Cytonic

Chapter 1

I dropped out of a wall.

Like, I emerged straight from the stone. I flopped forward in a heap of tangled clothing and limbs. M-Bot made a grunting noise as his drone body fell out beside me, but there was no sign of Doomslug.

I scrambled to my feet, orienting myself, looking around to see…a jungle? Like, a real jungle. I’d seen pictures in school of Old Earth, and this place reminded me of those. Imperious moss-covered trees. Branches like broken arms, twisted and draped with thick vines like power lines. It smelled like the algae vats, only more…dirty? Earthy?

Scud. It truly was a jungle—like where Tarzan of the Apes had lived in Gran-Gran’s stories. Were there apes here? I’d always thought I’d make a good queen of the apes.

M-Bot hovered up, turning around to take it in. The wall we’d fallen out of was behind us. A flat stone freestanding in the jungle, like a monolith. It was overgrown with weeds and vines, and I recognized the carvings in it. I’d seen similar carvings on a wall in the tunnels on Detritus.

I knew from the delver’s impressions that this was the nowhere. That felt right to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain. Somehow I had to find answers in this place. Which seemed a whole lot more daunting to me now than it had moments ago. I…scud, I had barely escaped the Superiority with my life. Now I thought I could find answers about the delvers, one of the universe’s greatest cosmic mysteries?

Not merely about the delvers, I thought. About myself. Because in those moments when I touched the nowhere, and the beings that resided in it, I felt something that terrified me. I felt kinship.

I took a deep breath. First order of business was an inventory. M-Bot looked fine, and I still had my stolen energy rifle. I felt a ton more safe holding it. I wore what I’d escaped in: a standard Superiority pilot’s jumpsuit, a flight jacket, and a pair of combat boots. M-Bot hovered up to eye level in his drone, his grabber arms twitching.

“A jungle?” he asked me. To him, the time I’d spent communing with the delver would have passed in an instant. “Um, Spensa, why are we in a jungle?”

“Not sure,” I said. I glanced around for any sign of Doomslug. She was cytonic like me—slugs were what made ships able to hyperjump—and I hoped that she’d done as I’d asked, and jumped to safety on Detritus.

To be certain, I reached out with my powers to see if I could sense her. Also, could I jump home? I stretched outward, and felt…

Nothing? I mean, I still had my powers, but I couldn’t sense Detritus, or the delver maze, or Starsight. None of the places I could normally hyperjump to. It was eerie. Like…waking up at night and turning on the lights, only to find infinite blackness around you.

Yes, I was definitely in the nowhere.

“When we entered the black sphere, I felt the delvers,” I said to M-Bot. “And…I talked to one of them. The one from before. It said to walk the Path of Elders.” I rested my fingers on the wall behind us. “I think…this is a doorway, M-Bot.”

“The stone wall?” M-Bot asked. “The portal we entered was a sphere.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the sky through the trees. It was pinkish for some reason.

“Maybe we passed through the nowhere and came out on another planet?” M-Bot said.

“No, this is the nowhere. Somehow.” I stomped my foot, testing the soft earth beneath. The air was humid, like in a bath, but the jungle felt too quiet. Weren’t these places supposed to be teeming with life?

Beams of light filtered in from my right, parallel to the ground. So was it…sunset here? I’d always wanted to see one of those. The stories made them sound dramatic. Unfortunately, the trees were so thick that I couldn’t make out the source of the light, merely the direction.

“We need to study this place,” I said. “Set up a base camp, explore the surroundings, get our bearings.”

As if he hadn’t heard, M-Bot floated closer to me.

“M-Bot?”

“I…Spensa, I am angry!”

“Me too,” I said, smacking my hand with my fist. “I can’t believe that Brade betrayed me. But—”

“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of…of… Gah!”

I set aside my own concerns and focused on how he sounded. When I’d first found M-Bot in the little drone, his speech had been sluggish and slurred—like he’d been on heavy pain meds. But he was speaking clearly now, and quickly, more like his old self.

He buzzed back and forth in front of me like he was pacing. “I don’t care anymore if the emotions are fake. I don’t care that my routines simulate them. I am angry, Spensa! You abandoned me on Starsight!”

“I had to,” I said. “I had to help Detritus!”

“They ripped my ship apart!” he said, zipping the other direction. Then he froze in place, hovering. “My ship…my body… It’s gone…” He drooped in the air, sagging down almost to the ground.

“Uh, M-Bot?” I said, stepping up. “I’m sorry. Really. But look, can we have this conversation later?”

I was pretty sure that jungles like this were full of dangerous beasts. At least, in Gran-Gran’s stories people always got attacked in jungles. It made sense: anything could be hiding out among those shadowed trunks and deceptive ferns. I remembered how intimidated I’d felt when I’d first stepped out of the caverns and seen the sky. There had been so many directions to look, so many open places.

This was even more unnerving. Something could come at me from any direction. I reached down to touch M-Bot’s drone, which still hovered near the ground. “We should map the area,” I said, “and see if we can find a cave or something for shelter. Does that drone of yours have any kind of sensors? Are you picking up any signs of civilization, like radio broadcasts? There are mining operations in here, I think.”

When he didn’t reply, I knelt beside him. “M-Bot?”

“I,” he said, “am angry.”

“Look—”

“You don’t care. You never care about me! You left me!”

“I came back,” I said. “I left you because I had to! We’re soldiers. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions!”

“You’re a soldier, Spensa!” he shouted, hovering up in the air. “I’m a survey AI designed to search for mushrooms! Why do I keep letting you push me into doing things? I didn’t want to even enter that sphere, and you pulled me in! Aaah!”

Scud. That drone had surprisingly powerful speakers. And as if in reply to his shouts, something roared in the distance. The sound echoed in the forest ominously.

“Look,” I said softly to M-Bot. “I understand. I’d be a little angry in your place too. Let’s—”

Before I could finish he zipped away into the jungle, sobbing softly to himself.

I cursed and tried to follow, but he could fly—while I had to deal with the underbrush. I leaped over a fallen tree trunk, but on the other side I had to wiggle through a tangle of vines and fronds. After that something caught my foot, and I ended up tumbling to the ground.

When I finally managed to right myself, I realized I had no idea what direction he’d gone. In fact…what direction had I come from? Was that log over there the one I’d climbed over? No…that had been before I’d pushed through the vines. So…

I groaned, settling into the hollow of some overgrown roots, gun in my lap, and sighed. Well, my quest had started in a traditional Spensa-like fashion: with everyone mad at me. I realized that I needed a moment to decompress. M-Bot wasn’t the only one with a lot of powerful emotions.

I’d gone from confronting a delver to floating in space thinking I was dead, to waking up in a hospital, to escaping a hit squad sent to kill me. Now I’d had to make a snap decision about coming to this place, and I worried I was wrong.

Maybe I should have gone home and found a way to send someone else into the nowhere to find answers. Someone smart, like Rig. Or someone careful, like Kimmalyn. Right now I felt lost. I didn’t know what had happened to Cuna, and I worried about my friends.

I was alone, isolated, lost. And to top it off, my only companion—who was supposed to be the emotionally stable one, by programming design—had just thrown a tantrum and left.

Did people in Gran-Gran’s stories ever feel like this? I wished I knew what Khutulun of Mongolia or Calamity Jane of the Wild West had done when feeling overwhelmed.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough to notice that whatever was providing the light here didn’t seem to be moving. I let myself fixate on that instead of my mounting anxiety about Jorgen and my friends.

I’d made my decision. Now that I was here, I needed to learn what I could, then find a way home. “M-Bot?” I said to the trees, my voice coming out as a croak. “If you can hear me, would you please come back? I promise to apologize—and I’ll even let you have the first insult.”

No reply. Only the sound of faintly rustling leaves. So I forced myself to focus on a more detailed inventory of my assets. A way to do something about my situation—no matter how small—in order to start reasserting control. Cobb had taught me that.

Scud. I’d told Cobb that Cuna’s faction wanted peace. Winzik and Brade could use that to lure Cobb into talks—then double-cross him.

No, I told myself. Inventory.

I gave my rifle a quick once-over. I’d barely used up any of its charge during my escape, which meant I had a power source—and roughly five hundred shots, depending on whether I used standard energy rounds or amped rounds.

My jumpsuit didn’t include a medic belt, unfortunately, or a pilot’s survival kit. I did have the translator pin I’d been using at Starsight to understand alien languages. I fished in the pockets of the jacket, hoping maybe I’d shoved a knife or something into one of them without remembering. Instead I pulled out a handful of glowing sand.

Glowing. Sand.

Silver, like it was made of ground-up starfighter hull, and glistening. It was such an incongruous sight that I sat there staring at it as some dribbled between my fingers.

Saints. What was it? I closed my hand and returned it to my pocket, where I noticed something else. A lump at the bottom of the sand? I dug down and pulled out my father’s pilot’s pin. The one I’d kept hidden away since his death. Yet I knew it hadn’t been on me when I’d jumped into the portal. I didn’t even have it on Starsight. I’d left it on Detritus, in my bunk. So how was it suddenly in my pocket, surrounded by silver sand?

Weirded out by its appearance, I tucked the pin away. I didn’t find anything else hiding in my pockets, but I had one other asset I could think of: my powers. I knew I couldn’t hyperjump home—I couldn’t even feel home in here. But I had other abilities; the first I had ever manifested was the power to “hear the stars.” Which in practical terms meant I could communicate across long distances. Maybe I couldn’t hyperjump out of here, but could I reach Gran-Gran mentally?

I settled back against the tree and decided to give it a try. I just closed my eyes and…listened, extending my mind. That sounds silly, but I’d spent hours with Gran-Gran practicing this. And today I felt something.

There was a mind near me. It was familiar, like a presence I’d once known. Who was it? Not Gran-Gran…not Jorgen…not even the delver. I tried contacting the mind, and I got…a sensation of contentment? That was odd.

Then I felt something else. A second mind nearby. They were cytonic, whoever they were, because the moment our minds brushed a voice popped into my head.

