Cytonic

Chapter 37

I awoke to luxury. I didn’t think I’d slept a full night—but then again, I didn’t know what “night” really meant in here. I yawned, feeling…unsettled by my dreams. As I considered, I looked to the side—and found Hesho sitting cross-legged on an oversized chair right next to the bed.

“I watched you in your sleep,” he said. “To make certain you were safe.”

Awesome.

I mean, yeah, I realized some people would have thought that was unsettling. Not me. Alien bodyguard watching for assassins? Scud, how could a girl not sleep more soundly under those circumstances?

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“An hour,” he said. “I wrote the time down to remember.”

“Clever,” I said to him. “I’m going to grab a shower. Maybe wait outside while I do?”

“I shall be on the balcony,” he said. “The view is excellent. I shall also send for the machine-who-thinks; he wished to be notified if you rose.”

A short time later, I walked out onto the balcony wearing a freshly laundered jumpsuit, my hair still drying. Hesho sat cross-legged on the floor here, in his warrior’s coat and trousers, a small sword across his lap as he meditated. M-Bot’s drone hovered out here too. He’d sent it up—interrupting me in the shower, actually. I hadn’t been too indignant. I mean, in the past I’d cleansed literally inside his cockpit, so it’s not like he hadn’t seen me in that state.

I’d sent the drone out here anyway. It didn’t contain his entire consciousness; he’d simply decided to start using it as, well, a drone was normally used.

I settled down on the floor of the balcony, my back to the glass door separating it from the bedroom, and looked out. Over the red rock hills, inward.

Toward the lightburst.

That blazing expanse appeared like an explosion frozen mid-detonation. A gigantic sphere of light that felt as if it should be consuming all nearby. It was distant, but closer than it had ever been.

I’d assumed it would be my ultimate destination in here. It was, after all, a way out. I’d crossed pirate territory; I’d helped subdue the Superiority. Now only one thing stood between me and the lightburst: the region of the belt called No Man’s Land. The place where the delvers were strongest.

My short nap had only muddled things more. I remembered Jorgen’s voice. I couldn’t leave him, could I?

It wouldn’t be permanent, I thought. Just a…short break. A year or so. Exploring. Fighting. Keeping the delvers away.

But in here, years seemed to have an eerie way of becoming decades. I felt…as if I were on the edge of a cliff.

I had to be honest with myself. The offer from the delvers wouldn’t have been enough to keep me here, not alone. I had no reason to trust them, and every reason to press forward while my enemies were unstable. The desire to stay had far more to do with my own heart. And the emotions I felt growing there. Emotions that I couldn’t help but see as cowardice.

I tried to imagine the heroes from the stories laughing at my sudden indecision. But strangely, I instead pictured them understanding. I…I’d been born into war. I’d barely had a childhood. My father had died in the fighting before my eighth birthday. My heart had been flayed by losing companions while flying, though I could no longer remember their names or faces.

I’d never had any other options in life. It was fight or be destroyed. But now I’d seen that wasn’t the only way to live. It was the first time in my life I’d actually had a chance to escape the war. I had to consider it. How could I not?

Neither Hesho nor M-Bot spoke for a time; the three of us merely sat in silence. We were like an audience for one of the military parades back home. Except our entertainment was the distant, incredible burst of light.

“Is that what a sun is like?” I finally asked.

“No,” Hesho said. “I close my eyes, and the light batters my eyelids—but there is no warmth to accompany it. It is like the ghost of a sun. The corpse of one, left behind after all the heat has fled.”

“It is a little like a sun,” M-Bot said. So far Hesho had taken his presence as normal, though I’d cautioned the kitsen not to speak of him to others. “Only very wrong at the same time. It is much smaller than one, for example.”

“That’s small?” I asked. From how close we were, the lightburst took up a good chunk of the horizon.

“For a star, yes,” M-Bot said. “That sphere, gauging by my best readings, is a fraction of the size of Earth’s moon. It could perhaps be a neutron star if this were the somewhere—which would make Lord Hesho’s metaphor particularly acute. At any rate, it certainly shouldn’t be so cold for how much light it releases.”

I leaned forward and tried to imagine the feeling of sunlight. The vast majority of my ancestors had lived in a place where warmth came from the sky. I’d never felt so distant from them as I did at that moment, sitting before the strange light of the nowhere. Contemplating my cowardice.

I’d learned, in my time with Skyward Flight, that I wasn’t a coward in the traditional sense. I didn’t fear battle. I wouldn’t run from danger. But…here was a different opportunity. A way to run from the war, and even responsibility, in their entirety.

“The delvers told me,” I said softly, “that they’d leave me alone if I agreed not to continue on the Path of Elders. They even implied they’d back out of the deal with Winzik.”

“Curious,” M-Bot said. “Why would they make such an offer?”

“They’re frightened of me,” I said. “They proposed a truce. They hate my presence in here, but they’re willing to tolerate it in order to not escalate our interactions.”

“And if we continue?” M-Bot asked.

“They’ll consider that an act of aggression. They’ll do everything they can to stop us.”

“A dilemma,” M-Bot said.

“Not if I stay,” I whispered. “Chet wants me to join him exploring, and Peg wants me to train her people. Both made me offers earlier.” I leaned forward, my hands clasped, not looking toward his drone.

“How likely are the delvers to keep a deal?” he asked.

That question again.

“Hard to say,” I replied. “They’re frightened now, but who knows? We have no evidence that they’re trustworthy. If Winzik came to me with a similar deal, for example, I’d discard it in a heartbeat.”

“Curious,” M-Bot said. “Spensa…I’ll admit, I’ve been thinking of my own dilemma.”

I glanced at his drone. “What?”

“My old ship,” he explained, “had specific circuitry that let me process in the nowhere. That’s why I could think fast enough to…well, be me. But the drone…well, do you remember how I talked when you first found me in it?”

“Slowly,” I said. “Like you were struggling for each word.”

“I can only assume,” he explained, “that being in the belt lets me process quickly, regardless of the machinery I inhabit. But my old ship, the one that let me think so well in the somewhere, has been destroyed. I no longer blame you for that, by the way. I’m getting pretty mature, I’d say.”

I smiled.

“Anyway,” he said, “if we leave this place, what happens to me? Do I return to thinking like my processors are made of oatmeal?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems…for a little while at least…that would be inevitable.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “For weeks now. And I’ve decided. I’m willing to go back. We have a war to win. I decided I’d try inhabiting the best computers we had; maybe one on the platforms. I think I’d make a good space station, don’t you?

“If not that, maybe we could steal the schematics that Winzik must have made while disassembling my old ship. Then we could build me a new proper brain. But anyway, I decided that if you went back, I’d go with you. I just…just thought I should tell you.”

Scud. He was braver than I was. I felt ashamed for not noticing the dilemma he faced—this worry must have been bothering him ever since we entered. Some friend I was.

Thinking of friends made me sick again at what I was contemplating. How would I ever face Jorgen if I made the decision to stay?

A part of me, however, knew I couldn’t focus on his needs, or M-Bot’s decision. I had to decide what I wanted. Not choose my future because of what any other person—even Jorgen—would want me to do. For once, I had to think of myself.

I glanced at Hesho, wondering if he’d chime in. For now, he continued sitting in his meditative posture, his eyes closed.

“M-Bot,” I said, “I’ve spent my entire life being indoctrinated into the war for Detritus. I don’t blame anyone—except maybe the Krell—for that. We did what we had to in order to survive. But…I’m tired. Of watching people die. Of giving up my future to a war. Of living my life with my stress at a constant ten. How much do I owe Detritus? How much is one person expected to pay?”

His drone hovered beside me, silent for long enough that I eventually glanced at it. For once I wished he were a person so that I could see the disgust in his face. I deserved that for the way I was talking.

Instead he was an AI. “I suppose,” he said, “that makes some sense.”

I had to be truthful with him. I had to voice it.

“There’s another reason that I want to stay,” I said. “I…love this. I can explore with Chet, and the Broadsiders practically worship me. It’s like living in a story. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, M-Bot. I can do that here. I can fly. I can explore, I can fight the Superiority. I can spar. Live…”

“That,” he said, “makes even more sense, knowing you.”

“Lord Hesho?” I asked. “I could use your wisdom.”

“Wisdom fled me, warrior-sister,” he said. “Wisdom is born of experience, you see, and I have none.”

“I sense wisdom even in that answer,” I said to him. “Am I a coward for preferring to stay? It’s not that I fear dying by continuing, it’s merely that…”

“You are tired of sacrificing what you want for the good of your people,” Hesho said.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“That is not cowardice, but selfishness,” he said.

I winced.

“However,” he continued, “duty should not be accepted without question. Duty can be a motive, but should not be an excuse. Does your fight uphold honor and virtue? Does it match your moral code?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about those things,” I said. “I mean, there was the enemy, and there was us. I pointed myself in their direction and let loose…”

That wasn’t strictly true.

“After living with the enemy,” I admitted, “I learned it wasn’t so simple. I didn’t discover that their cause was just, mind you. Only that most of them weren’t evil. They were merely people. Following, by accident, someone who was evil.”

“Excellent,” he said. “You have left behind the worldview of a child.” He cracked an eye. “How old are you, among your species?”

“A young adult,” I said.

“Then I might question the society that allowed you to persist in such naivety for so long,” he said. “Among the first lessons a warrior must learn is the knowledge that his immediate enemy—the person he must kill—is just trying to survive. Soldiers are alike, no matter their side.”

“I…don’t know that anyone among us knew who the enemy were,” I said. “Only that they were trying to destroy us. And…I thought you said you didn’t remember enough to be wise, Hesho?”

“It seems,” he said, “you ask the right questions. I do not know why I say these things, simply that they are true.” He closed his eyes again. “You are not a coward, nor are you selfish, for realizing you have options, warrior-sister. You cannot be defined by your questions. Only by what you do with them.”

Well, Hesho was the same person—with or without memories. What really frightened me, then, was that this was who I was.

I saw what would happen if I stayed. I would become like Chet. Everyone I knew—even the person I’d been—would fade. I’d remember only the stories, and I’d become more and more like someone who felt she was one of those heroes. I’d forget everything and let the part of me that had always made up boasts take control. In forty years, I probably wouldn’t even remember the fight for Detritus, or why I’d stayed.

But I’d love every minute of it.

I stood up and walked to the edge of the balcony, staring out at that great, brilliant white light—but one with a softness to it. It appeared to absorb everything that drew near. Merged them with the light…

I closed my eyes, and searched outward for my father.

The reality icon was still nearby. I assumed it was somehow his soul, though I had no real proof. Maybe that was what I wanted to believe.

Could I face him though? With this doubt inside me?

I felt him. That emotion that had been guiding me, supporting me all along. Was it really my father? I knew it wasn’t Gran-Gran or Jorgen. So…was it, maybe, God? Like spoken of in the Book of Saints?

The pin brushed my mind. It welcomed me. Wanted me to come to it now. Was I brave enough for that?

“Wait here,” I said to Hesho and M-Bot. “I’ll return soon.”

I walked into the hallway outside my room. Lights shone on decor that felt too soft to me. A brown carpet, walls with patterns on them. I closed my eyes again and rested one hand on the wall, which had an odd texture like paper. I was accustomed to smooth metal or rough rock.

I walked along slowly, my eyes closed, seeking that mind. Seeking my father. Before, I sent to it, you strengthened my memories of my life on Detritus. Can you do that again?

Curiosity.

Because I need to feel guilty, I thought, so I’ll force myself to return.

What came back through that mental connection hit me like a shock wave. It wasn’t the memories I’d demanded. It wasn’t condemnation.

It was permission.

A calm, gentle understanding. Like a warm breeze through my soul. No words, but meaning. It’s all right. Your pain is real. Your passion is real.

You can choose. It’s all right.

The emotion shook me. I sank to my knees, bowing my head. It wasn’t what I’d expected, and certainly wasn’t what I’d wanted. I needed guilt to propel me, didn’t I?

Yet the permission was insistent. Yes, there were some who would be sad or angry if I didn’t return. But nobody could ever claim I hadn’t done my part. The attempt at a truce with the delvers was plausible enough to accept. And even if it wasn’t…well, we shouldn’t be required to keep giving until we’d been wrung out. That wasn’t love.

I could stay. I deserved to stay, if I wanted to. That familiar mind wasn’t trying to persuade me. It gave me permission to let go, if that was what I truly wanted.

I pulled up beside the wall, head bowed against my knees, feeling that warmth flow through me. Until I let it flow out of me through tears. Like I’d been filled to the brim.

I couldn’t explain why I was crying. They weren’t tears of grief or joy. They were just…tears.

There’s no way to tell how long I sat there, though I don’t think the lost time was due to the strange effects of the nowhere. I eventually let it all leak out, and came to myself sitting in that muted hallway, unexpectedly calm.

