“Wait here, please,” Gem whispers.

Crouching like a cat, he inches into the corridor. He’s about twenty feet in when two LI students pop out from either side of the tunnel’s far exit and fire their Leyden guns. They must have been lying in ambush, but Gem is ready. A nanosecond before they pull their triggers, Gem fires his SIG Sauers. Both guards drop like sandbags. Their miniature harpoon projectiles scrape trails of sparks as they skitter harmlessly across the walls of the corridor.

I have to remind myself to breathe. I can’t decide whether I’m relieved or horrified. Did Gem just… ? No, those couldn’t have been lethal rounds. I glance behind me, but the lagoon grotto is still empty. If Gem’s gunfire didn’t alert every hostile in the base, I’m pretty sure my pounding heartbeat will.

Gem crouches lower. He moves to his left, keeping his eyes on the far exit. No one else appears from the room. He creeps forward. When he reaches the opposite end, he sweeps the area with his gun sights, then kicks the fallen guards to make sure they’re no threat.

“Clear,” he calls to me, his voice low.

I limp down the hall, my side on fire. Blood is already soaking through the bandages. When I join Gem, I look down at the guards, both of whom have nasty red welts in the middle of their foreheads. I take the name of a certain Nazarene carpenter in vain.

“Please don’t blaspheme,” Gem says automatically. “I used rubber ammo. They might have nasty headaches when they wake up, but they won’t die.”

“How are you not in shock?” I ask.

“I’ve been in shock for days,” he whispers, then points to the next corridor. “Aren’t the security monitors in the room just ahead?”

Without further challenges, we reach the monitors in question. Why the surveillance room is not guarded, I don’t know, but I suspect it’s because Gem just shot the guards in the head. Gem stands watch at the door while I cycle through views from the various cameras.

The base is mostly empty…very empty. The armory has been stripped. Luca’s gold-level boxes and alt-tech experiments have disappeared from his workshop. In the server room, Ophelia’s computers are either gone or disassembled, their hard drives probably pulled. And in the sick bay…

An ice cube lodges in my throat. The patient’s bed is empty.

“Where’s Hewett?” I wonder.

Gem starts. “What?”

“Hold on….” I toggle through more cameras, my fingers trembling. If I was wrong about the hostages, if they and Dr. Hewett were on board the Aronnax . . . I switch to the view of the front dock, and my shoulders relax just a little.

“There he is,” I tell Gem. “Two hostiles are bringing his stretcher aboard the Varuna.”

Gem frowns. “Why would they—?”

“Insurance,” I guess. “They’ve stripped all the information and tech they can from the base. With the Aronnax gone, the Varuna is their only way out.”