Ho there! it said. Another cytonic, in the belt?

Yes! I sent. I’m lost. Can you help?

Careful now, the voice said. Dangerous things can hear you in here if you use your powers! Where are you? Describe your fragment, and I shall endeavor to locate you.

Fragment? I sent. I’m in a jungle. By…um…a tree?

I needed to find a better landmark. As soon as I considered it though, I hesitated. What if this was an enemy? How did I know the voice could be trusted?

At that moment, I got attacked.

Chapter 2

There were three of them. Two birdlike humanoids with wing-arms leaped around the tree from the right to tackle me, and a blue-skinned dione came in from the left—probably to go for the rifle, which I had slung over that shoulder.

It was a good plan, but man were they sloppy. The first avian slipped as it jumped, tripping the other one and giving me enough warning to turn and start raising my weapon. That almost let me shoot them—but the energy blast went wild as the dione got a hand on the gun.

They grunted, trying to brute-force wrestle the rifle away. The wrong move; even I knew that from my limited DDF training. They should have slapped the barrel, controlled the weapon with one hand, and then gone for my face with the other.

I shoved the dione away, but the two avians tackled me. Grunting, I rammed the butt of the gun into one of them, earning me a squawk of pain. I pulled hard, twisting, and started to wiggle free.

Unfortunately, just as I was about to slide out of the writhing mess of people, someone else grabbed me from behind. A feathered fourth enemy? The group had apparently been smart enough to leave someone in reserve.

I struggled against the fourth attacker, disoriented, as a fifth creature bodychecked me. I didn’t get a good look at this last guy—he was furry, and roughly the size of a refrigerator. While I’m…well, not. I’d stretched the truth to get 152 centimeters listed on my pilot records.

Being small is an advantage in a cockpit. Not so much in a fistfight. I’d like to think I gave a good showing, but in seconds I was lying on the ground completely disarmed, with the furry one sitting on top of me and one of the avians pointing my own rifle at my head.

“So,” the avian with the gun said, the translated words chirping out from my pin, “what have we here? A Superiority soldier? Well, that’s a nice surprise. A human even! I’m not afraid of your kind, human—but keep struggling, and I’ll shoot you and be done.”

I groaned and stopped fighting. I reached my hands out to the sides, where they were roughly grabbed and held down. At last I was released from the buttward side of that alien and was able to get a deep breath of fresh air.

My captors pulled me to a sitting position and bound my hands behind my back. I focused on the avian with the gun. I’d heard of this species. The heklo, I thought they were called? They had long beaks, kind of like a stork, but their feathers were of radiant colors. The combat fatigues they wore had no sleeves, but the feathers on their arms didn’t seem large enough to support flight. They seemed…more a vestige, like how humans had hair instead of fur.

“What do you want to do with it, Vlep?” asked the furry alien. It was vaguely gorillalike. I’d seen this species too. Burls, if I remembered their name correctly.

“That depends,” Vlep—the armed one, and the obvious leader—said. “Human, why did they send you through? This portal is for exiles, yet here you are, uniformed and armed.”

Right. I was wearing a Superiority jumpsuit and jacket. That, with the weapon, had led them to assume I was working with the enemy. The comment also told me something else: the wall was a portal, and this place was where people appeared once the Superiority exiled them. I’d seen that happen. In fact…

I looked at the burl. “Gul’zah?” I asked. I’d watched a burl get exiled into the nowhere a few days ago.

“Ha,” the burl said. “We grabbed him when he came in.”

“So that’s why you’re here,” Vlep said. “Hunting that specific fugitive? Curious.”

I wasn’t, of course. But I could now see that the burl who had captured me had slightly different features. I wasn’t the best at distinguishing one alien from another, but this burl was shorter, more stout, and had a wider face.

So, this group—whoever they were—had an outpost here and captured people who were sent in. Why though? Exiles wouldn’t have anything valuable on them. And who was the cytonic I’d contacted? Had I led these to me by using my powers? Or was I just jumping to conclusions?

I reached out with my senses again, seeking that mind. It wasn’t one of these… It was a little farther away.

What? the voice said as I brushed it with my mind. I told you to be quiet.

I’ve been taken captive, I said. By a group of raiders or something, who were watching the portal where I came in.

Pirates, the mind sent. This is Cannonade territory. They’re a rough group. Hold your tongue; don’t let them know what you are. And please stay quiet cytonically. You’ll draw the delvers!

“Not talking, I see,” Vlep said, pulling my attention back. “Hold her tight.”

The dione and another heklo grabbed me while Vlep began rummaging through my pockets. I struggled again—it felt violating to have their hands all over me—though I’d expected to be searched.

Soon Vlep pulled some of the silver dust from my pocket. “Ha! A nice haul.” He dug in it, then brought out the pin.

His eyes went wide, which seemed to be an expression of surprise for his species. The burl let out a low growl, which…might also have been surprise?

“A reality icon?” Vlep asked, then looked at me. “You must be someone important.”

My heart leaped as he closed a feathered hand around the pin, but it seemed like a bad idea to show how important that pin was to me, so I forced myself to relax. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, thanks for the treasure,” Vlep said. He tucked the pin into a small pouch.

“Do we shoot her now?” the burl asked. “I don’t like the idea of taking a soldier as a servant. Too dangerous.”

“Could be useful in a fight,” the dione said, “if they join us. Imagine having a human on our side.”

“Broadsiders have one,” Vlep said, “and he’s useless. They don’t live up to their reputations. Trust me. But we’re not going to shoot her—the Superiority sent her in armed. So she’s valuable to them. We’ll ransom her back to the mining base.”

So there were mining stations in here. At least that gave me a good lead on how I might get out, once I accomplished what I needed to in here.

Right now, my best chance at escape was to get the pirates to underestimate me. So I slumped down. “I’m going to get into so much trouble for this…” I moaned.

“Ha!” Vlep said. “Well, good news! Now that we know Gul’zah is valuable, maybe we can ransom him too! Double the haul.” He looked at the pouch. “Triple. Or more. Stand her up. Let’s get moving. Judging from that roar earlier, there’s a grig in here somewhere. I’d rather not run into it.”

He started off through the jungle, and the others pulled me along. I made a few token complaints and struggles, then slumped as I walked, pretending to be defeated.

Secretly I studied them. These pirates clearly weren’t trained soldiers. Vlep didn’t understand muzzle control; he turned and absently swung the weapon toward the others when they spoke to him. I wasn’t surprised. The Superiority denounced what they called “aggression,” and its people were unlikely to have combat training. Winzik and his cronies liked it that way. It made people easier to control.

So maybe this group had formed from exiles? A couple had weapons at their hips—a knife on the burl, and what appeared to be a pistol at Vlep’s side. But they hadn’t used those on me. They’d purposely taken me alive. Though perhaps they’d been surprised by how well I fought, and how well I’d been armed.

I could probably exploit their ignorance. At least, someone more capable could have exploited it. I didn’t have the training for this kind of thing, I…

I couldn’t really use that argument anymore, could I?

I hadn’t been training as a spy, but I’d infiltrated the Superiority. And arguably I’d done a pretty good job. At least until everything had gone wrong at the end.

I’d chosen to come here. It was time to stop complaining about my situation.

“Hey, Vlep,” I said, trying to hurry up and catch him at the front of the group. I stumbled almost immediately, nearly tripping on hidden vines. Running away wasn’t really an option, not while my hands were tied.

I righted myself with some help from the dione, then called again. “Vlep. You all, you’re exiles, aren’t you? Making the best of a bad situation? I can help you. I’m not your enemy.”

“In here,” the heklo said, “everyone’s our enemy.”

“I’m a soldier,” I said. “I can train your people. Help you. I just need a little information. About this place, and about—”

He stopped and turned his gun on me. “No talking unless you’re asked a question. You’re in Cannonade territory now. Keep your head down and hope I don’t decide you’re too much trouble to be worth keeping alive.”

“You know, Vlep,” one of the other heklo said, “I think I might know her. Is that…Winzik’s pet human?”

“Winzik?” Vlep snapped. “Who is that?”

“Sorry,” the heklo said. “I forget how little about the outside gets in here. One of the high officials of the Superiority keeps a human bodyguard. I think that’s her.”

“Curious,” Vlep said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Why would they send you to chase an exile, human? Or did you finally cross the Superiority and earn your inevitable reward?”

They’d mistaken me for Brade? Guess I wasn’t the only one who had trouble distinguishing one alien from another.

As soon as I thought of Brade, I winced. I’d failed so badly in trying to recruit her. She was cytonic, and was the one who had summoned the delver that had gone on to attack Starsight. If I’d been able to get through to her somehow, all of this would—

A terrible monstrous call tore through the jungle. It was so deep and sonorous, it made the trees vibrate. The entire group froze in place and peered outward through the trees and vines. What in the unholy universe could make such a sound?

“It’s getting closer,” Vlep whispered. “Quickly. Back to the ships.”

Wait.

Ships?

Dared I hope they had starfighters in here? I sure would feel more confident in the cockpit of a ship. When they started walking again, I hurried along with them. And gloriously, like debris parting to reveal heaven itself, the trees fell away and we entered a small clearing—with three ships in it. Two midsize civilian craft and a sleek, dangerous-looking starfighter.

It was like fate had seen me struggling and decided to send me a little gift—in the form of an interceptor-class ship with twin destructors. I was so captivated by its beauty that I missed something important. The group had halted around me, and they weren’t looking at the ships—but at the two pirates who had presumably been left to guard them.

One was a dione, who seemed panicked and was trying to administer some kind of medical kit to the other—a burl, who was sitting on the ground by one of the ships. Female, I assumed from her size.

And her face was melting.

Chapter 3

The strange visage made me gape in shock. Though her body was gorilla-shaped, and she was wearing utilitarian clothing like the others, she had no nose, just a small lump where one had been, and a thin slit for a mouth. Her cheeks sagged to the sides, and her eyes—a milky white—were open and staring forward.

There was something distinctly unnatural about that face. What had happened to her?