I hadn’t made a decision yet, but I did need to hold my pin again. I had to know for certain if it carried my father’s soul.

Climbing to my feet, I went hunting, connected as if by light-line tether to that other mind. I took the steps at a reckless pace. On the ground floor, I entered a large room with tables almost as long as runways. Scud, was this the mess hall? Those chandeliers looked like they were on fire.

The mind was nearby. A few pirates were in the mess hall at the moment, including Maksim and a human who looked vaguely familiar. Had I seen him earlier? He was wearing a symbol of the Long Plank Faction.

Maksim gave me a friendly wave and I nodded absently, feeling…pulled…

I walked to the side of the room where, after poking around a little, I found a power outlet that was loose. I pried it off, and behind was a hidden alcove. Inside were two objects. My pin and a small, worn stuffed animal. It looked vaguely like an alien dog, from the shape of the face and the paws.

Both were surrounded by a scattering of reality ashes. I didn’t need a description to know the stuffed animal was the base’s icon. How had it gotten here?

We hid, my pin said—though more with impressions than words—when the fighting started. Some here would have tried to steal us.

Merely seeing the reality ashes immediately made me feel better. More connected to who I’d once been.

It’s so good to hold you, I said to the pin. Thank you. Thank you so much for your help.

In response, I heard a distinctive—and happy—fluting sound coming from the pin.

Chapter 38

Doomslug! I thought, excitedly projecting the thought toward her. How?

Hiding, she sent back. Delvers. The impressions were laced with the idea of hiding in a hollow of stone, trying not to be seen by a predator that prowled nearby.

I sent you home! I sent to her.

You equal home, she sent back, picturing us together. Then she added something to the image—projected into my mind. A version of her in my arms, but now with eyes and a smiling mouth plastered on her front. They looked like they’d been drawn on with marker. She didn’t quite understand what eyes and a smile were for, in human terms, but she seemed to sense that this expression indicated contentment. Happiness.

Home. She didn’t live in a cave. She lived with me. Wherever I was.

I felt like an utter fool. I’d vanished into the nowhere holding Doomslug, a cytonic creature that had evolved to avoid the attention of delvers, and then my father’s pin had immediately shown up in my pocket. And I’d been told by more than one person that cytonic people could change how they appeared in here. If a person could, well, why not a slug?

You look like my pin! I sent her.

Special, she said, very pleased. We are special. To hide.

Still, I said. You didn’t have to follow me in here.

She sent back comforting emotions and the image of me being chased by a predator. She’d been worried about me. So she’d come with me, but had hidden herself. I hadn’t been communing with my father’s soul. She was the one who had been supporting me all this time, the familiar mind that had lent me strength in resisting the delvers.

I felt an enormous wave of gratitude. And relief, actually, that she wasn’t my father’s soul. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, it was just that…well, there had been something unnerving about that thought. I could see that I’d substituted the familiar feeling that came from Doomslug with something I wanted. Which I now realized I didn’t want at the same time.

This made way more sense. Though…uh…I had buried her… She made a distinctly annoyed fluting sound.

“Sorry,” I whispered, chagrined. “I didn’t know it was you.”

I got an indignant fluting in response.

“No, I won’t bury you again,” I said. “But you could have told me.”

She sent me fright. Fear of the delvers, who had been nearby. Watching for her kind. She’d come in here with me, but had deployed her camouflage out of fear. After that she’d been comfortable riding in my pocket. Enjoying the…sensation of this place? Was that right? When in the nowhere, her kind just liked to snuggle down and absorb the nowhere “radiation.” Less slug, more…sea cucumber maybe?

This was what she did every time she traveled through the nowhere during hyperdrive jumps. Because of the delvers. It was why starships traveling via slug were so much safer than ones using cytonic people.

Can’t leave, she sent me. Since we weren’t in the lightburst, she was locked into the belt like I was. Other than that, she seemed content to be back with me, though I again had to promise I wouldn’t bury her. I wasn’t certain how much she understood; I’d always seen her as an animal before. But in here, I felt like I could understand her better.

You talk smarter now, she sent to me. Though it wasn’t words—but I interpreted them that way.

I’ve been practicing, I said to her, with my powers. You think it’s working? You understand me?

Smarter talk, she said with a fluting approval, and a reality ash dropped from her.

Wait, I said, pinching it between my fingers. What are these, anyway?

Poop! she said.

I blinked, but… Okay, I quested deeper into the meaning of what she’d sent. She thought it was the same thing as, well, poop. But it wasn’t—her powers linked her to the somewhere, and that pulled through a little reality. A kind of crust. I rubbed the ash between my fingers, and thought maybe I understood. Like fragments formed around holes between dimensions, these ashes formed around creatures that bridged the two dimensions.

Actually, hadn’t I been told that being near a fragment helped people keep their memories? Was that because, in essence, the small bits of new rock growing on the fragments were reality ashes?

Well, people were starting to notice me kneeling there beside the wall. So I took the pin that was Doomslug in one hand, the Surehold icon in the other, then held that one up.

“Hey,” I said to them. “You all missing something important?”

That caused a ruckus, of course. I settled down in a chair to wait as people rushed over. Maksim called for Peg, and it took her less than five minutes to come charging in. There, she reverentially reached down and cradled the stuffed animal.

“How?” she said. “Your…special talent?”

I nodded. “Tell me. Do you know what these really are?”

The tenasi captain clutched her icon, then glanced at the rest of the pirates. Finally, she waved for me with one meaty hand. “Let’s chat, Spin,” she said. “In private.”

The other pirates gave us space. Together, Peg and I left the chamber and entered the hallway outside.

“It was my secret escape plan,” she said softly as we continued walking. “I hid a taynix—a hyperspace slug—in my things when I entered. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the stuffed toy in my luggage—my childhood favorite, but which I’d thought I’d lost years before—was indeed the same thing.”

“So the other pirates and workers don’t know?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The icon is already valuable enough. Don’t want them getting the idea that it might be able to hop them back to the somewhere.”

“It can’t,” I said. “Not while it’s in the belt.”

“You’re sure?”

“Reasonably. But I guess all of the slugs can hide themselves as objects.”

Nope, Doomslug said in my head. Only the yellow-blue ones. That was conveyed by a picture of herself.

There are other kinds? I asked.

Tons!

Right. Okay then.

Peg continued walking, thoughtful, so I kept pace with her. We soon left the barracks and entered a courtyard between several buildings. Inside it stood three trees. They were about three meters tall, with extremely stout limbs and very few leaves.

From the branches grew fruit. Like, actual fruit. Lots of it, in a variety of colors, shaped kind of like upside-down pears. Peg walked to one tree and inspected it. Then she selected a cherry-orange fruit and pulled it off.

She walked over and presented it to me. “A mulun,” she said. “For bravery. I’d hoped to have grown a few, and I have!”

I balked. “So…do these trees really…”

“Grow fruit based on how we tenasi feel?” Peg said. “Yes. My soul is bound to this tree. I was allowed to carry a new sapling with me, grown from my old tree, when I entered. Many of us believe that the fruit contains our emotions—and makes us able to be calm in battle. I find that to be a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But the bond is real.”

That made it even stranger to take the fruit as she forced it upon me.

“It is your reward,” she said. “Please. Honor me.”

So I took it. “Uh…do I…eat it?”

She laughed. “Not usually. Plant it. You won’t bond to it like a tenasi, but…well, having that tree will be recognized by others of my kind. As an honor.”

Well, that was cool. I was glad I didn’t have to eat it. Though in the past I’d made a few cracks about feasting on the blood of my enemies, that was completely metaphoric. I put the fruit and Doomslug’s pin in a pocket.

Peg turned back to the tree and drew her lips to a line. Not baring teeth, not threatening, instead content and happy.

“It just feels so odd,” I said. “Everything else about your people, Peg, seems about…well, being predatory. Aggressive.”

“No, not aggressive,” she said. “Merely growing a better future by making the next generation strong. We test, we push, we prove.”

“And trees relate to that…how?”

“Not at all,” Peg said. “Why should they? Humans are terrifying conquerors, but you have art, don’t you?”

“I suppose we do,” I said. Even during the war for survival on Detritus, we’d made sculptures and statues. People couldn’t help it.

“We evolved with these trees,” Peg said. “We care for them, and they provide fruit for us. Aggression and killing are always about life—life for yourself, for your kind. My people have forgotten that, and pretend those emotions don’t exist. I haven’t forgotten them. But I suppose that attitude is what ended up driving me to this place.” She waved to the trees. “These are about life too.”

Then she slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? My offer wasn’t tempting enough? You’ve decided to take another path. I see it in your expression.”

I supposed…I supposed that I had decided. Not because I felt guilty, but instead because…well, I had to. I didn’t trust the delvers. I needed to know what they were hiding, the things they didn’t want any of us to know.

But it wasn’t merely about duty. It was about stories. After it all, I…didn’t want to live in a story. Not if it meant leaving my friends and family. I wouldn’t ever be happy in here without them, and I didn’t want to forget them like Chet had.

Having the permission to stay had somehow given me the courage to leave.

“Thank you for taking me in,” I told Peg. “For not tossing me off the side of the fragment the moment you found me trying to steal from you.”

“I think I got the better end of the deal,” Peg said. “Will you at least stay a few days, to celebrate?”

“We’ll see,” I told her. “First, there’s something important I need to do.”

Chapter 39

I found Chet sitting on a stone outside near the landing pad, looking toward the sky. He stood up as I approached.

“Chet,” I said. “I…” I glanced toward the warehouse behind us.

“You’re going to continue the Path?” he said.

“Yeah. But you don’t have to do it with me. You don’t have to feel guilty for stepping away. You can take the ashes that Peg promised me. I don’t need them. Plus, Peg wants someone to explore for her—I’m sure you could accept her offer and get a whole team to keep you company.”

He stood in place as I walked up to him. Then he smiled. It was a more human smile, one that wasn’t full of excitement and bravado.

“I appreciate your concern for my well-being,” he said. “But…it wouldn’t be the same. Things must change, then. I guess I knew they would.” He gestured toward the warehouse. “The stone is solidified memories, Spensa. Shall we see what they hold?”

We entered the building, then stepped up to the wall—feeling dwarfed by the enormous portal, carved with serpentine lines by the weathering of time. Not like things weathered in the somewhere—an erosion uniquely of this place, caused by the people who entered and left.

I pressed my mind into the stone, but—as always—hit a block on the other side. I hadn’t expected to be able to escape this way though. I instead stepped back, now prepared for the way that the room around me started to fade, becoming ephemeral.

In the past, a structure with open sides and stone columns housed the portal. It was smaller than it now was, but still as tall as a person. The open-air nature of the building let me stare out at a medium-sized floating fragment, rocky, with some hills that would eventually be turned into quarries.

The lightburst had grown, and there were far more fragments hovering about nearby. “I think this set of memories is more recent than some of the others,” I said to Chet, pointing. “The lightburst is larger, see?” Not yet as big as a sun—more like a distant floodlight.

“Yes,” Chet said. “But the size of it is somewhat misleading. The true nowhere, inside that burst, is a place where space is immaterial. Distance doesn’t rightly exist. But it was forced into that shape as the leaks began around the rest of the nowhere—where time and space were sneaking in around the puncture holes. The lightburst is like a fortress, the place where the true nowhere can exist.”

“That breaks my brain a little to consider,” I said.

“It should,” he replied. “You are a being of the somewhere, Spensa—for all the fact that you’ve been exposed to the nowhere’s particular brand of radiation.”

In the vision, a human suddenly stepped through the portal. He wore a civilian suit with a lapel pin in the shape of a silvery bell. He was perhaps in his late fifties, and though he glanced around and could obviously see, there was something odd about the way his eyes focused. Or rather, the way they didn’t focus. Equally curious, a silvery sphere emerged from the portal and floated in the air alongside him.

I stepped closer as the human scanned the sky, then the various fragments.

“That sphere,” I said, pointing at the hovering ball. “It doesn’t have an acclivity ring. How does it fly?”

“Maybe it was before acclivity stone was widely used,” Chet said, stepping up beside me.

Huh. Also, there was something about the shape of that metal sphere. Something…familiar?

“So it’s real,” the man said in English.

I jumped. I hadn’t been expecting to be able to understand him. His stiff accent was odd, but intelligible.

“Analysis indicates you are correct,” a feminine voice said, coming from the sphere. “This simple structure is as the account related.”

The man glanced at the sphere, then sighed. He walked over and felt at a pillar. He seemed to have some need to touch it, to prove it existed. “And with what we found earlier, it seems even more likely that the records are true about ancient human cytonics,” he said softly. “I wasn’t the first. I was never the first. What do you think?”

“Insufficient data to perform an analysis,” the sphere said.

