In the candlelight I can make out a dark material beneath our feet, even and smooth.

After we take a few steps forward, there’s a rapid flashing, like lightning, followed by a clicking sound. The space fills with harsh blue light, almost as though our very presence caused it to appear. I throw my hands up, cower.

There is no viselike grip on my neck.

No booming voices of the gods.

Just a faint, steady hum.

I look up. Sheets of scrap metal glow overhead with blue-white light, illuminating what is easily the largest room I have ever stood in. The walls are curved. The floor is slick and shiny. An emblem marks the center, some type of winged creature that is vaguely familiar. I’ve seen it in the General’s library, I realize. It marked some of the Old World tech he’d hoarded.

Areas to rest—seats and benches, tables and chairs—are spread throughout the room. “What is this place?” Reed asks behind me. I shake my head, uncertain, and we move forward, crossing the emblem on the floor and entering a hallway.

The first doorway we come to has Old World symbols—CENTRAL COMMAND—above the frame. Inside, there are rows of tables and chairs. Hundreds of small squares line the tables, each one marked with an Old World symbol. There are levers too, knobs. A strange silver thing shaped like a curved squash with a cord coming off one end. And standing at eye-level on the table, across from each chair, is a dark window. When I brush away the dust that has gathered on one of the surfaces, I can see my reflection in the frame.

There are more rooms off the main hall. A storage hold, stocked with boxes and labels I can’t read. A kitchen, though I can only reason this from the few plates and bowls left on the table. An outhouse that was certainly referred to as something else by the people who lived here, seeing as it’s very much inside. Bathing rooms, with a tub five times the size of the bucket I wash in at Dead River. Then bedrooms.

The first few we pass have just one bed per room, but the last one holds hundreds. Maybe thousands. They are stacked on top of one another, three high, with ladders to reach the upper mattresses. The air in the room is stagnant. It reminds me of being under the deck on Zuly’s tanker, only worse.

“Oh,” Harlie says.

I turn toward her and gasp, clamping a hand over my mouth.

There’s a body on the bed, swimming in clothes that are now too big for the bones that remain. Asher turns away from the sight, only to inhale sharply. There’s another pair of skeletons in the bed behind us. They are curled together, as if they died in an embrace.

“What is this place?” Reed asks again.