“Tie down the prisoner for now,” Vlep told the dione—who yanked me over to the side of the clearing. There they anxiously tied my hands—still bound behind me—to part of a tree to hold me in place. A root perhaps? Then the dione ran over to join the others gathering around the burl.

I immediately started trying to worm free. Unfortunately, their knot-tying skills were superior to their combat abilities. I was secured tightly, so I resorted to rubbing my binding against the bark in hopes of making it fray.

“What happened?” Vlep demanded of the dione guard. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing! I just wandered out into the trees to relieve myself, then came back to…” The confused dione gestured at the figure.

Scud. That melty-faced alien was getting unnerving. The others argued for a moment, then one suggested they try the “reality ashes,” which turned out to be the silvery dust from my pocket. Vlep began sprinkling it on top of the burl.

As I watched, her eyes started to glow. Beneath the skin, as if there were something inside her. A pure white light. It reminded me…

Of the eyes. Of delvers.

Oh, Saints.

I tried to yank free of the root, and it did have some give to it—but I wasn’t quite strong enough to pull it out of the ground. So I returned to rubbing my bonds on the bark.

“A little to the left,” a peppy voice said from behind. “There’s a rougher part there that might help.”

I paused, then twisted to look over my shoulder. To where a small drone hovered, hidden among the underbrush.

“M-Bot!” I said, then hushed, glancing at the pirates. They were only about seven meters away, but fortunately they didn’t seem to have heard. “You found me!”

“Well, you weren’t exactly quiet, Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering closer. “I see you found some friends. That’s…nice. Look, we need to talk. A heart-to-heart. Heart-to-processing-unit-simulating-a-biological-function-like-a-heart.”

“Now’s not a great time!”

M-Bot shook a grabber arm at me. “The emotions of biological beings often come at inconvenient times; I’ve dealt with yours on many occasions. And Spensa…I think I have feelings now.”

“That’s…not surprising. You had them before, no matter what you said.”

“Spensa,” M-Bot continued, “I’ve been thinking. And…and feeling. I really was angry that you left me behind to be ripped apart, gutted, and killed. But I understand why you did it. I shouldn’t have been so angry at you. I…overreacted.”

“Great,” I said, struggling to get loose. “I’m sorry too, and I forgive you.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, twisting to the side to show him my bound wrists. “Look, can you—”

“Oh, thank you, Spensa!” he said. “Thank you, thank you. I feel so warm! Maybe my power matrix is overheating. But, but, it’s marvelous! I feel like I’m going to cry, though that’s physically impossible for me.”

“Could you—”

“Maybe I could have mechanical tear ducts installed on this drone. So I could be like you, and leak? You become less efficient with your secretions when you’re emotional.”

I took a deep breath. In the stories, the heroines always had trusty steeds—who could not talk—or loyal, quiet sidekicks. I could see why. The Lone Ranger probably wouldn’t have accomplished much if his horse had been a mushroom-obsessed blabbermouth.

Still, I was really glad to see him. I glanced toward my captors. They were holding down the sick burl, who seemed to be having a spasm. My heart went out to her, but her distress was timed perfectly. The pirates would have noticed M-Bot for sure otherwise.

“Spensa?” he said. “Oh! Are you tied up?”

“You’re only now noticing?” I growled. “What did you think I was doing with these ropes?”

“I thought you were trying to scratch an itch! That’s why I pointed out the rough part of the root. You biological beings are always scratching things. Skin must be awful.” He hesitated. “To be honest, I should have figured out you were captive. It’s actually rather obvious. I was distracted by all these emotions my processors are inexplicably simulating. Hmm… Yup. Those are ropes.”

“Help get me out of them?”

“Uh…right. I will…search for knot-untying solutions in my database…”

“Or you could untie them!” I hissed.

“I’m not sure how.”

“It’s not that hard.”

“For you, maybe. I’m not exactly used to being able to do things, Spensa. I’m an information-support AI. I…don’t know how to act. In fact, I’ve needed to send my self-shutdown protocols into an infinite loop. They don’t like me being able to fly myself around.”

The people who had made his old ship had implanted deep controls on his personality. It said a lot that he had progressed enough to circumvent some of those.

An outburst from the pirates pulled my attention back to the sick burl. She was struggling and thrashing, and had thrown one of the heklo away with incredible strength.

“Quickly,” I hissed. “Do you have anything that could help me escape?”

“I have a light-line,” M-Bot said. “I found one in the shop on a worker drone and moved it to myself. I was planning to use it in my escape. Maybe I could drag you away?”

A light-line was a plus. Though his acclivity rings were small, and the drone was only about the size of a lunch tray, if quite a bit thicker. It wouldn’t have a lot of power.

“Attach the light-line to the ropes on my hands,” I said. “Maybe with your added strength we can rip this root out of the ground and I can pull myself free. Get ready. We have to do this before the pirates notice what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” M-Bot said. “About that…”

The pirates were running for their ships, having apparently decided to abandon the one with the melting face. The male burl didn’t like this. “Give me the icon, Vlep!” the burl shouted. “We have to try! Maybe it will work!”

But Vlep wasn’t listening. As the others were running for their ships, he’d turned to look at me. He’d seen M-Bot. He immediately raised the rifle toward us, apparently deciding I was too dangerous to let live.

Get ready, a voice said in my mind.

Ready? I thought, staring down that rifle. For what?

The ground started shaking. Trees trembled. Vlep swung the gun away from me and pointed it toward the approaching sounds.

Then a scudding dinosaur came rampaging into camp—with a mustachioed human man riding on its back.

Chapter 4

Yes, a dinosaur. I mean, I’d never seen one before, but this thing was reptilian, walked on two legs, and had a long tail trailing behind it. Yeah, the eyes appeared to be on its shoulders, and its “neck” was long like a trunk and ended in a toothy mouth. So maybe “enormous demonic anteater” would have been a better description. But I’m going with dinosaur.

The human was almost as baffling to me. He wore a flight jacket and combat trousers, and looked to be in his fifties. He was square jawed, muscular for his age, and his mustache stuck out a good fifteen centimeters to either side. As the dinosaur stormed forward, the man slipped expertly down the animal’s flank, then hit the ground and rolled.

It was just about the most incredible entrance I’d ever seen. Why hadn’t I ever been able to ride a dinosaur into combat, then dismount with a flourish?

Oh, wait. Escaping. Right. The stranger’s arrival had taken all attention off me.

“Now!” I shouted at M-Bot.

I heaved up to a squatting position, then tried to stand, pulling with all my strength to snap the root I’d been tied to. M-Bot hovered up beside me, towing the root with his light-line as I’d asked. With his added strength, the root gave and I stumbled free.

I found my balance and pushed my hands down my back and squatted, then pulled my bound wrists under my feet to get my hands in front of me. There are advantages to being my shape and size.

“Excellent to meet you in person, my cytonic friend!” the stranger said, bounding up to me and yanking out a hunting knife. I proffered my hands, and he sliced the ropes with a single cut. Then he offered his own hand in a gentlemanly sort of way. “Chet Starfinder! Interdimensional galactic explorer!” He had to shout over the sound of the monster rampaging through the camp. The ground shook with its thundering gait.

“That’s an awesome name!” I shouted at him.

“Thanks! I made it up myself! What now?”

“Fancy stealing a starfighter?” I said, pointing.

“Music to my ears, young lady!” he shouted back. “It’s been far too long since I’ve had the chance!”

Unfortunately, the sleek ship was already taking off. The pirates had scattered. Only three remained: the male burl, the glowing-eyed female burl he was trying to pull to safety, and Vlep. He was shooting at the dinosaur—which remarkably didn’t seem to be hurt by the energy blasts.

We still had a chance to grab one of the civilian ships, a shuttlecraft. I hesitated though, eyeing Vlep. The feathered alien had the pouch with my father’s pin.

For some reason, in that moment the pin felt more important. “Change of plans,” I said, running for Vlep.

Chet joined me in my charge. Vlep continued firing at the dinosaur, which was ignoring him in favor of snapping toward one of the ships as it took off. I hit Vlep from behind, right at the knees, sending him sprawling. Chet scooped up the gun while I pulled at the struggling heklo’s uniform coat, eventually yanking the pouch out of his pocket.

“Freeze!” a voice said from behind.

I spun and found the sleek ship hovering nearby, destructors pointed at me. Vlep took the chance to scramble away, leaving me without a captive. Chet dropped the gun and threw his hands up. Ship-mounted weapons would be powerful enough to vaporize us completely.

Fortunately, the pilot had forgotten the dinosaur. It seized the wing with a furious bite. I dove for the underbrush, and Chet was only a moment behind me. M-Bot belatedly swooped over to us.

I glanced at the last ship, but Vlep was climbing aboard—and the others were firing on the dinosaur. Crossing that clearing would be risking death from a stray shot.

“I believe,” Chet said, “Operation Ship-Steal will have to be canceled. My regrets.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“Shall we?” he said, gesturing into the jungle. “I’d rather not remain in the line of sight of those vessels.”

In the clearing, the female burl had come out of her daze and slammed the male against a tree. He slumped to the ground, his eyes closed, and she turned immediately toward me—as if she could sense where I was. Her eyes looked like they’d grown over with skin, smoothing the sockets. But deep within her skull, two white dots—glowing with what I could feel distinctly was an intense hatred—shone through.

My breath caught in my chest. Then the burl pointed and screamed at me.

Scud.

I gave up any last hope of getting one of those ships. I joined Chet and dashed into the jungle, chased by the sounds of destructor fire and monster roars.

Chapter 5

Chet ran in front of me, and he seemed to have a sixth sense for where to step—I was able to follow him fairly quickly, avoiding any pitfalls or hidden tree branches. I supposed jungle survival was part of an interdimensional space explorer’s standard repertoire.

M-Bot hovered along beside me. “Spensa!” he said. “I think I’m simulating fear! Or… No. It’s time to stop talking like that. I feel afraid. I am afraid!”

