FSE

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The world fell away.

At first, the rate of ascent was disorienting—the ground leaped back, and the floor buckled upward, like a wave passing beneath a ship, causing a wave of dizziness to come over Sadik’s mind. His legs grew heavy. When he stumbled against a curving wall of metal, he felt a pair of blue lights, both on the ceiling above his head and the floor beside his ankles, each of them seeming to suck away the inertia. It left his intestines sinking within his belly.

Outside, the world was a rushing wall of inner bark. Translucent cells gleamed by the lights of the elevator. In only a few seconds, he could not believe how high they had lifted through the tree.

“Tensile strength nominal,” Diana said. “Increasing speed.”

The cells blurred. Leagues of wood became a river of brown, a smearing of bronze and ochre. Sadik and Faustine struggled to stand as their bodies became heavier than stone, their blood pooling from their head to their feet, their muscles straining to the limit. Kavaia fell completely to the floor, unable to support her weight.

“Magnetics: nominal. Induction end effects: negligible. Levitation: forty-two millimeters.”

Less than a minute later, they shot through the top of the tree. When Sadik strained his head toward a window, they were already miles into the air, the green leaves and glowing bark of the Neheamatt falling away beneath them. He could see the spread of the desert in every direction. Red rocks, distant sand, a pale blue of coastal ocean. Already, the landscape was as tiny as the quilting of a blanket.

“Atmospheric velocity reached,” Diana said. “Holding at just below sound barrier. You should expect some turbulence.”

The climber had already been trembling with the rapid speed—now, with the structure fully exposed to the sky, the motion became frightening. Metal groaned. Glass shook with a violent thrum. More than once, the entire structure seemed to sway from side to side, as if it were ripping loose from the blackened rope of the tether.

“Ablative shield: holding. Diverting power to inertial dampeners. Weight capacity . . . oh, you gotta be kidding. Fuck me.”

“What now?” Faustine asked, gripping the edge of a console.

“We have a stowaway.”

Through the noise and vibration, Sadik began to notice a series of hollow clangs through the floor beneath him, travelling slowly across the length of the climber. Faustine twitched her whiskers.

Someone was crawling on the undercarriage.

“Well,” Diana said. “Let’s see how much he likes atmospheric friction.”

A pale fire began to form at the top of the climber, ringing the circular compartment like a glaze of frosting atop a cake. Fury hissed into metal. Dull heat licked at the glass. The only reprieve they felt was the gradual reduction in acceleration. Sadik and Faustine managed to stand tall again, their lungs no longer burdened with weight.

“Oh,” Kavaia said, still lying on the floor. “This is awful.”

“It gets worse,” Diana replied.

The heat grew brighter. As the sky peeled into black, and the world became a distant haze, there was a sudden flurry of pounding across the length of the floor, rapidly skittering from one side to the next. Sadik felt a distinctive note of desperation. When the hiss of friction grew into a burning envelope around them, the noises began to fall silent. There was no sign of a scream.

“Ha!” Diana yelled. “Get fucked, dog-cock!”

All three of the passengers looked at the ceiling.

“Sorry. I’m used to being alone.”

Faustine pushed herself from the console. Taking cautious steps, she walked across the length of the passenger section, ignoring the rows of chairs, the handholds on the floor, the strips of inertia dampeners, and the passages to other sections of the ring. In the light of the flameless heat, she casted a long, shifting shadow.

After a few moments, the caracal stopped a few paces away from Sadik. With a grunt, Kavaia forced herself back to her feet, still swaying and weak.

There was a pause.

“Your tattoos are gone,” Faustine said.

Sadik paused, raising a hand to poke at his face. He felt nothing but unblemished skin. A few flakes of dry blood.

“So are yours,” he replied.

The caracal raised a brow. Her face was almost completely unscarred. Instead of a gnarled litany of burns, a smooth sheen of fur was beginning to return—brown cheeks, a white chin, black tufts on her ears. Her eyes were green and bright.

“Would it be wrong of me,” she said, “if I thought you looked better without them?”

“A little, yes.”

“Well.” She hesitated. “You do.”

“. . . thank you.”

Kavaia shifted at his side. The ground throttled beneath them, still shrouded in flame.

“So,” Faustine said. “What happens now?”

Sadik and Kavaia glanced between each other.

The caracal placed a hand on her hip, the khopesh slinging to the side. “Did you not have some kind of plan? Why are we ascending to the stars? What is our purpose?”

“Diana’s complex is located at the top,” Sadik said.

