“I’m sorry. Was that rude?” Ariadne bit her lip. “Humans aren’t as easy for me to interact with as machines. The same action won’t work on the same two people in an expected response.” The almost-robotic intonation of her voice was an eerie echo of the Oracle. Clo shivered.

“You’re doing fine, kid.” Clo forced her voice to soften.

“Your leg does hurt, though?”

Clo sighed. “Yes.”

At first, it had throbbed all the time. Real pain and phantom pain hurt just the same. Eventually, her body grew used to the change.

“Okay. Right,” Ariadne said. “Follow me.”

Clo reached up, popped the hatch of the vent at the back of the closet, and gave the much-shorter Ariadne a boost before using a storage box to climb up herself. Her leg twinged, but it didn’t slow her down. They shifted forward carefully to dull the echo of their movements. Within moments, they were covered in dust. Clo fought the urge to sneeze.

The air duct opened directly onto the elevator shaft. Ariadne sidled onto the support beam first. Clo leaned out.

“Don’t look down,” Ariadne warned.

Too late. “Silt,” Clo breathed.

The shaft was the entire height of the building, lined with glimmering bones. She wasn’t even sure she could see the bottom. Normally, she was fine with heights—she climbed around spaceships all the time and she’d been raised in the Snarl—but the drop there dizzied her.

Ariadne moved back along the ledge. “Come on, Clo,” she urged. “We only have to go down two floors. The ball is enough of a distraction that we won’t have people coming and going.”

“And if the elevator appears . . .” Clo began.

Ariadne grinned, as if the thought delighted her. “We’ll have to jump on the top of it so we’re not squished. Easy.”

Easy? Was she flooded? “And then we’ll have to hope no one hears the thump, raises the alarm, and finds us on top of the damn elevator.” Clo let out a breath and looked down again. “This is such a bad idea. Getting squashed by an elevator sounds like a terrible way to die.”

“I mean, yes. It would be. But we’ll be fine!” Ariadne said, falsely bright. “We just have to go along to the end there. There’s even a service ladder. Ten minutes, tops.” She started back along the ledge. Clo muttered a silent prayer and followed.

The ledge was barely wide enough for her feet, and she was wearing dress shoes borrowed from Nyx’s stash—with flat soles, at least, but nothing like her grippy mechanic boots—and they were a size too big. She tried not to think about slipping, dangling from the narrow ledge, and losing her grip on the smooth metal. She tried not to think about those awful, few moments she’d have after she fell.