I laid on my back, looking up at the ship that surrounded me as I laid on the strange spongy grass along one of the lakes I’d first encountered when I arrived on lifeboat eight.

  It had been at least a day since Flint had stolen the processing core from me. Flint had betrayed me. I wanted him to be a friend, someone I could trust, but it felt more like he was just using me for his own gains.

  I was too ashamed to reach out to Nori, not after I lost the core. Instead of trying to explain myself or have to go back to the terrible place I’d just been, I decided to just distance myself from everything and hope it would get better on its own.

  A familiar tone rang out through the ship, announcing it was time for the species shift. It had been the melodian’s time to be out on the surface.

  All around me, even far in the distance, I saw their eyes turn bright white as they went under the control of the artemis network.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I’d worked so hard to reach out to the lifeboats, to be back with my own kind, but after the months of spending time with them on the lifeboat I couldn’t help but feel disappointed whenever I saw a member of my own species. I had wanted more than anything to be able to blend into a crowd, to be with my own kind, but being with the people on lifeboat eight was just… sad.

  They barely spoke to each other. They lived in their own heads as long as they could while their bodies were used like slaves. I’d grown to feel uncomfortable around them. I didn’t understand them and I likely never could. Their lives were so different from my own and I felt like there wasn’t anything I could do to help them.

  The only exception was the listeners, but since I first met them they were bitter, angry, unable to trust anyone outside of their group and the only one that I felt like I could actually trust had just thrown everything away because he couldn’t trust me.

  If that was what melodians were like when they weren’t under the effects of the assembler, it almost felt like a good thing that the rest of them were trapped in their own heads all the time.

  It was a terrible thought, but I couldn’t help but feel like the distrust, the backstabbing, the bitterness toward outsiders, maybe it was the reason the assembler was invented in the first place. Maybe it was the only way to make my species tolerable to live with.

  As the melodians made their way out to the elevators the mechara slowly began to emerge. The merchants going to their various shops and the others making their way out to the streets.

  I liked the mechara a lot more. They had personalities, they talked to each other and made friends. I loved sitting and watching them interact with each other as they made their way up to the surface. They liked to show each other what they’d been building and working on. Despite not understanding their obsession with small machines, I admired how much they enjoyed them. It seemed like a large part of their culture revolved around the creation of little clocks and timers that would be designed with different materials and whatnot.

  One group I’d gotten particularly fond of sat down near me, next to the same lake they always sat next to. They were young and seemed to have a lot to say about whatever they were learning in school. One of them was excited to talk about a certain pocket watch he’d gotten working for the first time. He seemed proud of how small it was despite whatever features he’d built into it.

  I couldn’t tell what they were, since he was just pointing to the various parts on the watch face and the others seemed to understand it just by seeing it.

  I wanted to go over to them and ask them about it, but I knew they would just be confused about my presence. Every mechara I’d tried to speak to either thought I was there to do something for them or would just get annoyed by my presence. I felt like they’d never accept me and honestly, I couldn’t blame them. If I’d spent my whole life around the melodians I’d encountered, I wouldn’t want to be around them either.

  I closed my eyes, fighting back yet another wave of tears as I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself. I worked so hard to get to lifeboat eight yet the more I learned about it the more I hated it. More than anything, I just wanted to go home.

  There was still one person I could talk to. The only exception to the absent minded or bitter melodians and the exclusionary mechara was Nori. She spoke to me like a person and didn’t seem to have any inherent distrust of me. I wanted to go back to her, but I had no idea how I could talk to her after what happened. I reasoned that I could just tell her that I couldn’t find one, but that could lead to her asking me to go back. I didn’t want to go back.

  No, there wasn’t anything I could say to her aside from the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to her.

  A light footed pair of footsteps started making their way toward me. I could hear their claws digging into the mossy floor as they slowly made their way toward me and sat down next to me.