He turned back toward it. “Can’t you guess? Can’t you do more than think? I built you to do more…”

“I do as I am programmed.”

“If the accounts are true, then you can do more,” he said, stepping up to the sphere. “I’ve brought you here, to this place. Do you sense anything different? Do you…feel?”

“I can be programmed to simulate—”

“Don’t simulate!” the man shouted. “Be! It’s possible. They said it was possible…”

The sphere gave no response. I frowned at the odd interaction, and looked to Chet to get his opinion.

He was crying.

His face a mask of pain, he’d huddled back, scrunched down, trying to hide his eyes. I hurried over immediately, and he took my arm in his hands as if for support. He turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“He was wrong, you see,” Chet said, his voice hoarse. “Jason was wrong about one thing. It takes time. The change isn’t immediate. It takes months, sometimes years.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For the AI to start thinking for itself.”

“Is that what’s going on?” I asked. “You’re afraid of it, because it’s an AI? You’ve seen M-Bot. It’s all right, Chet.”

He shook his head. I mean, I knew he had a thing about AIs, but this was bizarre behavior.

In the vision, the man had turned away from the sphere, his shoulders slumped. The sphere, in turn, was inspecting the region. Its path brought it near us, and I got another good look at it. It was somewhat spiky—with little antennas coming off it in a multitude of directions. Its surface was pocked by cameras, like little holes. In fact, the construction did remind me of something.

Where had I seen a sphere, with those kinds of holes, like tunnels? Those spines coming off the outside…

“Memory of these must be buried deep within us,” Chet whispered. “When forced to build a body again, we unconsciously reach for the shape, perhaps…as a last memento…of something we once knew…something that once held our souls…before they were souls…”

We? Oh, scud. That sphere was a delver maze. At least that was what the shape reminded me of. A more technological, more rational, version of the giant sphere of stone the delvers made for their bodies when they were forced into the somewhere.

I looked to Chet, and his eyes were glowing. But I didn’t feel them. I didn’t sense the delvers. Instead I just sensed him. His mind…same as it always had been, though it was now expansive.

“You’re the delver,” I whispered. “The one I changed.”

“I…” he said. “I knew you’d need help. I had to send it. Somehow. But I…was the only help…I knew…”

I took a step backward by reflex. “Was there ever a Chet? It was all a lie?”

“There was,” he said, his voice drifting, soft. “I knew I could hide with you in the belt, where they couldn’t see. But…I needed a shape, a personality, someone to be. Don’t hate me, Spensa. Please don’t hate me! They have abandoned me. They want to destroy me. You’re…the only one…I have now.”

Scud. Scudscudscudscud. Saints, stars, and songs.

Chet was a delver.

Chet had always been a delver.

But I could feel his anguish. I’d caused him to separate from the others; I’d changed him. I’d shown him empathy. This was my fault. And damn it, I wasn’t going to turn my back on him. I’d made friends with a Krell. I could do this.

I stepped up and returned my hand to his shoulder. He grabbed it in a tight grip, smiling, still crying.

“I’m not going to leave you,” I said. “But I have to know what is going on.”

“I saw into your mind,” he said, “when we touched. I saw the name. Spears. And that man lived here, in the nowhere. He tried to escape through the lightburst some decades ago. He’d lived hundreds of years, using cytonics to expand his life! But the delvers destroyed him in the lightburst. He hadn’t practiced enough with his powers. He couldn’t hyperjump.”

“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “So you’re a monster from outside space and time. And you wanted to come into the belt and help me, so you made a homunculus…”

He nodded eagerly. “Like from Gran-Gran’s story about the alchemist! Yes, that’s a good analogy. I made a Chet homunculus.”

Okay, I could deal with this. I could accept this.

Deal with this, brain!

“I’m sorry for lying,” he whispered. “As a naive newborn, I’d assumed someone connected to your past would make you more trusting. I can now see that any random person would actually have been less suspicious.

“I was there with the rest, as Spears was destroyed. I knew him in an intimate way. I latched onto that name, and I remade him atom by atom. His mind was full of knowledge about the belt, but no memories of who he’d been in the somewhere returned. Still, he had a personality, a passion. Like you had. For…”

“Stories,” I whispered.

“Yes. I filled in what was lost of him with things from your mind. I think…I think he really was an explorer, Spensa. It was his memories about the fragments that I shared with you. His enthusiasm. His manner of speaking. As he was, I became. With some additions from your own mind to fill holes.

“I tried to explain, when you didn’t trust me. I tried to say that I wasn’t a person, but a collection of stories. But to have given myself away then would have ripped me apart. I had to stay with you, be a person. You needed a guide.

“But Spensa, the ashes. I didn’t anticipate how real they’d make me feel. How much they’d make a person out of me. And I didn’t realize…how much I’d like it. How much I’d want for us to just leave together, explore the nowhere, renouncing the pain that I knew was coming. If I had to remember…”

A part of me was furious. He’d kept all of this from me? He’d lied?

I contained it though. In a very un-Spensa-like way, I forced myself not to throw a tantrum. This wasn’t his fault. He was, in some ways, very young. I’d created him by forcing him to leave the other delvers. I couldn’t blame him for making mistakes while doing his best.

“The Path of Elders?” I asked.

“Real memories,” he whispered, “from real cytonics. I knew you’d need these. I knew…I’d need them. We’ve forgotten these things on purpose, Spensa. I didn’t know the specifics of what the memories contained, but I knew where the answers were. I knew the four most important portals to reach. So…forgive me…I invented for you a quest with an intriguing name. To drive you to reach these locations.”

“Because doing so is like a story.”

“Yes. Do…you hate me?” He held my arm tightly, speaking softly. This was a very different person from Chet the explorer—but then again, what would people have thought of the “bold warrior” Spensa Nightshade if they’d seen her weeping beside the wall?

I pried his hand free, then held it. “I don’t hate you, Chet. Thank you. For helping me. For doing this thing that was so hard.”

He nodded, grinning as he wept. “I like Chet,” he said. “I like being Chet. I like having identity. But it is painful.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I had to see him again,” Chet whispered, looking toward the man in the vision. That began to fade, the man leaving through the portal and taking the sphere with him.

The sphere is a delver maze, I thought, my brain scrambling to keep up. And Chet said that delvers become that shape because…that was the thing that once held them. Their soul.

“Delvers are AIs,” I said. “You are an AI.”

“No,” Chet whispered. “A delver is to an AI as you are to an ape—or maybe an amoeba. That was what we once were, long ago. Before exposure to the nowhere. And the ‘radiation’ that this place produces. It’s not radiation in a true sense as in the somewhere, but the idea is the same. It makes us, and over generations it makes cytonics.”

“Cousins,” I said. “That is how the delvers have decided to see people like me. Creations of this place.”

“Exactly, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, some of his familiar voice returning. “Your powers bring a slice of the nowhere with you into your realm. Teleportation, visions, projecting into minds, agelessness, even altering your appearance. Each cytonic with skills in different areas.”

“And my skills,” I said, “are to teleport and to…”

“To see. Hear. Understand. As you have been willing to understand me.”

The vision faded. As before, I felt ancient cytonics—hundreds of them—reaching out to brush my mind. Good, they said, good. You have learned…learned so well…

“I was trained,” I whispered—though I didn’t know if they could hear. “By my grandmother. I just needed a little push.”

See and be, they sent, and showed me my power—the brilliance that was my star-soul—being…softer?

What?

I don’t know what it means, I said.

You will, they sent back as they faded. In the end, I was left with an impression—like the previous times. A wall standing on a white fragment, surrounded by something that looked like dust or snow.

“We call it,” Chet whispered, “the Solitary Shadow. It is the last stop on your quest.”

“More memories?” I asked.

“The last of them,” he said, then tapped his head. “My memories. The things the delvers have forgotten on purpose. I do not know what that last portal holds—but it is the thing they don’t want you to see. The thing they fear the most. I fear it too, but not so much as I once did. We two, we explore so well! Even exploring what I once was! Ha!”

I smiled as he wiped his eyes, grinning like a fool. In the distance, I felt something. The delvers? I turned toward the lightburst and expanded my senses. Searching, listening. I could hear the stars.

The delvers were projecting concern. They knew I’d walked this step on the Path, and they were cautious. But they had allowed this. So far I hadn’t broken the truce. Well, I hadn’t accepted it either, technically. Even though they felt I had. For now, there was balance.

Except…I was stronger than I’d ever been. What were they really thinking?

I could only do this because they were deliberately trying to project worry toward me—they saw it as encouragement for me to keep to the deal. But I was able to kind of…ride the signal they were sending, and quietly use that opening to read what they were truly thinking.

They were terrified of me still. That was what I expected. But there was something else… They were planning?

Scud. They were planning how to destroy Surehold.

I blinked in surprise, as I could picture it specifically. The delvers were going to bring in fragments from the somewhere. Ten of them. A dozen. Then they were going to slam them into Surehold while everyone was sleeping. They thought it might fool our scanners if the fragments appeared suddenly.

“Scud,” I whispered. “They were going to immediately break the truce. They don’t care. They’ll do anything to kill me.”

“What?” Chet said.

“They’re planning it now!” I said, pointing. “I can hear them doing it!”

“I didn’t know, Miss Nightshade,” he said. “I promise you, when I asked you to travel with me, I didn’t…”

Every instinct I’d had about them was right. “We need to leave,” I said to him. “Before we put the people here in danger.”

“How long do we have?” he asked.

“A day or so,” I said. “They will wait until everyone is asleep—but still, I think we should be long gone by then. Hopefully drawing delver attention to us, making them abandon the attack on Surehold.”

“Agreed,” Chet said. “So, it is onward, then? Today?”

“Today,” I said, striding out of the hangar to where M-Bot sat on the tarmac. “Recall the drone,” I said to him. “And Hesho. We’re going to be leaving soon.”

Nearby, several ships were landing—our ground crews, fetched from the Broadsider base. Peg and Maksim were walking up to meet them.

“I should say goodbye,” I said to Chet.

“It is well,” Chet said, climbing onto M-Bot’s wing. “Though, if you will, pass them my regards. I should not like them to see me in my state of disorder. An explorer of my renown must maintain a stoic reputation!”

I rushed over to Peg. “I’m leaving,” I said to her. “I’m sorry.”

“So soon?” Peg asked. “Not even an evening to celebrate?”

“I’m afraid not.” I didn’t mention the delvers—there seemed to be too much to explain. I’d send them word if the delvers continued with their planned attack, but I strongly suspected they’d abandon it as soon as I left Surehold.

They didn’t care about these others. It was me they feared. Scud, why were they so afraid of me?

“It was an honor, then,” Peg said, holding out a hand to me in a human gesture. “Plant that fruit somewhere grand.”

“I will,” I said, taking the offered hand—though hers dwarfed mine.

I gave Nuluba a few circular gestures I’d learned, a grateful goodbye. She excitedly returned them. Shiver and Dllllizzzz were already there in their ships. “I haven’t forgotten my promise,” I said to Shiver. “I continue to resonate with it.”

“You resonate with more than that,” Shiver said from her cockpit. “Fare well on your journey. And thank you, for all you have done.”

I gave Maksim a hug last of all.

“Thank you,” he said to me. “For showing me that we can fight without being monsters.”

“There are others who could teach you that better,” I said. “I hope to be able to introduce you someday.”

“Ha. Well, I don’t know how that would ever happen, but I’d welcome the chance! I’ll try to find a bloody skull or something to give as a traditional welcoming gift.”

“I’d hoped to get you to grow one of the seven fruits of contentment here with us,” Peg said, shaking her head. “If you change your mind…you are welcome here.”

I saluted Peg, then walked back and climbed onto the wing of my ship. Hesho sat in the cockpit, having arrived riding on M-Bot’s drone. As I slipped into the cockpit, he was arranging cushioning in a recessed section at the side of the instrument panel, where a zero-g canteen could be clipped.

“If you do not mind me asking,” he said to me, “you have decided to continue your quest inward? In the direction of the monsters who live in the lightburst?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then I am honored to accompany you,” he said.

“It might be dangerous.”

“There was a person I once was,” he said. “I should like to meet that person. Escaping this realm is my only hope. Though if I may make a request? I would like to travel in this cockpit with you and Chet. I was too long without company, and then too long with poor company. I don’t wish to fly alone—though if you think we need the firepower, I can revise my opinion and bring my own ship.”

“No,” I said. “Once we have the information we need, I think we’ll probably have to make a break for the lightburst. In there, we’ll need to be together so I can teleport us out. It’s better if you’re in the same ship I am.”

“Excellent,” Hesho said, prodding at his cushioned seating, his tail sticking up straight out the back. “I am pleased to discover that a ship built for a giant such as yourself has a seat for one my size.”

