After escaping the huge hall, Kin found himself in familiar surroundings.

The hole in the ceiling had led him through a medium-length corridor, which in turn tore open to reveal the huge circular pipe that he had used for transit through First Sphere. Kin breathed out a sigh of relief.

Finally, home. Or at least what can pass for it.

However, instead of turning to head back to the pod, Kin decided to explore further. He was nearly out of food back at base, and the only way to survive from here was to ignore his fear, ignore his doubt, ignore the terror brewing in his gut, telling him no, no, no, turn back! Save yourself!

In spite of the abyss, to spite the abyss, he had to go further. Had to go faster.

Had to go deeper.

And so deeper he went.

Buoyed by the lightness in his heart that comes with being in familiar surroundings, Kin crossed the huge pipe to another opening in the opposite end the he located with the rangefinder.

I am going shopping.

And like the people of old, the privileged in the Outpost that could splurge on whatever they wanted, Kin had a shopping list.

First things first—Batteries. He needed batteries. Batteries made light. Light made food. Food made life.

So he went to search.

Kin had noticed, over his extensive exploration of the First Sphere, that batteries were normally stored in rooms no more than twice his height, with a door marked with a diamond. There was no reason to believe that the Second Sphere was any different, so Kin set off in search of the shape. It reminded him of an old song, one that his mother in the Outpost used to sing to him, one that her mother used to sing with her and that mother before that, brought by the very first settlers of this dark world from a faraway imaginary land with greens and whites and air and a bright yellow sun.

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.

Kin was looking for a diamond to power his star, the star that he grasped in his hand, a sun that could be turned on or off to fight the watery darkness. Kin’s star, probably the only sun that would ever shine in this forsaken ruin.

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I will make my own sun.

In the meantime, what of Mion? She was an intelligence, a sapience, self-aware, but suspended in crystal and wire, a living song composed of whispers between pulsing circuits. But she could learn, could change over time, could come to understand the primordial hormonal reactions in humans, and she eventually grew to possess them, to be capable of feeling them.

Fear for her lost friend. Annoyance at his impulsiveness. Joy at his small successes, building little makeshift holes, successfully living another day.

And now, a huge, immeasurable sorrow for him, for the fact that survival was a gift and not a right as it should have been, a deep grief for this lost little boy in a huge grim world.

Mion’s coding ensured that if the time came, Kin’s survival would come before hers. But now, after spending so much time with her little charge, teaching and learning in equal measure, she wholly believed that, if there was a god that watched over this terrible alien planet, that she would willingly use her life to trade for his.

He’s only a little boy. Mion watched him, not through eyes which she did not have, but through the myriad sensors scattered through Kins’ suit, through his heartbeat, breathing rate, through the endless pings of radar like candles in the night, through the world described to her by a child’s mind. And she knew that this was better than he deserved.

“Batteries!”

Kin’s happy, cherubic cry signaled that he had located what he was looking for. Quickly trying the doors, he found that they opened, but jammed halfway. No problem -- he was small enough to fit in.

The first room yielded a success of eight sodium sulfide batteries -- long enough to last him for months -- and a couple of nutrient tubes.

Not enough.

Kin would need at least thirty more for his expedition to pay off.

Ooooooooooooo

Siren wail. Kin needed to move quickly.

As Kin picked himself through the dark corridors with practiced ease, he found that he was not afraid of the Sirens any more. He was definitely wary of them, and would not want a face-to-face encounter. But he did not fear them.

Ooooooooooaaaaaaoooooo

This wail was different. Siren vocalisations were organic, and you could tell that what made them was alive. This sound was artificial—almost mechanical.

Either way, it’s probably a new type of Siren.

Sirens were no longer a real threat to him—they were stupid, they could be exploited, and that was because Kin knew about them. And that was rule number one.

What you know, you don’t fear.

Oooooooaaaaaauuuuuooooo

There it was again. Getting closer.

Kin decided to head in the opposite direction. Clutching his rangefinder in one hand and his newly replenished torch in the other, Kin turned through a hole and dived deeper out.

Everything looks the same out here. Dark gaping holes, peeled metal, suspended wires, all in a nightmarish backdrop of deep water. A maze of corridors and rooms, labyrinthine struts and catwalks. It would not take long for Kin to get lost.

After a few hours of scrounging, Kin came across twenty-eight more nutrient tubes, tucking them into his bag as he went. Slinging his new-found food over his shoulder, Kin decided to make a beeline for his base.

Oooooooeeeeeeeooooo

The sound was getting closer. Kin decided to swim into a broken pipe. Lying there he waited for the Siren wailing to leave.

Ooooooooeeeeeeeeooooo

The wailing was beginning to hurt Kin’s ears.

Silence.

“What was that?” Kin climbed out of the pipe and looked around. The corridor he was in opened out into a large bay, open to the water.

The area was deserted, being exactly identical to the bay where his pod had beached itself, except that this area looked a lot more damaged. There were dents on almost every square metre, and now that Kin was out of it, he realised the corridor was in fact a tube leading through the bay, and that something had hit it with such force that it had been rent to the side, buckling and tearing open.

“What...what kind of thing did that? Even Sirens are…”

OOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOO