If I translated that from immortal Minister into mortal human, I think it turned out to mean that Indigo was sick of our shit. “I don’t care,” I said.

“I’ll take second,” Lantern-Eyes said, and conversation ceased while we finished eating. It had been easier to talk to them when we’d been in immediate danger of dying. I curled up on the ancient platform, head pillowed on my borrowed bag. The only light was the pale glow of Indigo’s collar-light, and I felt as alone as I’d been before I’d allied with them, sleeping alone in the dark, lost in a lab with only the ghost of Mara Zhu for company.

Lantern-Eyes woke me what felt like five minutes after I’d shut my eyes, shaking me hard enough to make me dizzy. “You sleep like the dead,” she said.

I yawned hugely at her and she got that weird look on her face again, like a cat that’s been picked up and is too startled by the liberty taken to decide whether or not it wants to be held. My whole body, I discovered, hurt. My hands were the worst, painful along the palms where I had scraped them, but my feet were sore, and my legs, and my shoulders. Even my ass hurt. I hadn’t realized there were muscles involved in self-preservation that were located in the ass.

Lieutenant Gupta was already settling down in her own chosen sleeping spot, pressed up against the wall and far from the ledge, by the time I persuaded my resentful abs to let me sit upright. “Just smack them if they get too close,” she said as she settled in. “There aren’t enough that they’ll dare attack yet.”

“Sorry, what?” I said, still mostly asleep and preoccupied with the resentment of every overused sinew in my body, and then I finally looked around.

Lantern-Eyes had left a flashlight on and set it down beside me, so that there was more light on the platform than just the dreamy glow of Indigo’s collar-light, which he’d dialed down anyway, presumably at the same time as he’d gone to sleep. The flashlight’s beam terminated, several feet away, on a pair of small, dirty feet, toes curling and uncurling and nails so long they’d gone yellow.

The feet were standing on the upwards staircase, on the very lowest step, closest to us. I picked up the flashlight carefully and shone it around. There was a Child standing there, leaning forward a little, staring. There was another Child behind that one, a few steps up, clinging to the railing and watching us just as intently.

A soft sound behind me made me flinch. I turned, flashlight raised, and found a Child crouched at the base of the steps we’d come by, squatting knees to ears, hands flat on the rusting mesh, watching.

Something shifted in the walls. I turned the flashlight on that and found something peering at us through a tiny gap in the walls, nothing but ink-gleaming eyes.