“You moron. Here,” she said, going into a pocket and taking out another ampoule. “I have an extra.” She gestured to Patton, who looked to me. “Aptat has another.”

At that moment, all I could think about was her face from so long ago, when I’d mentioned the Chime as we had departed the Silent Child. The absolute horror written on it. She had another angle, I just didn’t know what. “No, I don’t trust you,” I said.

“Time to go,” said Aptat. “These things are starting to move around out here.”

Patton slapped away the ampoule and kicked it into the food eel’s lair below the floor.

Naecia screamed, “We came here to rescue you!”

“It doesn’t feel that way. If you’re actually here to rescue us, go ahead and do it.”

“What happened to Oush?” asked Aptat.

“He was trying to kill me!” I said. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?” they said, gesturing for us to exit the enclosure, which we did.

The Scythin were in a state of disassembly that I didn’t understand. I’d never seen them stop moving. Some boids were completely still while others only lolled side-to-side. In certain places, they’d begun a slow coalescence, tumbling lethargically into groups. Whatever Aptat and the others had done to get them into this state, it was wearing off.

Aptat started off at a trot. “Oush was supposed to erase your mind first, and only then kill you.”

“What?” I exclaimed, while trying to keep up. “Why?”

“The Chime,” Naecia said, struggling to move in the baggy Vortu outfit. “It’s bad.”

“How bad?” I asked.

“Destroys-the-galaxy bad,” she said. “We couldn’t let you find it.”

“So you were gonna kill me?”

“Erase your mind and then kill you,” said Naecia, breathing heavily. “The only way to be sure. It wasn’t personal.”

I was speechless.

Aptat accelerated some. I glanced up ahead and saw what I’d been too distracted to notice before, off in the distance.

Patton said it before I could form the words: “Hey, is that the Silent Child?”

It really was there. A spaceship as wide as a football field, sitting inside the Timelance like it was an aircraft hangar. “How–?”

“We’ll explain later,” said Naecia. “You haven’t found the Chime yet, have you?”

“Uh,” I said, dragging along. “Kind of?”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Some place called Aszerat,” I answered.

“Did you tell them?”

“Maybe?”

“Fuck!” She punched awkwardly at the air to both sides.

“I thought I was saving them!” I said. “They’re sick or something!”

Naecia shouted in frustration. “Where in Aszerat?”

“I don’t know yet!”

“Meaning they don’t know. Good,” said Naecia. “We have to get there before they do.”