I squeeze through the busted door, realizing I not only have no weapon but also no plan. Find a weapon, get to my sisters, and help them hold off the Bhavajas is about as far as I can get in my reasoning.
I round a bend and come face to face with two Bhavaja women arguing. I punch the first in the face, easy as breathing. The second raises her weapon but has no time to fully draw it, let alone fire it. I have a vague recollection about how I can best a better-armed target who has not pulled a weapon so long as I’m within ten paces, but my body knew it before I consciously considered it.
I disarm the women neatly and shoot them both with the cephalopod weapon. Their suits dissolve around them. They gasp in the thin atmosphere. I heft the weight of the weapon in my hand and continue on down the corridor, navigating by sight as opposed to sound. I miss Jayd in my ear, miss the soothing sounds of the single person in the whole world who seems to give a shit.
What has Rasida done with her? Murdered her? Tossed her out into space? Or is she really as important to Rasida as she pretends?
I step through another broken corridor. A woman stands over two bodies. I heft my weapon, but as she turns, I see that inside the spray-on suit, it’s my sister Maibe.
Maibe signs at me. “The others?”
I sign back. “Dead. Anat too.”
“Jayd?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come with me,” Maibe signs. “We’re holding out in the cortex. This isn’t the main force.”
Maibe opens a gummy hatch in the corridor; it comes away from the sticky surface like pulling off a scab. I crawl after her in the darkness, dragging the weapon awkwardly in one hand while holding my weight with the other.
The darkness goes on and on. I wonder, again, how long the air in my suit will hold out. Does the suit recycle air? Do I have a limited amount? I have no idea.
Green-and-violet light spills out ahead of us. Maibe steps out and reaches a hand back for me. I have a long moment to wonder if I’m being lured into a trap.
But I take her hand anyway, and we squeeze into another long corridor. It’s like a series of umbilical cords that connects the levels of the ship. We walk for some time until we come to what Maibe signs to me is the second level and the cortex. Cortex sounds important, and I figure it’s some kind of control room.
Maibe turns off her suit, and it dissolves around her. She signs at me to do the same. “We’ve got good pressure on every level but the first,” she signs.
I mimic her movements, sliding two fingers up my left wrist until I find a series of raised bumps. I plug in the combination, and the suit falls off, peeling quickly away like shedding my own skin. I pick the little pieces off as I follow Maibe to a big green banded security door. Maibe knocks four times.
I hear raised voices on the other side and a heavy thunking sound.
The door opens. Prisha stands there, holding a big weapon like the one I used out on the assault on the Mokshi.
“Mother?” Prisha asks.
“All dead,” I say.
She narrows her eyes, as if convinced that I had something to do with Anat’s death. If only.
Finally, she nods and motions us in.
I’m not sure what I expected of the cortex, but this isn’t it. It’s a tight, round room with high ceilings and interfaces embedded in the walls. Organic tubing sticks out from each station, like they were meant to hook up to something that has long since been removed. The room is packed with people, all my remaining sisters and many others I don’t know—more family, maybe? They seem familiar. All are armed. It occurs to me that there are no children here. The youngest person is just past menarche. The oldest isn’t much more senior than Anat.
If this is the center of the world, it is unassuming and in terrible disrepair. I can’t tell what anything in the room is meant to do.
The whole lot of them is fixed on the origin of the thunking sound: the great round portal on the far side of the room. I can just make out the seam of it on the wall. I don’t have to be told the Bhavajas are on the other side.
“How did they know where this is?” I ask Maibe.
“How do they know anything?” Maibe says. “Spies, probably. Or their witches. Some witches remember how the worlds work better than others.”
“Why hold here?” I ask. “If we keep going down, we can find places to hold out and regroup on other levels. We can—”
Maibe frowns. “Zan, if they take the cortex, they take control of the world. There’s no point in going on once they have this room.”
“But . . . what does it do here?
“She can hook into the mind of the world here,” Prisha says, looking back at us. “She can twist it to her purposes. Maybe better than we can. It’s a mad ship, but the Bhavajas . . . you’ve seen what they do to other worlds.”
Have I? I don’t remember, but the point seems moot now.
The air in the room is tense. It stinks terribly: too many unwashed bodies pushed together in sweaty fear. I survey the room, trying to assess our tactical options. When the door goes—and it will, I am sure of that—we can retreat through the secret way Maibe and I had come in, but there doesn’t appear to be any other exit. And retreating through there is going to be tight, far too tight to get very many out. This is a last stand. My sisters intend to win or to die here . . . and those are in fact the only options if what Maibe says about the cortex is true.
I check the remaining cephalopods on my weapon. I don’t like the idea of losing. I especially don’t like the idea of losing to people who’ve bought Jayd as if she were a brood animal. What happens to Jayd if I’m dead? Who will go after her when I’m gone? No one. She’ll be on her own.
The thunking continues. I stay posted at the entrance to the escape route, more to ensure no one comes in than in the hopes I can be the first one out. Maibe is right—running now won’t mean anything if it we’re just giving the world to the Bhavajas. Idiot Anat, for trusting them. Foolish Jayd, for going along with it. And here I am, useless and pinned down.
The breach comes sooner than I expect. As the first weapon punches through the door, three women try to get past me through the exit. One loses her will completely and starts screaming and tearing at her hair. I hit her in the face with the butt of my weapon. She goes down hard on her ass. For me, the breach is a relief. I don’t know how to wait. But I know how to act.
Two women at the front of the room shoot back at the breached door, foolishly, because their weapons only serve to help open up the first hole.
“Hold!” I yell. “Hold until you have a clear shot!”
Something whumps against the door so hard, the whole room trembles. The ring of the portal moves perceptibly inward.
Those at the front arm their weapons.