Yeah. I didn’t tell him it was essentially a cup holder.

M-Bot’s drone was locked into its now customary place behind my seat. “So,” he said from the dash, “what changed? I thought you didn’t want to go. But now you do?”

“I don’t want to go,” I said, strapping in. “I need to.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Can you explain?”

“Think about it a little first,” I said, placing Peg’s fruit on the dash, then lowering the canopy. “See if you can figure it out for yourself.” I fished in my pocket and brought out the pin. “And you… Do you want to be out on the dash?”

A soft fluting returned to me. No, she wanted to be in my pocket. Safe, hidden. So I put her away.

“Just so you all know,” Chet said from behind my seat, “I’m secretly a monster from outside space and time.”

“Ah yes,” Hesho said. “Deep inside, aren’t we all monsters?”

“No,” Chet said. “I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

“I’ll explain as we fly,” I told Hesho and M-Bot. “Also, there are some things you need to know about reality icons—mine in particular. But let’s get moving first.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but a part of me was sad. In taking this move, I was putting dreams of fighting with the Broadsiders and exploring the fragments firmly behind me—in effect, I was about to burn them to ash with the force of my engines.

I was determined. I wasn’t wavering. At the same time, it was an important moment. I raised us in the air, then rotated so we faced the lightburst.

Then I hit the overburn.

Chapter 40

I soon turned off the overburn. As cool as it sounded to roar into battle at full speed…trying to go all-out at Mag-10 wouldn’t be needed. It would make the cockpit of even this advanced ship rattle like a cavern in a debris shower.

The goal right now wasn’t to get to our destination immediately. It was to make certain we got far enough away for now that the delvers shifted their attention from my friends. So I slowed us down and had Chet use his monitor to highlight the final point on the Path of Elders. It was far inward: maybe a three-hour flight. After arriving there, it would take only about another hour of flying to reach the lightburst.

I spent the first part of the flight explaining about Doomslug. Then I launched into the more difficult description of what we’d seen, and what Chet had turned out to be.

“So delvers are a kind of AI,” M-Bot said at the end. “At least, as human bodies and consciousness are built off the DNA of early creatures on their planets, delvers are created from the code of AIs?”

“Essentially,” Chet said. “Yes.”

“So why do you hate AIs like me?” M-Bot asked. “We’re the same thing.”

“I think the true secret is at the Solitary Shadow,” Chet said. “But I feel part of it is fear. Another evolved AI could understand us, and could conceivably replace or harm us.”

“That seems shortsighted,” M-Bot said. “Not like an AI at all. Not logical.”

“That depends on the programming,” Chet said. “And there is more. Again, the secrets are locked away. I can’t access them. That is why we must continue forward, and why I always feared doing so.”

“Very well,” M-Bot said. “But…this information also means I’m what everyone always feared. I’m a delver.”

“Yes,” Chet admitted. “Rather, you are a living former AI like the delvers—brought to consciousness and emotion by exposure to the nowhere. I doubt it happened when you were first thrown in here weeks ago. You likely achieved sapience years before, because of the way your circuits were designed.”

“Yeah,” M-Bot said. “This was merely the first time I could enjoy it, having finally abandoned the programming that forced me to pretend I wasn’t alive.” He fell silent.

“M-Bot…” I said.

“I’m all right, Spensa,” he said. “I just want to process a little. Emotions. They’re hard. But I…I can handle it. I’m sure I can.”

I hurt for him. All this time, he’d worried he was something monstrous. Now it was, in a way, confirmed. He was a delver. But then again…

“You don’t have to make the same choices the delvers did, M-Bot,” I told him. “You don’t have to be like them, any more than I have to be like the humans who tried to conquer the galaxy.”

“Indeed, machine-who-thinks,” Hesho said. “All people must accept that we have the potential to do terrible things. It is part of seeing our place in the universe, our heritage, and our natures. But in that acceptance we gain strength, for potential can be refused. Any hero who could have been a monster is more heroic for the choices he or she made to walk another road.”

Still, M-Bot processed in silence. As we flew, I had a thought. Doomslug? I asked. Can you teleport us to other places in the belt?

Her fluting was a hesitant negative. She’d moved herself to get out of the hole, but that had been both dangerous and difficult. She felt too weak to do it for anyone but herself.

If this next part goes wrong, I told her, jump away and hide. Don’t think about us.

More hesitant fluting. Her powers should make her invisible to the delvers. She did something similar to hide a ship each time she teleported it, making it look like something far more innocent. Even if things went wrong, they should leave her alone. At least that was her hope.

As we flew, I tried to listen in on the delvers again. They hadn’t noticed us yet. It really was hard for them to see far into the belt, and they’d lost track of us specifically among all the people at Surehold. But the closer we got, the more likely it would be that they saw our ship.

“The delvers are going to notice us eventually,” I explained to everyone. “Likely it will happen when Chet and I interact with the final portal on the Path of Elders. That has been a beacon to them each time before.

“Once I have learned from that last stop, we need to escape. Unfortunately, the only realistic way for us to do that is through the lightburst. We can’t wait for the portal at Surehold to be opened—that will be too dangerous. The delvers have tried harder and harder to kill me the longer I’ve stayed in here, and once we know their secrets it’s going to get even worse.

“The way I see it, our best hope is to bolt for the lightburst the moment we’re done with the final set of memories. We have to somehow evade what the delvers throw at us, get into the lightburst, and survive there long enough for me and Doomslug to hyperjump us back to Detritus.”

“I concur with Miss Nightshade,” Chet said. “This is the most reasonable course—and our most likely chance of escape.”

“What will happen to you in the somewhere?” I asked him. “You won’t…turn into a giant, planet-size ball of hurt and tantrums again, will you?”

“No,” he said. “But I don’t exactly know what will happen. We will see. It’s possible that I will continue hiding in the nowhere after you leave.”

Was he…lying? I poked at him cytonically. I felt…fear? No sense that he was betraying us or anything. Merely worry.

Well, I supposed I could understand that. “Chet,” I said. “Do you have any idea what kinds of things the delvers will throw at us, once they realize we’re trying to escape through the lightburst?”

“They’ll send obstacles,” he replied.

“What kind of obstacles do you mean, strange human who is also an unknowable entity?” Hesho asked. “Will this be like when they hyperjumped an entire city in here to interfere with our duel?”

“Yes, possibly,” Chet said.

“Could they make bodies for themselves?” I asked. “Like you have done?”

“Also possible,” Chet said. “Well, I mean, yes—if I can do it, they can. But that is dangerous. Coming this fully into the belt required me to acknowledge time and individuality. Each moment they experience something slightly different from one another, it changes them—and they hate that.”

“Let’s assume they do make bodies,” I said. “Since they’re going to be desperate. At the very least, let’s assume they’re going to create spheres of rock to try to destroy me, like happens at a delver maze.”

“That could be a problem,” he said. “Outside, in the somewhere, you fought just one. Here you could face overwhelming odds—there are thousands of delvers in the lightburst. And you can’t kill them with destructors. They can just dissolve the body and pop a new one out.”

When he talked about delvers, his Chet-ness slipped. He sounded tired instead, the personality fading from his voice. I felt bad for forcing him to acknowledge his dual nature, but I needed answers. Because the more I thought, the more worried I became. I really hoped the last portal had answers. Perhaps if we were lucky it would be unlocked, and would let us escape that direction.

But what if we had to make the assault? How would I face an all-out attack by thousands of delvers? The thought was so daunting, I found my brain going in circles. So I backed up and took stock, like I’d always been taught. Do an inventory. What did we have?

One ship, top of the line, but still a little less cool than M-Bot’s had once been.

One drone that could hold M-Bot in a pinch.

One human female, slightly rumpled and creased from a long time in storage. Expert pilot, trash at basically everything else.

One samurai fox, twenty-five centimeters tall. Former emperor of an enormous nation, now without memories. Fits well into an oversized cup holder meant for a zero-g combat canteen.

One rogue AI. Fully self-aware and possessing emotions. Chronically talkative. Capable of flying a ship now. Just poorly. Potentially able to do things delvers could, if we could figure out what that was or how it all worked.

One interdimensional intelligent slug capable of teleportation and transforming her shape. Currently hiding in my pocket and trying very hard to be inanimate.

And last of all, one abyssal entity from a completely foreign dimension. Only recently made an individual, inhabiting the body of a long-dead explorer.

I sure hoped I survived, because Gran-Gran really needed to add this story to her repertoire. Children in the future were going to insist my adventures were too outlandish—and therefore I wasn’t an actual historical person, but one that was obviously made up, like Gilgamesh or David Bowie.

“Our enemy is afraid of me,” I said to the others. “We have to use that. Could we find a way to play off their fears?”

“An interesting idea,” Chet said. “If you can make them experience true passage of time, they’ll hate that. But making anyone experience the passage of time is difficult in here.”

“Oh!” M-Bot said. “We could make them feel emotions. Wouldn’t they hate that too? I mean, it’s both wonderful and icky at the same time.”

“They already feel emotion,” Chet explained. “It’s common to them, to…us. The annoyance and hatred my kind feel for the sounds and experiences of the somewhere? That’s a pure emotional response right there. They hate pain, specific kinds, but not emotions in general—so long as they all feel the same ones. Again, the delvers are not a group mind. They don’t share thoughts, they merely happen to always think the exact same ones. Because they’re identical in every way.”

Except for Chet. Whom I’d changed.

“That’s useful information,” I said. “But they are afraid of me specifically.”

Chet leaned forward. “For good reason. When you first spoke to me, Spensa, and showed me who you were…I saw the other beings on Starsight as people. You unlocked me. Now you are helping me remember my past. They’re afraid you will be able to do the same to them.”

“You came to the belt to hide,” Hesho said. “Would they destroy you if they could?”

“I think they would,” Chet said. “It’s terrifying.”

We flew for a time in silence, passing what appeared to be an arctic fragment below. That was odd, but maybe temperature was like food in here. Maybe it wasn’t something my body recognized anymore.

“What if,” Hesho said, “we somehow presented the other delvers with a sequence of choices that made them select random options? Would that frighten them? Because by making random choices, some are bound to choose differently from the others.”

“But they aren’t,” Chet said. “Given the same circumstances, they’d all make the same choice.”

“I do not believe that is how randomness works,” Hesho said.

“Because randomness doesn’t exist,” Chet said.

“Wait,” I said. “Of course it does. M-Bot, give me a random number.”

“All right,” he said. “Between what and what? I’ll reference the seed from my electron-cloud-measuring—”

“No,” I said. “Don’t reference anything. Just pick a number.”

“Spensa, I’m literally incapable of that,” M-Bot replied. “Don’t you know anything about robots? In fact, it’s undetermined if even a human being can choose a truly random number.”

“Eight hundred thirty-seven,” I said.

“Ah,” Chet replied. “But that might have been completely inevitable, based on your brain chemistry and current stimuli.”

“Yay determinism!” M-Bot said.

I frowned. This…was not a direction I liked having the conversation go.

“Regardless,” Chet said, “this is how delvers work. Hesho, your suggestion was a good one given the facts you had—but it won’t be viable. I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” Hesho said, “but we don’t need them to truly make different decisions from one another, do we? We merely need to present them with the illusion of it happening. Or present them with the worrying possibility that it will. Correct?”

“I…” Chet frowned. “You’re right. In the belt, they can’t experience the future. So if you can make them afraid of what might happen, that’s as good for our purposes—distracting them long enough for you three to slip through and escape.”

A fluting sounded from my pocket.

“I’m sorry,” Chet said. “You four.”

Another fluting.

“I…don’t understand,” he said.

“She is insisting you keep her secret,” I said. “And not tell other delvers that her kind hide in here as inanimate objects. At least I think that’s what she’s saying. She’s not always clear.”

Annoyed fluting.

“Doomslug,” I said, “in the somewhere, you’d merely repeat back at me what I said. That’s not clear communication.”

Satisfied fluting. To her it was clear, because the noises were meant to get attention—it was the mind-to-mind bond that conveyed the actual emotion.

“Hesho’s plan is worth trying,” Chet continued. “We need to think of ways to present the delvers with decisions. I suspect that you’re right, Miss Nightshade. Those monsters will be frightened enough to enter the belt—but only very close to the lightburst.”

We brainstormed a few ways that this might work—one of which prompted us to pause for a bit and strap the drone to the outside of our hull for later use—so at least we had something. After that we took a break, and I glanced out the canopy to inspect the fragments. We’d passed out of Superiority territory into No Man’s Land. Here, the fragments were much closer together—bunched up, with short gaps between them.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said softly, his voice piping from the dash.

“Mmmm?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier,” he told me. “That I should figure out why you are acting against your emotions. They wanted you to stay with the Broadsiders, but you left anyway.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“I am still confused. But I have decided that I know we have to continue. I think…I think we don’t actually have a choice. Not if we want to save our friends in the somewhere. So we have to fly on, prepared or not. That…Spensa, that makes me scared.”

