Chapter Nineteen - The Servant

  There were so many bad ways that I could wake up on Covien, and I really thought that I had experienced them all. A sharp reprimand from an employer; a six-legged rat stealing crackers from my crate; a dust storm pouring in from the maintenance hole above my relay. 

  But today I was proven wrong. 

  Something like hot iron was poking itself into my ribs, and it ripped me from my subconscious with a violent slap. 

  I jerked upright, gasping for air. Pressure on my eyes and a firm resistance on my wrists told me I was tied to a chair, blindfolded. Never a good thing. I fought against the restraints with uncoordinated, panicked movements only to discover that every motion produced a weak parody of the pain that had woken me.

  What in Ethreal had I been tied up with?

  The pain at my wrists and chest eased away as I stilled, but I became aware of a deep, heavy rumbling— too quiet to be close, but too present to be far away. Something crackled on my left. Electricity? Or a liquid? Behind me, it sounded like a tank was filling up. Or was it being emptied?

   I twitched, twisting my head this way and that, lost in the dark behind my blindfold as the quiet cacophony of foreign sounds rose to a crescendo with a clicking, thrumming, and hissing.

  “Hello?” My raspy voice eased the itch of the unfamiliar sounds for a moment, but it got lost within its own returning echoes. Judging by the distorted reverberation, I was in a room much larger than the one I had been caught in.

  A different room, I thought with rising panic. A different room meant that I didn't know where I was. I tried not to hyperventilate— I tried so very hard— but an insatiable hole of fear was starting to form in my gut, hungrily gnawing at my brain like worms. Gray Raven caught you, a voice squawked in the back of my mind. Web warned you for nothing, you loser!

  I shushed the voice, out loud, and the sound helped me concentrate on the questions I needed to ask, despite the persistent clicking around me.

  Where was I? Where was my poncho? What had they done with Lewis? Was he gone? Was Kan safe? What about Hector and Zero?

  “Hello?” I shouted again, hating the grinding notes of desperation in the echoing replies. “Is anyone there?” The question bounced off  high ceilings and far-off walls, repeating the query back to me with a mocking tone.

  I wanted to shout for Kan. In fact, I was about to when I realised Gray Raven didn’t know how close by she was. At least, I hoped they didn’t. My mind scrambled over sharp, unpleasant thoughts, rushing towards me one after the other. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe they had caught her, too. Would she be able to talk her way out of it, like Oli? Thoughts of Oli sent me into a spiral of ache. 

  You got yourself into this, you can get yourself out. I pulled against the bindings at my wrist, ignoring the intense bloom of agony there. No give. I swore under my breath, jerking my head back and forth. The chair I was tied to rocked with me. I gritted my teeth, using all the strength I could muster to rock it from side to side. No one else was going to get hurt tonight because of me— I was going to get out of here.

  It took very little to tip the chair. Thankfully, my shoulder hit the floor first. My head followed, and the world went white for a bizarre two seconds before fading back to black. I tried to shake my head to clear the dizzy feeling, but that only made it worse. Okay, don’t do that. Just rest a moment—

  “You are…” a low, feminine voice intoned in front of me, “… nothing like what I pictured.”

  I looked around, awkwardly hanging sideways from the upset chair. I had heard no footsteps or door. “Who’s there?” I asked, because of course it’s standard procedure for bad guys to introduce themselves to me.

  A small silence. “You know, when Gray Raven asked me to hunt down a survivor, I thought it was going to be a challenge.”

  A sigh echoed through the room, loud and modulated.

  “Instead I got… you. No wonder you went under the radar for so long here.”

  I frowned behind my blindfold. The voice was strange, distorted even— like it was coming from a vocal simulator. “Uh, thank you?”

  “Only an Astrogate survivor would take that as a compliment.” Footsteps approached. Heavy boots, I thought as I felt a hand pick up my chair and right it effortlessly. The ropes around my chest and wrists burned with the movement.

  The blindfold was unceremoniously ripped from my eyes, but I saw no trace of my captor. The world became a murky-purple haze of dark tangled shapes and large, imposing pools of violet glow. Tanks as tall as towers rose on either side of me, the only light in the darkened space. They flowed down the narrow walls in identical rows to where an un-cut cavern terminated in a door much like the powershaft’s. 

  I looked down at myself, finding the source of all the burning and agony to be what looked like tethers made of light, wrapped around my torso and wrists to keep me as immobile. “What the hell?”

  A shadow shifted in front of me. My gaze snapped up— I could have sworn it wasn’t there a moment ago.

  I waited for my eyes to pull the figure into focus, but all I could truly see were the tables and machines behind it— which were the source of the violent beeping and the awkward hissing. Peering again at the black blur, I found my eyes instantly strained just trying to look at it.

  It was… untethered. Flickering. After a moment of painful concentration, I was able to make out a silhouette— waxing and waning— like a buffering projection that only became more solid the less I tried to gaze at it. 

  Its feet were clad in dark boots, which were fastened with strange, metallic strips to its pant legs. A cloak and scarf, coloured like pitch, hung from its shoulders, where a mask lurked within the dense shadows of the hood. 

  White eyes stared at me from the mask, glowing with an intense, warning kind of white. 

  It was the creature from the tunnel.

  I wasn’t able to hide my shudder, gazing up at it as it flickered.

  “Welcome to Gray Raven, Evren,” the figure said pleasantly, switching a heavy stone staff to its other hand. “We’ve been… so anxious to meet you.”

  I felt like something had been lodged in my throat. I wouldn’t have been able to speak even if I wanted to.

  “Tell me where the Mixling is,” the shadow started, tone sadistically calm and cheery, “and I’ll make the next few hours of your life as painless as possible. How does that sound?”

  I’d heard from the informationals on my Tab that the sentiency of a race was often measured by how the fear hormone was used in situations where escape wasn’t an option; a trapped rodent would use its fear to bite, while a trapped sentient would use it to bargain. I’d even heard that the Entrillian Research guild called this the line between Creature and Sapient. 

  To this day, I never knew where Geodians fell on that list because my general response to fear wasn’t quite either of those. 

  I swallowed, gawking up at my captor. “What in Ethreal happened to you?”

  The question took my captor back for a split second, but not enough to put it on its back foot. 

 “So aghast, little survivor?” it asked. The eyes flicked down to my right arm, which had been unbandaged. “That is ironic coming from you.”

  I blinked up at the cloaked figure, pushing down the rising itch to scramble away. “Coming from me? Ironic?” I tried to laugh. Tried to subtly pull on the restraints around my wrists. Tried to look around the cavern for a close exit. “I’m not even sure you have the right Geodian.”

  The apparatus of my captor had to be polymorphic— the glowing eye holes changed to show amusement, squinting an examination over me for a long moment. 

  “You’re so scared, you won’t even show it.”

  Slowly, it started circling my chair, heavy soles clicking against the concrete floor. “You ran into our labs thinking you could just run out again. Above the repercussions, and untouchable.” When she came back into view on the other side, a black, flickering hand was placed on a hip. “So typical of an Astrostorm survivor. You survived the unthinkable, so you have to survive everything else, right?”

  Typical Astrostorm survivor? I tracked its movements to a table, where it clicked through the pages of a monitor with unpractised, curious movements. What did she mean 'typical'?

  “I hate that about you all.” The distorted words were barely breathed out past the mask.

  Ask where Lewis is, something in my head shouted. I ignored it, watching the cloaked shadow unceremoniously flick through information it didn’t appear to be reading while twirling its staff. 

  “You’re no scientist,” I say with some certainty. “What kind of Gray Raven agent are you?”

  The staff hit the ground— an angry sound that only stone would make on concrete.

  “You’ve cheated death more than one time.” It turned to me. “I’d thought you’d recognise a reaper when you saw one.”

  That didn’t answer my question. I tried to shift in my chair without moving too much. “A reaper… like the Ferryer?”

  The figure let go a strange, distorted sigh. “Our jobs have very similar descriptions, I guess. She takes souls that do not belong to where they should. I do the same, just not for free. Now tell me where the Mixling is.”

  I blinked away the tiny beads of sweat that started to form and run down my face. “You must not be a very good reaper if you have to get me to do your job for you.”

  The reaper seemed to flicker in and out of existence. Suddenly, it was in front of me, face inches from mine without taking a step. “You are in no position to patronise me, survivor.”

  There was no way I could hide the fear in my tone, but I spoke nonetheless. “I am tied to a chair,” I told the mask quietly, “in a dark creepy cavern somewhere in Lower Lisk. I have no idea if my friends are alive or not because you keep pulling them apart and” —I raised my voice— “I’m hungry. Patronising you is the only thing I have left to do.”

  It withdrew, folding its glitching arms. “Why not give her up? She was hunting you all interphase, I hear. You’ve also been abandoned by your friend, the metal dealer, so what have you to gain from her staying hidden?”

  I wanted to ask what it had to gain from Kan showing up, but the masked figure went on. “That half-spawn broke Covienian law, which compels all citizens to give up Astrogate debris on pain of exilement from the Entrillian Empirium. She’s a criminal, little survivor. Why protect her?”

  I watched the shadow, unable to tell her just how wrong she was about Covien. No one gave a Tranquillian hoot about being in the Empirium. Saying you’d get exiled for disobeying the Empress was like saying you’d get candy if you defaced a Pantheonic temple. 

  After my silence lapsed into something unbearable, the reaper nodded to itself, genial tone dropping to a serious, soft octave. “I take my job very seriously, Geo. And yes sometimes it is retrieval, like the great Ferryer of old.”

  It straightened its heavy cloak, leaving the staff next leaning against a table. “But people make it complicated, and that makes me sad. Because it’s really up to them how uncomfortable they make my operations.”

  The reaper walked behind me and my chair, voice trailing into the cavern.

  “Those that help me, get rewarded with good, but people struggle to remember that one. Especially here.”

  There was a clicking sound behind my pillar, and then a noise of huge, wet sploosh.

  “You want to know what’s easier to remember? Those that hinder get rewarded with bad.”

  A dragging kind of noise followed the small silence.

  Suddenly, Gray Raven’s reaper was depositing something in front of my chair, and the dishevelled form of a notorious mechshop owner tried to raise shakily from the ground, wet and miserable as dark, hateful eyes met mine.

  “Lou… Koval?" I quaked out, looking back to the reaper. “But I thought he was helping you?"

  “Oh, well he tried—” intoned the reaper, leaning down and grabbing Lou’s wrist. “But I couldn't just do nothing after he broke his word and his head mechanic ran off after encrypting our prime witness to your survival." It produced a pair of cuffs from within its heavy cloak and cuffed Lou’s hand above his head on a table support nearby. “Hindering me isn’t going to get anyone anywhere good.” It patted the Covienian’s cheek a few times with a strange, almost see-through hand. “Let's hope your son figures that out soon, hm?”