  I didn’t need to open my eyes and I didn’t need to wait to hear them speak. I knew who it was, there was only one mechara that would pay any attention to me.

  “Hey Nori,” I said quietly.

  “Hey Tess” she said in a similarly quiet tone “I was starting to get worried about you.”

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  I wasn’t exactly trying to hide, but the ship was massive, it was unlikely she’d be able to find me by just wandering around and searching for me.

  “I was worried about you since you didn’t seem to come back from the lifeboat” she said, “So I made my way to the security offices and found the video of you getting back.”

  “Ah… So you…” I started to say.

  “Yeah I saw what happened. Why did your friend do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know if you’d call him a friend at this point. He used me to get something he wanted. If he can’t trust me, I can’t trust him” I said, squeezing my hands a bit as I tried to not let my frustration out on Nori over what happened.

  “Right… Sorry to bring it up…” she said.

  I opened my eyes, looking up to see she was sitting just next to me, her elbows on her knees with her beak laying in her hands as she looked out at the lake.

  “I want to go home Nori” I said.

  She looked over at me.

  “Yeah? Well, Lifeboat seven should be…” she started to say.

  I cut in, “I’m not talking about lifeboat seven.”

  “Oh…” she said, her gaze looking out to the windows with the night side of earth in its view.

  I sat up a bit, putting my hands underneath me.

  “I don’t belong here Nori” I said, “the other melodians, they’re so different from me. I don’t understand them. They spend all their time in the assembler and don’t seem to do anything outside of that. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable around them.”

  “What about the mechara though?” she asked.

  I shook my head “No they’re…” I stumbled on my words a little, trying to figure out what to say, “I guess you’ve never experienced this. I mean, why would you? You grew up having all of their attention. Despite not wanting the amount of attention you get, you can talk and be heard. You can say something and they care about what you have to say. But me? I’m invisible to them. Out of all the mechara on this ship, you’re the only one that’s willing to give me the time of day.”

  “Sorry, uh…” she said as she looked up, one hand stroking the bottom of her beak “That means… That means that I’m willing to talk to you and not ignore you, right?”

  I sighed “I did it again didn’t I?”

  She nodded “You did. I think it’s neat though. I’m getting better at learning human expressions.”

  “See that’s why I want to go back. I feel comfortable there, you know? It’s where I grew up, it’s where everything makes sense to me. I just… I want to go home” I said as I pulled myself up and sat upright next to her so I could look out the windows with her.

  We sat for a few minutes in silence, giving us both a moment to simply sit and watch the earth move underneath us, eventually the atmosphere started turning red as the sun started to rise.

  “If you help me get the core back” Nori said “I think I can pull some strings.”

  She turned to me, her beak open a bit as she looked at me with a bit of excitement in her eyes.

  The sudden change in tone confused me.

  “Uh… Okay, yeah I can do that…” I said with a confused expression.

  She slumped a little.

  “Sorry, it means I can use the resources I have to try to…” she started to say before I interrupted.

  “Oh! Human expression, right. Sorry, yes you used it correctly” I said with a smile.

  Despite how gloomy I felt, I couldn’t help but have my spirits lifted whenever I was around Nori. Her curiosity and sense of wonder around the humans and myself was a little infectious.

  “So what does the core have to do with getting me back home?” I asked.

  “It’s a gift for the humans and we were hoping to give it to them at this big event they wanted to put on” she said, “I feel like I’ve learned enough English to be able to speak to them directly. They’ll be helping me with a script since I still have a lot to learn. But up until now we haven’t had a formal address. They’ve been working with us on getting everything in order and getting the supplies up to us to get lifeboat seven functional again. But they’ve said their citizens are getting frustrated after not hearing from us directly. So far they’ve only heard us through their leaders. We’ll need a lot more resources and it’ll take time, so they’ve asked us to speak to humanity directly. I figured, we could do that at the same time as we deliver the core to them and we were gonna send some melodians down there for the delivery so I mean, I should be able to just get you on board with that crew.”

