I’d walked the long route from the hospital level through the tunnels, largely deserted now, at midmorning. Most of the patroi would be in the upper levels of the citidome by this time, working. I could have used the elevator, but I wanted the privacy, the time apart, to clear my head. I felt overwhelmed to the point of nausea. Everything that had happened the last few days—the disastrous evaluation, my annual, the doomed visit to the Outside—the boy—it was all too much.

I stopped before the fountain on the vi’in. The passageway widened here to accommodate a large postern, which brought warm water from the hot springs near Bright Horizon. It cascaded down in the center of the passageway like an ancient waterfall, collecting in a basin at the bottom before trickling its way on through the caverns.

I scooped a handful of warm water out from the basin, splashed it onto my face. We’d had so few communications from the party of settlers who had gone to Simos, the second world, hoping to establish an evacuation colony. The planet’s magnetic field disrupted the System to the point of near unusability. Before we lost contact, they’d told us that there were other inhabitants on the planet. Seemingly human, the report had said, but I hadn’t realized how much like us they’d be. Alien, but not quite alien enough.

How had one gotten here?

At the end of the vi’in, the passage opened out into a large cavern. Three wide steps led up to the arched entrance of the geroi’s villa. Even though it was deep under the ground, it had been designed to look like the aboveground manor that had once stood beside the sea. Six columns held aloft a tile roof inlaid with glistening stones, each a different color. A woven-copper gate, the entranceway to the villa’s front courtyard, swung open as I approached. Where once beautiful green bushes and fruiting trees would have formed a garden, we were left with nothing but decorative stone statuary and the few scraggly vines that had adapted to life without the sun.

I glanced into the polished bronze stela in the courtyard’s center as I passed. The medics had wiped my face off, but there was still rusty grime caked along my hairline. I sighed and began pulling my disheveled hair loose from its wraparound braid. My coarse white curls were stained reddish-brown. That awful tangy metallic smell wafted around me as I ran my fingers through, trying to loosen the knots.

The villa was silent apart from the echo of my footsteps across the tile. I detoured into the east wing, where Ceilos’ suite was located, but no light shone under his door. Antos and Melusin were not here, either. They must be at the capitol. I wondered if they’d gotten any sleep the night before.