Chapter 18 - Reparation

  In the dark, things usually felt less real. Like their shapes were dissolved into some ambiguous cosmic matter, and without them, in the stillness and the shadows, I could rest. Or think. 

  But not now.

  Now, as gears and locks ground into place through the powershaft’s door, the opposite seemed to be taking effect.

  Everything felt real and awful and dark, and the air smelt like fear and tarnished bearings. 

  Confirm system-wide shut down? There was a commanding feminine warning, then the slamming of someone’s fist on an interface panel.

  With a whirring-down noise I felt deep within my chest, every measure of energy inside the powershaft’s door died into nothing, casting wherever we were into an eerie, lightless silence.

  The only thing I could hear was Hector chittering nervously in the dark next to the pile that used to be my crate, but it was a small noise compared to the pandemonium inside my head. I knelt, fingering through the limp pieces of polyplast.

  Kan’s wristcuff activated. Blue-green light drifted softly to where I found a handful of dented coins among the wreckage of my belongings. Three black circles against my palm– like the mouth of the tunnel we had walked into, or like Covien’s three moons.

   Or like a cluster of Astrogates.

  My fingers closed around them.

  “We’re safe,” Kan said somewhere to my left, exertion in her voice as she leaned heavily against the wall. “They can’t get in without rebooting the whole damn door.” She caught her breath for a few seconds. “It’ll take… hours. We may as well be on the opposite side of Lisk… Gods, this air smells bad.”

  I looked up at her, wanting to do something– say anything– but nothing came.

  I twisted, instead, and the metal of the door scraped against my back as I pressed into it, sliding down miserably to the ground.

  “Evren, over here– there’s a stairwell.” That was Kan again. Who else would it be? “Come on.”

  My eyes traced a railing, and I finally made the connection that we were on a platform in a thin, vertical tunnel. Something buzzed in front of me, a blackened pillar that the darkness hid from view. The powershaft, probably, Smiley said, but I didn’t care.

  Looking back at my hand and staring at the only remnants of the seventy five Disks that the Passerine had given me, I wondered distantly if I should feel anger or grief. I knew I was never really going to get a coat, so that ruled out anger. Grief seemed strangely self-serving, seeing as I had decided to save Lewis hours ago. But still, something unnameable rose in the absence of a named emotion, filling the void with sticky contradictions to my earlier resolve.

  “Kid? Come on, we should move.”

  I looked up at Kan. She was standing in front of me. Her wristcuff was bright and brilliant and blue. Blue like Captain Rigg’s eyes. Blue like Lewis’s eyes. Blue like Covienian’s oceans probably used to be blue. Before the Sceliri. Before Gray Raven. Maybe the universe was blue before all the bad things happened. My hands clenched around the Disks, tighter this time. My hand started to hurt.

  “Evren?”

  Kan was kneeling, now. She put a hand on my knee, hesitantly, and Hector took the chance to flap to her shoulder. “What is it?”

  I looked up at her. I hadn’t realised I'd pulled my knee from her grasp, drawing both closer to me. “That thing, at the end of the tunnel. What was that?”

  Kan’s face remained impassive. She shrugged. “I… I have no idea.”

“Then what was it doing there? What just happened?”

  Kan hesitated, but not because she was unsure. “You heard Oli. Lev told Gray Raven that Oli helped you. They would have contacted him this morning– forced him into some kind of deal– something like that.”

  My hand found my throat, pulling the collar of my poncho away from where it threatened to choke me. “Oli… meant to betray us? But didn’t he help us?”

  Kan nodded, looking down at the key still in her hand. “He did both, and now we both live.” She looked at the large door in the blue light of her wristcuff. “Clever rat.”

  I clutched my chest, feeling the fabric of the poncho, fibres coarse under my grasp. All it did was remind me of where it came from. Who it originally belonged to. “He never should have helped me. I never should have asked. But in The Shaft, I was scared. Lev was looking for me. I-I panicked.”

  Kan’s face was tense as she looked down at me, worried, mad, or stricken– or maybe all of them at once.

   “And now he’s gone?” I clutched my fist tighter around my poncho’s strange wool. “Injured? Taken captive? What will they do to him?”

  Kan’s face morphed into grief, but I pressed on. I needed to know.

  “Is this how it’s going to be? Forever?” I ran a hand through my hair, pulling on it, painful and frantic. “The merchants. They just needed help. Lev was gonna to turn us all over to Lou. I couldn’t let him find them… so Oli hid us.” I bent my head, resting my arms on my knees and burying my face in the crook of my elbow, angry at Lev and Gray Raven for using so small a clue to find Oli– to find me. 

  “Gods, Kan… they really will use everybody, won’t they?”

  I buried my face deeper into the Scavenger poncho, worn and secondhand. I did not think of Web’s brother. I did my best to push him from my growing pit of guilt, but I did not succeed. “Lewis isn’t even the first person to go missing because of me,” I confessed miserably, giving into a thought I had refused to think for six phases as every reality that I had been avoiding cascaded down on my brain. “I couldn’t pull myself from the ship when it crashed. A man helped me, and his sister. Now where are they? Hunted by Gray Raven, too? Missing? Dead in an alleyway like you nearly were?”

  I didn’t cry, because there was so much movement inside my brain, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. But the grief built in other ways, finding avenues to express itself as my hands started to tremble and my voice started to break. 

  “Loose was wrong. Astrogate debris isn’t cursed.” I put my hands over my head, trying not to think of Oli, of Lewis– of anything. “It is a curse.”

  It was a long, long moment before I felt Kan sit down next to me. Even longer still before I heard her pull down her hood and take a shaky breath. “Maybe we’ll just… take a breather.”

  A long silence followed. Black occupied every corner of the powershaft, seeming to shift into nothing, spreading and receding like the ghosts on level forty.  

  Kan’s voice broke the silence like the expert touch of an engineer– soft and precise. 

  “When I was… very little… my tribe thought I was cursed. Well, to be more precise, they thought I was ‘an omen of evil sent by the Guardians for the sin of my father.’ Scavengers are like Avaiyyatains that way– anything impure they consider to be… less.”

  I lifted my head, swinging my gaze to Kan’s soft, teal-soaked face.

  Kan’s eyes slid down to my poncho, dark eyes tracing the Scavengers' tribal markings. Finally, she sighed, looking away as she rested her hands on her knees.

  “Everything bad was blamed on me. Every sickness. Every death. Every Echo attack.” She looked down, swallowing. “I believed them, you know. I really did. But, I had a half brother. He wasn’t mixed, but he was kind, and very, very stupid. And when he could, he’d take the punishments meant for me. And when he’d come home, I’d cry, cause I thought it was my fault.” Kan’s eyes were lost in a distant memory. “He told me the same thing every time. He said you can’t be responsible for the sacrifices people make for you. And that it was his right to stand up for something he believed in.” She looked back to me, face becoming firm. “You are not a god. You are not a Guardian. You are a girl. A person.” She made sure I was looking at her eyes. “Not a curse.”

  I wrapped my arms around my knees tightly. “But, Oli–”

  Kan cut me off. “All of Oli’s life, he’s been selfish. He’s hurt people. He’s screwed them over. He’s been afraid, like all Covienians are afraid.” She put a hand on my shoulder– steady, strong. “Tonight, he did something brave. He found a way to make the right decision work in a situation that told him that that wasn’t possible.” Her hand fell away, and her voice quieted. “Like I tried to do.” 

  “You got stabbed, though,” I reminded her, “And Oli was shot.” 

  Kan shrugged. “It happens.” 

  I thought about what she said as I looked back to the coins in my grasp, dark gaps against the bandages on my hand. Munted. Pressed down. Unworthy. “Will they hurt him because of me?”

  Kan hesitated. “If anyone can play their cards right, it’s Oli scriking Preastigat.” She scoffed, resting her head against the metal of the door. “That fast-talker could convince a Great Sine to sell its scales.”

  I didn’t want to laugh. I knew that this was the wrong place. But a small, weary chuckle escaped my lips. She was right– but the humour faded almost as soon as it came.

  “Thank you for shooting Oli. It was the right thing to do.”

  Kan shrugged, rubbing her marred half-Tironian markings on her neck. “Yeah, well, I owed him one. Now Gray Raven will think we got the up on him.”

  I frowned, remembering the metal dealer had slipped something into my bag. I put the three Disks in my hand into one of my pockets, and started to root through the grey satchel at my side. It took a moment to sort through all the other knicknacks, but I found the unfamiliar item and held it up.

  It was a pearl covered pocketknife, one I had seen him use to cut the Scavenger’s bindings with. Old, forgotten Covienian engravings were etched into the blade like filigree ghosts. I ran a thumb over its flat edge, feeling the coolness of the darker than usual metal. Memories stirred under the surface. They were not mine, and I tried desperately to ignore them, remembering all too well the sick, uncomfortable feeling that ability had given me when I'd encountered the Passerine’s table.