  “And what would this core do for them exactly?” I asked.

  “It’ll teach them how to make complex materials” she said with a bit of glee in her voice.

  I tilted my head a bit “And… Those are?”

  “Oh, right um. Okay so they’re getting close to the end of their glass revolution, we were thinking we’d just give them a bit of a head start into the final phase of that” she said.

  “Sorry. You mentioned that before but I don’t know what that is…” I felt like I was asking stupid questions but I was having a hard time following.

  Nori took a deep breath “Okay so, the glass revolution. It’s what makes a civilization go from living off their environment to being able to build things like this” she said, gesturing up toward the ship.

  “For us, just like with them, it started with the invention of glass” she continued, “At first, it’s used to learn more about the universe we live in. From telescopes to microscopes, glass lets us see how small the universe gets and how overwhelmingly massive it is at the same time. As soon as glass is invented, a whole series of discoveries follow it. Humans seem to be following the same path we did, where we started learning about atoms, molecules, subatomic particles, light, gravity, nuclear forces, while also learning about planets and stars and galaxies. It’s a revolution because your civilization is able to go from living by nature's rules, to being able to bend nature to your own whims. By inventing complex machines and creating things like transistors.

  “Humans are close to getting to the end of their glass revolution, which is when you start creating your own biology and being able to build materials atom by atom by creating artificial life forms that take instructions via light pulses. It takes a long time to get there, but they’ve already made it most of the way.”

  “And what does that do exactly?” I asked.

  “Complex materials? Well, it means you can create materials that weigh almost nothing while being stronger that diamonds. You can make mechanisms that are atomically perfect yet too small to see with anything but an electron microscope. You can create your own life who’s job is to build these small structures for you. Just as an example, you can make it so a piece of aluminum has single atom thick layers of a single crystal that spans the entire length of a piece of metal, sandwiched between layers of non-crystalline structures. It’s impossible to create that sort of thing by just casting the metal, it has to be created piece by piece, atom by atom. Which you can do, if you create artificial life that’s able to work on such small scales.”

  “And… That makes it better?” I asked, trying not to get lost.

  She nodded “It means you get a material that’s stronger than anything that can form naturally. And I mean, that’s just one example, you can do a lot more with complex materials. Actually, the assembler that melodians have, that’s a type of artificial cell that can be created with it.”

  I frowned, feeling like I understood the assembler a bit better than I wished I did. Flint had mentioned that it was ‘installed’ and ‘grew’ into you. It makes sense that it would be some type of artificial life but the thought of it gave me a shiver.

  “I’d rather not think about that,” I said.

  “Sorry. Yeah it always made me feel a bit icky too but the melodians don’t seem to mind it” she said.

  “Anyway” I said, wanting to change the subject “how do I help you to get this core thing back?”

  “That’s actually why I came out to get you” she said, “That melodian probably did what he did because he knew there was a power cycle coming up. I uh. I admit, I saw you out here pretty soon after seeing the recordings but I didn’t want to bother you until you were ready to talk. But if they want me to go down there, this is our last opportunity for a while.”

  “Oh, right he mentioned the mechara can go down there during a ‘spin down’ as he called it” I said.

  Nori nodded “Yeah. It’s coming up pretty soon. If you’re up for it, we can start making our way down there.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. I figured, the faster I helped her get the core back, the faster I could get back home where everything made sense. I leaned forward and stood up.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I said.

  I had to walk a little faster than what felt comfortable to keep up with Nori. I remembered I used to just walk on all fours back home but I noticed I hadn’t seen a single melodian walk like that since I’d arrived so I felt like I’d be committing some kind of social faux pas if I were to do that.

  There was a small car parked along the side of one of the roads which Nori led me into as we set off toward the central ring.

  My thought of walking on all fours made different memory come to mind as I thought about the culture on the lifeboats.

