“A version of you, anyway,” Ava corrected. She fumbled out the pocketbook in Ursula’s purse, holding up the driver’s license. Nouresh took it gingerly. “This is who we were sent to find, but she …”

“Got eaten. We think,” Jules said.

“I always knew other versions of me existed,” Nouresh said, staring at the license. “It’s strange to be confronted with evidence.” She looked at Ava. “If she’s dead, why did you keep looking?”

Ava lifted the flap on the pocketbook that held the driver’s license. On the other side was the photo of Ursula and her emo-phase granddaughter. There weren’t any other photos in the pocketbook—no children, no other family members, no pets. This had been the most important person in Ursula’s life, the only one whose picture was worthy of being kept on her at all times.

“Her granddaughter. She’s older now, and I only met her for a minute,” Ava said. “But she seemed nice. Scared. And alone.”

“The FINNA looks for the most, uh, appropriate replacement if the original person is gone. It decided that meant you,” added Jules.

“Did it now,” Captain Nouresh said softly. She swallowed, then tossed the pocketbook back to Ava. “Doesn’t matter. A captain never abandons her ship during a battle.”

Ava fumbled to catch the pocketbook, and by the time she’d shoved it back into the purse, Nouresh had resumed walking at her fast clip. Ava hurried to keep pace.

Nouresh stopped in front of a door, painted that same bloody red. This one had a complicated brass locking mechanism. She took a breath, leaned into something that looked like a shallow satellite dish, and said softly, “Uzmala Nouresh.”

There was a soft, metallic tinkling sound, and then a clank, components moving and shifting until the door swung inward.

“This place is so cool,” Jules whispered.

“Agreed,” Ava replied.

The two of them followed Captain Nouresh into a circular room about the size of Ava’s bedroom. It was dominated by a large table with a high lip around the edge, like an enormous ashtray. Its top was covered with a thick layer of sand. After shutting the door behind them, Nouresh shouldered Ava and Jules aside to stand beside the table. She spoke, again in that soft voice of command, then plunged her hands beneath the surface, sending ripples through the sand as if it were water. A large bubble bulged out from the center. It grew eyes, claws, and a mouth pulled from a thousand insects that had devoured Ava in a thousand nightmares. (She had extremely specific phobias, she could admit.) “That’s the mother?” Jules asked, quicker on the uptake than Ava.

“Oh, god!” Ava said. That eldritch nightmare had lived in the pit below the clone LitenVärld. “That’s the thing that almost ate us?”