Glass vials line the tables along the dusty walls. Flames dance in a stone bowl in the room’s center, and around it hangs all sorts of metal equipment. Tongs and trays, syringes, wide glasses, aprons, and long tubes snaked in circles lie in piles all over the ground.

“This isn’t a library,” I say. “It’s a lab. Could Bati be in there? Does it show bodies?”

“I don’t know. This is my first time using this thing.”

“We can’t risk not knowing. I have to go in.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No, you stay here with Julius.”

“Rue, no. I understand I could get hurt. That’s part of it. It’s not your job to protect everyone, least of all me. And besides, it’s a lab. There could be useful stuff in there.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Julius says. “And I’ll birdcall if I hear or see anything.”

“Of course.” I roll my eyes.

“What?” he says. “That’s how they—”

“Do it in double-o seven, I know.”

Bri looks between us.

“Don’t even try to understand.” I pull myself through the hole, rock scraping my sides. I take Bri’s hand, and she gets through easy enough. The sphere she’d dropped through the hole snaps to her feet the minute her foot touches the floor.

“Whoa, how’d you get that thing to come back to you?”

“I modeled the performance coding after the heat-seeking fire arrows we ran into. The idea is that they seek out whatever material or form of energy I set it to.” She tosses the hologram ball in her hand. “So, with this, I just set it to seek out the rubber sole on my shoe, mixed it with some of my DNA. Spit, if you’re curious….”

“Oh my god, gross!”

“And voilà! This ball will snap like a magnet to any whiff of my DNA.”

“That’s nasty as hell. But foreal, Bri, your ability to take shit and make new shit never ceases to amaze me.” I offer her a fist bump and she pounds back. “Glad you riding with me, friend.”

“Ride or death.”

I don’t even correct her at this point.

“Jue, you good?”

“All clear out here. I’ll birdcall, remember?”

If the fire weren’t burning in the room’s center, we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Bri is already inspecting lab supplies and dropping things in her bag. She plucks leaves from a far wall, where it looks like someone planted a floor-to-ceiling garden.

“Bati?” I whisper. “You in here?”

Digits scroll across glass screens, running calculations or programs or something. I lean in and a percentage bar at the bottom is three-fourths full. Nothing about this place feels Ghizoni to me.

“Rue… I don’t think…” Bri pulls out a long arrow from under a bed of wires.

I touch the end of it, and it erupts in flames. “Ouch!”