Ashok made a step for Elena with his arms, then lifted her straight up, his prosthetic arm and powered legs easily supporting her weight. Callie could have asked for that kind of assistance, too, but being captain meant doing that sort of thing yourself when you could. Ashok’s boost got Elena’s head about four meters off the ground, and she clambered the rest of the way up along the cable, just as Callie had. Elena wriggled through and shifted around and lowered herself down the other side until Shall plucked her off the wall and set her gently on her feet. Much easier than Callie’s own dismount. Maybe an excess of self-reliance was a kind of arrogance.

“Want us to come through too?” Ashok said.

“No, I think this is a sealed box,” Callie said. “If that opening closes up, I want you and Lantern on the outside figuring out how to open it again. Let’s–”

A booming noise filled the space: harsh, churning, guttural syllables, so low they made Callie’s teeth hurt, doubtless extending deep past her auditory range. The smoke changed color, flashing green, then yellow, then pink: like a light show at a concert. She’d heard a Plutonian ice metal band live, once, a musical experience reckoned to be the most punishing in the system, and that band would have gladly sampled this noise at a show – though the lights were a bit too bright for their aesthetic. “What the hell is that? An alarm system?”

“It’s an old language of my people,” Lantern said. “I am not fluent, but I think it says something like, ‘obedience is life, rebellion is death’, things like that. The colors are very much like the chromatic displays we use in our language, too – that particular pattern denotes urgency, an imperative, an order to comply without question immediately, because there is great danger in even a moment’s hesitation. I wonder… I had assumed the gas was a soporific, to anesthetize the victims, but what if it’s hypnotic, instead? A drug meant to induce a state of suggestibility, and then blare these messages of obedience and surrender? We have records of the Axiom using such multivalent conditioning techniques.”