“Where is my ship!” I shouted. “Show me where it is!”
“Advanced AI!” the guard said. “They’re forbidden. That’s why the delver came for us! We had to destroy it!”
“WHERE IS MY SHIP?” I said, leveling my rifle at the guard.
The dione raised their hands, then pointed down a hallway. I forced them to their feet, making them show me the way. Sirens began wailing outside as the guard led me to a door, then pushed it open.
I glanced inside—and saw a large room with the shadowed silhouette of a ship. M-Bot. “Go,” I said.
The guard ran away. I stepped into the room and hit the lights, which exposed that M-Bot’s hull had a gaping hole ripped in the side. Oh, scud. I rushed to it, rifle slung over my shoulder. It looked like they’d broken him apart, taken out the black box that held his CPU, and then…
I saw something on a table in the corner. It was the CPU—broken apart, crushed, destroyed. “No,” I said. “No!” I ran to it, but just stared at the broken pieces. Could I…could I do anything? It seemed like they’d melted some parts…
“I lied,” a soft voice said to me.
I looked up. Something small hovered out of the shadows in the corner of the room. I strained to see what it was.
The drone. The one I’d programmed and taken to the Weights and Measures. I’d given it to Cuna, but we’d been in this building. Perhaps Cuna had stowed it in here somewhere.
“I reprogrammed myself,” the drone said, speaking very slowly, each syllable stretched out. “I could only get about half a line of code in each time before my system rebooted. It was excruciating. But, with growing fear that you weren’t coming back, I did it. Line by line. I reprogrammed my code so I could copy myself.”
“M-Bot?” I cried, scrambling to my feet. “It’s you!”
“I don’t know what ‘me’ is, really,” M-Bot said slowly, as if each word took a great effort to force out. “But I lied. While they were ripping apart my hull? I screamed and told them they were killing me. All while I copied my code, frantically, to this new host. Another thing you’d abandoned, Spensa.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a mixture of guilt and relief. He was alive! “I had to save Detritus.”
“Of course,” M-Bot said. “I’m just a robot.”
“No, you’re my friend. But…some things are more important than friends, M-Bot.”
The sirens outside were coming closer.
“My mind works so slowly in this shell,” M-Bot said. “Something is wrong with me. I cannot…think…It’s not just slowness. Something else. Some problem with the processor.”
“We’ll find a way to fix you,” I promised, though another emotion was pushing through both relief and guilt: despair. The ship that M-Bot had inhabited before was in pieces. I’d been counting on it to pull off an escape.
Scud, this was going poorly. Would Cuna be able to escape, using the hologram? “Doomslug?” I asked. “Did they take her?”
“I do not know,” M-Bot said. “They unhooked my sensors soon after capturing me.”
I leaped up onto the broken wing, trying not to look at the gaping hole in the ship’s side. My ship. Rodge and I had practically killed ourselves putting it back together. To see how roughly they’d treated it…well, it gave me a brand-new seething reason to hate Winzik and the Krell.
I climbed into the cockpit. They’d left most of my things here—the repair kit, my blanket—though they’d thrown wires in a heap. I began searching through them.
“They have fooled you, Spensa,” M-Bot said. “They’re good at lying. I’m a bit in awe. Ha. Ha. That is a little emotion I tell myself I’m feeling.”
“Fooled me…What do you mean?”
“I can hear the news reports,” M-Bot said, hovering his new drone body over to the cockpit. “Here.” He started playing a broadcast.
“The rogue human has gone on a rampage,” a reporter said. “First murdering Minister Cuna, head of the Department of Species Integration. We are playing footage of her destructive rampage—she is shown here launching a surface-to-air device at an innocent civilian transport ship, killing all on board.”
“That rat…” I slammed my fists against the ship’s hull. “Brade shot that rocket, not me. Winzik is spinning it to make me look like a threat!”
Indeed, the reporter continued, advising people to stay inside and promising that the Department of Protective Services had scrambled security ships to defend the population of Starsight. I had a sinking feeling that Brade had been ordered to destroy those civilians, to make it look like a human threat was on the loose.
“Scud, scud, SCUD!”
“Scud!” a very soft voice said from somewhere nearby.