  “Hey Nori?” I asked, grabbing her attention.

  “Yeah?” She asked, turning to me.

  “Okay so, this will sound pretty random” I said, “but I remember when I first got onto the lifeboat. I was in an elevator and I waved to this mechara that I saw. He looked really offended by it though. But I’ve seen other people wave to each other and it seemed fine? Is that something melodians aren’t supposed to do?”

  “Waving? Like, to say hello?” she asked.

  “Yeah, like…” I started to say as I raised my hand up, mimicking what I’d done in the elevator.

  “Oh!” Nori reached out, grabbing my hand and pressing my fingers back together as she looked around to see if anyone else had seen.

  We were in a moving car so it was unlikely anyone else was watching.

  “Okay okay sorry” I said, feeling extremely confused.

  Nori laughed “You did that? To a mechara? Oh he must have been so mad.”

  Thankfully rather than being upset, she sounded amused more than anything else.

  “What am I missing here?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  Nori smiled “Sorry, it’s not the wave. It’s because you spread your fingers out. Mechara only have four, you have seven. When you spread your fingers like that it’s seen as a sign of showing off that you’re more… capable… With your hands.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling even more confused.

  “Mechara work with their hands a lot. We build things and goodness we’d be able to do a lot more with hands like those let me tell you! But we don’t, so we’re a little jealous. So to be polite, melodians always keep their fingers bunched together in a way that makes them look like they have four fingers too. At least, when they’re around us. I don’t know what they do amongst themselves” she said.

  “Oh, so he thought I was making fun of him or something?” I asked, feeling a little bad about it.

  She nodded “Yeah but it’s okay you couldn’t have known.”

  “Hmmm” I mumbled, sitting back in my seat a bit more.

  As we got closer to the central ring my attention was brought to a crowd of mechara who were all densely packed around something ahead of us.

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  I was about to ask Nori what was going on, but she seemed just as confused as I was.

  The car pulled up alongside the crowd and came to a gentle stop, letting us get out before it started moving off again.

  “What do you mean ‘broken’?!” a mechara asked, sounding extremely upset.

  “You’re telling me they just stopped working? All at once? Right when we’d get our first viewing?!” a woman exclaimed from the other side of the crowd, a similar angry tone reverberating through the rest of the crowd.

  They were standing around a group of the same vehicles I’d traveled with Nori and Flint on. The ones up on the surface being the melodian and mechara variants of the vehicles.

  “Everyone please!” a mechara yelled out over the crowd, yelling out as he stood up on the back part of one of the car “We’re doing our best to get it running again but right now the whole network is down!”

  The crowd yelled out in anger but after a moment one mechara’s voice stood out louder than the rest, the other mechara quieting down so he could speak.

  “This is the first power cycle we’ve had since we got here! If these things don’t run now, who knows when we’ll have another chance to see it!” he yelled out.

  The crowd once again chanted in agreement.

  I looked up to Nori just in time to see her bringing her hand up to her beak as she let out an incredibly loud whistle, startling the crowd but grabbing their attention.

  As all eyes turned to Nori, their expressions changed. They all looked like they shrank a bit as they realized they were in her presence.

  It felt weird how much the mechara respected Nori as if she was some kind of royalty. To me she was a friend but to them she was like a celebrity.

  “Everyone please clear the way” she said, not raising her voice in the slightest.

  Without a word the crowd parted, letting her and I through. As expected, they didn’t seem to pay much attention to me, all eyes were on Nori.

  “I’m sorry everyone, I’m sure they’re working as hard as they can to get everything up and running again. I promise, if this one doesn’t work out, we’ll schedule a non-powercycle spindown for viewing purposes once the system is back up and running.

  The tension in the crowd seemed to dampen as she said it. They trusted her and if she was making that promise, they accepted it.

  “Thank you miss Nori we uh… Sorry” he said.

  He was one of the ones that had been yelling the loudest earlier.