  “Be safe out there.” I echoed Oli’s words aloud, folding the knife open and closed. “What an odd thing to tell me.”

  “Like a pocketknife is gonna keep you safe from the Void at large.” Kan scoffed, finding Oli’s parting gift strange and amusing. “What are you gonna do with a knife when you get out to space? Mug an Astrostorm?

  “Could be worth a shot,” I sighed, examining the odd etchings. “Maybe it would give me my name back.”

 Kan rested heavily against the door– her weariness caught up with her as she also stared at the knife. “'Evren’ isn’t your real name?”

  I looked over at Kan, putting the knife away. “I lost all my memories in the Astrostorm.” I frowned. “You… didn’t know?”

  Kan looked at the shadows, eyes lost for a moment. “No, I didn’t even think about it, to be honest. Makes sense though. Evren is… a pretty dumb name, considering.”

  “Thanks.”

  Something creased across Kan’s features. I nearly missed it for the curiosity that it was. “Why did you pick 'Evren'? Isn’t that what Covien’s Astrogate department named the storm?”

  I wanted to make up something meaningful, but I wasn’t sure I had the energy to lie. I stretched my legs out in front of me, fighting the urge to fall asleep and forget everything that was happening.

  “When I met Lewis,” I started wearily, “he said that children were named by that which created them, and… seeing as I had no mother, I had to fill in the blanks with what I could.” I looked up at the ceiling. I could hear Astrostorm Evren’s thunder from across the long spans of time that had lapsed between now and the last time I saw it. The memory was bittersweet.

  “It was the thing that brought me to Covien. Gave me this strange life.” I looked down, the auditory memory fading away. “But it’s gone, now.” Just like my memories, I thought to myself. Just like everything from before.

  I heard Kan shift. “Were you sad when it ended?”

  I thought about what she said, then looked away. “No one’s ever asked me that.”

  “That’s a… shame.” 

  I studied the dark for a minute, thinking about how I could change the subject. “So you’re half Scavenger, huh? Not half Liskian?"

  Kan inhaled, then blew out the air like it was the words she didn’t want to say. She looked down at the concrete platform we sat on, bowing her head briefly as she consulted some part of herself. She pushed herself to her feet, dusting herself off.

  “My father died when I was young. He was a mechanic in the tribe, a damn good one. Like I said, my mother left me here after finding out how hard it is to raise Mixlings on Covien.” She offered me her hand with an indifferent shrug. “But I guess she’s gone, too.”

  For a small moment, I stared up at Kan, seeing more than just tangled markings and her stern, unhappy facade. For just a heartbeat, I saw a child that had been considered less because of their genetics, and had to fight with that their entire life. Suddenly, the aversion to me looking at her marks, her impassive stance on everything, and the general uncomfortableness around other people didn’t just hurt, it made sense. 

  Too much sense.

  I took her hand with a smile that I hoped was serious. “Then she missed out.”

  Kan’s mouth twitched in something like a smile, and she pulled me from the ground. “Oh yeah, I’m sure she’d be super proud.”

  I collected as much of my things as I could while Kan raided a supply closest nearby. She stuffed a few things in her dark bag and carried something over to where I swept through the debris of my crate. 

  “Here.” She dropped a thick, heavy knapsack in front of me, empty and sad. “To replace your crate.”

  I pulled it closer, moribund. “Not that I have that much to put in it, anyway.” A few posters had escaped the crush of the doors. My hat, the light bulb I stole from Surface Side, and a little string and bandages, plus a knickknack here and there. I searched around for more money, but it must have been on the other side, or worse, in between the slats of concrete that made up the door.

  I put my grey satchel into the larger bag, just cause I didn’t want that many things to carry, and I slung the whole thing over my head. It settled comfortably over my shoulder as I stared down at the tinders at my feet.

  Kan came and stood beside me, serious. “Should we say a few words?”

  I gave her a look, and turned to leave. “Don’t make it worse, please.” Randomly, I found myself feeling extremely grateful for her presence. Despite what Smiley tried to tell me, doing this alone would have been terrifying.

  She handed me a flashglow. “Here, I found it in the closet. Turns out the Bots store stuff in here for when they work.”

  I activated mine, and Kan put her hand up, squinting as light streamed into her eyes.  

  “Oi! Quit it!”

  “Sorry,” I said, and swung the light to the stairwell that Kan had found earlier. It disappeared into the dark, downwards, circling around the cylindrical powershaft like a cramped snake. I flicked my light to the huge monolith, studying it for the first time. In the light, I expected wires, or some kind of weird, settlement-sized battery. I took a step towards the railing.

  “Kan?” Another step. “You said no one goes in here because of the air, right?”

  “Well, the powershaft goes down to the old mines, so… I guess, because of the air…” she trailed away. She took an experimental breath. “It’s different, but we’re not dead, so…” Suddenly, she was at my side, looking up at the humming, black pillar. “What the hell is that?”

  Now that we had flashglows, we could look at what the powershaft really was. It was a tower, or a pillar of some kind. Not the scruffy tech and bad wiring of Lisk. No spools of unwanted wire and rusting brackets. It was smooth, and black, and now that I had my light on it, I could see strange, intricate engravings. Old engravings. Foreign and strange and not Scelirian.

  “What is this?” I asked Kan. “Those markings don’t look like anything I’ve seen here.”

  Kan leaned against the railing, examining the markings on what I assumed was stone. “Even if it was, why is it here?” She leant back, shaking her head. “This is supposed to be where Lisk keeps its power.”

  I turned to her, then looked at the reinforced door we had locked. “I think it still is. It’s just not how you thought it was stored. Look.” I pointed to thick red cables that came to the pillar and fed into the walls of the shaft. They weren't connected to the pillar themselves, but hung stiffly, suspended in mid-air as they somehow fed off the power from the pillar without touching it.

  “I don’t get it.” Kan stood under one of the cables, frowning up at it like it had offended her. “These red cables can power a level each. And they’re not even touching the damn thing.”

  The energy that was radiating off the pillar was almost nauseating if I focused on it, so I didn’t. I nudged Kan as I passed her, stepping down the stairs.

  “Come on. If those cables are what carry the power, then all we need to do is follow them, and Gray Raven will be on the other end.”

  And with them, Lewis.

  The dark of the shaft pressed in on all sides. The small flashglow I held in my left hand felt weak and feeble against the shadow that seemed to be wafting up from the deep, where somewhere, taps below us, the base of the pillar attached itself to the ground. Often, I found myself leaning over the railing of the stairs and looking down. I saw nothing. I heard nothing, but something about the dark below felt anchoring, and my curiosity grew with each step we took downwards.

  We passed two more platforms going down, but none of them had enough red cables going out to warrant how much power Oli had said Gray Raven consumed.

  Something passed on the wall. I stopped, going back a step and nearly bumping into Kan.

  “What’s that?”

   We both examined the huge grate. Darkness ebbed on the other side, but I could feel the telltale rush of air. Not fresh. But different than the rancid grease-laden air of the powershaft. “That leads somewhere,” I found myself saying, pointing at it.

  “Anything else you’d like to observe?” Kan queried flatly, stepping past me. She only made it a few steps before she turned her light off, quickly gesturing for me to do the same.

  I glanced at where she'd pointed. Two levels below us sat a platform like the one we came in on. Just like Oli had said, huge red power cables encircled the platform and jutted out into the wall, disappearing into tightly sealed holes like a few disembodied legs of a spider. I tried to count, but there had to be over a dozen red lines feeding into the wall.

  “Did you say one of those cables powers a level?” I hissed as she shuffled beside me.

   Wordless, she nodded. We both observed the humming mass of red cables, calculating. 

  Kan pulled out her wristcuff, activating it. After negotiating with the holographic interface for a few moments, a display appeared in the dim light. Grids, lines, and boxes all materialised under a little display of the Liskian ranges.

  I tried to smother a gasp with my hand, staring at the lines of information and realising it was just like the one Lev had. “Where did you get a map?”

  “I stole it off the Scavenger.”

  I sighed, eyeing the interface wistfully. “I didn’t even know they made maps of Lisk until today…”

  Kan made a face– it was strange on her normally stoic features. “Of course they make maps. How do you think anyone gets anywhere in this haystack?”

  I hesitated.

  Kan made a noise of agonised understanding, turning back to the map. “Oh my gods, that’s why you’re always late to work.”

  I grumbled to myself, focusing back on the projection as Kan toggled to where we were. 

  She pointed to long, rectangular squares stacked on top of each other just below the surface of the mountain. “This is Market Level, and all the other upper levels around it.” Her finger moved to a skinny vertical tunnel that ran down the side of all of them. A little dot appeared at the top– I assumed the dot was us. “And this is the powershaft. Where we are.” She dropped her finger, frowning at the map. “But that door shouldn’t be here because there is absolutely nothing connected to the powershaft on this side of the ranges, according to this.”

