I’m not expecting anything to come of it, but the shadows grow outside.

I skid back in the cell.

Shit.

Looks like I touched a nerve.

I brace for a rush through the door, maybe a steel-toed boot in the stomach, but nothing comes. I drop my hands low, unfold from the corner, risk a glance at the door. The seals don’t budge.

But I hear something grind beneath the floor. The chains tug at my wrists: just taking up slack at first, but eventually the pull is irresistible. The links disappear through a hole in the deck, dragging me across the cell, holding me low to the ground.

I don’t remember this. Not in Reveley, and not in Syndamere. Not in the hulk that the colonials called Scharapel and the cons called the Cookhouse. Three of the worst days of my life, lived in a pool of my own sweat.

This isn’t like that. Something is wrong.

The door should be swinging on its hinges, and there should be wardens all over me, boots and batons and spit blowing through their teeth. Instead, they wait outside, watching me through what passes for a window in this place.

The first door opens smoothly. The first of three, this the widest and heaviest, so thick its hinges should be screaming at the weight. They don’t, and the wardens move it around on fingertips. I glimpse the edge as it turns away: solid as anything I’ve ever seen, forged in the heart of a collapsing star.

I saw the other side of the door once, sometime long ago. I couldn’t tell you when, exactly, but I remember it vividly. A carving: swirls like tidal waves cut into the surface.

Beneath them, the twisted faces of the drowned.

I don’t recognise the thought, but I don’t have long alone with it. The second door is thinner, and almost transparent. I don’t remember there being two doors on this cell, let alone three, but now that I’m looking, I remember all the time I’ve spent studying it. Not long enough to work out what it is or what it does, but long enough to come up with a few theories. It’s hard to see when it’s resting in its the grooves, but when it moves it edges into focus. Then it turns hazy like frosted glass.

While it was shut, there was only silence, but now I hear the wash of prison noise: bootstep echoes and shuffling feet, whispered conversations and weapon checks.