  Nori got into one of the vehicles and motioned for me to get in.

  The others looked a little frustrated, but none dared to speak up as she entered a code into the front panel of the vehicle, causing everything on the dashboard to light up a moment later.

  The crowd parted in front of us as Nori started forward, leading us out and away from the crowd as we made the final leg of the trip toward the central ring.

  Once we were fully out of eyesight from the crowd I couldn’t help but ask.

  “How did you get it working like that?”

  Nori smiled, “Administrative access. Normally these are regulated by the Artemis network. Maximum speeds, guidance controls, automatic braking. It’s a safety thing. But if needed, it can be turned off and the whole thing becomes manually driven.”

  “How many people have that kind of access?” I asked.

  “Uh… Not sure of the exact number but I can say, very very few” she said as we crossed into the central ring and started driving down the first ramp, bringing us a level down.

  As we drove we passed by several other groups of mechara, all equally frustrated about the vehicles not working. It looked like a lot of them were hoping to see the earth during the power cycle. Their frustration was hardly masked as we drove past them.

  We continued driving down through the blue sector, then into the green, passing familiar looking maintenance floors along the way.

  “Hey, how close are we to the room with all the earth stuff in it?” I asked.

  “Not far, why?” Nori asked.

  “When we come back, could we pick up some of the instruments?” I asked, tapping my fingers together.

  “Oh! Yeah I can grab those for you. We weren’t really sure what they were supposed to do but I’d love it if you showed me” she said with a smile.

  “Good. Yeah back on earth I used to play those a lot. I miss them” I said, excited about the prospect of being able to play something again.

  The gravity was starting to get noticeably stronger as we made our way down to the lower levels of the green section. As we approached the next ramp down there was a large warning sign in front of us.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Nori slowly brought the vehicle to a stop.

  “Sector four. Mechara aren’t supposed to go down any further unless there’s a spindown. We’ll have to wait here until that starts” she said.

  “Right, too much gravity” I said, “out of curiosity, does it make you feel weird that there are all these parts of the ship you can never go to?”

  “You know, I’ve thought about that actually. Yeah, aside from the parts of sector four that are in the central ring, we can’t ever go to any of the lower levels in the ship. It’s always interesting to come down here during the spindowns and look into the red section. It spins really fast, but I can sometimes catch glimpses of the melodians in there and I wonder what it’s like to be able to go to those places.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think the most interesting parts of the lifeboat are up at the surface,” I said.

  She smiled “Yeah, I guess… It’s one of those things where you want to go to the places you’re not supposed to. There’s something exciting about that idea” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s too bad earth gravity is so high. I wish I could bring you there” I said.

  “Oh yeah trust me, a lot of mechara are upset that we can’t go there” she said with a bit of a laugh.

  There was a loud tone that rang through the ship, startling us both a little as the vehicle began rumbling underneath us.

  “What’s that?!” I asked, gripping onto the side of the vehicle.

  I was answered a moment later as I looked down the hallway to the side, seeing the farther section of the ship move.

  “Spindown! We can start making our way down now” she said as she turned the car back on.

  “Oh! Right!” I exclaimed as I felt a gentle but constant force pushing us backward while the moving hallways in the distance looked like they were getting faster.

  As we started to move out, I remembered something important I needed to ask Nori.

  “Nori” I said, leaning over to her so I didn’t have to yell “I just remembered, Flint mentioned something about this black shard thing.”

  Nori brought the car to a sudden stop, her eyes wide as she looked at me.

  “Wait what? Who… How do you… Oh you heard the message. Do they know about it?” The sudden intensity in her voice was alarming.

  “I… Sorry, I didn’t tell them but they figured something out about it I think?” I said, feeling nervous from how focused she suddenly was on me.

  A look of concern went across her face as she turned her attention forward. She brought the vehicle up to speed again but kept it slow enough to be able to talk over the wind.

