Cytonic

Chapter 9

I woke to the feeling of something nudging me. M-Bot? Yes, he was poking me with a drone arm.

I yawned, stretching. Curiously, my strange experiences the previous night were perfectly crisp in my mind. Talking to Jorgen, feeling his concern. Then overhearing the conversation between Winzik and the delvers.

Scud. Winzik was trying to make a deal with the delvers.

If he succeeded, the war would take a very, very bad turn.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “You have been asleep for ten hours, per my internal chronometer. Chet just got up and left the cave. I woke you, as you requested.”

I sat up in the dim light, my back stiff from resting on stone.

M-Bot hovered closer. “I,” he said, “would like to be acknowledged. It was exceptionally boring watching you two all night.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry to make you keep watch like that, but I slept more soundly knowing you were there.”

“Well, to be honest, waiting isn’t as bad for me as it is for a human. I can change how quickly time seems to pass for me by speeding up or slowing down my processor. I’m going to go take a cactus break. Let me know if you need me to do anything else super boring.”

He floated off out of the cave, and I followed. Chet stood on some of the higher rocks of the hills here, looking outward. A heroic pose, focused, determined.

I climbed up beside him and adopted a similar pose, staring across the expanse of flying chunks to the distant lightburst. Home of the delvers.

“Two hundred years,” Chet said. “And I’m finally going to do it. Walk the Path of Elders.”

“Why have you never tried?”

“At first, I didn’t know about it,” he said. “After that, I didn’t really understand what it was. Now…” He glanced at me. “I’ve never found a place I was afraid to travel, Spensa Nightshade. I always thought I’d be willing to explore everything and anything! But then I found something inside me, inside my head, that I didn’t understand.”

“I felt kind of the same way.”

“It all worried me,” he said. “Chet Starfinder, afraid to explore his own mind…” He glanced outward. “I can make a picture in my head of the entire belt. I can visualize it somehow, know my way to every fragment. That’s how it manifests for me—other than speaking mind to mind. What about you?”

“I can do the speaking thing too, obviously,” I said. “And more, I seem to be able to intercept thoughts that others send out, even when they don’t want me to. I can use what I hear, interpret it, use it in battle by instinct. Plus, I can hyperjump—moving instantly from place to place.”

“So it is possible,” Chet said. “That sounds extremely useful.”

I grimaced. “Less so when you’re as untrained as I am. Regardless, being able to see the landscape around you? Like you have…sonar? That sounds pretty awesome.”

“It’s useful for an explorer, I must admit!” he exclaimed, then pointed. “The fragment you need to reach is in that exact direction, but we’ll have to take a roundabout path, I’m afraid. We travel at the whims of the fragments, and can cross only when they bump against one another. I can see the route, fortunately. Eight fragments. We should be there in about a day’s time.” He looked at me and smiled widely. “Are you prepared, Spensa Nightshade, for an adventure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then onward!” Chet said, then slid down the rock slope and landed on the ground in an expert maneuver.

I followed almost as skillfully.

“Wonderful!” he said as I landed.

“I’ve got some experience caving,” I explained.

He led us off then, M-Bot zooming along behind as we struck outward. Over the next little while, I got a fairly good picture of this place—at least on the small scale. The fragments were of different sizes, but on average took around two hours to cross. And there was such variety to them. The first we traversed was covered in strange tall weeds with red tips. The next was dominated by towering rock formations rising high like sentinels. The third had enormous waterfalls that tumbled from heights and then flowed straight off the side of the fragment in some impossible continuous cycle.

The travel challenged me to the extent of my physical abilities. On the second fragment, we had to rappel down the sides of cliffs using the light-line. On the third we forded a river, then crawled through a tunnel behind a waterfall. The fourth fragment was a prairie with many ravines and was populated by beasts that looked like rhinoceroses, only with two heads and fearsome teeth. It was touch-and-go as we hid behind rocks while they wandered past, seeking prey. Chet explained they didn’t need to eat, but were instinctually driven to hunt.

The next fragment was rocky and barren, with only a few small trees for plant life. We had to wait on the far side to meet up with the next one—and while we stood there, Chet suddenly rushed us beneath the cover of a small scraggly tree with a thankfully thick canopy. Soon starships soared past—pirates on the lookout for slaves to capture.

Chet saw me watching them from beneath the trees, and must have noticed the hunger in my eyes.

“There is a pirate base a little beyond our first destination,” he explained. “If you are still so bold as to want to try, I believe we can acquire a starship there—through roguish means, naturally.”

I grinned at his phrasing, and then we scampered out—risking being spotted by the pirates—in order to catch the next fragment before it floated away. We skidded down the slope and leapt across together, reaching a swampy fragment with decaying trees and soft ground.

A real swamp! Places like I’d imagined from childhood, listening to Gran-Gran’s stories. They were all here, each landscape in microcosm, inviting me to explore. As we traveled, I began to feel an exhilaration—and something more, something deeper.

Confidence.

It felt like it had been forever. I’d spent weeks uncertain of myself as I infiltrated the Superiority, trying to act like another person, lying and sneaking. I’d been terrified that my personality faults would cause me to fail the mission, and thereby doom my people.

It was so satisfying to be able to do something that I was good at. I’d spent a decade exploring the caverns of Detritus, and had trained physically for the task. I could tell, from the way Chet spoke and acted, that he hadn’t anticipated my expertise in this—and he seemed to find it thrilling to be guiding someone who could keep up with him.

It made me feel wonderful. Like I could accomplish anything. I would walk this Path of Elders, and I would learn the secrets of the delvers. I’d bring this information back to my people, and together we would defeat the Superiority.

I could do it. I really could.

I loved that feeling.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked as we moved around the perimeter of the swamp fragment—the footing was more solid here. “You appear more…alive than I’ve seen you recently.”

“I’m merely confident,” I said. “That we can do this.”

“I’m not,” he said. “It seems like so much. Chet says we’ll have to travel all the way inward to follow this Path. Pirates, the Superiority, the delvers… It’s a lot, Spensa.”

“Focus on what we can accomplish right now,” I suggested. “For the moment, all we have to do is get across this swamp.”

“Well, that’s easy for me,” he said. “I can fly.”

“See? One step at a time. You can do this. I can do this. Whatever it takes.”

He nodded by wobbling his drone up and down. “Okay!” he said. “Whatever it takes. My! That feels good. To at least pretend we’re in control! I like it. Is this how you feel all the time?”

I wished that were true, but I didn’t contradict him as he zipped out over the swamp, looking down at…

“A mushroom!” he shouted, hovering above one growing in the bog. “A real mushroom, Spensa!”

I stopped to watch him buzz back and forth. Being in a drone suited him. There was an energy to his personality that came out as he flew around me in a circle.

Chet walked back to join me in watching M-Bot. I even caught him smiling.

“He’s really not dangerous,” I said to Chet.

“His energy is a little contagious,” he admitted. “We’re almost there—only two fragments to go. The portal you seek is in some ruins.”

“Ruins?” I asked. “Like from an old mining operation?”

“No,” he said. “Though we’ll pass something like that on the next fragment. The ruins we’re hunting are older. Perhaps as old as this place.”

“Have you wondered how all of this got here?” I asked him. “This landscape, these fragments?”

“Indeed I have. There are legends, naturally. People think hyperjump accidents are behind some of it, or even the delvers. But lore says that some of this was here before either delvers or cytonics.”

I helped M-Bot harvest a sample of his mushroom and store it inside his “specimen box,” which was the cavity in the cleaning drone where it once held the dust it vacuumed up. The little drone hummed happily as we started out again.

We reached a larger river flowing over the side of the swamp fragment. Chet directed us inward instead of trying to ford it. Though the current wasn’t swift, he didn’t like the idea of potentially being swept off amid uncertain footing.

We continued on, leaping from one firm section of ground to another. After a half hour or so of this, Chet halted me by taking my arm. He narrowed his eyes at the next section of land, then shook his head.

“False land,” he explained. “See how it ripples? Sinkhole underneath that patch. This way.” He led me through some still water, where the stench of the mud was terrible. Soon we reached another long section of dry land.

“Are there any landscapes you haven’t traveled?” I asked him, impressed by how easily he guided us.

“Oh, I’m sure there’s something out there that I haven’t seen,” he said. “But I have traveled a great deal! I don’t like staying in one place—you lose track of time in here that way. I prefer new sights, new experiences! I only stay with others when I’m out of reality ashes. Once I have a few, I’m off!”

After a little more hiking, I spotted our next fragment: the penultimate one before reaching our destination. This one turned out to be another desert, but with vast dunes as tall as buildings. I narrowed my eyes. Didn’t sand worms live in dunes like that? Or at least giant scorpions?

Before we could cross over, however, Chet perked up. He turned, then pointed. There were more starships in the sky.

Chapter 10

Used to this by now, I joined Chet in taking cover beneath a large tree with crooked branches but a decent number of leaves. The tips drooped so low they trailed in the water, making ripples.

“Broadsider markings,” Chet whispered to me as we peeked through the canopy at the ships. “We’ve entered their territory.”

“Are the factions that different from one another?”

“Generally, no,” he said. “But the Broadsiders have a reputation for being more fair than the others. Then again, their leader is said to have once been in the Superiority security forces. I’ve kept my distance for that reason.”

There were four ships in this formation. I didn’t recognize the specific designs, but they were definitely military grade. As we watched, they clashed with another group of ships that darted up from beneath the fragment.

A quick firefight ensued, the various ships flying like hawks and prey from one of the pictures of Old Earth, twisting around one another as they soared down past the fragment.

Seeing them fight awakened something in me. I missed flying. It had been only a few days, but already I longed to feel a ship around me—its motion an extension of my body as I soared around obstacles and wove between enemies.

Being in the sky. Claiming the stars.

I missed it. Dearly.

“Soon,” I whispered as the ships vanished from sight, chasing one another beneath the fragments.

