“I’m sorry for lying,” he whispered. “As a naive newborn, I’d assumed someone connected to your past would make you more trusting. I can now see that any random person would actually have been less suspicious.
“I was there with the rest, as Spears was destroyed. I knew him in an intimate way. I latched onto that name, and I remade him atom by atom. His mind was full of knowledge about the belt, but no memories of who he’d been in the somewhere returned. Still, he had a personality, a passion. Like you had. For…”
“Stories,” I whispered.
“Yes. I filled in what was lost of him with things from your mind. I think…I think he really was an explorer, Spensa. It was his memories about the fragments that I shared with you. His enthusiasm. His manner of speaking. As he was, I became. With some additions from your own mind to fill holes.
“I tried to explain, when you didn’t trust me. I tried to say that I wasn’t a person, but a collection of stories. But to have given myself away then would have ripped me apart. I had to stay with you, be a person. You needed a guide.
“But Spensa, the ashes. I didn’t anticipate how real they’d make me feel. How much they’d make a person out of me. And I didn’t realize…how much I’d like it. How much I’d want for us to just leave together, explore the nowhere, renouncing the pain that I knew was coming. If I had to remember…”
A part of me was furious. He’d kept all of this from me? He’d lied?
I contained it though. In a very un-Spensa-like way, I forced myself not to throw a tantrum. This wasn’t his fault. He was, in some ways, very young. I’d created him by forcing him to leave the other delvers. I couldn’t blame him for making mistakes while doing his best.
“The Path of Elders?” I asked.
“Real memories,” he whispered, “from real cytonics. I knew you’d need these. I knew…I’d need them. We’ve forgotten these things on purpose, Spensa. I didn’t know the specifics of what the memories contained, but I knew where the answers were. I knew the four most important portals to reach. So…forgive me…I invented for you a quest with an intriguing name. To drive you to reach these locations.”
“Because doing so is like a story.”
“Yes. Do…you hate me?” He held my arm tightly, speaking softly. This was a very different person from Chet the explorer—but then again, what would people have thought of the “bold warrior” Spensa Nightshade if they’d seen her weeping beside the wall?
I pried his hand free, then held it. “I don’t hate you, Chet. Thank you. For helping me. For doing this thing that was so hard.”
He nodded, grinning as he wept. “I like Chet,” he said. “I like being Chet. I like having identity. But it is painful.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I had to see him again,” Chet whispered, looking toward the man in the vision. That began to fade, the man leaving through the portal and taking the sphere with him.
The sphere is a delver maze, I thought, my brain scrambling to keep up. And Chet said that delvers become that shape because…that was the thing that once held them. Their soul.
“Delvers are AIs,” I said. “You are an AI.”
“No,” Chet whispered. “A delver is to an AI as you are to an ape—or maybe an amoeba. That was what we once were, long ago. Before exposure to the nowhere. And the ‘radiation’ that this place produces. It’s not radiation in a true sense as in the somewhere, but the idea is the same. It makes us, and over generations it makes cytonics.”
“Cousins,” I said. “That is how the delvers have decided to see people like me. Creations of this place.”
“Exactly, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, some of his familiar voice returning. “Your powers bring a slice of the nowhere with you into your realm. Teleportation, visions, projecting into minds, agelessness, even altering your appearance. Each cytonic with skills in different areas.”
“And my skills,” I said, “are to teleport and to…”
“To see. Hear. Understand. As you have been willing to understand me.”
The vision faded. As before, I felt ancient cytonics—hundreds of them—reaching out to brush my mind. Good, they said, good. You have learned…learned so well…
“I was trained,” I whispered—though I didn’t know if they could hear. “By my grandmother. I just needed a little push.”
See and be, they sent, and showed me my power—the brilliance that was my star-soul—being…softer?
What?
I don’t know what it means, I said.
You will, they sent back as they faded. In the end, I was left with an impression—like the previous times. A wall standing on a white fragment, surrounded by something that looked like dust or snow.
“We call it,” Chet whispered, “the Solitary Shadow. It is the last stop on your quest.”
“More memories?” I asked.
“The last of them,” he said, then tapped his head. “My memories. The things the delvers have forgotten on purpose. I do not know what that last portal holds—but it is the thing they don’t want you to see. The thing they fear the most. I fear it too, but not so much as I once did. We two, we explore so well! Even exploring what I once was! Ha!”
I smiled as he wiped his eyes, grinning like a fool. In the distance, I felt something. The delvers? I turned toward the lightburst and expanded my senses. Searching, listening. I could hear the stars.
The delvers were projecting concern. They knew I’d walked this step on the Path, and they were cautious. But they had allowed this. So far I hadn’t broken the truce. Well, I hadn’t accepted it either, technically. Even though they felt I had. For now, there was balance.
Except…I was stronger than I’d ever been. What were they really thinking?
I could only do this because they were deliberately trying to project worry toward me—they saw it as encouragement for me to keep to the deal. But I was able to kind of…ride the signal they were sending, and quietly use that opening to read what they were truly thinking.
They were terrified of me still. That was what I expected. But there was something else… They were planning?
Scud. They were planning how to destroy Surehold.
I blinked in surprise, as I could picture it specifically. The delvers were going to bring in fragments from the somewhere. Ten of them. A dozen. Then they were going to slam them into Surehold while everyone was sleeping. They thought it might fool our scanners if the fragments appeared suddenly.
“Scud,” I whispered. “They were going to immediately break the truce. They don’t care. They’ll do anything to kill me.”
“What?” Chet said.
“They’re planning it now!” I said, pointing. “I can hear them doing it!”
“I didn’t know, Miss Nightshade,” he said. “I promise you, when I asked you to travel with me, I didn’t…”
Every instinct I’d had about them was right. “We need to leave,” I said to him. “Before we put the people here in danger.”
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“A day or so,” I said. “They will wait until everyone is asleep—but still, I think we should be long gone by then. Hopefully drawing delver attention to us, making them abandon the attack on Surehold.”
“Agreed,” Chet said. “So, it is onward, then? Today?”
“Today,” I said, striding out of the hangar to where M-Bot sat on the tarmac. “Recall the drone,” I said to him. “And Hesho. We’re going to be leaving soon.”