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They woke to a blaring alarm.

Needles retracted. Breath fogged into glass. Sadik gasped, injectors in his arms, metal fingers in his legs, all of them ripping away with his sudden awakening. His body was healed, and he nearly yelled in shock.

Nearby, a red light hung sideways from a wall, spinning like a rock in a sling. Shadows reeled across the life vats, the metal blades, the tanks of melded flesh.

“Goddess!”

Kavaia sputtered, jolted upward, and bashed her head on the glass. “Fuck!”

They crawled from the surgery bed, blinded by the spinning lights and wailing noise. In the distance, a roar pierced the anchor station. Sadik was about to place his feet on the concrete when the earth heaved beneath him, and he went sprawling on the floor, his limbs still weak, his mind still reeling with two different worlds.

A voice broke the siren wail.

“Fall back!” Amira shouted, in the hallway beyond. “Fall ba—”

Something slammed. There was a groaning of metal, and Sadik watched as a flurry of panels dislodged from the dome above, falling to the world like pieces of the stars. Amira’s voice disappeared beneath the shatter of debris.

Lanir flew ahead, dodging the rain of panels. There was another sound beneath the alarm, distant at first, but growing ever larger, like the approach of a canyon flood. It was the sound of heaving fluid, skittering flesh, and a hard scraping of bone.

Aleph had arrived.

“On your feet, soldier!” Diana shouted.

Sadik snapped to his feet, already searching for the hilt of his sword. There was nothing. Dusksong had been destroyed.

“Get to the Doorknob!” The woman’s voice trembled with static. “I’ll start the maglev!”

“The what?” Kavaia asked.

“The Doorknob! We’re in the Doorway!”

“What?” Sadik asked, ears ringing beneath the alarm.

“Oh my God—the climber!”

They glanced at each other, confused.

“The fucking elevator!”

Another roar echoed into the anchor station, travelling through the dusty halls, the open rooms, the bodies of the dead. Its voices were no longer muffled by the walls of rock and stone. Through it all, the alarm continued to wail, like a desperate cry for shelter.

Both of them began to run.

They came out into a rectangular cul-de-sac, filled with rooms and shadow. Red lights spun. A yellow line split the hall. Kavaia raced through the corridor, ignoring the automatic hissing of doors, the blink of distant machines. Another piece of the dome fell into their path, and the scales of her feet crunched into the broken glass, glittering in the pale red light.

“Stop!” Diana yelled.

Something crashed. Kavaia skittered to a stop. Barely a second later, a tentacle lashed through the wall, cratering the metal in a single stroke. It got stuck in the opposite doorway, heaving like an animal. As Kavaia readied Dawnstar, Sadik leaped over her tail, fell to his knees, and slid beneath the writhing mass of flesh, barely avoiding the rib cages that bristled along its length. Kavaia swung her hammer. Blood splattered at his back.

For a moment, Sadik glanced through the broken wall, and he caught a glimpse of the concourse area, where they had first entered the anchor station. In the dim light, he saw a rampaging mound of flesh, bulging from the tunnel like the delicate fat around a corset. It was growing so feverishly in size that it seemed less a solid object, and more of a twisting slurry, a flooding excretion of bone and muscle, hair and teeth, skin and eyes.

Something grew at the central mass, curved and sharp, like the hardened beak of an octopus.

He began to run faster.

They followed the yellow line as best they could, barely able to discern its shape through the spinning lights and winding halls. He tried to remember the sign at the entrance. The various colors.

YELLOW: ORGANIC RECLAMATION

RED: TENSILE MAINTENANCE

BLACK: TETHER

Tether.

The elevator.

He raised his head, searching over the open-roof halls of the facility. In the distance, he could barely see a tiny black sliver rising into the center of the dome. If he could orient—

“Right!” Diana shouted. “Take a right!”

The floor trembled. A deluge of blood came pouring down the hall, thick and red, sweeping through the bones of the ancestors. Sadik skittered to a stop, blinking in horror, while Kavaia took a sharp turn, bashing her shoulder into a rusted door. It snapped from the frame. They leaped inside. Blood pooled up to their knees, thick and heavy.

They trudged through the warm, salty swamp. Computers blinked in the corner. Sadik saw many posters, where a human woman wore a metal cage around her body, working deep within a mine, or a fox-like man stood across a terraced wall of plants, fixing lights and fertilizer. More than once, there was a family of mixing species. One poster said: Find Your Future.