“We should probably give it a few moments,” Chet said, settling on a rock there under the tree. “In case they come back this direction.”

“That was another faction, right?” I asked. “Cannonade?”

“Your eyes are keen!” he said. “Before long you’ll know the proper markings for all six.”

“Do they often fight one another?”

“Aggressively!” Chet said. “It’s a pity. They could be out exploring and adventuring, but I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge them a little sport. We all have our own ways of passing the time in here.”

Well, if we were going to wait this out, it seemed like a good opportunity to arm myself. I’d cursed the loss of my rifle several times already, so I selected a sturdy stick from those fallen around the tree and began stripping it. Once finished, I found a good stone, properly oblong with a narrow portion in the middle.

I tried to affix it to the stick, but my first effort failed because the vines I’d picked snapped.

“If I may, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, unlacing his left boot. He pulled out a long shoelace, revealing another one still fastening his boot. “Always double-lace your boots when exploring! You’d be surprised how often an extra bit of string comes in handy. The uses are multitudinous!”

He showed me how to lash the stone in place—and then, surprised at my lack of knowledge, took out his other extra shoelace and proceeded to give me a short lesson on different knots and hitches. I realized, with embarrassment, that I’d allowed having a light-line to make me complacent in this area.

I listened with devoted attention. It felt like such a practical thing to learn—the sort of thing that…well, that I imagined my father might have taught me. If things hadn’t gone so poorly.

Once we were done, I tucked away the shoelace—he’d told me to keep it to practice with—and picked up my club. I swung it a few times for good measure.

“A fine weapon,” Chet said, hands on hips. “What shall you name it?”

“Skullbreaker, of course,” I said.

“Excellent.”

“Though…I don’t know if sand worms have skulls,” I said. “Maybe we should sharpen a rock and make a spear, in case I get swallowed and need to kill it from the inside.”

“I doubt that will be requisite,” Chet said with a chuckle.

“Say that when you’re in a sand worm’s gullet and I’m standing triumphantly on the corpse of mine, contemplating how to make a hat out of its skin.”

“Ha!” Chet said. “I doubt I’ve ever met a young woman quite so…bloodthirsty.”

I shrugged. “It’s kind of an act. You know, bravado. But I do want to be able to defend myself against any beasts we encounter.”

“If we must do so, then we have failed,” Chet said. He held up a finger, adopting a straight-backed lecture pose. “No beast attacks a person unless that person has made a mistake. We trespass in their domain, and it is incumbent upon us to take the utmost care to avoid accidents.”

“You don’t hunt?” I asked.

“Heavens, no!” Chet said. “Not except for sustenance, which is unnecessary in here. I explore to see the wonders of the universe! Why, to leave that wilderness so desecrated… No. An explorer must not be a destroyer. He must be a preserver! But then, I’m rambling. We should continue. The pirates appear to have taken their squabbles elsewhere.”

We continued on, barely reaching the desert fragment and leaping across before the two drifted too far apart. M-Bot seemed reluctant to leave his mushroom hunt, but he followed us.

Chet’s comments about hunting and exploring left me intrigued—it was the opposite of what I’d expected from someone like him. The way he talked felt liberating. Exploring, traveling…he could do that and test his skills without needing to fight or kill. It was a new way of thinking. For me, the struggle to get better had always ultimately ended with the destruction of my enemies. Or at least the humiliation of those who had laughed at me.

I was changing though. It had begun on Starsight, as I met so many who were technically my enemies—but also just ordinary people. I wanted a way out of all of this now, more than I wanted to end the “Krell.” Was there a way we could stop this war without destroying them or them destroying us?

Chet kept us to the valleys between the dunes. I watched the sand carefully as we walked.

“Um…” M-Bot hovered out in front of me. “Spensa? I had to leave behind some of my information databases, but I kept the fauna surveys for all known worlds in the Superiority and…I don’t want to be a downer…”

“No sand worms?” I asked.

“Afraid not.”

“Scud,” I said. “What about giant scorpions? Orion totally killed one of those on Old Earth, so they’ve got to be real.”

“There are several low-gravity planets with arthropod-like creatures that would probably fit that definition. Oooh… One has a poison stinger that, if it hits you, you grow fungus on your tongue. And in your blood. Basically, it kills you. But mushroom tongues!”

“Wow,” I said. “That really exists?”

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Are you…crying?”

“No, of course not,” I said, wiping my eye. “It’s just…I’m glad something that awesome exists, you know? Like in the stories. Maybe when this is all done, we can visit that place. You think maybe I could train one up from a baby to let me ride it?”

Chet chuckled from up ahead, leading us farther into the desert—and I allowed myself to grow excited. The next fragment would be the one with our destination, my chance—finally—to see what the delver had sent me to experience.

I should have been exhausted. And to an extent I was. It had been a difficult day of travel. It felt good though; there was something healthy and satisfying about being this type of worn out. It was odd that I wasn’t hungry. And I’d been hiking all this way and was only mildly thirsty.

But…well, I was walking across a literal flying desert and had passed infinite waterfalls that were fed by no tributary. I doubted lack of hunger would be the oddest thing I experienced in here. I hurried up, joining Chet as we were forced to climb a dune—a difficult process, though he showed me how to do it at an angle, and while keeping somewhat solid footing by not walking in his footsteps.

“In snow,” he explained, “step where the person in front of you did. That will save energy. Sand dunes, however, settle. And so the person in front of you will disturb that, which actually makes it harder if you step right where they did.”

At the top, I picked out the proper fragment. “That one?” I asked. “The green one?”

“That’s it,” Chet said.

There was so much life on these. Plant life, at least. Even the desert had scrub stubbornly breaking from the sand and growing defiantly. Was this what it was like on most worlds? Plants just kind of grew, without anyone to cultivate them?

“Are you nervous?” I asked Chet. “About what we’ll find?”

He thought for a moment, smoothing his mustache. “I feel…like it’s inevitable. I knew I’d make my way to the Path eventually. To the point that when you mentioned it to me, I felt like I’d been drawn to you. Pulled onto this course.”

“That…sounds kind of unnerving, honestly.”

“My apologies; that was not my intent.” He glanced toward the distant lightburst. “Still, I worry about the delvers’ hand in this place. I never can quite trust that my will is my own…”

“Do you know anything about them?”

“They’re not a group mind,” Chet said. “People get that wrong about them. The delvers are all separate beings—but they’re also identical. They live in a place where nothing ever changes, and where time doesn’t exist. They exist in one moment, in one place, indistinguishable—and terrified of anything that isn’t exactly as they are.”

“Okay…” I said. “A lot of that doesn’t make sense to me, Chet. But I’ll try to pretend otherwise.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “All I know is that the not-making-sense part is why individuals like you can hyperjump through the nowhere! Time and space are irrelevant, and after slipping into the nowhere you can come out anywhere else. I worry, however. Every time we puncture the barrier between the nowhere and the somewhere, we corrupt the nowhere a little. Like how you can’t walk through clean fresh snow without leaving tracks.”

“Do you think…there is snow in here somewhere?” I asked. “I’d like to see it sometime.”

“It exists, but is rare,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Nightshade. Did you actually live your entire life on that barren planet? How did you survive?”

I shrugged. “We have algae vats and artificial light underground. And there is some life. Rats live in the caverns, eating fungi and algae that transfer heat into biological energy. It isn’t much, but we make it work.”

“You sound like an exceptionally courageous group,” Chet said. “It is my honor to travel with you—though I must admit I find your home a strange place to have a society!”

“Oh!” M-Bot said, flying up beside him. “It is a very strange place, with a fascinating mix of technological advancements and backward ignorance. They have spaceflight, but not automatic soap dispensers, for example. So you could say their culture has had its ups and downs.”

“It indeed sounds interesting, abomination,” Chet said. “Come, Miss Nightshade and companion. We should hurry—there is a point of interest on this fragment I would like to show you before we leave it, but we will need to rush. It wouldn’t do to miss the next fragment because we dallied!”

We continued on, Chet picking up our pace. A half hour later, we crested another dune and I got a better glimpse of our target fragment. It was covered with shimmering grass—it looked so soft, like the fur of a good blanket—and idyllic streams that dropped off the side, sparkling like drops of sunlight. It looked like paradise as described in the stories. Green, alive—there were even butterflies.

However, something felt odd to me. Chet had rushed us to get here in time, but that fragment appeared to be hours away. At the rim, Chet waved me along to the right. The dunes tapered off here, and in a few moments we found what he’d wanted to show me: a pit. The sand had blown away, exposing brown rock—and a vast chunk had been dug out of the fragment, going down at least thirty meters. The sides were tiered, like a reverse pyramid, paths running along them in a spiral.

“A quarry,” I said. “For acclivity stone?”

“Precisely,” Chet said. “This one is ancient, but I thought you might appreciate seeing an example of a quarry. The ones the Superiority runs farther inward at Surehold are much more massive affairs, but it’s the same general principle.”

“Too bad they didn’t leave any acclivity stone,” I said, searching the quarry. M-Bot zipped past me and went soaring down to look at the bottom. “Maybe we could have fashioned some kind of floating device for ourselves.”

Chet shook his head, smiling.

“What?” I said.

“They left plenty of acclivity stone, Miss Nightshade,” he said, gesturing. “What is it you think we’re standing upon?”

“Rock,” I said.

“Rock,” he said, “that floats through the sky? These fragments all have acclivity stone in them. Unfortunately, it takes refinement and energy to make it work on a scale that’s usable, so I doubt we’ll be able to make any kind of device. Still, it is all right here.”

I blushed at the realization. Of course the fragments floated on acclivity stone. It made perfect sense, now that I thought about it. I guess the blue coloring, like the light glowing underneath M-Bot’s wings, came from the refinement process.

“Now,” he said, “that other fragment.” He gazed across at it, then frowned. “It should be here any moment.”

