About Salvation:
Fall down seven times, get up eight.
These are the words Kenzie has always lived by. The problem is, she’s fallen down too many times to count.
Kenzie and her friends have already escaped two vicious alien attacks—not to mention the corporate bounty hunters sent to capture them. They’re haunted by the friends they’ve lost and the hard choices they’ve had to make in this war they never asked for.
And now, thanks to superpowers she received from the very aliens she’s fighting, Kenzie has stranded everyone on a strange planet with no way off. She just wanted a safe place from the monstrous creatures terrorizing her world, but this new planet has dangers of its own, and Kenzie will have to uncover its secrets if she has any hope of ever making it home again.
Sacrifice is nothing new for Kenzie. She’ll do anything—anything—to destroy the aliens that killed both of her parents. But how can Kenzie save Earth if she can’t even save the people she loves?
Excerpt:
I was getting used to running. From aliens, from bounty hunters, from underground criminals -- when it came to escaping, I was something of an expert by now, even if I didn't always manage the most graceful exits. So you wouldn’t think plodding through a desert would be all that difficult, even if it was on an alien planet.
But we were hitting the point where I’d almost welcome an alien, or the sounds of bullets, or anything to break up the sweltering, tedious trudge. My clothes, sticky with sweat, clung to my body, and loose strands of my hair matted to my face. We didn’t have any water, and no one had spoken in maybe an hour, not even Reed, our resident wisecracker. We were all too parched. I almost laughed at the irony. Somehow, after everything we’d survived, we just might die after all, and it wouldn’t be alien claws or Omnistellar bullets that did us in. It would be the sun.
Better still, it was my fault we were stranded here. Of course, I hadn’t had much choice. The ship we were on was about to explode, thanks to my father activating the self-destruct system. It was either teleport us out or explode with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t direct my own teleportation power. It wasn’t even mine, technically. It was borrowed from Liam, a treacherous alien with superpowers of his own. Because apparently, borrowing powers was something I did now.
I brushed a piece of heavy wet hair out of my face and peered at the city in the distance. Hours of walking, and the stupid thing wasn’t even a glimmer closer than it was when we started. When a flash of light appeared over the city, we’d set off at a near jog, clinging to Cage’s assertion that our friends must have caused the light. Now, hours later, we’d slowed to a trudge.
The flash could have been anything. Lightning. Other people. There was no reason to believe it was my friends. It was still entirely possible I’d dropped people I cared about somewhere in space and left them to die.
My heart sank. Yeah, the others had pressed me into using my borrowed power. Sure, we’d have died if we’d stayed where we were.
But at least it wouldn’t have been my fault.
That knowledge tore my insides to shreds. So many people had died since I opened my eyes that fateful morning just a few weeks ago, the day I was taken hostage: most of the prisoners I’d been responsible for, my parents, my friends. The idea that I might have abandoned even more of these friends somewhere in space…
No. I tightened my shoulders, refusing to give the thought purchase. If determination counted for anything, my friends were here somewhere. I would find them, and they would be all right. I simply wouldn’t allow things to work out any other way.
The sun had moved all the way across the sky while we walked and was now slipping below the horizon. We were going to find our friends here. I wouldn’t let myself consider any other possibility. But even I had to admit it wasn’t likely to be anytime soon.
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About Caryn Lix:
