Estimated oxygen time: 22:19:32

I saw Last Day Town from above, lit by the asteroid still making its journey through the sky—its crests and caves, the fault that served as a cemetery, the blinking airlock. I rose high enough to put myself above the crater and see Anaxagoras’s cave with the mounds of metal waiting outside, glinting in the light.

Funny thing about space—as soon as you lose contact with the surface, as soon as you have some off-ground velocity, you lose perception of up and down. Every child knows that, in theory, but what they don’t know is how it feels, when what used to be the ground starts seeming like a wall—a wall infinite in all directions, so tall it seems like it can never be surmounted, sliding down under you.

I was going in a direction that felt like a vertical 45 degrees, trying to ignore the disorienting view and focus on the task. My target was only four hundred kilometers away; if I reached even a measly fifty meters per second on the rocket, I could make it in less than three hours, and I had much more oxygen than needed for that. The rocket was intuitive to control, and I was confident that I could return home, if only it kept providing thrust.

Then it stopped.

The feeling of weak acceleration was gone. I looked down at the massive wall moving in front of me, but I couldn’t tell if I were gaining speed or not. I looked behind me at the exhaust, but there was nothing to see—it was just a metal funnel, it looked the same whether or not it was functional. I covered the exit with my gloved hand, and pressed the button, hoping to feel some pressure against my fingers, but there was none.

No pressure meant no gas coming out, and with no gas coming out, there couldn’t be any thrust. I pieced this together very carefully in the tightening grip of a full-fledged panic. I pressed the button again, and still felt no pressure. I wanted to fiddle with the controls, but there were no controls to fiddle with. There was a panel just between the hand holds, glued instead of welded, and even if I’d been desperate enough to try to open it, I couldn’t have managed it with nothing but gloved fingers. I pressed the red button again and again. Had Diocletian given me a faulty rocket as a practical, deadly joke? Or had Ctesibius given it to Diocletian, hoping they crashed? Diocletian were right—having the rocket intercepted had not even been a problem.

The surface seemed so far away. Even with the low gravity, a drop of a couple of hundred meters would shatter my bones and tear open my suit, at the very least. My thoughts were very clear, but cold, numb. Technical.

My upward momentum died as I reached the top of my ascent, but I still had significant forward speed. The cliff was coming at me, right in the middle of my path. I couldn’t think about it as upward anymore—it was in front of me now. When you are falling, you get a very clear sense of where ‘down’ is.

I punched the button again, grabbing the neck of the rocket with one hand and jabbing my thumb into the button as hard as I could, like I was gouging the eye of some stubborn, tough animal. Nothing changed; the rocket was completely dead.

This was the primal terror of dropping from a high place, but slowed down, almost frozen. I would have a couple of hundred long seconds of falling before the rock finally swatted me out of the sky. I could wait, or throw the rocket down to lose some momentum, or nick the suit somehow to get a tiny bit of thrust from my own escaping oxygen. None of those options left me in any better position to survive this, to return home, and I ran through them in circles, again and again. I wanted to scream, but I knew that if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. I clenched my teeth hard, as if I could bite the madness down.

There was also a sliver of self-schadenfreude, of amusement, as if gloating at my own fate, mocking myself for having dared to hope; to trust strangers I had never met, who had died long ago. This is how an idiot dies—if nothing else, I was heading towards a spectacular crash. Quick, what should I do with that little time I’ve got left? Review my life? Think about how I’ve failed as a parent, as a husband? Tsur and Ayelet were the most important people in my life, and I ruined their lives. Is that what drove me to come out here? God, I don’t want to be one of those people crying for forgiveness as they die. Maybe going insane is a better use of the time. Better use of the time? The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what I do with the rest of my life. I felt a measure of relief I wasn’t ready for. It just didn’t matter. I was free.

The top of the cliff was coming closer and closer, a juggernaut that was about to ram me to pieces. Closer now, I could see an entrance at the top of the cliff, perhaps to another cave, and light coming out of it. A small figure stood at the door, casting a long shadow over a plaza. A quiet witness of my swan dive, whose expression I could not even see.

It seemed like a short landing strip, like something I could have easily landed on if I weren’t going to crash directly at it. The little figure grew and grew, revealing more details. In their hands was a panel, like the one I’d seen Anaxagoras use when they killed my electronics. Every detail was infinitely important.

Closer now, I recognized more features. Bands of suit material lay at the figure’s sides, nameless tools bound to the ends of them, and the feminine lines of her body were broken by the frame of a jetpack on her back.

I found myself lamenting that I will never get to find out what the hell that was about, on account of my terminal velocity.

She bent her knees, taking a second to descend, then leaped towards me. Her hand went for the jet’s controls, and she accelerated, kicking up a cloud of dust beneath her, her tools dragging behind. I was going down fast; she was going up even faster. I raised my arms, putting the rocket between us as a shield, but she passed me, leaving me unharmed. I turned my head to look after her and saw that she’d left a trail of fabric behind and beside her, one long loop coming my way. With a whiplash impact, the loop snagged me, slamming the rocket into my gut. The acceleration was intense, organ crushing, the world spun around, too fast to track, and the rock platform passed by me once, twice, each time quick enough it would still crush me if I so much as touch it. The only thing that wasn’t blurred was the woman on the other side of the band of suit material, spinning around me as I spun around her. I could see her face clearly now, dimpled and tan, her tongue between her teeth as she used her jetpack’s joystick to control the motion of the pendulum she’d built out of the both of us with short, accurate bursts. The rock drew closer, slowing down from a deadly thing to a surface again, something you can land on.

I collapsed onto it and let out a series of short screams.

I’d accepted it all being over. Been ready for it. It’d been an actual miracle, that someone had pulled me back from the jaws. This was going to take a while to process.

Using her jetpack, she brought herself to a gentle stop on the platform, boots first, raising another cloud of dust, and stood with the lit entrance of the cave behind her. It was my jetpack, actually, I realized now that I got the chance to look at it. I rose to my feet somehow, finding shaky balance, and pushed the loop away from me, stepping away and letting the rocket fall beside me. She pulled the loop towards her, catching it with one hand, and inspected me with her large, brown eyes as she began coiling the loop in quick, practiced movements. Her expression was soft, full of pity. Who was this person, who could throw themselves into such wild chaos, and tame it?

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” she said in a tone that was confusingly formal, like an official spokesperson or a recorded message. “We hope that you are in no way injured?” She clasped the loop by her belt, and her gloved hand reached forward for a shake. “Let us formally introduce ourselves. We are line Ctesibius. What is your name?” Her smile was nothing like Diocletian’s—she seemed honest, unguarded, albeit slightly manic.

“Just… give me a second, ok?” I said, slightly breathless. I hadn’t noticed how little I’d breathed in the last couple of minutes. I was sweaty, itchy, and my muscles were tense. I was dying to get out of this stinking suit, to shower, to touch my own face, to get back home and be done with all of this. Funny, how we miss the places we try to escape, as soon as we succeed.

She took her hand back, watching me as I got my breathing in order, hunched. I straightened up, and she put her hand forward again, somewhat off beat.

I grabbed her hand shakily and tried not to stare at my jetpack on her back. My grip tightened, and I felt the delicate bones of her hand through two layers of suit. I could probably land a good strike, I thought suddenly. The jetpack has a stronger thrust than the rockets, and she’s going to die even if I don’t take it away from her... Something in her smile made me decide against it—there was something naïve in the way she’d acted: too naïve for a place like this. The way she’d used ‘we’; the way she’d saved my life without as much as a single wrong movement. This wasn’t someone who’d go in without a plan.

I let go of her hand. “My name is Yossi Ben Ze’ev,” I said.

“Are you holding up, Yossi Ben Ze’ev?” she asked. She had a way of moving her head when she looked at me, as if changing her viewpoint would gain her a better perspective into my soul. She was shorter than me, but unlike Diocletian her movements didn’t signify power—only curiosity and concern.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what for. I looked around, orienting myself. We were standing only a couple of meters away from the edge of the cliff. The crater lay beneath us. At the dead center of it, barely noticeable, was a flash of white, strobing light. “I didn’t expect to be here very long, and every moment I spend here things just seem to get worse, and it seems likely I’ll die here, and I was just on a rocket taking me outside when it failed, and I…”

“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.” Her tone made it clear that I wasn’t the first dying man she’d comforted.

“I’m sorry; I just need to know… am I going to die here?”

Genuine surprise lit her face, and for a moment she just seemed like an ordinary woman. “No no no,” she said quickly, then regained her peculiar composure. “Rest assured; Ctesibius will do whatever is in our power to get you back inside safely.”

“Is it? In your power, that is.”

“Absolutely,” she said, and smiled again. “Now, if safety is what you’re after, we should probably get inside. We want to get you home as quickly as possible.”

This wasn’t a place where you could trust people, but I wasn’t in a position to survive without trust, either. After Diocletian, my worst fears about this place had been confirmed: it was kill or be killed, just like you’d expect. Even with that in mind, I followed her into the cave. What else could I have done?

#

Estimated oxygen time: 22:10:02

Ctesibius picked up my dead rocket and went through the large hole in the rock into an entry tunnel. The ceiling was three to four times taller than me, and the walls even wider apart, the floor sparsely littered with small pieces of plastic and metal. Despite still being a closed excavation with a single entrance, leading to a widening cave, where Anaxagoras’s and Diocletian’s narrow tunnels had obviously been tactical choke points this one felt welcoming, even more so because it was bright with yellow light scattering from the chamber the hall led to. A light that drew me in, after hours of nothing but the faintest illumination.

One person sat at the far end of the hall, in a gray space suit, their hands fumbling inside a bubble made from suit material. It was similar to Diocletian’s bubble but much smaller, its form elongated and narrow. Ctesibius and I approached with a couple of soft kicks, and when we got close, I saw more clearly: While most suits had been cut to create sheets of material, one of them hadn’t had the helmet cut off, leaving the transparent visor as a viewing port for looking inside. The figure had their hands inside inverted sleeves that let them work the inside the bubble without opening it, though I couldn’t see what was in it.

They lifted their eyes to us for a moment, bright green looking through the short hair falling over their forehead and I saw that it was a woman, though she was so young that “girl” would have been more appropriate. A single ray of light landed on her freckled face, and the shadow of her pixie-like nose fell across her cheek. Her eyes darted between the two of us, then to the rifle that sat by her side, then back to the woman who introduced herself as Ctesibius, who shook her head slightly.

She went back to her work, mumbling. When we drew closer, I heard what she was reciting.

-Cartridge in place,

Three in a row,

Make sure each one clicks

Panel in place,

Little light on,

Hatch should make a tick.

Ctesibius left my rocket leaning against one wall and stood over the other woman, and peeking over her shoulder, into the bubble. I kept my distance. “How’s that rocket coming along, Third?”

“It’s hard to tell. It’s like I—”

“How many verses are left to the poem?”

“Just the last one, checking the remote deactivation array. First?” she asked in a voice that almost broke, and threw another quick glance at me. Considering she had probably been thrown out only a couple of hours ago, and spent her last hours memorizing a poem, maintaining technical gear, her expression was surprisingly reserved.

“What is it?” Something in the tone of the woman who brought me in, the one I knew was Ctesibius’s First, changed, making it clear that Third should ignore me.

“What if I fail?”

First, looked at me, pleading for my patience, and placed a gentle hand on Third’s shoulder. The tools tethered to her belt floated after her, gently colliding with Third and the bubble.

“Line Ctesibius made mistakes before. It happens. What matters is not that this rocket should work, though it probably will—what’s important is that we devote ourselves to this work, making sure we do our best, like we did yesterday and the day before that, and like we will do again tomorrow. Breathe in, breathe out. Be here, be now. What’s the next step?”

Third took a deep breath and let it go. “Connecting the kill-switch. But I can’t make it ‘tick’ when it reaches the slot.”

“Oh, that’s not what that means. There’s a little motor that opens up in internal aperture—a spring shuts it down. ‘Make sure that it ticks’ means that when you activate the kill-switch, make sure that the hatch not only closes, but closes hard. You’re supposed to feel the vibration of the impact if you’re holding the rocket.”

First was standing behind the girl, blocking the viewing port for me. By the way Third’s shoulders tensed, she was exerting some kind of effort. “I feel it,” she whispered after a moment, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “It works.”

It dawned in me, embarrassingly late, what it meant that they were installing remote kill switches on the rockets. Rockets just like mine, which had malfunctioned just at the right moment to land me in Ctesibius’s arms. Ctesibius, who had been standing there with a control Panel in her hands. Fuck.

First looked back at me, inspecting my face like one looks at their visor to check the status, and I realized not only did she not try to hide it from me—she wanted me to understand. There was no point of confronting her; she knew that I knew, and there was no shame in her expression for it. No use wasting energy on anger. I needed to focus.