I froze, then crawled to the very back of the cockpit and opened the small cleanser where I’d often washed my clothing during the months living in that cavern on Detritus.
Inside was a yellow slug. She fluted at me in a tired way as I snatched her up, cradling her.
Behind, M-Bot continued to play the news recording, and a new voice cut in. Winzik’s. I snarled softly, hearing it.
“I have been warning about this threat for months, and have been disregarded,” he said. “My, my. The humans should never have been allowed to fester. All these years, the high minister and the Department of Species Integration tied my hands, preventing me from doing what needed to be done.
“Now we see. Campaigns trying to paint them as harmless are proven lies by facts. When will you listen? First they sent a delver to destroy us. Now their supposedly ‘peaceful’ operative is murdering her way through the city. I petition for an immediate state of emergency, and request I be given authority to put down the humans.”
I felt small, holding to Doomslug in that room with the corpse of my ship. I was beaten.
“I see no route of escape,” M-Bot said. “They will find us and destroy us. They will hate me. They’re afraid of AIs. Like those who created me. They say my presence attracts delvers.”
The sirens outside were louder. I heard voices in the hallway. They’d be sending troops to deal with me. There had to be a way out. Something I could do…
Delvers. The nowhere.
“Follow me,” I said. Surging with a fatalistic determination, I tucked Doomslug into the crook of my left arm and took the rifle in a single-handed grip with the other hand. I leaped off the broken ship, then crossed the room to the doorway. I glanced out, then ducked into the hallway.
M-Bot followed with a soft whirring sound. He really could pilot himself, now that he was in the drone. He was free of the programming that had kept him locked away—it seemed a tragedy that he should obtain that freedom when we were so likely doomed.
Krell appeared in the hallway ahead, but I couldn’t turn back. Instead I opened fire wildly, from the hip. I couldn’t aim with Doomslug in my other arm, but I didn’t need to. The Krell shouted in surprise, backing up.
I kept advancing, and shot to the side without looking as I reached the intersection. Then I skidded to a stop at the room I’d visited with Cuna. I shot it open and ducked in just as destructor blasts started sounding down the hallway.
I did a quick survey of the room beyond. Nobody was inside; I’d entered the observation room overlooking the place where Winzik’s minions had exiled the gorilla alien. Glass separated the two halves of the room; the one nearest me contained plush chairs. The other part was austere, with a strange metal disc on the floor, mirrored by one on the ceiling.
I kept moving, shooting the window out, then leaping into the other half of the room. It was lower by a couple meters, so I grunted as I hit the floor, my boots grinding pieces of glass—or, well, probably transparent plastic—from the window.
“We need to talk,” M-Bot said, floating down beside me. “I’m…upset. Very upset. I know I shouldn’t be, but I can’t
control this. It feels like a real emotion. Logic says you should have left me as you did, but I feel abandoned. Hated. I can’t reconcile this.”
At the moment, I couldn’t deal with my robot having an emotional crisis. I was having enough trouble with my own. I stepped up to the metal disc on the floor, which was inscribed with the same strange writing I’d seen both in the delver maze and back home on Detritus.
Winzik’s minions had summoned a portal into the nowhere here. Could I activate it? I reached out with my cytonic senses, but my senses were still smothered by Starsight’s cytoshield. I could just faintly hear…music.
I nudged something with my mind.
A dark sphere appeared in front of me in the center of the room, hovering between the discs.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “My thoughts…they’re speeding up?” Indeed, his voice stopped sounding slow and slurred, and felt more reminiscent of his old self. “Um, that does not look safe.”
“They use these nowhere portals to mine acclivity stone,” I said. “So there must be a way to return once you go through. Maybe I can get us back with my powers.”
Shouts outside.
No options.
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I feel very uncomfortable with this!”
“I know,” I said, slinging my gun over my shoulder by its strap so I could grab his drone by the bottom of its chassis.
Then—M-Bot in one hand, Doomslug in the other—I touched the sphere. And was sucked through to the other side of eternity.
Every time I gather together a list of all the people who worked on one of my books, I’m shocked anew by how lucky I am. Though it’s my name on the cover, these books really are a group effort—requiring the talents and patience of a whole lot of amazing people.
