Indigo, glowing faintly, knelt in the platform and watched. “You’re really good at that,” I told her over my shoulder, and focused on one step at a time. It was still hard to breathe, but all I had to do was breathe enough for the next step.

“I practically raised my sisters,” Tamara explained, as I descended into the dark of the tunnel after her.

My heartrate immediately tried to speed up. I swallowed, took the next step down, and said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. My father worked a lot, and my mother wasn’t very detail-oriented. She was there all the time, present, but disorganized. I kept the house clean, made sure everyone got to school on time and got their schoolwork done, all that. So they went to me if they needed something as much as they went to mom.”

“You were uniquely well-suited for the Republican military,” Indigo said from above me, and my ears mustn’t have been working very well, because it sounded like he was yanking her chain.

“The military also offered me a chance to get advanced degrees without having to pay for them myself—or worse, take my parents up on their offer to bankrupt themselves and my sisters to pay for me,” Tamara said. “We don’t get special designated teachers in Terra Nova.”

But they did get families, I thought. Indigo had clearly refuted the idea that any of his close associates qualified as a family. It sounded lonely.

Striking out on your own without your family’s support, all because you wanted to keep them safe, also sounded lonely. “Do you ever regret it?”

“Regret joining the military? Regret coming out here and getting stuck here for five years, knowing that my sisters probably all think I’m dead? There’s no point resenting what’s already happened; it’s done. The only thing to do is make my situation better from here. Watch your step, Sean,” she added, and suddenly my next step landed hard on ringing flatness, and palms on my back braced me from stumbling.

I’d reached the end of the ladder, and the top of the spiral staircase for the descent. When I turned and flicked on my flashlight, Tamara stood there, as solid and steady as a stone. Lieutenant Lantern-Eyes was so balanced, like the gravitation scales in a spaceship that, regardless of tilt or acceleration or graviton malfunction, always found their level. It struck me how sane she was. I mean, she was neurotic, sure, making me look four times down a hallway and probably counting bullets in her spare time. But all of the sanest people I’ve ever met were like her, able to find their level no matter where or how they were.

“Move so Indigo can get down,” she bade me, and drew me a step away so that Indigo could descend after us, glowing a pale and radiant blue.

When he reached the bottom, he turned to me. He reached up one hand to his collar-light and, slowly and deliberately, dialed out a pattern. A slow brightening like a flower blossoming, followed by a dual throb like a heartbeat. His name.