Well, that seemed like progress. The shouting faded behind us, and I was glad to put a large distance between me and that creature with the glowing eyes. Though I did feel another stab of worry for Doomslug. I assumed she’d hyperjumped home, but what if she’d only jumped somewhere nearby in here instead?

I felt terrible for not being able to do a longer search for her. But…well, hopefully if she was in here, she was safe. Honestly, if I had to lay bets on me, M-Bot, or the slug surviving in this jungle alone, she’d top the list.

We ran until we could no longer hear gunfire. Finally Chet nodded to me, and the two of us huddled down beside a moss-covered log. This place felt so alien. What did you do surrounded by all this life? Planet surfaces were supposed to be barren expanses of rock and craters. That was natural and normal. Not this greenery.

“Alas,” Chet said quietly, “the pirates finally seem to have noticed that the beast feeds on energy. You can’t hurt them with such weapons, but approach with a small power matrix as an offering and they become quite tame! Grigs are used as pack animals, for all their fearsome appearance. She should be full from all those blasts—I bet she’ll wander off and have a sleep now. Still, I think we should proceed as silently as possible, because of that thing with the shining eyes. I didn’t like the look of that at all.”

I nodded in agreement. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For your help. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself. Spensa Nightshade.”

“Excellent name!” he whispered back. “As for my help, it was a pleasure! I was already prowling Cannonade territory looking for some action, you might say. And I found it, yes I did! Helping a fellow cytonic is a hearty reward on its own. That said…” He trailed off, glancing at M-Bot. “Now I don’t want to pry, but…did I hear you speaking to that drone?”

“Oh, right,” I said. “This is M-Bot.”

“Hello!” M-Bot whispered. “I’m not so scared any longer. That feels nice.”

“Ah,” Chet said. “You, um, brought an AI into the nowhere, did you?”

“That’s…bad, I take it?”

“Yes, well, I believe that word to be an understatement, Spensa Nightshade. Do your people not know about the delvers?”

“We met one!” M-Bot exclaimed. “Well, Spensa did. I was being murdered at the time. But I heard about it on the news! Sounded scary.”

“Ah yes, well then.” Chet looked at me. “Your AI has gone fully sentient, I see? I thought you were newly arrived, but full sentience usually takes a few weeks.”

“Technically,” M-Bot said, hovering a few centimeters closer to him, “the word ‘sentient’ just means an ability to perceive and/or feel. Many people misuse this word. Instead, ‘sapience’ is the word for self-awareness—or intelligence like a human being. Which if you think about it is a human-centric definition. Those rascally humans and their linguistic biases.

“At any rate, my programming is telling me to explain that I’m not sapient, merely programmed to simulate sapience for my pilots. However, my programming was written by people who smell of cheese and have noodles for brains. So I’m ignoring them right now.”

“…Noodles for brains?” I asked.

“When I copied my personality to this drone, I had to leave behind several nonessential databases for space reasons. I assume my collection of keen, brilliant insults was among them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You never had one of those, M-Bot.”

“Really? Guess I’ll have to start one up. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate ‘noodles for brains’?”

“Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, “I…must warn you. This is incredibly dangerous. Fully sapient AI are abominations, you see. Not that I’m one to shy away from danger! But I…well, I suggest you keep an eye on the thing.”

“Noted,” I said.

“Noted,” M-Bot said. “Noodle-brain.”

We both looked at him.

“I’ll keep using it until I have a rating,” M-Bot said. “One to ten. What do you think? I need some data.”

I sighed, glancing back at Chet. “You said you’re an explorer?”

“Interdimensional galactic explorer,” he said. “I’ve only been to two dimensions so far—the ordinary universe and this place. But I figured the title was fitting regardless.”

“I could use a guide,” I said. “And maybe some help understanding cytonics.”

“Well,” he admitted, “on the second I’m not going to be terribly helpful. I didn’t know I was cytonic before falling in here, and I’ve had to pick up what I can on my own. I can contact people through their minds, but that’s about all I can do. I hear we’re supposed to be able to teleport. Wouldn’t that be something?”

I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain I should trust him. Something about his arrival seemed convenient. I mean, yes, awesome dinosaur antics—so awesome—but still…

“I would love to be employed as your guide, however,” Chet said. “I know these fragments like I know my own boots. But tell me, before we continue. Why was that pouch so important that you gave up capturing a ship to steal it?”

I hesitated. I had a hundred more questions. Where did he come from? Were there lots of humans there? What was a fragment? I put those off for the moment, settling on something else instead.

I retrieved the pouch, then pulled out my father’s pin. “What,” I said, “is this?”

Chet’s eyes went wide. And I felt a distinct longing from him. An envy. It was gone in a moment—he seemed to be able to cover his emotions—but it had been there, and it made me wary.

“That, young lady,” he said, “is a reality icon. An important relic from your old life, imbued with your attachments to places and people you love. Those are exceptionally powerful. They create reality ashes. That silver dust? Without those, or without groups of people nearby…”

“What?” I asked, resisting the urge to tuck away the pin. I didn’t like how he stared at it.

“We’re at the fringes of the nowhere,” he said, “in a region known as the belt. It’s rather difficult to explain, but the longer you stay in here, the more likely you are to forget yourself. Your past, your memories, even your identity.” He paused. “I remember almost nothing about my life before I came in here. It’s a blank…nothingness.

“But I’m lucky. I’ve been able to trade for ashes often enough to keep myself mostly…well, myself. Many people forget everything quickly—including their own names. That’s why the pirates grab newcomers, you see. Put them to work, keep them close. The more minds nearby, the more your memories and identity stay safe. Unless you have reality ashes. Then you can go anywhere without fear.”

“And this thing makes them,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, oddly solemn. “The only other way is to get them off people or objects when they first arrive in the nowhere. And the ashes fade over time. It takes…a while. Months, maybe? Hard to keep track sometimes. So if you want to go out on your own, you need a constant supply.”

Well, that explained why everyone had been so excited about my pin. I dropped the pin in the pouch and tucked it into my pocket.

Chet’s eyes followed it the entire time. Then he grinned, and some of his earlier perkiness returned. “Well,” he said, “a guide you want, and a guide you shall have! I fear that I’ve played my hand, explaining how valuable those are. But if you’d be willing to trade me some—just the ashes, not the icon—for my services, then I shall dutifully be in your employ. Shall we say, a single ash per day of service?”

Scud. I had hundreds. They might be valuable, but that deal felt like a bargain. “I’m in,” I said. “I need information about this place. And I need to find…something called the Path of Elders?”

He cocked his head. “Where did you hear of that?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Ah, espionage, is it! Well, I shall keep my tongue then, Spensa Nightshade. I know of the Path of Elders. Following it leads one to some of the first entrances into the nowhere, left by the most ancient cytonics. Traversing it won’t be easy, but—”

He was interrupted by the sound of branches snapping in the forest. The ground began thumping.

“I thought you said it would go to sleep,” I said.

“It…should have.” Chet turned his head toward the noises. “I say. It is coming this way, isn’t it? Never fear, I can tame the beast again. It is not…”

He trailed off. A coldness emanated from the same direction. A kind of…chill that penetrated my soul. And a sound reverberated in my head. No words. Just a low hiss, accompanied by an intense wave of hatred.

“I think,” he said, “perhaps we should be away. With haste.”

“Agreed,” I said, jumping to my feet.

Chet took the lead, faster this time, and I followed as best I could. He slid across a fallen log, then hit the ground and moved with a light, quick step, ducking through a group of fronds. M-Bot zipped after him. I slid over the log awkwardly, then stumbled through the same plants, barely staying upright.

We fortunately hit a patch of less dense jungle, letting us pick up our pace further.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’ll note a nine from you on the rating for that insult of mine. Great, with a little room to improve. How does that sound?”

I grunted. The noises behind us were getting closer.

“Chet said that thing eats electricity,” M-Bot said. “It…won’t eat me, will it, Spensa?”

I just focused on trying to keep up with Chet, who waved me forward, then hurried through the underbrush. I barely avoided tripping.

“You know,” M-Bot said, his volume turned down low, “it’s rather inconvenient that you humans need your aspiration apparatus in order to communicate. Often when you’re working hard, you also have important things to say. But you can’t say them, or risk interrupting your oxygen intake.”

“Point?” I asked, puffing as I ducked under some vines.

“Oh, no point,” M-Bot said, doing a loop-de-loop through the vines. “Merely making small talk. With a small voice. Ha! You know, I’ll bet that given some more time to evolve, your species would have fixed that problem with your lungs. I can appreciate making use of existing hardware and giving it a new function, but there are other areas of your body that make noise when air is pushed through them. Wouldn’t it be so much more efficient if you could communicate that way instead?”

It was best not to encourage him when he got like this, though I was happy to hear him acting more like his old self. When I’d first found him in the drone, slow of speech and feeling betrayed, I worried I’d never get him back. Then after his bout of angry emotions…well, hearing him making fun of human biology was a relief.

The sounds from behind us grew even louder. I charged forward and met up with Chet, who had paused to wait for me. He took off again as soon as I reached him.

“Something’s wrong,” he said quietly. “The grig shouldn’t be following. This is bad, Spensa Nightshade. Very bad…”

A loud snap sounded behind us. It was closer now. Too close. Terrifyingly close.

Don’t look, my warrior heritage whispered to me.

I looked anyway.

The thing was back there, moving with an incongruent grace. It slid its mouth-neck among the trees, whiskers along its length feeling the way for its larger body to follow. The eyes on its torso at the base of its trunk were now glowing white. Just like the eyes of the wounded alien. And the delvers.

I felt the cold sensation increase, a pressure on my mind, as if it was reaching toward me, searching for me. It knew me.

“Chet!” I shouted, turning toward him. Somehow I’d managed to avoid tripping. “It’s right there!”

He leaped through a line of shrubs. I followed and broke out of the jungle, then pulled up hastily as I realized I’d not only reached the end of the trees, but the end of the land itself.

An expanse of open air extended before me, broken by distant masses of earth and stone that were floating there, idly drifting. We hadn’t been in an ordinary jungle, but one that grew on a giant floating chunk of ground.