  I was staring at the gaping mouth in the powershaft wall below us. I wasn’t really sure why she was trying to find the secret evil lab on a government issue map. “I guess maps aren’t so great after all.”

  I ignored Kan’s eyeroll in my direction and started creeping down to the platform that had all the power cables feeding into it. I had to climb over a few while Kan merely had to swing her long legs over them.

  I peered around the corner of the entrance, finding a strange round mechanical door. I frowned. That wasn’t exactly what I thought the back exit of Gray Raven’s lab looked like. “It just looks like a door.”

  Kan must have heard the disappointment. “Did you want it to have a big sign on it that said ‘Astrogate survivors, no admittance?”

  I frowned up at her, but the anger was lost to her as she moved to a console set into the wall. Taking out her key, she swiped it over the grey screen and waited.

  Nothing.

 “When you… shut down the system- thing– that powered the door up there…”

  Kan was rubbing her face. “I must have powered down the entire security system.”

She exhaled a breath. “Dammit. No wonder no one has come looking for us in here.”

  I stared at her, voice high and squeaky. “That was a possibility?”

  She studied me. “Do you think Yessenia Istrati is the only one in Lisk to have a Scelirian access key? They will be trying to re-boot the system I shut down. It’ll take longer if it’s every door instead of just one, though.” She said the last part like it was a good thing.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Two hours. Maybe less.” Kan studied the door. “But after that...”

  I stared at all the power cables. “And even with the security system down, these can still connect to the power?” I knew they could just by their feel, but I had to ask.

  Kan nodded, and I looked back at her.

  “Well, I’m not, um, an engineer or anything. But maybe we could find some wires… or maybe a panel in the door… and find a way to get it open with–” I gestured to the nearest cable. “–this?”

  Kan eyed me. At first annoyed, then curious. She turned around, scanning the obstacle in front of her. “Well, yeah, if I can find the main switch and get the controller off, it would just be a matter of converting the power to–” 

  She spiralled into a conversation with herself I didn’t even remotely understand, and in a moment, the former head mechanic was on her knees by the console, wires sprawled everywhere.

  Great idea: Check. 

  Expertise to help: No. 

  There was nothing else I could do until Kan figured out the rest, so I found myself back at the grate above. It took very little for it to open– after, of course, I had found the lock and twisted it off. Metal squealed in protest as I lowered the heavy grate and let it hang against the wall sadly.

  I lifted up my flashglow, peering into the darkened vent. Years of dust coated the inside of the square shaft. In the distance, I saw my light reflect back at me as the vent turned a corner. I was at just the right angle to see that it turned towards the door that Kan was working on. I shared a look with Hector, who perched on the frame a few inches from my face.

  Interesting.

  There was something else that was interesting, too. Something that made me turn around and stare at the powershaft. It felt… like it was flickering? I wanted to test it, but I just stared, wondering why the feeling in my head was growing fuzzier and warmer by the minute.

  Kan was shining her light up at me, finally realising I wasn’t next to her.  “Evren, what are you doing?”

  I looked down at her through the gaps in the grate. “How much time did you say we had?”

  “Two hours. Maybe more.” 

  The realisation of what was happening hit me faster than the surge of power did. I was already flying down the stairs before Kan’s second question could echo off the dark shadows of the near-infinite shaft.

  “What’s–”

  I grabbed her arm from where she knelt, pulling her towards the stairs as wires fell from her lap. “Guess what? They’re connecting the door to something outside–” I gestured to the mass of humming cables. “They’re doing the same thing as us!”

  Kan's gaze darted around as we ran towards the vent. “There’s nothing that could do that in Lisk– how could you possible know–” 

  A purple emergency light flickered by the door below, expunging some of the shadows from the platform.

  Suddenly, the answer to that question didn’t matter, and Kan was running faster than me. She needed no explanation when we got to the hole in the powershaft’s wall. She dove into the vent, crawling furiously towards the end as I grabbed Hector from the ledge, shoved him in my bag, and closed the grate.

  The sound of locks opening echoed behind us, and distant shouts of displeasure followed. I peered behind me, straining to hear the sounds of people in the powershaft. Scavenger tongue and General mixed like oil and water, unpleasant and angry. Steps started to thunder up the stairs, and the power in the back of my mind died away. Strange.

  Heart in my throat, I struggled into the darkness with all my weight on my elbows and knees. It was suffocatingly dark in the vent, like the blackest night on Covien mixed with airborne tar.

  When I caught up to Kan around the corner, I collapsed next to her and pressed my head into the metal of the vent. “That was close,” I whispered.

  Beside me, I felt Kan nod in the dark. “How did you know the power was gonna turn back on that fast?”

  I hesitated. Would she believe if I told her I knew that they hadn’t just turned the power back on, but had got something else to power it on instead? I swallowed. “Just a feeling.”

  “Right,” Kan said at length. She looked behind us at the corner, where light emanated faintly from around the bend. There was shouting at the end of the vent: a question. “So I guess that rules out that door, then.” Her tone was light, but it couldn’t hide the panic as sounds of the grate opening echoed down the vent.

  Oh no.

  I urged her forward, refusing to freak out. “Then we find another door.”

  Kan’s whispered question came after about five seconds of awkward shuffling. “And if we can’t find another door?”

  I stifled a nervous chuckle as I crawled forward a few more spans, feeling around the edges. Nothing. I crawled forward, feeling along the next stretch, and was rewarded with the sensation of loose metal. “Then we make one.”

  Biting my cheek against the pain, I dug my fingers into the crack and bent the metal in.

Geodian ancestors, I thought bleakly as cuts started to form along my hands. Please do not turn your face from mine. The panicked plea had come from deep within my brain, but I didn’t have time to analyze them. 

  The panel bent upwards enough that I could see what was below us.

  Tall, imposing silhouettes lined the floor of a dark room below. The shadows appeared like strange blocks of black against the low powered security lights that buzzed softly below. Kan struggled up next to me, frowning down into the room.

  “Evren?” Kan said, worry in her tone as flashglows started shining around the corner behind us. Scavengers were checking the vent.

  I frowned down at the shapes below. Shelves, I realised, as my eyes adjusted. “Follow me.”

  I bent the metal downwards, making a hole large enough for someone to squeeze through, and swung down from the hole onto the nearest shelf. It was times like these that my body knew what to do better than I did. It’s true, I had my share of clumsy moments, but just sometimes, if I didn’t really think about it, I could toss a lightcore from a hangar in fifteen seconds, and swing from a vent to the top of a nearby shelf. My feet found the steady metal, but my body weight pitched forward in a dangerous tilt. After about five seconds of hand flapping, I was steadied.

  I blew out a breath, twisting to look back at Kan. “Hurry up.”

  “And if that thing hadn’t been safe to stand on?” she asked, emotions just as mixed as her heritage. Hector seemed to be asking the same question atop her head.

  “Then you would have had a very funny story to tell Lou Koval the next time you saw him, now come on!”

  Kan gave me a look that said she didn’t appreciate my tone, and lowered herself onto the shelf after me.

  We both wordlessly looked up to the hole in the air vent I had made, holding our breath. Distant sounds of querying people echoed around the cramped space– a flashglow shone around the corner of the vent. My chest tightened as I stared up.

  Two seconds. Three.

  Finally, darkness. Voices receded, and there was a distant slam of the grate being put back into place.

  Kan released all the air in her lungs. “Well, I guess that really rules out that door.”

  I nodded, turning to examine the space we had dropped into. I felt rather than saw the enormity of the room.

  A storehouse, I was certain, with a row of shelves to my left and another identical to my right, all facing away from me. We had climbed out on the middle row, and if I had to pull a number from the darkness, maybe two dozen shelves sat in each row before the warehouse terminated into a thick, reinforced wall, illuminated a strange, muted yellow from the security lights on the ground.

  Everything was so quiet. So still. Everything, except for a strange, distant rumbling I could feel in my chest.

  “Is this Gray Raven?” Kan whispered behind me, following my gaze as she readjusted her bag and rifle across her shoulder.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I gestured to the enormous space. “But there has to be a door in here.”

  Kan nodded. “If I have to crawl through another vent, I’m going home.”

  I nodded, like that was fair, but Smiley barked unhappily, At least you have a home!

  She meant it as a joke, I tried to remind Smiley.

  I knew this was a good way to escape capture again, but if I had to be honest, I was frustrated. Frustrated that it had been hours and we still hadn’t found Gray Raven’s labs yet. Frustrated that this detour meant we were farther away from them. That Lewis was no closer to being rescued, and I didn’t even know what time of the night it was, let alone when the Passerine was going to expect me before they left the planet tomorrow morning. I sighed unhappily, filled with anxiety even as I put my arms out to balance my steps. I found the end of the large shelf, lowering myself to my stomach to push myself off. Using the huge, hand-sized bolts on the shelves as footholds, it was an easy path to the ground. I looked up to make sure Kan was following me, turning my gaze upwards and catching sight of what was being kept on the industrial shelf.

