The Ministers were like gears whirring, shifting position until they formed a circle around us. The hull groaned, and flashlight beams glanced over walls and ceiling and floor.

Then the hallway went dark, all except for my little flashlight, like I’d been tossed into black water, and all my companions swallowed up too. A narrow hand landed on mine, flipped the switch on my flashlight, and threw me into the dark with the rest. “Stay low,” Indigo said into my ear.

The Ministers had turned off their lights, both collar and flash. I could hear them moving around, the soft scrape of boot against the ground, the swish of fabric, or a sword coming free. And something from far off to my right snarled.

That wasn’t a Minister.

I kept low, like Indigo had said. I curled my fingers around the thin metal of my flashlight and tried to breathe evenly. Could they even see me? Were those even the Ministers, or was whatever else that I’d seen in this hallway moving around me, circling slow, like a buzzard? I’d felt eyes on me earlier, seen movements in the darkness. It seemed like that hadn’t just been the cockroaches. Had the Ministers known we were being followed? They must’ve, but they’d said nothing. Did they know what these creatures were? Could these monsters, whatever they were, have been what killed the crew of the Nameless? I remembered the claw marks dug deep into bone.

The Indigo Minister would keep me safe, I consoled myself, and a minute later wondered where the hell that thought had come from. The Indigo Minister had murdered Leah and was holding me captive.

“Benny,” I whispered, unable to keep silent, and he said, “Here!” from startlingly close by. I reached out and my fingers landed awkwardly against someone else’s hand, pinky striking palm. I shifted my grip in time to find his wrist. I heard Quint whimper, and knew she was nearby too.

Far to my left, a high-pitched shriek. Nails scrabbled against metal. As I turned, a white light flashed, bright and brief as lightning, and an afterimage barely glimpsed burned itself into my retinas: Ultraviolet, with one hand upon her collar and the other holding a narrow blade, facing down some manlike thing, hairless and dead white, with long arms. It looked like the manikins we used to set up during the Holiday of the Dead back on Kystrom, with the unsettling proportions of limb and neck, and the dead white skin. Manikins come alive, and striding through an empty starship voiceless as ghosts, plastic toes tapping.

The flash had been a summoning. Sightless in the dark I felt the other Ministers swooping past us, converging upon the monster all together, the Ministers silent, the manikin crying out shrill and furious like a hawk. My hand gripped Benny’s wrist, and this was our chance.

“Up, quick!” I hissed, and tugged on his shirt until he got up. He must’ve grabbed Quint; I heard her cry out in surprise. I had my flashlight but I didn’t dare turn it on; the Ministers were distracted, fighting that thing, but a bright white light was as good as a shout to them, saying “Hey, your captives are trying to escape!” I led Benny and Quint down the hall as fast as I dared to move until I felt, in the air currents by my shoulder, that something was coming towards me.