She hoped Clo was holding up out in the hallway, but she couldn’t spare more than a thought for the mechanic. The muscles in her back were so tight, she thought they’d break. She could feel One’s presence behind the code. As long as she didn’t trigger an anomaly, she should be able to slip in and out.

But had the Oracle already noticed that the sensors had triggered there? Would it drive One’s attention away from training on countless planets, on the millions of cameras dotted through the Empire?

Ariadne’s hands kept shaking.

Rhea was still helping her to unpack her childhood with the Oracle, but when would there be time for any of them to heal from their pasts? Ariadne was supposed to be living her new life by now, fixing odd things to get by on some quiet, faraway planet. Far from the Temple, far from the Oracle’s tendrils. Not here in the depths of One’s domain.

Her eyes scanned the information, all of it storing deep in her brain. No time to make copies, no time to even think about what her eyes were seeing. She had it.

“Ismara,” she whispered, scanning the text. “Ichor mines.”

Josephine was a rock called ichor from the planet Ismara. Frustrated, Ariadne tried to read more, but the whirring of the mechanisms in the Oracle’s mainframe stopped her. Though she had an eidetic memory, there was only so quickly she could scan the information in front of her. It would have to do.

She’d lingered long enough already.

She slid a small drive into the slot on one of the screens. The virus would enter the Oracle’s interface as if it were a routine process to streamline code, and there it would sit until Ariadne needed to activate it.

From farther away, she thought as she quickly entered information into the report logs. Way, way farther.

If the Oracle did pay attention to the logs on the smallest of the Three Sisters, it should say that Minoa Katrakis-1, one of the chief engineers, came to check on shipment records. Ariadne made sure to look up other ships’ manifests as well as Zelus’s, and Minoa had been assigned to work on that ship, as well. She was another small woman, though not as tiny as Ariadne.

She had to hope this desperate patchwork quilt held. Engineers would know how to pass through the maze, though Minoa would only work this one. If any heat came down on the engineer, it would be Ariadne’s fault. She didn’t want to risk another’s life. She’d already caused so much death.

Now to find her way back. She was ready to dance.

“Goodbye, Oracle,” Ariadne whispered.