her lips
against Ava’s forehead. “I love you, too. I’m sorry I’m off.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish
there was something I could do for you.”

“Well, maybe there is something…”

Kenzie tugged her gently through the water,
hands pressing against Ava’s limbs until she got the gist of what
Kenzie was requesting. Soon she was kneeling on the stone bench,
legs on either side of Kenzie’s lithe body, arms twined around her
neck.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Ava asked,
peering down at her worriedly. They hadn’t made love all week, and
honestly, Ava had been a little afraid to touch her.

She nodded, gazing up at her with wide,
serious eyes. “Please. Unless you don’t want—”

Ava caught the words in her mouth as she
kissed Kenzie. She wanted. She wanted so much that she could feel
her hands shaking as she pulled Kenzie closer; she wanted so much
she didn’t even notice the cooling night air against her skin.

Kenzie kissed her back just as desperately,
and then her hands were on Ava’s breasts, her belly, between her
legs. Ava arched her head back and closed her eyes against the
sight of the gray-brown sky, the city’s light pollution hiding all
but the brightest stars from human sight. She didn’t want to think
about space, didn’t want to think about how close she’d come to
losing this woman from another planet, this person who had slid so
easily into her life, so deeply that Ava wasn’t sure how she’d ever
lived without her. The Before Kenzie era was gray and dull in her
memory; After Kenzie was vibrant, colorful, and painful too—but in
a good way, like the way your elbow tingles right after you smack
it on something sharp. You know the tingling will be gone soon, and
it’s not even pain, really, as much as it is a reminder that
you could be hurting.

Because there was always someone hurting
somewhere. It was simply a fact of life.

#

In the middle of the night, Ava awoke to a
cold bed. A steady whoosh sounded not far away, and she blinked
sleepily, reaching for her robe. In the living room, she found
Kenzie in her sleep tee and shorts huddled on the floor in front of
the gas fireplace. She was staring into the orange-and-red flames
and didn’t look up as Ava approached.

“Hey,” Ava said, yawning as she pulled a
scrunchie from her wrist and secured her hair.

Startled, Kenzie looked up at her, eyes wide
for a moment with an emotion Ava didn’t entirely recognize. And she
felt it again, the unspeakable, violent rage toward her brother and
would-be mother. Or rather, her wouldn’t-be mother.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said, even though the words
felt impotent. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t.” Kenzie looked back at the fire
and pillowed her chin on her upturned knees.

Ava didn’t bother pointing out the lie. She
merely sat down behind Kenzie and wrapped her arms and legs around
her. “Couldn’t sleep?” she murmured into Kenzie’s hair, which still
smelled faintly of chlorine.

“No. I think I’m out of the habit.” Kenzie
held herself rigid, but then as Ava nosed into the soft skin of her
neck, she sighed and relaxed back into her. “They didn’t let
me.”

This last bit was offered so matter-of-factly
that Ava almost missed it. “What?”

“They kept me restrained on a gurney in this
tiny room, and every time I started to doze off, a hose would come
on and spray me with water. Like, ice-cold water. Normally, I’m not
affected by things like that, but whatever drug they gave me
weakened my powers, so…”

Ava swallowed against the rage percolating
inside of her, forcing her arms not to tighten around Kenzie. Not
that it would hurt her. Or maybe it would. Had she fully recovered,
or was she hiding some form of damage that might be more
permanent?

“I’m sorry,” Kenzie added, her voice small.
“I didn’t mean—”

“No!” The word burst out of Ava, and she felt
Kenzie flinch slightly. “No,” she repeated, tempering her tone,
“don’t apologize. I’m the one who should be sorry. Sorry that my
family is so heinous, that my brother and his followers hate you so
much, that my mother…” She stopped and exhaled, trying to
relinquish the anger and powerlessness washing over her in dark
waves. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Kenzie.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Ava kissed her neck and waited, giving her
the room to speak if she wanted to. Or not. Either way, it was her
choice.

“In fact,” Kenzie added after a minute,
turning her head so that her cheek brushed Ava’s lips, “you were
what kept me going. They had this device—Klon Rae called it the
memory modifier—and it was awful. It seized on every fear I’d ever
had and just…” She stopped and shivered, and Ava held on, lips
pressing gently against Kenzie’s skin. “Anyway, I fought it off by
calling up memories of you smiling at me, the two of us flying
together, just—happy thoughts. You helped get me through even if
you didn’t know it.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Ava made herself
say, even though she felt sick at the thought of machines created
to bring the otherwise invincible to their knees. A memory of a
conversation at a family dinner when her father was still alive
came back to her. Her parents and Nick had been debating a method
of defense against the most powerful off-world refugees, and Amelia
had proposed mind control while Nick insisted robotic technology
was the only true weapon humans would have against the all-powerful
aliens who he claimed came to Earth seeking their fortune at the
expense of humankind.

Robots and mind control, the stuff of
fantasies. Except those fantasies had crossed into reality, and the
woman leaning back into her, made of other-worldly flesh and
blessed with a character Ava sometimes thought was too pure for the
vagaries of humankind, had fallen victim to Ava’s family’s
scheming. Her mind juxtaposed that cold, austere dinner in the
family brownstone all those years ago with tonight’s warm, laughing
affair in Sloane’s backyard and wondered, not for the first time,
what her life might have been like if her birth mother hadn’t
died.

For a moment, she remembered how Kenzie had
admitted to fantasizing about killing Nick for trying to hurt her.
Now that he had hurt Kenzie so badly, Ava thought she might
consider walking back her own position on the topic.

“Ava,” Kenzie whispered, her eyelashes dark,
damp smudges against her silky skin.

“I’m here, love,” she whispered back, throat
tightening as she felt Kenzie’s shoulders begin to shake. And then
Kenzie was turning into her, pressing her face against her chest,
hands scrabbling at her back. She was crying great rending sobs
like the night Ava told her she loved her, and Ava felt just as
useless as she had the last time Kenzie dissolved into tears before
her. She couldn’t fix this. She couldn’t research or design or
tinker to solve this problem. Her mother and brother were still out
there, and nothing Ava did could protect Kenzie because the costume
she wore made her an automatic target. Ava could no more stop
humans—or other aliens, for that matter—from harming Galaxy Girl
than Kenzie had been able to stop her fleet from being
destroyed.

After a while, Kenzie calmed down again, and
soon she was pulling back to smile wryly at Ava, her eyes swollen
and skin blotchy. “There must be something about gas fireplaces
that makes me cry.”

“Maybe there’s a smell that triggers your
olfactory receptor neurons.”

Kenzie’s smile was more genuine this time.
“You’re such a nerd.”

“Yes, but I’m your nerd,”
Ava said, sliding her palm across Kenzie’s still-damp cheek.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Humming a little, Kenzie encircled Ava with
her arms and floated them toward the couch. “Is it okay if we stay
out here by the fire?”

“Of course,” Ava said, her eyelids growing
heavy again. “Whatever you need.”

“Sleep tight, my little dumpling,” she heard
Kenzie murmur as the couch cradled them in the fire-warmed
room.

“Love you, Kenzie.”

“Love you, too.”

#

When she awoke next, the world beyond the
picture windows was one massive streak of sunny sky. It was
blinding, in fact. Ava closed her eyes again, longing for her
sunglasses.

Wait. She sat up on the couch, looking
around. Where was Kenzie?

In the kitchen, there was coffee percolating,
so she relaxed a little. Kenzie was somewhere nearby, and Sentinel
couldn’t find them here. They were safe, she reminded herself.

She was leaning against the counter inhaling
the aroma of coffee from her mug when Kenzie returned to the
apartment, Taammeni headband securely in place. Her cheeks were
rosy instead of splotchy, and her eyes were clearer than they had
been all week.

“Hi,” she said, and pulled off the headband
before darting forward to kiss Ava.

“Good morning.” She touched Kenzie’s cheek.
Her skin was cold, which explained the rosiness. “Were you
flying?”

Kenzie nodded and opened the refrigerator,
bending slightly to survey its well-stocked contents. “Sometimes I
forget how peaceful the world can be.”

Ava took advantage of the view, eyes skimming
over Kenzie’s jeans-clad figure. Her pants disappeared into fuzzy
slipper boots, and a fleece vest from REI hung off her shoulders.
Summer mornings in the Pacific Northwest weren’t always the
warmest.

“Are you looking at my butt?” Kenzie
asked.

“No. Well, maybe. It’s such a lovely
butt.”

“Right back at you,” she said, and winked
over her shoulder.

Kenzie was hungrier than she had been lately,
too, Ava was pleased to note. They fell into an easy rhythm, making
pancakes and eggs and eating at the butcher block island like they
did this every weekend.

“This is nice,” Kenzie kept saying,
blueberries staining her lips.

And it was.

After cleaning up their breakfast dishes,
they adjourned to the living room to practice yoga and Min-Nal on
adjoining exercise mats. When they were all practiced out, Kenzie
announced that it was time to go for a walk in Stanley Park.

“It is, is it?” Ava asked, eyebrow
lifting.

“Jane says fresh air is a cure-all, in her
scientist’s opinion, so I thought we should give it a whirl.”

“Surprisingly, Amelia comes from the exact
opposite school of thought.” She made the comment thoughtlessly, as
if her mother hadn’t just helped her brother spend days torturing
Kenzie and god only knew how many other off-worlders.

“Right.” Kenzie’s voice was tight, her eyes
downcast as she kicked off her slippers and stepped into her
running shoes, headband back in place.

“Kenzie, I’m sorry,” Ava said, reaching for
her hand.

“It’s okay. I’ll meet you downstairs.” And
she slipped away, closing the door behind her gently in a gesture
that took Ava back to the day she’d realized Kenzie Shepherd and
Galaxy Girl were one and the same. So much had happened since then,
and yet here Ava was, still making a mess of things.

#

Over the course of the long weekend, Jane’s
cure seemed to take effect. They walked around Stanley Park each
morning after breakfast and yoga/Min-Nal, soaked in the hot tub
multiple times each day, and binged TV shows they hadn’t had the
time recently to watch. As the hours ticked past, Kenzie began to
seem less cagey, the shadows in her eyes fading in earnest, and she
opened up more and more about her time in Idaho. Gradually, a
picture emerged of her captivity, and though Ava was tempted to
stick her fingers in her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear details,
it was her family who’d done the torturing. The least she could do
was listen.

When they weren’t in Stanley Park or bingeing
Netflix, they sat on the deck enjoying the summer sunshine or holed
up inside to play video games, anything that allowed them a
temporary escape from reality. There was more napping than their
last visit to Vancouver, too, and the sex alternated between
desperate, shuddering encounters like their first night in the hot
tub and slower, quieter dalliances in the comfortable king bed.
Occasionally, Ava would open her eyes and find Kenzie staring at
her as if trying to memorize the moment, recording the sight and
sound of their intimacy for time immemorial.

Ava had never cried during sex. In fact,
she’d always secretly looked down on people who wept over an
orgasm. But on their second night in Vancouver, Kenzie had her way
with her three times in a row, not allowing her to fully come down,
and Ava found herself crying softly. She pulled Kenzie up and
kissed her, and she thought they probably both knew that it wasn’t
sex making her cry. Kenzie’s ministrations had merely lowered her
walls, knocked down the imaginary boundaries she tended so
carefully, and Ava couldn’t help thinking all the what-ifs she’d
been trying for days to keep at bay. What if Coop had refused to
help? What if Klon Rae’s father had only cared about saving his
daughter? What if Kenzie had simply vanished and Ava had never seen
her again?

“It’s okay,” Kenzie whispered, holding Ava’s
face between her hands and peppering her cheeks with kisses. “I’m
here.”

This only made Ava cry harder because if
things had gone even a little differently, Kenzie wouldn’t be
anywhere at all. She would be dead, and Ava would have to decide
which path to tread: the path of light and love, in Kenzie’s honor,
or the path of revenge and murder, in her own family of origin’s
tradition.

Her money was on the latter.

#

Ava let Kenzie guide the pace of their
serious discussions, trying to give her space. It took a while, but
Kenzie eventually told her about her interaction with Coop, how
he’d implied that he was working with Sentinel to protect
Sloane.

“Are you going to tell your sister?” Ava
asked.

It was Sunday afternoon and they were seated
on the couch in front of the fire, and Kenzie was demolishing the
brownies they’d baked earlier that day. She must be feeling better
because no matter how much food they prepared, there never seemed
to be enough. Cooking for Kenzie was like preparing institutional
food—in theory there should be plenty, but somehow there never
was.

Kenzie nodded and swallowed a large bite,
chocolate crumbs dotting her lips. “At some point. I’m just not
sure how to tell her.” She wiped her mouth. “Oh my god.”

“What?” Ava paused mid-sip of her coffee.
“What’s wrong?”

“Klon Rae’s Markalian, and Markalians don’t
have mouths.”

“I know.” Ava had become accustomed to the
Markalian visage by now. In fact, she was looking forward to
meeting Klon Rae, the child who had become Kenzie’s “sidekick.” Did
child labor laws apply to clandestine governmental black ops
groups? Ava wouldn’t put it past Panopticon to try to recruit the
girl.

“Does that mean she’s never had brownies?
Or ice cream?” Kenzie was staring at her plate now,
clearly horrified.

Ava forced herself not to roll her eyes.
She’d thought Kenzie remembered something from her captivity, but
instead she’d merely had a food-related epiphany. Typical.

“At least Coop helped you,” she said, trying
to bring the conversation back on topic. “Klon Rae’s father, too.
That’s more than can be said for my family’s involvement.”

Kenzie finally looked away from her plate.
“Um,” she said, sucking gooey chocolate from a fingertip. “I sort
of have to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Ava swallowed, waiting.

“You know how I heard your mother and brother
arguing?”

“Yes.” To be exact, they had been arguing
about whether or not to kill Kenzie. Ava forced herself not to
shudder at the thought.

Kenzie squinted at her in an expression that
was pure Sloane Shepherd, except with more anxiety. “Well, right
before that, your mother showed me some stuff on a laptop.
Basically, I think she was trying to break us up.”

“What did she show you?”

“She claimed it was evidence that you killed
Martin Graylon.”

Ava recoiled. That was not a name she had
been expecting to hear. “What the hell?”

“She tried to convince me you’d lied to me,
and when I refused to believe her, she got pretty pissed.”

“Like, torture pissed?” Ava made herself
ask.

“No. That was your brother’s thing. She was
more about the emotional manipulation.”

Ava nodded. That tracked. “I have to admit,
I’m a little relieved. I thought you were going to say she tried to
convince you I was working for Sentinel on some long con.”

Kenzie looked away and then immediately back
at her, blinking rapidly in the tell Sloane had told Ava to watch
for one Game Night when the boys insisted no one who was dating
could be on the same team. Sloane and Ava had gravitated to each
other and had proceeded to win every game except Pictionary, which
they’d lost in spectacular fashion.

“She did try to convince you of that, didn’t
she,” Ava said slowly. “Did you believe her?”

“Of course not.” Kenzie looked offended. “I
called her bluff. I told her that unless you walked in and
announced in person that you were part of Sentinel, I
wasn’t about to believe a word she said.”

That must have gone over well. “Let me guess.
She responded with more lies.”

Kenzie’s face scrunched up. “I’m a little
hazy on the timing, to be perfectly honest.”

Ava stood up and began pacing. “I’m so sorry.
If I could get unadopted I would. Wait.” She stopped and snapped
her fingers. “That’s it! I could talk to an attorney about severing
legal ties!” Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Minors could
become emancipated; surely there must be a similar option for
adults.

Kenzie pulled her back to the couch and
wrapped her arms around her. “I know it’s hard having Amelia as a
mother, but it’s not like you’re the only one with problematic
parents.”

Ava burrowed her chin into the curve of
Kenzie’s neck, angling their bodies closer. “What do you mean?”

Kenzie shrugged. “My parents were part of the
team in charge of hyperfield navigation. It’s not their fault that
the fleet was destroyed, exactly, but they did take the time to put
me on an escape pod instead of trying to help solve the
crisis.”

“Okay, but that seems like a normal response.
They loved you so much they would do anything to save you,
right?”

“Well, maybe Amelia’s trying to save you,
too. Think of it. An off-worlder killed your dad. Maybe she’s
worried the same thing will happen to you.”

Ava inhaled the clean scent of Kenzie’s
shirt, a well-worn baseball tee that was one of Ava’s favorites, as
she contemplated her girlfriend’s amazing empath skills. Not to
mention her optimism. When it came to trying to break them up, Ava
was fairly certain Amelia was more worried about the family name
than Ava’s safety.

“Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t change
the fact that the group she apparently runs used a child to get to
you.”