  I gaped down at the man and his sinister, miserable stare, and Lou looked down from my eyes. Anger? Or shame? 

  It was then that I noticed the growing pool of purple liquid that spread out around him. With a terrible thought, I looked to the tanks lining the walls and their lilac coloured fluids.

  The tanks in the cavern were massive. Far larger than any of the tanks Kan and I had seen in the other lab. Dark shapes rotated dreamlessly inside them, electricity periodically striking out at the glass from the inside. They were bigger, perhaps more unstable, pieces of Astrogate debris. Had they thrown Lou Koval in a similar tank? In the same fluid?

  “But he’s not all a lost cause,” the shadowy figure continued, “because he led us to the biggest hindrance of all.” The reaper grabbed its staff again, pointing it at Lou as it sparked purple. “He’s the one that told us that we’d find a way to track you down in the port. That there was something there connected to you.” The figure turned to me. “And what did we find? You’ll never guess.”  The reaper spread its arms. “The reason for why so much of our Astrogate debris goes missing!”

  In the heavy silence that followed, it dropped its arms with a disappointed sigh.

  “Well, come on, a little excitement would be nice. We have been looking for… a very long time.”

  I inhaled, trying not to look at the mechshop dealer a few spans away. “I’m so happy for you.”

  The reaper shook its head, suddenly mournful. “Seems that you have absorbed some qualities from that robot.”

  I frowned at her. “Like morals?”

  “Like sarcasm,” it shot back. “Now. Look at him.” It pointed at Lou. “Now look at me. This is what happens when people waste my time, so choose your words carefully, and do not make me ask again, survivor– where is the Mixling?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know any Mixling.”

  The modulated voice from under the mask rose in anger. “Being snide will not get you what you want—”

  I looked around the strange lab. “And being threatening will get you what you want? Didn’t anyone tell you that you were on Covien? Fine. Go and torture Lou Koval. This guy nearly chopped my hand off a few days ago. What am I supposed to say? ”

  A second squeezed between us as the reaper stared me down, and I stared back at it. I knew the feeling inside my chest wasn’t courage, but giving up Kan after everything that had happened… it was wrong. And this creature probably thought that showing me Lou Koval like this would scare me into giving up my friend, but the only thing it did was tell me that if Lou Koval survived a swim in one of those tanks, I probably would to. 

  “You think you know a lot about this planet, don’t you?” the reaper asked, relaxing its shoulders as the silence dragged on.

  “I know more than you.”

  “Bet you didn’t know that you aren’t the first piece of debris to go missing here.”

  Silence filled the spaces in between the clicking and the whirring of the make-shift cavern lab.

  “Bet you didn’t know that Tri-Dock 61 handles the debris shipments out to our labs.” The reaper rubbed its chin, thoughtful. “And all the interplanetary travel has to be recorded in its registry.”

  “Actually, I did know that one.”

  “But you didn’t know who was in charge of the registry side of things, did you?” When the star-white eyes of the mask found mine, they narrowed. “No, I have a feeling that you wouldn’t be here if you did…”

  “What are you saying?”

  It ignored me, speaking into a cuff much like the one Kan had stolen. “I think our guest will be more comfortable in here, Bas.”

  Two large doors opened behind me. Wheels turned next, filling the space with the exhausted protests of metal on metal. Scavengers came into view on my right, wheeling a tall Servant Bot out on an upright, portable kind of table. The Bot was restrained up to his neck, but I had no idea why— the amount of cords and cables spilling out of him was enough to tell anyone that that robot wasn’t going anywhere.

  His chest plate was bare. Inside, I could see the two twin ventilators rise and fall as they tried to suck in air to cool the damaged parts of his chassis. Machinery twitched and ticked around something that most of the wires were connected to— his primary computation unit. It looked burnt.

  Emptiness expanded in all the places panic should have been. The two Scavengers deposited the slab about five spans to my right and instantly started to connect him to monitors and machines already set up and primed.

  I stared at the closed vision sensors, willing them to open as screens flickered to life next to him. One of them was a display showing lines of code and symbols that I would never be smart enough to understand. There were three different lines, all displaying something different.

  Lewis’s programming? Or… something else?

  The reaper moved to the Bot as the scavengers bustled around his slab. With a flourish, it gestured to Lewis.

  “Meet Gray Raven’s long sought-for sabatour; LW13.”

To say that my mouth went dry would be an understatement. On some level, I knew what the reaper meant, but my mind refused to put the pieces together.

  I stared at Lewis’s closed vision sensors for a second longer, trying to focus on the fact that a thin slit of faded blue was still visible.

  The reaper was watching me. I couldn’t look at the figure, but I couldn’t hide the stricken expression on my face, either. “Lewis?”

  “No, not at the moment,” the reaper informed me. “This is LW13, Tri-Dock 61’s port Bot— and Lewis is not its name.”

  It turned back to the Servant Bot, pearl coloured eyes narrow with contempt— but voice still unnervingly calm. “After Lou Koval helpfully told us that our connection to the missing piece of Astrogate debris was at the port, a very thorough examination of Tri-Dock 61’s systems uncovered a search string in the consoles that looked like someone trying to look up the location of a very specific ship number, about… six phases ago.”

  “That was me— not Lewis!” I protested. “He didn’t do anything wrong, he… he was just helping me. I made him do it—” I struggled against my restraints. “I made him do it!”

  The reaper shook it’ head. “No, you didn’t.”

  I looked between her and Lewis. “Yes, I did. I… couldn’t remember anything after the storm. I wanted to know where the ship was going and Lewis wanted me to leave, but I forced him to let me stay— he was a Servant Bot helping an Organic— he couldn’t help it!”

  Both hands went into its shadowy pockets as it circled around, appearing to be thinking deeply about something.  

  “Servants. Service. To serve…” it intoned, like it was testing the words inside its modulated mask. “What an interesting concept. You know, in the Kore, it’s often said that the Blue Fringe planets are the servants to the Empirium. Stupid analogy, but I guess it has its credence– what are servants but smaller vessels that serve the greater?” 

  I glared at the reaper. I had a feeling I knew where this was going. 

   “You’re a Geodian, aren’t you? You ever been a slave? Or a servant? Do you know what it means to be bound to someone else's will?” A glitching hand swung through the make-shift lab. “To be at the beck and call of a master? To have no self. To destroy parts of yourself, over and over and over— all for the sake of something greater?”

  Its voice echoed through the cavern, returning with sour notes. 

  “It’s hell, Geodian. Hell. At least, for an organic mind.” 

  A glitching hand knocked against what was left of Lewis’s chest plate. A solid thud echoed through the cavern. “That’s why we built Bots like your friend here; metal servants to the Organic, compelled, if not driven, to help, uphold and uplift in any way they could— but bound completely by their master’s law.” 

  I knew what she was saying. I already knew, because Lewis and I had been dancing around it for six phases— the one thing that never added up about him. Or me. 

  “Scrubbed footage, we also found at the port.” The reaper continued without taking her eyes from me. “Missing reports. Faulty accounts of why certain supplies were going missing. Inconsistencies that all pointed towards a certain something with the ability to change those reports. And when we tried to look up who might have made that search, all the data was gone! Wiped cleaner than a Nefnat’s nursery. Who would have done that, I wonder? Is it ringing any bells yet, LW13?"

  Lewis’s eyes fluttered at the words, but his head remained heavy on his chest.

  “Oh, that’s a pity,” said the Gray Raven agent with an air of sadness and a ripple across it’s untethered form. “But no matter. When we unlock that encryption, you’ll be able to tell us about all the other things you’ve hidden over the past fifty years. And all the Covienian laws you’ve bypassed to get in our way.” It patted the slab he was on, gently. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your masters at the Artisentient Unions will be dying to get their hands on how you’ve written your own code, over and over again.” 

  I could stop thinking about what she said. Couldn’t stop thinking about how angry Lewis could be about me staying on Covien. How panicky he could become when I would mention that I didn’t know where to go and wanted to stay. How strict he had been about not letting me come to the Port at certain hours. How obsessed he was with getting me to leave Covien from the very beginning.

  No. This didn’t make sense— if Lewis knew about Gray Raven before, he would have told me. 

  Right?

  My eyes drifted back to the Bot. His vision censors opened a crack, but they weren’t looking at me– weren’t looking at anything, really.  Something at his neck sparked, and he fell wearily to one side— eyes shut as his ventilator drew in air  laboriously.

  Salts of the maker, Lewis, I wanted to yell, why didn’t you tell me?

  My eyes found a figure standing just behind Lewis— A Koval mechanic, but not one I knew well. He had his hands bound, and his gaze fixed to mine. Messy grey hair covered a face battered by both workshop dust and time. Irises as dark as stone stared at me hollowly.

  This must have been the mechanic that Kan had seen from the window of the storehouse. I leant forward a little to get a better look at him, but he dropped my gaze. Not quite shame, but not quite pride. 

  The reaper nodded to the morose mechanic behind Lewis. “Well. You promised to do your best until we found your friend, so get to it.”

  The mechanic didn’t look afraid when he met the reaper’s gaze. He held up his cuffs wordlessly.

  “Ah,” said the dark form. “A man of humour.”

  After a small nod to the two Scavengers now standing guard, the mechanic was released, and I was left to watch helplessly as the Covienian started to work on Lewis, unscrewing yet another chest plate and revealing a different part of his kinetic coil.

  The reaper walked up to me, leaning easily against the back of my chair. The smell of heavy minerals and metal mixed in the heavy air as the figure drew close.

  “Because we can’t crack his encryption,” the reaper explained, watching the mechanic work, “I’ve asked wonderful mechanic Kir Shaw to pull apart his kinetic coil in hopes the power drop might cause miss Oh’Krean’s security programs to falter.”

  The agent pointed to a monitor next to Lewis— the one with all the strange lines of codes and symbols on it, which overlapped in some areas and glitched out completely in others. “You see that? That’s what happens when a Bot gets overprogrammed. Reprograming takes time and effort, and all that— but overprograming means slapping protocols right on top of the old ones like a subconscious soup. Much faster, I hear.” It dropped its hand, and I fought the taste of bile in my mouth. “Because of what that Mixling did to him, he’s stuck in his oldest programing right now, swimming around down there like an Organic, and looking like he’s not much enjoying it.” The reaper rubbed its chin as Lewis twitched— vision sensors closed tight. “I’m told it will actually get much worse—”

  My nails scraped against the metal of the chair's arm rests. “Stop it.”