“By my best guess,” M-Bot said, “judging by its slow movement, our fragments won’t touch for ten hours.”

“Ten hours? Chet, why did you hurry us?”

“I…” He scratched at his head. “Ten hours, you say?”

“Yes,” M-Bot said. “Though I have set my internal chronometer to the time used by Spensa’s people, which is patterned after one hour Earth time. The same as used by my old ship, and thus also—presumably—by you.”

Chet settled on a rock. “I apologize, Miss Nightshade. My sense of time is…not as reliable as it once was.”

I let the conversation die, but I was baffled. How could Chet have such a poor sense of time?

“Well,” Chet said. “Perhaps we should get some rest here, then attack the Path of Elders. Always best to hit a task fresh and awake! So that it can’t hit back, you see.”

I smiled. That reminded me of something Kimmalyn would say. But I agreed with getting some rest. It had been a wonderful day, though a long one.

As Chet took off his jacket to make a pillow, I checked on my reality icon, finding it had shed three motes of silvery dust today. I proffered one to him and watched carefully so I could study the hungry way he eyed my pouch. Everything about traveling with him had been a joy—everything except that look.

I tucked away the pouch quickly. Chet took a little longer to put away his ash—instead staring at it for a time, glowing and twinkling in his palm.

“So, the Path of Elders,” I said to break the odd mood. “Is there anything we need to do to prepare for it?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. “I visited this first stop one time, but decided not to go into the cavern. I feel embarrassed to admit that, after seeing your excitement.”

I stared out at the garden fragment. Yeah, it was moving more slowly than Nedd did at mess on an early morning shift. It would take a long time to get here. “It feels like the quests that happened in the old stories. That’s why I’m excited.”

“You put a lot of stock in those stories.”

“My grandmother told them to me when I was a child. They kind of just…stuck.”

“I find that admirable,” Chet said. “But I warn you not to raise your expectations too much. Life isn’t always like one of those stories.”

“I know,” I said, still staring over that beautiful field. “But…stories say something. About us, and about where we came from. They’re a reminder that we have a past, a history. And a future.”

When I was growing up, Gran-Gran’s stories had been my shield. Against the names I was called, against the things people said about my father. Against my own terror that all those things—particularly the ones about me—were true.

In the stories, there was a sense of justice. Everything had a purpose; every little bit meant something. I thought if those heroes and heroines from the stories could keep going forward into the darkness, so could I.

I might have clung to them a little too tightly. With how strange everything had been lately, perhaps I was seeking some kind of stability. Or some kind of guide…

“I can understand that,” Chet said. “It’s odd—this place has stolen from me who I was, but I still know things. I know what a burrito is, though I’ve never eaten one in here. I can list the names of the first human colony worlds. And I remember…stories. I partially decided on my name due to the tales of the old hero Chet Cannister.”

“Oh, those are good,” I said. “But I like the older ones best. Heroes like Odysseus.”

“Or Hercules.”

“Yeah,” I said, slamming my fist into my other hand. “Or Satan.”

Chet blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Satan?” I said. “The hero?”

“The…hero.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gran-Gran told me the story. Satan got thrown into a place of fire, but he was like, ‘Hey, everyone. It doesn’t matter, so long as we have each other. We can make this place as good as any paradise.’ Then he volunteered to infiltrate the enemy’s world and went on this big quest through the Abyss.”

“Now, my memory—as I’ve warned you—isn’t great,” Chet said. “But that sounds like the old poem Paradise Lost. I…think you might have misinterpreted it.”

“What? Who do you think was the hero of that story?”

“Adam and Eve.”

“Those losers? They didn’t do anything but sit around! Everyone else had flaming swords and dramatic battles!”

Chet grinned. “Well, that’s one way to interpret it. And what do I know? I only know my own name because of the patch I found on my uniform.”

I made a pillow out of my jacket. As I did, M-Bot hovered over beside me. “Ummm…” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“…I think he might be correct about Paradise Lost.”

“Read it again,” I said. “You really expect me to believe that—in a story with people named Beelzebub and Moloch who live in Pandæmonium—the author wanted us to root for someone named Eve?”

Some things are obvious. Unless you’re a robot, I guess.

“Do you want me to do what I did last time?” the robot asked me more softly. “Just in case?”

I nodded, then lay back, contemplating the day we’d had. I couldn’t remember another day in my recent life that had been so thoroughly enjoyable. That made me feel guilty though. Jorgen and the others were fighting for their lives, and I was investigating swamps and playing explorer?

I would have to stay focused. Tomorrow we started the Path of Elders, and hopefully I’d finally have some answers. Or at the very least I’d learn the right questions.

Chapter 11

M-Bot woke me the next “morning,” and I stretched, finding the garden fragment hovering an easy step from our own. My memories of the “night” contained only ordinary dreams. I wished I’d been able to find Jorgen and at least deliver a report, but I was so exhausted that my attempt didn’t get far.

Chet got up when M-Bot tapped him, and at his suggestion I searched out a nearby spring. I took a drink—one of the last ones I’d need in here—and washed my face and hands. Fortunately, I didn’t stink as much as it seemed I should have, considering all the effort of the day before.

As I washed, I glanced at M-Bot, who quietly whispered, “He didn’t get up. Slept until I woke both of you.”

I nodded, then joined Chet at the edge of the fragment. “Ready?” I asked him.

“Forward!” he said.

We stepped across. And I realized this was my first time walking on grass. It felt so strange underfoot. Springy, like I was walking on a pillow.

This fragment turned out to be relatively small. All green grass and hills, with a lake in the center. Near that was a hillside with a hole cut into it—like a doorway into a mine.

The tunnels beyond weren’t extensive: a little entryway followed by three small rooms with earthen walls. But walking through them, I felt an eerily familiar sensation. Scud. I’d been in places that felt like this before.

We found the portal at the rear of the largest room. It was much like the one I’d come out of in the jungle—a glistening surface of rock, slate grey, but carved with lines. Hundreds of them this time, in an intricate pattern.

M-Bot flew up to the wall, and the lights on his drone lit up the markings. “Hmm,” he said. “I kept a database of all known scripts cataloged by the Superiority. This appears to be none of them.”

I nodded absently, tracing a curving line with my finger. “They aren’t a language, not really. I think I know what the lines mean though.”

“How can you?” M-Bot said. “You just said the markings aren’t a language!”

“They aren’t.”

“But they mean something?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, what?”

My finger reached the end of the line. “Memory.”

M-Bot hovered beside me. “Hmmm. Yes, I find this curious. I’m feeling a new emotion. It’s like anger and frustration mixed! How interesting.” With that, he hovered up, then came down directly on my head, whacking me.

“Ow!” I said, more surprised than in pain.

Chet immediately cursed, reaching to grab M-Bot, but I held up a hand to stop him. “M-Bot,” I said, “what is wrong with you?”

“That is what my emotions said I should do,” he explained. “Wow. I feel better! Curious, curious…”

“You can’t just hit people.”

“Didn’t you hit Jorgen basically all the time?”

“That was different,” I said. “First I hated him, then I liked him. So I had good reasons.”

“Ah!” M-Bot said. “You say things like that, and I want to hit you again! Would you stand still so I can smack you with a grabber arm? That sounds fun.”

“Abomination,” Chet said, “you should—”

“It’s all right, Chet,” I said. “He’s just having trouble dealing with emotions. They’re new to him.”

“I think I’m doing well, all things considered,” M-Bot said to Chet. “I bet the first time you had emotions, you babbled a lot and soiled your clothing.” He hovered back around to look at me. “Would you please explain what you meant by telling me this wasn’t a language, then immediately interpreting it?”

“These are the memories of the people who used this portal, M-Bot,” I said, kneeling and feeling at the grooves cut into the stone. “It makes a curious kind of sense. Cytonics are like…biological means of communication and travel. Hyperjumping replaces starships, and mind-to-mind contact replaces radios. So it feels right to me that there would be a way to store thoughts. A cytonic book, or recording.”

“Yes,” Chet said, kneeling beside me. “That is what I’ve heard. The Path of Elders involves a sequence of these portals—four or five total, from what I’ve been able to learn. Each is among the most ancient of ways into the nowhere, etched with the experiences of the first cytonics.”

Yes, I’d seen these patterns in the tunnels of Detritus. I’d also seen them in a large space station—the shipbuilding facility in orbit around Detritus. And I’d seen them inside the delver maze, a place I was increasingly convinced was the corpse of a long-dead delver.

“What do we do?” I asked. “How do we begin?”

“I’m not certain,” Chet said. “Admittedly, I thought we’d experience the memories as soon as we entered.” He placed his own hand on the markings. “I…can feel something.”

“So,” M-Bot said, “these things are both memories and portals between dimensions?”

“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes. The boundary was weaker than usual in this room. My pocket started to grow warm—my father’s pin.

Time for a test. The somewhere, home, was on the other side of this wall. Could I open the way? I engaged my cytonic senses. With my hands on the wall here…yes, I could feel the somewhere—my reality—pulling on me, trying to suck me through. The rock became as if liquid, and I began to sink into it.

Strangely, I could again feel a presence near me. Like I had when I’d used my powers in the jungle. The one that…that I wanted to believe might be my father. Was it guiding me? Leading me to freedom?

I stopped with a thump. Like the sound your boots made on the floor when you kicked them off at night. I tried again.

Thump.

“What do you feel?” Chet asked me.

“The portal is locked on the other side,” I said. “As you warned.”

“I hoped I was wrong about that,” he said. “And that your hyperjumping powers would let you use these portals to access the somewhere. Alas! Fortunately, that is not our primary endeavor here. There has to be a way to see the memories left for us. Can you…listen to the rock? Spy on it, as you say you can do to the delvers?”

I tried that, closing my eyes and listening. Opening my mind. Yes, there was something here. How did I access it? I asked the rock, pled with it, to open to me. But I failed. With a sigh, I opened my eyes.

To find that the cavern had changed around me.

I could make out the vague outlines of the rooms here, but they were ethereal, insubstantial. It was as if that world had faded, and another had sprung up in its place. In this one I felt like I was floating in darkness.

I stumbled, trying to get my bearings.

“Oh!” M-Bot said. “Spensa? You seem to be experiencing motor control problems. This isn’t related to the rap on the head I gave you, is it? Oh scud, I directly disobeyed my programming mandates by doing harm to—”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m seeing something.”

“Well, you’re probably always seeing something. Even when your eyes are closed, technically. Or maybe not because—”

“Hush,” I said, turning around. Chet still knelt beside me, looking about in confusion.

“Do you see what I do?” I asked. “We’re floating in darkness. Like when in the lightburst.”

“Indeed,” Chet said. “Only, look here. Beside me.”

I knelt, unsteady. I could feel the floor, touch it. Yet it was faint, nearly invisible to my eyes. Near our knees was a small pinprick of whiteness. It was part of the vision. “Is this the lightburst?”

Chet shook his head, seeming baffled. But as we watched, something changed. A substance began to grow around the pinprick of light, obscuring it. Growing like a tiny asteroid, then flattening out, and…

“A fragment,” I said, watching as stone grew. “We’re witnessing the birth of a fragment.”

“Yes…” Chet said. “I believe you are correct. We are watching it grow over hundreds of years, I suspect. It’s as if…”

“As if matter is seeping through,” I said. “That’s what this is, Chet. A tiny weakness between the dimensions. The somewhere is leaking in, forming a fragment like a stalactite forms slowly over time in a cavern.”

And I knew this was happening over centuries, as Chet had said. That information appeared in my mind, because…because it had been left intentionally to inform me. These thoughts, they were the thoughts of ancient cytonics.

“Yes!” Chet said. “I believe you’ve done it, Miss Nightshade! This is the past. The Path of Elders. The secrets of the ancient cytonics.”

Scud, it sounded awesome when he said it that way. As we watched, the fragment expanded into a block of stone perhaps twenty meters wide.

“Look,” Chet said, pointing behind me. “Was that there before?”

I turned around. I didn’t see any other fragments, but I did pick out a faraway white spot. It was the lightburst, but it seemed to have appeared as the fragment grew.

“It’s so small,” I said. “And there are no other fragments around. This must be the distant, distant past.”

I got a sense of this place at the time. A kind of silent tranquility. Nothing dangerous. No feelings of anger. No…

No delvers. The delvers either hadn’t existed at that time, or had been somewhere else.

“How can we see this?” I asked. “You said this Path was memories of people who entered the nowhere, but presumably nobody was here to see this part.”

“Time is strange here,” Chet said, still kneeling. “I imagine that cytonics were able to uncover this somehow. Do you see this here? What do you make of it?”

A line had appeared in the ground—the illusory version. It was different from the rest of the fragment, shinier, a different color. As we watched, it grew up into a wall, just a few handbreadths high. But a tiny pattern appeared on it, a little swirl. It felt like some kind of natural occurrence. Like erosion.

Yes, that was it. A kind of interdimensional erosion. Only created when…

A figure appeared in the scene. A dione, with blue skin.

I felt the vision abruptly slow. Decades were no longer passing with each second; this was in real time. The dione stumbled to their feet.

“Preindustrial clothing,” Chet guessed, pointing at the furs sewn roughly together.

The dione gasped and spun around, confused. They smiled, baring their teeth. Wait, no. That wasn’t a smile. For diones that meant aggression, or maybe fear.

The dione didn’t see us, and it felt eerie to have them look through me. They then dropped to their knees and started clawing at the tiny wall that indicated the portal.

Until…time seemed to speed up again. We watched the unfortunate dione as a blur trying to find a way off the fragment. They aged, then died. Their corpse turned to dust, leaving bones. It happened in seconds.

“That poor creature,” Chet said. “Dying alone in this place.”

I knelt beside the dione’s bones. The fragment had grown larger, but only a little. “Matter leaks into here from the somewhere. You’ve said you suspected this, Chet.”

“Indeed! Perhaps the belt formed because of weakened boundaries.”

I scanned the darkness and thought I could pick out another fragment forming in the distance. And the lightburst…it was a tiny bit larger. “So the fragments grew around small weaknesses between this dimension and ours. The lightburst consolidated as a reaction—it became the uncorrupted region of the nowhere. A kind of…safe room in a quarantine zone, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Chet said. “Yes, that feels correct.”

There was another piece. Something more to this. “If the somewhere is leaking into here,” I said, “did the nowhere in turn leak into our dimension? What shape would that take?”

The answer was right before us. Other diones appeared in the vision, coming through the portal, each leaving a tiny addition to the wall—more matter, and another swirl each. These learned to jump in and out, and no more died alone in here.

“Cytonics,” Chet whispered. “This is how it happened. The nowhere leaked into our dimension, and it…changed people living near the breach. It made us.”

“It’s like…interdimensional radiation,” I said, “that infuses people with the nowhere?”

I felt a surreal sense of disconnect as—in the near distance—another fragment grew in fast motion. Other people appeared on it eventually, but of a different species. Varvax. The Krell, though they didn’t have their exoskeletons. They were little crabs, and…

I felt the two species connect, speak mind-to-mind before they even got close enough to shout at one another. The first two species to ever meet, at least in the nowhere, and long before either had access to space travel.

I tried to listen to them, tried to focus my attention. Like squinting, but with my brain. Cytonic metaphors are weird, but that’s what it felt like. I pushed, and something in the memories encouraged me.

Further, it said. Express your talent. Listen…

I linked with it, and my brain interpreted what was being sent. Information, both verbal and nonverbal.

When I’d fought the drones on Detritus, I’d interpreted their instructions and responded before I consciously registered what I was hearing. This was the same. My mind, or my soul or whatever, knew what all this meant. And something clicked.

Ahh…I thought. So that’s how you do it.

When I listened in on others with my mind, I did it by pretending I was something I wasn’t. I somehow spoofed being the communication’s intended recipient. It let me remain shadowy, unseen—a spy.

Good, the memories said. Then a soft impression appeared in my mind. A place. Go here, the vision whispered. Alongside the words came the image of a fragment with some ruins. Then the vision vanished.

I sank to the ground, my back to the portal wall.

“It was the hit to your head!” M-Bot said, hovering down beside me. “I’m so sorry!”

“It wasn’t that, M-Bot,” I said. “I promise.”

“Oh, thank Turing!”

“Who?”

“One of the fathers of computing,” he said. “It felt appropriate to say.”

“You did not harm her, abomination,” Chet said. “I saw the vision too.”

“Did you feel that last part?” I asked. “Like a voice…helping guide me…”

“I didn’t feel anything like that,” he said. “I saw the first fragments, the first portals, and the first cytonics…then a hint of the next place to go?”

“Yeah, I saw that,” I said. “Another fragment with ruins.”

“Yes,” Chet said. “That’s a fragment deep inside Broadsider territory, I’m afraid. But…I know that we must go there. I feel…overwhelmed.”

I felt elated.

Yes, elated. I realized that ever since I’d discovered my powers—what my people called “the defect”—I’d been worried they were something nefarious. I’d thought that maybe I was something terrible. A delver in embryo, or something monstrous.

But I wasn’t. Cytonic powers were just a mutation. Granted, a bizarre one caused by my ancestors being exposed to the nowhere’s leakage into the somewhere. But nothing terrible grew within me. I was just…well, me.

Saints. I’d needed to see that. A simple revelation, yes, but it changed everything. I knew what I was. I knew how I had come to be. And it was no wonder that powers manifested in our people—Detritus had one of these portals, perhaps helping activate the latent talent from our bloodlines.

This was part of the information the elder cytonics had left, the thing they’d wanted me to know. You are not a monster, the impression lingered. You are one of us. You are wonderful. You are natural. You are loved.

And along with that, a nudge to help me develop further in my talents. A push, and some understanding. I had the sense that if my talents had been different, I would have been nudged a different way, to develop those abilities instead.

I glanced at Chet, who was grinning practically ear to ear.

“I feel left out,” M-Bot said. “You’re both experiencing different emotions from the ones I am. And…this is all very confusing. What is one supposed to do with all of these emotions? What are they for? What’s the purpose?”

“I don’t think they have any specific purposes,” I said.

“Of course they do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have evolved in you and then been programmed into me. But…I suppose there are things that are evolutionarily neutral, and perhaps saying ‘purpose’ implies too much volition behind the process. Unless you believe in God, which I’m not sure that I do. I mean, I was created by someone. Hummmm…”

I took a few deep breaths, trying to digest what I’d seen. “Chet,” I said. “Did you see those varvax on the nearby fragment?”

“I did indeed, and I find it curious. The two fragments were relatively near to one another. Diones and varvax.”

“Well,” M-Bot said. “I don’t know what exactly you saw, but histories show that those two peoples traveled between worlds cytonically before they did it with starships.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The same thing happened to humans and the kitsen, and maybe other species. I never realized the hole in that. A cytonic usually needs a direction to go, instructions, to hyperjump—at least very far. But this explains how; they met in the nowhere before hyperjumping between worlds.”

“Abomination,” Chet said, “do you have a record on when the delvers first appeared in the somewhere?”

“The initial records of the delvers occur after the First Human War began,” M-Bot said. “That was when the Phone Company—a human organization—gave hyperdrives to the people of Earth. Humans then spread throughout the galaxy. War began, and near its end the first delvers appeared. Before that time there were no reports of delvers, or even the eyes.”

I looked to Chet. He’d sensed it too—no delvers had existed at the time of this vision. So how had they appeared? What were the delvers?

My contemplations were interrupted as an enormous jolt shook our fragment, accompanied by an overpowering crash.

Chapter 12

I grabbed my makeshift club, which I’d dropped near the front of the cavern, and stumbled out onto the loamy ground. Chet joined me, unsteady on his feet, holding on to the wooden supports at the mouth of the cavern.

