The light, and the voices, were fading.

Skyler glanced all about, and saw no way down to the floor short of a drop. He thought he could make it but knew Ana could not unless perhaps he broke her fall. That would make far too much noise, though. He turned to her and whispered. “I’m going inside. I need to see who is in there. Wait here, and when it’s safe I’ll catch you when you drop down.” He saw the objection in her eyes and added, “It’s too far for your ankle to take.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, sounding anything but convinced.

Convincing her would take time he did not have. The light, the voices, dwindled with each second. Skyler turned and lowered himself through the oval opening. The walls of the pipe were shockingly thin, a few millimeters. This would have amazed him had he not seen tons of equipment and supplies, even his own bulky aircraft, climb up the thin space elevator cords. If anything the thickness of the walls here were generous.

He lowered his legs, eased himself down, gave one last affirming look at Ana, dangled from his fingertips, and dropped. As landings went it was a pretty good one. The Builder’s ubiquitous material did not clang or clack like metal or tile. Skyler thought it more like stone.

He landed in a crouch and paused, listening. The voices had faded completely now, and the light was nearly gone. Skyler pushed himself to a jog, ignoring a few splinters of complaint from his shins and knees, and the dull ache that clung to his split chin like some tenacious insect.

Ahead he saw an opening in the floor, the same one he and Ana had floated through after leaving Blackfield and the object. Yellow light glowed weakly from within. He dropped to his knees and leaned his head in. If this was indeed the same tunnel they’d used before, the configuration had changed. It should angle sideways in the new gravitational context for ten meters to meet the room they’d originally entered the pyramid through. That span of passageway was gone now, vanished. Either filled in or simply sealed off. Instead a new tunnel presented itself, running straight for a long, long way. A hundred meters away, perhaps more, he saw a pocket of yellow light surrounding human forms. Two were silhouetted against the light, blocking the three or four others from view.

Skyler watched them fade into the distance. How far the tunnel went he had no idea. Hundreds of meters easily, and without curving. That meant it ran lengthwise, parallel to the axis upon which the whole structure spun. That could only mean one thing. He’d suspected it all along, somewhere in his mind, and was only now admitting it to himself. They’d docked with the Key Ship. They’d linked up and someone else was already here.

Skyler swallowed. Blood drummed in his temples, adrenaline building within him. Someone else was already here, and they’d simply picked up the object and left. Headed to the key room, he had no doubt. They didn’t call out for him or Ana. They’d laughed upon discovering Blackfield.

It could only be Grillo. Anyone else—Tania, Sam—would have expected Skyler to be present, would have looked for him.

He rocked back on his ass and let the adrenaline course through him, focusing his thoughts. He glanced back, toward the tube where he knew Ana waited. She sat there in the dark, at once terrified and anxious, awaiting him. And injured.

You’ll have to forgive me later. I will come back. When it’s safe.

And with that he turned, dropped down into the connecting tunnel, and began the hunt.

Skyler kept his pistol pointed dead ahead.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, collapsing to a pinpoint of fuzzy darkness that did not grow bigger as he walked. How big had the Key Ship been? He tried to recall Tania’s words. Five kilometers at least, and with a feeling that settled like a stone in his gut he began to think this passage might span the entire distance.

The people he’d heard had turned, but as of yet Skyler had seen no connecting halls or rooms. He kept his flashlight off just in case. Once his eyes had time to adjust, it became clear the long hall was not totally dark. A ghostly purple glow seemed to span its length. Somewhere very far off there had to be more light, for the tunnel seemed to end at a pinpoint of white, like a night sky where only one star existed.

He glanced back, saw darkness. Paused, heard nothing. Please stay put, Ana. He tried to imagine her walking this distance on her ankle, or making the two three-meter drops necessary to get here at all, and couldn’t. And as much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t picture himself tugging her along, one arm constantly around her for support. She’d become a liability.

A hissed voice shattered the silence. “Now!”

Blinding light hit Skyler from the left. He whirled, swinging his pistol in one outstretched hand. A shape flashed, something cracked into his forearm. The pistol clattered away as pain exploded above his wrist.