  A hand gripped my shoulder, and the mask drew close to my ear. “Tell me where the Mixling is, and I’ll tell Kir Shaw to stop.”

  I stared up at the mask, trying to block out the noises of the mechanic working on Lewis. Trying to block out the blank, hateful stare of Lou Koval from his table leg. Trying to block everything out.

  “I don’t know where Kan Oh’Krean is. We split ways—”

  A laugh. Cold, like the void. It released my shoulder, painfully. “I’m sure a few minutes with your friend will jog your memory.” It glanced at a wristcuff that looked very similar to the one Kan had stolen. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  The reaper got the attention of the Scavengers in their native tongue. After an instruction, they both nodded, and the dark form left.

  The doors behind me creaked and slammed back into place, but briefly, I could hear the bustle of another lab beyond them— full of people and more hissing machinery.

  Soon, all that was left in the murky cavern was half a Bot, two Scavengers, a mechanic, and me. I gazed at Lewis. He had his eyes shut tightly, like he was trying to fend off some kind of bad dream.

  Giving up Kan wasn’t an option. But sitting here and watching Lewis get dismantled was also not an option.

  My gaze flicked to the unhappy mechanic. Kan seemed genuinely upset he had been taken, and judging by his face, so was he. I couldn’t remember what she had called him, though.

  “Will he be okay, Herus?”

  He looked up, and I think he might have answered. A Scavenger on guard turned to me and gave me a curt command to keep quiet. I didn’t know much native Scavenger, but I did know shut up— it had been relatively self-explanatory in the past. 

 To hell with it, and you, I thought with a glare as the Scavenger turned back around. I wiggled my wrists despite the burning sensations around my bones. I wasn’t going to waste the fact that the reaper was gone. With or without my hands, I was going to get out of this chair. 

   It was now or never. Geodian ancestors… I thought weakly, straining with all my might against the pain of the tethers. 

  Just as I thought the ropes were going to give way, something flashed across my vision. It made me hesitate, and I lost the concentration on my task. Frowning, I looked around to see what had caused the strange flicker of light.

  Nothing had changed. Machinery whirred, clicked, and beeped, and the mechanic still worked on Lewis under the Scavengers careful supervision, but nothing else had changed.

  I re-focused my strength on my bindings. Pain burned through my skin around my wrists, but there was no smell of burning flesh or heat as I moved around. It must have been an electrical stimuli prompted by the strange tethers of light, not actual heat causing the pain. It was contorted and cruel, but smart; a normal prisoner in intense agony whenever they moved would be less likely to attempt escape, I guessed. 

  Again, as I thought the tethers were going to snap, something flickered across my eyes, blinding my vision for a full five seconds. I exhaled angrily, looking all around the lab to see where the light was coming from.

  It was only then that I saw the scarf draped high off the edge of a behemoth tank. I frowned, craning my neck, and just as I did, a flicker of light flashed next to it. 

  The scarf disappeared, and the face of Kan appeared where it had been, peering over the edge of the tank.

  I looked at the Scavengers, checking to make sure they hadn’t seen the Mixling. After I was certain they were absorbed in their task, I looked back up at Kan with a relieved grimace. 

  Took you long enough, I wanted to say. 

  She pulled her arms out from under her, and signed long sweeping gestures that I could see from across the cavern. 

  You. Stay.

  I frowned helplessly, looking around all the machines that surrounded me. I couldn’t sign back, but I hope she could see the look on my face and rightly translate it as where the Eth would I go?

  Kan made a motion for me to calm down. I took a breath.

  I. Have. Plan. Behind. Door. She pointed to the huge round door at the end of the cavern I had noticed earlier.

  I nodded.

  You. Stall. Distraction— Kan signed. Twenty Minutes.

  Wait. I think it was the motion for twenty. It might have been forty. No, wait, maybe it was the motion for light?

  Kan saw the confusion on my face, and she started again, making just two more motions.

  Wait. Stall. 

  My lip quivered, but I nodded courageously. With no reaper to watch me, I found out being scared was painfully easy now.

  Kan looked like she was going to sign something else, but ducked behind the edge of the tank before she could. I heard the doors slam against the wall behind me.

  “—without them, this settlement becomes a distant memory in no one’s history books.” A male voiced boomed around the cavern, thick with a Koreworld accent. “Either you find me more kinetic coils for the tanks, or you re-connect the labs to the powershaft.”

  The reaper answered as footsteps came closer— calm in comparison to the first voice.

  “Lord Entris, with all due respect, reconnecting the labs to the powershaft is the most asinine thing you could do right now with the Koval mechanic still missing. The—”

  “You would do well to watch your tone—”

  “You would do well to listen to someone with experience.”

  Two figures rounded on my right, argument dying away. The first was the reaper, carrying her stone staff loosely in her hand, but the second person was new, and he was surprised. 

  He had red, shoulder length hair, and short pointed ears. A lab coat that had a brushing of soot and dirt near its edges draped over a short, but well-built kind of humanoid. Grey, rolled up coat sleeves revealed pristine, pure-blooded Tironian markings that pointed downwards, not upwards like Tarik’s, and dark round glasses rested in his hairline, reflecting the flashes of light from the tanks around us. 

  The Tironian was looking at my arm, frowning like someone regarding a price tag that seemed a little too low to be true.

  A scientist, I realised. An Astrogate scientist. 

  He turned to the reaper, closing a book he had been previously writing in. “The Scavenger said it was a Geodian survivor.”

  “This is a Geodian survivor. They’re not so big when they’re young, you know."

  The scientist moved closer, looking at my hair, my markings, and my scars— anything, I noticed, except my eyes.

  I leant away from him, but over the scientist’s shoulder, I saw Kan. She noiselessly jumped across to a tank farther down the row, and pulled herself into an open vent. It shut with a distant clack, but within the cacophony of noise around the lab, it was but a drop in an ocean.

  The Tironian that the reaper was calling Entris brought his iron coloured eyes back to my arm. They reminded me of Tarik.

   Suddenly, I felt incredibly small. I swallowed, wishing that I was back with the Passerine helping in the engine room more than ever.

  Closer still, the Tironian studied the patterns along my well restrained arm with a small head tilt. He had a book open in one hand in an instant, and he was referencing it with a studious expression.

  I tried to calm my heart rate by holding my breath as he drew nearer. It didn't work. I caught the scent of chemicals and a smell like tar, and it threatened to suffocate me.

  “This is more than impossible," the Tironian breathed out. "Six phases after the fact, and here it is… still alive…" He looked at the scars on my throat, frown deepening. 

  “'It's' a she," I snapped, leaning away from the Tironian as far I as could. “And she does not want to be here—" Within my fear, I struggled to find the little bits of courage that were left. “You-you need to let me go. Isn’t this… really illegal in the Empirium now? You-you can’t just take people.”

  The Tironian straightened. Looking at my face, but again, not my eyes. "How long has it been tied up here?"

  “Three hours," the reaper replied. “She tried to break the Bot out after you left— just like I anticipated."

  Three hours? I thought in a panic. I'd been unconscious for three whole hours? 

  Entris nodded, looking at my Geodain marks, then my two thin braids on either side of my face. “Yes, you often say that Astrogate survivors are pathologically loyal... This one still has cultural practices. Odd considering the memory loss…" Absented-minded, he picked up the end of one of my braids.

  I couldn't breathe. Something very rigid, and very ancient, and very angry boiled over inside me. For the first time, I gave into one of Smiley's suggestions without thinking.

  I bit him. 

  The Tironian's hand tasted like bitter chemicals and Rusty Ris’s  grated soap, but I bit down hard, anyway. His startled cry of pain was perhaps more satisfying than anything I'd ever heard.

  He dropped my braid, jerking away as his notebook clattered to the ground.

  I spat what little blood I had got in my mouth, unable to look away from the Tironian’s eyes— which were now glued to mine. Fear and curiosity mingled in the scientist’s gaze. 

  I wasn’t sure what scared me more.

  The reaper leant against its staff, a few paces away. “I think you’re getting through to her, Lord Entris,” it remarked, amused. 

  The Tironian looked down at his hand, ignoring the reaper beside him, then to me. Then to his hand. 

  Slowly, he turned to his companion. “Are you sure this is the right Geodian?”

  The reaper straightened, equally slow. “Are you questioning my ability as Gray Raven’s reaper?”

  I laughed. It was the fear of the moment mixed with the bitter taste in my mouth. “You know, if you let me go, I won’t tell anyone about this mix up. In fact, I’ll help you look for the real survivor. I’m really good at finding things. Have you tried The Shaft? They love it down there—” 

  “Enough,” the scientist snapped. It felt validating to at least get an emotional response from him. 

  “I…" He took a step back, rubbing his forehead. “I need Sobayashi.” He gestured to the two Scavengers on either side of Lewis. “I need doctors Sobayashi and Venericus." Entris instructed them as they left, and they walked past me, this time warily.

  Good, Smiley thought.

  The reaper rested its long stone staff against Lou Koval, sitting on the lab table next to him. “You can’t just test for the type. You need more information about the gate she came from.”

  The Tironian shot it a look as dark as the lab, before turning back to me like I was a puzzle that had been bothering him for hours. “If I must not question you, you cannot question me.” 

  The reaper shrugged, picking at a thread on its glove. “Fine.” There was something strangely feminine in the action. 

  The scientist was moving around, so I turned my attention back to Entris. Lewis had always told me it was rude to stare at people, but I figured this was an exception to the rule. As the scientist studied me, I studied him back. 

  Kan wanted me to stall. How exactly did I do that?

  The Tironian looked down to write something in his book. I cleared my throat loudly, getting an idea. 

  “Are you going to tell me your name now, or are you not allowed to talk to the specimens?" I asked.

  The scientist was unreadable as he looked up at me, apparently not effected by my patronising tone. “I am Lord Remillian Oseo Entris— House Entris, of the first patrons of En— I am the lead scientist for the Astroportralis division of Gray Raven run by Vakara Au'lune. I need to know how much you remember from the Astrostorm."

  I blew out a breath. “Wow. Do you… have to rehearse all your names in the mirror?”

  He ignored me, voice calm. “Do you experience hallucinations?" 

  The question took me off guard. I dismissed Smiley’s vibrant retorts as I turned to look at a rumbling tank, trying to see inside it. “No. Do you?”

  “Have you always been bad at lying?"

  I made a face at him. “Have you always been this good at questioning people?”

  “Can you remember anything before the storm? What sector it was in when you entered? Or perhaps how old was it? A year? A decade? A phase?"

  “You have an entire warehouse full of Astrogate debris." I looked at the behemoth tanks all around us, all glowing and humming and rumbling with their unstable contents. "Why don't you ask those pieces of debris your questions?"

