I found the turn Liam mentioned and wasn’t surprised I’d missed it the first time. I had to bend almost double, but if Liam could squeeze through here, so could I. I scraped a good chunk of skin off my arms, then crawled along until I reached another grate. Peering through the tangled metal, I distinguished a few people moving in the shadows. I watched them a moment, heart racing, until the shadows settled into human forms. For just a moment, they’d looked shapeless, reptilian, cold. But no. Humans all.

I seemed to be in another section of living quarters, possibly a level down, as I’d thought the vent had sloped as I’d crawled. I threaded my fingers through the metal and pushed experimentally. Three corners popped loose. Across the room, a woman gave me a cursory glance, then returned her gaze to her tablet, clearly uninterested in why I was climbing out of a wall.

In spite of my drumming heartbeat and a frantic need to hurry, I eased the grate down carefully and with a minimum of noise. I made the short drop to the floor and pressed the grate into place. It seemed to attach magnetically at three of the corners, only the fourth fastened by an actual screw. I gave Liam credit for the arrangement. What was his relationship with the Danshovs? Why had he taken my comm? He claimed fear of the aliens motivated him. But maybe he only said that because he knew it drove me. For the first time, I recognized my lingering terror as a perceptible weakness, one others could exploit. I swallowed hard. This just reinforced the need to find the others. We were stronger together.

No one seemed to have noticed my appearance except the woman with the tablet and a wide-eyed boy. He gave me a shy smile, as if people popping out of grates was normal in his world, and turned back to his mother.

I was in a small, dark room, but it didn’t seem to be anyone’s private quarters, more like a public gathering space. A door stood open to one side, and when I emerged, I found myself in the prison proper. I didn’t know what the room had been. A server room, equipment long since stripped? Obsidian predated Sanctuary by several decades, and although it seemed familiar at first, I was quickly realizing that I couldn’t rely on my memories of Sanctuary, or of any Omnistellar facility, to navigate.

I pressed through the prison. Families and individuals inhabited some of the cells, but no one gave me a second glance as I passed, emerging at last into the stairwell. The buzz of the market reached me from above. I was right, I’d descended a level at some point. At least now, I had a minute to breathe.