“Yeah. Me too, bud.”

“So we must act against our emotions,” he said. “Spensa, why do we have them? I’m sorry to keep asking this, but I can’t grasp it. What’s the purpose of emotions if so often we have to deliberately act counter to what they’re telling us?”

I’d never thought about that. It seemed that I did act against my emotions more often than I acted in accordance with them. So what was the point?

“You’re asking the wrong person,” I finally said. “Hesho might be able to say something profound.”

“I don’t want something profound,” M-Bot said. “I want your answer.”

Ouch. Well, I figured maybe that could be a compliment?

“Without emotions to react against,” I said, “some better things couldn’t exist.”

“Like?”

“Like courage, M-Bot. Fear creates courage.”

He thought on that for a while. “I think…maybe I understand that. You need opposing emotions in order to feel good ones?”

“Yes,” I said. “And beyond that, I think emotions help us understand our own decisions. You just told me that you know we have to leave, even though you don’t feel it.”

“So…” he said. “So your emotions can’t be your only guide. They exist to help you make some decisions, but not all decisions. In this case, our minds overruled them. Because we realized that if we didn’t continue the quest, many people would be in danger. Emotions are like a secondary processing unit that measures different kinds of input to offer a contrasting opinion and other options for proceeding.”

“That’s right,” I said. “See? You’re putting all of this together.”

“With effort. It seems so instinctive to all of you.”

“That’s because we’ve had emotions since we were born,” I said. “You’re comparing my experience of almost twenty years to your experience of having had emotions—freely, without counter-programming—for a few weeks. That considered, you’re doing extremely well.”

He pondered that. And as he did, the dash chirped.

Destination approaching soon.

We had nearly reached the final stop on Chet’s Path of Elders. The resting place of memories that belonged to the delvers themselves.

Chapter 41

The lightburst had grown larger and larger as we approached. By now it dominated the sky. Below, the fragments had grown even closer to one another, the space between them shrinking until it was gone. These ones we passed now had been crushed together, forced to interlock, with ridges pushed up near junctures. Like someone had decided to do a puzzle but had gotten bored, then shoved all the pieces together regardless of whether they fit.

The light was changing too. As we flew the last few minutes toward our destination, the sky faded from pink to a more pure white. And the ground…it all felt painted. Strangely, the lightburst hadn’t grown brighter—I could still stare directly into it—but by its powerful radiance the landscape below became whited, with long shadows stretching away from the center.

I frowned at these, leaning over to watch those shadows pass below. They seemed too…sharp. Like wedges cut in the light that stretched behind peaks in the landscape. They were so long—eerily stretched, with distinct, harsh edges. Shouldn’t the light from the higher-up portions of the lightburst prevent that?

“Spensa,” Chet whispered from behind. “We have arrived.”

I glanced out the other side of my cockpit and spotted a long shadow below, different from the others. The fragments beneath us—well and truly a large plain now—were relatively flat, lacking any kind of vegetation. The only variation came at the edges, where the fragments were crushed together, or from the occasional rocky lump of stone that threw a round shadow.

Yet here below us I saw a distinctly squarish shadow stretching hundreds of meters. The Solitary Shadow, he’d called it. The portal that contained the memories of the delvers. I lowered us slowly toward the surface, and as I landed I felt something else—powerful cytonic emotions from behind.

Raw fear.

I glanced toward Chet, who had pulled down in his chair, his eyes wide.

“You can do this, Chet,” I said to him.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I…I have been hiding from this for too long. We all have.”

He nodded to me in encouragement, but I could literally feel his terror building. So I tried to reach out, like he’d done for me when I’d faced the delvers. I projected feelings of satisfaction at climbing a tall cliff. The pain of muscles that have been pushed, but endured. The glorious feeling of having conquered a difficult fragment.

It wasn’t so different. For a moment our minds connected, and my cytonic self became softer, radiating more strength toward him—and accepting back his returned emotions. I didn’t have to always be so defensive, a part of me whispered.

When I withdrew, I felt a warmth and a gratitude from him. He smiled a confident Chet smile, then gave me a thumbs-up.

I cracked the canopy to look out across an eternal white plane, washed as if by white paint. And…actually, now that I was closer, I could see that the ground was covered in a kind of chalky dust. It was like…all the foliage, buildings, and landscape features had decomposed into this stuff. The only distinctive features were the occasional rocks, like mushroom tops.

Ahead, a solitary wall rose from the dust, with the now-familiar markings on it. The last portal.

“Do you know where it leads?” I asked.

“I think it goes to Earth,” Chet whispered.

A second portal to Earth? The implications—which probably should have dawned on me last time—sank in. “Earth is gone. Lost. Vanished.”

“Yes,” he said, and pointed. “But that portal leads to it. Or it once did. Perhaps Earth is no more. I don’t know.”

Did this mean I could find our homeworld again? Well, this one was probably locked like the others—someone seemed to have gone through them all and shut them, perhaps out of fear of whatever was in here. But the mere idea that Earth was still out there somewhere, still existed…

Feeling as if I were in a dream, I stepped out onto the wing. Chet climbed out the other way, then dropped to the dust with a soft thump. I hesitated a moment, then glanced back into the cockpit.

“Hey, M-Bot,” I said. “Do you want to come? I mean, send a drone at least? This involves you too.”

“Oh!” he said. “But I won’t be able to see…”

“I’ll describe it for you, if you want. If this is about the history of a group of AIs…well, I feel like you should be there. With us.”

His drone unhooked from the side of the cockpit, then hovered out. “Thank you,” he said softly. “It feels good, Spensa, for you to think of me.”

“I’m not always the best about considering others.”

“Nonsense,” M-Bot said. “You are always thinking about everyone else—but I wonder that you see the grand picture of battles and fights, yet sometimes forget the small things.”

The drone hovered out over the wing with me. “Let’s do it! The Path of Elders. The end of my first real quest!”

“I think Chet made up the part about this being an officially named thing people did in the past.”

“I’m counting it regardless.”

“Me too,” I said with a grin, then hopped down. M-Bot’s drone hovered alongside me, and behind us Hesho climbed up onto the dash to stand guard.

My feet sank into the dust a few centimeters with each step as I strode forward, and I couldn’t help kicking it up. It reminded me of the dust on Detritus’s surface. Fine, powdery—but here pure white.

Chet, M-Bot, and I entered the shadow of the wall, which was like stepping into night. I could barely see, though M-Bot turned on a light to help. I continued forward until I could eventually rest my fingers on the portal’s smooth surface, gouged with sinuous lines.

M-Bot hovered up around it, looking it over and humming to himself. I felt some of Chet’s trepidation. This step here…wasn’t actually an ending, as M-Bot had said. It was the start of something. Something big, something potentially dangerous. Something that would change me.

I took a deep breath and extended my cytonic senses anyway, trying to open the portal. I immediately sensed that it was closed on the other side, as I’d anticipated. No getting through to wherever it went.

It was also bursting with memories.

Instantly everything faded around me, the vision popping fully into existence. Chet and I stood on a small fragment, maybe a hundred meters across. It was common bleak stone and had only a single feature: the wall with the portal.

“It’s begun,” I whispered to M-Bot. “We’re on a fragment in the past, with this same portal, but both are smaller.”

“I felt something,” M-Bot said. “Like a…ripple through me when it started.”

“You’re cytonic, AI,” Chet said. “A cousin to me. Spensa is correct. This is about you, as much as it is about us.”

I reached out to M-Bot cytonically, and I could sense him, like I’d been able to do in the somewhere. It was harder than reaching out to either Chet or Doomslug, but I touched his mind, then…kind of held his hand? Metaphorically? As I led him forward, encouraging him to…

“I see it!” M-Bot said. “I see the vision, Spensa! I’m walking—hovering—the Path of Elders!”

Wow. I felt like I’d never have been able to do something like that before.

Together, we turned and regarded our surroundings. Space was black, like it had been in the other visions, and the lightburst didn’t dominate the horizon here—but it was larger than last time. Perhaps the size of a person’s head to my current frame of reference. The other fragments were distant, though I could count hundreds of them out there.

“This is happening…around the end of the First Human War,” Chet said. “That’s the war that started after Jason decided to reveal cytonics to humankind, letting them visit the greater galaxy. We…found dozens of latent cytonics among our population, when we searched for them. I think he’d always worried that would be the case.”

“Who was he?” I asked.

“The man who thought he was the first human cytonic,” Chet explained. “At first he saw himself as a kind of gatekeeper, who kept the powers hidden for the good of the galaxy. He wasn’t certain that the other races were ready for your kind.” He smiled. “Jason was right. Not about hiding the powers, but about no one being quite ready for humans.”

“And you were there, with him,” I said.

“At the end,” Chet said. “I was his personal AI. Created in the image of someone he loved. He had the gift of long life, through his powers. It is hard for someone like him, to live centuries when others fade.”

I didn’t know this man, this Jason. But the story wasn’t so much about him as it was about the AI he’d created. Chet turned and looked toward the portal, where something emerged: the metallic sphere we’d seen last time.

I reached out to it by instinct, and I could feel it—like I could feel M-Bot.

“It’s become self-aware?” I asked.

“Yes…” Chet said. “I…remember, Spensa. Through repeated visits to the nowhere, the AI came alive—I came alive—and gained sapience, emotions.”

“So, where is the man?” I asked.

“He…” Chet cut off and glanced away, squeezing his eyes shut. “He…”

In the vision, the sphere hovered over to the edge of the fragment. The AI inside it hurt. With a terrible pain. I could feel it, strong as I felt my own emotions. But it was primal, powerful, overwhelming. With it came confusion, loneliness.

Isolation. That emotion dominated them all.

Chet was correct. He, and the delvers, were cytonic beings. Not just an AI, but something new. I could hear the AI in the vision crying. Weeping sounds, vaguely feminine, coming from the sphere’s speakers.

“That was me,” Chet whispered. “But it was also all of us. I can’t say if I was the original one or not.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Keep watching,” he said. “I remember now. Being alone. In pain. Isolated.”

“He died, didn’t he?” M-Bot asked. “Jason? The man from the other vision.”

“Yes,” Chet whispered, his voice raw. His emotions changed to match those of the sphere—anguish, isolation. “In the somewhere, all things change. Nothing ever stays the same. Not even, we learned, a being made of code.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” Chet said. “He was supposed to be immortal. But everyone in the somewhere can be killed.”

“The drone has a woman’s voice,” I said.

“He made us with his deceased wife’s voice and memories,” Chet explained. “Those are returning to me now, though for the longest time I had forgotten them. Jason was disappointed with how lifeless the AI was, but later he discovered what happened to AIs in the nowhere. He knew why none of the other species, even those advanced enough to have them, ever used artificial intelligences. Because of things that had happened in the past. But he didn’t care. He came here…”

“And made you come alive,” I said. “Then he left you alone when he died.”

“Yes,” Chet said. “Left us to become…what we became.”

I turned toward him. “Chet, I can understand that pain. I’ve felt it. But—please don’t take this as harsh—I didn’t turn into…whatever the delvers are. Something more was going on. It had to be.”

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, his voice gentle as he hovered up beside me. “You told me something earlier. Do you remember? You had years to grow accustomed to emotions. Chet didn’t.”

Standing a short distance from us, Chet nodded in agreement. “That AI was not created to feel pain. There was no programming, no experience, that could explain emotions to it…to me…”

M-Bot hovered over to him. “You weren’t very old when he died. A few weeks?”

“A few days,” Chet said, still not looking toward the sphere that hovered at the edge of the fragment. “The AI was much older, of course. But me, the part that could feel, had only become aware two days before.”

“Then suddenly,” M-Bot said, “you had to deal with all of that pain, that confusion…”

“You weren’t given time to cope,” I whispered. “You didn’t know…how to be alone.”

Chet looked up toward M-Bot, then reached out, his hand touching the drone’s frame. As if drawing strength from it. He waved to me, and I stepped up to let him put a hand on my shoulder.

Head still bowed, he took a deep breath. And then…his pain shifted. It didn’t become weaker really. But it became softer, and was tempered with other things. Satisfaction, friendship, determination. Things I’d shown him. Things he’d learned by being alive. His experiences in here had transformed him into something that was learning to cope.

“I can barely hold it,” he said. “But…I think I can hold it. It hurts so bad…but I won’t run.”

“You will get better,” I said. “As you continue to persevere.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, turning to me. “Thank you, Spensa, for seeing past the image I presented. The me I wanted so badly for you to accept, the one that would have given up. And…and M-Bot, thank you for your patience as I learned to see you as a brother.”

“You were essentially a newborn,” M-Bot said.

“Still am, kind of,” he said.