“I’m not sure she knew. Anyway, Sloane says
groups like Sentinel try to enlist assistance first with bribes,
but if that doesn’t work and they need someone’s expertise,
extortion is an easy second. And who better to take than somebody’s
child?”

Kenzie’s arms tightened incrementally, and
Ava nestled closer. She was so tired of thinking about Amelia and
Nick and their twisted notions of who belonged on Earth. Right now,
she just wanted to focus on this moment, to make Kenzie feel as
safe and loved as she felt.

“Let’s stay here forever,” she murmured.

“Sounds good to me.”

But they couldn’t, of course. Sloane and Mika
and Matt and D’aman were expecting them back the following evening.
Besides, there were things to do, political opportunities to take
advantage of, irons to strike while hot. And fresh. Although, could
irons be fresh? What was striking irons an actual reference to,
anyway?

Three days wasn’t a long enough break, in
Ava’s opinion. Someday, when all of this was over (assuming it ever
was and that they emerged alive and well on the other side), she
would try to convince Kenzie to take a real break, one that lasted
weeks instead of mere days. They could fly to a tropical island,
where they would walk along sandy beaches and swing in hammocks and
make love in private lagoons until they barely remembered who they
were. Or Kenzie could take her to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone,
and Redwood National Parks, like she’d talked about wanting to do.
Ava had seen photos of these places, but they couldn’t compare,
Kenzie insisted. Especially the Redwoods. Ava couldn’t wait to one
day walk among the towering giants, some of which had been alive
for nearly the entire last millennium.

Someday they would see those trees, Ava
thought. And Kenzie would lift them up to the very top so that they
could see the view of the Californian sea and countryside from
above, like the ancient giants themselves.

Just as soon as they finished saving the
world.

#

Ava knew Kenzie really was feeling better
when she woke up on their third and final morning in Vancouver to
find her girlfriend serenading her: “Do you want to build a
snowman? Come on, let’s go and play!”

Ava tried to pull the pillow over her face,
but Kenzie whipped it away in a blur of super speed, narrowly
missing a bedside lamp. “Whoops. Aaaava,” she added, wheedling her
name. “Come play with me. I’m awake. Let’s go to the park early
before anyone else is up.”

And even though Kenzie was under strict
orders not to speak to her before coffee, Ava thought she could
make an exception, just this once.

The park was especially beautiful in the gray
light of dawn—exactly as Kenzie had promised. And as they walked
along the rocky seashore, waves crashing and ancient trees towering
above them, Ava believed they might really do it. They might
actually save the world and ride off into the sunset together.

God, she hoped so. She just wasn’t sure at
what price.

But there would be time to worry about that
later. For now, she was happy to walk this narrow, paved path along
the ocean beside Kenzie, their hands clasped, fingers intertwined.
Kenzie had come back to her, just as she’d promised, and though
Sentinel was still out there, though Nick and Amelia were most
assuredly up to no good, Ava would appreciate this moment of peace
for as long as it lasted.

Chapter Fourteen

“We have a problem.”

Ava’s text message interrupted Kenzie’s
frenetic gaming on her phone, which she was currently using to
distract herself from the impending interview with Katie Carson.
She sat up on her couch and minimized the word puzzle app.

“What’s wrong?” she typed back.

“Katie wants to talk to a certain reporter,
too.”

“Me??”

“Yes, Kenzie. You.”

“But why????”

“Apparently, she read several articles in
which you interviewed the Galaxy Duo, so…”

Crap. She should have known that breaking
journalistic codes of ethics would one day come back to haunt her.
“What are we going to do?”

Three dots appeared beside Ava’s name, went
away, and then returned. Finally, the message arrived: “Do you
think D’aman is available?”

Why would—oh. Right. Shape shifting powers,
activate. The real question was whether or not D’aman was
willing, but Kenzie only typed, “Good thinking!! I’ll
check.”

And that was how less than an hour later
Kenzie and Galaxy Girl were in the executive elevator at Hyperion
on their way up to Ava’s office for the interview. Kenzie was glad
that she’d be going as herself. Katie Carson was a legend, and
Kenzie had always wanted to meet her. She’d just thought it would
take longer to reach a professional level where their paths might
cross. But this was fine. This was good. She was ready.

At least, until the Queen of Media strode
toward her, hand extended in greeting. Kenzie, who could fly faster
than the speed of sound and catch literal bullets in her hands,
could only stutter as Katie shook her hand, a knowing smile
shadowing her famous features.

“Ms. Shepherd, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Um, Ms. Carson, it’s—the pleasure—all
mine.”

“Please, call me Katie,” the older woman
said, pressing Kenzie’s hand briefly between both of hers before
letting go. “And you must be Galaxy Girl,” she added, turning to
D’aman.

“Galaxy Girl” was much more collected than
Kenzie, as was befitting a superhero. D’aman inclined their head.
“Ms. Carson. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. We’re hoping
to reach a lot of people with our message tonight.”

That was exactly what Kenzie had intended to
say herself. Good thing D’aman was playing her alter ego. That way,
Kenzie could simply be herself without having to worry that her
nervous mannerisms and occasional archaic use of English would tip
viewers off to Galaxy Girl’s identity.

“Yes, well, that is the plan.” Carson’s gaze
shifted from Galaxy Girl to Ava. “Ms. Westbrook. It’s a pleasure to
meet you. My nephew tells me the two of you were quite close at
school?”

The way she said “quite close” almost made it
seem as if—wait. Kenzie glanced at Ava, eyes narrowing. Had Ava
failed to mention that she’d dated Katie Carson’s nephew? But Ava
only smiled thinly and shook the journalist’s hand. “Yes, Drake and
I go way back.”

That was neither a confirmation nor a denial,
Kenzie thought, only just stopping an audible harumph from escaping
her pursed lips. Kenzie knew you couldn’t trust teenage boys, and
she wasn’t even from this planet.

Her irritation with the faceless
“Drake”—which, really, who named their child after a male
duck?—distracted her from her social anxiety as they ran through
the final prep for the interview. Even after the cameras began to
roll and the questions came in earnest, Kenzie remained calmer than
she’d expected. Most of the questions were directed at D’aman and
Ava, and in spite of Carson’s attempts to focus the conversation on
Galaxy Girl’s recent abduction, they both pivoted again and again
to the Human-Off-Worlders Alliance program that Hyperion and SPD
were collaborating on. Matt’s article had described the kidnapping
and dramatic rescue in a fair amount of detail, so D’aman knew how
to tread with questions about that experience, and Kenzie managed
to work in a few of the talking points she and Ava had discussed.
She even made sure to maintain a respectable amount of distance
from her girlfriend. Carson knew that questions about their
relationship weren’t allowed, and she kept to her end of the
bargain.

On that topic, anyway.

The interview was winding down when Carson
sprung the gotcha question of all gotcha questions on Kenzie: “Ms.
Shepherd, one last thing. How do you think the rumors about you
being Galaxy Girl got started?”

Horrified, Kenzie stared at Carson, who was
suddenly wearing a predatory smile. Fortunately, D’aman fed her a
response that she obediently parroted: “Sheesh, I didn’t know about
any rumors. Is this a joke?”

“This is most definitely not a joke. Does
that mean you deny being Galaxy Girl?”

“Point at me,” D’aman thought at
her.

Kenzie pointed at D’aman, sitting between her
and Ava in full superhero costume. Somehow, her hand didn’t even
shake. “You mean this Galaxy Girl?”

“That’s the one.”

D’aman kept the lines coming: “I assure you,
I’m no hero. Though I do wish I could fly. It would make covering
stories so much easier! Don’t you think?”

“I suppose it would,” the veteran journalist
said.

Even from a few feet away, Kenzie could feel
Ava vibrating with anger. Or possibly from fear—the two emotions
were difficult to tell apart from biometrics alone. Despite her
emotions, Ava waited until the cameras were off and the team was
packing up to corner Carson.

“What the hell was that?” Kenzie heard her
say, her nostrils flaring.

Carson lifted one elegantly plucked eyebrow.
“It was a last-minute tip, one I didn’t put much credence in.”

Until now. As she milled about near
the balcony, chatting with D’aman, Kenzie could almost hear the
words hanging in the air.

“Don’t play with me,” Ava said. “You know
very well that even implying someone might be an off-worlder puts
them in immediate danger. Along with their friends, family,
co-workers, pretty much anyone they’ve ever met. If you even think
of airing that part—”

“Relax,” Carson said, holding up a hand.
“Your girlfriend is safe, Ava. I know how deep your pockets go, and
I have no intention of opening myself up to a libel suit. For now,
Galaxy Girl’s identity is safe. But a word to the wise: get out
ahead of this before someone else gets wind of the story.”

Kenzie swallowed hard. Why had she agreed to
this interview? When she’d been the friendly little Seattle
superhero, she had existed in relative anonymity, helping wherever
she could. But now that she had become an unwitting symbol of
human-off-worlder relations, a harbinger of supposed progress,
things felt as if they were spiraling out of control. Had Nick
tipped off Katie, despite Amelia’s insistence that they keep her
identity a secret? And if so, why not send a still from one of the
torture sessions that showed without a doubt what Galaxy Girl
looked like beneath her mask? Amelia’s excuse for keeping Kenzie’s
identity secret didn’t really hold up under close examination.
Unless…

Maybe Amelia really was trying to protect
Ava. Amelia knew better than most that if Kenzie’s identity were to
be revealed, Ava—Galaxy Girl’s girlfriend—would become an immediate
target. Was that the real reason she didn’t want Nick to reveal
Kenzie’s identity?

She was so caught up in her ponderings that
she didn’t notice Katie Carson crossing the room until D’aman
murmured, “Incoming.”

“Galaxy Girl,” Katie said smoothly, “it was
wonderful to meet you. I’m glad you returned to Seattle safely
after your ordeal. I must say, you are an inspiration to more than
merely off-worlders. I do hope we get a chance to speak again.”

“Thank you,” D’aman said, nodding. Their
smile faltered momentarily, but they seemed to recover. “Safe
travels.”

The reporter turned to Kenzie and extended a
hand. “Ms. Shepherd,” she said. “Best of luck to you.”

“Thank you,” Kenzie said, managing to keep
her voice cool. “You’re quite an inspiration yourself.”

“Why, thank you. I’ll be sure to keep an eye
on your… career.” And with that last cryptic comment, she swept
away.

“What was that?” Kenzie asked once she was
out of earshot.

“What was what?” D’aman deflected.

“Your weird smile thing.”

“Nothing.” D’aman lowered their voice. “Ms.
Carson just thought something a little… colorful. I think she was
testing my telepathic skills.”

“What?!” Kenzie caught herself and dropped
her voice to a whisper. “Oh my god, she totally knows I’m Galaxy
Girl, doesn’t she?”

“No, she thinks it’s just a rumor. Your
secret is as safe as it was before the interview.”

Which wasn’t all that safe to begin with.

#

It was almost dark when Kenzie left Hyperion.
On a nearby roof, she changed into her Galaxy Girl outfit before
flying to Kenmore, a suburb that lay along the northern edge of
Lake Washington. She found the neighborhood she was looking for
easily enough, but she had to check her phone a second time for the
right address. Google Maps navigation didn’t work from the air, and
all the houses in the planned community below her looked alike from
a distance.

Enhanced vision helped, though. At last, she
found the intersection she was looking for and touched down in the
front yard of a small house.

“Galaxy Girl!” Klon Rae leapt off the porch,
where she’d clearly been waiting for Kenzie. She was cloaked in
human form, with bright red hair pulled up into braids and
overalls. With her freckles and wide grin, she reminded Kenzie of
Pippi Longstocking.

“I know, right?” Klon Rae thought at her.
“Isn’t Pippi the coolest? I love her so much!” Suddenly, she
stopped, hands to her ears in a Markalian gesture of dismay. “I’m
sorry. I mean, may I converse with you in this way at this
time?”

“Yes, you may,” Kenzie said aloud, laughing.
As she approached the child who had saved her life, she felt her
eyes prick with tears. “May I hug you?”

“Yes!”

But she didn’t get a chance. Moving faster
than Kenzie would have thought possible, Klon Rae launched herself
into her arms. Kenzie staggered under her weight before squeezing
her tentatively. Klon Rae was more solid than a human, that was for
sure.

“You can hug me harder than that,” Klon Rae
thought.

So, she did.

Klon Rae was just as bubbly and brave in
person as she had been at Sentinel’s mountain stronghold. She
clutched Kenzie’s hand as she led her inside and proudly introduced
her to her entire family waiting in the living room. “This is my
friend, Galaxy Girl. Galaxy Girl, this is my family.”

Klon Rae didn’t release her grip on Kenzie’s
hand as her mother, also cloaked in human form, rushed forward and
enfolded Kenzie in an even more crushing hug. “Thank you for my
daughter’s safe return! I don’t know how we can ever repay
you.”

And—huh. Her voice sounded like it was
actually a voice, not a thought inside Kenzie’s head.

“That’s because it’s not in your head,” Klon
Rae transmitted. “My mom is human.”

Kenzie stared at the girl, and then she heard
what passed for a thought-giggle.

“Just kidding. Hah! You should have seen your
face. I totally had you. But really, my parents can project their
thoughts as speech using a transceiver from Markal. I have one too.
I just haven’t—”

“She hasn’t quite mastered the technique
yet,” her father said, sending an admonishing look at his daughter
as he stepped forward and clasped Kenzie’s free hand. “It’s good to
see you looking well. The last time we met, I’m afraid that was not
the case.”

Kenzie nodded and squeezed his hand.
“I am well, thanks to you and your daughter. I’m
not sure where I would be otherwise.”

“I must apologize,” he said, hanging his head
in a decidedly human gesture. “I’m truly ashamed of the part I
played in your capture and detainment by those—humans.” His
wife elbowed him, and he straightened. “I’m sorry. We try not to
speak ill of humans, as we are guests on their planet.”

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said. “In this case, I’m
pretty sure the ill will is entirely deserved. And you don’t have
to apologize. My capture wasn’t your fault. You were coerced.”

“That’s kind of you, but I should have
resisted. Instead, all I cared about was my daughter’s safety.”

“You did resist in the end,” Kenzie pointed
out. “Besides, most people in your position would have done the
same thing.”

“She really believes that, Dad,” Klon Rae
thought. “You can trust her.”

“Klon Rae,” her mother said, human scowl so
realistic that even Kenzie flinched a little. “You know better than
to repeat another’s thoughts without their permission!”

“Oh, yeah.” Klon Rae looked almost as
guilt-ridden as her dad. “Sorry, Galaxy Girl. My bad.”

“No, it’s fine.” Honestly, Kenzie felt a
little helpless. This whole situation was awkward even without the
multiple modes of communication required, each with its own form of
etiquette. “You know, I was already twelve in Earth years when I
settled here. The Alliance helped me learn English, but the
cultural cues and non-verbal stuff were difficult for a long time.
Sometimes they still are even now.”

Klon Rae gazed up at her. “It’s hard being
different, isn’t it?”

“It is. But it’s also a blessing of sorts
because it teaches you empathy. And for someone who isn’t
telepathic, learning how to be empathetic can also be
difficult.”

“How did you end up on Earth?” one of Klon
Rae’s siblings asked, eyes wide, and the conversation took a less
intense turn—much to the relief of everyone present, Kenzie was
pretty sure.

The visit lasted for another twenty minutes,
and then her phone dinged. Ava, checking to make sure she was okay
and that they were still on for dinner. Kenzie smiled a little as
she sent back a thumbs-up.

“See, I told you that lady was lying about
her,” Klon Rae thought, her tone smug.

“You did indeed,” Kenzie agreed as she rose
from the couch. “Thank you all for your hospitality, but I need to
get back to the city.”

There were handshakes and hugs, and then,
just as Kenzie was turning to leave, Klon Rae at her side, she
heard the young alien whisper-think, “Klar Nee doesn’t believe that
I’m your sidekick.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Kenzie added aloud.
“When are you available to report for sidekick training? We’ve got
a suit design for you to approve.”

Which was mostly true—Kenzie had asked Sloane
to find something in Galaxy Girl colors in Klon Rae’s size. At this
point, the suit was definitely in the works.

“Are you serious?” Klon Rae thought-shouted
as she jumped up and down. “Oh my god, you are! I’m going to be a
superhero!”

“In training,” Kenzie said, with a glance at
her young friend’s parents. “With parental approval and at times
that don’t interfere with school, of course.”

Klon Rae’s mother nodded, her smile, Kenzie
was relieved to note, genuine and even a bit emotional.

“Thank you,” she said to Kenzie. “Really.
Just, thank you.”

“I could say the same thing,” Kenzie said,
and reached out to hug the red-haired woman again.

