A dark sphere appeared before me in the center of the room.
Scud. Was I really going to do this? In my hand, Doomslug fluted nervously.
The sterile whitewashed walls, enormous one-way mirror, and metal tables marked this as some kind of scientific facility. I was on Starsight: the massive space station that housed the regional offices of the Superiority. Up until this past year, I’d never even heard of the Superiority, let alone understood the nuances of how it—as a galactic government—ruled hundreds of different planets and species.
To be honest, I still didn’t understand those nuances. I’m not exactly a “there are nuances to this situation” type of girl. I’m more of an “if it’s still moving, you didn’t use enough ammunition” type of girl.
Fortunately, nuance wasn’t needed at the moment. The Superiority was undergoing a violent military coup. And the new people in charge did not like me. The shouts of the soldiers calling to one another as they searched the facility for me grew louder.
Hence the dark sphere. My only way out was to open a portal to another dimension. I thought of it as the nowhere.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “My thoughts…they’re speeding up?”
He hovered nearby, having stuffed himself into a little drone. It was shaped vaguely like a box with wings and a pair of grabber arms on the sides. Two tiny acclivity rings—blue stones that glowed when powered—allowed it to hover, one beneath each wing.
“Um,” he said, “that does not look safe.”
“They use these nowhere portals to mine acclivity stone,” I said. “So there must be a way to return once you go through. Maybe I can get us back with my powers.”
The shouts outside were getting closer; there were no other options. I couldn’t use my powers to hyperjump out of this place, not with the shield that protected the station.
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I feel very uncomfortable with this!”
“I know,” I said, slinging my gun over my shoulder by its strap so I could grab his drone by the bottom of its chassis. Then—M-Bot in one hand, Doomslug in the other—I touched the dark sphere, and was sucked through to the other side of eternity.
In a flash I was in a place where time, distance, and matter itself didn’t exist. Here I was formless, a mind—or an essence—with no body. It was as if I were a starship floating in an endless blackness with no stars—with nothing at all to interrupt my view. Every time I hyperjumped using my powers, I briefly passed through this place. I was accustomed to the sensation, but it wasn’t familiar. Just…slightly less terrifying than it used to be.
Immediately I reached my mind out, searching for Detritus—my home. I’d begun to understand my powers in the most basic of ways. I couldn’t go many places with them, but I did know how to get home. Usually.
This time…I strained… Could I do it? Could I hyperjump to Detritus? The blackness around me seemed to stretch, and I could see white spots in the distance. One of those was…Gran-Gran?
If I could connect with her, I thought I could pull myself to her. I pushed harder, but grew worried that I’d draw attention. The delvers lived here. And as soon as I thought of them, I became aware of their presence out there in the darkness. All around me, yet invisible for now.
They didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. In fact…they were fixated on something else.
Pain. Terror.
Something was in pain in here. Something familiar.
The delver. The one I’d prevented from destroying Starsight. It was here in this place, and it was afraid. As I focused on it, it appeared as a white point much brighter than Gran-Gran. It had noticed me.
Please…help…
Delver communication never manifested as actual words; my mind simply translated the impressions, the images, as words. This one needed my help. The others were trying to destroy it.
I didn’t think. Instinctively, I shouted into the nowhere.
HEY!
Hundreds of bright white spots opened around me. The eyes. I could feel their attention on me now, knowing me. The one they’d been fixated on hovered around the outside.
As always, the sight of all those eyes intimidated me. Yet I was a different person now. I’d spoken to one of their kind, connected with it. I’d persuaded it to turn its appetite away from the people of Starsight—by showing the delver that they were alive.
I just needed to do the same thing here. Please. I projected my thoughts toward those eyes, showing them calm understanding, not fear: I am a friend. I am like you. I think. I feel.
I did exactly what I’d done before. The eyes stirred and quivered, agitated. A few drew closer, and I could feel their scrutiny. Followed by…an emotion, so much more powerful. Pervasive, overwhelming, omnipresent.
Hatred.
The delvers—there was no telling how many—accepted that I was alive. Because of my cytonic abilities, they understood me to be a person. Their hatred changed to disgust. Anger. It was worseto know I was alive. It meant the things that had been encroaching upon their realm—persistently bothering them—were self-aware. We weren’t mere insects.
We were invaders.
I tried again, more desperate this time. They rebuffed me. As if…they’d seen what I’d done to the one of their kind, and had prepared themselves to resist the same sort of approach.
I recoiled at the wave of their terrible anger. And I heard a terrified scream. Doomslug? Her shout projected something into my brain, a location.
Home.
The delvers withdrew. I unnerved them, it seemed. They hadn’t expected to find me here. That gave me an opening.