  “They shouldn’t know about it. This explains why they wanted to see me. Darn it, I should have known” she said, her hands squeezing the wheel a bit tighter.

  “Could you tell me what it is? I remember hearing about it in the message but I don’t know what it is” I said.

  “Where to even begin with this…” Nori said mostly to herself. She glanced at me for just a moment before continuing “When lifeboat seven was destroyed Artemis went with it. The remaining lifeboats all went into their fallback modes. Basically, the ship wasn’t able to do much on its own. But we found out that when the main computer was destroyed, it had automatically started a backup. But the problem was, it was only partway through booting up when the whole thing exploded. It left Artemis in an extremely crippled state which is why it isn’t nearly as functional now as it used to be. I guess you don’t remember when it was all up and running but he used to be able to make decisions and even hold full on conversations with you if you wanted. Now… He can’t. The only way we know how to get it back up and running is with his original operating system. Which was stored on the black shard.”

  “Is that anything like these shards the melodians carry with them?” I asked.

  Nori nodded “It’s mostly the same thing, but it’s the kind they used to have way back when we had a planet. They used to be a lot bigger and they weren’t clear like yours.”

  “And you think Sloan took it?” I asked.

  Nori nodded “Yeah I guess you would have heard that in the message… We’d do anything to get it back and if Sloan took it like we think she did, then we have to get it back.”

  “And there weren’t any backups?” I asked.

  She sighed “There were. Although Artemis was running entirely in lifeboat seven, we had a backup shard in lifeboat eight and nine as well.”

  “Had?” I asked.

  Nori frowned again “We don’t know what happened. After the explosion, the two backup shards were destroyed. They seemed to go out all at the same time. At first we thought all three of them burnt out, but when we got everything under control in lifeboat seven, the shard wasn’t fried at all. It was just missing. We searched everywhere, but it was gone. The only explanation is that it had to have left lifeboat seven before its destruction. The only thing that makes sense is that Sloan took it.”

  “Okay but, they made Artemis once, can’t they just do it again?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that” she said as we made our way down another ramp, “We don’t know exactly how it was built in the first place. A lot of the knowledge came from mother nexus but that knowledge was mostly stored on…”

  “The black shard” I said, finishing her sentence.

  She nodded, “Yeah. I think if we can get the shard back we’d be doing things a lot differently the next time around.”

  Nori increased the speed a bit more, moving us down through the ship a bit faster.

  I couldn’t help but notice that our gravity was getting lower as we continued down. With brief glimpses of the outer sections of the ship, I could see we were going extremely fast, the hallways zooming by in a blur as the central ring continued to slow down.

  Eventually we made it to the maintenance floors, the gravity was completely gone but thankfully our seatbelts kept us in place.

  With the maintenance floor’s extremely tall ceilings and wide expansive rooms, we could see both sections of the ship at the same time, moving faster than I’d seen anything of that size move in my life. It was like watching an entire city fly past faster than a supersonic jet. I was just thankful we were closer to the center of the ring.

  “Do you know where we’re supposed to go?!” I yelled over the sound of the spinning ship.

  Nori nodded while yelling over the sound, “When I was watching the cameras, I followed where Flint had gone! When he got to this floor he looked right at the camera and pointed out the door! I think he expected me to see it! We don’t have cameras on this floor which is probably why they chose this spot!”

  I looked out over the floor. It stretched farther than we could see, the extremely gradual bend of the outer layer of the ship mixed with the high ceilings meant we could see a lot further than anywhere else aside from the surface itself.

  As we drove I heard the sound of the gravity games intro starting up. It was a lot louder than I’d expected, but I also remembered it sounding like it was coming from inside the ship itself, so it was possible we were in one of the places where it was generated from.

  Despite everything happening, I was a little sad to be missing the gravity games this time around.

  “There!” Nori yelled out, pointing in front of us.