“Great,” First patted Third’s shoulders. “Now finish the verse. You’re doing fine.” The last encroachment was murmured, as if there was something forbidden hidden among the words. She motioned for me to follow, and went deeper inside to a larger chamber, brighter than any room I’d seen so far. I found an undeniable pleasure just in being in that lit room, after hours of darkness; in how clear colors were, how stark our shadows were. The light was coming from a single light bulb in the center of the ceiling, yellow and warm, making the rock look a soft brown instead of cold gray.

"Can you guess how the rockets work?” She said, a hint of pride in her voice.

“Not really,” I said. I wasn’t very interested in the mechanism itself, but I chose to play along. “How?”

She walked beside me, maintaining eye contact as she spoke. “Are you familiar with the mechanisms of your life support systems?”

“What do you mean?”

Their main hall was large and full of devices, half-built contraptions, and raw materials in equal amounts. A short, emaciated man sat on top of a formation of rock and investigated the way a short spear moved inside a long metal tube, applying what seemed like machine oil. His helmet was hooked with a cable to an aggregate of radio receivers, connected to one another. His eyes were squinting with focus. First chose not to bother him, and so did I.

“The system in your suit, do you understand how it operates?”

There was a time where I could tell you the name of each chemical, but that was long ago. “I—understand the principal. It scrubs out the carbon dioxide and pumps in new oxygen.”

“Scrubs?”

“Just… takes it out of the air and locks it somehow.”

“It is the system that sustains you, and you didn’t take the time to understand its basic principles?” She sounded honestly surprised. “The tank supplies oxygen in breathable pressure, while exhaled CO2 is absorbed by a carbon-lithium filter. After a day of use, the filter accumulates such high levels of absorbent that even the lowest drop beneath standard pressure causes it to dump CO2 back in its immediate atmosphere.” She glanced at me, gauging my level of understanding. I nodded, and she continued.

“When oxygen runs out, the user starts suffocating on their own CO2. For that reason, residents of Last Day Town avoid reaching the end of their countdown at all costs, even if that means having their suit cut open.” She scrutinized my expression again. “As you may have seen. But, with a little engineering, the negative can be turned into a positive: If the filters are taken out without being exposed to vacuum, and heat up enough for them to eject their CO2, they can serve as a propellent source for these rockets. That obviously requires a pressurized environment, or the gas dissolves in space.”

“So that’s what that was?” I gestured at the little bubble Third had been tending to.

“Precisely,” she said, encouraging.

The man turned to us, grimacing. His eyes were open now, worried, as he looked at First. “Diocletian are moving,” he said flatly. “They left the receiver’s range.”

“Are they furious?” she asked.

“Rabid.”

“Plug it off,” she said. “We know where they’re going.”

Where were they going? If they’d seen me drop from the trajectory they’d planned and land right at Ctesibius’s door, along with their only chance at survival, I could imagine they would have something to say about it.

He nodded, then looked at me for a moment, his eyes not even meeting mine. “The jetpack Anaxagoras sold us; Was that yours?” The question was a pure technicality, like there was nothing to be angry about.

I nodded. First waved an apologetic hand at me and turned to the man. “This isn’t the way Ctesibius speaks.”

He looked at her as if calculating the exact amount of effort it would take to argue, and finally surrendered with a shrug. “May we assume that you also have the wrench needed to disconnect the propellent?”

“I don’t.” There had been, inside the skipper, in case I needed to replace a gas balloon. That didn’t matter now—it couldn’t have remained intact after the explosion, and the fall that must have followed. “Are you going to use it for your rockets?”

He looked at First, ignoring me, seemingly not just displeased with my answer but disappointed at my very existence. “Ctesibius doesn’t need more rockets,” he mused. “But we could use it as propellent of a spear gun.”

She stiffened slightly. “We don’t even know if we have a wrench for that kind of gas balloon, and you’ll waste hours looking for one. Ctesibius spent many days making those springs for the spear gun, Second. Finish the design you were given.”

“Ctesibius used to think we should spend the time looking for that wrench,” he said through clenched teeth.

“And now Ctesibius thinks that we shouldn’t.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean,” she said, her voice growing slightly louder, before she regained control of herself. “Our predecessors are dead. We are the line now, and as First I’m telling you that having the kind of wrench that could replace gas tanks… it’s going to be more trouble than worth. If we do have it somewhere in our stores, it should be left there. When you’re First, you’ll know what it’s like to hold that responsibility. Now, for the last time: hurry up with the spear gun and finish the fucking springs.”