It took another few minutes to extricate
herself from the grasp of her Markalian sidekick, but eventually
Kenzie found herself winging winglessly across the city toward
Ava’s penthouse, where she found her girlfriend waiting on the
balcony, a glass of wine in hand. Kenzie took advantage of the
distance to X-ray the apartment quickly, relieved when she didn’t
find anything out of the ordinary. Still, from what Sloane had told
her, the apartment wasn’t the safe refuge they’d convinced
themselves it was.

All at once, Kenzie remembered the night
she’d hovered outside Ava’s window in Hyperion Tower, not long
after they’d kissed for the first time and the Pendran refugee had
nearly wrecked a city block in a meltdown fueled by grief and
Sentinel’s infinity drug. What had Ava said that night? You
have to land sometime.  Had it only been a few months
since they’d started dating? That didn’t seem like nearly enough
time for everything that had transpired between them.

She ditched her suit, and soon she was
joining Ava on her balcony, the setting sun a hazy ball of orange
hanging over the outline of the Olympic Mountains in the
distance.

“Hi,” she said softly, sweeping forward to
enfold Ava in a careful hug. It was difficult to be away from her
now for any length of time. And yes, she realized that sounded
obsessive, which was why she hadn’t said as much out loud.

“I’m glad you’re here. I was worried about
you,” Ava admitted, nuzzling Kenzie’s neck.

“So was I,” she said. “I mean, about you, of
course.”

Ava laughed. “We’re such a mess.”

“Indeed, we are.”

They were both quiet, and then Ava asked,
“What are we going to do?”

Kenzie felt it too—the fear that neither of
them would be safe as long as Sentinel existed and Nick and Amelia
were at the helm. But she didn’t want Ava to worry, so she kissed
her cheek and smiled. “Personally, I was promised food, so…”

“Right. Of course.” But Ava’s smile was more
pensive than usual.

“Can we go out?” Kenzie asked.

Ava bit her lip. “I guess so. Where did you
have in mind?”

“Someplace far from here. What do you
say?”

The shadows in Ava’s eyes receded slightly.
“I’d say this date is sounding better by the moment.”

An hour later they were seated in a booth at
Kenzie’s favorite downtown Bellingham restaurant, Taammeni
headbands in place as they waited for their order of calzones and
gnocchi. Kenzie’s nondescript flight suit was stored in a bag at
her feet, and they were holding hands across the battered wooden
tabletop while college kids and families with young children
chattered away around them. Kenzie was more relaxed than she’d been
all day, mainly because it wasn’t likely Sentinel would track them
here.

“This place reminds me of college,” Ava
said.

“Reminds me of high school.”

“Did you used to study here?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I came here with Sloane,
though, for weekly sister check-ins.” She smiled a little, lost in
memories. “Sloane has always tried to make order from chaos.”

“And you’ve always made her job more
difficult, haven’t you?”

Kenzie grinned and shrugged. “Possibly. But
she likes the challenge.”

“I’m sure,” Ava said, sipping the house
sangria without making a face. Impressive, given that even Kenzie
could taste the cheapness of the wine base. “Sounds like your
standing brunch date with your sister has some pretty deep
roots.”

“Very deep. Sloane has always looked out for
me. I used to go up on the roof to look at the stars after everyone
else was in bed, and one night she used a rope to follow me up
there.”

“So, she was a badass even as a
teenager?”

Kenzie nodded. “She’s always been a
badass.”

“That I can believe.”

Kenzie pictured her sister’s face when they
came back from their long weekend in Vancouver. The relief that had
flooded Sloane’s system had been all too obvious, and Kenzie had
almost regretted not staying in Seattle like her sister would have
preferred.

She shook her head and ran her fingertip over
a pair of initials carved into the wooden tabletop. “Can we just, I
don’t know, talk about something other than our families? Like, how
was work? Any cool new tech that Matt will soon be drooling over
after stealing the specs from one of your servers?”

“As if he could hack my servers,” Ava
scoffed. “But I’ll make you a deal: I won’t bring up family if you
don’t ask about work.”

“Did something happen?” Kenzie asked, her
mind automatically going to Sentinel agents armed with off-world
weapons.

“Not yet. But my board insider informs me
that a vote of no confidence is all but guaranteed.”

Kenzie gaped at her. “They can’t do that, can
they?”

“Of course they can. It’s like impeachment—I
wouldn’t have to resign because of the vote, but
the board could make my work life hell. More hellish than it
currently is, that is.” She shook her head. “Let’s not talk about
it. Tell me about Klon Rae and her family. Did you get to meet them
all?”

Kenzie genuinely wanted to hear more about
the coup Hyperion’s board was planning. But as she began to tell
Ava about her “sidekick” and her family, she realized it was a
relief to chat about the Markalians instead of worrying about
Sloane’s fears or Ava’s hostile board of directors. Here in this
place with their headbands in place, they could pretend to be just
another normal couple, out together to enjoy cheap sangria and
giant calzones. And gnocchi, of course. Couldn’t forget the
beautiful Italian dumplings.

But just like their trip to Vancouver,
tonight’s break from real life could only ever be temporary.
Eventually, after a sizable meal and a long, peaceful walk along
the Bellingham Bay boardwalk, Kenzie flew them back to Seattle.

“Your place or mine?” she asked as they
approached the city limits.

“Yours.” Ava’s reply was immediate.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

It was hard to imagine wanting to sleep in
the place where Sentinel had spied on them for weeks. Sleep made
you incredibly vulnerable, and to think that tiny cameras had
catalogued their every move, every word, every sigh, transmitting
it all to a rental unit two floors down... The interlopers had long
since cleared out, but still, Kenzie was relieved that Ava hadn’t
wanted to spend much time there lately.

Then again, Kenzie’s apartment wasn’t
completely secure, either, as they were soon reminded.

Sloane was waiting on the couch when they got
there, a half-empty pint of cookie dough ice cream on her lap, the
DVR paused on the latest Game of Thrones episode.
Kenzie stopped as she took in the sight of her sister gazing at her
from the living room. Sloane hadn’t pestered her for information
about Coop even once, but it looked like her patience had worn
thin. Although maybe Kenzie was reading into things. It was
possible Sloane only wanted to rewatch GoT and
overdose on ice cream.

Kenzie set her keys on the kitchen island.
“Traitor. I can’t believe you’re watching without me.”

“And I can’t believe you took off to go god
knows where,” Sloane replied, stabbing the ice cream with her
spoon. “Hey, Ava,” she added, tone warmer.

“Hey, Sloane,” Ava said, voice similarly
tinged with what sounded to Kenzie like affection. She pointed
toward the bathroom. “I’m going to take a quick shower, so she’s
all yours.”

Sloane saluted, and Kenzie knew that her
intuition had been spot on. Looked like they’d be having “the
talk” tonight.

Ava started to slip past, but Kenzie caught
her hand. “Don’t abandon me!” she whispered under the pretense of
kissing her girlfriend.

“Just talk to her.” And with that, Ava
sauntered off to the bathroom.

Was an emergency too much to ask for right
about now? Kenzie strained her ears, listening to the sounds of the
city, but no sirens or cries for help presented themselves. Giving
up, she dropped onto the couch beside Sloane and reached for her
spoon.

“So, Coop,” Sloane said, launching right into
it.

Kenzie sucked a sweet spoonful of ice cream
into her mouth and swallowed before handing the utensil back. “So,
Coop.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened with
him, and he refuses to talk. I think I deserve to know the truth.
Did he really join Sentinel?”

Kenzie could have lied by omission. She could
have dodged the question, could have glossed over her conversation
with Coop and focused on the part where her sister’s mentor had
helped her escape Sentinel’s clutches. But Sloane had been there
for Kenzie so many times over the years. It was time for Kenzie to
return the favor. “Sloane,” she said softly, trying to think how to
word what had to be said.

Her sister’s shoulders dropped, and then she
was setting the ice cream aside and pushing back into a corner of
the couch, making herself a small ball of unblinking anxiety. “He
was really with them, wasn’t he?”

She wanted to soften the blow, but then she
thought about what Sloane would want. “Yes. He was.” She laid it
all out—how he entered her biometrically secure cell, armed and
unhurt; how he tried to convince her to cooperate; how he suggested
that the Westbrooks were only trying to protect the planet.

“Why would he say that?” Sloane’s
voice reflected the hurt in her eyes. “He doesn’t hate
off-worlders, I know he doesn’t. So why would he help
Sentinel?”

Kenzie blinked at the sudden heat behind her
own eyes. She knew she had to tell her sister what Coop had
admitted, but Alia, she wished she didn’t. “I’m so sorry,”
she started, but Sloane scooted closer, reaching for her hands.

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I joined Panopticon
hoping to help people like you, but I turned out to be helping the
people who hate you the most.”

“Stop,” Kenzie said. “This isn’t about me.
Coop was your mentor. I just hope you can hear me when I
tell you I’m sorry he wasn’t as strong as you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“He implied that he agreed to join them in
order to protect you.” She paused, waiting for the explosion that
was sure to come.

But after a moment, Sloane nodded slowly.
“Mika and I talked about it so many times, and the only thing I
could figure—other than a literal personality change—is that he
thought he was protecting someone. He doesn’t have anyone else,
Kenzie. It had to be me, didn’t it?”

Kenzie frowned, trying to ignore the flare of
jealousy at the thought of Sloane confiding in Mika instead of her.
“If you thought that, why didn’t you mention it before?” she asked,
and then winced at the petulance in her own tone. Nailed
it. Not.

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to burst
your bubble. You always see the best in people, Kenzie.”

Which was sweet, and also a tad
condescending, and overall, just so Sloane.

For her sister’s sake, Kenzie wished now
she’d thought to ask Klon Rae to read Coop’s thoughts when the
neural disruptor was off. Of course, the request probably hadn’t
occurred to her because for one thing she’d been totally out of it
by then, and for another, she hadn’t fully believed he would
help.

So much for seeing the best in people.

“What did he say, exactly?” Sloane asked,
gazing down at their linked hands.

“He said he was sorry, that we can’t all be
heroes.” She paused. “He also asked me to tell you that he didn’t
have a choice.”

Sloane shook her head, a hint of steel in the
clench of her jaw. “Bullshit. Seems pretty obvious what he
chose.”

“You,” Kenzie said. “He chose you, Sloane.
Would you do any differently in his shoes?”

Sloane pulled a hand free and rubbed her
eyes. “I don’t know. I’d like to think so.”

Kenzie had pondered this same question as she
sat with Ava in the hot tub in Vancouver, city lights making stars
overhead difficult to see. Would she have done things differently
if Sentinel had threatened her loved ones? Like Sloane, she would
like to think so. Ultimately, though, she couldn’t be sure.

“I’m sorry,” Kenzie said again, wishing she
could undo the months of not knowing what had happened to Coop, the
shock of realizing that he’d allowed Sloane to think he might be
dead when he was actually colluding with the enemy. “I didn’t want
to be the one to burst your bubble, either.”

“Don’t worry, I can differentiate between the
message and the messenger. Besides, he’s been with Sentinel for at
least a year, Kenzie. If nothing else, they’ve had plenty of time
to brainwash him.”

Kenzie nodded. Another day or two without
food and sleep, and Sentinel might have turned her, too.

“Thank you for telling me,” Sloane added,
squeezing her hands.

“What are sisters for?”

At that, she felt Sloane tug gently and
allowed herself to be pulled into her familiar embrace. Sighing,
she snuggled closer, inhaling Sloane’s scent mixed with what she
now recognized as Mika’s perfume. She wondered if she smelled like
Ava. Probably. Even their body chemistry was shifting now as she
and Sloane became more entwined with the women they had grown to
love.

“Can you believe this is our life now?”
Kenzie asked.

“Mine, yes,” Sloane said. “Yours, with the
costume and the billionaire girlfriend? Not so much.”

They cuddled for a little while talking about
their adolescent dreams of what life as an adult would be like, and
then Kenzie couldn’t resist the melting ice cream any longer.
Sloane hit play on the DVR, and soon it felt like just another
night with her sister beside her, bingeing their favorite show.
Kenzie couldn’t believe how close she’d come to possibly never
having another one of these evenings ever again, and as she caught
Sloane sneaking looks at her out of the corner of her eye, she had
a feeling Sloane couldn’t quite believe it, either.

Ava joined them a little while later, hair
damp and skin flushed from the shower, and as Kenzie sat squished
between the two most important people in her life, television
screen flickering in the otherwise dark apartment, she felt safer
and happier than she would have imagined possible.

#

The video interview made more of a splash
than Kenzie had anticipated.

“Dudes,” Matt said when she and Ava slid into
the usual booth at the pub the following night, “you guys have been
shared more than a million times already!”

“Um,” Kenzie said, frowning at his word
choice while beside her Ava lifted one sculpted eyebrow, “don’t you
mean the article has been shared more than a
million times?”

“Wha—?” Matt’s eyes widened and he hunkered
down, staring at his phone screen. “Whatever,” he said as everyone
within hearing range cracked up. “Really mature, you guys.”

“Says the man whose multiplayer name is
MattMobile,” Antonio said from the other side of the table. He had
been nicer to Ava since the kidnapping incident, which seemed to be
a trend. Maybe Kenzie should get held captive more often—or, like,
maybe never again, now that she thought about it.

Sloane elbowed Kenzie. “Seriously, great job
on the interview. We’ve seen another significant drop in anti-alien
chatter in the twenty-four hours since the video went live. Nicely
done, you two.”

“What can I say?” Kenzie said breezily. “You
can’t fake chemistry like ours.”

The unintended consequences of the interview
began appearing in Kenzie’s Twitter feed the following day,
dampening her enthusiasm. The first mention featured an outtake
from the interview that showed Galaxy Girl’s brown eyes gazing at
Ava, with Kenzie a blurry figure in the background. The caption
read, “Look at it this way, @KenzieShepherd_reporter: Not many
people can say they got dumped for a superhero. #Kenzava
#GalaxyCorp”

She immediately texted the link to Ava, who
responded with a laughing emoji followed by a heart-eyes emoji.

“This isn’t funny,” Kenzie texted back.

“Sweetheart, you have no need to worry. My
heart belongs to you, not Galaxy Girl.”

Within hours, the GalaxyCorp hashtag was
trending, and Kenzie was fielding teasing remarks at her desk in
the bullpen. She rushed through her edits on an emerging tech piece
for Aaron and then literally ran out of ECM, happy to escape her
gossiping coworkers.

Ava “comforted” her that night, and the
Twittersphere was soon otherwise engaged, but over the days that
followed, Kenzie still fielded more mentions than she usually did.
Besides the annoying tweets, though, life began to settle down. By
the time they were a week out, the GalaxyCorp ship had lost steam,
mostly due to Ava posting a rare Instagram photo of herself in a
U-Dub tee, one arm looped around Kenzie’s neck, their smiling faces
close together, accompanied by the caption, “My favorite
Seattleite.” As per Sloane’s request, Kenzie was mostly obscured,
but you couldn’t miss her glasses and ponytail or the
pink button-up she had worn during the Westbrook/Galaxy Girl
interview. Kenzie’s ego was soothed even though, as Sloane and Matt
pointed out, it wasn’t like Ava could actually cheat on her with
Galaxy Girl. But whatever. The rest of the world didn’t know
that.

A few days later, Panopticon learned that
Nick and Amelia had been spotted in Eastern Europe. Kenzie and
Sloane wanted to go after them, but D’aman argued that it might be
a trap intended to lure Galaxy Girl out—again. Martalla, D’aman’s
fellow Kreedilan, volunteered to accompany D’aman on the scouting
trip, and while the pair returned two days later with no additional
intel on Sentinel’s leaders, they seemed noticeably closer. The
rest of the group teased D’aman about their love life, and Kenzie
felt almost as swoony for her old friend as she had felt for
herself when she’d first started dating Ava. D’aman had been alone
for so long. Seeing them with a sparkle in their eye and an extra
spring in their already springy step was beautiful.

Another week passed, and life was beginning
to settle into a cautious rhythm. With Katie Carson’s magic touch,
Galaxy Girl’s brand was on the rise, which meant anti-off-worlder
protests were becoming less popular. Editorials had begun to focus
more on the negative economic impact of anti-alien groups than on
criminal acts by rogue aliens. Aaron, citing Kenzie’s knack at
drafting evocative personal profiles, assigned her a regular column
focused on off-worlders who were making positive community impacts
in Seattle and beyond, and even the national news was beginning to
shift from alien crime coverage to off-worlder interest pieces.

Meanwhile, Kenzie and Ava were trying to
prioritize their relationship without neglecting the Super Friends,
which they did by going on regular double-dates with Mika and
Sloane and playing Game Night with D’aman, Martalla, and the boys.
Ava was still the COO of a Fortune 500 company—at least for now—and
her schedule was still packed with meetings, events, and
conferences, and Kenzie was still a superhero at the beck and call
of Panopticon and local authorities and, really, anyone who needed
help. Sentinel was still out there, and the anti-alien movement was
probably only biding its time. But even so, Kenzie couldn’t help
feeling that the tide might finally be turning back in the
direction of tolerance.