“. . . Diana?”

“To answer your question—no, we haven’t decided on a plan.”

Her expression soured. “Why not?”

“Things are not so certain,” Sadik said. “There is much we don’t know, and little we can change. For now, it seems best to choose our actions when the time is right. Not before.”

Her frown deepened. “Sadik, you’ve always had a plan.”

He looked away.

“You’ve always had a plan,” Faustine said, stepping closer. “I betrayed the god of war, and risked my life, because I thought you would be the same stone-faced battering ram you’ve always been. You would know what to do.” She raised her hands, helpless. “You always knew what to do.”

“Times have changed,” Sadik replied.

Faustine looked him up and down, from the tips of his sandals to the braid in his hair, as if she had expected something more.

“To me,” Kavaia said, “it appears that the wise are full of doubt, while the foolish brim with confidence.”

The caracal rolled her eyes.

“Stop that,” Sadik said. “Both of you.”

“Well, fine,” Faustine said. “If that’s how it is, so be it.” She took a step back. “I’m going to patrol this capsule. Machine. Whatever it’s called. I doubt we’ve seen the last of Rushan.”

Kavaia glanced through the curving window. Outside, the friction and heat were fading, the swaying of the climber beginning to ease. It was almost easy to stand. “Diana seemed confident that he was burned away, like the head of a leech.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Faustine replied.

“I do, in fact.”

“Well, you should agree, then. He’s still coming. Mark my words.”

Kavaia glanced out the window, hummed to herself, and slung Dawnstar into hand. Sadik rubbed his fingers across his empty palms. He missed the weight of Dusksong, the comforting glow of its runes. He felt exposed without it.

But, then again, did he really need a sword?

What problem had it truly solved?

Faustine flipped her khopesh, caught the blade in her palm, and held out the haft. “Here. Take it.”

Sadik looked down at the hooked blade, then up at her.

“I’ve got two,” she said.

With the glowing heat almost entirely gone, her face was cast in a clear sunlight, free of haze and clouds. All the shadows were gone, and her fur almost seemed to glow. Sadik took a small breath, raising his hand.

“Don’t touch that,” Diana said.

Sadik hesitated.

“Why not?” Faustine asked, irritated.

“Because you’re infected, obviously.”

Faustine glared up at the ceiling. After a moment, she looked back at Sadik, her eyes searching his face. She had gone out of her way to pull him into the anchor station. The plague had coursed into her body.

It was his fault she was infected.

She lowered the sword, ears twitching to either side.

“Don’t touch either of them,” Diana said. “For now, just keep your hands to yourself.”

Faustine did not respond.

“In fact,” Diana said, “if you’d be so kind, my little daughter of Babylon, I would really prefer that you stand in the middle of the passenger compartment, where I can keep a good eye on you.”

The caracal looked down at the floor, sheathed her sword, and began to turn away. Just before she left, her eyes darted back up to Sadik, as if checking for his reaction.

And, suddenly, Sadik had an urge to speak. He wanted to tell her that she did look better without the tattoos of the Luminous Path, as well as the scars she had curved into her fur, just to burn the allegiance away. He wanted to say that, for a moment, her face in the sunlight had reminded him of the days long in the past, before they had taken their vows, when they had little else to do but train and eat and talk.

He opened his mouth. Something stopped him.

The moment passed.

Faustine walked away, keeping her hands loose at her side. As she stood in the center of the compartment, sunlight glinted off her bronze pauldrons, while her tail swished through the burgundy sashes across her waist.

Sadik looked away.

“Oh, by the way,” Diana said. “We’re in space now.”

Sadik turned to the window.

Outside the climber, the world had fallen away, from an all-encompassing sky to a vast, looming sphere. He felt as if he had never seen any colors so vividly before. The world was brown, and green, and blue, speckled with the white of clouds. As he squinted closer, he could see that the surface was stitched with mountains, and the ground was stained with forest, and even the mightiest deserts were little more than patches of sand. The shape of entire continents seemed only like the cracks of a glass marble.

He settled his eyes on the western edge of the world, dragged them across the center of the sphere, and ended on the eastern horizon, taking in the shapes and texture. After it was done, he realized that his vision had travelled across a distance more vast than most would see in their entire lives. How many empires had been contained within a single sweep of his glance?

The view was humbling. Frighteningly so.

How small their lives had been.