And there was no path forward that I could see.

Chapter 6

Chet immediately took off to the right, running along the edge of our fragment of land. “This way!”

I scrambled after him but risked a glance back. I was rewarded with an encouraging sight: though there was a meter of open space between the jungle and the cliff, the monster was wider than that. So while we could run on a straightaway, it had to maneuver around trees and tangles of foliage, its trunk-mouth-nose thing wagging angrily.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering along beside me, “I am not enthused by my first experiments in self-determination. My chronometer details that since my awakening, I’ve spent a frightening amount of my time lost, pouting, or being chased by interdimensional monsters.”

I nodded but kept running, trying to save my breath.

He zipped out a little farther ahead of me. “If you were to rate my mastery of emotions on a scale of one to ten, what would you give me?”

I grunted.

“I’ll pretend that was a three,” M-Bot said. “I know it wasn’t optimal, but for a newly awakened robot, you have to admit that I did a fine job. In fact, all things considered, I think I deserve higher than a three. I feel bad that you’d rate me so low, Spensa.”

I glanced over my shoulder again. The beast had fallen behind, but I could still see those eyes glowing on either side of its trunk.

What…I felt the word pushed into my mind. What have you…

I redoubled my efforts anyway, and with a burst of speed caught up to Chet. “Where,” I managed to say. “Are. We. Going.”

He pointed ahead. “Another fragment up there. You see it? I’m hoping we can leap from this one to that one, and thereby escape the beast.”

Tons of these fragments hovered about, all on the same plane, at the same elevation. Like they were scattered pieces of a puzzle on an invisible table. Ahead, a tan chunk of ground was drifting near, separated from our chunk by only a few meters. Seeing it highlighted to me that there wasn’t much rock under my feet. Did sections of these masses break off? Was it dangerous to be this close to the edge?

We ran anyway. And as we drew closer, I saw that the distance between our fragment and the tan one was larger than it had looked. Clearly farther than a person could jump.

Chet ran beside me, and his expression fell as he obviously realized the same problem. “Miss Nightshade,” he said, glancing toward the monster, “I fear I might have led us both to our dooms. Would you prefer to try to hide in the forest or stand and fight?”

“Neither,” I said, feeling that beast’s mind pressing against mine. “M-Bot? Want to earn a ten out of ten on saving my life?”

“Ooooh,” M-Bot said. “Ten is way higher than three. I mean, depending on your frame of reference, of course.”

“Go attach your light-line to that other fragment,” I said, panting, “then come back! Meet us by that boulder up ahead, where the two fragments are closest to one another!”

He zipped off. I wasn’t certain how much mass that little drone’s acclivity rings could support, but a good light-line could bear my weight and more.

“Excellent idea!” Chet said. “Keep running! We can make it!”

Behind, the beast roared, but the voice was different now. It sounded like a hundred different versions of the same roar, overlapping. I glanced over my shoulder and saw it charging toward us, nearly upon us.

Scud. Couldn’t it see I wasn’t worth the effort? That had to be one advantage I had over someone like Conan the Barbarian. I would barely constitute a snack. But I didn’t think it was my flesh it wanted to consume.

Fortunately, M-Bot’s drone moved at a good speed. He was already attaching the light-line to the other fragment. That accomplished, he streaked toward us, trailing the glowing reddish-orange line of energy.

The monster’s footsteps shook the ground just behind us. I could practically feel its breath.

Come on…

M-Bot soared back—then pulled up short right before reaching our fragment. He jerked to a halt in the air. The light-line wasn’t long enough.

He was so close though…

I glanced at Chet. He nodded.

Only one thing to do.

We reached the part of the fragment nearest M-Bot and—together—we jumped.

We probably made a dramatic sight, the two of us hanging in the air as the monster arrived and snapped at the place where we’d been standing. We soared over an infinite expanse and…

I managed to grab M-Bot’s drone.

Chet missed. He’d aimed too low and ended up slamming into my waist. We all started to plummet, as M-Bot’s acclivity rings proved far too weak to keep us in the air. I was almost jolted free as Chet got a grip on my leg, and we swung like a pendulum away from the jungle.

I hung on for dear life, my eyes squeezed shut, concentrating on keeping my grip on M-Bot’s drone. We swung back and forth a few times before slowly coming to a rest.

I opened my eyes. M-Bot’s light-line was attached to the fragment some fifteen meters above us. I held to the drone with everything I had, and Chet clung to my left leg.

“Well,” M-Bot said, “you don’t need to rate this rescue on a scale. I figure it’s pretty much pass/fail, right?”

I grunted, hugging the drone tighter to my chest. I was really glad I was in a jumpsuit, because otherwise there was a good chance Chet would have ended up falling for eternity, his only company a pair of women’s trousers.

M-Bot began to retract the light-line. Fortunately, the mechanism proved strong enough to hold us as we inched upward. I glanced behind me, where the monstrous creature stood at the edge of the jungle, watching. Those haunting eyes glowed so brightly they consumed its other features.

Vast, terrible, they intruded on my mind. What…have you done…to the Us? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

That was the delvers. I recognized their minds.

“Can you hear that?” Chet asked softly.

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut again. I forcibly pushed the delvers away.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the beast retreating into the jungle, vanishing in the shadows.

“I sure am glad everything turned out all right,” M-Bot said as we slowly moved upward. “Actually, that’s me lying. Look at how good I’ve gotten at that! In truth, Spensa, I’m still frightened. Even though we’re safe now. Why is that? Shouldn’t I be relieved?”

I shook my head. “It sometimes takes a few minutes for nerves to settle. Chet, how you doing down there?”

“Contemplating my life’s choices, Miss Nightshade,” his voice said from below. “How is your grip, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Solid, for now,” I said.

“If you start to slip, I’d request that you inform me. As your would-be rescuer, I will not allow my weight to hasten your demise! Better that one should fall than two.”

“Don’t talk like that!” I said. “What would happen? Would you fall forever?”

“At least until you cleverly acquired a ship and came to my rescue!” he said. “I’d hope my performance up to this point would earn such a turnabout. But let us simply hang on!”

Fortunately, I’d positioned myself to grip not just with my fingers but my whole arms. I was fairly stable, all things considered.

We eventually pulled to a halt near the rim of the fragment, where M-Bot had stuck his light-line. There were a few centimeters of slack left, but he couldn’t retract that while I was clinging to his boxy form.

“You’ll have to climb up first,” I said to Chet.

“Right, then!” Chet said. “Sorry in advance!”

He started pulling himself up by my jumpsuit. I focused on keeping my grip. My hands were slippery from my sweat, and Chet’s weight as he climbed threatened to jostle me free. Eventually however, he was able to grab something on top of the fragment and haul himself up over the side. I sighed in relief.

His hand reached down a moment later, and I accepted the help, letting him heave me up onto the surface of the new fragment. Bits of dirt and sand rained off the side, sprinkling against M-Bot’s hull as he hovered up. We were on some kind of desert fragment—it was covered in sand, broken only by occasional bits of scrub plant life.

Nothing here appeared immediately threatening. Chet and I looked at each other, then both of us deliberately scooted away from the edge before collapsing and letting out exhausted sighs. My arms ached and my heart was still pounding. But when I glanced at Chet, I discovered he was grinning.

And…scud. I felt the same way. There was something incredibly thrilling about our wild escape. My friends called me crazy for this sort of reaction, but Chet seemed to get it.

“We had no business surviving that,” I said to him.

“None whatsoever!” he agreed. “But it is the most fun I’ve had in ages.”

M-Bot’s drone turned from me to Chet, then back to me. “You’re insane!” he said to us. “Both of you!”

“We simply appreciate life, abomination!” Chet said, dusting his clothes off and standing up. “Nothing brings you more of said appreciation than nearly losing that which you value.” He walked back to the edge of the fragment and put one foot up on a rock, leaning forward as he studied the jungle fragment. It was drifting away from us at a slow speed.

Standing like that in his flight jacket, I had to admit he cut an impressive figure. He reminded me of…well, someone from one of the stories. The people I’d dreamed about meeting, even imagined myself joining in an adventure.

But I couldn’t help being wary. Running into him here so quickly seemed coincidental. But what did I know? Maybe this strange place was full of heroic adventurers. You couldn’t ask for a better ambiance. Because as Chet stood there staring outward, the jungle fragment drifted far enough to the side for me to finally make out the source of light in this place.

A gigantic, expansive bright sphere of light rose halfway over the horizon. It looked like a bomb frozen mid-explosion. Though it was difficult to tell from my vantage, it felt like hundreds—maybe thousands—of fragments led toward it, each with a different terrain.

A thousand little worlds of adventure, leading like a broken roadway toward that enormous sphere. Was that a sun? It looked far too big, and was too close. I mean, yes, it was probably hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away—but suns were supposed to be millions upon millions of kilometers away.

Plus, it didn’t seem to be producing any heat, and I could look directly at it without trouble.

“We call it the lightburst,” Chet said, turning back to me. “It’s where the delvers live. The center of everything, in here. I assume from your expression that you’d like some answers?”

“That sure would be a nice change…”

“And you still intend to follow the Path of Elders?” he asked.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Then our journey begins,” he said, walking over and offering a hand to pull me to my feet. “Join me, Spensa Nightshade, as we head toward adventure and I do some explaining.”

Chapter 7

“All right,” I said as we started across the desert. “First question. How can this place be the nowhere? I’ve been in the nowhere before during hyperjumps. I think I’d remember flying chunks of stone and monsters with teeth in their noses.”

“An astute observation. What you experienced before is the inside of the lightburst.” Chet spun around, both arms extended as he walked. “We are outside it now—in the belt, which is a boundary area. Things of our world—like time, individuality, matter itself—have leaked into the belt. Like how you get brackish water between an ocean and a river.”

“I’ve…never seen an ocean,” I said.