Another fragment had collided with the one we were on. It looked smaller than ours, but thicker and more dense. Like a battleship made of stone.

“How did you miss that?” I demanded of Chet, pointing across the green field to the place where the two fragments were mashed together.

“I have no idea!” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!”

The ground shifted again as the “battleship” fragment shoved farther into ours, causing dirt to roll and stone to crunch. Our fragment was pushed along with it, like an old ship being pushed by a tug—a really aggressive tug with its boosters on overburn.

The chaos sent me to my knees. Scud, the entire fragment was shaking terribly. On Detritus I would have thought a thousand meteors were striking at once.

Chet grabbed me by the arm and helped me to my feet.

“How do we get off!” I shouted at him over the noise of rock crushing.

“I don’t know!” he yelled back. “There aren’t any nearby fragments!”

I struggled for balance but pointed at the “battleship” fragment. “There is one other place to go!”

“It’s trying right now to destroy us,” Chet yelled. “I don’t know that I consider it an option!”

“I’m very angry too!” M-Bot shouted from behind me. “I thought you should know, since it seems like we’re sharing!”

“Options?” I shouted at him.

“For being angry? I’ve always liked raw fury, but indignation has a certain bold flavor too, don’t you think?”

“M-Bot!”

“Sorry!” he shouted. “My databases say the proper behavior during an earthquake is to either get outside—which we’ve obviously scored good marks on, since we’re literally outside our own universe—or get to a place where nothing can fall on us. This seems to work. Yay us. Oh! And I’m not mad any longer. Wow. Do emotions always pass this quickly?”

Well, maybe the collision would subside now that we’d survived the initial impact. I looked up across the grass. The ground continued to tremble, and something else bothered me. Something I couldn’t immediately define. It was…

“The water,” I said, pointing. “The lake is empty. What happened to the water?”

“It must have drained out the bottom!” Chet said. “The fragments aren’t made entirely from acclivity stone—some have more, others less. I have hypothesized that it influences how fast they move.”

“The one crashing into us is more solid then?” I said. “It must have come up quickly, if you didn’t spot it.”

“Precisely!” Chet said. “Our current one looks to be mostly soil, so the bottom of the lake must have given out.”

That bothered me. I mean, these fragments were already playing with my brain. I perpetually felt like I was walking across unstable footing. As I scanned the fragment, my fears became manifest.

Rifts appeared in the soil. Widening cracks like bolts of lightning moved across the once-tranquil prairie. In these lines the soil and grass vanished, sinking out of sight.

“It’s breaking apart,” I said, forcing myself to keep my feet despite the shaking.

“Scrud!” Chet said. Ahead of us an entire section of the grassland fell away, leaving a gaping hole. “I suggest a hasty actualization of your earlier plan. We must get onto that more solid fragment!”

We dashed away from the tunnel with the portal, and it collapsed in a roar behind me. The ground, which had once felt soft and springy, now felt treacherous.

“M-Bot,” I shouted. “Stick the light-line to my back. If I jump or fall, pull upward with every bit of lift you’ve got.”

“I’m not powerful enough to carry you!”

“I don’t expect you to!”

As he complied, I tried to maintain a jog, but the tremors kept knocking me off balance. Chet wasn’t faring much better; ahead of me a particularly violent quake sent him sprawling, and then a rift opened between us.

He glanced toward me with alarm.

I jumped.

Obligingly M-Bot moved upward, pulling the light-line taut. While he couldn’t lift me completely, his efforts did add to my spring. I’d trained in low-g, and this wasn’t much different, so I knew how to compensate. I spanned the widening chasm and landed next to Chet.

“Marvelous!” he said as I pulled him to his feet. Together we charged toward the fragment that was causing all of this. But abruptly Chet grabbed my arm and hauled me back, halting my run as a hole opened up right in front of us, dirt pouring down like it had liquefied.

Scud. I glanced to Chet with thanks, and he pointed to the side. We scrambled that direction, rounding the hole, and reached the far edge of the fragment.

Here the ground was bunched up, the earth piled in an enormous furrow. “Get that light-line off me and attach it somewhere up above!” I shouted to M-Bot.

He zipped up to the top and attached the line, then returned trailing the red-orange rope. I looked to Chet, who nodded, grabbing the light-line. “Just like climbing to the top of Mount Rigby!” he said. “Highest point on the fragments!” He glanced at the bunched-up soil. “Only perhaps more squishy!”

“Less heroic explorer talk!” I shouted. “More climbing!”

As if to punctuate my words, a vast section of the ground behind us fell away.

“Point taken,” Chet said, then began ascending the high furrow of trembling soil. His feet sank in, making it an obvious struggle. Fortunately, there were chunks of stone to use as footholds; he proved his skill in climbing as he located them.

I followed him up, and my lighter weight was an advantage. When I’d been younger I’d imagined growing to Amazonian heights to become a fierce swordswoman—and then I’d run out of centimeters. Instead I’d taken to imagining myself as so small that giants underestimated me, so I could therefore scamper up their backs and stab them in the ears.

There weren’t many giants to slay, but I got mileage out of my size today as I limberly scrambled up the mound of dirt, barely needing the light-line. Then I helped pull Chet out of a mire—it was tough with the dirt sliding around us. But together we managed to reach the top.

M-Bot hovered up from below. Worn out and filthy, the three of us stumbled up to a high point on the new fragment. It looked like a blasted-out landscape, ashen and cracked—but it was solid.

The fragment we’d left was in utter turmoil. Little patches of grass peeked through the churning dirt—like sections of unburned skin on the face of a pilot who had died in a crash. Those were quickly vanishing as our current fragment pushed forward. Dirt fell away in vast swaths, with chunks of acclivity stone drifting off to the sides.

In minutes, the entire fragment was gone save for some chunks of dirt stuck to the front where we stood.

“I would not believe this if I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand,” Chet whispered. “Miss Nightshade, I’ve never seen such an event.”

“Fragments don’t often collide?” I asked.

“On occasion, they bump at speed,” he said, “but I’ve never experienced anything more fearsome than a short jolt.” He put his hand to his head. “It’s as if the nowhere itself is trying to kill us.”

Great. Jumping into a dimension literally controlled by beings that hated me might not have been my smartest decision ever. Then again, I had genuinely needed to see that vision at the portal. So…yeah. Frying pans, fires, all that. As long as there was some warmth and I could roast some rats.

“I feel bad about the portal,” I said. “Those memories, lost…”

“All memories are lost eventually,” Chet said. “I agree this is a tragedy—but I prefer to keep my head high.” He dusted off his trousers, shook some dirt from his jacket, then smiled at me. “Think of it this way. We survived again, and we began the Path. I shall count it as a grand victory!”

“We need to get farther into pirate territory to get to the next stop though.”

“Indeed,” he said, pointing. “That direction.” Our current fragment floated perpendicular to that, so I supposed it could be worse. “We’d have to cross dozens upon dozens of fragments, however, to reach those ruins on foot.”

“So…” I said. “Time to restart Operation Ship-Steal?”

He smiled, turning and pointing a slightly different direction. “The Broadsider home base is perhaps two days’ travel. I shall need a short time, Miss Nightshade, to use my powers and devise a path forward. We may not be able to go directly; it will depend on the timing of the intersection of the fragments.”

“Let’s hope,” I said, “that no more of them intersect as violently as this one.”

Chapter 13

While Chet sat to figure out the route, M-Bot and I went to do a little scouting. This newest fragment was the most normal of the ones I’d been on. No strange grasses, no towering trees. Not even dirt. Just good, sturdy rock. It was darker than the stone on Detritus, and was cracked like it had been through a furnace, but the way it scraped underfoot reminded me of home.

We found a small wooden building, but it had been scavenged clean. While I was inside, M-Bot called to me. I peeked out to see three starfighters shooting past in the sky.

“I think they’ve come to survey the destroyed fragment,” M-Bot said, hovering beside me.

Made sense. We stayed out of sight, and I had a spike of fear that they’d grab Chet. Unfortunately, I realized I’d misplaced Skullbreaker in the chaos of the exploding fragment. That gave me a surprising sense of loss. The club hadn’t been impressive, but it had been special because Chet had helped me make it.

As the starfighters wove through the sky, flying away from our fragment and doing a few quick maneuvers, I got a feeling for their skill. Like…like how you can tell from watching someone’s warm-up routine how athletic they are. Those pilots seemed fine, but not terribly skilled.

If I could get into a ship, I should have no trouble outflying them in the short term. But how would I get through pirate territory in general? We would need to land and study the next portal in the Path of Elders, and we couldn’t do that if pirates were on our tail.

When the ships were out of sight, I hurried back to check on Chet—and found that he’d vanished. There was just the large pile of dirt heaped up on the front of the fragment near where the collision had happened.

That dirt stirred, then Chet appeared, digging himself out from where he’d apparently hidden himself. He brushed the dirt from his jacket, then spat out a little of it and grinned at me. “Not my most noble of escapes, but better than becoming a floor washer!”

“How goes the planning?” I asked him.

“A little more time, if you please.”

I wandered a bit farther away—maybe twenty meters—and climbed up a small rock formation near the edge of the fragment. I stood tall, looking into the distance and admiring the view of the various nearby fragments, one of which was streaming water into the void.

Hands on my hips, I took a deep breath and couldn’t help but grin. Scud, I was loving this. The feeling I’d had the day before—the joy of traveling with Chet—expanded. Now I’d seen firsthand that the quest was useful to me.

Exploring a strange frontier? Being forced to use some physical prowess for once? Running, climbing, jumping, and being chased by monsters? It really did feel as if I’d slipped into one of Gran-Gran’s stories. Where I belonged. Where things were right. It was genuinely satisfying to have my life depend on whether I could escape a crumbling fragment—rather than on how well I could imitate an alien on Starsight.