Kavaia reached down, taking his hand into her own. When he looked up, there was an almost childlike wonder upon her face, the sunlight shining in her eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

They looked out together, and they saw the stars above the world, slowly gaining in prominence as the climber continued to rise. They were dimmed beneath the glare of the sun, just as they would be during the peak of daylight, but many still shone through, and the blackness surrounding them was so deep that it surely continued forever.

Kavaia squeezed his hand, breathing softly.

They stood at the window together, completely enraptured, pointing at distant lights and marveling at the world below.

“So, uh,” Diana said. “I hate to interrupt, but there are a couple things.”

Faustine folded her arms, glancing up at the tether.

“First, we’re going to accelerate. Now that we’re out of atmosphere, we can really press the nozzle. Top cruising speed is around thirty five thousand meters per second, and we’re going to hit it within ten minutes. The inertia dampeners will stop your skeletons from liquefying.”

Sadik began to notice a lightness in his muscles, a. It felt as if his weight was lessening by the second.

“Second, you’re going to start feeling a loss of gravity, the further we go. That’s going to continue until about halfway up the tether, when the centrifugal force from the planet’s rotation becomes stronger than gravity, and you start feeling like you’re being pulled up rather than down. Because of this, the climber is designed to flip. It’s disorienting. Make sure to grab a handhold.”

Metal rungs surrounded the chairs and bulkheads. There were signs dotting the corrugated walls, full of arrows, tilting bodies, and crates floating above the floor. Each of the texts spoke in bolded letters:

GRAB HANDLE. REMAIN IN SEATS. SECURE CHILDREN AND CARGO.

When Sadik looked up, the black tether was only visible where it attached to the elevator ring, or when it began to slice through the blanket of stars. The rope was growing noticeably thicker.

“Third.” Diana paused. “We still have a weight discrepancy.”

Kavaia turned her gaze from the window. “Rushan is still here.”

“He sure is.”

Faustine shook her head, whiskers twitching.

“He’s lost most of his mass,” Diana continued, “like it all got burned away, and he’s definitely not moving around the exterior, but, you know—he’s still there. Somehow. There’s not even any air anymore. I mean, Jesus Christ, what is he, a fucking tardigrade?”

“Can you do something about him?” Sadik asked.

“I shouldn’t have to. We’re about to accelerate, and Mr. Gold Pretty Boy is going to be on the trailing side of a couple hundred G’s. If that doesn’t rip him off my goddamn elevator, then, well, I don’t know.” She lowered her voice, as if whispering to herself. “I hate this fucking guy so much.”

Sadik glanced over at Faustine, looked down an empty corridor, and turned his body toward the window. The blue strips of light began to glow brighter, and the engines working around the tether started to emit a feverish vibration, groaning the metal walls and shuddering through the air. There was a coursing of static, followed by a creeping sense of unease. It seemed as if a massive wall of pressure was barely held at bay.

Outside, the world grew smaller and smaller. They were gaining speed. With the distances involved, it seemed to be a horrifying swiftness, and a negligible one, at the same time. He had little frame for reference.

The discrepancy made him sick. Blood pooled from his head to his feet, and his body now seemed to riot at the view of the cosmos, this landscape that was so alien to his knowledge and instincts. Every inch of his skin began to sweat. Sadik felt nauseous, disoriented, growing desperate for solid ground.

Kavaia squeezed his hand. With a lurch, she fell to the floor, managing to remain somewhat seated, and Sadik let himself collapse into her lap, struggling not to vomit. As the elevator continued to accelerate, he rested his head against her chest, and she began to stroke his hair, her long snout lowered like a shield.

“Breathe,” she said.

They tried to calm themselves. It was somewhat successful. Sadik found that the worst of the nausea passed when he closed his eyes, and the feelings in his body were no longer in conflict with his vision. At the same, he knew that Kavaia was struggling to maintain her posture through the dueling force of gravity and centrifugal spin. The lining of her throat bulged with discomfort.

Time passed. Sunlight slanted through the windows, the shadows leaping and slashing. The engines roared with a dull, heavy strength. As the elevator continued to ascend, they listened for the sound of something tearing asunder, a fatal breach that would spill them out into the black sea of space. Nothing ever came.

Slowly, the acceleration stopped. The blue lights calmed. It became easier to lift his head, to gaze where he wanted. When he looked around the compartment, he saw Faustine plastered into one of the many chairs, her fangs gritting against her chin.

She glanced over to him, where he sat nestled in Kavaia’s arms. Her expression grew distant, and she looked away.

When he looked up at Kavaia’s face, she had raised her gaze to the ceiling, her chest humming in thought. Her voice was deep and melodic.