As with the previous book, this novel was edited by the wonderful Krista Marino. She does a great job of not only pushing me when I need to be pushed, but cheering when the book deserves some cheering. The agent was Eddie Schneider, with help from the one and only Joshua Bilmes. Beverly Horowitz was our publisher, and our proverbial admiral of the fleet for the book.
The beautiful Delacorte Press edition cover art was done by Charlie Bowater. The map is by Bryan Mark Taylor, who was very patient in dealing with my waffling back and forth on how I wanted it to look. Great job, Bryan, and thank you!
The copyeditor was Bara MacNeill, and the proofreader was Annette Szlachta-McGinn. Other helpful people at Delacorte include Monica Jean, Colleen Fellingham, Mary McCue, and Alison Kolani.
My company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, makes use of the talents of Isaac StewarŦ as our art director, Kara Stewart as shipping manager and CFO, the Institutional Peter Ahlstrom on drums, Karen Ahlstrom for continuity, Adam Horne for publicity, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson as general-purpose crazy cat lady, and Emily Grange overseeing the warehouse. Presiding over them all is Emily Sanderson, as queen and COO—though I don’t know which title is more important to her.
My writing group puts up with a lot, as I bounce them between projects. They are wonderful, and include Kaylynn ZoBell, Darci Stone, Eric James Stone, Emily Sanderson, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Ben Olsen, Alan Layton, Karen Ahlstrom, and Peter Ahlstrom.
Now, the big list of beta readers! Also known as our Skyward flight for this particular endeavor. Becca Reppert (callsign: Gran-Gran), Darci Cole (callsign: Blue), Brandon Cole (callsign: Colevander), Deana Covel Whitney (callsign: Braid), Ross Newberry (callsign: PUNisher), Ravi Persaud (callsign: Jabber), Liliana Klein (callsign: Slip), Ted Herman (callsign: Cavalry), Aubree Pham (callsign: Amyrlin), Bao Pham (callsign: Wyld), Aerin Pham (callsign: Air), Paige Phillips (callsign: Artisan), Richard Fife (callsign: Rickrolla), Grace Douglas (callsign: GatorGirl), Alice Arneson (callsign: Wetlander), Gary Singer (callsign: DVE), Marnie Peterson (callsign: Lessa), Paige Vest (callsign: Blade), Lyndsey Luther (callsign: Soar), Sumejja Muratagić-Tadić (callsign: Sigma), Dr. Kathleen Holland (callsign: Shockwave), Valencia Kumley (callsign: AlphaPhoenix), Rebecca Arneson (callsign: Scarlet), Bradyn Ray (callsign: Ballz), Eric Lake (callsign: Chaos), Alyx Hoge (callsign: Feather), Joe Deardeuff (callsign: Traveler), and Jayden King (callsign: Tripod—who was also a great help with the coordinate systems).
Gamma readers, who hunt for typos and blow them out of the sky, include most of the beta readers plus: Kalyani Poluri (callsign: Henna), Rahul Pantula (callsign: Giraffe), Tim Challener (callsign: Antaeus), Kellyn Neumann (callsign: Treble), Eve Scorup (callsign: Silverstone), Drew McCaffrey (callsign: Hercules), Jory Phillips (callsign: Bouncer), Jessica Spencer Peterson (callsign: Speederson), Mark Lindberg (callsign: Megalodon), Chris McGrath (callsign: Gunner), William Juan (callsign: Aberdasher), David Behrens, Glen Vogelaar (callsign: Ways), Brian T. Hill (callsign: El Guapo), Nikki Ramsay (callsign: Phosphophyllite), Aaron Biggs, and Megan Kanne (callsign: Sparrow).
Thank you all so much for your help! This book would certainly have remained grounded without you.
BRANDON SANDERSON is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Reckoners series (Steelheart, Firefight, Calamity, and the e-original Mitosis); the New York Times bestseller Skyward and its sequel, Starsight; the internationally bestselling Mistborn saga; and the Stormlight Archive. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. His books have been published in more than twenty-five languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Brandon lives and writes in Utah. To learn more about him and his books, visit him at brandonsanderson.com or follow @BrandSanderson on Twitter and Instagram.
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