  The scientists shifted. "Those burns on your arm; how did you get them?"

  Stubborness was growing like summer weeds in my thoughts. Dangerous weeds.

  "Toaster accident," I replied. What was a toaster? I still didn't know. It felt right to say, though.

  “Interesting.” 

  “Can you ask her where the Mixling is while she’s being so cooperative?” the reaper asked from the table where it swung one leg back and forth restlessly.

  Entris ignored the sarcastic remarks of the shadowy figure, and glided to a monitor near my chair, fingers tapping lightly on it. The light tether around my chest constricted with the action.

  Before I could even look down at myself, my thoughts shattered like glass, and something arced across my skin. It didn’t hurt, per say, but it produced an entirely different kind of sensation that I had no words to describe, all coming from the places where the light tether wrapped around me— like needles being dragged across my nerves. Strange and electric and totally, totally wrong.

  Just as I thought that I was going to fade out of existence, it stopped. 

  I sagged against the tethers, failing to draw in the breath I thought my body needed. 

  “Let’s try this again,” the scientist said, leaning down, and speaking softly. “Survivors don’t last as long as you. So either you came from a unique gate, or you aren’t from one at all. You’re readout also doesn’t match any of the other debris that’s been studied for the past hundred years. So it will be hundreds of years of research against my word."

  Covered in sweat, and shaking badly, I looked up blearily at the Tironian as he continued.

  “That means I have to be very meticulous when someone like you appears, claiming to be a survivor." He put his hands on his knees. “So. To properly prime the machines we’re about to connect you with, you need to tell me some things about the storm, or else this is going to be very painful for you, and very time consuming for me."

  I frowned, looking up as my teeth chattered together loudly.  “How about… you go stuff yourself in an Astrostorm… then tell me how you feel about it?” 

  The second wave of agony was almost instantaneous.

  “Still nothing to say?” the scientist called Entris asked after I had caught my breath. “Please think this through.”

  I recovered a little faster the second time, and I was thinking it through. Apparently, they were going to test me with something. They needed information about Astrostorm Evren to make the test work. If I didn’t give it to them, it would stall their progress. I swallowed down bile. This better be a damn good plan, Kan.

  “Yeah.” I said, weary. “I do.”

  The scientist opened his book. By the time I had the strength to look up again, he had his pen at the ready.

  “You smell really, really bad.”

  The third time the light tethers activated I knew it was because he was angry.

  The scientist walked away, and I watched him as beads of sweat ran into my eyes. Despite the warmth of the light tethers, I was freezing. I wanted my poncho back. If they hadn’t thrown it away, I thought glumly. 

  “She’s right, Lord Entris,” the reaper said from the table. “About you, I mean.”

  The scientist looked up, as if gathering strength. “I do not need you here spectating. Isn’t there some poor helpless thug you should be disembowelling for information?”

  The reaper made a face, polymorphic eye holes contracting in a scoff. “Please. I’ve already done my bit.” It patted Lou Kovals head. He glared at the cloaked figure, too weak to speak. “It’s up to the locals to do their bit. Otherwise, it’s all on you.”

  Before I could ask my question, two other scientists walked in with a handful of Scavengers. The first was a Light Geodian, like Xander, and while she was also very beautiful, her companion stole all my attention.

  Long, thrice-jointed legs covered in a thick red exoskeleton attached themselves to a slender torso, from which two sets of skinny arms protruded, all ending in a kind of claw. The head was more flat than round— almost like a disc— and four eye stalks grew from the top with black, gleaming, bead-like eyes. They turned this way and that, studying the room, and eventually, me. 

  The second, thinner pair of arms straightened under the first. Perhaps it was surprised. 

  This particular scientist made the Covienians in the room look like they were all average height. I didn’t even need to bring the name of the race to mind, because I had one in my pocket. 

  An Orthropian. 

  I think, under different circumstances, I would have been overjoyed to see one of the shallow ocean dwelling race in real life, but seeing as the two scientists saw me and both assumed what I thought were looks of disbelief and fascination, my emotions were swiftly replaced with fear.

  Entris saw them enter, beckoning them further into the darkened lab. “Prime the machines. We’re testing for type one.”

  The tall, crabby Orthropian nodded and turned to a machine at the back of all the tables, working at it without a word. Ever so often, I saw the eye stalks turn upwards to me, then back down to its work— but other than that, it was remote.

  The Geodian, however, walked up to Entris slowly— almost timidly. “Lord Entris, type one doesn’t have the characteristics of the other debris from this storm. It might be better to—”

  Entris snapped his attention to her. “If I wanted consultation of my job, Doctor Venericus, I would have asked for it from Sobayashi, not his assistant.” He nodded to me. “Prime the subject. We start from base one and work our way up.”

  I started to get a little uncomfortable, and it had nothing to do with the argument. The scientists were moving, now. Messing with machines and clicking things on and off with practised motions, like they had done this dozens of times. It didn’t take a Kletisian to know that something was about to happen.

  I shifted despite the pain around my chest and wrists, testing the bindings again. I couldn’t help but look at the vent where Kan had disappeared. This would be a good time to rescue us, Kan.

  Lewis always had a solution, and even when he didn’t, he’d find a way to make any disaster bearable. What would he do now? What should I do? 

  I gazed at him across the lab. Lewis had barely even opened his eyes twice since he was wheeled in. I thought about what the reaper had said— that he was swimming in his own subconscious— reliving memories from past designations that were from so long ago he’d never even mentioned them.

  Many a time, I had wondered where Lewis had come from. He said he was bought by Tri-Dock 61 from a pre-existing company long before the Blue Fringe War. He also said he couldn’t really remember anything before that. I assumed all those memories were gone. It had made me feel better about myself.

  But looking at him now, it didn’t look like they were gone. It looked like they were still very much there. 

  Lewis moved restlessly as the mechanic worked on his kinetic coil, twitching his left arm violently like he was pulling it away from something sharp. Was it the memory of Kan stealing his arm? No, that seemed too recent…

  I didn’t notice the strange shadowy reaper next to me. It took all my energy to stop myself from starting as it leant down so I could hear her lowered tone, as she too, gazed at Lewis.

  “Most would have given in by now,” she mused, gesturing easily to the Bot. “I thought because LW13 was your only companion here, has known you the longest, and has genuinely tried to keep you alive at great risk to himself, that you would be compelled to end this torment he’s in.”

  I didn’t look at the mask. Instead, I looked at one of the colossal tanks to my right. Purple electricity struck out at the glass intermittently, raging at its glass confines.

  “Still? Nothing to say?” it asked.

  “No.”

  The voice was as calm as pond water. “You’re wasting your conviction, survivor— there’s just nothing left for you to protect. I know that Mixling is around, and by the time this night is done, she will be in my custody, and she will do as I say.”

  I scoffed. “Good luck getting Kan Oh’Krean to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

  It straightened, looking down at me. “Who needs luck out in the Blue Fringe? I have something far more dependable.”

  I stared up at the mask now. I hoped I didn’t give away just how scared I was. If Gray Raven pulled Lewis apart there was no guarantee that I could drag him to a mechanic to put him back together again. Then again, there was no guarantee they weren’t going to load me onto some ship after this test and just take me away. If I gave Kan up, though, that wasn’t a guarantee of her getting caught.

   It was just information, right?

  Damn you, Kan, I found myself thinking bitterly, why couldn’t you just save us all now?

  The reaper saw my hesitation. A small nod to a Scavenger next to the elderly mechanic. There was a pause in his actions— a terrible, terrible pause— and then he pulled something out of Lewis’s chest, a cord that sparked as it came free.

  The Servant Bot shivered, opening his eyes. Tools and detritus fell from his body as he struggled to get away, pulling against the restraints like he had just realised he was tied up.

  “Ah,” the reaper said, glancing at one of the monitors hooked up to Lewis. “Without the sedation line, it looks like he’s reliving an old memory right now. Bringing em’ out of low power mode like that can be dangerous, I hear.”

  I watched as the seven foot Servant Bot writhed around on the table, unable to move under the restraints, but also unable to be still. “Isis?” I heard him ask weakly. He looked at the mechanic foggily, still pulling away from him. “Has she come back?” he asked, manic energy in his vocal simulators. “She said she would come back for me—” Lewis pulled violently on the restraints against his chest, weak metal hands clawing at nothing. “She’s coming back. She said she would!” His tone was one of fierce anger— a tone I had never heard before. 

  A tone I was sure wouldn’t comply with his servant module.

  “I could ask the mechanic to take off his arm again,” the reaper said. “We don’t actually need that. Just his memories.”

  A hot, burning sensation rose in my throat, and it had nothing to do with the light tethers around me. “I don’t know, please don’t do this to him. I don't know where Kan is.”

  The reaper turned fully to me. “But you do know something, don’t you? Some plan or meet up place you two had? Some hide-out? You couldn’t have run in here without a plan, so what was it?”

  I shook my head, trying to ignore Lewis’s protests at being let go, at being put back together, at being left behind as he yelled in a voice that didn’t even sound like his own. “No, there was no plan,” I choked out. “I changed the plan. I promise—”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  I spared another look at Lewis. Kan could be merely minutes away from her plan. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t— I couldn’t- I couldn’t—

  There was too much hesitation. The reaper nodded again to the mechanic. “His right arm, if you please, Mr. Shaw. I think it’s time he matched his patron survivor.”

  “No!” Before I could even gather my strength to fight against my own restraints, everyone except me turned to where the door behind us slammed into the wall like a thunderclap.

  The cavern was filled by the sound of someone being pushed forward suddenly. “I don’t know anything— let me go! I told you I don’t know anything!”

  I straightened in my chair, eyes wide. The only other person who recognised the voice was the mechanic called Shaw. His aged face contorted in shock, gazing listlessly behind me.

  “Well, what do we have here?” the reaper asked easily.

  A Scavenger’s voice responded, fast and respectful. “A good-will offering from Kovals' Engineering, Heri. Someone who meets the criteria of what you were looking for.”

  I watched as two Scavengers approached on my right, holding a long-legged, ganky Covienian between them, a bag over his head and his hands tied painfully behind his back.

  “How fortune has smiled upon me today… Gary Lome. In the flesh.” The reaper stepped towards him and ripped the bag off his head. “Prime wiring and neurosynth mechanic for Kovals' Mech Engineering. Hmmm. Yes, you just might do.” The figure discarded the sack on the ground with a casual flick of her wrist, examining Gary like he was a roast it was considering for purchase. “I hear it’s a prestigious position for someone so young.”

