The first voice swears, with venom. “Worse than Russ. Must you always be the queen’s prized pet, Thaane? Is she tugging on your leash?”
A cacophony of movement. The slam of a body into, thank the stars above, the opposite wall and not us. The whole hall rattles, pebbles and gravel scattering from the ceiling. I swallow an involuntary cough.
The fourth voice—Thaane?—is terribly steady, but packed with power. A loaded gun, trigger tensed. A weapon is no less lethal for having a silencer; I fully believe that if the speaker cut loose, he would tear everything in his path apart in a rampage with his bare hands, with his teeth.
“Know full well, soldier,” says Thaane, “that if they find your body on the battlefield, slit from throat to thighs, everyone will report it was one of the rebels who did it.”
The third voice—Isek?—is tremulous. “Let him go, Thaane. It isn’t worth it.”
The crash of a body to the floor. Coughing, gasping.
“Azarii’s troops won’t make it inside, not with us at the ready,” Thaane continues, apathetic. “But should one slip through, let’s not make it easy for them to find their way about.You, soldier … do it.”
A clap of clawed hands. It feels like I’ve been flipped upside down, and then I’m nearly choking, trying not to gasp aloud, the sensation like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the hall. Aspect reaches to steady me, and I push back hard, not wanting their shifting gait to make their peg leg squeak and alert the nearby soldiers.
Almost as soon as it began, it’s over. In a single flash, every single blue-flame brazier on the wall goes out.
We wait for the footsteps and voices to recede, then wait another long moment to be absolutely certain, before emerging from behind the banner.
The darkness is perfect and total now. I creep along the rugged stone hall with one open gloved hand on the wall, counting every perceptible turn in my head so I can retrace my steps before Adria finds my new chamber empty. So help me, I wish I knew where I was trying to go. I wish I knew what I was looking for. I wish I didn’t feel doubt wriggling in my gut that this was at all a good idea.
But, at the very least, Adria is certain to be distracted from us right now. And the hall’s standard patrols have been called to the gate. Clearly, the rebellion I glimpsed in Alpha’s memory is bloodthirsty and out in full force. Beyond the fortress’s walls, freezeshot and bullets alike distantly ring out, split by battle cries on both sides.
“For the queen!”
“Down with the usurper!”
Aspect’s forehead contains a headlight, but since mechs were never intended for use beyond the Daylands, the darkest area they’d encounter would be a starship’s repair hatch—nothing compared to the boundless dark of the Shadowlands. The illumination doesn’t carry far. Just a shivering, pale cone in our immediate vicinity.
Our combined stealth is also limited by Aspect’s new leg, which A) does not have a knee joint like Leg One, and B) announces every step of Leg Two with an enthusiasticsqueak.
A short while later, the only thing I know for sure is that I haven’t accidentally gone backward. Where I’m going remains a mystery, and the more turns I have to memorize, the more I fear I won’t be able to find my way back. But I can’t turn back until I’ve found something useful, either for Aspect’s awakening or justifying my crimes to the Daylands, or this will all have been for naught. So I trudge on into the nothingness.
Besides the battle cacophony beyond the fortress, the only sounds are my mask-filtered breathing and Aspect’s squeaky new leg.
And then, low, shuddering straight up my spine—rumbling.Growling.
“Aspect,” I gasp. “Against the wall. Now.”
Unfortunately, Aspect chooses the wall opposite me, leaving my immediate surroundings encased in impenetrable dark.
Out of the void, six glowing red eyes blink and lock on me, then tilt in casual observation. I go stock-still against the wall. The eyes creep closer, close enough that hot, rank breath from the unseen creature fogs up the outside of my helmet. Something drips onto my visor. It traces down my mask, dripping to the stone floor. My knees are knocking worse than Aspect’s ever have, legs jittering together, fear abruptly alive in my whole body, a scream struggling to break out of my throat.
The growling rises. It vibrates through my ribs like a bass drum. Something thick and hot lashes out toward my face, too quickly for me to react, trapping me against the wall. In my fright, I stagger, knees hitting the rocks below, the strange sensation smacking against my helmet, blocking my view. It takes an embarrassingly long moment for me to register that what’s blurring my vision is saliva—the pressure on my helmet, twin lapping, flailing tongues.
“Aspect,” I breathe, barely audible even to myself. “Light, please. Slowly.”
Aspect tilts their head to reorient the spotlight, revealing the hulk that stands before me. At Chloe’s insistence, I’ve studied precious memories of Pagomènos’s early animal inhabitants, so I know what a dog is supposed to look like, though they’ve been extinct for generations.
This is definitely not the natural state of a dog.
Its body warps, surges, into a trio of thick necks, each adorned with its own canine head. Two are characterized by lolling tongues that tease my mask, the red eyes playfully bright; the third head snarls, eyes more like starship error warning lights, rotten gums flecked with spittle, tongue relentlessly chewed, coated in both dried and fresh blood. Is it one dog? Three, somehow merged into one?
In the memories I’ve studied, humans patted them on the head, called them good.
“Good … dogs?” I open one gloved palm, willing my hand not to shake, and lay it against one of the two friendly foreheads. “Good dogs. Very … good … dogs.”
The beast nuzzles into me, nose wet, midnight-black fur coarse but soft. An absurd peace rolls through me. I could close my eyes and stay here forever. Maybe this is why early Pagonian settlers brought dogs to the planet. I already want to smuggle this strange specimen back to my quarters, stroke its muzzles with my fingers until it falls into a pleasant sleep.