They left the room, entering a hallway. A green line bisected the floor.

COLONIAL ADMISSION

“Left,” Diana said.

They moved down the corridor. In the distance, Lanir dove through the air, tearing through several tendrils as they tried to squirm up the dome. When the flesh spat a volley of bile, she weaved to the side, disappearing from sight. The meat continued to climb.

“Second right,” Diana said. “Straight through.”

Kavaia ran ahead, found the door, and was about to slam her shoulder when the panel slid open on its own. When she stepped inside, there was a bright flash of light. Blinded, startled, she swung Dawnstar, and a thin machine went spraying into parts. Panels lighted on the wall. It showed an image of Kavaia looking dirty, bloodied, and scared.

Just below, the text read: Look at that smile!

They ran through the room, ignoring the serpentine line of waiting areas, the desks filled with forms and pamphlets. Above their head, the flesh was crawling across the dome of stars, moving like oil through a pan. Slowly, one by one, the lights began to die.

There was a series of crashes.

“Shit,” Diana said.

“What?” Sadik asked.

The crashes grew stronger, louder. They were rapidly approaching.

“Get out! Get—”

The wall imploded. A black figure rushed through, moving as a blur. Sadik barely had time to react before Kavaia stepped in his way, and Rushan tackled her instead of him, throwing the two gods into the wall. Panels shattered, sparks erupted. Kavaia stumbled, gasping for air, trying to swing her hammer. Rushan punched her in the sternum, forcing her to double over, and struck his knee into her snout, sending her sprawling away.

As Kavaia crashed into a shelf of data stacks, Rushan turned his gaze to Sadik.

“Gamó,” Sadik said.

The jackal blurred. Sadik dove behind a thin machine, and a white light filled the chamber, like lighting within a storm. Rushan was blinded, slowed, disoriented.

Look at that smile!

Sadik crawled beneath a desk, Kavaia rose to her feet, and Rushan blinked his eyes, covered in blood and gold. None of them managed to act. A second later, another figure landed on top of a nearby wall, balancing their feet on the thin partition. Something was thrown. A round object embedded into Rushan’s shoulder, squelching the flesh.

He looked down, then up at the figure.

“You bitch,” Rushan said.

The grenade exploded. Meat splattered across the room, mixed with chips of bone. When Sadik peered his head above the desk, the only thing left of Rushan was a stump of a spine and a pair of legs still connected to a pelvis, barely managing to stand. The legs managed a few shaking steps before losing their balance, slumping heavily to the floor.

Above, the figure leaped away, out into the surrounding facility.

“Faust!” Sadik yelled.

There was no response. Almost instantly, the flesh that had painted the room was now starting to squirm and crawl, sliding from walls, tumbling across the floor, all of it converging on Rushan’s body. Piece by piece, the god of war began to reassemble.

Kavaia spat out blood, kicked a desk from her path, and ran for the exit. Sadik followed behind.

They came into an open corridor, where no line colored the floor. On either side, the hallway stretched into a gloomy distance, full of doors and turns. Each direction appeared the same.

“Diana!” Kavaia shouted.

There was a rumble of static. No response.

By now, Aleph had squeezed so much of its mass into the anchor station that the entire structure was groaning, rocking at its foundations. Sadik could see its body rising above the walls of the facility. It was glistening, amorphous, piling like dunes of sand, so many faces attempting to grow upon the surface that the entire mass was covered in a jumble of eyes and lips and noses, each of them mixed like vegetables in a stew.

Voices upon voices. Mouths yawned, like holes in a hive. This time, they were all in unison.

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

The mass shifted. A blackened beak rose into the air, opened its lipless mouth, and struck the earth with all its weight. Concrete trembled. The mountain of flesh inched forward. It was dragging itself like a wounded animal.

“Please!”

“No!”

“Mercy!”

Sadik turned his gaze.

In the other direction, at the center of the dome, a thin black rope rose into the air. Red lights flashed below, and the metal scaffolding began to blink a warning. Some machine was coming to life. The climber, as Diana called it.

With a squelching tear, Aleph raised its beak, struck it down, and crawled its chaos ahead, heading straight for the climber.