  Gary blinked painfully, swinging his gaze around before finally landing on the reaper before him. Then, and only then did he shrink back towards his captors.

  I hadn’t realised how well I had handled seeing the strange creature for the first time until I watched Gary do it— coal eyes wide with mortal terror.

  The reaper folded its glitching arms. “What message have you brought from Kovals', Mr. Lome?”

  Gary had recovered enough to straighten as best he could. “I bring no message,” he corrected with fear in his voice. “I don’t know what Kan did before you killed her.” 

  The reaper nodded. “Oh yes, yes— you and the head mechanic were friends. Good friends, it looks like. I see now how you can be useful.”

  Gary looked around imploringly and caught sight of Lou Koval, tied to the table leg and sagging against it limply like a loose bag of marbles.

  “Lou…” Gary mouthed the name as he looked at his once-terrifying employer. I thought he’d look more upset at the state of the mechshop dealer. “Lou!” he shouted, “Tell them I don’t know anything! You know I don’t know anything. I can’t do anything for them.”

  Lou Koval coughed once, looking back down at his purple soaked legs as the reaper laughed.

  “Oh no, it wasn’t that Koval who traded you in.” It nodded towards the door they had just entered through. “It was that one.”

  Gary turned to the sound of footsteps. Everyone did, actually. They approached to my left, and the silhouette of a dark coat stepped into view. A scarf wrapped around his neck to hide bruises, and limp plaguing his right side. I knew exactly how he got it.

  Xander Nemshensi’s crutch.

  Lev Koval spared me one glance as he walked into the lab. I expected hatred or malice, but all I got was a look so emotionless I could have been staring at a mop.

  Gary fought his captors, trying to get at Lev. “You bastard! You know I can’t do anything! Why do this? I’m your friend, Lev. Your friend.”

  Lev had his hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed as he watched his friend struggle. “You’ve never understood what’s at stake, Gary.”

  Gary fought even harder. “Lev, please! I can’t help them! They’ll kill me—” He spared a look at the Scavengers next to him, then back to Lev, lowering his voice. “Lev, please,” he repeated, quieter this time.

  Lev looked away. His eyes met the reaper’s, brow taut with emotionless grief.

  “Lou Koval for him,” he said, voice even. “Gary Lome is the best of the neurosynth mechanics we have. He worked closest with the Mixling and Shaw. In exchange for my father, you can have them both.”

  The reaper nodded, reviewing Gary, who now had the fortitude to glare at her. “Is that so?” It turned back to Lev. “I admire your foresight then, master Koval.” It gave him a small clap. “It seems you’ve managed to hand me most of Kan Oh’Krean’s closest associates.”

  Lev didn’t look at Gary. “Will you release my father or not?”

  The reaper sighed, pushing the sound through her dramatic distorted helmet. “Well, I mean for a prize such as two of your finest mechanics, I see no reason to refuse you.”

  Without much ceremony, Lev turned to where his father rasped for breath. Kneeling down, he uncuffed the Covienian from the table and draped one of Lou’s arms over his shoulder. Supporting most of his father’s weight, he stood—  the scent of poison slowly wicking into his clothes.

  “You’re in control here,” I heard a new voice say. Everyone looked to where the elderly mechanic was putting down one of his tools. “Lev, don’t bow to these worldenders. It isn’t our way! Take Gary back with yo—”

  “Quiet,” the reaper demanded, and one of the Scavengers struck the mechanic, silencing him.

  Lev’s face contorted in something I wished was anger, watching the elderly Covienian hold his side painfully.

  The mechanic looked up, wheezing through gritted teeth. “He’s thrown in his lot with the Echoes, boy. You don’t have to pull him out of their pit.” The mechanic was struck again.

  Lev looked down, his clothes already saturated with the toxic purple still dripping from the Covienian beside him. He said nothing, only turned slowly to the door.

  The reaper moved to block their path. I watched as Lev averted his gaze from the Koreworlder, his concrete-coloured eyes finding the equally time-worn floor.

  “Make sure that Kovals' Engineering never interferes with Gray Raven again. Or twenty minutes in a lilac tank will compare with nothing to what Gray Raven can do to you.”

  Lev’s eyes met the reaper’s, bravery lasting only a second. “It will be as you say.”

  Silent, the reaper let them pass, and they disappeared— Koval and son. 

I wondered if Lou Koval would make it to Surfaceside. Then I wondered if I would feel sad if he died.

   I wondered if anyone felt sad when a monster died. 

  The reaper clasped its hands together in a smack, jerking me from my thoughts as it turned to Gary. “Well, well. What an exciting turn of events.” Pearly coloured eyes took Gary in, almost relishing his presence. “Neurosynth specialist. Maybe we don’t need that Mixling, after all.”

  Gary’s courage had been awakened by the sight of the Kovals leaving. He glared at the shadow. “If I could reverse what’s wrong with that Bot, Kovals' would have sent me down here first. No one can undo what Kan Oh’Krean does.”

  The reaper dismissed him, gesturing for the Scavengers to uncuff him. “Oh, don’t be such a nay-say. No one likes that.” It gestured to Lewis. “I think Lev was saving you for the last resort because he knew that a primary wiring specialist should be able to navigate an encryption with ease.”

  Gary looked at me, full of misery. He looked terrible. I mean, his nose was still purple and blue. (I guess that was still my fault.) His hair was worn and ragged, and his eyes were full of desperation, like they were when Lou Koval asked for his particle knife.

  I wondered if given another chance, Gary Lome would give it again. 

  He looked down. Maybe he was wondering, too.

Then, a look of pitiful defiance entered his face as he studied the reaper. “And what if I don’t want to?”

  The reaper stilled, putting a hand to its chin, and looking like it was genuinely thinking about it. “Well… fair point. Let me see… what would happen if you didn’t do as I said?” It clicked its fingers, as if it just had a brilliant idea, and pulled something out of its heavy cloak. 

  It took a heartbeat to aim it at the older mechanic and pull the trigger.

  The Pulser shot dissipated into the old Covienian’s shoulder. The short-lived clatter of tools he was holding hit the ground before he did.

  Gary leapt to the writhing mechanic as the reaper put the weapon back in its cloak. “Yeah,” it said pensively, “I think something like that.”

  I watched in horror as Gary dropped to his knees and held the old man in his arms. “Shaw! Shaw... no!”

  The reaper nodded to the Scavengers who had brought Gary in, and they lifted the younger man off the ground, leaving the mechanic on the concrete. Shaw was breathing through gritted teeth, I realised with a half-cry of astonishment, but it was fast and shallow.

  Gary fought even harder against the Scavengers now. “You monster! Don’t you have a soul?”

  “Not anymore, it seems,” the reaper said. It gestured to the older mechanic. “Now, I think that you can get him to a Poc if you fix the Bot in a timely fashion.”

  In between the light-coloured Scavengers, Gary’s look was dark and sombre, but he dropped his gaze to the ground after a pained nod; just like Lev, in some way. 

  “Fine. I’ll… I can try my best.”

  The reaper sighed contentedly. “Now there’s the Covienian spirit I love so much.” It motioned to the Scavengers, who shoved Gary towards Lewis and then grabbed Shaw, hauling him heavily to a nearby machine and cuffing him to it. 

  Everything had happened so fast, I hadn’t noticed the dark-skinned Geodian standing a few feet from me. She had watched the proceedings with absolute fascination, and maybe a little bit of concern, her Tab clutched close to her chest. 

  Entris shot her a dark look across the lab.

  “Venericus. Enough spectating.”

  She looked me up and down, standing close. Discarding her Tab on a nearby table, she took a coil of yellow cable from a humming machine, unrolling it silently as long white rows of impossible tidy braids fell off her shoulder. Each Hatiresh was adorned with a single, silver bead, and tied off with a blue band that matched the startling cobalt hue of her eyes. Her entire person spoke of elegance, and wealth.

  The thought left a bad taste in my mind, like a moth-filled cracker. Mixed with what had just happened to that mechanic and what was about to happen to me, a bitter emotion surfaced in my chest. I glared at the Geodian.

  “Nice Hatiresh," I said, forcing her to look up. “Is there a bead for every person you've kidnapped?"

 The look she assumed was horrified. It didn't feel as satisfying as I thought it would.

  The scientist took a moment to collect herself, rallying her courage and coming to stand next to me, dark hands unravelling the cord methodically.

  She smelt like chemicals, too. Sweet, fake chemicals that reminded me of the flower I had down in the Warehouse District.

  “What are you doing to me?"

  It still seemed like the Geodian was too scared to speak. I thought about biting her, but decided against it. She hadn't done anything yet to warrant Smiley's punishments—

  Something pushed down on my head, and a sharp, needle-like pain exploded at the back of my neck, lodged in my spine, all before I could even react.

  Gasping, I saw the assistant step away, possibly fearing for her hands as she held them close to her protectively.

  It hadn't been fear on her face, it had been concentration!

  I tried to twist around to see what she had done, but it was no use. Angrily, I examined the yellow cable that ran over my shoulder to on the ground, leading to the machine that Entris was inputting numbers into.

  "What the Eth was that?" I shouted, trying to use the chair behind me to rub off whatever implement she had stabbed me with. All that the extra pressure seemed to do was push it in more, and I cried out in a mix of pain and frustration. Bite her! Smiley shouted, but she was too far away.

  I looked towards the large, round door, still writhing around in a pathetic attempt to get the cable off. Kan, I pleaded. Please, hurry. Acid-like panic started worrying away at my bones, at my back— at the place in my neck where they had attached the wire. 

  I looked around for anything that could help me, suddenly aware of the possibility that Kan wasn’t coming back— that she had run. Wait– no, she wouldn't. She said she was going to help me— but I couldn’t stop thinking it.

  Entris was talking again. I only heard the words distantly as I pulled helplessly against the ropes around my wrists— against the pain at my neck. Kan is too late, Smiley shrieked. Or dead. Or Gone. Or perhaps she came to her senses and stowed away on a ship, heading to a far planet without Gray Raven. That wasn’t fair— that was my plan!

  Entris said something to Venericus. “Type one differential.” I could see his lips move, but I couldn’t hear the words. Grim faced, maybe even sympathetic, the Geodian turned to the console next to me. It made a grinding kind of noise as she flicked a switch.

  “What’s that—”

  Ah. Questions. They’re usually a good way to stall. Machines don’t listen to questions, though, and especially not the one connected to the back of my neck.

  Something like a bolt of energy slapped into my heart. Scathing white stole the world from my eyes. The light tether had been discomfort, like being hit on the back of a head with a brick. But this? This was a planned, surgical kind of agony carried out by the intentional needle of energy, science, and electricity. Everything pulsed down my throat and into my core, hot and uncomfortable like whatever the reaper had hit me with.