“I don’t know, you guys,” she said one Friday
night nearly a month after the infamous #GalaxyCorp interview, “but
I kind of feel like maybe everything will be all right.”

She and Ava were sitting on one side of their
usual booth at the pub, and Kenzie didn’t need superpowers to pick
up on the immediate reaction among her human companions. Mika
rapped her knuckles on the wooden tabletop, Sloane knocked back a
quick shot of tequila, and Ava leaned away from her, frowning.

“Sentinel is reorganizing as we speak,”
Sloane said. “We can’t afford to get complacent,
Kenzie. You can’t afford to let your guard down,
not even for a second.”

Kenzie knew that. She still occasionally had
nightmares that resembled the false memories planted by the memory
modifier, a long-term effect of the device she was sure Nick would
have loved to know about. But even so… “Being hopeful isn’t the
same as being complacent, Sloane.”

Ava lifted Kenzie’s hand and kissed her
fingers. “I wish I had your optimism, love. As long as my mother
and brother are out there, I’m afraid I agree with Sloane. We can’t
afford to relax, not until they’ve been apprehended.”

“Same,” Mika said, and took a gulp of beer.
And then, pursing her lips, she added, “So. What does everyone have
planned for Labor Day? Should we do a barbecue at Sloane’s?”

“No plans yet,” Ava said, directing a
flirtatious look at Kenzie. “But a barbecue at Sloane’s sounds out
of this galaxy.”

Mika and Sloane both groaned, but Kenzie
laughed. She loved when Ava said cheesy things because she knew
that underneath the flirty smile, Ava meant every word.

#

The lull lasted a total of six weeks. Six
weeks of learning to sleep through the night again, of trying to
focus on the good rather than the bad, of watching relative peace
and prosperity return to Seattle and Hyperion. It wasn’t as if
crime just stopped, of course. There were human criminals on
the loose and off-worlders occasionally causing trouble, but the
immediate threats to Seattle were more on an individual basis than
on a global scale.

Sentinel had to be planning something, of
that the Super Friends had no doubt. But while Sloane disliked the
idea of waiting to see what that plan might be, Mika counselled
patience. Something wicked would come their way, but there was an
advantage to being well-rested. In any case, though they followed
up on the remainder of known Labyrinth locations, the files Ava had
uncovered were officially a dead end. Sentinel must have figured
out the connection was being investigated and appeared to have
moved their operation someplace entirely new.

When the uneasy standoff ended, Kenzie didn’t
realize at first. It was the next to last Saturday of August, and
Kenzie and Ava had decided on dinner at her place, a viewing of
their favorite romantic movie, and a candlelit bath. In other
words, an evening at home just for them.

And yet… Kenzie couldn’t resist
a little bit of Galaxy Girl-foolery. She was in
Italy picking up Ava’s favorite ravioli when her phone vibrated.
She stepped outside the restaurant and opened her message app.

“Where are you?” Ava had texted.

“ETA 15 minutes,” Kenzie texted back.
“Everything OK?”

The thumbs-up she received in reply was a bit
curt, so she figured Ava was probably stuck in traffic on her way
up Queen Anne Hill. But when she walked into her apartment fourteen
minutes and three seconds later—she liked to time her flights, and
this was a new record—her girlfriend was seated at the dining table
frowning, a small cell phone Kenzie didn’t recognize in her
hands.

“What’s up?” Kenzie asked, setting her Galaxy
Girl bag on the kitchen island.

“We need to talk,” Ava said, her voice
flat.

“Okay.” She sat down across from her
girlfriend, trying to read the odd look in her eyes. What the heck
was going on?

“We have to break up,” Ava said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, we have to break up.” She winked,
one eyelid drooping slower than the other. And then she whispered
lower than most frequencies, “Just play along.”

Kenzie frowned. “Um, okay?”

“Seriously? That’s all you have to say?”

“Are you sure?” she tried again. And then,
truthfully, “I don’t understand.”

“You’ve got that right,” Ava said hotly. She
winked again as she rose to her feet, momentarily towering over
Kenzie. “I can’t believe I ever thought this would work. Don’t call
me. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk. If I’m
ready to talk.”

She turned and flounced out of the room. But
as the door closed behind her, Kenzie heard a barely audible,
“Angelica’s. ASAP.”

Suddenly, Kenzie was alone in her apartment,
all thoughts of a romantic night with her girlfriend blown utterly
to bits. What had just happened? Like, seriously, what the
hell? She sighed as she stowed the takeout in her refrigerator
and prepared to head out again.

Freaking humans and their penchant for drama.
There was always something, wasn’t there?

Chapter Fifteen

“What do you mean, Ava just broke up with
you?” Sloane set her glass of Scotch on her kitchen counter.

“I don’t know, Sloane. It was really weird.
Something strange is going on.”

“Obviously. That girl loves the shit out of
you.”

“I mean, I thought she did.” Kenzie paused as
she noticed for the first time that Sloane was clad in a fancy
bathrobe cinched loosely over what was unmistakably a slip of
lingerie. “Crap, am I interrupting again?” she asked, glancing
around the kitchen as if Mika might be hiding behind a large piece
of furniture.

“Nope,” Sloane said, giving the “p” an extra
pop.

Kenzie’s gaze rested on the glass of Scotch
on the island. “Why are you drinking alone on a Saturday
night?”

“I don’t know. Why did Ava break up with
you?” Sloane shot back, and then sighed as Kenzie’s face scrunched
up. “I’m sorry. It’s been a really long day. Tell me what happened
with Ava. What did she say, exactly?”

Kenzie paced back and forth as she described
her girlfriend’s bizarre behavior. “I’m pretty sure I heard her say
‘Angelica’s ASAP’ as she was leaving,” she said, coming to a stop
beside the counter.

Sloane was already heading toward the stairs.
“How sure, Kenzie?”

“Like, ninety-nine percent?” And then, as
Sloane shucked off her robe, she spun away, covering her eyes.
“Dude! I did not need to see that!”

“I think you seeing my date night underwear
is the least of our problems right now.”

“It’s not a competition, Sloane.”

Kenzie heard her sister gasp as she headed up
the stairs. “Bite your tongue! Everything is a
competition.”

In less than a minute, Sloane was back,
dressed in her weekend secret agent uniform of black shirt, black
jacket, and black jeans, her favorite gun strapped into her thigh
holster. She had told Kenzie once that she felt stronger and more
sure of herself in her work clothes. Now that Kenzie had a
superhero uniform of her own, she kind of got it.

“Ready?” her sister asked, grabbing her bike
keys from their hook.

Kenzie bit her lip. “No, but let’s go.”

Which wasn’t the Super Friends’ official
motto but, frankly, probably should be.

#

Angelica was still living in the safe house
near the arboretum. After Kenzie’s successful rescue, Ava had asked
her Xandilan security chief to stay in Seattle. For now, Ava was
footing the Airbnb bill until Angelica could find something more
permanent. Besides, she’d told Kenzie, she didn’t want to let go of
their operation headquarters until Nick and Amelia had been
captured and Sentinel destroyed for good this time.

Apparently, she’d been right to be wary.

Ava was waiting in the windowless downstairs
server room when Kenzie and Sloane reached the house. As soon as
she saw Kenzie descending the stairs, Ava ran to her and flung
herself into her arms.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean any of that!
It’s my god-damned mother again.”

“It’s fine,” Kenzie said, stroking her hair.
“I figured. Are you okay?”

D’aman arrived just then, accompanied by
Martalla. Kenzie was glad to see that the signal ring, which Sloane
and Mika had managed to recover from the Idaho facility, still
worked.

“What’s happening?” D’aman asked, their
wrinkled brow more creased than usual.

“That’s what we were just about to find out,”
Sloane said.

They sat down at the conference table, and
Ava clung to Kenzie’s hand as she launched into an explanation of
her earlier behavior. It all started with the burner phone she’d
discovered in her purse after a meeting crosstown late that
afternoon. She remembered a young woman bumping into her on her way
to her car, but she hadn’t thought much of the encounter.

“When did you find the burner?” Sloane
asked.

Kenzie was barely listening. She couldn’t
help thinking that if Sentinel could slip a phone into Ava’s
purse…

“Not until I got back to my office,” Ava
said. “An alert went off, and I pulled it out—”

“Ava!” Kenzie stood up so quickly her chair
overturned. “It could have been an explosive device! Why didn’t you
call security?”

“I haven’t exactly been sure who to trust
lately, Kenzie,” Ava said, her expression unflappable.

“What about me? You should have called
me!”

“Actually,” Ava said, “it’s a good thing I
didn’t. Because if I had, the children’s wing of that new
off-worlder clinic by the waterfront would be nothing but smoking
rubble right now.”

Kenzie froze. “What?”

“Do you want to elaborate on that?” Sloane
asked.

The text, Ava told them, was very clear: She
had twenty-four hours to end her relationship with Kenzie and
deliver herself to Sentinel. If she failed to comply, Nick—“Because
let’s be real: this has my brother’s name all over it”—would
destroy the children’s wing of the off-worlder clinic. If Ava
contacted the authorities or was seen consorting with Kenzie/Galaxy
Girl at any point in that time frame, the hospital would be
destroyed immediately.

“The thing is,” Ava added, gazing between the
two sisters, “the clinic isn’t the only target.”

Kenzie felt the hair on the back of her neck
rise. “Who, Ava? Who else did he threaten?”

Ava sighed but didn’t look away. “Your
parents.”

“Jane and Ben?” Sloane asked unnecessarily,
her voice gruff.

Ava nodded.

Kenzie stood motionless, fists clenching and
unclenching as she tried to maintain her fast-slipping control. A
freaked-out Galaxy Girl was exactly what Sentinel wanted, but she
couldn’t help it. This was all her fault. She’d had to play the
hero, and now her family—not to mention all those children at the
clinic—stood to lose their lives. Maybe it would have been better
if Nick had just killed her when he had the chance.

Sloane moved toward her. “Hey,” she said, her
grip tight on Kenzie’s arms, “stay with me, okay? I need you on
this one, Kenzie. Mom and Dad need you.”

Kenzie swallowed and nodded, the horror
fading a little as she focused on Sloane. “Okay,” she said, still
nodding. “I’m good. I’m fine.”

“Where is this phone now?” Sloane added,
turning back to Ava. “And how do you know you weren’t seen coming
here?”

“The phone is with Angelica in a movie
theater not far from here. I have one hour and then I need to
return. And don’t worry, I checked the device. It has location and
audio tracking enabled but not video.”

“That doesn’t mean Sentinel couldn’t be
following you,” Sloane said, her tone annoyed.

“Yes, but it’s highly unlikely they think I’m
anywhere but in that theater. Angelica is wearing my face.”

Having off-worlder friends was handy
sometimes—like now, when your girlfriend’s supervillain family
members tried to destroy your world. Kenzie pictured Ben and Jane
reading and listening to classical music in the living room back
home, Ben sitting in his favorite recliner by the picture window
that looked out over Bellingham Bay, Jane with her socked feet up
on the fancy couch she bought only after Kenzie and Sloane moved
out. They wouldn’t have any idea what hit them. Or maybe they
would, and that would be so much worse.

“Okay,” Sloane said, leaning against the
table, “let’s review. You’ve fulfilled step one of their
instructions but not step two. If you don’t text to say you’re
turning yourself over to them by this time tomorrow, they’ll kill a
bunch of off-worlder children and”—she faltered, then resumed—“our
parents. Does that cover it?”

Ava nodded and glanced at Kenzie, her eyes
worried. But Kenzie only looked away, trying to keep her breathing
steady.

“Right.” Sloane pushed away from the table.
“We’d better get you back to that theater while we figure out a
plan. Can Angelica cover for you again in the morning?”

Kenzie stared at her sister. “We can’t let
her leave this house, Sloane!”

“It’s fine,” Ava said, rising to catch
Kenzie’s hands in her own. “I’ll be okay. Besides, it’s probably
better if I don’t know what you’re planning.”

“But you can’t… I won’t…” Kenzie felt her
cheeks turning blotchy as she fought back tears.

“I promise I’ll come back to you,” Ava said
softly, leaning up to kiss her cheek.

“Isn’t that my line?” Then she pulled Ava to
her, but more slowly and carefully than usual. Her emotions might
be teetering on the edge of control, but she couldn’t afford for
her body to do the same. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

And then Ava kissed her, soft and sweet,
right there in front of everyone.

#

Ava had only been gone a short time when Matt
arrived, followed almost immediately by Agent Rodriguez from
Panopticon. But still no Mika, Kenzie noted. If this wasn’t such a
crisis, she would have pinned Sloane to a chair and demanded to
know what had happened. As it was, she didn’t comment, not even
when her sister called Rodriguez instead of her own girlfriend.
Sloane had debated calling in anyone from Panopticon, but in the
end, they’d decided they needed the extra firepower, and Rodriguez
could be trusted.

Or so they’d thought.

Kenzie was standing beside her sister, arms
folded across her chest, as Sloane started to fill in the new
arrivals. “You’re here because it has come to our attention that
Kenzie and Ava…” Sloane’s brow furrowed as she gazed down at the
note Rodriguez had just shoved in front of her.

Kenzie looked over her shoulder, starting as
she read the words: “I’m wearing a Sentinel
wire!!!!” Stunned, she glanced up at the stone-faced agent,
who pointed at the note before giving Sloane the universal “Go on!”
hand signal. Which, what the hell? Was Sentinel seriously listening
to their every word?

“Well,” Sloane said, clearly stalling, “I
guess I’m not entirely sure how to put it.”

“It’s okay.” Kenzie glanced up from the note.
“Ava and I broke up.”

Matt stared at her. “What?”

“I was surprised, too,” Kenzie said. “But
that’s not the main reason you’re here.”

“Right,” Sloane said, nodding. “Why don’t you
fill them in, Kenzie?”

“Okay. Well, I received a threatening DM
earlier today,” Kenzie said, thinking on the fly. “They knew way
too much personal stuff for it to be random, so I brought it to
Sloane, and she thought you guys might be able to help. You know,
off the record.”

Matt was still staring at her like she was
crazy, and Kenzie found herself wishing he had D’aman’s telepathic
skills. Not now, Greenie, she thought. Fortunately, he
seemed to realize something was up because he kept quiet. Which,
for him, was nothing short of a miracle.

Sloane regarded Rodriguez evenly. “Agent
Rodriguez, I’d like you to work with our techie friend here to try
to track down the user, see if it’s someone connected to a known
hate group or simply a rogue citizen who doesn’t like journalists.
In the meantime, the rest of us will brainstorm potential
responses.”

Rodriguez looked up from the note she was
furiously scribbling. “Happy to help,” she said, neutral tone
belying her drawn expression. With one last weighted glance at
Sloane, she slid the pad of paper across the table while Matt
shrugged and fired up the closest server.

As soon as they were upstairs, Kenzie crowded
Sloane for a look at the note. “What does it say?”

“I’m sorry,” Sloane read. “They said they
would kill my wife if I didn’t cooperate. USE ME. I can be
a… And then it ends.”

“A double agent,” D’aman supplied. “She wants
us to use her as a double agent.”

“Could you tell she was working with
Sentinel?” Sloane asked.

“No,” they said. “In addition to the wire,
Sentinel gave her a bracelet that generates a neural feedback
loop.”

“How do you know that?” Kenzie asked.

“Because she turned it off right after she
entered the house, thereby allowing me full access to her thoughts
and memories. Sentinel informed her a few hours ago to report right
away if she got called into work, so she knew they must be planning
something big.”

“Did she call them?” Kenzie asked.

D’aman shook their head. “Not yet. She needs
to soon, though. She’s wearing the wire, but she wants to help. Of
course, she also wants to keep her wife alive.”

“Fuck,” Sloane said, groaning.

“Fuck,” Kenzie echoed, her brow wrinkling.
Rodriguez’s wife was another innocent they needed to save from
Sentinel’s clutches. How did the list keep growing?

Still, this meant they had the upper hand.
For possibly the first time in the history of their interaction,
the Super Friends had a chance to get out in front of Sentinel.
Nick was going to rue the day he brought Jane and Benjamin into
this, Kenzie thought, clenching a fist. She would make sure of that
personally.

#

With all those talented minds, a plan soon
began to take shape.

As part of phase one, Rodriguez carried her
phone out to the backyard and hit dial while the others listened
in.

“Code?” Kenzie heard the voice at the other
end ask brusquely.

Rodriguez checked her screen and read back a
number.

After a moment, the voice grunted. “Do you
have anything to report?”

“Yes,” she said, and paused.