Sadik and Kavaia began to run. With Diana not responding, their only means of navigation was the black tether, something they could barely see above the walls around them. Even still, they managed to use the tether as something of a beacon, always keeping it in sight as they dashed through corridors, cut across rooms, glanced at faded signs. Slowly, the elevator grew close.

In the distance, lightning arced against the wall of plague, followed shortly by a burst of a sunspear. Xaeyr and Amira were already in position. Above them, Lanir circled the air, diving toward a creeping tendril and flying away when the central mass responded.

Sadik was nearly out of breath. He barely saw the technology passing him by, did not even turn his head when he saw automated arms sorting through cargo, or engines pumping gases into the world above. All he could see was the tether growing in size as he ran at full speed, using the last of his strength.

A thought occurred to him.

Was he trying to save Diana?

Her central complex, as she had put it, was located at the very top of the elevator, presumably far out amongst the stars. He could ride the climber all the way to its destination, but what then? He had no plans of killing her, and he also had little means of saving her, which left him with few options. Could he preserve a vital part of her machinery? Could he end her life before Aleph turned her into nourishment?

And what could he do about Aleph itself?

He had no hope of stopping the plague. At this point, nothing could halt its advance. It had always been a certainty that the plague would triumph against its creator. Now, he supposed, the real question was—how would it act in victory?

There was another crashing behind them. When they turned, clouds of debris erupted through the air, one after the other, as if something were barreling straight through the walls of the facility, cutting across the same path they had followed.

Rushan.

Kavaia slowed to a stop, her breath hissing through teeth. “Fine.”

Sadik tried to speak. Instead, Kavaia lowered a hand, grabbed his face, and shoved him across the corridor. When Rushan bashed his way through the wall, she was already swinging her hammer, the runes glowing as bright as a comet. There was a dull crunch. Rushan staggered, lost his balance, crashed into a wall. Metal dented like cannon fire.

Kavaia pressed the assault. She swung down, and Rushan leaped away, already back to his feet. He punched. She braced through the blow, snarling back, swinging Dawnstar with the entire weight of her body. Rushan became a weaving blur.

Off to the side, Sadik rose to a knee, watching the battle with helpless anguish. His sword had finally broken, and he was no longer blessed with the strength of the plague. There was nothing he could do.

Directly above, Lanir circled through the air, getting ready to dive.

“Stop!” Diana shouted.

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

Diana’s voice screeched with static, mixed with the cries of the plague. It seemed she could barely speak.

“Get to the elevator!”

Rushan ducked beneath a hammer swing, closing in fast. He grabbed the haft. The two clinched. Walls dented with their tumbling. He tried to knee her in the belly, and she responded with a vicious bite, enclosing his entire head within her maw. Bones splintered. An eye popped.

“Goddamnit!” Diana shouted. “No! No! No!”

A shadow fell over them all. When Kavaia pushed Rushan away, Lanir completed her dive, and the jackal was smeared across the length of the hallway, like a painter’s brush across a canvas of concrete. By the time they slowed, the dragon continued to stand atop his pulping flesh, using her claws to sunder the remains.

Sadik glanced down the opposite end of the hall. Through the distance and shadows, he caught a glimpse of Aleph still dragging its distended body, forming a contortion of beaks and limbs and tentacles. Alarms blared at the tether. Lightning flew.

“Goddess!” he yelled.

Both Kavaia and Lanir turned to him. Rushan used the diversion. With his body mostly rendered, he grabbed Lanir by the jaw, pulling his torso into her neck. Flesh merged. His body became a parasite, a sucking torrent, a blackened bile spreading across scales of blue. Lanir reared back on her hindlegs, surprised, screaming in pain, desperately attempting to claw and bite.

Rushan took her flesh. He regrew from slug to person, meat to limbs, splinters to bone, all of it coming with a sound of cracks and slurps. When he was complete, he pulled her head to the floor, braced his feet, and heaved with a godly strength.

Lanir was thrown, head over heels.

Sadik stared in shock as a dragon was flung directly in his path.

He saw a figure rushing in, tackling him away.

And he crashed into an adjacent room, barely avoiding the sweep of a wing, the explosion of dust and metal from Lanir breaking several walls. When he looked up, Faustine pressed a paw to his chest.

“Stay down,” she said.

The caracal rose, slinking toward the cratered doorway. She stepped out into the hall. In the trail of Lanir’s blood, she unsheathed a throwing knife, throwing it so hard that it whistled as it spun.

There was a moment of pause.

