I stand at the edge of a precipice, staring at the darkness.

It yawns in front of me, just beyond the last lights of eerily quiet neighborhoods and shuttered storefronts that make up the edge of the settled Vents. Deep in the lowest layers. Hours of foot travel from the surface. It’s night up there, somewhere. Though the last seam through the crust of the city is so far back that the sky above is a pure veil of black.

The bridges that extend from the towerside into the darkness hang in a tenuous state of collapse. The last of the lamplight dies halfway across. I stand alone in the artificial twilight, tiny in the mortuary silence. Staring at the forbidden forest of derelict, upside-down undercity. Gauging it for myself.

The lamplight flickers. Returns.

Thirty meters are all that separate me from the Shocks. A chasm just like every other in the Vents stretches to either side of the bridge I stand on. Beyond it looms an abandoned city that only exists in silhouette. I wasn’t afraid of even the roughest neighborhoods behind me. I could protect myself from anything the Vents has to offer. But I have no idea what lies ahead. The paranoia of the unknown is worse than any monster reality could cook up.

Instinctively, I want to return to the lights. Shy from the Shocks and close the doors to it, just like how I would camp in the living room when I was little and alone in an empty estate made for a sprawling family. Nabuna feels it, too. That’s why he lingers off the side of the bridge, and I on the first step across.

I’m wearing a blackmarket skinsuit that clings to my body like an oil slick, stretching up to the scar over my nose. No extra weight, nothing that could snag on undercity debris. A small comm unit worms into my ear, giving me a hands-free link to Cal until she went dark just a few minutes ago at the Imperial District metro stop.

Now it’s my turn. The fingers of my left hand curl in and out, testing the stickiness of the gecko pads on my fingertips. A small light rides on my left hip beside a magnetic plate for my JOY and a tiny emergency beacon. Nabuna’s insurance policy. He made me take it; wouldn’t say why. Seeing how wary he is of the Shocks, I accepted it without question.

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The greaser lifts his cigar with a wavering hand and takes a heavy drag. “This is a bad idea, Blanco,” he grunts.

So he said five different times on the ride over. I don’t take my eyes off the darkness, in case it decides to leap at me the moment I stop watching.

“What’s really out there?”

My voice does not echo. It goes across the bridge and does not return. I speak normally, but the sound is like a whisper compared to the necropolis that stretches ahead. The wind is cold, no longer humid, icy like that of winter on the mountains. Nabuna’s reply is no less quiet in its grasp.

“Nothing good,” is all he says at first. Then, “You sure you thought this through?”

“Sure enough.”

“Once you cross that bridge, ain’t no one coming after you, chica. You on your own.” Another drag. “If you have a death wish, I would recommend jumping instead.”

I lean to the side, looking over the edge of the bridge. Incomprehensible, endless abyss.

“Whatever you’re looking for, it ain’t out there,” he says.

“I know. But something else I can use might.”

My gaze returns to the front. The taboo undercity and its miles of lightless, abandoned cityscape that cling to the bottom of the capital without power or light or human presence, separating me from my target. Like the world’s largest cave, stalactites of towers, the crust of the city its roof nearly a mile above. I check Cal’s coordinates one more time before stepping further onto the bridge. Twilight cloaks my shoulders, drifts down my back, devouring the contours of my body on a path to my heels as I leave the light’s fading touch.

One final call gives me pause.

“Hey. Blanco.”

I turn. He’s holding something in his hand. Vial-shaped. Shimmering liquid inside.

“You ever use stims?” he asks. I shake my head. He tosses the vial to me in a low arc; I catch it with my left hand. “This ain’t stims. Don’t pop it unless the alternative is dying.”

I slide the vial into a slit high on my left arm. Look back up to say thanks, but he’s already tugged his cap down and turned back to the undercity, thick hands slipping into weathered leather pockets. I watch him go. Wait an extra moment. Wish instead that it were someone else entirely with me, and that she were coming, not leaving. The shadows are deeper, less permeable when she’s not around. No snarky comments to watch my back now.

Bereft my guiding light, bereft the shadow that’s come to take its place at my side, I turn and head into the abyss.