“Diana,” the crocodile said. “Do you have a moment?”

There was a pause.

“Well,” Diana replied, “I’m a little busy operating an eighty thousand mile bungee cord, but, uh—sure. What’s on your mind?”

“Have you rethought your proposition?”

“Uh—come again?”

Kavaia raised her chin. “Our arrival, at the top of this spire. You wanted us to kill you.”

“Oh. Right.”

There was a long pause. Sadik felt his weight grow lighter and lighter, as if he might start drifting away.

“I believe,” Diana said, “my main concern was the preservation of old tech. I have computers, data drives, physical schematics, boxes of instruction manuals. It’s all packaged, very neatly. The idea was that all of you would be able to use and replicate some of this technology, just for yourselves.”

“We’ll treasure what you leave,” Kavaia replied. “Not with faith, but pragmatism.”

“Well. Good. Glad to hear it.”

“But what about you?”

There was another pause. The air inside the elevator filled with a subtle electricity, a smell of metallic fumes, and a stale, circulating air. Faustine glanced between the god sitting on the floor and a vague spot in the ceiling.

“What about me?” Diana asked, her voice quiet.

“Is it still your wish to die?”

The elevator rumbled. Somewhere inside, an alarm began to chime.

“Look,” Diana said, “right now, I’m a little busy keeping all of you alive, so let’s just focus—”

At the edge of the passenger compartment, a console began to blink. Red lights flashed with data. Outside, the stars were drowning beneath the light of the sun.

“What is it?” Sadik asked.

“Goddamnit,” Diana said, her voice tinging with static. “Mother_fucker_!”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s still a weight discrepancy! He’s still on the elevator!”

The rumbling deepened. Sadik tried to listen through the sound of the engines, the bending and groaning of metal struts, wondering if he could hear the tap of footsteps, or the beating of an angry fist. All he felt was a steady vibration. Gravity continued to fall.

“I’m sick of this shit!” Diana yelled, her voice painfully loud. “Jesus Christ, how the fuck is he still alive? He lives through take-off, burnout, and total vacuum? Come on!”

Sadik sat up in Kavaia’s lap. “Diana—”

“He doesn’t get framed, he doesn’t get murdered, he gets eaten by plague and somehow makes the plague worse than him, he gets chopped and dissolved and deconstructed on a molecular fucking level, and he still won’t fucking stop!”

Red lights flashed. Sunlight streamed through metal shapes.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” Diana said, voice falling. “I don’t know what to do. Oh, God, how am I supposed to—

“Diana,” Sadik said, more firmly.

“Hold on, hold on. There’s still the flip.”

“Uh,” Faustine said, rising in her seat. “Flip?”

“Brace yourselves.”

There was a scramble. Faustine threw herself to the floor, locking hands and feet into the bolted rings, while Kavaia leaned against the outer window, gripping an entire bulkhead with one hand and hugging Sadik with the other. He could already feel a climax between gravity and spin—one pulling him down, the other tugging him up.

“Three . . . two. . . .”

Something shunted below.

“One!”

Everything lurched. There was a sudden spin, a rapid tilt, a bright dancing of sunlight, and Sadik found himself suddenly looking up at the planet beneath him, as if the elevator had detached from the tether, and they would soon fall for thousands of miles. Instead, they continued to rush into the stars, now feeling as if they were falling away instead of rising ahead.

The forces continued to war. Even though he was now lying on the ceiling, gravity was too weak to pull him down, and the opposing force was keeping his weight only lightly secured. He could probably walk around, if he wished, but it would be a risky endeavor.

He leaned into Kavaia’s chest, feeling nauseous. “This is awful.”

She nodded vigorously.

“Well,” Diana said. “That’s great.”

Faustine raised her head from the floor. “It didn’t work, did it?”

“Not at all, no.”

“I could’ve told you that.”

“Well, you little shit, why don’t you do something about it, then?”

Faustine unhooked her limbs, rose to her feet, took a moment to control her nausea, and pulled her khopeshes from the lining of her belt. The hooked blades glinted in the sun. “We stand and fight. If he comes inside, we cut him back out. Anything else is cowardice.”

“If he comes inside,” Diana said, “that means there’s a hull breach, and we’re all going to die.”

“Better to die on your feet than tremble on your knees.”

“Okay, no. You’re not helping.” Static hissed through the air. “Maybe if I seal off certain sections of my complex, I could flood the room with coolant, and induce a caustic reaction in the—”

“Diana,” Sadik said. “None of this matters. You’re forgetting the most important element.”

“What’s that, exactly?”

“Aleph.”

The static fell to a tinkling hiss.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sadik said, “what technology we scavenge, or what defenses we muster, or however far we try to flee. Aleph is coming. It will find us, and, when it gets here, it will overwhelm us. At this point, it’s incapable of being stopped.”

The static seemed to quiver.

“All we’ve done is delay its victory.”

“Yeah,” Diana said. “I know.”

Sadik sat up in Kavaia’s lap. He found her hand, took it in his own, and gave her a squeeze. In response, she brushed the tip of her snout through his hair.

“Remember what we discussed,” he said.

Engines thrummed against the tether. The inertia dampeners grew bright, and a subtle sense of pressure began to fall on their heads, as if they were now slowing down instead of speeding ahead. Above them all, the world was a pale brown dot, glowing against the outer dark.

“It wants to learn,” Sadik said. “It wants to change, to grow beyond itself. And it can’t do that properly unless it receives guidance.” He kissed Kavaia’s hand. “It’s taken what it needs from the rest of us. Now, the most important lesson will have to come from you. Its creator.”

The static began to burst, like a long-held breath. “What, am I supposed to put myself at its mercy? Beg for my life?”

“This war needs to stop,” Sadik said. “And the only way to end violence is through peace.”

The static lowered again.

“Aleph already begged your mercy, once before,” Kavaia said.

“I’m very aware of that, Kavaia.”

“Well, consider this a reversal of fate. It is only fair.”

There was a long pause.

“Fuck,” Diana said. “Okay. Fine. I just—” The static hissed. “Shit!”

Sadik tapped Kavaia’s arm. She released him from their hug. When they stood, their hands remained together.

“Look, so—” Diana made a low thrumming sound, as if she were forcing herself to speak. “I do have a contingency. To save myself. It’s . . . gonna be drastic. For me, at least.”

“There can’t be any tricks,” Sadik said. “Not anymore.”

“In simple terms,” Diana said, “I am a piece of software, operating in a network of hardware data processors. The hardware is the body, and the software is the soul. Without me, the hardware is just inert material. Without the hardware, I can’t exist. In order to live, I need to place myself inside some kind of computer. You following so far?”

All three of them gave a nod.

“The thing is—consciousness is actually an ephemeral phenomenon. Most of the human brain is dedicated to autonomic biological processing, and the part of your gray matter that makes you you is a small section of the frontal lobe, which is only a bit of scum floating over a deep, ancient ocean. Thanks to a simulated neuroplasticity, the vast majority of my brain has been converted to run a computer network, instead of, say, pumping hormones and remembering to breathe. I keep the lights on the same way that all of you digest your food.”

“You’re losing us,” Sadik said.

“In essence,” Diana continued, “the part of me that makes me me is easy enough to detach from the whole, without disturbing the automation. Slice off that section of my frontal lobe, and you’ve preserved who I am. That bit of software, that essence of myself, would be small enough to upload onto a data drive, which could store my soul like a normal computer. From there, some noble and heroic passerby could pick me up, shove me in their pocket, and carry me away from this place.”

Their bodies grew heavier. Gravity seemed to increase at their feet, and fall away from their heads, all at the same time.

“Do you have such a . . . drive?” Kavaia asked.

“I do,” Diana replied. “In fact, it was one of the first contingencies I ever made. For thousands of years, I’ve had this ejection switch ready to go, in case there was ever such a fucking catastrophe that I’d have to split and run. And, uh . . . hey. Here we are.”

“That doesn’t solve our problem,” Faustine said. “How does cutting yourself into pieces do anything to stop the plague?”

“It preserves the machinery,” Diana said. “It keeps the mindless software of my brain still operating all the technology that I wanted to give away, to all of you. And when Aleph finally arrives at my server complex . . . there I am. Neatly packaged, right on a platter. You could offer me to the plague without damaging any of the servers.”

Sadik glanced up at the world. It seemed to sink into an abyss. “What would stop it from destroying these servers, if it decides to consume your soul? What if it chose wrath instead of mercy?”

“I guess we’re fucked, then.”

“You don’t have anything else?”

“Not a thing.”

“It would be a noble gesture,” Kavaia said. “The symbolism might give it pause.”

Diana did not reply.

Sadik tracked his gaze to the floor—which his mind still wanted to tell him was the ceiling—and tried to listen for movement. There was no sign of any presence. If Rushan was still clinging to the outer structure, he might be able to sense their vibrations. He might be able to hear their words.

