It didn’t matter anymore. The odds were good I’d be dead before ever finding out. “What happened after the hull blew out? How did you survive?” And, too, “How did you find me?”

“The Ministers thought the data was in Mara Zhu’s office, but the last thing I wanted was to run into any of them. Besides, I had a theory. Remember that blocked-off tunnel we crawled through? Well, there’s more things like that. Some barriers are still up, some have fallen apart, but I figured whoever made the blockages was trying to protect something important. So Quint and I followed the barriers backwards for a while. She was adamant we get the Philosopher Stone at first.”

He paused for a moment, nothing but the sound of his crunching footsteps to fill his silence. My head was throbbing, centered around the implant. I didn’t dare reach back to touch the back of my skull, afraid of what kind of swollen mess I would find.

“After the first time we ran into those things that look like children,” Benny said at last, “she changed her tune. Wanted to go back, promised to justify it to her boss. We were pretty far from the Viper but by then we’d made it to the bridge. So we stopped there, figuring we could radio for help, or find a way back to the Viper that didn’t take us through all the monsters. The bridge had this big window out to space… When we looked out, we saw that the Ministers’ ship was gone. So was the Viper.”

“Wait, gone? As in they left?” Impossible. One wouldn’t abandon a mission as important as this.

“Not gone,” said Benny. “Moved. They went back and moved their ship and took ours, too, so that we couldn’t escape. Parked them both somewhere near here. Must’ve been faster to fly than walk through this maze. So I knew the Philosopher Stone must be over here. I came over here, and ran into you.”

“I thought you and Quint decided not to get the Philosopher Stone, and just to leave,” I said.

“We got to talking more and it came out that Quint didn’t have a good chance of convincing her boss that us leaving was justified. And now she’s dead, so.”

So he was stuck—or he had been stuck, before he’d found me. I firmed my heart. I would get Benny out of this, one way or another, no matter what the residual Dreamer infection did to me.

“Hey, there’s one bright side about the Ministers moving the Viper,” I said. “Now it’s close by. We can definitely escape with the Philosopher Stone before the sun goes nova.”

He hummed, without reply. The underside of my arm itched. I rubbed at it, and felt something move beneath my skin, in unison with the throbbing at the back of my skull.

The beam of Benny’s flashlight abruptly terminated at a solid wall. He stopped short. “Sean. What is this?”

“It’s a wall, Benny.”