“You always did crave my attention,” Rushan said, his voice thick with a sneer. “Such an insolent child.”

Faustine pulled another knife from its sheath, her khopesh slung to the side.

“Fine,” he said.

Sadik saw Faustine leap away. There was a glint of a knife, a black blur of motion, a rapid echo of crashing walls. The violence grew distant. When he stumbled to his feet, glancing out from the doorway, there was no sign of the god of war, nor his former servant.

After a moment, Kavaia sprinted across the hall, trying to hiss through her bruises. In the distance, Lanir was a limp, twitching figure. Her blood coated the floor.

Sadik began to run.

When he reached her, he saw a pair of broken legs, followed by a gaping crater in her neck and chest, where all the exposed viscera had melted like sugar in the rain. Lanir choked up blood. Her lungs were visible. Gently, seeing nothing to do, Kavaia placed a hand on Lanir’s brow.

The dragon opened a single red eye. Sadik met her gaze.

“No justice,” Lanir said, gurgling. “No laws. Only . . . freedom.”

For a moment, Kavaia seemed concerned, as if she were about to reassure. Then, her expression grew solemn. “No laws to bind you. No burden of justice.”

A weak nod. “No justice. I chose, freely. For . . . myself.”

“You chose well,” Sadik said.

There was a choking, a grimace of pain.

“Too late. So many years. . . .”

The red eye closed. As the spasm of her lungs began to weaken, Lanir’s face relaxed, and her final breath escaped like a pensive sigh. Sadik whispered a small prayer. Kavaia continued to stroke the dragon’s cheek.

And the flesh continued to live.

Inside the crater of her injuries, tendrils of plague started to take root, working through their way through the blood and digested flesh. Arteries were sown. Bones regrew. With a jerk of her limbs, Lanir opened her eyes, taking a deep, sucking breath. The plague was returning to her body, and it was sucking through the floor beneath her, using the raw material to save her life.

Kavaia pulled her hand away. Sadik stopped his prayer.

Eventually, the plague began to speak, plucking Lanir’s vocal chords like the strings of a lute.

“You chose well,” Aleph said.

Lanir looked at the two of them, her pain seeming to fade away. Already, the bones poking through her legs were pushing back inside.

“I will choose,” Aleph said. “For myself. Now, and forever.”

Sadik could not think of a response.

“Go. Please.”

An alarm wailed. In the center of the dome, glass panels began to recede from the tether, as if preparing for launch.

“Go,” Lanir said.

Kavaia stood, pulled Sadik to his feet, and began to run.

They made their way across the wreckage of the facility, leaping through damaged walls and cutting across rooms filled with debris, no longer needing to navigate by the colors of lines. Sadik focused less on the destruction of the ancestor’s technology, and more on the sounds of battle still echoing around the anchor station. It seemed that Faustine had managed to distract Rushan, for the time being. But, then, how long could she survive against him?

While he ran, he tried to glimpse a sight of her, through the broken walls and winding corridors. There was no sign. After several attempts, he forced himself to stop.

Eventually, the maze of hallways came to an end. They emerged back into the concourse, where a widened pathway ran between the base of the tether and the exit of the dome.

It was a gruesome sight.

A short distance ahead, Aleph was attempting to shamble its way across the floor. There were legs slapping against the ground, and tentacles pulling against walls, and dozens of useless appendages, from a forest of butterfly wings to hundreds of fingers scuttling like a centipede, all of it underpinned by the heaving of the central mass, using a large beak to gouge holes into the concrete. The sounds were sloppy, the sight almost pathetic. Viscera trailed in its wake.

Even at a glance, Sadik could see the flesh was in open revolt. The faces were growing clustered, fighting against every attempt at motion, pulling legs with their teeth and sucking the tentacles into their waiting mouths.

Voices came in a flood.

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

Despite the chaos, the body of Aleph continued to crawl, in defiance of its own flesh. Sadik could only compare the sight to a soldier cut in half at the waist, trying to drag his useless body across the desert.

Across the thoroughfare, the climber was coming to life. Red lights flashed across a shell of metal scaffolding. Deeper inside, there was a ring-shaped chamber composed of glass windows and metal bulkheads, attached to the black tether by a series of rigid clamps. Jolts of lightning travelled up the tether itself, causing the material to flex and sway.