  I knew I wasn’t holding my weight anymore. I also knew I was yelling or something, but that didn’t make sense because I didn’t have the energy for that, so it must have been someone else in the lab.

  Just when I knew that something inside my soul was about to simply come undone, every torment terminated into a soulless, tuneless ringing in my ears.

  Mercilessly, everything went silent.

  Without the ropes around me, I would have fallen to the concrete. Instead, they cradled my limp, lifeless body like well intentioned jellyfish arms, stinging and itchy.

  Voices rose in a cacophony of arguments. Someone ran past my chair. Everything felt and sounded so far away that I genuinely felt, for an impossible moment, I was somewhere else entirely.

  But then my ears popped and the ringing came back, and my limp, shivering body was thrust back in between a world of purple gurgling tanks and spooled wires.

  “Who the hell stopped the test?” a Koreworld accent shouted. A name drifted into my murky thoughts. Entris.

  Finally, I heard the call that I didn’t even know I was waiting for.

 “The power just cut— Generators three and seventeen are dead!”

  When I felt like I could move my limbs again, I straightened, trying to ease the discomfort around my bindings. 

  Blurry shapes dashed too and fro. The warehouse seemed darker now. Less units hummed with anticipatory energy. Scavengers were rushing this way and that with scientists that leapt past from the lab behind me.

  I saw the mask of the reaper, listening with slitted eyes to a worried Tironian. Entris pointed at the doors, the last half of his argument bleeding past the ringing in my ears.

  “Screw your operations! Two more generators is all it’s going to take for this lab to implode. Find that fault, or Vakara’s lab will be a relief to what happens here.”

  The black waning figure stood, nodded to two beige blurs, and disappeared with them towards the large, round doors at the end of the cavern.

  All I could think as they walked away was Kan. She must have stopped the test. This must be her doing. She told me to stall and to wait, and that’s what I was trying to do, but if they started those machines again, there was no way I could promise to not give into whatever they asked of me.

  That terrified me.

  Shapes were coming into clearer focus. Scientists were moving from one behemoth tank to the other, checking small units attached to their bases. Greasy smears of oil covered a panel in each one, like something dirty had been loaded in not too long ago. I frowned at it, lifting my head higher.

  “How do you feel?”

  I looked up at an expressionless Entris, who stared at me with no malice at what had just been done, or anger at what had just been stalled. Without the reaper to yell at, only curiosity remained. No remorse for the pain.

  Just scriking intrigue.

  “Give me your other hand and I’ll tell you,” I murmured weakly, trying to hide the shaking of my right arm. Even beneath the light tethers, it twitched like it never had before.

  “Right.” Entris nodded, before turning away to the dark-skinned assistant that was calling him to a table with multiple monitors spread across it. “What is it, Venericus?”

  Watching him go, I fought wave after wave of violent nausea. I didn’t want to throw up— no one ever wants to throw up— but if I did, I wanted to do it on one of the scientists.

  Preferably the girl. 

  “Lord Entris, I…” The Geodian faltered, looking at me, then the screen. “I think there has been a mistake with the test.”

  Entris shooed her away from the monitor, squinting at the small symbols. “I gathered, Venericus.” A pause. “Well, this looks reset. Your station must have powered down in the burst. Many of them did—”

  “I didn’t check—” the Geodian chittered at his elbow. “I mean, the power went out, and Doctor Sobayashi asked me to help with tank 43, so I— I just checked it now, I mean. Replayed the data, because I thought the burst was—”

  Entris turned to her. “Just spit it out, Venericus.”

  The Geodian nodded, taking a breath and swiping through another set of data on the screen. “It’s just that. There was no reset. She re-stabilised the unit all on her own.” She turned to him, drawing his eyes away from the screen momentarily as her voice rose in pure excitement. “Entris, don’t you see? There was no reset. Atomic structures have normalised. Proton and neutron count are completely stable. No decay— all on her own.”

  I strained to see the screen, but then I realised that there was no point and gave up. Everything was swimming, and not just words.

  Entris became very still. “Wrong.”

  Venericus looked around, maybe for help from another scientist, maybe for something to beat Entris over the head with. “I graduated the Entrillian Institute of Technology and Science with an Electromutation degree. I… I know I’m not wrong, Lord Entris.”

 While they talked, the tall, strange Othropian had clicked up behind them, looking at the unit over their heads.

  “While young,” they said with a rasping, breathy kind of voice, “my assistant is no novice.”

  The Tironian turned around to look up at the tall crab-like humanoid.

  “When Kefka finds the power fault, prepare the type two differential test,” he instructed. “Then we’ll discuss this.”

  “Entris,” Sobayashi said, raising its second right limb to stop the other scientist from turning. “You knew the circumstances when we came—”

  Entris pushed the claw of the Orthropian away, an action that made him seem strangely petulant and young.

  “Type two differential again. Now.”

  The Othropian nodded, bowing to him before he left. “Yes, lord Entris. My apologies.”

  The scientists broke up, preparing with a new kind of worry and excitement. Entris stayed by the monitor, chin resting in one hand while the other fidgeted with a ring on his left index finger I hadn’t noticed before.

  I got tired of trying to puzzle out why these people were upset about these results. Nothing made sense, and I was so tired.

  Where was Kan? She said she would help me. Nausa and shivers still wracked every part of my body. This didn’t feel like being helped, this felt like being abandoned. I fought the thought of her leaving me, but Smiley crowed out every possibility of the night with a fervent glee. 

  Voices rose to my left, interrupting both my thoughts and Smiley. I realised they were strange, foreign accents I had never heard before. My slitted eyes found their source— two scientists pulling a blackened kinetic coil out of those strange little units at the base of the tanks.

  Putting a new one in and connecting it to the appropriate wires, a dark-skinned scientist wiped the back of his brow, small teal tattoos on his wrists that marked him as some kind of Flirin.

  “Is it always like this?” he asked in a hushed tone, screwing the panel shut as the tank rumbled dangerously above him, emitting the same pulsing glow that lit up the shadowy cavern. 

  The other scientist examined the large kinetic coil in webbed, spindly hands. “Not always. There’s a gang that Entris wanted to use to find the survivor. Smart, but this time it didn’t end well. It’s local politics. Stuff like that.” She checked a panel on the large tank in front of her, watching the dark cluster of debris spark for a moment, then settle.

  The Flirin wiped his hands on a rag, standing before looking over his shoulder cautiously at Entris across the cavern. “I thought that’s what his lordship’s pet was here for.”

  The other scientist, some kind of aquatic humanoid, smoothed back two fins on the sides of her face in something like fear or displeasure. “Vakara’s reaper is no pet of Entris’s,” she said, voice low. “He’s just the only head scientist that will work with her.”

  Weakly, I looked back at the so-called head scientist as the Flirin asked why.

  “The other scientists are scared of their survivors. Entris is not.” A small pause, and her voice went so low I had to strain just to hear the syllables. “The rumour is that he was one of the scientists who helped stabilise that creature, years ago. I think that’s the only reason he doesn’t fear it.”

  The two scientists rushed away after a quizzical look from one of the other occupants also checking on panels nearby, but I barely noticed them leave— my mind was spinning out like a stripped pacer on a bad road.

  Survivor? The reaper? No. That couldn’t be true.

  I tried looking around with jerking, sweaty movements, as if I could find the proof for that statement within the glass confines of the Astrogate debris tanks.

  That creature, that thing, was nothing like me.

  Was it? 

  No, it was a person. Not an it. She was a  survivor, like me. What kind of storm had made her? And why hadn’t the same thing happened to me, too? Soon, my thoughts became a swirling mass of unformed particles and half-finished fears as I wondered if maybe, one day, I’d be just like the reaper, strange and untethered.

  There was a large, scraping kind of noise that drew everyone’s attention to the round door of the narrow cavern. The entrance opened, and two figures emerged. One being dragged, another doing the dragging.

  Even through the fog and pain that had swept over me, I managed to find the energy for one more, shallow flicker of panic.

  I saw the the beige of the stolen Scavenger’s clothes as the pair came close— the red that was weeping through her side. Somewhere inside of me, there was dread, but all it seemed to do was create a large hole inside my chest— voiding every thought as soon as it came.

  The reaper threw a Mixling down at Entris’s feet, hands already bound behind her back. 

  I was so tired, I couldn’t even say her name— couldn’t even struggle in protest of her capture. I was just left to stare at her, still and unmoving and afraid of any of the machines being turned back on again. Thinking about the plan that didn’t work and the conversation I had just overheard. Glassy-eyed and stupid at the capture of my friend. 

  It was the worst feeling ever. 

  Like someone would shy away from something gross on the floor, Entris took an involuntary step back, then stilled, looking up at reaper. “Ah,” he intoned, “the mechanic that encrypted the Bot?”

  The hooded figure nodded. “And the source of our electrical problems. Caught her in the powershaft.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Kan. What the hell had she been doing in the powershaft?

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows, blood dripping from a nose that looked like it had been smashed in by something. Her Scavenger clothes were seeped in deep red at her side. She looked up at me with a weak rasp.

  “Guess those painkillers finally wore off.”

  There was something terrible about her face. A look that I rarely saw on any Covienian.

  Defeat.

  A nameless panic rose in my chest. I wanted to yell at her, to rail at her, to tell her how stupid she was for trying to help me, while also asking this was your plan all along? Get caught and die?

  I stared down at her from my chair as her eyes traced the light tether and that weird yellow cable at my neck. She pushed herself onto her knees, spitting out more blood, and looking up at the reaper.

  “Well, you caught us.” She spread her hands, assuming the most patronising tone I’d ever heard. “Good for you, I guess. Now what?”

  The reaper struck Kan faster than she had shot Shaw. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it was enough to send Kan back to the floor, coughing.

  “Now,” the cloaked figure snarled her answer. “You’re going to tell us how you disconnected the powershaft to our labs, then you’re going to decrypt that Bot.”

  I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around it being a person. Referring to it as an 'it' made me feel better, but wasn't that the same reason why I had bit Entris?

  Kan was laughing into the concrete, pushing herself onto her elbows once more. “Whatever hell you believe in, witch, go burn in it.”

  Entris and Venericus shared a look— a strange, worried sort of look that made them each take a small step away from the slithery, glitching figure. The waxing and waning of the reaper's form was getting worse the more she talked to Kan. I started to wonder if it was personal control, or something else that held her together. 

  The reaper leant down and grabbed Kan by her matted red hair, pulling up her face so that they were only inches apart. Wisps of what looked like dark, ghostly smoke gathered around the reaper before dissipating again. “As much as I would love to kill you right here and now, you unfortunately have some unfinished business in this life to attend to before I send you to the next.”