Thanks to Doomslug, I could feel the path. I could get to Detritus. I could see Gran-Gran, and…and Jorgen. Scud, I missed him. I wanted to be near him again, talk to him again. I needed to get home to my friends and help them. The war was going to escalate now that Winzik had seized control of the Superiority.
I almost hyperjumped. But I lingered. Something held me back. An impression, an instinct.
What am I? that singular delver projected in a pleading tone. What are WE?
I’m Spensa Nightshade, I sent to it. A pilot.
Is that all?
It used to be all I cared about. But now…now I’d discovered another side to me. Something frightening, something I didn’t completely understand.
There is a way to learn, the delver sent. In this place. We call it the nowhere. You sensed that, didn’t you?
Yes, I had. But I didn’t want to stay here. I tried to put that option out of my mind. I needed to go home.
But…did my people need me? Just another pilot? I visualized something then. A projection of my own fears? Maybe it was an effect of the nowhere. I saw myself return and rejoin Skyward Flight, fighting…and failing. Failing when the delvers inevitably returned, because a fighter pilot—no matter how skilled—couldn’t defeat them. Failing when the Superiority marshaled the power of its cytonics, hyperjumping whole fleets. Worse, they could manipulate cytonics such as me, exploit weaknesses in our powers.
They’d done that to my father. Turned him against his own flight. Led him to death.
I was a pilot, yes. But pilots weren’t enough.
We knew so little about any of this. We didn’t understand what the delvers were. How could we hope to fight them? We didn’t understand cytonics—up until recently, we’d considered those who had these powers to be “defects.” How could I face opponents like Brade, skilled with their talents, if I ran from who I was?
Home called to me, and I yearned to return. But home didn’t have answers.
Can you show me? I asked the delver. What I am?
Maybe. I don’t even know what I am. There is a place we can learn, a place in the nowhere. A place where…we were all…born…
There are no places in the nowhere, I sent.
Not in its heart, no. But at the fringes there are settlements.
I saw the meaning—the delver spoke of a region where acclivity stone was mined. Another mystery I had never quite understood. How did people go into the nowhere and harvest that rock, if the nowhere was a formless void?
Yes, there were actual places on the fringes. Places important to cytonics. Important to me. The delver put one of these locations into my mind.
I hung trapped between two opposite pulls. One, my desire to go home, to hold Jorgen, to laugh with my friends. The other, something frightening. Unknown. Like the frightening, unknown things in my own soul.
If you come here, the delver sent, it will be difficult to return. Very difficult. And you might get lost…
I felt Doomslug’s mind trembling. The rest of the delvers began to reappear, eyes opening—piercing white holes in reality, burning and hating. They did not want me going where that delver directed.
In the end, that was what prompted my decision. I’m sorry, Jorgen, I sent—hoping he could at least feel the words. I had to choose the path that led to answers. Because in that moment, I was absolutely certain it was the only way to protect the people I loved.
You go home, I told Doomslug. I will find my way later. I grabbed hold of the destination the delver had sent me.
Thank you, the delver projected. I could feel its sincere relief. Seek to walk…the Path of Elders…and remember to not get lost…
Wait! I sent. The Path of Elders?
But the delver withdrew, and I felt the others preparing to attack. So I gave Doomslug a final push to go home, then activated my powers and threw myself into the unknown.
I dropped out of a wall.
Like, I emerged straight from the stone. I flopped forward in a heap of tangled clothing and limbs. M-Bot made a grunting noise as his drone body fell out beside me, but there was no sign of Doomslug.
I scrambled to my feet, orienting myself, looking around to see…a jungle? Like, a real jungle. I’d seen pictures in school of Old Earth, and this place reminded me of those. Imperious moss-covered trees. Branches like broken arms, twisted and draped with thick vines like power lines. It smelled like the algae vats, only more…dirty? Earthy?
Scud. It truly was a jungle—like where Tarzan of the Apes had lived in Gran-Gran’s stories. Were there apes here? I’d always thought I’d make a good queen of the apes.
M-Bot hovered up, turning around to take it in. The wall we’d fallen out of was behind us. A flat stone freestanding in the jungle, like a monolith. It was overgrown with weeds and vines, and I recognized the carvings in it. I’d seen similar carvings on a wall in the tunnels on Detritus.
I knew from the delver’s impressions that this was the nowhere. That felt right to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain. Somehow I had to find answers in this place. Which seemed a whole lot more daunting to me now than it had moments ago. I…scud, I had barely escaped the Superiority with my life. Now I thought I could find answers about the delvers, one of the universe’s greatest cosmic mysteries?