She could do this, Kenzie thought, willing
Rodriguez to speak. She had to do this.

Rodriguez cleared her throat. “Agent Shepherd
asked me to help her with a social media thing for her sister.”

“Kenzie Shepherd?” the voice asked
sharply.

“Yeah, the reporter. She seems really upset,
and I overheard her tell Agent Shepherd that she never should have
dated a Westbrook, that they were all alike and none of them could
be trusted.”

There was a pause, and Kenzie heard typing at
the other end. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” she said.

The line went dead, and Rodriguez tucked the
burner phone back inside the thigh pocket of her cargo pants.
Kenzie watched her glance up at the sky, where the still
mostly-full moon was rising over the treetops. Was she praying for
her wife’s safety? If so, Kenzie knew how she felt.

Please, Alia, she thought, keep
them both safe. Keep them ALL safe.

Rodriguez came back inside and gave them a
thumbs-up before returning downstairs to chase down false social
media leads with Matt. The plan was in action.

“Do you need me here for this part?” Kenzie
asked Sloane.

“No, but don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m from a species that makes yours look
like Neanderthals.”

“That may be true, but geniuses fall prey to
their emotions just as much as the next person. Maybe even
more.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

Kenzie launched herself into the air from the
backyard and zoomed away from the city. Her first stop was
Bellingham, where she hovered high above her childhood home. By
now, her adopted parents were asleep, unaware of the van parked a
block from their house, its inhabitants monitoring a bevy of
tracking devices. Though every part of her longed to strike the van
with her body at full speed, to simply crush the Sentinel team out
of existence, she remembered Sloane’s warning and, with a last look
at her peacefully unaware parents, zipped back toward Seattle.
Again, she avoided human and computer detection as she surveyed the
off-worlder clinic. She didn’t notice anything amiss, but then
again, a strike team was easier to hide in a city of millions than
in a town like Bellingham.

Turning, she flew a few blocks north and
paused again, a thousand feet above the city. Even though it was
well past midnight now, Ava was sitting up in bed, Kindle open on
her lap. As Kenzie floated among the clouds, she watched her
girlfriend reread the same page over and over again. She wished she
could swoop down and take Ava in her arms, hold her until both of
their heartbeats calmed, until they fell asleep listening to each
other breathe. She wished none of this was happening. She wished
she could simply dial back time, return to a period when Nick was
rotting in prison and Amelia was still working secretly towards his
release. If Kenzie had been able to see into the future, she might
have exercised her power more ruthlessly. She might have even
become the killing machine the Thornton-Westbrooks predicted she
would.

Was that their aim? To bring out the darkness
buried inside her heart, tamped down and hidden beneath the layers
of resilience and hope? If it was, she decided as she hovered above
Ava’s building, then that was what they would get. She was tired of
being the mouse to Nick’s cat.

Come and get me, she thought, wishing
just for a moment that Ava’s brother was telepathic.

Too restless to sleep, she kept an eye on the
city all night, returning again and again to check on Ava from
afar. She figured Sentinel wouldn’t find that behavior suspicious,
were they to notice her skulking around her supposed
ex-girlfriend’s residence. Humans were notoriously stalkerish; she
was just doing her bit to fit in.

Ava, she was glad to see, finally dropped off
to sleep sometime in the middle of the night. She would need to be
at least a little rested if she was going to play the part they’d
written for her. If all went according to plan, Nick would be back
in prison tonight, and Amelia would have an orange jumpsuit of her
own. Or—but Kenzie stopped the thought. She didn’t want to murder
Ava’s mother and brother. Well, to be honest, she sort of did, but
she couldn’t imagine living with herself afterward. Or, more to the
point, she couldn’t imagine Ava living with her.

At sunrise, when Ava’s alarm went off, she
opened her eyes and said, “Kenzie,” her voice little more than a
sigh.

“I’m here,” she whispered as wispy clouds
swirled around her.

Ava didn’t believe in things she couldn’t
see, but maybe she felt Kenzie’s presence. Or maybe she just
guessed what Kenzie was up to because she lifted her eyes skyward
and said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” But the wind whipped her
words away.

Ava kept up a quiet monologue as she got
ready for the day, and Kenzie found a spot on the Space Needle,
listening as she swung her feet over empty space and watched the
sun rise. Ava described a dream in which she and Kenzie had flown
high up in the atmosphere, the lights of the city a smudge below
them, the stars mere pinpricks among the vast blackness of
space.

“You told me you had me,” Ava said as she
began to apply her makeup. “You said you would protect me.
Always.”

“I will,” Kenzie said from her perch atop the
Space Needle. “I promise. Everything will be okay.”

The rising sun seemed to agree, and Kenzie
crossed her fingers as she stepped off the Space Needle into open
air and flew away.

#

Mika showed up at Angelica’s house just after
Kenzie got there, accompanied by a handful of off-worlders Kenzie
recognized from various protests across the city. She was glad
Sloane had convinced her to wear the Taammeni headband to the
briefing. Otherwise, her secret identity would be more of an open
secret.

“Please, we would like to help,” said a
Vortilan with neck gills just visible beneath her shirt collar.

Kenzie squinted. Was that Mika’s
ex-girlfriend? Possibly, because beside Kenzie, Sloane was standing
motionless, her mouth open as she stared at Mika and company.

“What?” The detective flipped her hair over
her shoulder. “You said all hands on deck.”

“I also said ‘top secret’ and ‘on a
need-to-know basis,’ Mika!”

“Sloane.” Kenzie caught her sister’s wrist.
“We could use the help, couldn’t we?”

Sloane hesitated, her brow dark. “Fine. But
you’re in charge of this ragtag unit,” she told Mika. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

Sloane glared one last time and stalked
away.

There was an awkward pause, and then Mika
turned to Kenzie with a slight grimace. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you,” Kenzie said,
gesturing to the off-worlders milling around, chatting quietly
amongst themselves. “Are you and Sloane… are you guys okay?”

“I don’t know. I said something stupid last
night, and now she won’t talk to me.”

“She’s just really scared. Trust me—she needs
you right now.”

Mika’s eyes tracked Sloane to the kitchen.
“Are you sure? She seems pissed. Maybe I should give her
space.”

How could humans be so obsessed with romantic
love and yet be so stupid about it at the same time? “She’s only
angry because she’s worried,” Kenzie said, trying to be patient.
“Anger is easier to process than fear. Give her a minute and then
try to talk to her—and don’t let her push you away.”

Mika nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Kenz.”

Matt and Antonio wandered over then, and
while Kenzie introduced them to the new “recruits,” Mika followed
her advice and pulled Sloane aside. Kenzie tried not to use her
powers to eavesdrop, she really did, but, well, she failed
miserably. She pretended to pay attention to Matt’s explanation of
the similarity between neural feedback loops and video feed loops,
but she was really listening to Mika’s careful apology for
misspeaking the night before—something about a local restaurant
that sounded innocuous to Kenzie, but what did she know?—and
Sloane’s initial refusal to back down. Mika stayed calm and didn’t
react defensively, though, and at last Sloane accepted her apology.
She even confessed, “I’m really glad you’re here. It
was killing me not telling you what was going
on.”

“What is going on?” Mika
asked.

As Sloane caught her girlfriend up on Ava’s
predicament, Mika’s eyes drifted to Kenzie, who averted her gaze.
Probably not fast enough, but if Mika didn’t like dating the sister
of an off-worlder with superpowers, there were plenty of other fish
in Seattle’s lesbian cop dating pool.

D’aman and Martalla arrived next, touching
down in the backyard along with a Markalian Kenzie didn’t
recognize.

“This is Plio Kan,” D’aman said. “They were
instrumental in helping us find you, Galaxy Girl.”

Kenzie bowed deeply. “Thank you, Plio Kan. I
owe you a debt of gratitude that I hope one day to repay.”

“Do not trouble yourself,” the Markalian
said. “It is our duty as off-worlders to look out for each other.
That is why I am here now.”

Kenzie nodded. “Well, please accept my
thanks, anyway.”

Plio Kan inclined their head graciously.

The next arrival popped into existence in the
backyard a few minutes later, and Kenzie rushed over to meet her.
She’d hoped Klon Rae’s mother would come but hadn’t known for sure
until the moment Klim Nak materialized. Like Plio Kan, she appeared
in her true form dressed in Markalian battle regalia, which made
the hug she offered Kenzie a tad awkward.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Kenzie said
as they separated.

“Of course. Klon Rae wanted to be here too,
but we were able to convince her that her lack of control over her
powers made her more of a liability than an asset. She said to tell
you she’s with you in spirit.”

“I appreciate that more than she knows.”
Kenzie didn’t need telepathy to know how difficult it must have
been to keep the girl away.

“We have a saying on Markal,” Plio Kan said,
joining them. “Individually we are one atom; together, we are the
sun.”

“Well said, my friend.” Klim Nak nodded to
Plio Kan, and then both fell silent, their heads tilted in the
telltale sign of a private telepathic conversation.

Kenzie glanced around at the mixed
human-off-worlder team they’d managed to assemble at short notice.
Everyone they’d expected had shown up along with quite a few they
hadn’t, and the pieces were almost in place to take on Sentinel.
Now all they needed was Ava.

At Sloane’s suggestion, the team moved inside
and gathered in the server room in Angelica’s daylight basement—AKA
operation headquarters—for final preparations. While Kenzie fought
the urge to blur downtown to search for her girlfriend, Sloane and
D’aman moved from group to group, briefing the team members on
their roles. Another quarter of an hour passed, and still the only
missing link was Ava. Rodriguez had already texted to say she was
holding in place, ready to move as soon as Klim Nak was in
position, but the operation couldn’t begin until they knew Ava was
ready.

“Where is she?” Kenzie muttered to herself,
checking the time again. Ava should have made the switch with
Angelica and found her way to the house by now. Had something gone
wrong?

And then, as if Ava had heard her question,
she appeared.

The server room was so crowded that no one
else seemed to notice the woman dressed in all black descending the
stairs. But then Ava removed her black baseball cap and shook out
her long, beautiful curls, and Kenzie felt the familiar rush of
warmth at the sight of her girlfriend. Pride, too—Ava was talented
and beautiful, and for some reason, she loved Kenzie back.

Then Ava tripped on the bottom step, and
Kenzie remembered that athletic prowess wasn’t one of her
girlfriend’s many attributes.

She reached Ava’s side in an instant,
righting her and checking her over for injury. “You okay?” she
asked, using Ava’s slight misstep as an excuse to hold her
close.

Ava nodded. “I’m good. You?”

Kenzie only shrugged, anxiety gnawing at her
insides. Now that Ava was here, she didn’t know if she would be
able to sit back and just let her walk into the lion’s den, as the
plan required. Maybe she should scoop Ava up and fly her away—but
then what about the off-worlder children? What about Jane and Ben,
who still had no idea they were in danger? What about Rodriguez’s
wife and all the other innocents who stood to lose their lives
today? What about Ava’s autonomy and Kenzie’s promise to respect
her boundaries?

All compelling points, really. Which left
only one option. “Why can’t you switch with Angelica for the rest
of the day?” Kenzie asked. “I know she offered to pretend to be
you, and she’s basically indestructible. You’re… not.” Her mind
unhelpfully supplied the variety of ways in which Ava could die
during this operation, a dizzying array that insisted on replaying
on a continuous loop.

“I wish I could, love,” Ava said.

“But you can. That’s the whole
point. It’s your choice!”

“You’re right, it is my choice, and I can’t
ask someone else to fight this battle for me. Amelia and Nick are
my family, and it’s my responsibility to face
them.”

This was ridiculous. Kenzie had previously
stated she couldn’t promise not to do everything in her power to
keep Ava safe, up to and including going against Ava’s will, and
the Vancouver condo was just sitting there, empty.

Ava’s eyes narrowed. “Kenzie, don’t even
think about it.”

Great. Now Ava was telepathic, too. “Fine,”
she said, practically spitting the word.

It wasn’t fine at all, of course. Faced with
an impossible choice, Kenzie was tempted to storm off, to put
distance between herself and this puny human she loved so
much but who insisted on risking herself unnecessarily. But
then she remembered her mother and father kissing her goodbye,
recalled how she’d clung to the memory of that last embrace ever
since. This battle of wills couldn’t be how her relationship with
Ava ended.

With effort, she let go of her anger and
frustration, pushed aside everything except her overpowering love
for the stubborn, strong, terrifyingly fragile human being standing
before her.

“Fine,” she repeated more quietly, her
shoulders slumping as she accepted Ava’s decision. She pulled Ava
in for what she told herself was
absolutely not their last ever
hug, goddammit. “I love you, but I hate that you insist
on taking this risk.”

“Fair enough,” Ava said, kissing her cheek.
“But you can’t live in fear. You more than anyone should know
that.”

Behind them, Sloane cleared her throat, and
Kenzie could almost hear her sister complaining that they had an op
to run, for eff’s sake. Reluctantly, Kenzie stepped back, but she
kept hold of Ava’s hand. She didn’t plan on letting go until she
absolutely had to.

“Listen up, everyone,” Sloane said. “We’re
almost ready. I don’t think I have to tell you what’s at stake
today, but I’m going to anyway. For years, Sentinel and the
Westbrooks, with one exception”—and here she glanced at Ava, who
nodded back—“have made life difficult for Earth’s off-world
citizens. Once again, their xenophobia and hatemongering have gone
too far. I’m not speaking in hyperbole when I say this may be our
only chance to turn the tide against them. Up to now, Sentinel has
proven elusive. But today that changes.”

A ripple of anticipation ran through the
room. Kenzie gazed across the assembled faces, trying not to wonder
who would still be alive at the end of the day and who might not
be; whose career might be ended by devastating injury; who might be
plagued by PTSD for the rest of their lives because of the plan
Kenzie, D’aman, and Sloane had drawn up. This was the job Sloane
had done for years, and Kenzie at last had begun to understand the
risks—and consequences—her sister faced daily. Sloane was the type
of person who confronted conflict head-on, who didn’t believe in
denial as a coping mechanism. This was the life Sloane had chosen,
and Kenzie suspected she would sacrifice anything to protect the
innocent, the weak, the disenfranchised.

Her gaze fell on Mika, who was watching
Sloane with a small, proud smile. Well, maybe
not anything.

With Matt clicking through the schematics on
the screen behind her, Sloane went over each step of the operation
one final time, answering last-minute questions as they arose. When
she’d finished, she turned to Kenzie.

“Galaxy Girl, do you have anything you’d like
to say?”

Kenzie blinked in surprise, and then, with
Ava’s encouraging smile, she joined Sloane at the front of the
room. She gazed around the group slowly, making eye contact with
each member of the team in turn. “I just want to say thank you to
everyone here. Your courage and strength remind me what we fight
for every day—freedom, justice, equality. For hope and, yes, love.
My people have a motto, Al-zin minarah, or ‘stronger
together.’ That’s what we are, all of us in this room: stronger
together.”

Another excited ripple ran through the
volunteers, and Sloane nodded at the faces turned their way. “It’s
go time. Be safe out there.” And with a nod to Matt, she pushed a
button on her military grade watch. The operation clock had
begun.

Kenzie glanced at D’aman, who was preparing
to leave with the first wave.

“We have this,” they said, clasping her
elbow.

She hoped so. “Be careful.”

“I will. You, too.”

D’aman nodded to someone behind her, and
Kenzie turned to see Antonio watching her, eyebrows raised. She
nodded, and he gave her a lazy salute before following D’aman to
the stairs.

“Where’s he going?” Ava asked.

Kenzie hadn’t noticed her girlfriend
approaching, but now everyone else in the room faded away. She
clenched and unclenched her fists, pushing away images of the
Washington coastline, empty railroad tracks pointing north like an
arrow.

“Kenzie?” Ava prompted. “What’s Antonio up
to?”

“Oh, nothing. He just has to go back to
work.” She paused, and then she made herself ask, “Ready?”

Ava nodded. “I am. Nice speech, by the way.”
Her voice was steady, but Kenzie could hear her quick heart rate
and shallow breathing. Ava was as scared as she was, and yet she
was still prepared to go with through the plan. Kenzie tugged her
close again, wishing she could pause time. It didn’t seem possible
that she would have to watch as Ava took herself out into a world
where Sentinel was waiting to kidnap her—or worse.

How had Kenzie allowed Sloane to talk her
into this ridiculously dangerous plan?

Ava pulled away just enough to place a
lingering kiss on Kenzie’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon,” she
whispered. And then she turned and strode toward the stairs, her
shoulders back, chin up. She didn’t look back.