  A face stared at me, hollow eyes inches from mine.

  My hands let go of their own volition. My yell echoed through the warehouse, terminated only by the heavy thud my body made when it hit the ground.

  Air abandoned my lungs in a rush, refusing to go back in. I was trying to cough, trying to get away, trying to think while I was distantly aware of Kan’s form hurrying down after me.

  “What happened?” She knelt beside me. Everything inside of me craved oxygen, but my organs refused it. I felt Kan’s hands on my arm, steadying. “It’s alright, it’s not the end of the world. You’ve just winded yourself.”

  I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at the shelf. I lifted a shaking finger, pointing behind her.

  She twisted around, then made a noise of understanding. “Oh, right.” She turned back to me. “It’s a Bot. They’re all just Bots. Calm down.”

  “Bots?"I wheezed, as the first little bit of oxygen started trickling painfully slow back into my lungs. I laid on the floor, greedily breathing in the stale mountain oxygen, feeling relieved and stupid all at once.

  “Are you hurt?” Kan didn’t offer me her hand, but for a brief moment, it looked like she wanted to.

  I stood, dusting off my backside and straightening my poncho. “It' no higher than the Port windows, I guess,” I choked out. “Well, perhaps a little higher.” My tailbone was a sore, but I was alive. More than what I could say for what had startled me.

  I looked up, staring at the unmoving form. It was a pre-Silent War Labour Bot, its oval faceplate pale and grey in the low security light. My eyes traced the rest of the shelves, adjusting to the dark.

  I wasn’t sure what I should look at first. All of the limp, hanging limbs, or the dead, lifeless eyes that stared despondently at the floor. Pools of dark pitch dripped in a steady beat off the shelves, leaking from holes hewn out from each and every chest plate.

  I looked down at the oil pooling on the concrete, then back up to the Labour Bot hung there like a strange, oversized doll, trapped and bizarre. 

  I failed to fight off a shiver. Do not think of Lewis.  “This is…” I turned in place, realising that every shelf was just like the one I was looking at– covered in lifeless Bots. DO. NOT. THINK. OF. LEWIS. “…Horrible.”

  Beside me, Kan was still staring up at the first Bot. “This is the Evaluation act.” 

  I turned back to her. I hadn’t heard those words for days– I had almost forgotten them. “The what?”

  Kan frowned solemnly, casting a quick glance around. “The Evaluation act. It was backed by Gray Raven.” She got on her knees next to a small stir-unit. “Del’s mechscrubber activated that first Bot– and Tri-Dock got involved, yes, but the Empirium has been trying to crack down on Covienian tech for decades.” She pried open a side plate and started pulling out wires, examining them and stuffing the good ones into her bag. “Something about how it all used to be Scelirian Artisentient tech, or something. And it’s old. Like… really old. And hard to mod.”

  Artisentient? The word took a moment to click into its more common meaning.  

  C-module robots. Intelligent ones. 

  I hesitated, clearing my throat. “Oh, well, I’m sure Dels mechscrubber would be happy to know that.”

  Kan eyed me from where she examined a gear pulled from the dead Bot in front of her. “I heard you say to Oli that you worked at Dels, where you there when it–” Her eyes narrowed, and she rolled her head, nodding. “Nope. What am I even saying? It was you, wasn’t it? Of course it was you.”

  I was rubbing my chest painfully, still trying to chase the ache away from being winded. “Everyone’s always so judgemental when they find out,” I complained in a mumble, turning back to the shelves. “You try working for Del. That Hauler Bot was the only marginally interesting thing about his shop.”

  It was then that I thought I heard a snap in the warehouse. My eyes darted behind me, but was only rewarded with empty aisles and dead gazes. I shivered, wondering if the ghost of the Hauler Bot would come to haunt me for what I had done.

  I gestured up to the metal corpses, intent to change the subject. “Why would Covien refuse to update their tech?” I asked Kan, who had moved on to a new Bot, and was unscrewing its arm for some reason. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

  If someone had offered to replace my old, janky Data Tab, I would have said yes. 

  Her chuckle echoed through the warehouse, bouncing off dead Bots and concrete beams. “Take a look around, kid.” She kept pulling out chunks of gears and unscrewing them into little piles at her knees.“Covien re-uses. And re-uses. Everything from mine crawlers to drainage pipes. Repurposed and made new. Lisk itself is a scriking Scelirian Kataton 5 refinery turned into settlement.” Her voice softened as she worked, gently proud. “How we’ve rebuilt… It’s who we are as a people. Taking that away is like ripping the Hatiresh off a Geodian.” 

  My hands found my two thin braids subconsciously, finding that mental image disturbing, but effective. “Oh.”

   “It’s these holes that confuse me, though.” She pointed up to the hole in chest plate of the Labour Bot, standing. “Do you know what goes there?”

  I would only scrub the little parts of the Bots, not the bigger ones. I shook my head, and Kan continued, spinning in place as she counted the shelves under her breath.

  “Kinetic power coils. The standard for Scelirian units– the one that changed Artisentient tech for the whole Kosmoverse.” She stood, readjusting her heavier bag across her shoulders. It fit well with her Scavenger’s garb. “I guess... it’s worth a little fortune if you know how to disengage it from a Bot without breaking it– which not a lot of people know how to.” Even Kan sounded doubtful of that explanation.

  I nodded to the Bots. “So what do magnetic coys do? Something like a battery, right?”

  Kan hesitated. “Kinetic coils,” she corrected me. “It’s a battery for a Bot. It’s the most expensive thing about them, aside from neurosynth connectors.”

  I thought about Lewis’s arm, folding my own. “Neurosynth connectors… The thing you stole Lewis’s arm for?” I asked.

  Kan had the grace to hesitate, side-eying me before moving deeper into the storehouse. “Uh, yeah. That.”

  I found myself looking at a triangular unit with five arms and a roller-ball for movement. It had little drawings on it, like a small child had scribbled over it. A household Bot, I guessed. Perhaps a part of a family. My eyes drifted to the hole in its side. I would not think of who else I would find in here. I would not picture his three little arms or chipped yellow paint. I would not make this hole deeper than it already was.

  I shook my head, following Kan.

  “It’s stupid,” I found myself saying as I walked beside Kan. “I wanted to make sure Lewis wasn’t taken away by this… It’s why I stole his arm back.” I watched my boots walk across the grease smeared floor. “Seems so silly that it lead to him being handed over to Gray Raven in the end.”

  Kan was silent a long moment as we both walked towards the end of the warehouse, the sound of dripping oil filling the silence like marbles rolling over glass. Smooth and wildly unpleasant.

  “I’m sorry about that, you know.”

  I looked at Kan, expressionless as I realised what she was talking about. Of course, Kan was looking at her rifle as we moved, avoiding my eyes like they  were poison.

  “Tri-Dock 61 asked Lou to relinquish some land he owned on the surface. He wanted to steal their Port Bot’s arm as a way of saying no. That’s why we took it.”

  I frowned. Oli Preastigat has said something similar when I was down in The Shaft with the Passerine– about everything just being a power game for Lou. I glanced up at Kan as we walked, then back at the hole in the ceiling we had climbed out of. I wondered what other power games Lou played on his mechanics. I thought of how he used Gary’s particle knife, not his own. He got Rin to throw my ticket from the railing, not himself. Got Kan to hold me down, instead of him…

  Kan glanced over at me, frowning at my expression. “What?”

  I looked away. Gods, how did she do that? “I… I was just. Wondering. About…” I couldn’t really say what I was really wondering about. I chose something else. “You said you had a sibling. Before, in the powershaft. What happened to him?”

  Kan’s eyes went a glassy kind of hard. Angry, even. Oh crap, I definitely should have asked my other question.

  “Two half-siblings, actually,” she said, unexpressive and stern. “I thought they were gone, but Lou told me so many things, and I…” She looked down at her gun again, frowning at its corners, angles, and edges. Not looking at me. “I just don’t know what’s true anymore.”

  “So your siblings… they could be out there? Not gone?”

  Her gaze sadly drifted to my eyes, then slid down to my poncho. “No. At least not both of them.”

  Something flickered in her gaze. A question she wanted to ask me, I could sense it. But it dissipated, replaced with a determination as she looked around the warehouse. “I don’t see any power cables, so we need to find one if we want to find a lab.”

  I tried not to feel frustrated again at our lack of progress as Kan went on. 

  “If we can’t, we’re stuck down here in a warren of warehouses that don’t exist on any map, and don’t have any evident exits–”

  She froze, grabbed my shoulder, eyes locked down an aisle of dead Bots to my left.

