“Right.” I took another step before reaching back for Ahiga and pulling him onto the catwalk with me. An alarm went off, and I froze. “What’s that? Did I do something wrong?”

Ahiga muttered a few curses and then looked down. “Nah. See those guys there? In the heat suits?”

From up here, everyone looked tiny, but I saw a group of guys standing by one of the doors. They were covered head to toe in black suits—giant boots covered their feet, helmets on their heads, and what had to be oxygen on their backs. “Yeah.”

“They’re about to open the doors. The fans and cooling will combat it, but they’re not miracle workers. Dangerous as fuck to go out there. The ground can be a lot even for the suits. It’s volatile. No one usually goes outside, unless everything’s about to go to hell and—”

Cooling systems started blasting the doors, sending a cloud of steam around the men waiting for them to open.

“What do you think’s going on?”

“Dunno. Could be a problem on the surface or some repairs to the outside or they could just be doing some extreme training.”

I watched as the guys disappeared and the alarm stopped.

“You ready?” Ahiga asked.

No. Not even a little bit. “I guess. Where are we headed?”

“Straight across.”

“Perfect.” As I walked forward, still holding Ahiga’s hand, I glanced down at the people below. A group ran a weaving path through all the workers. “Why would they choose this place to work out? There have got to be cooler places to exercise on the base.”

“This is a base. We train military personnel here, and—” Ahiga jerked to a stop.

When I glanced back, he was staring straight up at the ceiling. The look of pure misery on his face made me laugh. “You looked down again, didn’t you?”

“Your fault.” The cold look he gave me was enough to frighten the toughest of guys, but it wasn’t working on me. Not when I was holding his hand to walk him across the catwalk like a little kid.

“Sorry,” I said, but the laugh felt earned. I needed it.

As we reached the end of the catwalk, Ahiga let go of my hand and moved in front of me. “This way.” A couple of turns later and we were in front of a stairwell.

“Are you using a chip to navigate in here?” I could buy him knowing his way around the ship. I assumed most cargo ships were laid out the same way, but this base was supposed to be different than most due to the mining and the fact that it was built on fiery hot, molten lava.