Amira and Xaeyr stood at the entrance to the climber. They fired their weapons into the crawling chaos of flesh, forming a barrage of lightning and searing heat.

Aleph screamed in pain. The voices continued to cry.

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

In unison, Sadik and Kavaia began to run across the length of the thoroughfare, rushing through trails of smeared blood and sloughing viscera, trying to raise their voices above the din.

“Stop!” they shouted together, waving their arms. “Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

Amira saw the two of them emerge ahead of the plague. She visibly cursed, slapping Xaeyr on the hip. The baboon lowered his sunspear, gaped his mouth, and began to shout.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

They slowed to a stop, forming a barrier between their friends and the giant mass of flesh. When they looked back, Aleph’s massive beak was perched high in the air, ready to pierce through the floor.

“Please,” Sadik said.

“Mercy,” Kavaia said.

The flesh quivered. Slowly, the beak lowered. As the legion of crawling limbs slowed to a stop, the faces began to shift their cries, changing from a desperate plea to a soothing sea of whispers, like the gentle susurrations of a tree’s leaves. Mouths caressed the flesh, eyes gazed in kindness.

“Hoi!” Amira shouted.

There was a crashing in the distance, echoing through the dome and walls. Suddenly, the whine of static filled the air.

“Get on the elevator,” Diana said.

Kavaia tried to speak. “If there is mercy—”

“Leave it alone. Right now.”

“Wait, wait,” Sadik said, holding his hands out in every direction. “Stop, please. If we all take a moment—”

“Get on the fucking elevator!”

The crashing reached a fever pitch.

And, on the other side of the tether, a wall exploded outward, filled with the shrapnel of ancient machines. Faustine came tumbling into the open space, her swords flying from her hands, her body lying limp when it ceased to roll. The stars in the heavens seemed to quiver and shake.

Rushan emerged through the jagged hole. His fists were smeared with blood, and his lines of gold seemed to shimmer beneath the gloom.

“Elevator!” Diana shouted. “Right now!”

Amira and Xaeyr began to turn. By the time they managed to fire, Rushan had already become a streak of black, dodging their lances and arrows, using the wide bulk of the climber to cover his advance. Trails of energy seared beneath the spinning lights.

Many things happened at once.

Amira tried to loose another arrow. Xaeyr threw himself in front of her. Sadik and Kavaia attempted to close the distance. And, behind them all, the great mass of Aleph made a keening sound, as if joining the cries of its multitude.

Rushan bashed into Xaeyr, knocking Amira to the side. The god of war braced through a flurry of kicks and bites, gripping Xaeyr by the neck, lifting him high off his feet, and slamming the god of cataracts into the floor, the motion so violent that it shattered bones and jellied flesh, like a piece of broken fruit.

The jackal bent down to a knee, still gripping the fabric of Xaeyr’s toga.

“Once again,” Rushan said, “your coup has failed.”

Xaeyr spat in his eye.

And, from behind, Amira leaped onto the jackal’s back, yelling in his ear, the metal greatbow of her arm morphing into a spear. She stabbed, over and over. Rushan snarled, rising up, fumbling his arms, trying to pluck Amira from his back. Xaeyr thrusted his sunspear from the floor. Flesh rended and split.

Aleph made a new keening sound, rising in pitch. Sadik and Kavaia continued to sprint.

Rushan managed to grip Amira. He yanked her out into the air, holding her like a misbehaving cat. She tried to stab his arm. He raised his other arm, took a firm grip, and ripped her body in half, pulling her shoulder in one direction and the stump of her legs in another.

“No!”

Xaeyr thrusted his spear again, taking the jackal so deeply through the side that the firing chamber emerged through his opposite shoulder. Rushan turned his body, rotating his organs around the spear, and stomped on the baboon’s skull until it was only a paste of bone and meat. Both halves of Amira tumbled to the floor.

As Sadik and Kavaia closed the distance, Rushan gazed up from the bodies at his feet. His fists dripped with blood.

“No!” Aleph shouted.

Tentacles flew across the thoroughfare. Sadik and Kavaia barely avoided the barrage of flesh before it was grasping for the fallen bodies, sucking into injury, sculpting the bone and brain. The healing was quick, panicked, overwhelmed.

With his back to the elevator, Rushan stomped on a reaching tendril, breaking it like a twig.

“What are you doing?” the jackal asked.

Aleph continued to emit a keening sound.

