Elena held on to Ibn’s hand for a moment. “I’ll be with you soon,” she said. “With the others.”

“Inshallah.” Ibn’s voice was nearly a sigh.

The canoe floated slowly into view beyond the ragged opening, and without further farewells or ceremony Shall launched himself out of the hangar toward the waiting ship.

As soon as Shall was clear, the opening in the wall closed up instantly, and a guttural roaring alarm began to sound.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A big part of being a leader was making decisions when it would have been much easier to stand around being shocked and horrified. Before the door was even entirely closed, Callie had launched herself at the wall to slap the “door open” switch on the control panel, but it just flashed an angry yellow and didn’t otherwise respond. Then she pivoted and shouted, “Back on the kaiju! Ashok, get us out of here!”

She hustled Elena and Lantern on board ahead of her, and the kaiju began fluttering its way upward again as soon as Callie clambered in. Lantern’s limbs were trembling almost spasmodically, and Elena gazed around, wide-eyed. The alarm sounded a lot like the voice from the reconditioning chamber, and even though they had helmets on and were snug inside the kaiju, the noise was still deafening.

Callie looked out the ragged hole in the bio-drone’s side, expecting… what? More spiders? More kaiju? The Axiom themselves, risen from their slumber like mummies in a tomb in a survival horror immersive?

Nothing came after them, though, and then everything went dark as they entered a service tunnel. The sound cut off, too: they weren’t in a part of the station with atmosphere anymore, so sound didn’t carry. That was a blessing.

“What do we think happened back there?” Callie said.

“Signals,” Elena said. “Just like Ashok said. I was looking at the spider-thing on Hans, and something about it made me nervous. I thought I was afraid it would come back to life, and Ashok reassured me about that, but–”

“Ugh,” Ashok said. “Right. There was some kind of transponder in the spider. Something passive, using almost no energy, but when it left the station, the station knew. Those devices are used to recondition rebellious slaves, right? So if one of the spiders leaves the station without authorization, the place goes into lockdown. I’m so sorry, I should have thought–”

“Did you know?” Callie drew her sidearm and pointed it at Lantern. “You were the one who said we had to take Hans off the station. Was this your intention, to trap us here–”

To Callie’s surprise, Elena put a hand on her arm and pushed her gun down. Callie didn’t resist, but she looked at Elena curiously.