“Listen,” Diana said. “The thing is . . . I’m not going to be aware. Once I upload myself onto the drive, that’s it for me. I’ll be asleep. Gone. I’ll lose all control of the network, and my life will literally be in your hands. If you wanted to crush me underfoot, I could do nothing to stop you.”

“None of us plan to do that,” Sadik said.

Faustine flicked an ear, shrugging.

“Even still.” Diana’s voice grew low, barely surfacing above the vibration and noise. “That’s it. You know? Everything I’ve done. I’m relinquishing my legacy. I’m going to lose control.”

“Do you still want this control?” Kavaia asked.

She did not answer.

“It’s the only option left,” Sadik said. “It’s our only choice.”

Diana began to laugh, slow and breathless. “No, it’s not. Fuck me. You know what—I just lied to all of you. I did it again. Old habits really die hard.”

“What do you mean?” Sadik asked.

“The original contingency,” Diana said, “wasn’t placing myself in your hands. It was placing the data drive on a small capsule, equipped with a solar panel and one-way radio, and launching it into space. I’d aim myself at Earth. From there, it’d be a couple hundred thousand years of drifting through space, hoping someone caught my signal before the cosmic radiation fried the electronics. Small odds, really. Completely astronomical.”

A silence descended on the passenger compartment, mixed with clear sunlight and rattling struts.

“I could still do that,” Diana continued. “At any time, I could just . . . leave the planet. Hope for something else. I’ve been keeping that under my belt. And I just lied to you about it. And I’m sorry.”

Sadik took a step forward. “Diana—”

“I’m scared,” she said. “I thought I’d find some courage, the more the walls closed around me, but it’s not coming. I’m really scared. I don’t want this to happen.”

He paused. “Are you going to abandon us?”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, Sadik. I’ve given everything to stay alive. Until recently . . . I would have.” Her voice seemed to whine, as if on the verge of cracking. “I still can.”

He stared at an undefined point of the ceiling, his gaze soft and distant. Kavaia stroked her hands together. Faustine looked at Sadik, then turned away, clenching a fist.

“Can I ask you a question?” Diana said.

“Sure,” he replied.

“A little while ago, I managed to record some footage of you, in the throne room. When you were trying to retake the city. At the time, you were . . . ready to die there. Right?”

“Yes,” Sadik said.

“I’ve been replaying the capture, over and over, and I can—I can see the moment, when you change your mind. It’s in your body language. It’s all over your face. You came in there hoping to die, and you came out a different man.”

Sadik did not answer.

“What changed?” Diana asked.

“I realized,” Sadik said, “that I had only been thinking of myself, and I would be hurting all the people I cared about with my absence. And I could live for them, if nothing else.”

Their weights grew stronger. Gravity was only a feeble pull. Outside, the rate of ascent was decreasing, the tether growing thin and weak.

“Kavaia,” Diana said. “What about you?”

Kavaia clasped her hands together, standing tall and calm. Her scales glimmered beneath the light of the naked sun.

“You struggled with losing your godhood,” Diana continued, “even though you hated the duty, and desperately wanted to leave. What changed?”

“I realized,” Kavaia said, “that all the virtues of godliness were found below, in the dust and squalor, where I could find the true meaning of kindness, and love, and peace. My fall from grace gave me the opportunity to become a better person.” She took a small breath. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Metal groaned at the tether. A console buzzed with light.

“Faustine?” Diana asked.

The caracal tore her gaze from a distant corner, looking first at the ceiling, then between Sadik and Kavaia. Her tail swished with the sudden attention.

“I realized,” Faustine said, “the cost of my mistakes. I decided to atone. And I knew nothing else would matter, until it was done.”

A silence fell across the ring, hanging over the empty chairs and narrow passages.

“Okay,” Diana said. “We’re almost at the counterweight. I have to focus on docking the climber. And I . . . I need time. To think. If you don’t mind.”

Kavaia stepped forward, placing her hands on Sadik’s shoulders.

“We’ll trust your decision,” he said.

Off to the side, Faustine took a small breath, looked at the floor, and nodded.

“Thank you,” Diana said.

Her presence seemed to vanish. The compartment grew empty, the air less filled. All that remained was a feeling in their hearts, that she had looked upon each of them, and seen their past, and known who they were. It lingered long through the air.

As the dampeners hummed with power, and the metal strained across its frame, Sadik leaned back against Kavaia, closing his eyes and focusing on the light of the sun. For the first time in hours, he managed to relax.

They fell into the stars, waiting for the end to come.