I swung around, tensing as my eyes flicked from the reflective surfaces of oily limbs and broken cables. The security lights flickered, casting the word in periodic flashes of pitch black.

  “What is it?” It was barely a whisper, but I had to ask.

  “It was…” Kan quaked out behind me. “I think I saw something.”

  “Well, what did you see?” I barely breathed the words out, eyes still scanning the floor, the roof, the rows of Bots.

  “A shadow.” Her grip on my shoulder tightened, almost painful. “We’re not alone.”  

  The chill that shivered down my skeleton was nothing compared to the scrape of images my imagination brought to my mind. Scavengers. Ghosts. That strange shadowy thing in the tunnel before Oli had handed us over. “What did it look like?” I whispered back, turning my back to her as she did the same to me. “Did it see us?” 

  “I don’t know…” Kan answered. “I only saw a glimpse. Maybe it was tall?”

  I heard a muted crackle– almost like a ripple charger. Was it to my left? Or my right? Panic started squeezing at my chest. Oh gods, it was that weird creepy thing! I hate weird creepy things–

  A clatter further up the row of Bots snapped my attention to that part of the warehouse. A moment later, the shelf next to us creaked in a low, drawn-out groan. 

  Wordlessly, the Mixling and I both took a step away from it. 

   I saw Kan glance fearfully at the dead end of the back wall, swallowing heavily. “We need to get out of here,” she said under her breath. 

  “Find a way out?” I queried above my rising heart rate. 

  “Find a way out,” she affirmed. “Quietly.” 

  She broke into a slow, silent run, and I followed suit until she came to the next heavy, Bot laden shelf. We took cover behind it, and I pressed my back into the shelf behind me, straining to hear any clue of sound in the black tapestry of silently dead Bots. Kan peered out towards where the clatter had taken place. 

  Behind me, a few shelves down, there was a squeak like metal turning in its place– or like a Bot turning its head. Quietly. Slowly. Intentionally. 

  The resolve I had felt an hour ago was dwindling down into a big pile of nothing. I shut my eyes, trying to picture Lewis– trying to picture Lewis being questioned by Gray Raven. Nothing can be worse than the Astrostorm, Smiley repeated in my head, nothing can be worse than the Astrostorm, nothing can be worse than the Astrostorm–

  Kan smacked my shoulder, and she nodded to the next row of Bots. I readied myself, and silently, me, Kan, and Hector all puffed across the aisles of lifeless robots to the cover of the next shelf. 

  I heard a metallic clatter in the darkness, just a few metres from where we had stood. 

  “It’s following us,” I hissed at the back of Kan’s head as we ran down an aisle of Bots watching us run with their greyed, lifeless eyes like useless, metallic witnesses. 

  “No scriking way,” Kan tossed over her shoulder, tone dripping with sarcasm even as she ran. She looked up at the fast approaching wall. “A door!”

  We both slammed to a halt at the end of the long aisle, Kan fumbling with the access key. She slid it over the panel. Nothing. No receding of metal or scrape of concrete.  “Oh, gods,” she swore. She slid it over the panel again. “Oh, gods.”

  The creaking was closer, in the shadows to my right. “What’s wrong? Why isn't it working!”

  Kan twisted to me, face as pale as Covien’s moons. “I think I shut down a lot more than just the powershaft.” Her pupils shrank in fear. “I think we’re locked in here.”

  The appropriate reaction to that statement was to scream, obviously. Instead, I had a better idea. A calmer one, which felt strangely clear in the panic of the situation.

 “Then we hide,” I said.

  We ran soundlessly to the closest row of Bots, and I hurriedly pulled myself onto the second shelf. I wiggled in between two Bots, finding their presence morbidly comforting. Even if I died by the hands of a creaking shadow, it would be in the embrace of the metallic companions I had come to know throughout my long six phases on Covien. 

  Kan was in the middle of pulling herself up after me, when we heard the creak again– louder, and closer. 

  I yanked her up by her shirt collar, genetics and adrenaline heaving the Mixling higher onto the shelf. If Kan was surprised, she didn’t show it. Like me, she tucked herself in between the two Bots, becoming invisible in the shadows, layered Scavenger clothing blending into the shelf like Kletisian magic.

  For about a minute, we perched there– our breathing becoming lighter and lighter as we started holding our breath. I was about to whisper a question to Kan when I saw the shadow of our pursuer, its silhouette framed by the flickering, emergency lights high above. 

  Squarish, and symmetrical. Its silhouette showed two track-like boxes at its side, as three long hands reached up menacingly above its head. Before I could even picture three-armed monsters created by Gray Raven to hunt me down, another three-armed creature popped into my mind.

Something far older, and much less dangerous.

  I squinted, my grip loosening on the shelf. It couldn’t be…!

  I was on the ground, running to the end of the aisle of Bots towards the shadow. 

  “Evren, don’t!” Kan shouted behind me, her stealth forgotten as she watched her companion speed towards the very thing that we had been hiding from. 

  I rounded the end of the shelf, breaking into the widest grin as I got a look at the faceplate of our pursuer. I couldn’t contain the joy from my voice. 

  “Zero!?”

  The small, squat janitorial Bot twisted to look at who had made the noise, making the terrible squeaking sound I had heard before. Its one, pitch black eye widened in its only version of surprise. A moment later, I heard its silent signal like a small nudge in the corner of my brain– a unique set of emotions and words that Zero had assigned me.

  Evren!

  I got to my knees as Zero sped over on his squeaky tracks and wrapped all three of his long, spindly arms around me as I flung my arms around the awkward shaped Bot. I held him firmly as if I was trying to keep him from being taken again, all the while laughing quietly. “Oh, Zero– we thought you were gone! We thought you were gone! I thought they’d taken you far away. Are you okay?” 

   Zero signalled hurriedly, Zero, Scared.  

   I nodded, pulling away and examining the Bot. “I know. Zero, I’m so sorry.” 

   Tri-Dock– Zero continued to signal, Tri-Dock update: individual performance suboptimal. Janitorial Bot: redundant.

The yellow Bot’s arms sagged on the concrete ground with a soft clink. No one needs me anymore. 

  I shook his frame firmly. It rattled. “Hey, now! Don’t talk like that. We need you! Me and Lewis. Remember when you caught that ticket thief by his toe?” I patted the top of the yellow Bot appreciatively. “Who cares what Tri-Dock says? They don’t know you.” 

  Zero’s one eye looked up from the ground, making the query signal for Lewis. Inside my head, the name almost hurt. I shut my eyes, hesitating. 

  “He’s… he’s not so good right now, Zero. We’re going to get him… but Gray Raven has him.” 

  Subject unrest. Cause: Gray Raven?

  I nodded. “You could say so.” 

  Evren: Safe?

  I paused again. I didn’t really want him to worry and overheat his processing core. Last time it happened, Lewis had to throw him out into the rain. I wasn’t even sure if Zero knew what Gray Raven really was. “Jury’s still out on that one, pal,” I said hesitantly. “We have to get Lewis out first, then I can go. Some scientists want what's inside his brain. So I need some help. I need you.” 

  Zero promptly stiffened his arms and drew the three hexagonal disks that made up his body straighter. Zero status: Ready for T-R-O-U-B-L-E. 

  With a chuckle, I stood, dusting off the little Bot. “Excellent.” 

  Behind me, Kan shifted. I twisted around, seeing her perplexed expression over her raised rifle. 

  I gestured to the happy janitorial Bot. “Kan, look who I found! It’s–” 

  “Zero-zero one; Tri-Dock's ancient janitorial Bot,” Kan interrupted me, eyes narrowed on the Bot. “Yeah, I know what it is. It used to scare me when I was a kid…” She shook herself from some bad memory. “Why was it stalking us? Why is it powered on?” 

  I turned back to Zero, raising my eyebrows. “Why are you awake, pal? Everyone else is…” I eyed the dripping, lifeless Bots around us. “Uh, sleeping.” 

  Zero turned, his two little tracks squeaking noisily as he did so. As he turned, we saw a dark grey electro-panel that had been slapped on the side of one of his hexagonal plates. It was dead. 

  Zero signalled, the only outward sound that he had was a short radial beep.

   I frowned. 

  “What’s it saying?” Kan asked behind me.

  “He’s just repeating his manufacture date,” I replied, looking at the electro-panel again. “And that he’s been stuck in here for quite a few Interphases.” I paused. “Alone.” 

  Kan sighed loudly, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. Kneeling down, she looked at the panel. Hector landed on her head again.

  “See. This is what happens when Kore world mechanics slap their ‘advanced tech’ on our Bots. This thing was supposed to keep him from powering up, but instead it kept him from powering down. Bunch of bin-brained morons.”