I settled down on the rocks. My friends were in trouble, and I did miss them. Terribly. What I wouldn’t give to be able to share this trip with them.

M-Bot hovered over, and I smiled at him. I had at least one friend here. I put my arm around his drone and pointed outward at the fragments. “What do you see?” I asked him.

“Chunks of matter.”

“I see adventure,” I said. “I see mysteries and striking beauty. Watch the water shimmer as it falls. Doesn’t it look gorgeous?”

“Somewhat,” he admitted. “Like…little bits twinkling on and off…”

“That’s what emotions are for,” I said. “Partially. It’s not their only purpose, but it’s an important one. Do you understand that part?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m closer, maybe. I guess…I guess I wouldn’t know how great mushrooms were without feeling something when I find them. Right?”

I smiled. “I’m glad I’m here with you, M-Bot. I know you were hesitant about entering. But thank you for being my friend, for joining me.”

He wobbled in a nod. “But Spensa? I’m…still sad.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’ve spent years upon years’ worth of processing time imagining what Commander Spears would be like. Now we’ve met him and…and he just calls me an abomination.”

“He’s coming around,” I said. “The longer he spends with you, the more he’ll see that he was wrong. But even if he doesn’t, who cares? I’m your pilot now. And I think you’re great.”

“Thanks…”

“What?”

“I said thanks. I don’t believe that statement requires qualification.”

“Yeah, but you left it dangling,” I said. “Something’s still bothering you.”

“You can tell that? How?”

“Gut feeling.”

“I don’t have guts,” M-Bot said. “So I guess you’re the expert. But…if you need to know, the bigger problem is that I’m still kind of mad at you.”

“For leaving you behind when I left Starsight?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you forgave me for that.”

“I thought I did too. But I keep remembering it. Is that…normal?”

“It is for humans. Sometimes it’s too easy to forget the things you should remember—and far too easy to remember the things you really should forget.”

“It’s doubly so for me,” he said, “since I literally can’t forget things unless they’re deleted, or at least commented out of my code.”

I leaned back, putting my hands behind me to support myself as I sat and thought on what he’d said. Scud, he’d given up a lot in all of this—his wonderful ship body not the least of it. And now, to deal with all these emotions…

“I’m sorry,” I said, “for what happened to you on Starsight, M-Bot. I truly am. It broke my heart to leave you like I did.”

“But you’d make the same decision again, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “As much as it pains me to know I hurt you, if I were in that situation again…yes, I’d go save the people of Detritus.”

“It makes logical sense,” he said. “But I don’t feel it. What do I do to get rid of these feelings? I don’t want to be angry. So it’s stupid that I’m angry. It makes no sense.”

“It makes a ton of sense, actually,” I said. “You don’t have many friends—basically just me and Rig. When I left, you were being abandoned by everyone you’d known and loved. It’s not the sort of thing you get over easily.”

“Wow,” M-Bot said. “You know emotions really well, Spensa. Particularly the stupid ones.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“So what do I do?”

“Weather it,” I said. “Get better. Learn to accept that sometimes what you feel isn’t invalid, but that it doesn’t mean you have to act according to those feelings either.”

“Again I’m supposed to feel things, but then ignore those feelings. Act opposite of how they direct. Why is that?”

I shrugged. “It’s just life. But sometimes talking about it makes it feel better.”

“Huh. Yes, I believe that I do feel a little better. Strange. Why is that the case? Nothing has changed.”

“Because I’m your friend, M-Bot. And that’s what friends do. Share.”

“And do they also abandon one another to certain death?” he said, then hovered down lower. “Sorry. It just kind of slipped out. I’ll do better.”

“It’s all right,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Again, it’s okay to feel angry, M-Bot. But you’re going to have to learn to deal with it. We’re soldiers. We have responsibilities that are bigger than any one individual. So being friends doesn’t mean I won’t someday have to leave you behind again.”

“What does it mean to be friends, then?”

“It means,” I said, “that if something like that does have to happen, I’ll do whatever I can to return to you once the crisis is over. And you’d do the same for me, right, bud?”

“Yes,” he said, hovering higher. “Yes, because I can move on my own now.” He turned, looking toward Chet. “And maybe you’re right about him too. Maybe it doesn’t matter what he thinks. It’s hard to feel that, but I can say it. That feels like a different kind of lying. One that’s not all untrue.”

“We’ll make a human out of you yet.”

“Please no,” he said. “From what I’ve read of it, I really don’t want a sense of smell.”

I smiled, intending to check on Chet. I hesitated, however, as I saw we’d drifted closer to the fragment with the waterfall. We weren’t going to hit it—in fact, our current fragment seemed to have slowed to a normal speed. Serene and peaceful, as if it hadn’t just been in a horrific collision.

Something was standing on the edge of that other fragment, near the waterfall. I couldn’t make out much because of the distance, but it seemed to have…

Glowing white eyes.

I felt a mind pushing against mine.

What…did…you…do…

…TO THE US?

I backed up a few steps. The delvers had found me. Chet had said it was possible to hide in the belt out here, but…I supposed that in using my powers to initiate the vision on the Path, I’d drawn their attention.

Determined not to be intimidated, I quested out with my own cytonic senses. And I found…strength? I’d grown, here in the nowhere. I was able to brush that distant delver’s mind as it projected anger at me. I picked out things it didn’t intend to broadcast. They had indeed sensed what I’d done in activating the Path of Elders, and they’d sent the battleship fragment to destroy the one I’d been on.

That had taken a remarkable amount of effort, and was something they couldn’t do often. It had actually been an experiment, as they felt they needed to push farther into the belt to try to find and stop me. These glowing-eyed things were the same. An experiment. Isolated individuals, who had lost a lot of their memories, were susceptible to the delvers’ touch. But only non-cytonics, for this particular thing they were trying.

Saints…I felt so much more in control now, even after only one step on the Path of Elders. The experience had opened something in my brain, showing me how to hide and not draw attention while spying with my cytonics.

This delver still wasn’t aware of how much I’d gleaned from it. I felt like gloating, but then I sensed it trying to attack my mind. That manifested as coldness and pressure; it was as if I’d been plunged into an icy lake, the cold seeping like water through my skin, toward my heart.

And those voices…

What have you done…to the Us…to the Us…

“The Us” referred again to the delver I’d changed. The others were angry, furious at me. Because I’d touched and spoken to that one delver I’d persuaded not to attack Starsight. In so doing, I’d corrupted it forever. Essentially destroying one of their kind.

That made me feel sick. The friendly delver and I had connected in a beautiful way; I’d thought my actions would change things. But if the others refused to listen to me… I shivered as our fragment drifted farther from the one with the waterfall.

Chet stepped up next to me then, and jarred me from my thoughts. “You felt it too, I presume?”

“The delvers possessed someone over there,” I said.

Chet nodded. “Whatever we did with the Path attracted their attention,” he said. “I find it amazing they’d risk individuality by entering the belt, but it is obviously happening. We will need to be careful moving forward.”

“Agreed.” I took a deep breath. “You finished planning our route?”

“I did indeed, Miss Nightshade,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Tell me. What is your opinion on sailing?”

Chapter 14

Chet led me back to the small wooden building I’d discovered, saying that we needed to salvage some supplies. I tried explaining that it had been picked clean, but once we arrived he proceeded to take the doors off their hinges.

We each carried a door to the edge of the fragment, where we waited an hour to jump across to the next approaching fragment. It was a tropical one, full of tall trees with bare trunks and leaves only at the tops. We took our time crossing this one, scavenging for some strange oversized nuts the size of a person’s head. They weren’t coconuts—I knew those from my studies on Old Earth—but were similar.

We spent the evening hollowing the nuts out by prying off the tops and pulling out the long, stringy pulp by hand. Afterward we stretched the interior membrane of each one over the hole we’d made and set it to dry.

That night, I again failed at contacting Jorgen. But I woke up eager and excited for the day’s trek—because while we’d slept, our next fragment had approached.

An ocean.

It was the most bizarre thing I’d seen here yet. The sides were stone like the bottom, but they were only about a meter thick. Beyond was water; essentially the fragment was an enormous bowl. It seemed larger than most fragments we’d traveled on, extending for kilometers into the distance.

Chet showed me how to use the pulp—which had become cordlike as it dried—to tie the doors together and lash the hollowed-out nuts to them. The nuts were watertight and filled with air. So when we shoved off into the ocean, we had a functional raft.

It was awesome.

Even M-Bot was impressed. He buzzed around us, complimenting the raft’s “structural integrity” and “remarkable buoyancy.” We named the ship the Not-ilus and I stood proudly at the prow—well, the flat front end I declared the prow. Chet chuckled softly, weaving oars from bent reeds and leftover nut-guts.

It was slow going, but I still felt like I was some ancient Polynesian hero sailing the ocean for the first time. Plus it got even better. Because the ocean had sea monsters.

I saw them swimming below as sinuous shapes and immediately fell to my knees, worried. And excited. Because, you know. Sea monsters.

I glanced at Chet, who was whistling softly and braiding some nut-guts into a stronger cord. One did not act so cheekily nonchalant by accident; he wasn’t worried about the sea monsters, whatever they were.

“Oh!” M-Bot said, hovering past me. “Look! Ah! Um, turn around! About-face! Reverse rudder or whatever! We’re going to get eaten!”

Chet calmly tossed me the rope, one end of which he’d fashioned into a loop. Then he handed me a small red fruit he’d harvested somewhere.

“Float that out beside us,” he said, “then set the loop around it in the water and get ready to pull.”

I could hardly contain myself as I did what he said. I stood at the ready as a blue serpentine head came up and snatched the fruit. I yanked with a mighty pull, looping the thing around the neck, which let out a gaping…

…yawn?

Well, it was a sea monster, even if it barely noticed that I’d captured it. Instead it chewed on the fruit, bringing up another coil of its body from the depths below. It was like a snake, perhaps as thick as a man’s thigh, but had little flippered legs along its very long body. It bit happily at the fruit, then looked up at me with pleading eyes, its head wagging in the water.