  It was hard to see, but I could just barely make out a group of melodians standing next to the garage-like building I’d originally met the listeners in.

  Nori and I looked at each other as we approached.

  I was suddenly feeling pretty nervous about the exchange that was about to happen, unsure of what they wanted or what they wanted to talk about, but Nori to her credit looked perfectly calm.

  As we approached I could make out that there were only three melodians standing at the entrance of the building.

  Nori brought the car to a stop just outside the building, the three melodians were holding onto some handrails, floating above the ground as they gestured for us to follow inside.

  We followed a moment after as Nori closed the door behind us. The loud whooshing of the air was mostly dulled down but the sound of the gravity games could still be heard reverberating through the walls. Thankfully it wasn’t too loud to be able to hear each other.

  The white melodian spoke up “Gron.”

  “Abel” said another melodian.

  The grumpier looking melodian announced “Flint.”

  Nori spoke up next “Nori.”

  They all looked over to me. I felt a bit confused at first, but realized, if all of the melodians were face blind like me, it would make sense in their presence to announce yourself in some way so everyone knew who was in the room.

  “Tess” I said, my voice getting caught a little as I spoke.

  I still had a lot to learn about their culture, but up until that moment I’d never seen anyone announce themselves like that. Then again, I hadn’t spent much time around melodians on the ship. Out of all the cultural things I’d learned so far, I liked the announcement thing a lot. It made things so much easier.

  It took a moment for anyone to speak up, both sides sizing each other up.

  “What’s going on guys?” Nori asked, crossing her arms.

  Flint pursed his face “What’s going on? What’s…”

  He was cut off as Gron raised his hand. He didn’t look at Flint, but his gesture seemed to be enough to get him under control.

  “I’m terribly sorry to have brought you here under such… Dramatic circumstances Nori. Like I said, my name is Gron. We hope we didn’t cause too much distress, we simply need to talk.”

  “I’m fine, just a bit confused. What’s with all this?” she asked, gesturing around herself “If you wanted to talk to me you could have just asked.”

  I felt a little more comfortable with the conversation, everything felt a lot more formal than I’d expected. Abel and Flint looked angry, but Gron’s deep, monotone voice was comforting.

  “My apologies miss Nori, my friend here” he said, motioning toward Flint “got a little too ahead of himself. This is not the way I was hoping to broach this topic, but since the topic has been forced, I’m glad we’ve been able to meet.”

  “Alright. Go ahead” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Well, as you know, there are no cameras down here” he said, “No microphones, no way for anyone to listen in on us. We wanted to ask if you were the one who’s been speaking to us.”

  “Speaking to you?” Nori asked, “I’m sorry I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Gron clapped his hands “Great! That answers that. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Wait! No no no that’s not…” Abel started to say.

  “Abel” Gron interrupted, “we have the answer we need, there’s no need to…”

  “No!” she yelled over him as she turned back to Nori “We know you’ve been looking for the black shard. Did you find it? Do you have it?”

  Abel spoke quickly, a bit of fire in her voice as she questioned Nori.

  Before Gron could speak again Nori jumped in.

  “You’re not supposed to know about that but since you ask, no. We don’t have it” she said.

  “So it’s true? Does Sloan have it?” she asked, her voice getting a bit quieter.

  Nori didn’t answer directly, but her non-answer was all they needed to hear.

  “So she did survive…” Flint said, his hand moving up to his mouth “Why haven’t you just… Killed her already? What if she tries to… What… What are you waiting for?”

  “Because they’re afraid she hid it” Abel spoke up.

  Nori cleared her throat “Well, it sounds like you don’t need me for all this. Can I please just have the core?” she asked, holding her hand out.

  “What do you plan on doing with it?” Abel asked, the accusatory tone returning to her voice.

  “We just want to get the Artemis network back up, that’s all” Nori said.

  Abel and Flint laughed as Gron’s eyes squinted a bit.