It wasn’t too late. Kenzie could still pick
Ava up and carry her out of the house, fly her away from Seattle,
away from Sentinel, away. But she didn’t. Instead, she
swallowed back her tears and watched the love of her life walk
away. Ava had made her decision, and Kenzie had to respect it. That
was the deal, even if she hated it with every subatomic particle of
her being. The only thing Kenzie could do now was try to make sure
Ava made it through the day alive.

Behind her, she heard Mika say, “Amelia
Thornton makes every other homophobic parent look like Mr. Rogers,
doesn’t she?”

“She does,” Sloane agreed.

“What now?” Mika asked.

“Rodriguez is a go, so now we wait.”

Kenzie took a steadying breath and joined
them at the desk where Matt’s schematics were still up on the
screen. “Do you think it’ll work?” she asked.

“I hope so,” her sister said. “We’re damn
well going to try, aren’t we?”

“Or die trying,” Kenzie agreed, her voice
grim.

“Ride or die with the Shepherd sisters,” Mika
said, shaking her head. “I had no idea how literally the two of you
would take that.”

Kenzie relaxed enough to smile wryly at Mika.
“Too late to back out now.”

“I wouldn’t even if I could,” Mika said.

Kenzie met Sloane’s eyes. Too late
indeed. Here went everything.

Chapter Sixteen

Matt had agreed to act as IT support during
the operation, and Kenzie hovered just behind him now, watching as
he operated the powerful server that controlled the operation’s
data. Currently, he was monitoring the first stage of the plan:
undermining Sentinel’s ability to inflict collateral damage.

“Is Klim Nak in position?” he asked Sloane
without looking away from his keyboard.

Sloane checked her phone screen. “All
set.”

Matt punched a few keys and then, on screen
one, Rodriguez’s cell phone camera relayed sound and images as she
opened a door and stepped through. The video was a bit choppy, but
the audio came through well enough.

“I’m home,” Rodriguez called. A voice from
off-screen answered her, and the Panopticon agent began to move
down a hallway. In the bedroom, she dropped her messenger bag on
the desk, leaving the Sentinel phone behind. It didn’t matter if
she kept the phone close, she’d informed D’aman. There were bugs
everywhere in her apartment, even in the bathroom light fixture.
The only place Sentinel didn’t monitor was the bathtub itself.

Kenzie chewed her lip and checked Matt’s
second screen. It was still black, which meant Martalla and Plio
Kan must be en route, but the third screen was active. Two
Panopticon agents Sloane had handpicked—and who D’aman and Martalla
had ensured via telepathy could be trusted—were in a van near the
waterfront, working on a patch into the off-worlder clinic’s
security system. Sentinel had already hacked into the network, so
it was a delicate operation to piggyback in on top of their hack
without getting caught.

Not as delicate as Klim Nak and Rodriguez’s
part of the plan, though.

On screen one, Rodriguez had stepped into the
bathroom to say hello to her wife, who was getting ready for work.
Kenzie averted her eyes as the two women hugged, listening instead.
Rodriguez turned on the shower. “Come on, Miranda, I’ve been at
work all night. Come take a shower with me… pleeeease?”

“Fine,” her wife huffed good-naturedly. “But
only if you wash my hair.”

“Deal,” Rodriguez said, and pointed her cell
phone camera at the ceiling.

Screen number two flickered to life, and
Kenzie squinted as Plio Kan’s body camera panned the exterior of
the Shepherd-Henderson house in Bellingham. No sign of Sentinel,
which didn’t mean anything. The screen went black again, only to
flicker back to life a minute later. Now Plio Kan was outside the
Biology building at Western Washington University. Not far away,
Jane was talking to a pair of students. She glanced up as Plio Kan
approached.

“Dean Mueller,” she said. “This is a
surprise. I’m sorry, did we have a meeting?”

“No,” Plio Kan said in a human woman’s voice.
“But I was hoping to talk to you about a topic of mutual interest.
I wonder if we might take a walk to discuss the details?”

“Of course.”

Jane said goodbye to the students, and then
she and the disguised off-worlder fell into step together. They
were in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by students and
staff alike, when Martalla—in the form of a Western
undergrad—approached to make the planned switch. If Kenzie hadn’t
been expecting it, she wouldn’t have noticed the slight sheen to
the air, the displaced quality of the sounds. One moment Jane and
Plio Kan were squeezing between a tree and a rowdy group of
students, and the next they were past the group, which was now one
student short if anyone had cared to count. Kenzie watched as
“Jane” nodded subtly at Plio Kan while a mouse poked its
inquisitive nose out of her lab coat pocket.

Matt sent a text to Plio Kan’s mission phone.
A moment later the “dean” checked her phone and excused herself,
leaving “Jane” to return to the Biology building. Thirty seconds
later Matt received a text from the Markalian: “All clear. On to
location #2.”

“Yes!” Matt turned to Sloane and Kenzie and
held up his hand for a high five.

Sloane frowned but Kenzie slapped Matt’s
hand. “That means Jane is safe, right?”

“Yep. She’s back to human form, and Plio Kan
is meeting D’aman at your father’s building next.”

Kenzie could only imagine how her adopted
parents would respond to being shapeshifted and teleported without
their permission. With Jane, it would either be with
adrenaline-fueled rage or academic fascination—Kenzie had no idea
which.

While Plio Kan was in Bellingham rescuing the
Shepherd-Hendersons, Klim Nak was still hiding in Rodriguez’s
bathtub, waiting to take Miranda to safety. Kenzie tuned in to
Rodriguez’s camera again in time to hear bare feet whispering
across the tile floor, followed by the sound of those feet landing
in the tub. A handful of seconds ticked by, and then another, and
then at last Rodriguez said the code phrase they’d been waiting
for: “We could use a weekend away from the city, couldn’t we?”

“Personally, I’d love a trip to the water,”
Klim Nak replied in Miranda’s voice, completing the code
phrase.

That meant Miranda was secured at the second
Airbnb safe house—a houseboat on Lake Union—with Jane and Ben.
Meanwhile, Klim Nak would continue to pose as Miranda until Sloane
sent the signal, and then she would teleport Rodriguez, the
Panopticon agent’s favorite weapon, and herself to wherever they
might be needed.

Teleportation was the absolute best, in
Kenzie’s opinion. And cloaking, of course. Not to mention the
ability to miniaturize yourself and other objects… Maybe she should
just say that Markalians were the best. Good thing her
sidekick-in-training was one.

After Plio Kan texted a final “All clear,”
Matt turned to the feed from the surveillance van, Sloane and
Kenzie peering over his shoulder. Only a few minutes left for this
part of the operation. If they didn’t get it done by the
agreed-upon time, everything else would have to be delayed, which
meant they would need to risk calling Ava. Sloane had come up with
a contingency plan—she would call Ava and demand to know why she
had broken up with her little sister, and then say that Kenzie had
shown up at her apartment the night before at x time,
where x stood for the revised operational go time.
Ava would offer one of three responses: “I can’t talk about this at
work” would mean message received; “I have to go to a
meeting now” would mean too late to change the go time;
and “I’m with someone” meant that Sentinel operatives had shown up
at Hyperion and were currently shadowing her.

Kenzie really,
really, really hoped that last eventuality did not
come to pass. They would figure something out if it did, but—

“All set,” one of the Panopticon agents said
over comms. “The video feed is in place, Plio Kan has made contact,
and Mika and her team are ready for launch.”

In addition to the cadre of off-worlders,
Mika had recruited her partner and another SPD friend to help
evacuate the clinic while the video feed that Sentinel was
monitoring from their own van looped a pre-recorded thirty-minute
segment. Hopefully that would be enough time for Mika and her team
to get everyone out before Sentinel noticed.

“Copy,” Matt replied. “Hold for now.”

Kenzie glanced at the mission clock on her
phone: twenty-seven seconds to spare. That was cutting it close!
She watched as Matt typed in a command on one of the servers to
launch the group text that indicated everything was on track:
“Capital One Bill Alert: Your credit card bill is ready for
payment.”

Matt glanced up at her. “You ready?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” Which was such a lie. But
Matt was human, so he didn’t know any better.

He held up his hand for a fist bump. “Be
careful, okay?”

“I will be,” she said, opening her fist into
a mock explosion.

“You got this,” Sloane said, pulling her into
a short, hard hug.

Kenzie hugged her back, but not too hard. And
then she was blurring to the backyard and launching herself into
the sky, where she could watch over Ava while waiting for the
pre-arranged signal.

Less than half an air mile from Hyperion, she
narrowed in on her girlfriend’s office, relieved to find Ava alone.
While Kenzie was too far away to hear her heartbeat or listen to
her current phone conversation, she could see the tension in Ava’s
shoulders, her displeasure as she slammed down the receiver, her
anxiety as she kept glancing at the two cell phones sitting side by
side on her desktop.

Kenzie watched Ava check her smartphone—she
should have gotten the Capital One bill alert by now. Apparently
she had, because she clicked send on an email, shut down her
computer, and picked up the Sentinel burner phone.

Ava paused, fingertips hovering over the
phone’s screen, and Kenzie once again pictured herself fulfilling
the fantasy still flitting about the back of her mind. But she
couldn’t really ignore Ava’s autonomy. Or, she could, but
she shouldn’t—even if it meant standing by while Ava willingly
walked into the lion’s den.

In this moment, as Ava prepared to offer
herself up as tribute to her brother’s extremist group, Kenzie
wondered if it would have been better to walk away before they ever
fell in love, before Ava’s choices possessed the power to put
Kenzie’s heart in serious, credible danger. But that would mean
giving up everything that had happened since that first day when
Ava smiled at her, eyes alight with possibility, and said, “I hope
this isn’t the last time we talk?”

If Kenzie was being honest, she wasn’t
willing to give up even a single moment with Ava. Not even this
one.

That, in the end, was why Kenzie didn’t move.
Why she remained where she was and watched as Ava texted Sentinel,
the screen in a position Kenzie could read even from nearly half a
mile away. “I’m ready. Name a time and place to meet.”

A reply popped up almost immediately.
“Hyperion roof, five minutes.”

Ava spun in her seat and looked out across
the city skyline. In theory, she might have been searching the sky
for the Sentinel helicopter. In reality, she was looking for
Kenzie, which Kenzie knew because Ava seemed to be staring right at
her as she mouthed, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Kenzie whispered, and then
she heard it: the drone of a helicopter.

Ava’s head tilted, and Kenzie almost heard
the deep breath she took. Then, with a last nod in Kenzie’s
direction, Ava rose from her seat, smoothed down her slacks, and
headed for her office door.

Kenzie’s anxiety spiked, but she managed to
take out her phone and add time and location details to the first
of two pre-drafted group texts waiting in her message app. Her
notifications trilled as the message was instantly delivered to the
operation’s group leads, and she tucked her phone away again,
squinting at the Hyperion building in the distance where she could
see Ava moving steadily toward the showdown with her family.

Wait, Kenzie reminded
herself. Stick to the plan. But she was Galaxy
Girl, and waiting did not come naturally to her. Waiting reminded
her of the years—decades—she’d spent alone in her damaged
escape pod, drifting without any knowledge of the universe
unfolding around her. Waiting felt like weakness, especially when
someone she loved was in danger.

Please, Alia, she thought, closing her
eyes and reaching out with her mind. Please watch over
her.

#

As Ava ascended the steps to the Hyperion
helipad, she wasn’t thinking about her mother or brother. She
wasn’t thinking of Kenzie’s parents, either, or even the children
at the off-worlder clinic. She wasn’t thinking of Rodriguez or her
wife, of Sloane or Matt or D’aman or Angelica. She wasn’t even
thinking of Kenzie directly. Instead, she was thinking of Klon Rae,
the Markalian child with the light of ten thousand suns lighting up
her human face every time Kenzie smiled at her or gave her a word
of encouragement.

Kenzie and Ava had taken Klon Rae ice-skating
a week earlier at the rink in Shoreline, where the girl’s physical
capability had been surpassed only by her obvious joy at being with
them. She was like a puppy, eager and sweet and a bit unwittingly
dangerous with her elbows. Sort of like Kenzie herself, in fact,
only without the weight of an entire lost civilization pressing
down on her.

And maybe it was xenophobic to compare the
two, or species-ist, but Ava couldn’t help it. Their energy and
strength seemed boundless, and that created a similarity in how
Kenzie and Klon Rae interacted with the physical world around them.
She didn’t think it was bigoted to say so. At least, she hoped
not.

Still, it wasn’t Klon Rae’s ice-skating
abilities or her alien ways that Ava was pondering as she took what
might well be her last walk—one way or another—through the halls of
Hyperion. It was the girl’s adulation of Kenzie, of this real-life
superhero who had deigned to take notice of her, who
had decided to make her part of her life on Earth.
Ava recognized that emotion in the Markalian child because she felt
it herself to an almost embarrassing degree. She was so
lucky to have met Kenzie, to have been touched by her
goodness, her heroism, her dedication to preserving the lives and
happiness of others. And yet, Ava was wrecked by her love for
Kenzie, too. Elevated and destroyed in equal parts by her love for
this otherworldly woman who her family hated and hated
and hated.

The light was blinding as she stepped out
onto the helipad, and she reached for the sunglasses she kept in
her purse. Then a voice she hadn’t heard in over a year, a voice
she hadn’t missed at all, shouted, “Freeze!”

There he was, her delusional half-brother,
dressed in a ridiculous war suit, floating above the deck of the
landing pad on rocket thrusters that sparked and hummed. The suit
was different from the prototypes she’d seen in Hyperion’s scrapped
project files. This version of the war suit came with a helmet that
covered Nick’s hair but left his face uncovered. Ava scowled. She’d
known in theory what she was getting herself—and Kenzie,
presumably—into, but seeing her brother in a robot exoskeleton was
deeply disturbing.

Family. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t…
Right.

He laughed. “Kidding, of course, darling
sister! It’s lovely to see you. I would hug you, but—”

“But then you’d have to kill me?”

“You said it, not me.” The noise of the
approaching helicopter grew louder, and he looked over his shoulder
as the sleek black combat craft drifted down to land.

Ava took advantage of his distraction to
examine the war suit. The helmet appeared to be more than just
protection. The wires snaking from her brother’s temple down inside
the neck of the enhanced suit were curious. Was that a
neurotransmitter? Did he have an onboard AI? Despite herself,
admiration of her mother’s genius flared inside her mind. The
design was obviously her doing. Amelia had always been proudest of
Ava’s scientific accomplishments, particularly her Combat Robot
League national championships while at MIT. Even Nick had seemed
proud of her abilities in the lab—until their father died and he
descended steadily into his current state.

The older brother she’d once loved was long
gone now. The man before her was twisted and hateful, murderous and
sly. During his lengthy trial, she’d come to accept that there was
no sign of the real Nick left anymore. Her brother was lost, a fact
their mother steadfastly refused to admit.

As if Ava had conjured her, Amelia stepped
off the helicopter while the blades were still moving, her bearing
as regal as ever, her eyes as she took in the reunion before
her—anxious? If Ava didn’t know better, she would swear
that her mother was nervous.

“I thought we agreed to arrive together,”
Amelia said to Nick as she stopped a few paces in front of him,
angling her body between her two children.

“You agreed. I didn’t,” he said.
“In any case, we’re here now. Let’s do this.”

“Here?” Amelia turned slightly. “Hello, Ava,”
she added, as if in afterthought. Her smile was cool, but Ava
thought there was a hint of warmth to it.

“Hello, Mother,” Ava said. Even though she
was a successful executive with homes of her own and a superhero
girlfriend, she still felt herself shrinking, automatically
reverting to her old role of peacemaker as her mother and brother
faced off against each other on the rooftop of her family’s
company. After all these years, how was she still in the
middle?

“Yes, here,” her brother said. “Why not?”

“We talked about this, Nick.” Amelia folded
her arms across her chest. “It’s too public. Too many
witnesses.”

“Again, you talked. I prefer
action.” He turned to Ava. “Call your girlfriend. Now.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, thanks to
you.”

“Good one, little sis. That’s actually
amusing.” He lifted a gloved hand toward her like a gun—it
probably was a gun, knowing her mother’s designs.
“Okay, how should I say this: call that alien freak and tell her to
come at once if she wants her ‘parents’ to live.”

Ava stared back at him, and then, pretending
reluctance, she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed Kenzie.
So far, everything was going according to plan.

Kenzie picked up on the first ring. “Ava?”
she said, her voice tense.

“Don’t be alarmed, darling, but I am
currently involved in a family dispute on the roof of my building,
and your presence has been requested.”

“I’m on my way,” Kenzie said, sounding far
too agitated for Ava’s liking.

The line went dead, and Ava began to count to
one hundred as detailed in Panopticon’s plan: one, two—

Galaxy Girl appeared in a blur of green and
blue, landing with a thud between Nick and Ava. Shit. That
couldn’t be good. Had she even had time to send the second
text?

“Are you okay?” Kenzie asked, keeping her
gaze trained on Nick.