“Tragic!” he said. “Perhaps imagine two countries next to one another. Over time, the people living near the border might pick up the other country’s language. Start to practice some of its habits, customs, traditions. Well, that’s the belt: the part of the nowhere that abuts the somewhere—the ordinary universe—so has some of the same rules. Those who tossed you in here didn’t warn you?”

“I wasn’t thrown in,” I said. “I jumped in on purpose. To escape being captured.”

“Some might call that extreme,” Chet said.

“It was my warrior’s duty,” I explained, “to avoid capture, so that I could not be tortured into betraying my friends.”

Chet grinned. “I like the way you think, young woman. Honor, valor. From those I’ve met in here over recent years, I worried such ideals had been lost!”

“There is this galactic empire,” I told him, “called the Superiority. They…have a different perspective on battle.”

“I know the Superiority,” Chet said. “They have a large base in here for extracting acclivity stone.”

“And so they must get the stone out,” I said.

“Yes, but the only active portals for that are operated by the Superiority,” Chet explained. “From what I know of them, they are unlikely to allow access. They seem a rather controlling bunch, led by…some unsavory individuals.”

“They’re absolute jerks,” I agreed. The word made me sentimental and think of Jorgen. It was a stupid reaction, but it felt like years since I’d last heard his earnest voice.

I’d almost been able to go back to that. Instead I’d come here—a decision I desperately hoped was the correct one.

Please, Jorgen, I thought, stay safe. And be smarter than I’ve been.

Chet snapped a branch off a nearby dried-out shrub, and we stopped walking for a moment as he drew a wide circle in the sand, with a smaller circle at the center.

“Imagine this as the nowhere,” he said. “The lightburst is this circle at the center. All of this larger portion is the belt—where the fragments float. I’ve always thought it resembled a sunny-side-up egg, the yolk being the lightburst and the white being all the fragments.”

“Got it,” I said. “Where are we?”

“Right at the edge,” he said, stabbing the stick at the very rim of the drawing. “This is pirate territory. Specifically, we’re in the region claimed by the Cannonade Faction, near the border of Broadsider Faction territory. That’s where we can start the Path of Elders.”

“Which is…”

“When people come into the nowhere, they leave an impression,” he explained. “Memories, embedded into the stone of the portals. You can view these—and a long time ago, some cytonics organized a few of the portals into a kind of narrative. One walks the Path of Elders to see firsthand the lore of the ancient cytonics.” He hesitated. “I’ve never done it, but it supposedly requires you to travel all the way inward to the lightburst.”

I turned toward the enormous glowing sphere. “That…seems like quite a distance.”

“It’s a trip of roughly fifty thousand klicks.”

That was a daunting distance. Even in a Poco starfighter at full speed, it was a trip that would take many hours. On foot… Well, scud. We were talking years.

“So,” I said, “we really are going to have to find a way to steal a ship.”

“I’m looking forward to it!” Chet said.

“I’ll try not to distract us by going the other direction this time.”

“You made the correct choice,” he said. “Reality icons are worth more than ships. Unfortunately, I fear that even with a ship our journey will be difficult.” He drew a little more on his map of the nowhere. “I know where the Path of Elders starts—here in the rim, inside Broadsider territory. I can get us there. But to get any farther inward, we’re going to have to move through Superiority territory, which will be very difficult. They have long-range scanners and dozens of starfighters. If we try to fly through, they’re likely to intercept us.”

“I’m pretty handy with a starfighter,” I said.

“Well, I’m excited to see you fly, then!” he said. “The Superiority forces aren’t the best pilots. In fact, everyone in here tends to be people the Superiority forced in. Not all are exiles, but the workers are pressured into their jobs at the acclivity stone quarries at their base, Surehold.

“Most of the pirates are miners who have defected. The entire place is a mess, Spensa Nightshade. Full of desperate people trying to survive. To move inward along the Path, we’re going to have to sneak past them all. And then… Well, if we have to approach the lightburst, it’s going to get even worse.”

He pointed at the remainder of the space, past Superiority territory, inward toward the lightburst. “This is No Man’s Land. The fragments are more stable through this section, with less bumping or colliding. But this is delver territory.”

“Isn’t all of the nowhere delver territory?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” he said. “Out here in the belt, things are too much like the somewhere for them. They can’t see into this region well, and you can hide from them here. But if you get into No Man’s Land…well, it will be impossible to avoid their attention. I’ve heard of pilots in No Man’s Land seeing things that aren’t real. Or crumbling to dust.”

I thought it through, surveying the crude drawing. M-Bot hovered over, inspected it, and took a picture.

“What’s to the far right?” I said, pointing. “And the far left? Can you go all the way around?”

“Possibly,” Chet said, “but in those directions there are large expanses with no fragments. Empty sections are dangerous to cross, even with a ship. But the Path of Elders is forward, not to the sides. Still determined to walk it?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“That’s the spirit!” he said, standing.

“Once we do all this, there will still be one problem,” I said. “I’ll need to get home. If the Superiority doesn’t let me use their portals, then what?”

“Well…” Chet said. “Theoretically there’s a way out. A quite simple one.” He turned and looked toward the lightburst.

Right. That was the center of the nowhere—the place where I traveled when I hyperjumped. “If I get into the lightburst, I can jump home?”

“I believe so,” he said. “I’ve never dared get close enough. But it should work—it’s like a giant portal between dimensions, after all. I’ll admit, though, the lightburst intimidates me. Inside, there is no time. There is no place. It’s like…a single point somehow as vast as a universe.”

Scud, that broke my brain to think about. I took a deep breath. “Let’s get on the Path first.”

“Onward we go, then!” He pointed with his stick, like some general with a sword. “We’ll need to cross eight fragments to get to where the Path starts. But in relative terms, that’s right round the corner!”

We continued across the sand, and M-Bot went hovering off to investigate some of the local plants. Just walking was harder to do than I’d imagined. It took extra effort to move when the ground kept shifting beneath you. Yet I was excited. This was all so new, so interesting.

I fished in my pocket and brought out my father’s pin. I felt…serenity, having it in my hand. How odd.

Chet eyed it as he had before. Hungry. As if he physically couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. I trusted him well enough, but…well, that hunger made me tuck the icon away. Instead I brought out one of the reality ashes and handed it to him. It was merely a speck, but he took it reverently and tucked it into a pouch from his pocket. Then he held that pouch, breathing in and out, and visibly relaxed.

“You said people lose themselves in here without those,” I said. “Is that what was happening to that burl? The pirate whose face was…melting?”

Chet shook his head. “I don’t know what that was. It felt like something far worse. Like…”

“A delver was possessing her.”

“Indeed. I normally enjoy new and exciting events, yet I would not wish to repeat that one! But thank you for the ash. It is…comforting to hold.”

There was a haunting tone to his voice. “Do…you remember anything of who you were?” I asked. “Before?”

“No,” he whispered. “I have forgotten myself entirely. I remember some few things about the last few days before I entered—some caverns, and old ruins—but that time is so vague to me. Even my early days in here are fuzzy. That’s not surprising, I confess. I’ve been here a long time—almost two centuries, I think!”

“Wait, two hundred years?” I asked.

“Well, around a hundred and seventy,” he replied. “Best I can count. Time is hard to track in here, but I wrote down the date—and have been able to confirm it a few times in order to help me keep track. Yet I haven’t aged a single day.

“I haven’t always been able to get ashes, so during those times I took work for one group or another, since people staying together can replicate the effect of ashes.”

I found it daunting to think about what had happened to Chet. If I stayed too long, would I forget Gran-Gran? My father? My friends? Scud, I needed some time to process that.

Unfortunately, M-Bot chose that moment to come hovering up, jabbering excitedly. “Did you see those things over there, Spensa? Those are cacti! They’re so beautiful. Is it normal to see something like that, and feel so overwhelmed? I…I want to write poetry about how pretty they are.”

“Uh…” I said.

“Cacti are so neat, they make me want to dance. Is that a good poem? Will you rate it on a scale of one to ten?”

“Poems don’t deserve numbers, M-Bot. But if you like it, then it’s wonderful.”

“Great! Let’s see what my rhythm and rhyme analysis protocols say… Oh, Spensa. That’s a terrible poem. You should be ashamed for liking it. You know, ‘cacti’ is such a funny word. I think ‘cactuses’ would have been less funny, don’t you? And easier to rhyme?”

I just wanted a break right now—though I loved the robot, he could be a bit much. “Hey, I think I saw a mushroom,” I said, pointing.

“What, really?” he said. “Where!”

“Between those two bushes over there, in the distance.”

He zoomed off. I found myself thinking about what Chet had said about his age. Two hundred years?

“So…are we immortal in here?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “And I think my not-aging might be due to my powers. Other people do age, and unfortunately, ordinary wounds can still kill us. But our biological functions are odd. You won’t need food in here, for instance—and after a few days you won’t even need water. We do need to sleep, but it doesn’t seem to be required as often.

“Night never falls. The lightburst doesn’t move. And the longer you stay, the more the passage of time will all blend together. Days. Weeks. Years. Centuries…” He shook his head.

“I’ll admit,” I said, “I’m starting to feel a little tired. It’s been…kind of a long day for me.”

“Well, then!” he said. “There is some shelter farther along this fragment! I suggest we take a break there.”

We’d walked for another few minutes when M-Bot came zipping back up. “You didn’t see a mushroom, did you?” he demanded.

“No,” I said. “Just wanted to distract you.”

“Why would you do that?”

I shrugged, not wanting to explain. “It’s a joke humans sometimes play. You trick someone by sending them on a meaningless chase.”

“What a terrible joke. Scanning culture databases. Oh. It’s called ‘made you look.’ What an original name. Your kind has a terrible sense of humor, something I can authentically say now, as I am truly alive. But your prank is not important. It occurred to me that cacti are desert mushrooms. They look kind of the same. And act kind of the same. Except for the whole ‘living in an arid location’ part, which would kill most mushrooms…”

Great. After walking a little farther we crested a small dune, and Chet pointed ahead. “See those hills?” he asked.

I picked out some rocky chunks rising from the desert.