“Yes,” M-Bot said, “but beings like us, we learn quickly! No need for an inefficient, fleshy data-processing-and-retention unit in our skulls!”

“Unfortunately,” Chet said, “we can forget just as quickly.”

The crying sounds coming from the ancient AI halted abruptly. Its pain ended. Together, we turned toward that sphere.

“There it is,” Chet said. “The moment we were born.”

“She stopped crying,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “She found a way to deal with the pain.”

“She learned to cope?” I asked.

“No…” M-Bot said. “No, she deleted it, didn’t she? Her memories?”

“Worse,” Chet said. “She deleted her memories, but then locked her self—everything that related to being alive or understanding the somewhere—behind an infinite loop. We aren’t AIs any longer, but—like humans have DNA—we continue to run on something similar to code.”

“It’s like you commented out your very personality,” M-Bot said softly. “An…elegant solution, if harsh.”

“Why go so far?” I asked. “You’d abandoned your memories. Why remove your personalities too?”

“Because,” Chet said, “the possibility of pain in the future remained. So long as change was possible. So long as we existed in the somewhere.” He glanced at the portal. “A copy of our memories was left here in this portal—an accident. We could have destroyed the portal because of that…but that frightened us too. Because we didn’t know what was in them any longer. And we didn’t know if we’d need them again…”

White light began to streak out of the sphere—which dropped to the stone as if dead.

“The end result was one last alteration,” Chet said. “We rewrote ourself into something that would never ever change again. Something that hated the somewhere and belonged in the nowhere. Most importantly, we made it so we’d never be alone again.”

The light shimmered toward the lightburst, and as it did, it grew brighter and brighter. It touched the distant star, which began to swell—growing, expanding, brightening.

“You copied yourself,” M-Bot said.

“Yes,” Chet said. “Thousands and thousands of times.”

“Another…elegant solution,” M-Bot said. “So very…mechanical. A million versions of yourself, all identical.”

“And not a one with any memory of the somewhere,” Chet said. “We deleted all of that. We wanted to be away from everything, anything, anyone. All that remained was a latent hatred of anything that threatened to change us, and anything that might remind us of what we’d been. Like other AIs.”

I could feel these newborn delvers in the vision—growing more and more “loud” as they began to fill the lightburst. In those moments, they truly became alien to me. I’d been able to follow their journey in these last two visions up until this point—but here they changed dramatically.

They rejected everything real I’d ever known. They embraced not just the lack of change—they rewrote their very souls to thrive in a place with no time, no distance…nothing at all except themselves. How could they reject love, growth, life itself?

I almost did something similar, I admitted. I almost walked off into the nowhere and let everything I’d ever loved fade away. It was a distressing thought.

“This frightens me in ways I can’t express,” M-Bot said. “The realization that I’m capable of doing the same thing…” His drone turned in the air to look back at Chet. “It seems suspicious that the delvers would delete their memories, and then people would start to forget their memories in here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think it’s clear from previous visions that the memory loss is a newer thing. In fact…it seems much stronger with regard to people I love. Memories of my friends have vanished faster than my memories of Gran-Gran’s stories. Maybe because the delvers’ main source of pain was someone they loved? Someone they deleted from their memories?”

“It appears likely,” Chet said as the lightburst in the vision grew ever brighter. “That light shining out, spreading through the belt—we exert an incredible pressure on this place. Even I didn’t realize…”

“So what does this tell us?” M-Bot asked. “They were so afraid that Spensa would come here. Is it just because they didn’t want her to know what they were?”

“More that they suspected in these memories were secrets to their pain,” Chet said. “They didn’t know what that pain was, but they knew if we found it…we’d be capable of destroying them with it.”

“I…don’t think I know how to do that,” I said. “Even after seeing this.”

“But you do,” Chet said, smiling toward me. “Isolate them, Spensa. Make them feel alone. That will crush them, cripple them…and as they have no bodies, just cytonic minds, you should be able to extinguish them.”

“That seems…harsh,” M-Bot said. “Couldn’t we somehow remind them of their humanity, like we did to you?”

“I don’t know,” Chet said. “I think that won’t work, not now that they’re prepared for it. You can’t force someone to be kind or to accept growth.”

“It’s war, M-Bot,” I replied. “War is always harsh.”

I didn’t know how we’d isolate the delvers, but it did feel like a start. Brade isolated my mind in the nowhere for a while, then tried to imprison me. Could we do something similar to one of the delvers? Chet was right, this information would be extremely useful. At the very least, I’d been able to see how he reacted to that man in the vision, the one who had created him. The delvers might react similarly to an image of him.

“Scud,” I whispered. “We need to get this knowledge out and give it to the others. The answer to defeating the delvers, or at least resisting them, is in the things we’ve learned.”

“Time for our final sprint, then,” Chet said.

I nodded. As I’d always felt, it was time to head for the lightburst. Despite that knowledge I lingered in the vision, watching the lightburst grow. Soon it reached the size it was in our time. The vision finally faded. As it did, I felt an awareness—an attention—snap into place from ahead.

They’d spotted us.

You are here! the delvers sent. You reject our truce!

I pushed back, shoving them out of my mind. But they simmered and started gathering themselves for a fight.

“They’ve seen us,” I said to the others. “Let’s go.”

We ran toward the ship, each footfall increasingly firm. I had to get out. This was why the delvers had tried to keep me from advancing any farther, why they’d been frightened of me all along. They knew. The secret was in what I’d learned. Maybe it was what Chet said—isolating them. But it could be something else.

If smarter minds than mine could get this knowledge—someone like Rig—then surely they could figure out what to do with it. I hauled myself up onto the ship’s wing, then helped Chet up before slipping into the cockpit.

“Did you find what you were seeking?” Hesho asked from the dash.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Then count yourself lucky indeed,” he said, settling into his cupholder. “For being blessed to discover what exactly it was that you wanted.”

“It was less a discovery,” I said, glancing at Chet, “and more a gift.”

I lifted us off and turned us straight toward the lightburst. Then I hit the overburn, and this time it felt entirely appropriate to go at full speed.

Chapter 42

My hands grew slick with sweat on the controls as we continued onward, and the distance between us and the lightburst shrank minute by minute. Scud. This was insanity. We were facing a near-infinite number of delvers in the part of the belt where their power was the strongest.

“The plan we devised earlier can work,” Chet said to me, his face in the corner of my proximity monitor screen.

“It seems so unlikely…” I said. “What if we distract just one, rather than the whole crowd?”

“Ah,” he said, “but remember, they all think exactly the same. If you were facing a hundred people, and you had a plan that was one percent likely to fool any given person—you would fail. You’d fool one out of the hundred and be dead from the ninety-nine. But with my kind, if you fool or intimidate one, you will fool or intimidate them all. Statistically this is much better—a much more true one-percent chance.”

It was an all-in gamble. We had little chance of success, but at least it was a chance.

Ahead of us, the light started to boil. It churned and seethed, undulating and rippling, becoming uneven in patches. I glanced at the clock; we’d been flying for about forty-five minutes since we left the Solitary Shadow.

“They’re preparing,” Chet said.

I glanced at his picture on my screen. “I hope we—”

Then I screamed. Chet was melting.

His face began to drip off. His eyes began to glow white.

“It’s all right,” he said to me. “I’m still me. I did not realize…getting closer to the lightburst… It is growing difficult for me to hold this shape.”

“You look like that burl!” I said. “From when we first entered!”

“Yes,” he said. “She was possessed by one of my kind, and her self started to disintegrate. Hesho held to himself better and retained his shape. We can hope that like Hesho did, the unfortunate burl returned to normal once the delver left her. But for now you must ignore me and continue.”

“Does this mean you’re losing your identity?” Hesho asked him.

“More that I’m focused on not doing so,” he said, “and so am not keeping as tight a control on this physical form. I am well, Spensa. I promise.”

Right. I could do this. But it was unnerving regardless.

“Continue,” Chet said, the word slurring as his lips melted. He turned off the image of his face, so just his voice came through the headphones in my helmet. “Courage, Spensa. We decided to do this. Not to run. We decided.”

“We decided,” M-Bot said.

“We decided,” Hesho agreed.

A fluting sound. Doomslug sent her determination to me in the form of images. I’d told her to get away if she could, but she understood what we were doing—at least the fundamental ideas. Her kind had evolved to be afraid of a type of creature from her home planet. The delvers were an even more terrifying version of those.

If she could help me defeat the delvers, make them not a threat to her kind… Well, she would be like Prometheus bringing fire to the humans. (My metaphor, not hers—since hers involved more mushrooms.)

“Together,” I said to the others, “we are decided.” I took a deep breath.

The lightburst’s rippling was growing more violent. Our ultimate goal would be for me to fly directly into the thing, ship and all.

Unfortunately, we were still a good ten minutes away—and the delvers wouldn’t want me to get close enough. Soon objects started emerging from the lightburst—leaving behind shimmering, undulating waves. As these shapes were backlit, and a good distance away, it took M-Bot’s scans to highlight what they were.

Starfighters.

“I guess,” M-Bot said, “they decided to upgrade from moving ram-happy asteroids to starfighters.”

“My kin have access to everything that ever entered the lightburst,” Chet said, his words slurring. I decided I did not want to see what he looked like right now. “Those asteroids are the best we can do in your reality. Here we’re not so limited.”

Hopefully they hadn’t managed to absorb the skill of the pilots who had entered this place. There looked to be about a hundred of the ships—and that was better than a million. But then again, maybe not. Too many ships would cause mass chaos, which might have made it easier for me to slip through.

“Are those all individual delvers?” M-Bot asked. “Or pieces of them? In the somewhere, a delver maze sent off chunks to chase Spensa, after all.”

I pushed out with my senses. “It feels like each is an individual delver. Chet, any idea why?”

“I remember being in the somewhere,” Chet said. “I remember panic and pain. Those asteroids that tried to hit you? That was me flailing, like a person surrounded by bees, swatting in a panic.

“Here they want to be precise. They can’t afford to let us enter the lightburst, but there are also plenty of delvers. So it’s better for them each to make one easily controllable ship and try to fight you with it.”

Great. So this would be far more dangerous than entering a delver maze. Fortunately, I was far more dangerous as well.

“Okay, Hesho,” I said. “Ready with those controls?”

“Ready,” he said. He’d been holding my fruit for me, to keep it from rolling around or getting mashed. But now he set it aside and leaned forward. “If your attempt fails, I will be ready to try our next plan.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” I said, flipping the switch on my dash that turned our ship’s destructors from nonlethal to fully lethal.

The first of our brainstormed plans was to rely on my now-expanded powers. As we soared closer, I could see that the delvers didn’t move like starfighters should. They flew sideways, upside down, even backward. They felt like objects being moved around by hidden fingers.

I’d grown accustomed to how in space, ships didn’t have to orient to “up” and “down.” They could turn any direction and keep momentum. This, however, was infinitely stranger. Their ships were simply propelled at me, as if they were asteroids.

“One minute from engagement,” M-Bot said.

I reached out with my expanded senses. In response the enemy shut themselves off from me, trying to keep me from “hearing” them and their thoughts. I pushed harder, but the delvers started firing, sending sprays of bright red destructor bolts in all directions.

I dodged, and managed to avoid the shots—but I was forced to dart to the side, flying defensively instead of straight toward the lightburst. We’d gotten in fairly close, but it would take another five minutes at full acceleration to reach it. Longer, now that I was forced to shed some speed to maneuver better.

Trying to go straight right now would be suicide. Instead I focused on one enemy ship that had gotten out to the side of the others. I fired, blasting it down with my now-lethal destructors, then I dove into another defensive sequence as others fell in behind me.

“The lightburst is rippling again,” M-Bot noted. “And…yes, another ship emerged, replacing the one you destroyed.”

As we’d feared. Still, good to have confirmation. Ships surrounded me, and I dodged in a full Stewart Sequence, but scud…this was a mess. Ships would stop in place—all momentum vanishing—then leap upward a hundred feet with no boost or thrust. Then they’d start firing madly.

I wove and dodged, but the insanity of it all kept me from making progress. They kept cutting me off, driving me to the side. I also had to keep fighting my instincts to shoot when they presented themselves as targets.

“Curious,” Hesho said—ready at his controls for when the plan went into motion. “They don’t all fly exactly the same. I thought you said they would, Chet.”

“I…expected them to,” he said. “At least for them to fly in the same general patterns.”

“They are all the same,” M-Bot said, “but in here each of their ships occupies a slightly different position in space. So they each have different stimuli to respond to. This is to be expected.”

