Fingers flash in the greenscale—the back of Hail’s gauntlet glowing as the low-light catches it, turns to a flare in the middle of my visor. Again, as she rolls us to a halt, down low, with me against the wall behind her and Salt across from us.

Another flick, and she skips us a few steps forward. The message continues on her fingertips: Possible contact. Watch for movement.

I draw up at her shoulder, finger on the trigger and eyes on the dark. My whole universe ends a few steps ahead of her, where the bubble of green static cuts away and the real darkness starts. Even with the instruments, we’re deep in the black, so thick it seems to resist us pushing through it.

We sit tight for thirty seconds, and then Hail has us moving again, keeping pace with her as we skip closer to whatever she’s seen. A wave of her hand, and she sets us down, each on a knee and aiming straight ahead.

Again, we wait. Hail opens the net without warning. “Hold fire.” It seems loud and sudden, even if she barely breaks a whisper. “Kill your visors. I’m switching to lamps.”

I hesitate. There’s nothing for cover in here, and nowhere to go but more open corridor. If anyone’s watching, they’ll be on us. Then again, it’s dark enough in here that we could trip over them and not know it until the shooting started.

I blink my way through the helmet’s systems, and lower myself into blackout. For a second, I can’t even keep up. The low-light leaves an outline where the projection used to be, and when that’s finally gone, all that’s left is the feeling of floating, and darkness so heavy it presses on my eye-sockets.

“I’ve gone cold,” I confirm, far too loud in the tight confines of my helmet. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Visor off,” says Salt, a heartbeat later. I wonder if we haven’t been thinking the same thing.

“Lights on,” she says.

The void explodes and burns her outline into my eyes, backlit by the twin halos of her helmet lamps, revealing a sudden stretch of open air and dust motes. Right ahead, just on the border between us and the endless dark, I see what she saw: the shadow of an empty ribcage, a pair of oversized shoulder joints, arcs of thick plating, lines of exposed hydraulics.

Mirror-coated fingers lunge for us, but stop dead at the limits of their reach. They twitch as if to catch hold of something, but fall to scratch madly at the floor, skipping sparks against the stone. The hydraulics flex, and the thing drags itself closer, and again with the other hand. We fall back as a heavy, skeletal frame in Sigurd’s livery claws its way into the light, covered in long, smooth scars.