Not merely about the delvers, I thought. About myself.Because in those moments when I touched the nowhere, and the beings that resided in it, I felt something that terrified me. I felt kinship.
I took a deep breath. First order of business was an inventory. M-Bot looked fine, and I still had my stolen energy rifle. I felt a ton more safe holding it. I wore what I’d escaped in: a standard Superiority pilot’s jumpsuit, a flight jacket, and a pair of combat boots. M-Bot hovered up to eye level in his drone, his grabber arms twitching.
“A jungle?” he asked me. To him, the time I’d spent communing with the delver would have passed in an instant. “Um, Spensa, why are we in a jungle?”
“Not sure,” I said. I glanced around for any sign of Doomslug. She was cytonic like me—slugs were what made ships able to hyperjump—and I hoped that she’d done as I’d asked, and jumped to safety on Detritus.
To be certain, I reached out with my powers to see if I could sense her. Also, could I jump home? I stretched outward, and felt…
Nothing? I mean, I still had my powers, but I couldn’t sense Detritus, or the delver maze, or Starsight. None of the places I could normally hyperjump to. It was eerie. Like…waking up at night and turning on the lights, only to find infinite blackness around you.
Yes, I was definitely in the nowhere.
“When we entered the black sphere, I felt the delvers,” I said to M-Bot. “And…I talked to one of them. The one from before. It said to walk the Path of Elders.” I rested my fingers on the wall behind us. “I think…this is a doorway, M-Bot.”
“The stone wall?” M-Bot asked. “The portal we entered was a sphere.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the sky through the trees. It was pinkish for some reason.
“Maybe we passed through the nowhere and came out on another planet?” M-Bot said.
“No, this is the nowhere. Somehow.” I stomped my foot, testing the soft earth beneath. The air was humid, like in a bath, but the jungle felt too quiet. Weren’t these places supposed to be teeming with life?
Beams of light filtered in from my right, parallel to the ground. So was it…sunset here? I’d always wanted to see one of those. The stories made them sound dramatic. Unfortunately, the trees were so thick that I couldn’t make out the source of the light, merely the direction.
“We need to study this place,” I said. “Set up a base camp, explore the surroundings, get our bearings.”
As if he hadn’t heard, M-Bot floated closer to me.
“M-Bot?”
“I…Spensa, I am angry!”
“Me too,” I said, smacking my hand with my fist. “I can’t believe that Brade betrayed me. But—”
“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of…of… Gah!”
I set aside my own concerns and focused on how he sounded. When I’d first found M-Bot in the little drone, his speech had been sluggish and slurred—like he’d been on heavy pain meds. But he was speaking clearly now, and quickly, more like his old self.
He buzzed back and forth in front of me like he was pacing. “I don’t care anymore if the emotions are fake. I don’t care that my routines simulate them. I am angry, Spensa! You abandoned me on Starsight!”
“I had to,” I said. “I had to help Detritus!”
“They ripped my ship apart!” he said, zipping the other direction. Then he froze in place, hovering. “My ship…my body… It’s gone…” He drooped in the air, sagging down almost to the ground.
“Uh, M-Bot?” I said, stepping up. “I’m sorry. Really. But look, can we have this conversation later?”
I was pretty sure that jungles like this were full of dangerous beasts. At least, in Gran-Gran’s stories people always got attacked in jungles. It made sense: anything could be hiding out among those shadowed trunks and deceptive ferns. I remembered how intimidated I’d felt when I’d first stepped out of the caverns and seen the sky. There had been so many directions to look, so many open places.
This was even more unnerving. Something could come at me from any direction. I reached down to touch M-Bot’s drone, which still hovered near the ground. “We should map the area,” I said, “and see if we can find a cave or something for shelter. Does that drone of yours have any kind of sensors? Are you picking up any signs of civilization, like radio broadcasts? There are mining operations in here, I think.”
When he didn’t reply, I knelt beside him. “M-Bot?”
“I,” he said, “am angry.”
“Look—”
“You don’t care. You never care about me! You left me!”
“I came back,” I said. “I left you because I had to! We’re soldiers. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions!”
“You’re a soldier, Spensa!” he shouted, hovering up in the air. “I’m a survey AI designed to search for mushrooms! Why do I keep letting you push me into doing things? I didn’t want to even enter that sphere, and you pulled me in! Aaah!”
Scud. That drone had surprisingly powerful speakers. And as if in reply to his shouts, something roared in the distance. The sound echoed in the forest ominously.
“Look,” I said softly to M-Bot. “I understand. I’d be a little angry in your place too. Let’s—”
Before I could finish he zipped away into the jungle, sobbing softly to himself.
