We followed Number One a long while along the curve of the Nameless. I did not know how far we walked—I was preoccupied with the shadows around us, the gaping doors and empty rooms.

And then the path ahead ended.

One called me forward, and I came up to stand next to her. It looked like the hallway had been deliberately blocked off at one point: the metal panels had warped seams, as if from ancient welding. A word had been scratched deep into the makeshift barrier.

The corner of the barrier was broken, the metal bent away, allowing ingress and egress. Whatever this barrier had served to contain was no longer contained.

“What does it say?” One asked, shining her flashlight on that carved word.

I knew that one immediately. “Danger.”

CHAPTER TWELVE:

Dead End

Quint had described the Nameless as hidden, in her initial sales pitch. Now, staring at the inscription on the ancient barrier, I doubted that claim. Hundreds of years ago, someone had scratched out that word into metal. It would have taken time and effort, but they’d inscribed it, instead of painting it or writing it or making a new sign. They had been desperate to make sure the message stuck around.

A powerful, ancient vessel, just left lying around like a book someone’d gotten bored of reading? Conveniently left in the corona of a violent star, where no one would notice it for hundreds of years? If this ship was not meant to be found, why not destroy it outright? And if it was meant to be found, why not put it someplace easier to do so? It was impossible to predict exactly when a star would go supernova—it was pure luck that we’d found this ship before the star had gone. Pure luck, or a strangely well-timed SOS.

The Nameless hadn’t been hidden.

It had been abandoned.

One tapped her collar-light, and indigo light flashed out. Indigo knelt down, shone his light into the hole in the barrier, and crawled inside.

“Aren’t you worried about what’s back there?” I asked One.

“Number Two can take care of himself.”

We waited for a long time beside the door marked DANGER. I managed to stop myself from pacing—I doubted One would appreciate it—but I couldn’t stop myself from worrying at the hem of my shirt, finding a weak spot in the fabric. The Indigo Minister was gone so long that I wore a hole into it, large enough to fit my finger through. I’d never dealt well with waiting. At least I didn’t see anything moving around in the shadows here. If there had actually been anything before.

At long last, a dark blue light shone from the hole in the barrier, and the Indigo Minister crawled back out. Dust streaked his cheeks, but his expression was calm. He flashed a quick, complex sequence of flashes in white light.

White light: addressing the entire group. Telling them what he’d seen inside the passage, I guessed.