“You,” I told it, “shall be known as Gnash the Slaughterer.”

It made a bubbling sound, then turned eagerly as Chet tossed another fruit far out into the ocean. It began moving, towing us along as I yelped and held tight to the rope.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering along beside my head, “I don’t think that creature is likely to slaughter anything.”

“It’s a garqua,” Chet explained, settling back down on the raft—er, the deck of our mighty ship. “They’re not dangerous. They come from Monrome.”

“Monrome?” I asked.

“Dione homeworld?” Chet said. “Even I know that, and I’ve forgotten the names of my parents.” At my blank stare, he continued. “No predators on Monrome.”

“What?” I said. “None?”

“None,” Chet said. “Scavengers and herbivores only.”

I glanced at M-Bot, who bobbed in the air to simulate nodding. “It’s true,” he said. “Though I doubt this one came directly from the dione homeworld—they have colonized nearly a hundred planets and have a habit of importing their local wildlife. After, ah, exterminating the local species for being too brutal and aggressive.”

“Sounds like them,” I said. “Still feels odd to me.”

“Did you assume every planet had the same ecological hierarchy as Earth?” M-Bot asked.

“Well…yeah,” I said. “I mean, it seems pretty fundamental. Things eat other things.”

“It seems fundamental,” Chet said, “because it’s the way it was for us. Doesn’t mean it has to be that way everywhere.”

Huh. I continued holding Gnash’s leash. She stopped to eat the fruit Chet had thrown—but then continued on, pulling us along contentedly. She appeared to think she’d find another piece of fruit if she kept going that direction, something Chet reinforced by occasionally tossing out another.

I contemplated the idea of a world—well, many worlds, if M-Bot was right—without predators. No hunting, no killing? How did survival of the fittest and all that work? At any rate, no wonder the diones thought everyone else was too aggressive.

The more I thought about it though, the more annoyed I became at them. They acted like they were superior—like they’d developed “prime intelligence” or whatever—because their society was peaceful. But they’d simply evolved on a planet without predators. They hadn’t become enlightened or learned a better way—they merely assumed their way was how it was meant to be.

I supposed lots of species were like that, my own included. But we weren’t conquering the galaxy—currently—or forcing everyone to live by our rules. Currently.

We spent the better part of the day crossing the ocean fragment. When we reached the far side we thanked Gnash with some more fruit and then moved on. And let it be known that M-Bot was totally wrong. Gnash was an excellent slaughterer, at least when it came to fruit.

We slept that night on a fragment with many caves that reminded me of home, and I think I got my best sleep of the entire trip there, comforted by the peaceful sound of water echoing as it dripped. The next day was full of different delights. Cliffs to scale, two swamps with utterly different scents—really, one smelled like cinnamon, like…someone I’d known once. After that, we crossed a fragment broken by winding canyons and beautiful patterns of colored stone.

By the end of the day, Chet informed me that we were nearing the Broadsider pirate base, and I found myself strangely melancholy. Once we got a ship, we would travel faster—and I was eager to take to the sky. But I had truly enjoyed the time I’d spent traveling.

Flying the rest of the way…well, it seemed that would undermine the epic nature of my quest a tad. That said, as I considered, I decided that many of the heroes from the stories would have used a starfighter if one had been available. Gilgamesh, for example, would totally have done it. (Not sure about Xuanzang, admittedly. He’d probably have been all about the need for the journey to refine him, or some other super-wise Zen stuff.)

We ended the day on a jungle fragment that I liked more than the first one I’d been on. It had less underbrush and all the plants were blue, which I found relaxing. It was just a more natural color.

According to Chet, this fragment would pass the pirate base the next day. So we decided to camp, and he sent M-Bot to scan for life forms that could be dangerous.

“I doubt that there are large beasts on this fragment,” Chet explained to the AI, “but it is better to be careful than to be eaten.”

“Plus,” I added, “if the delvers can possess bodies, they might be able to grab one we don’t expect. So see what kind of life there is, big or small. I’d rather not be surprised by a group of zombie chipmunks.”

“Zombie…chipmunks?” Chet said.

“It would likely be a fun fight,” I said. “With lots of kicking. Probably feels about the same to kick a chipmunk as it does to kick a rat.”

“And…how many rats have you kicked, Miss Nightshade?”

“Only the ones that were asking for it,” I said, smacking my fist into my palm.

M-Bot zipped off, and Chet and I began pulling down blue fronds and making bedding out of them. I kind of wished we could make a fire like in the stories, but it never felt cold in here—or hot. Plus the smoke would give us away.

Soon we each had a nice bed. And though I’d liked the caverns, this was probably going to be the softest of our nights in the nowhere.

“Thank you,” I said to Chet as I settled into mine, “for all of this.”

“I’ve been paid each day,” he said. “You don’t need to thank me!”

And each day he’d watched the reality icon with hunger. But I moved past that. “You haven’t just guided me, Chet. You’ve taught me and shown me incredible things.”

“Well,” he said, “at the very least I’m glad you were able to see an ocean of sorts. I did promise you they were fun to explore! Regardless, no need to thank me. You saved my life on that fragment that was being destroyed!”

“And you saved mine.”

“A sign that we’re an excellent team!” he said, settling back into his nest of fronds. More solemnly, he continued, “Truly, Miss Nightshade, I’ve rarely had such an invigorating companion. Plus you encouraged me toward a goal I’ve been avoiding for far too long. For that I thank you.”

I nodded in agreement. “What are we likely to face tomorrow? Will the pirates be armed with modern weapons, for example?”

“Yes,” he said. “But remember they are mostly outcasts—not a true military force. They have gathered together more out of necessity, to be near other minds.”

“Any idea why that helps us not forget in here?” I asked.

“It is curious, isn’t it? It’s like…people are all a little more real when they’re together. Maybe together we remind one another what it is to be alive. To have family.”

He said that last word with a hint of longing, looking upward through the trees. He’d forgotten his family, whoever they had been. I wished that he could see M-Bot as a lost friend, reunited, and not an “abomination.” But I decided not to bring the issue up again at the moment.

We fell silent for a while, then Chet spoke, his voice softer. “I once had a ship in here. I decided to fly it all the way to the lightburst—to get out that way, if I could, and return to whatever life I’d left behind. But…I lost myself, flying. I think that’s when I finally lost the last of my memories of my family, you see. Out there on your own, you don’t have anything to remind you of who you are.

“Down on the fragments, everything—the stones, the structures, the trees—helps somehow. It grounds us, one might say. Ha! At any rate, I think we two will be fine flying together. We’ll have each other, plus your icon. It should be enough. Should be…”

Chet trailed off and I shivered, imagining losing so much. I had to stay focused. Find my answers and get home. It had been…how long since I’d entered the nowhere? Maybe a week?

How many times have I slept? I wondered. Three? Or has it been four?

It was unnerving that I couldn’t remember. So I focused on the upcoming mission. “We’ll send M-Bot to do some reconnaissance once we’re on the pirate faction’s fragment,” I told Chet. “They may not be a true military, but they’ve got to be somewhat competent to have stolen ships and kept them.”

“That is true,” Chet said. “I agree. Expect them to be modestly capable, but not military trained.”

“I’ll bet they sleep in shifts and have scouts on duty to watch for anyone approaching, even on foot. So we have two options, as I see it. The first is to hit them when most of their numbers are away during a fight. During a battle, the people they leave behind might be distracted enough for us to get in and steal a ship.”

“Assuming all the ships aren’t away at the fight,” he said, “denying us our opportunity for larceny.”

“I suspect they’ll be smart enough to leave reserves—and if not, there will be ships in their hangars undergoing maintenance. M-Bot should be able to determine which of them are in flying shape.”

“Still sounds dangerous,” Chet said, leaning back in his makeshift bed. “I assume they would be more alert during a fight, not less.”

“Well, our second option is to strike during a long shift when most of them are asleep. We move in stealthily, have M-Bot hack through a ship’s security, then fly out with our prize before anyone knows what’s happening.”

“They’ll give chase,” Chet noted.

“Trust me, Chet,” I said, “I might not know how to build a raft, but I won’t have trouble outflying anyone in that group.”

“Marvelous! I shall look forward to our flight, then.”

M-Bot came zipping back. “I used infrared scanners to search for warm life forms, and didn’t find anything larger than a worm,” he announced. “No chipmunks, zombified or otherwise.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“That…wasn’t a ‘made you look’ joke, was it?” he asked. “Sending me out to look for things? I can’t tell.”

I’d completely forgotten about pranking him that once, so it took me a moment to remember what he was referencing. “No joke,” I promised him. “We really did want you to look for dangers on this fragment.”

“Thanks,” he said, then flew off again, likely to begin searching for mushrooms. I sat there for a while, staring upward…

Then I jumped when M-Bot returned.

How…how long had I just been sitting there, not noticing the passage of time? Chet was already asleep.

I couldn’t tell. It could have been a minute, could have been an hour. But M-Bot had seven different mushroom samples in his grabber claws and was laying them out to catalog them. So…scud.

I turned over in my bed, worried about that sudden passage of time. Gran-Gran had told me about a man who’d accidentally slept for hundreds of years. That wouldn’t happen to me, would it? Normally a thought like that might have kept me awake. But this time I fell right to sleep.

Interlude

Floating.

I quested out, searching as I had before. Like on other nights, I didn’t find anything. I was nearly pulled down by my own tiredness again.

But no. No, I was Defiant. Plus, I was better with my powers than I’d ever been. I was stronger than sleep, stronger than my own worst instincts. Strong enough to…

Push through. I latched onto the familiar sensation of Jorgen’s mind and pulled myself toward it.

This time I interrupted him shaving.