On instinct Skyler ducked, felt the whoosh of another blow pass over his head. He surged forward and hit something, someone. After the long darkness his eyes were useless in the sudden glare. Whomever he’d hit turned with his rush, threw him. Skyler’s momentum sent him skidding on the floor. He blinked, tried to push himself up, but his right forearm wailed in complaint, sending him back to the floor. Commotion all around him.

Boots thudding as his attackers surrounded him. Shouts of alarm and, chillingly, orders to halt.

Then he felt the cold metal of a gun barrel against his temple.

“That will be quite enough,” a voice said. A knee, not the speaker’s, pressed down on the center of his back, crushing his abdomen painfully into the hard deck.

Skyler kept still, staring at the floor until his eyes could handle what must be the combined light of four or five flashlights.

“I thought we heard a rat,” someone said.

“Yes,” the first speaker replied. Skyler had heard Grillo’s voice only once, a long time ago, but he recognized it instantly. Too calm, too even, like an emotionless fucking robot. “The question is, was he one of Blackfield’s, or was Blackfield doing the following for once.”

A hand gripped the back of Skyler’s head, clasped around his mess of sweaty hair, and lifted.

“Ah, of course. I should have guessed. Skyler, right?” Grillo asked. “I hardly recognized you under all that grime.”

He said nothing. Could see nothing but boots around him. Four pairs. No, five. One of them stood remarkably close behind another. Hostage and guard? Skyler tried to mark their positions before his head was cracked back against the ground with a wet smack. Someone slapped a binding across his wrists and tightened until the tie until it dug into his skin.

“My, my,” Grillo said. “Pray for one immune and they practically rain from the sky. So many options.”

A chill rippled down Skyler’s spine like cracking ice and settled in his anguished gut. Had they found her, so soon? Ana. Dammit.

Grillo wouldn’t know her, though. Then the epiphany hit him. They were all headed here, weren’t they? Grillo could be talking about anyone. Hell, every last one of them. Skyler let the cold ball of ice in his gut fracture and expand, filling him from head to toe. “The plague source is dead, Grillo,” he grumbled through lips pressed half against the ground. “Everyone’s immune now, though obviously it didn’t cure every sickness of the brain.”

Stark silence. Skyler hadn’t thought of it until this moment but Darwin without the prison walls of the aura would no longer be the tidy little play kingdom Grillo—and Blackfield before him—had enjoyed. People would flow back out into the world, and a ruler without subjects—

“Bring him,” Grillo said. “One of them will cooperate. One will surely see the light.” A dry laugh tumbled from his mouth, no humor in it whatsoever.

Someone hauled Skyler unceremoniously to his feet. The gun at his temple moved to the small of his back and jabbed.

“Thank you, by the way,” Grillo added, already ten paces off and not looking back, “for bringing the last of these relics. You people couldn’t have made this any easier.”

Skyler ignored the lunatic and glanced over his shoulder, hoping to size up his captor.

Instead he saw Samantha’s familiar blue eyes, a mixture of hope and justified disappointment there. A short man stood behind her; judging by his posture he had a weapon pressed her to back as well. A strip of duct tape had been slapped over her mouth, and before Skyler could utter a word he heard the grating tear as another length was shorn off the roll and pressed across his own.

Fresh pain at his chin, chased with the chemical reek of industrial glue from the tape. He ignored both and stared at Sam. He winked at her, the only communication he could offer. Before he could gauge her reaction, Skyler’s own escort gripped the hair at the back of his head again and forced him to look forward and down.

Compelled by the gun, Skyler trudged forward along the gradually curving side hall, with nothing to look at but the back of Grillo and his two flanking guards. One looked familiar. Skyler had seen him when he’d snuck through Gateway. One of Alex Warthen’s senior men, if he recalled. The man carried the oval object, wrapped in a thin blanket, with two reverent outstretched hands.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Midway Station

2.APR.2285

Handle gripped loosely between forefinger and thumb, he tilted the lever downward and winced in anticipation.