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He looked at her for a long moment, anger shining in his eyes, then at me, as if angered that I’d seen him humiliated, then turned his back to us. A frustrated exhalation was heard through the helmet radio.

She took a deep breath and smiled a little, apologetic smile. “Don’t mind that. Everyone’s a little tense. The day is short, and the work is plentiful.”

“And the laborers are lazy,” Second chimed in, recognizing the quote that I didn’t, his anger softened, “And the reward is great.”

“And the landlord is pressing,” First finished. I almost remembered where it was from.

“That’s the one thing everyone seems to agree on. Even… Even Diocletian.” I turned to look at the pile of radio receivers. “They’re coming here, aren’t they?”

“They are, but you shouldn’t worry about that. We have a lot of time.” Her eyes narrowed. “They really scared you, didn’t they?

“You should know,” I started saying, then considered it. You tell anyone anything they shouldn’t know, outside or inside, and we make sure you regret it, Diocletian had told me. But these people deserved to know that there were murderers amidst them, and it’s not like Diocletian could kill me. “They’re breaking Vampire Law. They make their thirds think they’re a part of Diocletian, but then they kill them and take their oxygen.”

“Yes, they are.” She sighed, her expression showing anything but surprise.

“You knew? But aren’t the lines supposed to…”

She let go of my hand. “We were enacting a plan; it’s just -”

“That there’s always so much to do.” I hoped there was no blame in my voice. I raised my eyes to hers.

“Accurate. Though not necessarily in the way you think.” She averted her eyes, and I found myself wondering how she could have been entrusted with so many secrets in such a short time.

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“A while ago.”

“Then how…”

“You told Anaxagoras you’re a journalist, right?” She said, doubt clear in her tone. “Then it’s safe to assume you have some questions. But before we start discussing Town politics, there are some things we’d like you to understand. So let us suggest this—we show you this one thing, and then you can ask us whatever you like, or be on your way.” I noticed, suddenly, how big and brown her eyes were, how soft her cheeks seemed. She wasn’t built for this, but she was doing her best.

I nodded.

Second’s voice was in my helmet again. “I know what you’re thinking, and you should leave it alone. We’re not in Pythia’s shuttle, and he’s not Ctesibius. We should just tell him what he needs to know and get him the hell out of here.”

She turned to his direction when she spoke, even though there was no clear line of sight anymore. “Hush,” she said, “Ctesibius is building an alliance here.”

“One might think Ctesibius would have had an easier time if the visitor would have only come three hours later,” Second answered venomously.

“Surely,” she said, calmer now, “by that time, Ctesibius’s Second will have finished his training and become a wise and patient First.” For a moment I thought they were putting on a show, but First’s sarcasm and the irritation in Second’s voice seemed genuine that I actually believed it. She motioned for me to follow her around the corner to another area in the cave.

“Is your bag ok?” she asked. “We can’t offer you any real refreshments, but if you need a carbon filter replaced, or a water tank refilled, we could get you some.” She gestured to a contraption by the wall.

And there it was again: a bunch of old space suits patched together, tethered to the wall at a point. I froze. For a moment I suspected oxygen pumps were working in partial capacity. The thermostat felt off, too, but according to my visor, everything was in order.

Her expression fell as she turned to me, her eyes full of pity. “No, no! It’s not like that! It’s just large enough for one person to get in and open their own suit for a while. Look at it.” I was scared to take my eyes off her in case she tried something, but logically I knew it didn't matter. If she’d have wanted to take my oxygen, she already would have.

She was right: The bubble was much smaller than the one Diocletian had used—certainly not enough to switch suits in. She leaned over and reached for my hand, and I let her take it.

“If you did come here a bit later, you might have had a chance to see it used.” She let go of me and moved away, stopping herself with one hand against the wall, and caressed the device softly. “In order to pack the carbon filters properly, we have to get into the bubble and wrap it there, once it’s time to go. A sacrifice many Ctesibius have to make, and I,” she whispered the last word, as if it was forbidden, “will be honored to make too. Diocletian are using a similar design, aren’t they? We couldn’t quite understand from listening to them.”

I nodded, not managing to find words as I recalled Diocletian crawling in the bubble like a worm inside of a carcass.