  I knelt down on the other side of Zero, putting a reassuring hand on his chipped yellow paint. “He was scared when we came in. He thought we were–”  I waited a moment, thinking maybe I had mis-read Zero’s signals. “Hang on, you thought we were people in grey?” I looked at Kan. “He said ‘grey ones’ come in and take things from the Bots every few days. He’s been hiding from them. It’s why he hid from us.”

  Kan raised her eyebrows while she pried the panel off the little Bot. “Scientists taking the kinetic coils?”

  “Back to the labs?” I added. A tight wad of helplessness started to form in my chest. “That could mean they’re close, right?”

  The panel on Zero’s side came away with a snap. Kan ignored me. “All right– there. That should do it.” She straightened, folding her arms and reviewing the Bot as it stared up at her, fixated. 

  Zero’s eye contracted as he watched her, then made another series of signals. 

  Kan’s one-word inquiry was flat and gruff. “What?”

  “He wants to know who you are,” I translated, tired. 

  Kan eyed me, minuscule tones of pleading in her voice. “Evren, it’s a pre-silent unit, it doesn’t–” She fell silent, deflating and looking away. After a few seconds of self-inflicted moping, Kan looked back. “Kan Oh’Krean. Bot mechanic.”

   Zero made a comment, and I laughed at him. My mood eased a little as I rubbed my face. “He thinks you’re pretty.” 

  Kan looked down at herself. She looked terrible. Pale and ashy and wounded, but slightly jittery as the painkillers worked overtime in cancelling out the gash in her side. “Fantastic. I’m so relieved the demented toilet cleaner unit thinks I’m attractive.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “We’re trapped in here. We can’t go back to the powershaft which means the only way forward is that door.” She pointed to the exit that was powered down, then looked around the Bots. “If I could find a power coil that hasn’t been removed, maybe I could hook it up to the door to…” She walked away, muttering to herself.

  Subject unrest; Gray Raven laboratories? Zero signalled. I realised he was looking at Kan.

  I put a hand on his top. “Yeah. We gotta find them, or else… Lewis stays gone.” I watched the Mixling fuss with some of the things she took from the Bots, wanting to help ease her frustration, but not knowing how.

  Is Evren scared? Zero asked.

  I nodded, slowly. “…Yeah.” I didn’t know if it was my brain, or Zero’s relay, but the Bot sometimes swung from speaking very unit-like, to speaking very informally, like an organic. It was almost like the more I focused on the Bot, the more he started to sound like a Data Tab systems read-out, and the less I focused on him, the more he sounded like… him.

  Zero was also afraid. Hide from the grey ones. Made me not afraid. Zero flexed a skinny arm. Cause of Evren unrest: need good hiding place. Zero share. Come.

  I hesitated. “You have a hiding place?”

  The yellow Bot pulled on my poncho, tugging me along determinedly, as he had done a thousand times before. I walked beside him, feeling the past follow me like a heavy, shy sort of ghost, murmuring breathy lamentations of the days spent in the Port, of the rare, laughter-filled sunbeams as they streamed through the high glass windows, and of the pensive games of Sines and Ladders which Lewis could never win. My chest tightened. I couldn’t push these memories away. I wondered if I’d ever want to. 

  Zero stopped where two corners of the storehouse met. It was nothing special. In fact, it was almost invisible. I would have mistaken the strange door for a computation unit of some kind if not for the unpleasant purple light emanating from a crack in the side. Noise pulsed distantly. Rumbling.

  Zero signalled, apprehensive. Hiding place.

  He pushed the unit away, and I found myself looking at a steep incline up to some dark, hidden room which was the source for the purple light. I frowned, looking to where Kan muttered unhappily at the door, trying to connect a few wires to its base.

  I sighed, following Zero up.

  It was more of a hallway than anything, inclining upwards with sticky walls and damp air until the tunnel structure gave way to a dark, cramped room. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a desk, low and small and not Covienian shaped, and an old mouldy seat. I frowned, looking at the things plastered to the walls. Charts and schedules, mostly. Some eaten by moths and rodents, others bleeding off the concrete as condensation wicked the colour from the parchment.

  An office, I realised, for whatever was stored in the warehouse behind us before Gray Raven turned it into a metallic mausoleum.

  Zero shifted beside me, in what I could only describe as a self-congratulatory outburst. Hide-out.

  I gave him a smile, feeling more weary than ever as I tried to figure out just how long Zero had been down here by himself. Waiting for someone to come. Waiting for someone to find him.

  “I like it,” I told the Bot. “I’ll give it a nine out of ten on the street urchin hide-out directory.” I shrugged at his relay of protest. “The only drawback is that there’s no Vending Unit to steal from.”

  Zero made a signal for his version of a snigger. Organic problem.

  In the corner where Zero sat, I saw  the strange, eerie purple glow of light. I moved to it curiously, finding a shuttered window, long since boarded up. Another office? Or a warning light, maybe?

  “What is this, Zero?” I asked.

  Screen people live down there, Zero signalled at the back of my mind. They get loud sometimes.

  “Screen people?” I echoed, more confused than I wanted to let on. I pried a board off the frame, kneeling on office papers scrawled in a strange kind of script. “That’s not a screen, Zero, this is a window.” When I stooped down and peered through, I couldn’t make sense of anything I was seeing.

  Purple. All I could see was purple. 

  This was confusing for more reasons than one, obviously, as purple was not really a thing and more like a colour. I blinked, wondering if I was finally losing my mind like Lewis said I would one day. Something fluttered passed my eyes. Bubbles.

I mentally steadied myself after realising that I was looking through a tank of liquid up against the window on the other side of the wall.

  “What in the…”

  I tried refocusing my eyes, looking past the fluid to see the warped, janky shapes of desks, tables, testing equipment, tanks, and then people inhabiting a room just as large as the warehouse at my back, if not larger. The thick glass in between me and the strange room below was the only thing, I presumed, that kept me and Kan from hearing whatever the hell was happening down there.

  Tanks, sitting low and filled to the brim of purple liquid, bubbled and popped as pieces of metal sparked as they were lowered in by chains and muffled yells by their operators.

  One tank in particular flashed a brilliant shade of magenta, blinding me as I stared at the rotating slab of steel that had looked suspiciously like a nav-console from a ship. When my eyes adjusted back to the light, the tank was empty.

  “What in the–”

  Grey clad figures gathered around it, holding time pieces and scribbling furiously on styluses and Data Tabs.

  Just as before, there was another flash, and the entire console had reappeared.  

  “What in the–!” 

  Zero was beside me, now, but he was silent. I looked at him, then back at the window. “What in all the dimensions of Ethreal are those tanks doing to those things?”

  A thought struck me, almost, one could say, like lightning.

  The tanks weren’t doing anything. They were keeping whatever that stuff was, in.

  My hands curled into fists. After six months of wondering what it might look like, I finally knew. 

  “Astrogate Debris.”

  Kan had much the same reaction that I did. At first, she was reluctant when I pulled her from the dead door, but after watching the strange proceedings in the room below, I was able to convince her that we didn’t need to find Gray Raven’s lab because Zero had already found it phases ago– and it was in the warehouse next to us.

  Kan had sunk onto the chair in the mouldy office when she saw the size of the lab, producing a terrible smelling burner from her bag and lighting it. The office chair creaked as she rocked back and forth, eyes glued to the slit by the window as the room filled with curls of gentle, blue smoke. 

  “That’s a big lab,” she said, for the third time.

  I was sitting on the ground. I nodded.

  Kan’s eyes flicked to mine before pulling in a lungful of smoke. “But it’s not big enough.”

  I hesitated. I had the same thought, but wasn’t sure how to articulate it. “How many of those red cables did we see out in the powershaft?”

  Kan nodded, a wordless confirmation to my question. She got up again from the chair, kneeling beside me with a small noise of discomfort. Eyeing the lab again, she shook her head. “There has to be more warehouse labs like this one. Or it just doesn’t make sense.”

  I turned back to the crack in the boards, eyeing the working scientists through a purple haze. I couldn’t stop looking at the tanks. What flickered inside them. How they seemed not all there. Ghostly, even.

  Kan was silent, still peering through beside me. Either a nervous tic, or perhaps just something to numb the pain of her injury, she went to draw in another breath of air from her blue smoldering burner.I wanted to say something about how they’d kill her one day, but my comment and her burner never made it to either of our lips.  

  Kan gasped, dropping her hand. 

  I swung back to the lab. At first, I had no idea what had caught her attention- there was so much to look at–  but a flurry of movement caught my attention near the edge of our view. 

  A tight bunch of about five Scavengers led a person through the warehouse – a prisoner of some sort. They were taken through the small jungle of cords, monitors, and machines with a bag over their head and their hands tied painfully behind their back. All I could see was that they walked with a small hunch– the way most old people did– and were wearing mechanics' clothing. 