The click as the shitter-coffin door unlatched sounded as loud as a gunshot after all the quiet. Its hinges, at least, were blissfully silent as he pulled the segmented folding door open and out of the way.

“Say what you want about the old goat,” the big man said under his breath, “but he built these damn things to last.”

He inhaled first. The air outside the tiny head was only marginally fresher than within, remarkable given that he’d been stewing in that dim box for days now. Still, it came as something of a relief.

Ignoring another growl from his empty stomach, Prumble sucked his belly in and sat up out of the bathroom to a darkened, empty climber car apparently turned on its side.

It had been a miracle of sorts that his stomach had been empty; otherwise he could have added one more bodily fluid to the stench within his miserable hiding space. It had never occurred to him when choosing the spot that up and down were not tried-and-true constants where he was going. Indeed, all directions seemed malleable, given that he’d entered the closet of a room standing, spent hours weightless, then briefly pressed on his aching neck and hands before the final, coffinlike state of sideways seemed to win the which-way’s-up battle royale.

Could be worse. He’d said that to himself half a hundred times since his questionable decision to hop inside the climber car next up in the revolver queue behind the one Sam and the others had chosen.

He kept expecting someone to open the fucking bathroom door and shriek at the fat, wild-haired man stuffed within, but no one had. Whoever had searched the climber had done a pathetic job. Head poked in, ridiculous question asked. “Anyone in here?”

“I’m trying to take a shit thank you oh so very much!” Prumble had only mouthed that, and fought a deep rumbling laugh when it had worked and the cursory search had ended. That had been hours ago. His brief flirtation with joy had fizzled as the aches and pains in his body grew to the point of intractable agony. A cabinet knob gouged into his shoulder. The water faucet pressed in uncomfortably close to his anus. And, God, the smell.

Prumble stood and stretched, ignoring the oddity of standing on the goddamn wall. Anything ranked above the shitter-coffin at this point.

His stomach growled once more, the final call to action he needed. Emergency rations aboard the climber were long ago consumed. The gun he’d used to fight off the subs he’d thrown at them in one last effort to stall their advance. It had worked, too. Three of the crazy bastards had tripped over the spent rifle. Tangled scrawny limbs were the last things he’d seen as he’d pulled the climber door closed.

There was simply nothing left to do in here, and clearly everyone else had moved along. He’d have to explore. Find Sam, if she lived. Kill a few more subbies—

The last foggy remnants of bloodlust coalesced and swirled through his mind at the thought of all that killing. A sharp taste of copper in his mouth brought back the memory bright and clear. He must have slain twenty. The carnage hadn’t slowed the others down. They’d vaulted and climbed over the corpses to reach him.

The odd direction of gravity probably meant his climber now languished in a storage facility somewhere. Gateway or Penrith, maybe Newcastle if they were doing their jobs right. He’d heard of the station called Newcastle Storage before, firsthand, from a cargo worker taking shore leave deep within the thighs of one of Madame Dee’s nubile escorts. Prumble thought it sounded rather like his former garage, only a few orders of magnitude larger and, at least during Prumble’s boom years, holding a mere fraction of the goods.

Yet the details didn’t add up. The man had said Newcastle did not spin like most of the other stations. Storage turned out to be a whole different beast in space, and the lack of gravity made the full use of all three dimensions possible.

But perhaps more damning than that was the fact that Prumble could breathe. That he hadn’t become a Popsicle inside that bathroom. That his custom environment suit they’d gone through all that bloody trouble to procure was now only fit to propel a small yacht. Newcastle was kept cold, airless, so that mold and microbes and rust would not pose a problem.

“So where the hell am I?” he muttered.

At least the exit was near enough to reach. It could have been ten meters above his head on the opposite side, forever unavailable to a man of his generous girth. Instead he only had to deal with the indignity of foisting himself through the horizontal portal. First things first, he thought, and yanked the handle. It didn’t budge. Fear rose like bile in his throat at the prospect that this whole damn climber was indeed a coffin. Then he pulled it the other direction and the handle turned smoothly. Terror receded. He did a little jig.