“Is there anything we can do to help? There’s a procedure that ejects the nitrogen out of the suits. It really helps one focus, though it makes you lose a bit of your oxygen.”

I couldn’t think of a less appealing idea than taking anything out of my suit. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“As you wish, but I want you to be at full capacity when we start doing business.” She pushed herself off the wall with one hand, and floated gently towards the other.

I ground my teeth. “Listen, Ctesibius, I’m…” I looked at my O2 read. “…already three hours in this suit, which is longer than I’ve spent in one in years. I’ve been assaulted twice, kidnapped, extorted once and counting. There’s nothing I want more than to get out of here. Whatever business you have with me, please, let’s get on with it.”

“Maybe if you took another moment to calm down—”

“I just want to get out of here. I’m way over my head, and if Diocletian wasn’t completely bullshitting me, you can still fuck my life up even if I do make it out alive. So please, just tell me what you want and give me something to replace the skipper somebody just decided to blow up.”

“Somebody?” she said, confused. “Oh, didn’t you realize who was behind the explosion? That was us,” she said, as if she was just clarifying a misunderstanding, not possibly confessing to my attempted murder.

“You did what?” A spray of spittle hit the inside of my visor. “Why?” My fists clenched; my elbows bent. I barely stopped myself from grabbing and shaking her.

“Ctesibius needed you to get here to make a deal. We knew Diocletian would give you their rocket, and all we’ll have to do is listen and kill your rocket at the right timi-”

“They could have killed me!” I swung one arm so wildly that my boots left the floor. “I would have been murdered for a single breath! You’re the reason I’m in this shitty situation!” My eyes jittered; my breath stuck in my throat. I wanted to smack her, and with cold clarity I realized that I could—she was unarmed, smaller than me. If I jumped her, I might have managed to get a hold before she used the jetpack. I couldn’t put my hands around her throat with the base of the helmet in the way, but I could probably improvise something -

Just as the thought crystalized in my mind, Third appeared at the corner of my eye. She was watching me carefully with the long rifle in her arms, her stance seemingly casual, but alert. I forced myself to take a deep breath, then another. I needed to think if I didn’t want to die. That was the thing I needed to remember: not dying. I would be able to forget all of this in a week or in a year. Could these people say the same? At the corner of my visor, the seconds kept ticking down with each breath.

“Yes, we blocked your exit out of this place,” First said, looking straight into my eyes. “Twice. Now we’re offering you another one. Do you want to take it or not?”

When I spoke, I did so very slowly, afraid that my voice would betray how close I was to losing it. “Just tell me one thing. “Was it you? Did you blow up my skipper?”

“I told you, it was Ctesibius that—”

“No, not Ctesibius. Not ‘we’. Was it you, personally?”

She moved away, putting distance between us. “No, my predecessor. He dedicated his last breaths on that task, and exploded with the charge. He died alone up there, sacrificing everything he had to make sure that we could provide you with a ride, later on.”

“Wow,” said Second, heard through the comm even though he wasn’t in sight. “So much for Ctesibius as a cohesive entity. Might as well tell him the whole thing.”

“For the love of God, Second: Shut up, and stick to the plan.”

She seemed so weak suddenly, so overburdened. To think that I’d almost hurt her, for a crime that someone else had committed. To think that she, for some reason, had decided to take credit for it. “Is this a part of the plan?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We were supposed to become friends first. But that isn’t really our forte. We’re more technically oriented.”

“I figured.”

“But I want you to know that letting you die here was never a part of the plan. You will get home safe. That’s a promise, and Ctesibius never break their promises. How’s it going, Third?” First changed the subject quickly.

“The rocket’s finished. It works fine,” she said proudly. I couldn’t understand how she could feel anything but terror and despair. How could she even focus enough to finish the thing, knowing it won’t save her?

“Not surprised in the least,” First said, smiling. “Surly Anaxagoras will be pleased. Go back to the entrance; we’re expecting company very soon, but ask Second to bring you something to do in the meanwhile. Maybe you could help him understand that springs are a perfectly good way to power a spear gun.”

Second interrupted on comm. “I’m on it, ok?”

Third nodded and turned towards the exit, but didn’t leave. First turned to look at me.

Move, a tiny voice said inside of me. I could barely hear it over the blood rushing in my ears. Stop waiting for others. If you want to live, move. “What do you even need me for?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” I said, and realized I wasn’t lying. “You’re spending your last hours doing hard, tiring work. You’ve been doing this for a long time. There has to be a reason.”