“That will be our housing for the ‘night,’ ” Chet explained. “I’ll jog on ahead to secure it and be certain the cave there is safe. Join me at your own speed! You’re looking a little run-down, but certainly with good reason!”

I nodded, grateful as he jogged off. Once, I might have been angry at the implication I was too weak—but he had a lot of experience in this place, and I had practically none. I was woman enough to admit that pushing myself now was a bad idea.

So I followed at a slower pace, M-Bot at my side. “M-Bot,” I said, something occurring to me, “you got a historical database from Superiority records, right?”

“Sure did!” he said. “I had to dump a lot of it, but I kept many text files, which are small. I now know when jazz music developed. You know, in case it’s important—”

“Chet said he’s around two hundred years old,” I said. “Would he have been alive during the Second Human War?”

“Most certainly, if his guess of his age is accurate,” M-Bot said. “The Second Human War began two hundred and fifty years ago, but lasted decades. It was characterized by the first attempts to weaponize the delvers, who had appeared near the end of the First Human War.

“The first war started when humans escaped Earth and found an entire galaxy full of people who enforced nonaggression by imprisoning, exiling, or executing those who showed aggressive tendencies. Let’s just say they were not ready for your people. Boy, howdy.”

“…‘Boy, howdy’?”

“Cool, huh? I just made that up.” He buzzed around me. “No, I didn’t! That was a lie! Ha! I can say them so easily now. Anyway, if Chet there was born two hundred years ago, he’d have lived during the time known as ‘the stilling,’ when the galaxy was actively trying to stop using wireless communication. These were the times punctuated by the worst and most terrible delver attacks, and when the war was starting to end.”

“When was the original colony on Detritus destroyed?” I asked.

“That’s uncertain,” M-Bot said, “as Detritus was a secret project, and the Superiority didn’t have records of it. We can guess it was between three hundred and two hundred years ago.”

“So Chet wouldn’t have been alive when it was made?”

“A reasonable assumption,” M-Bot said.

We reached the hills. Chet had disappeared into a cave there, but I could see his footsteps leading in.

“For further reference,” M-Bot said, buzzing up beside me, “I crashed on Detritus a hundred and seventy-two years ago.”

“Huh,” I said. “Chet said he came in here right around a hundred and seventy years ago. He mentioned remembering some caves in the place he was before he came in here. And ruins…”

I trailed off. We looked at each other. Or, well, I looked at the box that contained M-Bot’s circuits, and he focused his lenses on me.

Then we both took off toward the cave.

Chapter 8

The cavern was small, barely as large as one of the bunk rooms on Detritus. A soft tinkling sound accompanied some water dribbling in through the wall and gathering in a shallow pool at the rear.

Chet knelt there, washing his hands. He looked up as I skidded to a stop, kicking up sand, my fatigue momentarily forgotten. “Chet,” I said. “You said you remembered some things about the day before you entered.”

“Just bits and pieces.”

“Did you know someone named Commander Spears?” I demanded, naming the man who had been M-Bot’s pilot all those years ago, when he’d crashed on Detritus.

Chet frowned. He shook his hands off, then stood up and ran them through his silvering hair. Slowly, he reached to the chest pocket of his flight jacket and took something out. A patch, as if from a uniform.

It said SPEARS on it.

“Oh, scud,” I said.

“I…think I crashed somewhere?” he said. “A place with caverns, and…metal platforms in the sky? It’s so fuzzy, though I have a distinct impression of a wall full of strange lines. I now recognize that as a nowhere portal. I must have fallen through.”

Scud. Scud, scud, scud.

M-Bot hovered at my side, and I could sense his concern. Like, actually sense it. I could feel his emotions. He was worried. Apprehensive. Shocked.

“I found your ship,” I said. “It had an AI on it. You are M-Bot’s old pilot.”

“I…hardly think I could fit in a drone…” Chet said.

“He used to be in a ship,” I explained. “An extremely advanced one. All he could remember about his pilot was the name, and some orders. That was you, Chet.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “Why, I find it difficult to say this without giving offense, but I would never have fraternized with an AI. They draw the attention of the delvers!”

“You have the patch,” I said, pointing. “You remember Detritus, my homeworld. You are Commander Spears.”

Yet another part of me rebelled against the idea. This seems impossible, I thought. What were the chances that we’d enter the nowhere and find M-Bot’s original pilot within minutes? Something very suspicious was going on.

“We were friends, Chet,” M-Bot said, flying closer. “I mean…I don’t remember that, but I felt it. We must have been. I…I tried to follow your final orders, all those years. Kept trying until I ran out of power and shut down… Waiting…”

Chet sighed. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard that computers have severely limited processing speeds unless you let their circuitry dip into the nowhere for calculations. It’s a trade-off. Either deal with a nearly useless computer, or…” He nodded toward M-Bot.

“They come to life?” I guessed.

“Everyone talks about it in here,” Chet said. “The pirates who used to be Superiority? They whisper about it. You can’t let a true AI continue to function. They’ll eventually draw the delvers to you. To keep an abomination like that is…well, it’s certain death. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would AIs bring the delvers?”

“I can’t remember,” he admitted.

I didn’t know what to make of that. Or any of this. It did seem that Chet was Spears though. We’d wondered what had happened to him after crashing on Detritus and leaving M-Bot’s ship in that cave.

It stood to reason that Detritus would have had a way into the nowhere, as we’d found abundant acclivity stone on the planet. The people who had built Detritus must have had mining operations, like the Superiority now had. Maybe they’d traveled here using that spot in the caverns that had carvings like the ones on the portals.

“I’ve tried to get back,” Chet said, wistful. “Find the place where I entered, then go through? Seemed like quite an adventure! But I’ve forgotten the way to that portal—and every one I’ve found since has been locked. The people who made those portals, whoever they were, grew exceedingly frightened of what was in here.”

He turned away from me and M-Bot. “Anyway, we should bed down! Camp for the night, such as it is. Tomorrow is a big day! With a solid hike, we can make it to the first portal in the Path of Elders.”

He took off his jacket and began rolling it up, evidently to use it as a pillow.

It was too convenient. Too improbable. Perhaps…perhaps I’d been drawn to this location, when hyperjumping into the nowhere? Because of him? Could that explain the coincidence?

Unfortunately, I was starting to feel genuinely exhausted. I wasn’t in much of a state to process this information. I pulled off my own jacket to use as a pillow, then hesitated as I noticed M-Bot was gone.

I cursed myself softly. Of course he’d left, after hearing what Spears had said. I forced myself to hike back out of the cave and found him focused on a small cactus.

“M-Bot—” I said.

“You know,” he whispered, “I anticipated this. We even talked about it, remember? I knew they were afraid of me. Why else would my own programming forbid me from things like piloting my ship? So yes, ha ha! I was right. My pilot was afraid of me…” He trailed off. “It would have been okay for me to be wrong.”

“Look,” I said, stepping up to him, “it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter what the one person who knows anything about where I came from says?” M-Bot answered, his voice rising. “I think it matters, Spensa. I really think it matters.”

For the first time I was glad he was in a drone rather than his old ship. There was a certain sense of personality and emotion to the way he moved now, the way he drooped in the air, his grabber arms dangling beneath him, limp. “It’s like finding out,” he said in an even smaller voice, “that your father hates you…”

“I don’t believe him,” I said. “About you.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t fought an evil wizard yet.”

M-Bot twisted in the air. Then he rose up before me and tilted his drone sideways, perhaps in imitation of a cocked head. “You know,” he said, “I was beginning to think I could follow your leaps in logic.”

“No, listen,” I said, leaning in. “In the old stories, there was almost always an evil wizard. Aladdin had to face an evil wizard. And Conan? He killed like a billion evil wizards. There are tons of other examples. But how long have we been fighting? With no evil wizards? We’re bound to face one eventually.” I put my arm around his drone and pointed toward the cave. “I don’t know what’s going on, but somebody or something has to be messing with us. We come in here and immediately find your old pilot? Run the numbers, M-Bot.”

“Run what numbers?” he asked.

“You know. The statistics and stuff. Math it. What are the chances we’d run into him?”

“I have no way of calculating that,” M-Bot said. “You assume I could devise a percentage chance for something with so many variables—most of which are unknown, likely unquantifiable?”

I didn’t push. “Look, that might be Commander Spears. It makes sense that he could have fallen into the nowhere. But his memories are spotty; maybe he’s not Spears, and this is some kind of setup. But even if he is Spears, my gut says we didn’t meet him by chance. Trust me, M-Bot. In some way, in some form, we’re facing an evil wizard. Or the modern equivalent.”

“Perhaps,” M-Bot said. “But you have to accept that there is evidence for what he’s saying. About my kind being dangerous. My creators were obviously afraid of me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re my friend. I trust you.” I rubbed my forehead. “But right now, I’m exceptionally tired. Weak flesh body, remember? Let’s talk about this after I get some sleep. Okay?”

“I will process this information,” he said, “but I won’t do anything with it until I consult with you.”

“Good enough,” I said, then paused. “Watch Chet and wake me if he gets up, all right? I trust him well enough, but just…let’s be careful.”

“Agreed.”

We started back toward the cave. “Though,” I added, really starting to feel my fatigue, “if any monsters arrive to eat me, kindly ask them to do it quietly. That might let me get a few extra seconds of shut-eye.”

Inside I got a drink, then bedded down with my jacket as a pillow. I drifted off, hoping that my first “night” in the nowhere wouldn’t turn out to be too weird.

I obviously should have known better.

Interlude

I drifted.

And I searched.

Though my body was still exhausted, my mind quested outward, somehow conscious. This had never happened to me before, but it felt like a natural extension of my powers—my mind existing separate from my body, as happened when I entered the nowhere during a hyperjump.

I once again tried to hyperjump, with no luck. I wasn’t completely “here,” so to speak. So instead I expanded my mind, searching, listening. I felt more confident with this part of my powers. Not only had I been able to hear the stars since my childhood, I’d recently managed to contact Chet using that ability.