“Me?” He bared his teeth. “Why, I’m peachy,
Galaxy Girl. How swell of you to ask.”

“I’m fine,” Ava said once her brother had
stopped his sarcastic preening. She was about to comment on the
speed of Kenzie’s appearance, but Nick didn’t give her the
chance.

“Yes, yes, she’s obviously fine,” he said.
“But unless you want countless innocents to die, including your
foster parents, I’m going to need you to step away from my little
sister.”

Ava saw the cords in Kenzie’s neck tense and
realized her girlfriend was close to snapping. “Do as he asks,
Kenzie,” she said.

Kenzie glanced back at her, and Ava gave her
an encouraging nod, relieved when she stepped away.

“Good,” Nick said. “So, here we all are at
the very building where Ava first met Galaxy Girl. I have to admit,
I enjoy the poetic nature of this moment. Without further ado,
Mother, I believe you had something to discuss with the girls?”

Women, Ava thought, glaring at him.
They hadn’t been girls in a very long time. But he was trying to
get a rise out of her, just like always.

“Ava,” Amelia said, “I would like you to tell
Kenzie the truth.”

The truth? “I don’t
understand.”

“Of course you do, dear. Remember our earlier
conversation? You said you were ready to come clean about your
Sentinel involvement.”

That was why Amelia had agreed to
Nick’s scheme? She was still that determined to
break them up? Ava swallowed a disbelieving laugh. Just when she
thought her relatives couldn’t get more ridiculous, they ended up
on top of the family skyscraper fighting about inter-species
dating.

Ava glanced at Kenzie and raised her
eyebrows. Kenzie was the one with the earpiece connected to Matt,
which meant only she knew when the next step of the op could begin.
Kenzie shook her head minutely, eyes transmitting an unmistakable
apology. Ava looked away. She knew Kenzie had
gotten to the roof too soon. Teleportation or not, evacuating the
occupants of an entire clinic took time.

“I’m waiting,” Amelia said, her eyes
narrowing.

“Fine.” Ava turned to Kenzie. “My mother
thinks it’s time I tell you I’ve been playing you. I only pretended
to love you as part of a long, complicated con. In reality, I’m
loyal to Sentinel.”

Kenzie blinked. “No, you’re not.”

No, of course she wasn’t. “Yes, I
am.”

Either Kenzie’s acting abilities had
improved, or she was actually worried. Oh, for Christ’s
sake. Ava winked with the eye her mother and brother
couldn’t see, frowning as Kenzie bit her lip in amusement.
Whatever. She was good at winking. Plenty of lesbians had told her
so.

“Oh. Well, fine.” Kenzie paused dramatically.
“I already knew that, though. I’ve been playing you, too, you know,
to get info on Sentinel. Like, as a triple agent.”

Ava rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing
as a triple agent.”

“There is too.”

“There is not.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, shut up, both of you,”
Nick sputtered. He looked at their mother.
“Seriously? This is why you begged me to bring you
along?”

Interesting, Ava thought, glancing
from her brother to her mother. So all of this was Nick’s idea?
Amelia stared back at her, eyes trying to communicate a message of
some sort. But Ava hadn’t spent enough time with her mother in
recent years to be able to interpret her rapid blinking.

“Enough,” Nick said, and raised his arm
toward Ava again. “I’m tired of this game.”

And before she could react, he flicked his
wrist, releasing a coil of white energy at precisely the same
moment Kenzie shouted the code phrase into her comms: “Puny
humans!”

Shit, Ava thought as time seemed to
slow. And then she didn’t think anything at all.

#

Ava was never in any real danger. The moment
Nick flicked his wrist, Kenzie blurred to her side and moved her
out of the path of the energy blast. But she moved too fast for the
human eye to register, which might have been why Amelia leapt
between her son and daughter, taking the full force of his
shot.

“No!” Ava screamed, catching Amelia as the
blast carried her across the roof. And then Kenzie was blurring
them behind a nearby air conditioning unit as chaos erupted.

Martalla, D’aman, and Plio Kan blinked into
existence in the center of the helipad, while Sloane, Rodriguez,
and the rest of the Panopticon team swarmed up from the stairwell.
Nick roared in fury and blasted another energy wave from his glove.
Kenzie winced as it struck a human-looking D’aman in the
chest. But as expected—by her and the rest of their team,
though clearly not by Nick or the Sentinel agents emerging from the
helicopter—D’aman rebounded and began firing a Panopticon-provided
weapon at Nick and the Sentinel operatives fanning out across the
rooftop. It took more than that to keep a Kreedilan down.

Kenzie took advantage of Nick’s distraction
to check Ava over. “Are you okay? He didn’t hit you, did he?”

“No.” The black material of her costume
reflected against Ava’s face as she gazed down at her mother,
brushing Amelia’s normally perfectly coiffed hair back from her
face. “Why did you do that, Mom? Why would you…” She choked back a
sob.

“Because you’re my daughter,” Amelia said,
her voice faint, eyes staring skyward as she struggled to
breathe.

“But…” Ava shook her head. “Just hold on.
We’ll get you help, won’t we, Kenzie?”

“Of course,” Kenzie said. But over the sounds
of the battle raging nearby, she could hear Amelia’s heart skipping
and faltering, her body’s delicate electrical balance overwhelmed
by the pulse of energy from Nick’s suit. In reality, Kenzie knew,
it was already too late.

Amelia gazed up at Ava, eyelids fluttering.
“You never call me that.”

“What?”

“You never call me Mom.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Her eyes drifted to Kenzie.
“Take care of my daughter.”

Kenzie nodded gravely. “I promise,” she said.
And then, too quietly for human ears, “Alia’s will be done.”

“Nicholas…” Amelia whispered. And then her
heart slowed even more, and her breathing became labored, fast,
frothy pants more than breaths as she stared wide-eyed at nothing,
her body twitching.

Ava gazed up at Kenzie. “Can’t
you do something?”

“I wish I could,” Kenzie said, keeping one
eye on the fight. Sloane was holding her own, and Mika and Angelica
had arrived on the roof, leading the other off-world volunteers.
Sentinel was badly outnumbered, which meant the plan was working.
But with Amelia dying right in front of them, Kenzie wasn’t sure
how to feel.

It took another long, drawn-out minute before
Amelia’s body finally fell silent and empty. Kenzie could sense the
moment her life force faded away—her heart no longer beat, her
blood sat quiet in her veins, her lungs lay unmoving in her chest.
CPR wouldn’t help, and yet Kenzie was tempted to try anyway. This
woman had hated her, yes, and had treated Ava abysmally for most of
her life. But Amelia must have loved her children in her own broken
way because she had sacrificed herself for Ava.

And yet, it was an unnecessary sacrifice. She
had to have known Kenzie wouldn’t let anything happen to Ava—or
maybe she hadn’t. Maybe Amelia’s final act in life demonstrated how
impossible it would have been to ever change her mind about
off-worlders. Or maybe she had simply acted on instinct, a mother
putting herself in harm’s way to protect her child.

A shout sounded as a Panopticon agent fell on
the other side of the air conditioner, and Kenzie swept Ava into
her arms. “I’ll be back, Sloane,” she shouted into her comms, and
then she was in the air, Ava gasping against her neck as they flew
to safety.

In less than a minute, Kenzie was landing on
the ECM roof, where several of her colleagues stood staring at them
in shock. “Find Antonio,” she told Ava, already preparing to return
to the battle. “He’s waiting for you.” Sloane didn’t know about
that part of the plan, but Kenzie had needed a fallback in case
things went south.

“Wait!” Ava said, grabbing her wrist. “Take
me back!”

Kenzie looked back at her, gaze lingering on
Ava’s tear-streaked cheeks and flashing eyes. “No. I’m sorry, but
you’ve done enough for today. Find Antonio.”

And then she was pulling away and leaping
back into the air. With Ava safe, a single thought resonated
through her mind: she had to protect her family.

As she approached Hyperion, she took in the
fray. Sloane, Rodriguez, and Angelica were hunkered down behind a
bit of concrete, firing pulse rifles at a pair of Sentinel agents
manning the helicopter’s weapons. Plio Kan and Klim Nar had assumed
their rightful states and sizes—orange skin and eight-foot-tall
muscular forms—and, together with Martalla in their Kreedilan form,
were assisting the Panopticon agents. Most of the Sentinel
operatives had either fallen or been placed in handcuffs at this
point, and some were being led from the roof even before the
fighting had fully ended. But D’aman and Nick drifted high above
the deck, trading blows. Nick’s war suit appeared to make him
nearly as strong as a Zattalian—and just as invulnerable, judging
from the blows he was withstanding.

Kenzie sprang into action. With a few
well-placed punches, she neutralized the helicopter before rounding
up any unsecured Sentinel agents and dropping them in a heap in
front of her sister and Rodriguez. Then she shot into the air,
determined to help D’aman.

Nick saw her coming and fired off a salvo of
different-colored energy rays. She dodged them easily—all except
one. A blast of red energy struck her shoulder, and she dropped a
few feet in the air. Then she recovered and resumed her course,
slamming into Nick and driving him down, down, down… They crashed
into the center of the tower’s helipad, Nick taking the brunt of
the hit.

She heard him gasp for breath as the war suit
shuddered against the broken concrete, and she smiled, feeling her
rage threatening to overtake her. “That was for Ava. This is for
me.” She lifted him again only to drive him back down into the
concrete as hard as she dared without shattering the rooftop
completely. The building had been evacuated, but Ava would still
have to deal with the damage one way or another.

Nick gasped again beneath her. Then his eyes
flickered, and he gave her an ugly smile. “I know you wish more
than anything that you were human. I know you would give up your
Zattalian birthright if you could.”

Kenzie had admitted as much to Ava earlier in
the summer, late one night after a long day dealing with anti-alien
rhetoric as a reporter and anti-alien extremism as Galaxy Girl. But
Ava had held her and whispered words of love and caring into her
skin, and Kenzie had felt beautiful, deserving, special in her
uniqueness.

“There is no one on this world or any other
like you,” Ava had whispered. “You’re you, and yet you’re made from
the same stardust I am, the same neurons and protons that shape
every other person—human or otherwise—in the universe. I love you
because you’re you, and so do Sloane and D’aman and Jane and Ben
and Matt, and too many other people to even count.”

Klon Rae belonged to that group now. Kenzie
pictured the Markalian girl gazing up at her with the pain of
difference in her eyes, hurt that could be crowded out by something
as simple as going ice skating.

“You don’t know me,” she told Nick, “because
I wouldn’t trade being me for anything.”

She lifted her fist to end the conversation,
and that was when she saw it—a dagger in his hand swinging toward
her chest, the blade exhibiting the unmistakable neon-green sheen
of Vercurium. He had distracted her on purpose. Apparently, he did
know her, after all.

Before the deadly off-world blade could
pierce her flesh, a hand grasped Kenzie’s shoulder and pulled her
out of Nick’s reach. Not even a second later, an electromagnetic
pulse shattered the air around them. Kenzie felt herself pulled
back again, the hand still clamped on her shoulder with inhuman
force, as Nick cried out, his back arching, electricity crackling
through the war suit. The helmet glowed red against his pale skin
and his cry suddenly transformed into a scream that cut off as
abruptly as it had begun. He fell back against the cracked and
blackened pavement, smoke rising from the suit, eyes staring
unseeingly at the sky.

Kenzie listened intently, but his body was
silent. There was no heart beating, no blood rushing, no lung
sounds whatsoever. For the second time that day, a member of Ava’s
family had fallen, and yet this time Kenzie couldn’t find it in her
heart to be anything but glad.

A dozen feet away Rodriguez stood, the pulse
rifle she’d fired still pointed at Nick. “Is he…”

Kenzie nodded. “He’s gone.”

Rodriguez’s forehead cleared. “Good,” she
said, her eyes icy, and turned away.

“Kenzie,” Sloane called, and then she was
beside Kenzie, hugging her and D’aman with all her puny human
strength. Because of course D’aman was the one who had saved
Kenzie. They always had her back.

Kenzie turned, arms still around her sister,
and saw her mentor gazing down at them. “Thank you. I don’t know
what I would have done…”

“Kenzie,” they said, and then the usually
reticent Kreedilan was hugging her and Sloane too, their grip
gentle. “I’m just happy you’re okay.”

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” she
said, tightening her hold. “Both of you.”

She thought of Ava, who was good and kind and
had sacrificed her family so that Kenzie and Sloane could keep
theirs. She couldn’t be okay, not even close.

#

Ava knew her brother’s fate before Kenzie
appeared on the balcony off ECM’s conference room, her Galaxy Girl
mask still in place. Intrepid camera operators from local news
outfits—including ECM—had filmed the latter half of the battle from
nearby buildings. Ava had been watching when Nick nearly stabbed
Kenzie, only to be struck down by the blast of Rodriguez’s
weapon.

All at once, Ava was no longer the figurative
last Westbrook standing. She was literally the last Westbrook.

“Ava,” Kenzie breathed, hesitating in the
doorway to ECM’s fishbowl conference room.

“Galaxy Girl,” Antonio said, a note of
warning in his voice.

But Kenzie ignored him and the watching eyes
of their coworkers and rushed to Ava’s side, enveloping her in a
tight hug.

“Are you okay?” they said at the same time.
They both pulled back, and Ava meant to smile up into Kenzie’s eyes
because she was here, which meant she must be okay. But her mouth
wouldn’t cooperate, and instead she found she was crying, the sobs
rattling through her against her will.

“They’re gone,” she found herself saying,
clutching at Kenzie’s arms, her back, whatever her fingers could
find purchase on. “They’re both gone. They’re just
gone.”

“I know,” Kenzie said, catching her tears on
her fingers and trying to wipe them away as fast as they fell.
“Shh, sweet girl, I know.”

Ava was dimly aware that Antonio had left the
conference room and was shooing everyone else away, but she
couldn’t find it in herself to care. She had wanted closure so
badly, had told herself she wouldn’t mind if her mother died, if
her brother perished at the hands of the authorities. She’d
convinced herself that they weren’t her family, not really. But now
that they were gone, she couldn’t stand the overwhelming feeling of
guilt pressing down on her. They had died, and she was seeing her
life flash before her eyes, accompanied by flickers of
understanding that upended her view of the past.

Nick had been sick, not evil. Paranoid and
dangerous, yes, but as a result of a chemical unbalance, not
because he was inherently a bad person. She had known that,
she had. Why then had she turned away from him? He
was her brother, flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. She should
have tried harder to get him help, should have stuck it out through
his delusional ravings and bouts of violence. And Amelia—Amelia had
given her life to save Ava’s. Why had she done that? Because
you’re my daughter, she’d said, as if the answer was obvious.
But it wasn’t, not to Ava.

God, she should have met Amelia halfway
even one time in her life. What would that have
cost her? Why couldn’t she have shown her mother even a little bit
of kindness? She’d known the emotional shit show Amelia came from,
knew how devastated she’d been by Alexander’s death and Nick’s
breakdown. Why couldn’t Ava have been more patient with her? Why
couldn’t she have found it in herself to love her more?

“You never call me that,” she kept hearing
Amelia say, face contorted in pain, fear shadowing her eyes.

Amelia had been afraid of death, and yet she
had given up her own life so that Ava might live. And now Ava
didn’t know what to make of that.

“You’re okay,” Kenzie said, rubbing her back.
“I’ve got you.”

“God, Kenzie,” Ava said through her sobs,
hiccupping and choking, “what have I done?”

“You survived,” Kenzie said. “It gets better.
I promise it does.”

Ava closed her eyes and buried her face in
Kenzie’s neck, tangling a hand in her silky hair as she inhaled the
familiar scent of her skin. She had survived, she realized,
focusing on Kenzie’s words. She was still standing, and the
pain would get better. She didn’t doubt that
Kenzie knew what she was talking about.

“I love you,” Kenzie said.

“I love you, too.” So much that she didn’t
even care that she was getting snot on Kenzie’s superhero suit. It
was probably snot-proof, anyway.

She cried for long minutes, reaction and
grief and relief all pouring out of her, and Kenzie held her
through it all. But after a while, Ava remembered who she was and
where they were, and at last she pulled back, drying her tears with
a tissue Kenzie liberated from the box on the conference room
table.

“Okay?” Kenzie asked, checking her over.

“No.”

Kenzie smiled a little. “Are you physically
sound?”

The archaic wording made Ava smile a little
in return, which she supposed had been Kenzie’s intent. “Yes,
Kenzie, I am physically sound. Emotionally and mentally, not so
much.”

“I mean, I’ve been saying that for a while,”
Kenzie said with impeccable dad humor. “But if you’re feeling okay,
we should get going. I sort of took off without saying anything to
Sloane.”