  “You don’t think we believe that do you?” Flint asked. This time Gron didn’t interrupt, “We’ve seen too much. We know the mechara are trying to get the assembler four running and you can’t do it without the black shard.”

  Nori looked to me, then back to him, a look of confusion on her face “Sorry I have no idea what you’re talking about. We just wanted to get things running like they were before.”

  “Liar!” Abel yelled as she slammed her fist on the table in front of her “We know what you’re up to. We know you sent your little minion here” she said, gesturing to me “to grab the data from the SLOAN project. What you didn’t count on was for Flint to follow her there. She made a nice little excuse but we know better. You wanted that information for a new one didn’t you?”

  Nori looked genuinely baffled “What? SLOAN project? I… I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “You mechara” Flint said with venom in his tone “You can never stop lying can you? You just want to control, if we weren’t so useful to you I bet you would have gotten rid of us a long time ago. Well you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of standing by and watching as your kind takes everything from us. I’m gonna give you one more chance to tell the truth. You created that monster, but we know she wasn’t working alone. You’re afraid to bring Artemis back online because you know he was a part of it too and it’s just convenient for you all to blame the whole disaster on the melodians. So what? Are you trying to make another? Is that what she is?” he asked, gesturing toward me, “and what… Are you going to do… With the black shard?”

  “I’m sorry I…” Nori stammered, all the confidence leaving her voice “I don’t… Know…”

  Flint lunged forward, grabbing Nori by the front of her shirt.

  “Stop!” I yelled, my hearts racing from the sudden emotions in the room “I think… I think she’s telling the truth.”

  They all looked at me, waiting for me to speak again.

  “I… I um… Look, I think the problem you have with the mechara is valid. You might even be right. But Nori isn’t like the others. I think if you all just talked to each other you might actually find out you have the same goals. Nori told me herself, she wished the melodians would use the assembler less.”

  Flint let go of Nori, turning his attention to me.

  “You know, I didn’t give you enough credit before” he said, barely masking the anger in his voice “you’re a much better liar than I thought.”

  “Flint please just listen…” I tried to say.

  “What did it take? To work with the mechara? What did they promise you? I bet your whole story was a lie to get to me. To us. You just made up your whole story didn’t you?” he asked, his fists clenched.

  “Flint I think this is just a misunderstanding” I said, holding my hands up, trying to get him to calm down.

  “I bet you aren’t even from lifeboat seven. You just had them give you access, didn’t you? I wasn’t supposed to find you in that lab was I? Everything about you was a lie. I bet you can’t even understand the music.”

  Gron grabbed Flint’s arm “That’s enough Flint” he said.

  Flint’s attention didn’t leave me as Gron held him back “I trusted you Tess. I thought you were like me.”

  Although he was trying to hold it back, I could see he was crying.

  I was about to say something, but something caught my ear.

  The song from the gravity games shifted, its tone changing completely. The instructions had stopped as it changed to emotions.

  Flint was saying something, but my attention was on the music. It was entirely different from what the gravity games had been before.

  Danger.

  Death.

  Danger.

  Run.

  The others were all talking again. Nori was trying to calm the situation as Abel threw more accusations her way. Flint’s eyes widened as he looked at me.

  Speed.

  Drive.

  Leave now.

  “What…” Flint started to ask, as he stared at me.

  I chill ran through me, my hearts racing as the music guided my emotions. It was speaking to me personally. I didn’t know how, but I knew it.

  Death.

  Drive.

  Run.

  Danger.

  NOW!

  The others had to have seen the fear on my face as everyone’s attention was on me. I looked at them, but they didn’t seem to be feeling the same emotions I was.

  RUN!

  GO!

  LEAVE NOW!

  I could feel it, the seriousness of the music, the intensity of the message.

  “I… I think we should…” I started to say when suddenly the room around us moved, throwing us against the back wall of the garage.

  I didn’t need to ask what was happening.

  The central ring was getting brought back up to speed.