The wardens peer in through the tiny window-thing, make sure I’m still tethered. They know I can’t move from here, not if I strained and pulled and broke every bone in this body. The chain is made from the same strange metal as the hatch that seals my cell. Each link is engraved with the same line of text: a prayer that I will never break free.

The last the door clinks and shivers, locking-bolts breaking clear. The first two barriers were solid, but this one is a grate. It looks like black iron, bands as wide as my hand.

Well, not my hand.

They’ve been riveted together to form a loose grid. The metal is poisonous to me—enough that just getting near it makes my skin crawl and fills my thoughts with static. It pulls away into the ceiling, and what I’m hearing gets just a little clearer.

Wardens fill the doorway, but they aren’t what I expect. I’m waiting for dirty greys and NorCol jackets, or colonials in spit-masks and tattoos. What I get is a line of reflective, glassy plate.

I’ve never seen anything like them before. Not in all the years I’ve been here.

At the same time, I remember.

The first inches forward, a long, non-conductive spear in her hand. Another slides in behind her and extends another weapon, level with my throat. I want to ask them what they’re doing, call out so that someone else will hear me die.

Instead I grin. Or something like it.

The wardens do what they always do, an eye on every detail. I taught their grandmothers this, and their grandmothers before. One generation after another, ever since that petty little thing they called a ‘war.’ Lessons paid for in blood and falling towers.

I remember the early days, their trembling hands and wide eyes. Now they move with practised steps, spear points perfectly level. They inch around the room until they’ve ringed me with spikes, and others move in behind them. These wear a different kind of armour, with wide visors where their faces should be.

They would send machines to do it, but they know they can’t. Machines belong to me.

These are some of the oldest, women I have known for centuries. They wear delicate instruments in their gloves and helmets, made to do the work their drones would normally do for them. They run their fingers across the cell, and press their strange ears to the walls. They take turns staring at the ceiling, and crouch to work their lenses at the floor. Looking for the slightest crack or imperfection. Anything I could use against them.

The others keep me still, a forest of lance tips trapping me against the opposite wall. Their weapons are the spokes of a wheel, and I am the axis.