Kenzie’s sister would know exactly where she
had flown off to, but Ava only nodded.

“Do you want to come back to Angelica’s with
me?” Kenzie asked, heading for the balcony. “Sloane asked everyone
to meet there to debrief.”

“No, I should probably get back to Hyperion.”
She felt Kenzie’s eyes on her. “What? Do you realize how much work
today’s little escapade has made for me? Besides, I think it might
be nice to keep busy right now.”

“Fine,” Kenzie said, her reluctance obvious.
“But I’m coming by to pick you up later, and
you will come home with
me, capisce?”

“Yes, but as yourself, capisce?
I’m not sure I can handle your #GalaxyCorp angst right now.”

Kenzie levitated off the balcony without her.
“Just for that, you can find your own way back to work, Miss
Westbrook.”

Ava stared up at her. She knew Kenzie didn’t
mean it, but even so she felt panic rising at the thought of Kenzie
going anywhere without her.

Kenzie dropped back to the balcony. “Sorry,”
she said, hands smoothing down the already flawless lines of her
suit. “I was just kidding.”

“No, it’s fine,” Ava said. “I’m just a
little, you know…” She moved closer and slipped her arms around
Kenzie’s neck. “Change of plans. I don’t think I want to go back to
Hyperion just yet. How about I come to Angelica’s with you
instead?”

Kenzie perked up. “Really? Honestly, I would
love that, and so would the rest of the team. They were almost as
worried about you as I was.”

That thought warmed Ava more than it probably
should. “All right, then,” she said. “Up, up—”

“—And away.” Kenzie lifted them into the air.
“Hold on tight, my little dumpling.”

Normally, Ava closed her eyes against the
dizzying view of the city streets far below, with only a
frightening amount of empty air between her feet and solid ground.
But today as Kenzie flew them across town, her pace slow
but steady, she thought she just might keep her eyes open.

Chapter Seventeen

“Are you ready?”

Ava took a deep breath before meeting
Kenzie’s eyes in the mirror above the vanity in the corner of their
bedroom. “No.”

Kenzie smiled. “You’re going to be amazing,”
she said, moving to stand behind Ava. Her eyes were warm and her
hands gentle as they settled on Ava’s shoulders, kneading away the
knots of the past few months.

“I know. I’m just…” Ava shrugged, unable to
articulate the feelings swirling through her mind and body.

“I know,” Kenzie said, and pressed a kiss to
the top of her head. “But you’ll be great anyway.”

Ava checked her hair and makeup one last time
before rising from the upholstered bench. “We better go. Can’t be
late for the first day.”

“Definitely not.” Kenzie tugged Ava toward
her and kissed her with lips that tasted of toothpaste and maple
syrup.

She had been up before dawn, patrolling the
city before her workday at ECM, and still had time to make a large
breakfast. Ava had awakened in their bed to the scent of coffee and
pancakes, wondering why her stomach felt so tight until, abruptly,
her memory returned. Then she’d leapt from the bed—and immediately
tripped over Kenzie’s boots.

“Damn it, Kenzie, don’t leave your boots on
my side!”

At that, Kenzie had appeared in the doorway,
eyebrows raised. “Good morning to you too. Nervous, are we?”

She’d started to snap back that
no, we weren’t nervous, when Kenzie’s lips
twitched in amusement. At that, Ava’s ire mostly deflated, and she
squinted across the room at her girlfriend. “Maybe a little?”

Kenzie turned away. “Breakfast is ready when
you are, sweets.”

The term of endearment was new. So was the
apartment, the furniture, and nearly too many other things to
count. Ava had grown up in a private boarding school where change
was the only constant—new teachers, new students, new curriculum
plans every single year—and yet, even for her, the recent cascade
of changes was almost too much to bear.

It had been three months since the showdown
with Sentinel, three months since she’d scattered Nick’s ashes at
the top of his favorite ski mountain in Colorado, three months
since Amelia’s funeral in New York. Worried that the only people
who would show up would be rubberneckers and press, Ava almost
hadn’t held a funeral despite the will that described Amelia’s
end-of-life choices in detail. In the end, though, Ava couldn’t
bring herself to go against her mother’s final wishes, for which
she was now grateful.

The service had been well-attended by friends
from the old neighborhood and people who had worked with Amelia for
decades before she’d gotten swept up in “all that politics,” as one
woman had put it. Their sorrow for Amelia’s passing was evident, as
was their concern for Ava. They even shared fond memories of Nick
at the reception that Bea’s mother organized at the local country
club. Kenzie was there the entire day, of course, and she and Bea
rarely left Ava’s side. The Super Friends came as well, and so did
Ben and Jane. Along with Bea’s mom, the elder Shepherd-Hendersons
worked behind the scenes so that Ava was free to mingle. All in
all, the day had turned out to be much more emotionally gratifying
than she’d expected. Not happy, of course, but meaningful.

When her mother’s coffin was lowered into the
plot Amelia had picked out and paid for herself a few years
earlier, Ava had felt a shock of renewed recognition: both of her
mothers were gone now; she was well and truly on her own. Except
that she wasn’t. Kenzie and Bea were beside her, and Sabina had
embraced her at the end of the reception and reminded her that she
was always part of the Dang family, no matter if she wanted to be
or not.

“I do want it,” she’d assured Bea’s mother,
wiping away yet more tears. “Thank you.”

The guilt was still there, and the hurt and
anger, and maybe they always would be, but at least now when Ava
thought about her mother, she no longer doubted that Amelia had
cared for her. Amelia had sacrificed herself to protect Ava, and
that wasn’t something a parent did for a child they didn’t love.
Alexander, her biological father, had passed away still shunning
her, but Amelia had died reaching toward her. As painful as their
relationship had been, Amelia’s final act had been one of love, and
that made her passing somehow easier to accept.

There were other things to wrap up after the
final showdown with Sentinel, of course, besides funerals and
memorial services. Panopticon was still cleaning house and rooting
out moles, but true to his word, Coop had provided information that
had derailed the infinity drug distribution infrastructure. Using
data that Coop had helped them obtain from the servers at
Sentinel’s last operation headquarters (or lair, as Sloane
insisted on calling it), the Galaxy Duo had recovered all known
stockpiles in North America and had launched the narcotics into
outer space, where they’d dispersed harmlessly.

Sentinel’s servers also offered clues to the
off-world supply chain, and D’aman had taken a short leave from
Earth to track down the rogue Alliance rep who was trying to profit
off the planet’s political unrest. Destabilizing Earth’s refugee
program was good for black-market operations, it turned out, but
the rep had bitten off more than they could chew. Thanks to D’aman,
they were now rotting on an Alliance-run prison planet somewhere
light-years away that Kenzie had assured Ava was not anyplace she
would ever want to visit.

Earth, according to D’aman, was back on track
to join the Alliance, if they could only keep their anti-alien
extremists under control. Ava hoped that would happen, but she
wasn’t certain. Like her grief over the deaths of her family of
origin, only time would tell.

A week in Malibu after Amelia’s funeral had
helped Ava begin to come to terms with her loss, especially when
Bea and Rowan joined her and Kenzie at the beach house. All that
time in the sun and surf with her godson and her best friend and
her girlfriend eased some of the horror and, at the very least,
left her so tired that she managed to sleep. Weekly therapy
sessions were also helping, particularly an approach that taught
her to replace the recurring nightmarish memories of her mother’s
final moments with more positive memories and sensations.

“Like overwriting a corrupted hard drive?”
Ava asked her therapist.

The woman paused and then nodded, a bemused
smile on her face. “I would think so, yes.”

Fortunately, grief wasn’t the only thing on
Ava’s mind. Six weeks after Sentinel had been disbanded (for the
second time), Kenzie asked Ava if she wanted to move in together.
When Ava stared at her, speechless, Kenzie explained that she was
tired of commuting between two apartments plus three places of
work, and even though it was arguably a bit soon, Ava was a lesbian
so she should be okay with the accelerated commitment timeline,
shouldn’t she?

Kenzie looked so nervous spewing out what was
clearly a well-planned proposal gone awry that Ava couldn’t help
laughing as she launched herself into her girlfriend’s arms,
assuring Kenzie that yes, of course she wanted to move in
together. She hadn’t asked before now because she hadn’t wanted to
rush things.

“Pssht,” Kenzie had said, grinning as she
rested her hands at Ava’s waist. “I’m the fastest living creature
on the planet, remember? It isn’t scientifically possible to rush
me.”

Within weeks they had rented out their condos
and found the perfect apartment—loft style like Kenzie’s, but large
and with multiple terraces like Ava’s—midway between ECM and
Panopticon and not far from the Pink Door, where they’d had one of
their first dates. They didn’t need to take Hyperion’s location
into consideration because by then, Ava had already offered her
letter of resignation. She hadn’t been voted out, not quite, but
she could see the writing on the wall. Besides, not only couldn’t
she bear the thought of working in the building where her mother
and brother had died, she wasn’t happy at Hyperion. She was capable
of guiding her family’s company, but it wasn’t where her interests
lay. And if Amelia and Nick’s deaths had taught her anything, it
was the importance of not wasting this life she’d been given.

Which brought her to today: her first
official day at the tech start-up she and Jenny Bartlett,
Hyperion’s former research chief, were launching together with the
financial backing of one of Ava’s former boarding school
classmates, now a venture capitalist. Their mission was to provide
clean energy technological innovation. Their first project was a
high-efficiency solar cell inspired by Markalian physiology. Aisha
Williams, one of Ava’s friends from the Yale MBA program, would be
their chief financial officer, thereby rounding out the company’s
leadership. Ava couldn’t wait to see what they would build
together.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified to walk
into the mostly empty office space on the sixth floor of a Belltown
building whose terrace happened to face Emerald City Media. Because
she was. Absolutely terrified. But in a good way—like when her
stomach dropped each time Kenzie launched into the sky with Ava in
her arms.

They didn’t fly to work today, though.
Instead, they walked. Kenzie could have had them there in moments,
but this was their chance to enjoy each other’s company before the
workday sucked them in, so they strolled quietly, hand in hand,
Kenzie nodding and smiling at passersby, Ava going over to-do lists
in her head and wishing the walk took longer.

But it didn’t. After only ten minutes, they
found themselves in front of Ava’s new building. Unlike Hyperion
Tower, it was nondescript as small buildings went, except for the
tiered balconies overflowing with greenery. They were paying extra
for the outdoor spaces, but Ava didn’t mind. She had the cash to
spare, and having a place for Galaxy Girl to land was worth it.

“This is it,” she said, gazing up at
Kenzie.

“It is.” She paused and asked again, “Are you
ready?”

Ava leaned up and kissed her cheek. They were
both smiling when she pulled back. “You know it.”

#

Kenzie crossed the street to her own building
and ran up to her floor. From her cubicle, she distracted herself
by using her X-ray vision to track Ava’s movements around her new
company. She watched as Ava entered the wide, open office space
with its empty cubicles waiting for staffing. Neither Jenny nor
Aisha had arrived yet, and as Kenzie watched, Ava opened the door
to the largest of the executive offices, which was still only a
fraction of the size of her Hyperion suite. She immediately went to
the sliding door and stepped out onto the terrace, eyes going to
ECM before she spun in a half-circle, taking in the view of the
city. She was smiling her happy smile, which made Kenzie, in turn,
smile hers.

“What are you smiling at?” Matt asked,
peering over their shared cubicle wall.

“Oh! Nothing.”

“Right,” Matt said with a knowing smile.
“It’s her first day, huh?”

Kenzie nodded, smiling back.

“Well, we’ll have to celebrate tonight. The
pub?”

“I’ll check with Ava, but I’m pretty sure
she’ll say yes.”

“Sweet.”

“Noice.”

The daily editorial meeting was about to
start, so Kenzie tucked her bag into her desk drawer and checked
her email. There were the usual work-related notifications, the
usual spam, and she was pressing the delete button repeatedly when
her phone beeped.

She opened a photo message from Ava. “The
view from my balcony,” she had written. “I love you!”

The picture Ava had attached was of ECM and
the rest of the city spread out around it, the morning sun glinting
off the Space Needle in the distance.

“Gorgeous,” she typed back, “just like you. I
love you too!!!!” She added the requisite number of emojis (six
this morning) to demonstrate just how much, plus the little alien
with the fishing pole because it always seemed to make Ava laugh
extra hard.

She closed the message app and stared at the
picture on her phone’s home screen. It was of the Super Friends,
including Klon Rae in her new mini-superhero suit, gathered
together for a cookout on Sloane’s patio a few weeks earlier. Of
course, as a super-secret photo, it only existed on Kenzie’s phone,
which Matt had secured to such a degree that Kenzie had had a
difficult time unlocking it when she needed it. She had promptly
set the security back to low. What Matt and Sloane didn’t know
couldn’t hurt them.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. There were lots
of things the people of Earth didn’t know about that could hurt
them. For now, Kenzie thought it would be better to let them find
out on an as-needed basis. Especially Sloane. Telling her big
sister anything was always a challenge.

Predictably, Sloane hadn’t responded well
when Kenzie announced that she was going to ask Ava to move in with
her.

“You’ve been together for like half a
minute,” she said, slamming her pint down on “their” table at the
pub.

“Geologically, more like .0000008 seconds,”
Matt said.

Kenzie squinted. “Or .00000000008 fribs in
Zattalian units.”

Matt nodded in appreciation. “You have to
teach me more Zattalia factoids. I feel like we could develop a
code based on that. Or maybe a Game Night tradition.”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful,” D’aman said,
ignoring Matt as usual. Along with their partner, Martalla, they
had been spending more social time with the rest of the Super
Friends. “Have you practiced what you’re going to say to her?”

“No,” Kenzie said. “Is that… do
people do that?”

Sloane rolled her eyes. “Oh, for god’s sake,
I’ll help you plan.”

It was a good thing she had, too, because
Kenzie had apparently been about to ask Ava all wrong,
according to Sloane. Whatever. Humans.

The end result was that they had a beautiful
home with a view of mountains and water, and she got to wake up
with Ava every morning—when they were both in town, of course.
Getting a start-up off the ground had kept Ava away more than usual
recently, and she wasn’t the only one traveling for work. Kenzie’s
writing before and immediately after Operation GalaxyCorp, as
Panopticon insisted on referring to it (she blamed Sloane), had
garnered national attention, and now she was considered something
of an “alien whisperer.” Sloane and Jane had both nearly blown a
gasket over this turn of events, but Kenzie was pretty sure her
sister had multiple contingency plans in place were anyone to guess
her identity. D’aman and Matt probably did too, for that
matter.

In the meantime, she would enjoy her newfound
career success as well as the opportunity it gave her to meet with
off-worlders across the country. Aaron thought she might be able to
get a book out of it, and Kenzie loved the idea not only because
her writing career was taking off but because the more off-worlders
she met, the less alone she felt.

Not that she was alone that often these days.
Between Ava, Sloane, and their friends, her life felt pretty
full.

“Shepherd,” Aaron called from the hallway
just then, “try to resist your Millennial tendencies and join
us.”

“On my way,” she called back, and turned off
her phone. Then, trusty notepad and Galaxy Girl-proof pen in hand,
she followed Matt toward the conference room.

This was her
life, and it was a good one. It would be better if she could get
Twitter to stop using the GalaxyCorp hashtag, but she wasn’t
holding her breath on that one. She glanced up as she walked,
peering through the layers of wood and brick to the sky, through
the atmosphere to the wide emptiness of space beyond. Thank
you, Mother. Thank you, Father.

In the conference room, she took her seat at
the long table between Antonio and Matt. Time for another update on
the slow, lingering death of the industry they all loved.

Beside her, Antonio held up his fist. Matt
reached across Kenzie, and the three of them bumped fists.

“Wonder Triplets, activate,” Matt said,
grinning.

“Form of—” Antonio said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Aaron glared at them
from the head of the table. “This is a newsroom, not a cartoon
gallery. Now, listen up.”

Still smiling, Kenzie faced forward and
opened her senses. Whether her boss knew it or not, she was always
listening.

---------------------------------

Thanks for reading the Galaxy Girl trilogy.
If you enjoyed Kenzie and Ava’s story, would you please take a
moment to leave a review at Goodreads
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About the Author

Kate Christie, author of seventeen novels
including the Girls of Summer series, Leaving LA, and Gay
Pride & Prejudice, was born and raised in Kalamazoo,
Michigan. A graduate of Smith College and Western Washington
University, she lives near Seattle with her wife, kids, and the
family dogs.

To read excerpts from Kate’s other titles
from Second Growth Books and Bella Books, please visit her
author website. There,
you can also check out her blog, Homodramatica, where she
occasionally finds time to wax unpoetically about lesbian life,
fiction, and motherhood.

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One of the readers of the Girls of Summer
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Thank you, and
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