  “That’s Kir Shaw…” Kan’s reaction turned to anger as I saw her fist ball into a knot of frustration. “Damn Lou!” she hissed. “The only reason he’d be here is to help crack Lewis’s encryption.”

  I watched the group carefully as they marched out of our view. I took a breath to ask a question when Kan held her hand up, shushing me. 

  With her head cocked, she listened. After about twenty seconds, we heard a large door open even through the glass of the window. Hinges screamed, old and metal. A second later, it shut.

  It sounded heavy. 

  Kan looked at me, wearing a marginally worried expression. “That sounds like one hell of a door,” she commented. “One that’s obviously not part of the security system.”

  I sighed, imagining a plethora of bolts, locks and bars on it. “And if that’s where your friend is going, Lewis must be behind it.” 

  Kan took a breath unhappily, pushing herself from the slit and sinking tiredly into the chair again. “Most likely. We just need to know more. Need to know how many people are guarding Lewis, if there’s any more close by, and how we’re getting out again once we have him.” She rubbed her temple with a mutter, using her other hand to hold her burner to her lips. “Also, I’d love to know what the Ethreal Gray Raven is doing with about two hundred odd kinetic coils.”

  I watched her from my place on the ground, Zero sitting patiently beside me with his three hands all clasped together. “We need to get into that room if that’s where Lewis is being held,” I found myself saying, sounding strangely sure and confident. “You turned the doors connected to the powershaft off, right?”

  Kan nodded, leaning back in the office chair with her head resting against her hand. “Yes.”

  “Could you turn off… more than the doors?”

  Kan leant forward. “Like what?”

  I glanced at the far door again through the murky liquid. Then at all the people.

  “The lights?” I gestured to the warehouse next door. “I can’t imagine a better way to find out what’s happening down there than when everyone’s panicking in the dark. I can sneak around unnoticed. Find out more."

  Kan twirled around in her wheely chair, thinking about what I said. “Those red cables need to be connected to a convertor to work,” she mused to herself. “Straight power can’t just be plugged into gear and equipment, they'll need a breaker room. I would need to find that room, get in there, find the right breaker…”

  I lent forward. “But it would be close to here, right? Oli said those red cables can’t run too far from the powershaft.”

  Kan nodded, wordless as she spun the chair around and around. I think the painkillers might have been wearing off. Or maybe the effects of giving her two many were finally kicking in. “How many people we’re up against. Where are the exits and how many of them are there. See if there’s anything that might help our escape.This is what we need to know.” She stopped her spinning abruptly, throwing her burner on the ground and bringing up her map of Lisk again. As I blinked away the sudden burst of light, she was studying it carefully. 

  “Look. We’re on the other side of the Liskina ranges, now. We may have started in Market Street, but I’d bet all my salt that they have a surface access for ships or shuttles on this side. See if there are ramps or stairs that way.” She nodded, as if to herself. “When you’ve found out as much as you can– we’ll meet back here. I imagine you’ll have twenty minutes before they switch the power lines to a back-up generator.”

  “Won’t they check for us? Here in this… weird office thing?” I asked worriedly, sparing a glance at the walls like they were listening.

  “Not unless you give them a reason to.” She rested her elbows on her knees, tapping her chin. “That just leaves one problem. How do I get out of this warehouse to find the breaker room?” She buried her face in her hands. I knew the action wasn’t petulant, just a better way for her to think in the dark. “The door is the only way. And I can open it with a little power, if I can find it– but I’m pretty sure they’ll know the door’s activated as soon as I do.” Face still buried in her hands, she exhaled. “That might not be a huge problem, depending on where the door opens up to.”

  Hallway.

  I looked at Zero, frowning as I relayed the word to Kan.

  She looked up. I thought she was thinking about Zero’s word as she gazed at him thoughtfully. “It still has it’s kinetic coil,” she mused, still eyeing Zero.

  I blinked at her, unmoving. “So?”

  Kan spread her hands, the chair squeaking. “I could open the door using its coil.”

  I put a hand atop Zero’s head. “How?” I didn’t need a lot of mental fortitude conger up images of the massacre of Bots in the warehouse next to us, all torn chest plates and broken limbs.

  “It’s not gonna kill him,” Kan said, pushing herself from the chair. She  knelt next to the small Bot, pointing to a panel right below one of his arms. “Behind this panel is the converter. It converts–”

  “Energy into usable electricity,” I interrupted. I had picked up at least that from all the mechshops I’d scrubbed at. I folded my arms. “I know.”

  Kan inclined her head, and went on. “Well, all we would need is to hook Zero up from his converter to the panel by the door with one of these–” she pulled out a brown wire from her bag and held it up. “Ten seconds. That’s all I would need.”

  Zero took the wire, studying it like a researcher would study a specimen. He looked down at himself, obviously in thought.

  “And after ten seconds?” I asked, unsure.

  Kan stood, leaving the wire with Zero. “Well, after ten seconds Gray Raven really would know that someone opened a door. But if the burst of power is short enough, it won’t show up as more than a power surge.” She hesitated. “And… if it goes on long enough, it might connect Zero to the powershaft and fry him.”

  “Fry him?”

Kan gestured, trying to get me to be quiet. “Look, either we risk what we have to get out of this storehouse, or we lose everything and stay here forever.” She spread her hands. “Take your pick.”

  “It’s not my pick to take,” I protested. “And I’m not risking another friend tonight.”

  “It’s not that big of a risk. If he fries, then we can just take his memory file like I did with–”

  “Being connected to that much power sounds like agony, Kan,” I interrupted.

  It was Kan’s turn to fold her arms. “Evren, only C-model Bots can feel pain, and even then, they can turn it off.” She gestured to where Zero had been a moment previous. “Just ask him how he feels about–” She double took the empty space, hands falling back to her side. “Where’s Zero?”

  Every muscle stiffened. I looked at the door to the office, heart shrinking. 

  “Oh no.”

  Kan was the first out the door, and even though I was practically on her heel, her gasp of horror was an entire five seconds before my own as we rounded into the warehouse and saw what our strange metal companion was up to.

  Electricity arced from the small janitorial Bot as his thin metal arms held Kan’s brown wire affixed to the door panel’s stripped back insides. I couldn’t tell if his squeal was pain or just raw, unbridled excitement.

  The door was grinding open. Inch by inch.

  “You moron!” Kan shouted at the yellow Bot as we ran down the length of the warehouse. “You were supposed to wait until we were ready!”

  “I think he just wanted to help,” I panted.

  “Doesn’t matter. Look, I don’t know how long we’ll be, but wait by the window. As soon as the lights go out, break the glass and climb down.”

 “You’re taking Zero with you?” I asked her as we ran.

  Kan made a noise of frustration. “I don’t think I’ll have a choice–”

  We caught up to Zero, who pulled the wire away from the door. I glanced at the opening. Dark concrete hallway stared back, empty– for now.

  Kan took only one second to examine the edges of the door before grabbing Zero and pulling him through the exit. “Now, close it, greasy gears.” It didn’t take a Kletisian to know she was very, very angry.

  As Zero, strangely enough, happily electrocuted himself again to close the doors, I watched Kan’s face, hard and darkened.

  “Remember, Evren,” she said. “The most important part about tonight is that we make sure that no one can use Lewis’s memories against you.” The door was nearly closed. “No matter the cost.”

  It slammed shut. Oddly quiet considering the chaos of the moment previous. Oil dripped from the shelves at my back. Metal skeletons leant in to hear my whisper.

  “I know.”

  I squinted at Hector, eyes watering. 

  The bug squinted back. 

  Finally, it blinked. 

  I pointed a cramped finger at it. “Ha!” I breathed out in a triumphant whisper. “You lose!” 

  Before Hector could answer me, I became aware of distant shouting coming from Gray Raven’s lab. I snapped my head up, pressing my eye to glass. Had Kan been captured? Did it work? The lights were still on, so I guess that was a no. For now at least. 

  The muffled yelling was coming from a small shaped scientist– a secodack, based on their long ears and limited stature– was stepping away from a huge tank on the other side of the lab. Their station was covered in electrical sparks. Soon, I saw the same thing happening to the other stations around the make-shift lab. 

  Before I could study anything further, the lights went out. 

  I blinked Oh, the power must have gone out.

  My eyes widened. 

  Oh scrike! The power had gone out!

  I picked up Hector and stuffed him in the hood of my poncho, and then with all the strength I could muster, tore off the remaining boards to the window. With little success, I pressed against the glass, feeling for a latch. Nothing.

  I took a deep breath, turned, and picked up the wheely chair. Sorry, Kan. With few, rapid breaths, I threw the whole thing into the glass.

Shards of glass, along with the chair, flung out into the tank in front of it, cracked its surface, and disappeared below. 

  After a moment of hesitation, I took the large, comedically empty satchel from around my shoulders and left it below the ledge of the window. I’ll be back for you, I told its contents. 