I cursed and tried to follow, but he could fly—while I had to deal with the underbrush. I leaped over a fallen tree trunk, but on the other side I had to wiggle through a tangle of vines and fronds. After that something caught my foot, and I ended up tumbling to the ground.
When I finally managed to right myself, I realized I had no idea what direction he’d gone. In fact…what direction had I come from? Was that log over there the one I’d climbed over? No…that had been before I’d pushed through the vines. So…
I groaned, settling into the hollow of some overgrown roots, gun in my lap, and sighed. Well, my quest had started in a traditional Spensa-like fashion: with everyone mad at me. I realized that I needed a moment to decompress. M-Bot wasn’t the only one with a lot of powerful emotions.
I’d gone from confronting a delver to floating in space thinking I was dead, to waking up in a hospital, to escaping a hit squad sent to kill me. Now I’d had to make a snap decision about coming to this place, and I worried I was wrong.
Maybe I should have gone home and found a way to send someone else into the nowhere to find answers. Someone smart, like Rig. Or someone careful, like Kimmalyn. Right now I felt lost. I didn’t know what had happened to Cuna, and I worried about my friends.
I was alone, isolated, lost. And to top it off, my only companion—who was supposed to be the emotionally stable one, by programming design—had just thrown a tantrum and left.
Did people in Gran-Gran’s stories ever feel like this? I wished I knew what Khutulun of Mongolia or Calamity Jane of the Wild West had done when feeling overwhelmed.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough to notice that whatever was providing the light here didn’t seem to be moving. I let myself fixate on that instead of my mounting anxiety about Jorgen and my friends.
I’d made my decision. Now that I was here, I needed to learn what I could, then find a way home. “M-Bot?” I said to the trees, my voice coming out as a croak. “If you can hear me, would you please come back? I promise to apologize—and I’ll even let you have the first insult.”
No reply. Only the sound of faintly rustling leaves. So I forced myself to focus on a more detailed inventory of my assets. A way to do something about my situation—no matter how small—in order to start reasserting control. Cobb had taught me that.
Scud. I’d told Cobb that Cuna’s faction wanted peace. Winzik and Brade could use that to lure Cobb into talks—then double-cross him.
No, I told myself. Inventory.
I gave my rifle a quick once-over. I’d barely used up any of its charge during my escape, which meant I had a power source—and roughly five hundred shots, depending on whether I used standard energy rounds or amped rounds.
My jumpsuit didn’t include a medic belt, unfortunately, or a pilot’s survival kit. I did have the translator pin I’d been using at Starsight to understand alien languages. I fished in the pockets of the jacket, hoping maybe I’d shoved a knife or something into one of them without remembering. Instead I pulled out a handful of glowing sand.
Glowing. Sand.
Silver, like it was made of ground-up starfighter hull, and glistening. It was such an incongruous sight that I sat there staring at it as some dribbled between my fingers.
Saints. What was it? I closed my hand and returned it to my pocket, where I noticed something else. A lump at the bottom of the sand? I dug down and pulled out my father’s pilot’s pin. The one I’d kept hidden away since his death. Yet I knew it hadn’t been on me when I’d jumped into the portal. I didn’t even have it on Starsight. I’d left it on Detritus, in my bunk. So how was it suddenly in my pocket, surrounded by silver sand?
Weirded out by its appearance, I tucked the pin away. I didn’t find anything else hiding in my pockets, but I had one other asset I could think of: my powers. I knew I couldn’t hyperjump home—I couldn’t even feel home in here. But I had other abilities; the first I had ever manifested was the power to “hear the stars.” Which in practical terms meant I could communicate across long distances. Maybe I couldn’t hyperjump out of here, but could I reach Gran-Gran mentally?
I settled back against the tree and decided to give it a try. I just closed my eyes and…listened, extending my mind. That sounds silly, but I’d spent hours with Gran-Gran practicing this. And today I felt something.
There was a mind near me. It was familiar, like a presence I’d once known. Who was it? Not Gran-Gran…not Jorgen…not even the delver. I tried contacting the mind, and I got…a sensation of contentment? That was odd.
Then I felt something else. A second mind nearby. They were cytonic, whoever they were, because the moment our minds brushed a voice popped into my head.
Ho there! it said. Another cytonic, in the belt?
Yes! I sent. I’m lost. Can you help?
Careful now, the voice said. Dangerous things can hear you in here if you use your powers! Where are you? Describe your fragment, and I shall endeavor to locate you.
Fragment? I sent. I’m in a jungle. By…um…a tree?
I needed to find a better landmark. As soon as I considered it though, I hesitated. What if this was an enemy? How did I know the voice could be trusted?
At that moment, I got attacked.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