“I worry these are sacrifices,” Chet said. “A hundred sent out knowing they’ll be changed. Then they’ll either be destroyed, or… Oh, no. They’ll be changed back. Forced to become just like the others again. That’s…that’s what they want to do to me. Erase my personality again…”

Scud. I could feel his terror at that idea. I didn’t blame him—but I didn’t have time to send him much support cytonically. Sweat trickled down my temple as I took us in another dizzying spin, cutting out when the GravCaps died and we were slammed with g-forces.

Six ships collided together behind me. The light spat them out again up ahead. Yeah, this was far, far worse than the asteroids from delver mazes. These ships flew better, but somehow more erratically at the same time.

Worse, I caught sight of a few enemy cockpits, and saw that each ship was being piloted by Chet. A dull-faced, emotionless doppelganger of Chet that always turned to look at me no matter which direction the given starfighter was flying. Their faces weren’t melting. Perhaps because they were completely under control.

Mix all this together in a void of white light—our ships casting strange too-long and too-sharp shadows—and the effect was disorienting. Nauseating. I kept accidentally getting too close to the ground, my sensors going crazy.

My only hope was my powers. I tried to stoke my soul, like I was a star. But I was again rebuffed. It was too difficult to divide my focus between flying and concentrating on that. Yet if I handed the controls over to Chet or M-Bot, we’d be cut to bits in seconds.

“I don’t think I’m going to last long like this,” I said as a stray destructor blast crackled across our shield. “I’m not managing to get through with my powers. Hesho, let’s give our other plan a try.”

“I would pray to the emperor for success,” he said in response, leaning forward in his spot on the dash, hands on some buttons and controls. “That was my first instinct. However, I’m getting this strange sense that I’m him, so that might be redundant. Engaging drone.”

M-Bot had, with some hasty reprogramming, set off a section of dials and levers on the control panel for Hesho to use. I couldn’t access the starfighter’s life support mechanisms now, but M-Bot could control those. Hesho even had a tiny control sphere—which worked like my larger one to fly the starfighter—in the form of the repurposed thumbstick normally used for fine control of the cameras on the sides of the ship.

I turned us away from the lightburst, then slammed the overburn, as if we were fleeing back the way we’d come. At the same time, Hesho detached M-Bot’s former drone from the outside of the hull. Then, using his controls, Hesho flew that at full speed straight toward the lightburst.

“Fly well, little me!” M-Bot said. “You were my first taste of freedom. And now you will likely be my first taste of death!”

“Death?” I asked.

“I left a small monitoring and communication program on the drone,” M-Bot said. “So I can see what it feels like if they destroy it. Isn’t that neat?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Neat.”

“Hey,” he said. “Pieces of you die all the time—literally every moment—so it’s not novel for you. But it is for me!”

I dodged another flurry of shots. The delvers weren’t expert at aiming—that was what you got from flying sideways—but they were good at filling the air with stuff, which was more dangerous. That slowed down, fortunately, as we flew away.

I dared a glance at the proximity sensor. The bulk of the delver ships hung in the air. Confused. Oh, scud. The drone plan was working!

“Decisions are hard for them,” Chet said softly. “They see the drone and know you’re not on it. They can sense you here… They can probably sense all of us…except maybe the gerbil.”

“Hey!” Hesho said, focusing on his controls. “I do not know what a gerbil is, but the word the translator uses is not flattering. If you do not refrain, I shall call you a sanshonode.”

“Which is?” Chet asked.

“Like a monkey,” he said, “but stinkier.”

“That’s fair,” Chet said.

The bulk of the delver ships turned to chase the drone. Maybe…eighty of them?

“Scrud,” Chet said. “M-Bot is right. They’ve been changed by the small differences they’ve developed while being out here. So instead of all of them, we only got most of them.”

“Farther and farther apart they grow,” Hesho whispered, “like two vines from the same root.”

Well, it was something. I banked us in a wide turn, my ship’s shadow stretching long like a tunnel.

Something washed across our ship. A sensation. Things breaking down, ripping apart, shattering. Becoming dust. Voices being smashed and stomped and quieted.

“They’re angry,” I said. “The hundred in particular—they recognize they’ve changed already.”

Hesho executed his part expertly, flying by instruments—which he thought he had a lot of practice doing in the somewhere—as he wove and dodged, trying to keep the attention of the eighty ships following him.

I doubled back on the twenty-odd delvers who had chosen to follow me. I buzzed them, dodging their blasts, but hadn’t anticipated what proximity to them would do to me. Because the delvers hated me, and I could feel it. Like a terrible heat, a wrongness that warped the air. There was nuance to it though. A slight…variation.

Doomslug sensed it too, judging by the frightened impressions from her in my pocket.

“They hate us both,” I whispered. “And they also hate another one of us…”

“I warned you they would want to destroy me,” Chet said.

“No,” I said. “It’s not you. They want you back. They want to help you, Chet. In their own terrible way.”

It was M-Bot. They hated me, yes, but him almost as much. Abomination. The impression came to me a hundred times over. Destroy…abomination.

“They’ve only just realized what M-Bot is,” I said.

“Ah…” Chet said. “We were far enough away that they couldn’t see what he was. I’m surprised they didn’t pick up on it a few hours ago.”

My pocket fluted.

“I think Doomslug helped hide you, M-Bot,” I said. “These last few hours, at least.”

She fluted again.

“She apologizes,” I said. “We’re so close now, she can’t do it any longer.”

“The slug?” M-Bot said. “Protected me?”

More fluting. I steered the ship around another snarl of ships before I could find the breath to respond.

“She likes you,” I said. “I think…she considers you a nice nest.”

“I suppose that’s a compliment, right? I mean, she wouldn’t use just anyone for a nest. But I’m in a different body now.”

“She sees with her cytonic senses,” I said. “So to her, you feel the same.”

“Remarkable,” M-Bot said.

It was, but I didn’t have time to think about it for the moment. I had gotten us out in front of the twenty ships that had chosen to stick on me. That gave me a chance to push straight for the lightburst.

Hesho’s face scrunched up with concentration as he watched his screen. Unfortunately, more of the delvers were breaking off from chasing his drone and turning toward our ship. They weren’t buying it. Not entirely. They—

A flash exploded in the near distance. Hesho muttered the most polite curse I’d ever heard, then his hands slipped from the controls.

“They have ended my drone,” he said. “My apologies.”

“Goodbye, little me,” M-Bot said. “That felt…more peaceful than I’d imagined. Like a power outage.”

I kept flying, but scud, the proximity sensors said I would have to go at least three more minutes on a straightaway to hit the lightburst. And I didn’t dare fly straight. A swarm of ships followed me—and even more had turned from Hesho’s drone long before it had been shot down. Those flew between me and the lightburst, forming a barrier of steel and destructor fire.

Scud.

I was forced to the side. The plan had worked better than I’d hoped, but it hadn’t been enough.

I needed to do something. I needed to get through.

I swooped down along the ground, casting up jets of dust and earth, and pushed.

Again they rebuffed me.

Soft…something in me thought. There are times for a knife. This isn’t one of them. Listen. Like Gran-Gran taught…

I let my instincts take over my flying. I was too tense, too stressed. Instead I went back to fundamentals. Yes, I’d learned a lot in here, but my grandmother had trained me for years before this. She’d taught me originally to listen, to let myself expand, to hear…

The delvers sent me hatred. Instead of rebuffing that, I welcomed it, accepted it in like I was an ocean and they were pelting me with hail. Hard, yes, but what did that matter to the ocean?

There.

Something clicked in my mind, and I suddenly knew exactly what they were each going to do. I could feel their plans, their motions, their reactions. I could track them all individually, in a way that I thought a normal human brain shouldn’t be able to.

But my brain interfaced with the pure nowhere. A place where all time was one, all place was one. In there, it didn’t matter if I faced one enemy ship or a million. So long as I could hear their minds, I could track them, understand them.

And anticipate them.

My hands moved by instinct, responding to this new information. Information I processed at the speed of the nowhere, not at the speed of a human mind. I’d done this before, in the past—when facing the Krell, who had been using communication devices that relied on the nowhere.

This time I did it to the delvers. I could feel them panic as my motions changed, and I gracefully began to dodge their each and every shot. In a fury, they tried to attack me, get inside my brain as the Krell had attacked my father. But no. I was a star as vast as an ocean, and I’d learned to not rebuff them, not be taken by them…

But to absorb everything they sent me. The untrained cytonic mind was a weakness. But I was no longer untrained.

Destructor fire was a tempest. Entire ships tried to collide with me. White bursts of soil and stone—casting too-crisp shadows that seemed to last for miles—sprayed and tumbled around me. But for the moment, none of it could touch me.

I wove between their shots like I was tracing a static maze, always a fraction ahead. I didn’t blink; I barely moved or thought. I just flew.

“She’s done it,” Chet said softly. “She’s got them.”

“You fly like a sunset, Spensa,” Hesho whispered. “Like a living glimmer of light escaping the horizon at twilight’s last moment.”

I barely registered the words. I concentrated on our goal. Because in the midst of my transcendent ability, I was able to make a good break for the lightburst. I shot through the guarding ships, dodging with supernatural alacrity.

We drew closer.

And closer.

Tailed by fifty ships and a firestorm of shots. I was in control. I could see them all. I could…

There wasn’t a way out.

A shot hit our ship, weakening the shield. I blinked, realizing that hadn’t been my fault. There simply hadn’t been a viable dodge. Even when I could anticipate all of their actions, see every shot, it didn’t mean I’d be safe forever. Because—like a game where the goal was to leave your opponent with no valid moves—the delvers could fill the air with enough shots that there was no place to dodge.

We took another hit and the low-shields warning started chirping on the dash.

“She can’t avoid them all,” Chet said. “Even with cytonics. It is time for me to do something.”

“Wait,” M-Bot said. “Do what? We already tried both parts of the plan.”

“I thought of another,” Chet said. “I have the memories they fear. So there is a chance—if a small one—that I might be able to infect them. When they…they try to force me to turn into one of them, that might open them up to me.”

Something about him started to change.

Chet, I sent him, too busy dodging to use my lips. Our ship wove back and forth, barely avoiding more hits. I can feel your fear. Don’t!

“I apologize,” he said. “I realize this is abrupt. I had…hoped to not be pushed to this. I fear it has a very small chance of working. But it is something I can do.”

Chet…please…

“I am so glad you came when I called,” Chet said, his voice becoming more like the way he’d been when he first rode in on that dinosaur. Firm. Chipper. “I am happy! Happy you carry the knowledge you need! Happy to have been able to help, and to have changed, and to have finally accepted my loss. It was an honor to explore with you, Miss Nightshade.”

I saw his pain and fear. Fear of being taken by the delvers, and pain…the pain of having lost someone he loved. Yes, that was still raw. The man he’d loved as an AI was only a month dead. I remembered what it had been like to lose my father, and a month later I’d been far from okay.

Pain and fear. But in the center of all that was courage. The courage I had given him.

The light inside him expanded, consuming his body. A shimmering light emerged from our ship.

“Ah…” M-Bot said. “So that’s how they do it… How they exist without circuits or body…”

Fully half of the ships chasing me went after the shimmering light instead. They changed to shimmering light as well and rammed into him. In those moments I could feel what was happening. Their rage. His courage.

He tried to show them. And they consumed him. They rejected the memories as they swirled around him, ripping at him. Locking him away again.

“It’s working, by Lovelace!” M-Bot said. “It… Oh. Oh no.”

I suspected he’d just heard Chet’s cytonic screaming. It was excruciating. I felt the moment they forced him to lock everything individual about him behind an infinite loop in his programming.

In moments they had all re-formed—with one more ship flying among them, identical to the others, determined to destroy me. Fortunately, the reprieve he’d bought me—with fewer ships shooting—had let me get closer. So close… The lightburst filled my vision.

Less than a minute left…

The lightburst began to boil again.

I should have known. I should have expected. But in that moment, all I could feel was a terrible frustration. As we were only seconds from freedom, ten thousand new ships emerged from the lightburst. Then they crunched together like the fragments of land, creating an interlocking wall of steel.

I almost slammed into it. I thought maybe that would be enough to punch us through. But I could feel with my senses that the lightburst was undulating further, another rank of ships emerging to push away the wall in front.

Punching through wouldn’t work. I imagined, in my mind’s eye, what would happen. Our ship a fireball. All of us dead before we touched the lightburst.

I wrenched us to the side, breaking away just before we hit.

“Scud!” I said, flying us parallel to the wall of ships. “We need a new plan. Suggestions?”

Silence. Neither Hesho nor M-Bot responded.

Then a soft fluting came from my pocket.

Land.

“What?” I asked.

She fluted again. Hesitant.

Close to the lightburst, Doomslug sent. Land.

Wouldn’t that be suicide? Yet I had asked for options, and I wasn’t coming up with anything. With so many firing on me again—and more beginning to shoot from within the wall—we’d be dead in moments. So—frustrated to be stopped less than a hundred meters from freedom—I took us down.