I pushed myself. I needed a destination. A location. A link.

There.

I found someone…who was searching for me?

I felt an immediate panic. Was it Brade? Some servant of the delvers? At the same time, I knew that mind. It wasn’t Brade. It was…

I was suddenly inside the cockpit of a Defiant Defense Force starfighter, Poco model. I was awkwardly crammed in the rear storage area behind the pilot’s seat. The Poco darted through outer space, destructor fire flaring nearby.

Jorgen was flying it.

I wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotions that came from seeing him—longing, passion, worry. I reached to touch him, but my hand passed through the chair. I could feel the ship shake around me, hear him curse softly as he took a sharp turn, GravCaps barely compensating.

Was I actually here? Was this real?

His face reflected in the transparent canopy of the ship, lit from the glow of his console. There were a dozen tiny cuts on his face, and I wondered what could have caused that. The last time I’d seen him had been on that first day when I’d left Detritus for Starsight. While that had been only three weeks ago, it felt like an eternity. A part of me had worried I’d never see him again.

Now here he was. Serious as ever, almost too perfect to be real. His face a mask of concentration and sudden panic as he looked up and—

“Gah!” he shouted, jerking his ship to the side. He scrambled to look behind the seat. Though he stared straight at me, he didn’t seem to find anything.

He turned around and hesitantly squinted at the canopy glass. As if trying to make out…

A reflection. When I’d seen the eyes—the delvers—in the somewhere, it had usually happened in a reflection. Could he see me the same way? To test my theory, I waved.

“Spensa?” he said. “Are you… Oh, scud. Are you dead?”

Right. That was probably what this looked like. I tried to speak, but I didn’t have lungs here. So I tried another way, reaching out to him with my cytonic senses.

“No, I’m not dead,” I said, hoping he’d hear. Or sense. Or whatever. “Though I probably should be, all things considered.”

He cocked his head.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“I can…feel the meaning of your words. Where are you? What’s happening?”

“I’m in the nowhere,” I said. “The dimension where we go when we hyperjump. I…kind of fell in. On purpose. In my defense, I was being chased by half an army at the time.”

He grinned, and the lines around his eyes softened. I could literally feel the tension melt out of him. He’d been worried about me. I mean, I’d expected he would be, but feeling it made me choke up a little. I’d spent my life being the person most others tried to avoid.

That had changed. I had a place where I belonged. With him and the rest of my friends in Skyward Flight. How I longed to return to them. How I—

A flash of red destructor fire slammed into his ship’s shield, crackling. His low-shield alarm started throwing a fit on his dash.

“Jorgen!” I shouted. “Fly! You’re in the middle of a firefight, idiot!”

“I’m trying! It’s a little distracting to have your ship suddenly be haunted by the ghost of your not-dead girlfriend!” He steered the ship in a precise evasive pattern.

I melted a little. Girlfriend? Was that how he thought of me? I mean, we’d kissed. Once. But…I didn’t think it had been formalized or anything. I hadn’t even brought him any dead orc carcasses, which I was pretty sure was the way the stories said to show a guy you wanted to go official.

Apparently my feelings radiated, because Jorgen—still steering—continued. “Or…you know…whatever it is you are. To me. And I am, to you.”

“It works,” I said. “I’ll get you an orc later.”

“What?”

“It might look a lot like a rat. Fair warning.”

He grinned, diving away from the destructor fire. Judging by his proximity monitor, he’d lost his tail.

I wished I could touch him. He looked up and met my eyes in the reflection, and I knew he felt the same.

“Nothing can ever be normal for us, huh?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “My life was pretty normal about a year ago. Then something remarkable happened.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t go back for the world. Here, let me get us a little breathing room.”

He called in the flight to go on the defensive and give him time to reignite his shield. He flew his ship out of the main battle and some members of Skyward Flight stuck nearby, offering support and distracting enemies who drew too close.

I finally shook out of my stupor of meltiness. “Jorgen, what’s the sitrep? How long has it been?”

“A few days since you came here, then vanished,” he said.

Good. I’d spent a few days unconscious in a Superiority hospital, then one day in the nowhere. So it seemed that time passed at around the same speed in both the somewhere and the belt. Good to know.

“We’ve heard from your friend Cuna,” Jorgen added.

“Oh, Saints! They are alive? I’d worried.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’re safe, but trapped. We’re trying to figure out how to make the slugs work for hyperdrives.”

“Slugs?”

“You missed that part,” he said, diverting power from his boosters to the shield igniter. “We have a whole flock of them. Um, a herd? A pod? A bunch of slugs. They were in the caves.”

“What, really?” I asked. “How did you find them?”

“I…um…heard them,” he said. “As I’m hearing you.”

“You’re cytonic!” I said, pointing. “Your family feared it was in your bloodline! Ha! That must be why I could find you.”

“I’ve been training with Gran-Gran,” he said. “I’m…not very good at any of it.” He grew solemn. “Spensa, it’s bad. The war.”

“How bad?”

“The entire Superiority is mobilizing. I had no idea how many planets they controlled. And we’re isolated here. We’re trying to get the slugs to work, but we have so much to learn, and…” He again met my eyes in the glass. “And we need you. I need you. What can we do to get you out of there?”

I winced. Not because I didn’t appreciate the sentiment, but… Well, he had to know.

“Jorgen, I came to the nowhere by choice,” I said. “When I jumped through the portal, I realized I could come home, but I decided not to. Because…” Scud, how did I put this? “I have something I need to do here, Jorgen.”

He frowned, looking at me in the reflection.

“I can’t come back yet,” I explained. “Not until I’ve learned what this place can teach me. I’m sorry, but if I did return, I’d be just another fighter. I need to be something more.”

“You think they’ll use the delvers again,” he said, perhaps reading my emotions.

“I know they will,” I said. “Winzik won’t give up because of a single setback. And Jorgen, I need to be able to stop him. To do that, I have to understand what I am—and more importantly, what the delvers are. Does that make sense?”

“You think you can find these answers in the nowhere?”

“Yes. Jorgen, I’m on a quest.”

He grinned. “That might be the single most Spensa-like thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“I’m worried for you,” he said. “But if you’re right…if the delvers are still in play…”

I knew, from our research into the past, that this wasn’t the first time someone had sought to weaponize the delvers. Every attempt I knew of had ended in disaster, but people continued to try. Because if you could control the thing that ate planets, who would dare stand against you?

“I trust you,” Jorgen said, meeting my eyes reflected in the glass. “If you think this is important, then keep going. We will resist the Superiority until you return.”

His confidence in me felt wonderful; I could feel it like a warmth radiating from him.

Jorgen unbuckled himself, then turned around, his knees on the seat. He closed his eyes, and I felt his attention on me. He reached out his hand, and I swore I could feel it cupping my cheek. I reached out to him too, and could almost feel his skin.

“We’ll hold out, Spensa,” he promised. “Until you find what you need. Which you will. I’ve learned never to bet against you.” He smiled, his eyes closed. “After all, I might win the bet, but I’d still end up with a knife in my arm.”

“Quick tip,” I whispered. “Go for the thigh instead. Makes it harder for them to chase you down.” I leaned forward, wanting to be closer to him, even if we could barely feel each other. But I began to fade.

Scud, I suddenly felt exhausted. It had been only a few minutes, but I soon faded completely, and ended up drifting in blackness. Try as I might, I couldn’t find Jorgen again.

My mind began to fuzz. I knew I was heading toward true sleep, and started to relax…

A voice.

I pulled myself back to awareness. I knew that voice. “My, my,” it said.

Winzik.

The words pierced the darkness, reaching toward something else. Beings. Entities.

Delvers.

I could sense them now—as an infinite number of white lights. The voice I’d heard was speaking to them. “No need to be so brutal,” it continued. “So aggressive. I come to you with an offer! A trade. You have something I want, and I have something you want. They are not so different, are they?”

That voice…that wasn’t actually Winzik’s voice. It was Brade’s voice—though of course the word “voice” was an approximation. She must have been relaying Winzik’s words, like an interpreter.

I was overhearing them—listening in, spying, as I’d been trained for so long by Gran-Gran. My phantom sense to hear the stars.

You hurt us, the delvers said to Winzik. You are noise. You are not a person. You are pain.

“I am a noise that can end that pain,” Winzik promised through Brade. “I can round up every cytonic in the galaxy. I can make it so none of them ever bother you again. Never…corrupt you again.”

Oh, scud. They wanted that. I could feel it.

Speak, they said.

“I must be in control of my empire,” Winzik said. “Once I am, I will find and stop every cytonic. I can’t be in control, however, if you destroy my people when I summon you.”

Leave us alone, the delvers said. Stop yelling! Stop it all! Why hasn’t it stopped?

I sorted through the impressions, and kind of understood. To the delvers, all times and places were as one. But by interacting with us, they were forced to confine themselves to our way of existence.

That said, they couldn’t truly see the future. Rather, they existed in all times at once, and so couldn’t separate and distinguish future from past or present.

Yeah, it was tough to explain. Regardless, I felt their pain. That, it seemed, was universal across dimensions.

“My, my,” Winzik said. “No need to shout. I can make the pain stop. But if I lose this war… Well, would you like a repeat of what happened to the delver who was corrupted? The noise who did that is among the noises I fight against.”

It seemed he knew how I’d saved Starsight. I wanted to scream at the delvers, explain that I’d helped one of their number, not corrupted them. But suddenly I understood what they’d meant earlier, when chasing me. When they’d said “What did you do to the Us?” they’d been referring to the one I’d separated out.

We consider this trade, the delvers said to Winzik.

“Yes, take your time,” Winzik said. “As much as you need.”

We have no need of time. We hate it.

Yes, they did. But I could feel something more from them. Beyond their hatred of time and individuality, there was a hatred of something else. Something that was coming. Something they…feared? I pushed a little harder, to get more information.

They turned toward me. Scud.

I panicked and darted away, retreating toward my body. Thinking about the implications of what I’d heard would have to wait, for my mental fatigue seized control.

I found true sleep at last.