  I climbed through the window frame, careful of the glass and searching for anything that could slow my descent to the ground as the true sound of the lab hit me like a tidal wave.

  Scientists were shouting. Scavengers were running. The only light in the underground lab was the periodic flashes from the Astrogate debris, and the eerie violet glow like lightning from the towering tanks. The phasing light silhouetted the rushing figures in dramatic flashes, like a projection buffering– distorted and strange.

  My hands found the round shape of some kind of pipe attached to the wall, and I pulled myself from the window. My heartbeat and my brain and all the adrenaline rising in my chest told me that sliding down the metal would be a better idea than climbing down.

  When I reached the bottom, I realised all the reasons why it wasn’t. 

  My feet hit the ground with a jarring electric shock, and my hands burned. I took a moment to look at them, but couldn’t see a single damn thing. If they were bleeding, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. 

  I re-orientated myself, putting one hand to the large purple tank to my left and one on the wall, and started to run. Find Lewis. Find Lewis. Find Lewis. 

  I left the shattered window far behind me– using the wall to guide me to the end of the warehouse lab. I heard yelling coming from everywhere as I ran, like the very air inside the warehouse had grown a voice and was outraged at the interlopers that had faulted the power.

  “Where is the back-up power?” 

  “–will not last long without a stable flow of–” 

  “Who is in charge of this?” 

  The way of speaking, and the accent every voice was laced with, screamed Koreworld, and the sound of it made my skin crawl– different and poised and clean.

  My breath was coming in shorter pants. My legs ached. I realised how deceived I had been up in my perch. This room was much bigger than what I thought. 

  I ran past scientists that didn’t see me– even ran into a Scavenger that told me to watch myself. At any moment, the lights could come back on, and I would be recognised as definitely not a Scavenger. A poncho and Scavenger boots might make me look like at least a Scavenger’s child, but if they saw my face… there was only one person I could be– 

  Someone struck me. I was flat on my back. Who? Who just hits a person without warning? In the dark? why–

  Wait. No. Not someone– something. I struggled to my knees, using my hands to feel around in the dark. It was the wall of the lab. I had reached the end and ran into it. If my eyes weren’t watering painfully, I would have rolled them at myself as I stood. 

  The door that me and Kan had heard was already opened. I snuck through as three people to my right all argued about inflow currents and whatever the hell that meant. 

  One thing I would have loved would have been to actually see what was beyond those huge metal doors I had snuck through, but darkness hid all, even any potential exits.

  I found what I hoped was a stack of boxes by the inner wall and hid behind them, peering over the edge to get my bearings and adjust my vision. 

  Flashes of purple light like the ones in the other room pierced the shadows on all sides– but these ones were much, much larger. 

  Someone ran past. They were talking into a wrist cuff like Kan’s. “Bas is not responding. Get to the breaker room and drag his hide back here! We need to get the power back on or–”

  There was a crackle of noise. The man disappeared into the next room, voice fading away. 

  Whoever Bas was, I had a feeling Kan had seen to their demise. I shook away the thought, swallowing down my anxiety and standing on the boxes. Again, and again, I scanned the huge room. A crack of light on the opposite end of the warehouse told me there was a door there that opened out onto what looked to be a large tunnel street. I noted it down. Got ourselves an exit. Good. 

  I tried to count the voices, but there were just too many. I wanted to despair, then realised that was an answer all by itself. 

  Too many to count was too many to fight, said Smiley. A diversion is absolutely necessary. 

  There was something else in the room I couldn’t put my finger on– the terrible feeling of being watched. It was impossible, because no one knew I was in here. I took a breath, ignoring the feeling, as I searched the dark warehouse in a squint. 

  There was an odd glow in the middle of the room. It got brighter the more my eyes adjusted to the dark. I thought that was strange. Shouldn't have all the electrical things gone out?

  I was off my crate faster than a nanosecond as I realised what else would cast an odd blue glow like that. 

  I tripped over boxes,  climbed over crates, and stubbed my feet on about ten different machines– always careful to shy away from the glow of the eerie tanks of purple fluid. As I got closer, I saw a table like slab in the lowlight that had been propped up, facing away from me. Behind it was the source of the bionic blue light. 

  I scrambled over a thick knot of what felt like cables. My foot got caught. My heart beat was rising too high to think clearly, and I  started pulling at my feet. The darkness of the hangar hid all but the noise– the shouting– the demands to figure out who had shut the power down.

  I freed myself from the loose electricals, and I rounded the slab, looking up to see what I knew was going to be there. 

  I had been preparing myself, ever since Kan had told me about his capture– I told myself Lewis was being interrogated the only way Bots could be– but nothing really could prepare me for what I saw. 

  The two glowing vision sensors that usually sent a blue light down around his slender, metallic frame showed only the missing gaps in it– cords in every place cords could be connected– and even in places where they never, ever should have been.

  Chunks of his chest plate had been removed to expose the sensitive equipment that kept Lewis alive. Cables spewed out from under his neck. Everything was connected to about three different machines that encircled the slab like guards– keeping him trapped there like a bug pinned to the wall.

  I climbed up on the slab edge, pressing a small hand to a part of his chestplate that hadn’t been stripped away yet. He jerked away from the movement, but was unable to go anywhere from the restraints that kept him bound to the table. 

  Slowly, the blue eyes drifted down to where I stood, sending a blue glow over me and my horrified expression. 

  “Evren?” 

  I held my breath to keep myself from making any noise.

  Lewis’s synthetic voice was what made him an excellent servant Bot– it made him human, and approachable, and real. But today, all it did was convey just how much artificial pain he was in. I reached up, cusping a hand around his faceplate. 

  “Why haven’t you turned it off? The artificial pain?” I whispered, trying to hide my own.

  Under my touch, Lewis closed his eyes, sending us both back into darkness. 

  “They did something…” the robot rasped.  “I can’t.” 

  This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right that Lewis was here because of me. I didn’t care what Kan said about choices and other people’s sacrifices on my behalf. The fact of the matter was that without me, none of this would have happened. The thought tore at me, howled at me, made me sick. But it didn’t make it any less true.

  I knew if I went against what Kan told me to do, it meant my chance of getting out of this warehouse was a slim one. Who knew what could happen? Who knew where I would have to hide Lewis after this? Who knew what kind of phases were ahead if I got him out right now?

  I didn’t know– that was for certain– but then again, did I really care?

  The Kletisian pressed into my pants pocket, reminding me of a promise I made to a Fletric not even six hours ago.

  I ignored it for all the silent ones I had been making for six months.

  I took my hand away from Lewis’s faceplate and started pulling out cords from his body. One by one. Disconnecting them from the console just by feel. The units were dead, and there was no one to stop me.

  Kan was wrong.

  We didn’t have time for a recon.

  We only had time for a rescue mission. 

  The lights were a good enough distraction, I just needed to be fast. I just needed to be fast. Smiley did not agree, but I tuned its voice out, like I tuned out all the other noise.

  After I had pulled out most of the wires, I felt Lewis’s hand on my arm, stretched strangely so he could reach me under his bindings. At first, I thought he was trying to get up, but the touch turned into a weak shove. 

  “Go,” Lewis whispered, synthetic voice heavy with pain. 

  “I’m not leaving you,” I hissed at him, working a cable from under his neck. “It’s not your turn to be the hero.” 

  Lewis shook his head, trying to push me away again. “You don’t… you don’t understand…” the robot wheezed out painfully. “You need to leave!”

   I looked up at him, angry he was interrupting my attempts at freeing him. I felt the same feeling rise up my spine as when Lou Koval had grabbed my wrist. Suddenly, I remembered what I had survived to get here. I grabbed his faceplate in both hands.

  “Shut up, just shut up–” I hissed in an angry whisper. “If you think for a moment I am leaving you in this lab, you’re wrong!” The world was getting blurry. “Now let me help you, or I’ll get mad.” I started working a huge clamp from around his ventilation unit, ignoring the sickly feeling of warm oil on my hands.

  For the third time, Lewis pushed me away– and this time I had to step off the ledge of the slab to hold my balance. 

  “Evren, you don’t understand… this is what they want–”Anger, worry, fear- it all went into the pleading tone of his voice. “They have someone like you.”

  I took a step back, unable to even fathom what Lewis was saying. “What do you mean ‘they have someone like me?  Astrostorm survivors don’t–”

  “I never said survivor, Evren!” Lewis hissed weakly. His eyes flicked behind my shoulder, vision sensors going wide as he fought against his restraints weakly. 

  I didn’t even know what hit me first– the confusion of what Lewis had said, or the searing pain that pierced into my lower back, cutting across my nerves like a dozen jagged knives.

  For a nanosecond, I could feel something different– something other than pain as it pulsed up my spine and into my brain, crackling with a sensation of electricity and the raw, wild energy between the stars.

  Then everything went white.

  I didn’t even feel myself hit the ground.