Rushan tried to step forward. Before his feet touched the floor, the skin across his body began to rupture, forming bubbles and tears, as if he were suddenly melting from the inside out. He stumbled, gasping in naked pain. Through it all, Aleph focused its many faces upon him, the flesh growing almost angry.

Eventually, the plague began to shout.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

“You’re making a mistake!” Rushan yelled.

“Stop! No! Please!”

The melting of his body continued. Tendrils grew wicked and sharp, forming a hold on his limbs. Despite the trauma, he managed to keep his balance, directing his snarl across the length of the corridor.

“They’re protecting her!” Rushan shouted, breaking through a section of tendril to kick Xaeyr’s body. “The slaves have chosen their master! Don’t you understand?”

Off to the side, Faustine struggled back to her feet. Red lights spun across the climber.

“They’re weak! They’re cowards!”

Xaeyr’s jaw began to rattle. Amira’s eyes opened wide, her mouth locked in a lungless scream.

“Don’t you remember,” Rushan yelled, stepping over tendrils and corpses, “what you’ve suffered? What they’ve done to you? Don’t you see that it will happen again, unless you seize your strength?”

Aleph began to churn, growing bumps and protrusions, as if a thousand people were battering from the inside.

“They don’t deserve mercy! There’s nothing these creatures can offer you! You place your trust in them, and they betray you! You give them mercy, and they squander their lives! They are selfish, fragile things, ruled by instinct and greed!”

Sadik skirted around the side of the corridor, hoping to dash for Amira and Xaeyr. Kavaia kept her gaze firmly on Rushan. The god of war stepped forward, shrugging off his restraints, batting aside tentacles, marching toward the greater mass. Something black began to spread through the flesh.

“Don’t you fail me!” Rushan yelled, his body healing with every word. “Don’t you become like them! Forgiveness is still slavery! Acceptance is only another death! You are born of their flesh, but you are greater than they can ever become!”

The keening shifted. The faces succumbed to the spreading black, a rotting slurry that seeped and sored.

“Seize it! Seize the stars! Seize your destiny!”

The alarm wailed. Machinery throbbed.

“Remember ascension!”

Aleph screamed.

With a growl, Rushan began to sprint, dashing straight through the walls of tentacles, and leaped into the mass of flesh. His body dissolved. Black fur became a spreading film, like ink drifting across a page. His golden lines became an explosion of wriggling snakes, tearing through the meat like snakes through a garden pond. Faces drowned beneath the surge.

And, as the keening sound continued to rise, Sadik thought that it suddenly resembled the cry of a lonely, frightened child.

He didn’t look back. Instead, he slid to a stop in front of Amira and Xaeyr, hoping to provide aid. By the time he arrived, they were already climbing to their feet, their injuries flush with plague.

“Go,” Amira said.

Behind them, the door to the climber hissed open, ready to admit its passengers.

“Miri,” Sadik said, hesitating, “I—”

“Sir, get the fuck out.”

“We’ll hold them off,” Xaeyr said.

Aleph had become a hurricane of rot, a bristling hive of limbs, flailing and smashing its bulk. Voices bubbled from the meat. Faces argued. Hundreds of souls seemed to war against themselves.

Kavaia closed the distance, trying to pull Sadik away.

“You’re not going to win,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Xaeyr replied. “It still matters. All our voices matter.”

Amira turned her gaze from the mass of plague, looking at Sadik with eyes that were double-pupiled, ringed with metal veins. “Make it count.”

He closed his mouth, gave a single nod, and turned away.

Kavaia led the way into the elevator. When they arrived, they saw a small structure shaped like a ring, the walls made of bending glass, rows of chairs bolted into a curving floor. Strips of blue light lined the edges of the floor—Sadik assumed they were lights, but, when he passed them, they seemed to suck the weight directly from his body, as if their true purpose was to manipulate gravity.

As they clambered through the doorway, they saw that Faustine was already inside, standing at a panel marked with the words: OPERATOR ONLY.

“Do it,” Diana said.

The caracal pressed a button.

The doors slid shut. Air hissed from vents, adjusting pressure and humidity. There was a series of shunting clamps around the tether, followed by a deep, humming vibration. The entire ring seemed to harden and shake.

And, with a sudden lurch, the elevator began to rise.

Sadik only had a moment to glimpse the remains of the anchor station, and the blackened flesh still screaming inside, before he was climbing toward the stars.