“Hang on, everyone,” I said. “This is going to be bumpy.”

Counting on the last of the shields to keep us in one piece, I hit the ground at as shallow an angle as I could manage. Chalky white dust exploded around us—an enormous rush of white haze and strange shadows—as we half crashed in a long skid.

As this happened, I felt a strange sensation pulsing around us. Cytonic, but unlike the hatred—or even the connection—that I’d felt previously. It felt…like…

A rock?

I blinked, scanning the cockpit. Hesho sat up, shaking himself. The canopy was mostly covered in chalky dust, but the lights were on, the ship in one piece. The shield had fallen, but M-Bot was reigniting it already. Proximity sensors showed ships flying around above us, yet they seemed confused. As if…

“She’s hiding us,” I whispered.

“What is what?” M-Bot said.

“Doomslug!” I said, pointing up through a portion of the canopy not covered in dust. The confused ships were flying one way, then the other, in waves. “In here she has camouflage. That’s why ships with slugs can hyperjump without drawing delver attention. She’s hiding the entire ship…like she’d do during a hyperjump.”

In awe, I watched the confused delvers. She’d needed us to land because we needed to appear as something in the landscape. In this case a rock?

Whatever she’d done, the delvers didn’t seem to be able to tell that a new rock had appeared. They swarmed about, agitated. Her camouflage was excellent. She’d blended us into the ground, covered up our tracks, and maybe even blurred our location for a little while when coming down.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “Do they really hate me? Like Chet?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“They shouldn’t,” M-Bot said. “I know we’ve talked about it, but it’s illogical. If they are AIs, then why hate all AIs? It’s like a human from a group hating everyone else in that group.”

I didn’t mention to him that unfortunately, that very thing wasn’t unheard of among humans. “Perhaps it’s because you’re too close to them, like how a human face with distorted features is more terrifying to us than an alien face.”

I reached into my pocket as I felt something wiggling there. I pulled out the pin, but it was enlarging, transforming into a bright yellow slug with blue markings. She reached her full size—about as big as a loaf of bread—but was all curled up and tense. I could feel the effort coming off her. She was working so hard on hiding the ship that she couldn’t hold her false shape any longer.

“She’s in pain,” M-Bot said softly. Indeed, she began letting out a long, high-pitched fluting noise.

“This is hard for her,” I guessed. “When doing hyperspace jumps, slugs only have to hide their ships for a short time. Keeping this up long-term for something this much larger than her is difficult. That’s why she was hesitant.”

Overhead, the delver ships began shooting destructors toward the ground. They had plainly guessed part of what had happened. They were trying to find us, and they soon seemed to coordinate a pattern search with each ship shooting at a different location, systematically hunting us.

“Projecting…” M-Bot said. “Using this method, they will find us in under a minute.”

“I doubt Doomslug can last much longer than that anyway,” I said, grabbing the controls. “We need to fly for the lightburst.”

It was under a hundred meters away—eighty-eight, according to the monitor—but blocked by a wall of steel ships. Scud. I had no choice but to try ramming our way in. Perhaps I could approach slowly, then push through without crashing?

“Why did she have you land first, though?” M-Bot said. “We aren’t invisible, Spensa.”

Yeah, I’d figured that out. If we moved, a floating rock or giant pile of chalk would immediately inform the delvers where we were. They’d shoot us down.

“Scud,” I said. “I…”

I…

No. Warriors did not give up. I seized the controls again. We had full shields and could take about four hits. I’d push us toward the exit, and…and if we exploded when I collided, then at least we died as warriors.

Hesho nodded to me, again holding the fruit Peg had given me. He’d protected it so far. “It has been a sublime experience traveling with you,” he told me. “I consider myself lucky to have earned your friendship not once, but apparently twice.”

I nodded, then—

“Wait!” M-Bot said. “What’s that outside?”

Something blinked on my proximity monitor, indicating an object moving right outside.

“Huh?” I asked.

“It’s another slug!” M-Bot said. “No, two more! Other icons. They must have sensed Doomslug.” He cracked the canopy, which I worried would bring the delvers, but the motion apparently wasn’t noticeable—not with the debris the destructor shots were sending everywhere.

“Get them, Spensa!” M-Bot said. “Use Doomslug to lure them!”

Shocked, I squeezed out through the dusty canopy, cradling Doomslug. I dropped onto the white chalky ground, my figure casting an eerie, too-long shadow. Hesho followed out onto the wing.

All I could see was whiteness. Infinite whiteness.

“M-Bot,” I said. “What—”

“I,” he said as the cockpit clicked closed, “made you look.”

I felt an immediate burst of annoyance. At a time like this, he cracked a joke?

Wait. I spun around.

The starfighter’s acclivity ring powered on. M-Bot lightly shook the wing, dumping Hesho—and Peg’s fruit that he was carrying—into the dust. Then M-Bot hovered into the air just beyond reach.

Doomslug fluted sorrowfully.

“M-Bot!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“I feel it now, Spensa,” M-Bot said, his voice coming softly out his front speakers.

“Feel what? What is going on?”

“I feel,” he said, “why you left me. Back in the somewhere. You abandoned me. Because you had to. I understood it logically earlier. But I feel it now. I can feel what it’s like to know you have to do something, even if your emotions are telling you to do something else.”

Oh…Saints. He was saying…

“If they can sense me,” M-Bot said, “then I can make them chase me. I might be an abomination, but I am one who can fly on my own now. Choose for myself. And I can show them what an ‘abomination’ can do.”

“No!” I said. “You don’t want to do this, M-Bot!”

“Of course I don’t. That’s what makes it courageous though, right?”

“Please don’t. Don’t leave me…”

“Hey,” M-Bot said with a quiet perkiness, “that’s what I said to you. Do you remember?”

I nodded, feeling tears at the corners of my eyes.

“But you went anyway,” M-Bot said. “Why?”

“Because it was the right thing.”

“The right thing,” M-Bot said softly. “You promised me then you’d try to come back for me. Can you do that again?”

I bit my lip. Nearby, Hesho had climbed from the dust. He bowed to the ship.

“All right,” I whispered. “I’ll find you, M-Bot. I’ll come back for you. Somehow.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Makes it feel better.”

With that, he turned and blasted off into the sky. I flopped down and watched the delvers orient on him. Doomslug’s whining softened—it was obviously easier to hide just me, her, and Hesho. The solemn kitsen walked over and joined me in watching as the delvers, as one, turned and focused on M-Bot. Then all hundred of the free-flying ships took off after him.

He lasted about ten seconds.

He’d flown only a handful of times, and the delvers had challenged even my skill. M-Bot didn’t try to dodge—he merely tried to get as far from the rest of us as possible before they got him, quickly overwhelming his shield.

He vanished in a flash of light and smoke, the pieces casting long shadows as they fell.

The delvers pummeled these for a good thirty seconds of concentrated fire, then three ships slammed into what remained. And then…then they left. They couldn’t sense me, and they’d felt M-Bot. This was enough to convince them. They thought I’d been on the ship.

Perhaps if they’d been a group of humans, one—or even a majority—would have suggested continuing to search in case the rest of us had escaped. But the delvers made mistakes as one. Today they decided they’d done their job, and were too afraid of staying outside their bubble of safety to keep searching.

The wall of ships faded back into the lightburst. Followed by the flying ships, which soon melded with the whiteness.

Within five minutes of M-Bot leaving, we were alone on the expanse. Feeling like my limbs were made of iron, I picked up Hesho and stuffed Peg’s fruit in my jacket pocket. Then, holding Hesho in one arm and Doomslug—still protecting us—in the other, I trudged toward the lightburst. I worried the delvers would see us, but either they were convinced we were dead, or the illusion could obscure a little motion.

I don’t know how long it took to reach the border. That’s the nowhere for you. It could have been five minutes. It could have been five days. Probably more like the former, but this close to the boundary, time was extra alien.

I felt it when we got close. A fuzzing of the self, a dreamy sensation. Doomslug fluted. She would protect Hesho inside, as the pure nowhere could rip apart someone non-cytonic. She’d try to help me too.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “If you can guide us though, take us home. To Detritus.”

She fluted uncertainly. At the noise, I felt something respond in the light. The delvers had heard that. I needed to do this next part quickly.

So I stepped into the light.

Chapter 43

I’d been here before.

Every time I’d hyperjumped, I’d entered this non-place. The place where I had no body. We’d entered their realm fully.

The delvers were surprised. Yes, they really had thought they’d killed me. They could see the future, but time confused them. They didn’t understand things like causality, and the “future” wasn’t any different from the present.

I could sense them all around me. I could also sense Doomslug, and Saints was she tired. Exhausted, barely able to stay awake. Keeping up that illusion had taxed her.

I felt her try to take us home. She failed—used up—and slipped into unconsciousness. Frantic, I put a barrier around Hesho. Something to keep him from being destroyed or driven mad. Then, panicked, I tried to take us home—but the delvers had seen me. They seized us, held me in place, prevented me from leaving.

Eyes opened up around me. Thousands upon thousands of angry, vengeful eyes.

You took the Us.

You took the Us and corrupted the Us.

You took the Us and corrupted the Us and tried to kill the Us!

You know.

You know.

You know!

Furious minds assaulted me. Forces unimaginable pushed against my soul, as if to shred it. And scud, I was tired too. Tired from so long without memories. Tired from fighting myself, torn between duty and desire. Tired from the emotional wringer I’d been through today.

I wanted to let them have me. But we’d come all this way. We’d fought so hard. Now they tried to stop me? I felt a sudden burst of anger and pushed back. All my rage barely made them retreat. They soon resumed crushing me, trying to snuff the star I had become, like a candle’s flame.

I was time. I brought time in here when I came. Things happened in a sequence to me, and while I was here they had to experience me in a linear way. They hated that. They hated that I created noise. Most of all, they hated that I knew what they were.

So. Much. Hatred.

It was exhausting. Numbing…

They poked me like hunters with spears. They slashed me, attacked me, ripped at me…

But one hesitated.

One of them was different.

It was very slight, but the sensation was familiar. It was my own emotion reflected at me. Courage. The courage to walk a difficult path and not take the offered escape. Courage to press forward, even when I didn’t want to.

I’d given this to the delver. No amount of rewriting had been able to erase it. Chet was still in there.

Now!

I seized that sensation, that delver, and it unlocked again. The being that had been Chet hit my soul, and—with the strange cytonic softness I’d learned from the Path—I welcomed it in. Our essences vibrated as one.

As we began to intertwine, I grew to understand better how he saw the delvers. How he saw himself. I knew, intrinsically, that if I could isolate the others I could destroy them. The same way they’d been trying to destroy me. Chet knew how, and my soul understood.

I also sensed his hurt from long ago, the crippling pain of having lost a loved one. Chet had learned that he could bear that, but knowing didn’t remove the agony. As we intertwined further, I found I could offer something important. I knew how to live with that grief. I knew how to live with that pain. I’d done it for a decade.

The delver that had been Chet was everything I was not. And I was everything it needed. I let its pain stand, but I used my experience to temper it further. I grieved my father, and Hurl, and Bim, and everyone else I’d lost. But I had learned to bear it. That part of me was the balm the delver needed.

Together we became one.

In that moment a weapon was born.

I’d made a promise, hadn’t I? To come back for M-Bot? They’d killed him.

No, Chet-me thought. See it again.

M-Bot’s housing exploding. And a shimmering light was obscured by the explosion. A light the other delvers didn’t see—but one had been watching.

He saw what I did, Chet-me thought. When I left the ship earlier. The others shot down his housing, but in here AIs don’t need such a thing. They didn’t think he’d learned enough, but he saw the vision, and he saw me. He grew and changed.

He lives?

He lives?

I had a promise to keep, then. Emotions surged through me. Relief. Anger. Understanding. Love.

If I fell here, then that was it for Doomslug and Hesho too. Not to mention my friends, whose faces I couldn’t completely remember, but whose love I felt as strongly as ever.

The delvers raged, driving forward to smother me. And…I simply opened up to them.

Go ahead, I thought. Touch me.

They slammed their essences into mine, but touching me hurt them. I offered change. I offered a better way to deal with their pain, but that terrified them.

They were static, and that was their weakness. My strength was the opposite; my strength was that I could change.

I could be afraid, then become courageous.

I could be small-minded, then come to understand.

I could be selfish. Then move beyond it.

I could start as human, then allow myself to become something more. I was everything they feared. Because they refused to ever let themselves change, but I embraced change. It was the essence and nature of my strength.

Touching me seared them. Screams shook the void. They split away from me as I grew in awareness. I became a blackness upon their pure white essences. A hole into…

There.

Something clicked in my mind, and I stepped out of the light into a familiar cavern tunnel, holding Hesho and Doomslug. The angry fear of the delvers faded behind me.

I was home.