Vaeris reached the top of the stairs, let out a sharp, satisfied breath, unclasped a coin from the necklace at her throat, and tapped the top step twice. The entire stairwell—door, rail, and all—peeled up in a swirl of marble and hololights and collapsed into the coin with a sound like a dying mosquito. The floor where the stairs had been was now a dirty flat spot.

  Nobody spoke. Ironbelly’s tail gave a single, incredulous thump.

  Vaeris tucked the coin back into her shirt. “What?” she said, deadpan. “It’s not like I’m leaving my condo open to just anyone. I have enemies.”

  Elowen lifted a hand like she was about to object, thought better of it, and checked her rifle’s charge instead.

  Vaeris led them down the corridor as if nothing had just vanished, lined with backlit strips and a few inches of water on the floor. They passed through a door that looked like a decorative panel until it hissed open and emerged into a round chamber with a single hatchway labeled in six languages.

  The hatch led to a tunnel without gravity, which was hilarious unless you were in a hurry and built like Ironbelly, whose first push sent him spinning head over tail through the void. Vaeris and Quillian flung themselves ahead with the easy grace of people who’d done this since infancy. Nash loped, limbs trailing, hands scrabbling at anything that looked like a handhold; Elowen just drifted right along, serene and rigid.

  Ben tried to swim. Mistake. Thorn hunkered on his shoulder and muttered, but mostly Ben just pinwheeled, bumped Quillian in the face, and went sideways until Nash grabbed his ankle and said, “You gotta push off something, kid.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Ben said, face burning—then immediately cracked his head on a rung.

  Vaeris was waiting at the far end, lounging upside-down relative to everyone else, wrist deep in a touch panel. “Hold,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Ironbelly. “We may have a slight issue.”

  The tunnel began to hum, low and rising, vibrating everyone's senses.

  Ironbelly’s voice rumbled through the zero-g like a threat: “Exactly what kind of ‘maintenance tunnel’ is this, Vaeris?”

  Vaeris’s lips twitched at the edges, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “Technically, this is a mana inflow channel. And technically, it only cycles every three hours but sometimes shit happens. So, if everyone could just slip into one of the recesses of the service hatches, we’ll be fine.”

  Nash’s voice went flat. “You brought us through a mana channel?”

  Vaeris shrugged. “I wasn’t expecting to have guests. Move.”

  There were hatches spaced at intervals. Ben peeled one open and dove in after Thorn, who had only waited till it was cracked. Inside, the space was identical to the airlock they just left.

  The hum spiked—and then light. White as a flashbang. It burned through his eyelids and into his skull. He tried to scream but there was no air, no sound—just the taste of static and hot metal.

  Then it was gone.

  Blue tunnel. Silence.

  Ben fumbled at the hatch and pushed out, dizzy and not sure if he was alive—or extra crispy.

  Light seared his retinas, his skin went slick with cold sweat, and Thorn’s needle claws dug into his scalp as he pressed his body to the hatch behind him. Then, there was a clunk, and a pressure release—then the world yanked sideways and spat him into something hard and metal.

  He gasped. The air tasted like battery acid, and he was sprawled belly-first on the cold deck of an airlock cycler, limbs splayed in a failed attempt to catch himself. Thorn, still attached to Ben’s head, made a high-pitched whine and then dropped off, rolling across the floor.

  Ben blinked until his vision stopped pulsing. Above him, or maybe around him—it was hard to tell, the room was a cylinder with no up or down—a massive, glistening, thing with tentacles was plastered to the walls and ceiling. Its flesh shimmered with the color and texture of a migraine, and its beak, a full meter, poked through the maintenance hatch they’d just come from.

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  It made a slurping, hollow sound that did not belong here.

  He crab-walked backwards, putting as much steel between himself and the thing as possible. Thorn, who had finally remembered how to be bipedal, scampered behind his knee.

  “Thorn,” Ben whispered, because loudness felt like a bad idea, “what the hell is that?”

  Thorn’s tail flicked, and his voice was so low Ben almost missed it. “Voidreach.”

  The name meant nothing to Ben. He waited for more. Thorn, of course, delivered with a sigh of infinite patience, as if he were explaining the concept of rain to a particularly dumb rock.

  “Lives off mana, can exist anywhere, even in vacuum. They migrate, latch onto stations, ships, asteroids. Absorb energy and reproduce by budding. In some societies where mana outnumbers mana-users, voidreach are kept to regulate ambient levels. Helps prevent furniture and candlesticks from developing a personality. Indifferent to most things, but they can get irritated.” Thorn pointedly looked at Ben. “Sometimes eat meat. If annoyed.”

  Ben pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He tasted terror and managed to choke down his bile. “It’s not about to eat us, right?”

  “Not unless you poke it or insult its ancestry. Or, you know, smell delicious.”

  The voidreach’s beak flexed, and then a great, bubbling tongue slithered out and licked the rim of the hatch. A shiver ran up Ben’s spine and lodged in the back of his skull.

  “Okay, we’re leaving,” he said, and Thorn did not argue.

  They skirted the edge of the airlock, careful not to step on any of the iridescent tentacles. The voidreach didn’t look at them—or however space octopi looked—but Ben felt its attention, a gravity in the air, a focus like a searchlight that only sometimes landed on you.

  The outer hatch was sealed, but a quick scan of the panel revealed an old-fashioned manual override. Ben gripped the lever and yanked, hoping the voidreach’s suction was enough to keep them from being vacuumed into the channel.

  The hatch popped with a sound like opening a can of soda, and a crisp, recycled-at-least-a-thousand-times breeze hit his face. They ducked through and slammed the hatch behind them, and the sucking noise from the other side faded to a gentle, almost sleepy hum.

  Ben pressed his back to the door and exhaled. Thorn perched on his shoulder and started grooming his tail.

  On this side of the hatch, he found a narrow maintenance passage that curved away, lit by a sickly green glow leaking from the seams. Ben opened a channel to Thimble, expecting the signal to die or get jammed or some other catastrophic failure.

  Instead, her voice popped right into his ear.

  “You alive?” she asked.

  “I guess,” Ben replied, dryly. “Got separated, voidreach blocking the door to the others.”

  “Rotten luck, it'll take a nap after eating and we need to be long gone by then.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Now move your ass. I’m pinging you a route. No float tubes, no lifts, just manual climbs and emergency stairs. The main ways are locked down or blocked. Try not to get killed before you get here.”

  The map appeared on his wrist-holo, with floating waypoints that pointed to each turn. He started moving, ignoring the burn in his legs and the feeling that every turn was wrong.

  The first door was a vertical shaft lined with handholds, no wider than a coffin. Thorn insisted on going first, which was fine with Ben. If he wanted to scout, he could scout.

  Even though his body climbed without winding him, he wondered if teleportation was something he could learn.

  They climbed. Fifteen stories. Maybe more. He lost count. At the top, another corridor, this one lined with glass panels behind which strange, bioluminescent slugs writhed in vats. Ben didn’t look too closely.

  Thimble’s voice was in his ear, guiding him with clipped instructions.

  “Left at the next junction.”

  “Down those stairs.”

  “Stop touching things, Thorn.”

  He grunted and did as he was told. The passage narrowed, widened, then opened into a room crammed with blinking lights and tangled wire. He almost turned around.

  “Go to that far wall of cubbies,” Thimble said.

  He found it, a grid of storage bins, each with a keypad and a little screen. Thimble gave him a code, and a bin slid open, revealing a black box the size of a deck of cards. It had three buttons, each a different color, each on a different side.

  “Don’t push them,” Thimble said, reading his mind.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ben rolled his eyes and stashed the box in his jacket.

  “Now climb those shelves and through the vent.”

  They were halfway through when a crash echoed from behind them, followed by a splash and sizzling sound.

  “What was that?” Ben asked.

  Thimble paused, then, “Oh, nothing. You definitely didn’t just spill something highly corrosive. Definitely not.”

  Comforting.

  He kept crawling. The duct twisted, then grew hot. Not warm. Toaster-hot. Ben’s skin prickled. Thorn’s tail slapped him in the face.

  “Go faster,” Thorn hissed.

  Soon, music drifted through the duct.

  “You’re just over Club Fox. No worries. You’re just passing through,” she said, tempting fate.

  There was a metal groan and Ben froze. “Um, Thimble,” he started, “how much weight can this ductwork hold?”

  “Oh, you're fine, standard codes make sure tha—,”

  Cheap rivets popped. One. Then another. Metal screeched and gravity did the rest. Gravity from the richest ring spinning in Whisper's Edge.

  He landed on a glass table. The table did not survive.

  Ben rolled off the wreckage, glass in his palms, and looked up at a dozen faces frozen in shock. The calmest face belonged to a kitsune in a silver suit, fur the color of burnt gold.

  He did not look pleased. He looked expensive. And irritated.

  “Um,” Ben articulated. “Sorry?”