“I think Lantern is having a panic attack,” Elena said softly. “That tentacle movement is a signal of distress, and I don’t think she can control it right now.” Elena drifted to the Liar, whose every tentacle undulated and spasmed, and whispered to her soothingly. “This must be horrible for you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Trapped – in – locked – my – people –” the Liar’s voice was staccato, and then she made the same organic keening sound of distress My Cousin Paolo had emitted back on Meditreme Station.

Callie put her gun away. Liars lied, but they weren’t very good liars, as a rule. My Cousin Paolo had seen an artifact he recognized as a trace of the race that had made his people miserable for millennia, and had fled the station along with all of his kind because even a glimpse of the bridge generator was too terrifying for them to bear. And Lantern, brave Lantern, had entered an Axiom station, a place where her kind had been tormented and reconditioned.

If Lantern was telling the truth about the Axiom, being here, it must be an almost unendurable experience. Callie tried to think of something comparable. A descendant of a water wars survivor getting locked inside one of the old moisture reclamation camps, maybe – only one where the ghosts of the extraction corps still roamed, and the machinery could come back online at any moment.

Callie holstered her sidearm. “I’m sorry, Lantern. We’re going to get out of here. We just need to find the control room, right? Then we can kill the alarms, open the doors, and take control.”

Elena kept soothing and stroking until Lantern’s spasms slowed and finally stopped. “Yes, Captain Machedo.” Lantern reached into a pouch on her underside, removed the glowing sphere, and examined its lines and pulsations. “Ashok, there should be a left turn up ahead. Take that, then the next tunnel up, then a right, then up again.”

“We’re not going to the center of the station?” Callie asked.

“Humans put important things in the center. Liars do, too. The Axiom didn’t think that way. The control room is off on one side, not too far from our position. Just beyond…”

The Liar went silent.

“What is it?” Callie tensed, ready to hear, “Just beyond the automatic murder robot barracks” or something.

“Past the nursery.” Lantern’s voice was perfectly flat. “It does not say ‘nursery’ on this map. It says something I will not say aloud. But it is the place where my kind were birthed and instructed.”

Callie tried to picture a Liar nursery school. Little pools to swim in? Jungle gyms with lots of rings, for all those tentacles? Soft stuffed toys shaped like eels or fish?