But…did my people need me? Just another pilot? I visualized something then. A projection of my own fears? Maybe it was an effect of the nowhere. I saw myself return and rejoin Skyward Flight, fighting…and failing. Failing when the delvers inevitably returned, because a fighter pilot—no matter how skilled—couldn’t defeat them. Failing when the Superiority marshaled the power of its cytonics, hyperjumping whole fleets. Worse, they could manipulate cytonics such as me, exploit weaknesses in our powers.
They’d done that to my father. Turned him against his own flight. Led him to death.
I was a pilot, yes. But pilots weren’t enough.
We knew so little about any of this. We didn’t understand what the delvers were. How could we hope to fight them? We didn’t understand cytonics—up until recently, we’d considered those who had these powers to be “defects.” How could I face opponents like Brade, skilled with their talents, if I ran from who I was?
Home called to me, and I yearned to return. But home didn’t have answers.
Can you show me? I asked the delver. What I am?
Maybe. I don’t even know what I am. There is a place we can learn, a place in the nowhere. A place where…we were all…born…
There are no places in the nowhere, I sent.
Not in its heart, no. But at the fringes there are settlements.
I saw the meaning—the delver spoke of a region where acclivity stone was mined. Another mystery I had never quite understood. How did people go into the nowhere and harvest that rock, if the nowhere was a formless void?
Yes, there were actual places on the fringes. Places important to cytonics. Important to me. The delver put one of these locations into my mind.
I hung trapped between two opposite pulls. One, my desire to go home, to hold Jorgen, to laugh with my friends. The other, something frightening. Unknown. Like the frightening, unknown things in my own soul.
If you come here, the delver sent, it will be difficult to return. Very difficult. And you might get lost…
I felt Doomslug’s mind trembling. The rest of the delvers began to reappear, eyes opening—piercing white holes in reality, burning and hating. They did not want me going where that delver directed.
In the end, that was what prompted my decision. I’m sorry, Jorgen, I sent—hoping he could at least feel the words. I had to choose the path that led to answers. Because in that moment, I was absolutely certain it was the only way to protect the people I loved.
You go home, I told Doomslug. I will find my way later. I grabbed hold of the destination the delver had sent me.
Thank you, the delver projected. I could feel its sincere relief. Seek to walk…the Path of Elders…and remember to not get lost…
Wait! I sent. The Path of Elders?
But the delver withdrew, and I felt the others preparing to attack. So I gave Doomslug a final push to go home, then activated my powers and threw myself into the unknown.
Part One
Chapter 1
I dropped out of a wall.
Like, I emerged straight from the stone. I flopped forward in a heap of tangled clothing and limbs. M-Bot made a grunting noise as his drone body fell out beside me, but there was no sign of Doomslug.
I scrambled to my feet, orienting myself, looking around to see…a jungle? Like, a real jungle. I’d seen pictures in school of Old Earth, and this place reminded me of those. Imperious moss-covered trees. Branches like broken arms, twisted and draped with thick vines like power lines. It smelled like the algae vats, only more…dirty? Earthy?
Scud. It truly was a jungle—like where Tarzan of the Apes had lived in Gran-Gran’s stories. Were there apes here? I’d always thought I’d make a good queen of the apes.
M-Bot hovered up, turning around to take it in. The wall we’d fallen out of was behind us. A flat stone freestanding in the jungle, like a monolith. It was overgrown with weeds and vines, and I recognized the carvings in it. I’d seen similar carvings on a wall in the tunnels on Detritus.
I knew from the delver’s impressions that this was the nowhere. That felt right to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain. Somehow I had to find answers in this place. Which seemed a whole lot more daunting to me now than it had moments ago. I…scud, I had barely escaped the Superiority with my life. Now I thought I could find answers about the delvers, one of the universe’s greatest cosmic mysteries?
Not merely about the delvers, I thought. About myself. Because in those moments when I touched the nowhere, and the beings that resided in it, I felt something that terrified me. I felt kinship.
I took a deep breath. First order of business was an inventory. M-Bot looked fine, and I still had my stolen energy rifle. I felt a ton more safe holding it. I wore what I’d escaped in: a standard Superiority pilot’s jumpsuit, a flight jacket, and a pair of combat boots. M-Bot hovered up to eye level in his drone, his grabber arms twitching.
“A jungle?” he asked me. To him, the time I’d spent communing with the delver would have passed in an instant. “Um, Spensa, why are we in a jungle?”
“Not sure,” I said. I glanced around for any sign of Doomslug. She was cytonic like me—slugs were what made ships able to hyperjump—and I hoped that she’d done as I’d asked, and jumped to safety on Detritus.
To be certain, I reached out with my powers to see if I could sense her. Also, could I jump home? I stretched outward, and felt…
Nothing? I mean, I still had my powers, but I couldn’t sense Detritus, or the delver maze, or Starsight. None of the places I could normally hyperjump to. It was eerie. Like…waking up at night and turning on the lights, only to find infinite blackness around you.
Yes, I was definitely in the nowhere.
“When we entered the black sphere, I felt the delvers,” I said to M-Bot. “And…I talked to one of them. The one from before. It said to walk the Path of Elders.” I rested my fingers on the wall behind us. “I think…this is a doorway, M-Bot.”
“The stone wall?” M-Bot asked. “The portal we entered was a sphere.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the sky through the trees. It was pinkish for some reason.
“Maybe we passed through the nowhere and came out on another planet?” M-Bot said.
“No, this is the nowhere. Somehow.” I stomped my foot, testing the soft earth beneath. The air was humid, like in a bath, but the jungle felt too quiet. Weren’t these places supposed to be teeming with life?
Beams of light filtered in from my right, parallel to the ground. So was it…sunset here? I’d always wanted to see one of those. The stories made them sound dramatic. Unfortunately, the trees were so thick that I couldn’t make out the source of the light, merely the direction.
“We need to study this place,” I said. “Set up a base camp, explore the surroundings, get our bearings.”
As if he hadn’t heard, M-Bot floated closer to me.
“M-Bot?”
“I…Spensa, I am angry!”
“Me too,” I said, smacking my hand with my fist. “I can’t believe that Brade betrayed me. But—”
“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of…of… Gah!”