  Kan didn’t show that she was in pain, even though everybody in the lab with hair knew that she must have been. She just used the dead, impassive gaze of Lou Koval’s head mechanic to stare vacantly at her captor. “You think I’m going to do as you ask?”

  Standing, the reaper discarded Kan with a flick of the wrist. She straightened out her cloak, and the same small black Pulser was produced from within it. “Not me, no. But what about someone else?” She gestured to Lewis’s table. 

  Kan frowned, turning her head to to examine the workstation where Lewis was restrained and in pieces, monitors flickering in the low energy lab. Gary Lome stared at her from the tangle of hazy light with a bizarre mix of disbelief, relief, and horror. Next to him, Shaw wheezed on the ground, hand clasped to his shoulder as his glassy eyes barely registered Kan.

  The Mixling’s mask fell away. She pushed herself to her knees, glancing angrily at Gary before turning back to the reaper. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Thank you for asking.” In a blink of an eye, the reaper closed the gap between Gary and herself, seeming to morph through the table like she was just a gas cloud. When she reformed, she was behind the Covienian, holding the tar-coloured Pulser to his temple.

  “He’s here so I can do this.”

  Kan rose slowly, holding her side painfully. “Look, don’t do anything rash. I… he didn’t know. He doesn’t know how to undo what I did.”

  The reaper laughed. “Oh, I know that. But I didn’t really need him to fix the Bot, I needed him to be here so you would fix the Bot.” With a click, the Pulser primed. Instead of white light priming in the barrel, teal light, like Captain Rigg’s Pulsers, emanated softly from device. “Because I’ve seen a thousand people like you, head mechanic. Rage and kick as much as you want, there’s always a handful of people you’ll lay down your arms for. And all I have to do is find them.”

  Gary had gone whiter than the ghosts on level forty. Eyes locked with Kan, he pleaded for something I don’t think anyone in the lab had; a plan.

  For the first time in my life, I saw Kan Oh’Krean falter. The reaper must have seen it, too. 

  “First, tell us where the fault is for the powershaft— then, you decrypt this Bot. Do this nicely and quickly, and I don’t blow his brains out.” 

  Kan twisted around, looking at me. She took in the cable at my neck, then found my eyes.

  I don’t think we’re very good at this, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t, really. I still felt like crap. So I just shrugged at her. I didn’t know what else I could do. 

  Kan’s eyebrows pinched in acute pain. She jerked away from me, cursing. “Ferryer forget your soul.”

  “Yes, yes, insert ethnic curse here about my mortality, whatever,” the reaper chirped out, readjusting the Pulser at Gary’s head. “Now, I feel quite alright shooting two mechanics today, so please, by all means, take your time.”

  I saw Kan as she moved to look at Shaw, who barely registered what was happening now. 

  The reaper went on.

  “This Bot has waylaid shipment after shipment of debris to gods know where. You decrypt him, and I’ll let your friends go free as a thank you from Gray Raven.” She nodded to Shaw. “Maybe in time to get him to a Poc, who knows?”

  Kan clenched her fists. “What happens to Evren?”

  Entris finally spoke, now a safe distance from the reaper and Kan. “Gray Raven has the imperial seal to repossess all Astrogate affected debris out in the Y-sector.” His tone was so matter-of-fact, I wanted to escape my chair  just to hit him. “After we determine which lab to send the specimen to, Vakara will study it further there.”

  I stared at the back of Kan's head. Her red hair was tussled and stringy, bits and strands falling out of her long braid like a tangle of Bot wires. Deep down, I wanted her to have a plan. I wanted her to turn around, declare victory over these terrible, terrible people, and maybe punch the Tironian scientist in the face for me. 

  But deeper down, in a place where all my memories before the Astrostorm should have been, a part of me recognised a set board.

  Smiley did, too. Silently, it gave me permission for my next words. 

  “Kan,” I muttered. “Don’t lose them, too.”

  It wasn’t just a plea. It was a release. If I was going to get out of this warehouse, it was going to have to be because of me, now. Not her.

   Let Kan work on Lewis, I thought. He was no good to me encrypted, anyway— it would buy time as well as pull the servant Bot out of whatever hell he was currently experiencing. Then… then he would know what to do. We could find a way out, together. We could get everyone to safety, and he would tell me what to try. 

  “Evren.” Kan looked like she wanted to cry. I never thought I’d see her like that. “I really tried. I was almost there—”

  The reaper cleared her throat. “Yes, you nearly cut off all the power to the generators. Good for you, you nearly killed everyone. Now tell us where you placed that fault.”

  Kan shut her eyes, turning from me. “A line near the storehouse. It’s an electromagnetic blocker. Under a tarp.”

  “Bas— see to it. Now.” The reaper nodded to two Scavengers standing by, and they disappeared.

  “Where in En did you find an electromagnetic blocker?” Entris asked as Kan moved towards Lewis’s table.

  “I built it,” Kan answered. No pride. No anger. She looked up at the reaper; a question. “A mimicry of his memories?”

  The reaper nodded.

  As Kan limped painfully to the bench, the reaper jerked Gary towards Shaw, cuffing him next to the fading mechanic.

  Everything inside of me wanted nothing more than to panic, but I blew out a breath. If I survived the Astrostorm, I could survive this, right? I did that by myself, didn’t I? I mean, I didn’t remember it, but I’m the living proof that I didn’t need Kan to get out of bad situations. I’d do it on my own, just like the last six phases of my existence. 

  Kan getting captured was just eliminating one possibility to get out of this lab, Smiley said. There had to be more. 

  “Can we reconnect the systems back to the powershaft?” Entris asked the reaper, who was pacing back and forth in front of Lewis’s table, watching Kan work like a bird of prey circling a mouse.

  Without acknowledging the scientist, the dark form brought a communication cuff up to her mask. “Is it there?”

  A small moment of static. “Disconnected, Heri. The powershaft is fully functional.”

  “Re-connect all labs, comindair.”

  The reaper went back to watching Kan work. 

  I stared at the back of the Gray Raven agent, furiously trying to unscrew what a tangle of thoughts she had become. Survivor, the scientists had said. Of an Astrostorm. What else? And if they had her, why me? What was so special about me—

  The room flooded with energy a moment before the lights went on. What once was a dark, cavernous pitch was replaced with panelled walls of stark white metal as blinding spotlights came on, starting at the end of the cavern and— one by one— activating to reveal just how big the cavern really was. Monitors that had been dead so far were summoned back to life with the uncomfortable chorus of a deep writhing thrum, like a wasp nest on the verge of attack. So much energy now inhabited the lab, it made me even more nauseated than I already felt. I wanted to cough, throw up, and lay down all at once.

  This is what the warehouse would have looked like before Kan had shut the power off the first time. Everything before had just been back-up generators, ones that were somehow untouched by Kan's sabotage. Now everything was connected to Lisk's main grid— the powershaft.

  I looked around at the machines connected to the tanks, straightening in my chair. Each console was big and tiresome, but each had a panel that looked as if someone had splashed oil over it in haste. I thought back to the smears of oil in the Bot storehouse. I was struggling to piece together all this information I knew was relevant, so Smiley helped me.

  Kinetic coils are used to store energy. They were using them to protect the tanks because the astrodebris can’t be without power.

  They must need a constant stream of electricity, I thought to myself. Maybe to keep stable?

  I gazed at the purple tank next to me. A machine started priming to my left. The Orthropian was there, instead of the dark-skinned assistant. But even through its crabby features and blank eyes stalks, it looked wary. Why?

   I shook away the nearing panic as Entris gave another order to someone.

  “Type two differential, if you will, Sobayashi. It’s time we cleared this up.”

  Wait, I scrambled to piece together my next question. So what would happen if that stream of electricity was interrupted? Is that why everyone was so panicked when the lights went out? Because… something bad would happen?

  I opened my mouth to ask the Orthropian that when something slapped into my heart, entering from the wire behind my neck as everything went a strange pearly colour. 

  It was nothing like the first time. It was nothing like anything. This was a different kind of power, from a different kind of source. Forming a different kind of existence altogether. 

  One second. Two seconds. Five seconds, and it all dragged on like an eternity.

  Did it hurt? Well, I think so. I was yelling again. And I think I would only do that if I was in pain. But maybe, at the cusp of whatever was being pumped into me, there was something other than pain. A terrible tearing of energy and matter that felt less like pain and more like the death and rebirth of every particle that made up Evren West, splitting in half with a terrible cry just to find a way to painfully reform.

  Over and over.

  And over.

  And over again.

  Blinking rapidly, I tried to focus on my legs when it all finally stopped— wondering if I was finally dead this time. It was bound to happen somehow, I guessed. It was kinda of anti-climactic to survive an Astrostorm just to die in a chair, though. 

  That didn’t feel right.

  I arched my head up to look around again. No, I wasn’t dead, I realised. Kan was here, and she was looking at me across the table where Lewis lay— worried, I think. I frowned at her, wanting to yell well, some plan you had, you moron! But I just couldn’t. I could hardly even blink without feeling tired, and so much of my energy was focused on staying awake. 

 Okay, just a test— take a breath. You can still find your way out of the lab.

  I tried to think about the tanks and the powershaft— there was something there. Something I’d missed, I knew. Something I was just about to figure out—

   “Doctor Sobayashi,” the assistant said across the lab, interrupting my thoughts with something like disbelief in her tone. “Can you come look at this?”

  There was a pause. I heard the Othropian click over to where the two scientists stood, all four of it’s eye stalks contracting with concentration.

  “Impossible,” it said, voice raspy and strange. 

  I started to feel a little better. The pain in my chest started to lift, and I took my first normal breath. 

  I expected an argument like before, but through the hazy thicket of sounds and rumbling of the lab, the heavy silence of the trio of scientists felt more than deafening. 

  Entris looked down to his book, handwritten glyphs glinting off the high overhead lights as he looked back at the screen. 

  “What’s so interesting?” I tried to ask, but I’m not sure it didn’t just come out as a mutter. I had a feeling no one would answer me even if they had heard. 

  Slowly, Entris lowered the book, taking his attention from the screen and turning it back to me. 

  The only thing that moved between me and him was the laboured breathing of my lungs, and the sweat rolling down my face. 

  I frowned at him. 

  And what’s gotten into you, Lord Romolio Entrick? 

  The cold analytical face of the Grey Raven scientist was gone— and I knew something terrible had changed. No longer did curiosity or cruelty line his skin or possess his posture, but in its place there was fear— deep, and unflinching.

