Given the slaughter that was taking place on every side of us, maybe the summary execution of Digger Choi was a small bone to choke on. But he had risked his life to set us free, even if he had been sullen about it. I didn’t feel like watching his execution.

Allison gave me a peculiar look but she gauged my temperament correctly. She barked out a translation.

The soldier hesitated. I stepped forward, grabbed the Farmer’s forearm and pulled him upright. I could feel him trembling under my hand. “Run,” I told him.

Allison translated the single word. Digger Choi didn’t need to be told twice. He darted toward a part of the forest not yet burning. The soldiers shrugged and let him go.

He lived a little longer because of what I had done. But only a little.

*   *   *

The aircraft carried us over the killing fields and across the city wall to a landing bay on one of the towers of Vox Core. During the brief flight the Voxish soldiers appeared to have received confirmation of our identities: after a quiet mutual consultation they began to treat me with deference and spoke to Allison in what sounded like sympathetic voices. Even before the aircraft docked we were given fresh clothing (crisp new jumpers, this time in a shade of blue). One of the soldiers, evidently a medic, slathered a soothing balm on my wrist where Digger Choi had slashed it in the process of cutting me loose. The same soldier attempted to examine the wound where Allison’s node had been removed, but she pulled away from him and snarled. We were given water to drink: clean, cool, heavenly.

The landing dock was a windy rooftop. We left the aircraft and the soldiers escorted us to an enormous elevator housing, but Allison balked at the entrance and asked the soldier in charge a question. Her eyes widened at his answer. She spoke again, he answered curtly; the discussion began to sound like an argument, until at last the soldier gave her an exasperated nod.

“We’re almost exactly at the midpoint in the passage of the Arch,” she said to me. “The Network estimates twenty minutes or so to the transit, assuming it happens. I’m staying here until it does.”

I didn’t see the point. Vox would make the crossing to Earth or not, whether we were out here on this ledge or in some more comfortable space below.

“I don’t care.” She added in a lower voice, “I want to see it. I told them you did, too. What I want doesn’t matter, but you’re Uptaken—they have to pay attention.”