He jumped as he saw me suddenly reflected in his mirror, standing beside him in the lavish bathroom. It had two sinks. He was wearing a towel, fortunately, but I do have to say…boy took care of himself. Mandatory PT for pilots didn’t give a fellow pecs like that, not without some extra reps at the gym.

“Spin!” he snapped. “This is not a good time.”

“Oh, and last time was better?” I said, folding my arms and refusing to be embarrassed. “At least you’re not getting shot at.”

He reached for his towel to wipe away the shaving suds covering half his face, then—wisely—stopped. Finally, he took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to snap at you. You certainly couldn’t have known you’d find me in a compromising position.”

“Huh,” I said. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Stay calm,” I said. “Be so understanding.”

“Command training.”

“Bull,” I said. “I know your secret, Jorgen Weight. You’re a good person.”

“That’s…a secret?”

“Hush,” I said. “I have to say things like that or I’ll look like an idiot for taking so long to figure it out. It would help me out a ton if you’d at least pretend to be an actual jerkface now and then.”

“I’ll work on that,” he said, smiling.

I stepped forward, then edged around him so I could stand between him and the sink. He could only see me in the reflection, so if I stood there—facing the mirror—our height difference meant we could look each other in the eyes. He stepped back to give me room. Saints, that smile was adorable with half his face shaved. Even the tiny scabs from his healing cuts were adorable, in a grizzled warrior kind of way.

I, however, was anything but adorable. I’d never been one to fret over my appearance—even when I tried during my school days, kids used to joke that I looked like a rodent. They felt so brilliant realizing that the rat girl was a bit mousy.

That said, scud. “I need to find a hairbrush, don’t I?” I said. “And a shower. Or seven.”

“You look just fine.”

“Ah, ‘just fine.’ Exactly what a woman loves to hear.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant to say that you look like a barbarian who just finished killing her seventeenth rabid tiger to make a necklace out of their incisors.”

“Really?” I said, tearing up. I mean, it was silly but…you know, he was trying.

“It’s like you came strolling directly out of a barbarian story,” he said. “Except for the jumpsuit.”

“I can fix that,” I said, reaching for the zipper.

The way his eyes bulged was totally worth it. But he looked so uncomfortable that I spun around to face him, raising my hands. “Joking! I’m joking, Jorgen. Don’t faint or anything!”

He shook his head, reaching for a washcloth to wipe the suds from his face. That left his face half-covered with black stubble, which would have been sexy, except…you know, the fact that it was only half the face. I turned back around toward the mirror.

“What happened to your face anyway?” I asked.

Jorgen grimaced. “I squeezed a slug. It didn’t appreciate it and let me know.”

I wanted more details, but I knew our time was short so I didn’t press him.

“I lied earlier, Spensa,” he said. “Command training did not prepare me for you. Nothing could have done that. Anyway, I suppose I should ask for a report.”

“Days passed?” I asked him.

“Since our last visit? Five.”

Yeah, time was odd in the nowhere. I thought it had only been three for me, but I couldn’t tell for certain. “I’ve made progress on my quest,” I explained. “I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but first I have more important intel. Jorgen…I think the Superiority leaders are trying to make a deal with the delvers. An alliance.”

He blinked, then took a deep breath. “That’s unfortunate.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“I was taught not to curse in front of a lady.”

“Good thing there are none of those here, eh?”

He smiled. “You say you think they’ll make a deal. They haven’t yet?”

“Not that I know,” I said. “But the delvers were intrigued by what Winzik said. And judging by what I’ve felt from them…I think it will happen. Unless we find a way to stop it.”

“I’ll report this to Cobb and the command staff,” he said. “It confirms our worst fears, that the delver summoning wasn’t an anomaly—but an appetizer. Anything else?”

“I found a kind of heritage site,” I said. “It’s hard to explain, but I saw some of the history of cytonics, and was taught a little how to better use my abilities. Jorgen, I’m pretty sure we were made when the nowhere leaked into our reality and changed people living nearby.”

“Changed?”

“Think of it like a mutation,” I said. “Caused by specialized radiation seeping through weak spots between dimensions. It means we’re not freaks. We’re mutations.”

“Well,” he said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Though I don’t like the word ‘freak,’ many would call a mutation exactly the sort of thing that makes you one. Certainly, a ‘defect’ could be caused by a mutation. So I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that we’re not some kind of sleeper agent for the delvers,” I said. “We predate them, in fact. What’s happened is that cytonics have blended with the nowhere—giving us access to it, letting us bend our reality to work the way it does.”

He nodded slowly. “If what you say is true, then we could potentially make more cytonic people.”

“There’s a portal,” I said, “on Detritus, in the tunnels near Igneous. Search northeast of the cavern, near some old pipes in a place with some strange patterns carved in the stone. You might want to study it.”

“I’ll put some people on it,” he said.

“Be careful,” I noted. “A cytonic can fall through and get stuck in here—and it’s hard to get out. So don’t, you know, pull a Spensa.”

“Will do,” he said, meeting my eyes in the reflection. “This is important. I’m glad you stayed, even if it means…well, this.” He gestured at my ghostly state.

“I’m going to continue on the Path,” I said. “First I have to deal with a bunch of pirates though.”

“There are pirates in the nowhere?” he asked.

“Yeah. Awesome, isn’t it?”

“I thought the place was…well…nothingness.”

“Kind of is, kind of isn’t?” I said. “It’s complicated. I’m going to steal a starfighter tomorrow, which should let me get to the next memory dump.”

He backed up to lean against the wall, his arms folded, thoughtful. And for the first time I noticed how tired he looked. It was tough to tell with Jorgen, who always seemed so upright and solid—his dark brown skin making it harder to make out signs of fatigue like bags under his eyes.

“Jorgen?” I said. “You all right?”

“Things are tense here. We’ve found a way to protect ourselves—the planet’s defenses are fully online, thanks to Rig and the engineers.”

“Well, that’s good. You’re safe.”

“Too safe,” he said. “The galaxy is collapsing under the control of a tyrant while we’re hiding. I know we barely started playing on the galactic stage, but it feels wrong to hide. We should be doing something.” He grimaced. “It’s politics, Spensa. You would be indignant if you were here.”

“You can be indignant on my behalf.”

“I’m trying,” he said. “But you know how my parents are. I love them, Spensa, but…they’re partially responsible. They would have us keep hiding, hoping the enemy will just leave us alone. I know that will never happen. I knew it before you told me about what’s happening with the delvers.”

“Maybe my news will be enough to get them to listen.”

“Maybe,” he said, sounding entirely unconvinced.

I glanced around at the decor. I’d noticed that this wasn’t some standard DDF bunkhouse latrine, but now I saw more. Was that gold on the trim? White marble?

“You’re home,” I guessed. “Trying to persuade your parents?”

“I thought maybe they’d listen if I could talk to them outside a formal context. I should have known—they’ve arranged four dinners for me, all with eligible young women from the lower caverns.”

The rich caverns, he meant. The ones best protected from surface attacks. “Good thing I’m not the jealous type,” I said.

“Kind of wish you were,” he said. “If you’d swing by and decapitate one or two of them, maybe the others would give up.”

“Jorgen, please,” I said. “Decapitation is reserved for worthy enemies on the battlefield.”

This coaxed a full-on smile from him. He walked back up to me, and though we couldn’t touch, I could feel his mind behind me—and I successfully resisted the urge to probe his mind with my new talents. We stood there, looking, feeling, for a short time. Because it was all we had.

“You know,” I finally said, “I’m a little surprised to find out you don’t shower in your uniform. I half figured there was some outdated rule that required you to wear it at all times, or suffer one sixteenth of a demerit.”

“Wait until someone hears that I had a girl in the bathroom with me,” he said.

“I’m sure invisible girls don’t count,” I said, and felt myself start to fade. “Take care of yourself, Jorgen.”

“Same to you,” he said. “Consider it an order.”

I nodded, reaching for him. I felt like I got an armful of something—something that was him—as it all vanished and I was dumped back into the nowhere. His essence, like his scent, lingered—as did the picture of him in my head, half-shaven, weary.

Still, this was a success. I’d been able to find him again, and I was more confident in my powers. So confident, in fact, that I did something that might have been stupid. I went looking for the delvers.

Last time I’d dreamed like this, I’d overheard them engaging in an important conversation. Could I do that again? I quested outward, trying to capture the same…sensation as last time. The same location? It was wrong to think of anything in this place as having locations. It was more like frequencies or—

Something slammed into my mind.

It was you! Brade said. You were watching before. I told Winzik, but he didn’t believe me!

I tried to pull away, but she was better trained than I was. And she seemed to have some kind of ability to hold on to my mind in a way I’d never experienced before. I was like a fly in a web, buzzing about but held tight by Brade’s own mind.

I knew you were alive, she said. You did escape into the nowhere, didn’t you? Little cricket, sneaking about.

Brade, I responded. You don’t have to be like this. You don’t have to—

Of course I don’t, she said. You know what I hate most about you, Alanik? It’s that you aren’t willing to admit, even for the shortest moment, that I’m capable of making my own decisions. To you, I’m merely a misguided dupe.

Winzik is going to kill all the cytonics, I said. That’s the promise he made to the delvers. You know that. You’re the one who communicated the offer!

In response, she laughed. She either didn’t care or had some plan I didn’t understand. And…with my improving senses, I could feel a little more. That to her, my complaints were simplistic. Perhaps insultingly so.

She tried to rip my mind apart. But there was one thing I’d learned by sticking up for myself in the past: bullies expect you to fold.

I leaned into the fight. I didn’t whimper, or curl up, or back away. I threw myself at Brade with everything I had. Though I was formless, just a collection of thoughts, our minds could clash. Like two bursts of light throwing sparks. Two stars meeting.

She was trained. But I was ferocious.

Brade broke first, then fled, leaving me exhausted as I slowly faded into proper dreams, highlighted by half-shaven officers and epic journeys on sailing ships pulled by dragons.