“They won’t fight us down here,” says Hail. “Not after that. They’ll wait until we clear the elevator into D.” She settles into a corner, uses the bulkheads to prop her up. “Andrade hits in an hour and forty-eight minutes.”

“You all right?” we ask.

“If the next dose doesn’t make me OD,” she mutters. “I’ll be right as rain.”

“Bor?”

The other machine looks up. “Did you know they would do that?”

We cock our head. “Do what?”

Her shell spreads its hands. “This.” It locks its eyes on us, aims a finger to match. “You were one, once.” The hand curls away. “I mean, your machine—it was one of these. Do you have logs?”

“I do, but you don’t want to see them.”

“Why not?”

“They weren’t fighting hollows last time.”

Bor flinches.

You have nothing to fear from us, says the Cluster, all three machines looking back. You, says one, looking at Bor. Your file says you stabbed Moran, J. six times in the throat.

“How do you—where did you find that?”

Some of the hangar’s network is still alive, says the Cluster. They pluck a strand from the air, show us the edges of it. Even with the comms channels dead and every human voice stripped out of the loop, Horizon’s nets are huge. If we keep to the deepest parts, the flood can’t pick us up.

Your file says you stabbed one of your guards, repeats the one from before.

Bor grits her teeth. “They were going to put me in the hole again. I couldn’t—” She trails off. “I couldn’t anymore.”

The Juno nods. There are many things we don’t remember, but we know this for certain: it was the same for us.

WE REST WITH our joints locked straight, our feet locked down, and our thoughts running cold and slow. We’re spread out between the foundry bays, clear of the vault that used to hold the Cluster. We could’ve waited inside, used that massive silver door for cover, but we need to be able to move when the time comes, and the hollows aren’t trying their luck just yet.

The Cluster has plotted lines of fire through bottlenecks and blind corners; Hangar D is a ravine, but these sub-levels are a maze. Without the wind to carry it away, our body heat lingers, but we flare our plates anyway, catch some of the pressure-creep from the massive storms outside.

A breeze plays in the dust around our feet, tracking motes through Bor’s lamplight and lifting rust from the deck. It comes in through a passive life-support system, following one of the odd, coiling shafts designed to funnel air to the lower levels even if the pumps stopped working. The little current keeps us company here, so far from the sky.