  It was in this moment that I was able to truly read him, which was odd, because he was so far away. But like the Passerine’s table, or the Warehouse District, or the knife Oli Preastigat had given me, the lines between my emotions and his became nothing but a distant blur, I felt every truth that he had told himself, shift, shatter, and collapse. 

  I shook myself, finding the feeling so hopeless I nearly threw up. The connection disappeared. The Tironian didn’t even know what I had felt, but it wasn’t a moment after that that he turned, nodded to himself, and very carefully, shut his book. 

  He asked the Orthropian something. The crab-like scientist nodded its strange, disk shaped head and gathered a handful of loose scientists, taking them into the next lab with a quiet urgency. 

  Venericus was next. He turned to her, voice so quiet, I couldn’t make out what was said. Her eyes widened, but then she nodded and hurried to the console she had been working at. I watched her pull out wires, take out date drives, then smash them on the ground. 

  There was a shift in the air, and I felt it as keenly as if someone had just opened a door to a frigid tempest. 

  The reaper was standing at Lewis’s table, but she was looking at the dark-skinned scientist, too— polymorphic eyes narrowed in an unreadable expression. 

  Entris walked up to her, flicking his eyes to Kan momentarily. “Progress on the Bot?”

  The reaper contracted one eye, examining the scientist. I think it was the equivalent of raising an eyebrow at someone. She looked to Venericus, then to Entris.

  “Your sudden interest in my operations has not gone without notice, Lord Entris.”

  Entris took the reaper by the elbow, leading her a little further into the lab, where he probably thought no one could hear them. "A brief conloquim, please."

  He went to continue, then stopped many times before the reaper turned to leave, bored of his stalling.

  He caught her by the arm, taking a deep breath before he whispered. “If the numbers are correct on this survivor, this could mean a Zero Presence operation on Covien.”

  "What, her?" The reaper wrenched an arm away from the Tironian, taking a step back. “You can’t be serious.” 

  “Never in my life have I been more serious,” Entris interrupted. “And if this gets out, we will not be the only ones looking for her.”

  She gave him a look which could have been interpreted as a glare. “Zero Presence?” 

  He looked at the small collection of monitors, eyebrows pinched. “Get what you can off the Bot. I’ll look after the rest. Find every one who knew she existed.” Entris leant closer, looking around warily at the Scavengers that bustled to and fro. “Leave none for them to question.” Entris nodded to the Bot. “Do whatever you must,” he said, unable to hide the panic in his voice before he turned and left via the door behind me. 

  I was left staring at the reaper, watching her flicker and unform. What the hell was zero presence? 

  The reaper nodded herself after she watched the scientist go, silent as she drew herself up and straightened her cloak with a small flick of her wrist. In a second, she was back by Lewis’s table. 

  “What must be done to reverse your encryption, Mixling?” the reaper asked, glancing at me as she gripped and ungripped the staff by her side.

  Kan hesitated, looking up. Everything was put back the way it should be on Lewis’s chest plate, now. Everything that was missing was screwed back on, and all the wires were disconnected except one— the one that went down past his neck servos and into his primary computation unit.

  “It’s ready to decrypt,” Kan said, surprised to be interrupted. “Just waiting on the safety programs to load—”

  “I want done, not nearly done.”

  “But if I don’t wait, there’s a chance of undoing more than just the encryption to his drive—”

  Her answer was a long and dangerous stare.

  Kan nodded, a spare hand going to her side in a moment of brief pain. “Alright. No waiting.” She brought up a projection, inputting commands into the holographic display. She paused, hesitation brief. She looked at me, then the Reaper. “I can’t do it while he’s inactive. I need… to power him back on. He'd need to be awake for something that substantial.” 

  “Do what you need to," was the reaper’s curt response.

  With a sigh, Kan leaned over and pulled out the remaining wires connected to Lewis’s chest plate, muttering to herself as she connected it to a Data Tab. 

  After another press of a button, Lewis’s eyes snapped awake, flooding the space around him with an initial burst of blue light from his vision sensors. His chest plates— now all returned– rose and fell rapidly as he took in air like a thirsty person would gulp down water. 

  As Lewis straightened on his slab, loose tools and wires fell to the floor in a clatter. He was already looking around the room, gauging it, weighing it, and evaluating it as his vision lenses widened and contracted with small, mechanic whirring. 

  Kan started to input something onto a small Tab under the reaper's watchful stare, and the projection of Lewis’s code broke into two, creating two identical lines of his program.

  Bright bionic blue eyes locked onto mine with no expression, no eyebrows or mouth or even pupils. But I knew— I knew— that behind the blue of his vision sensors, and the small, near imperceptible slump of his shoulders, he had been dreading the very thing he was seeing. Fully decrypted and back to the land of the living, Lewis saw the very thing he had tried to prevent for over half a year.

  I tried not to look so pathetic. I tried to straighten– I even said his name quietly, swallowing down my helplessness. I really was okay, I wanted to tell him. I just needed a moment. Then we could find a way out. Just wait until my heart stopped pounding.

  His vision sensors contracted, like he saw through my facade. He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. Why did you do this? they seemed to ask achingly. 

  I had no answer.

  Kan’s eyes flicked to me, and then down to her hands. She was holding onto a small Data Tab or drive that was connected to Lewis. She took the wire out, and Lewis flinched uncomfortably, like it had hurt. The projection of Lewis’s programing flickered out, dissipating into the air. 

  “It’s… all there,” the Mixling said, holding out the Tab.  

  Snatching it, the reaper pocketed the drive somewhere in her dark cloak. She straightened her clothes, flicking off a piece of lint idly. "Excellent." She was relieved, it was hard to not notice. She nodded to the Bot. “Wipe it.” 

  Kan hesitated. “That… that wasn’t part of the plan.”

  The reaper drew herself up top her full height. It wasn’t much compared to Kan’s other half of Covienian genetics, but there was something about the way the lights above flickered that made Kan’s height pretty redundant. 

  “The situation has changed.”

  Kan frowned. “What’s changed? I thought you—”

  The staff at the reapers side erupted into sparks of magenta purple. It crackled violently as something like an energy bolt hit Kan’s chest. She was unconscious before she even hit the ground.

  “Everything’s changed, Miss Oh’Krean,” the dark figure said, lowering her staff. 

  “Kan!” I struggled against my bindings, hot, angry bursts of frustration rising into my chest. “Kan, no!” 

  The reaper barked an order to a few Scavengers nearby. “You two! Wipe this Bot. And you, get this sack of bones tied up.” 

  Gary locked eyes with her, wearing a sweaty, angry kind of expression which she ignored. 

  The reaper moved away from the table as Kan was tied up next to Shaw, coming to from the blast much faster than I had.

  I turned to watch the Scavengers bustle next to Lewis’s table. 

  I didn’t understand what was happening, or why. What were they doing with Lewis if they had that drive? 

  There was no one I could ask. No one was even looking at me. Why wouldn’t anyone tell me what was going on?

  The Scavenger’s fingers started to move on the last console that Lewis was connected to. Lewis watched for a moment before looking at me. 

  I took a breath, looking from the Scavenger, to Lewis— back and forth like it would give me my answers.

  No. 

  “Wait,” I said, struggling against my chair. “Wait a moment– just wait–” My eyes landed on Lewis. I was laughing. Why was I laughing? “Lewis, what are they saying? What do they mean? What’s happening?” 

  Lewis looked down. No, not down! He’s not supposed to look down. Down means bad. Look at me!

  “This isn’t your fault, Evren,” was the first thing he said, voice so soft it had no place in this stupid lab from the hells.

  I was shaking my head. “No, wait– what’s happening?” I strained against the light tether, unable to feel its sting as I looked at Kan, who groggily looked around in pain, hands already tied behind her back. “Hey, what are they doing? This wasn’t a part of the— Kan, look at me! What are they doing?”

  The Bot sighed at my demands, a simple action of pulling air into his ventilation unit, and exhaling it. He tested the straps on his wrists, the only things that still kept him affixed to the slab. “They were always going to wipe my memories when they found out; I just hoped it would be… after you left…" he looked up at me. "Not before.” 

  Another Gray Raven Scavenger was helping by Lewis’s table now, connecting a new cable to the back of Lewis’s head.

  “Wait– I don’t understand.” I took my eyes from Lewis, to the Scavenger. “Don’t touch him!” I snapped, looking back at the Bot. “Lewis, what should I do? Please, I can’t– Kan, don’t just sit there!” 

  She looked up at me, stony faced and pale. I saw her lips move weakly. She said something about Zero. Then looked down, hiding tears. 

  Only Lewis watched me, eyes sad and tired. 

  So tired. 

  “Tell me what to do,” I pleaded across the cavern. “Lewis, please just tell me what to do! I'll do it!” Something was stinging my eyes, making them well up without my permission. Lewis was getting blurry. Everything was getting blurry. “Wait– I don’t know what to do.” My vision burned. “Tell me what to do–” 

  “Evren! This doesn’t change anything,” Lewis said as a Scavenger activated another holographic interface. The Bot stilled, shutting his eyes for a moment before opening them, and leaning forward. “Evren– this won’t change anything, you still–”

  “Yes, it will!” I shot back, “I don’t know what to do– I don’t– I said don’t touch him! Lewis, you’re all I have!” 

  “Initialising memory drive reformat,” a console beeped cheerily as if to mock my demands. 

  This wasn’t happening. There had to be something I could do. There had to be something that I hadn’t thought of yet. 

  I looked up at the pillar, the ceiling, the walls– the tanks. Something had to be here. Something had to change. 

  “Evren!” I realised Lewis was calling my name. I blinked away my tears to look at him. 

  “Tell me why that Lightcore exploded.”

  “I don’t know!” I burst out, suddenly angry, or panicked, I wasn’t sure. 

  “What about Del’s Hauler Bot?” Lewis tried again. Something was blinking on the console next to him. “Why was it powered on? What happened to it?” 

  I shook my head, still trying to get away from the chair. “I don’t know, I-I was afraid!"

   The Scavenger pushed a heavy lever forward, and Lewis shook his head, looking down for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes seemed paler. 

“Sometimes” he started, “our greatest courage–” 

  “Stop it!” I yelled at him. I couldn’t hear this again. Not now. Not ever. 

  Lewis shifted on the table, tone urgent. “Don't let them–”

  The lever was pulled back down in a muted, silly sort of thud, then the weirdest thing happened; grey stole the blue from the Bot's eyes. 

  They flickered— alight one moment, dark the next. Arms went slack. The faceplate hit its chest, and the life force that once possessed the lanky, metal puppet, suddenly fled.

  Gone.

  The console next to the slab beeped with one more line. 

  “Memory drive reformat complete.”