“There is,” she said, and a smile spread across her face. “Come see it.”

“Give it a break,” Second said as he floated into the room, and picked up a sheet of sandpaper from one of the shelves. “We’re extorting the man, trying to be friendly isn’t going to change that. He wouldn’t understand, anyway.” There was a similar tone of guardedness, there. As if the subject was personal.

“That’s enough. I’m still in charge here. Honor thy father and thy mother, so that thy days may be long.”

He looked at Third, who was looking back at him with confusion in her eyes, and decided to remain silent. Not for fear of Third’s rifle, I realized. He was afraid of her ears, of her taking his example and treating him later on like he had treated First. He made a small gesture with his head and clicked his tongue, and they both left the room.

First looked at me, a glint of hope in her eyes. She braced herself against a wall, found an underhold and lifted it with ease, revealing an opening to a dark cavern, out of the reach of the lighting in the main hall. She fumbled with two wires that hung by the entrance, and the smaller room was bathed in white light.

The smaller room contained just one construct, though it hardly brought the word ‘egg’ to mind: vaguely oval, though studded with edges of metal beams welded together, with some surfaces covered by patches of suit and tape, others with glass, in what almost seemed like a window. On the inside was a padded couch and two large glass, rectangular cubes, like aquariums, reinforced with metal at the edges. The entire thing was shorter than a person, about as wide as too, and had just one hatch, laying open, almost too small for a human to pass through. That was it.

“A ship for one person,” she said with quiet pride. “The solar panels aren’t finished yet, but they would fit here, and here, and here, and this is a window for sunlight to come in and feed the algae. The second aquarium is for fungi to treat human waste before the minerals are reintroduced to the algae. It’s far from being luxurious, we agree, but it’s much better than choking on Ceres’s Everdark.”

There was enough room inside for one person, if they didn’t stand, or try to spread their arms. An agonizingly small space, like some medieval torture device. I took a step closer, morbidly curious.

“Ctesibius do wish for you to get home. But if you do anything to hurt this project, we will kill you.” There was no anger in her voice, but no doubt either. “We get that you’re pissed, but don’t take it out on the Egg.”

“I understand.” I was getting used to people suggesting that killing me was an option. “How long could someone live in there?”

She placed a gentle hand on the frame. “Decades, assuming we were provided with standard protein-and-vitamin-enhanced algae. Perhaps until natural death, if it were lucky enough to avoid collisions. There used to be a time when algae would degrade in quality, and mutants that produced less vitamins were fitter and thus took over the population, but they did this cool thing where the algae themselves are dependent on the vitamins so if they stop producing it, they die and…” She took a deep breath, reorienting herself. “Years, at the very least.”

“Did you learn that on the inside, or did somebody tell you that here?”

“That’s the wrong question,” she shook her finger, didactive.

“What’s the right question?”

“Do Ctesibius know? And the answer is yes.”

Again, that tenacious devotion to the line. I looked at the egg again, tried to imagine that voyage as anything other than a perfect nightmare, and failed. “What will you do up there?”

“Not us. Ctesibius will have to stay down here. Whoever we send up there won’t be a part of any line; they’ll take whatever name they came with up to orbit.”

“But what for? What will they do up there?”

“Survive! Can’t you see how grand that is?” She stepped away from the hatch, her eyes shining with a light that didn’t seem entirely natural. “The whole point is to refuse their verdict, to show that out here, sentenced to death, Line Ctesibius still managed to think ahead, to extend their mission, to have hope; or better yet, faith! And we did it for a stranger. It’s our way to present the largest middle finger we can imagine to the Shadow Man, to a government that tosses its own citizens out to drown in darkness and despair. To everyone who thought they’d beaten us, and would take away our humanity. Were you aware that Ctesibius is the first line? It’s this vision that gave purpose to a place that they intended to be nothing but a human-disposal.”

I nodded, not particularly interested in confronting her that each line I’ve met so far insisted they were the first line.

“You’re not convinced.” There was genuine hurt in her voice; it scared me to hear it.

“I wish I were.”

“It would have been better if you were, but it’s not necessary. What we need you to do is send us four kilos of algae and fungi each, the kind you can get at any store, any flavor is fine. Dried and frozen is adequate, but double check that it isn’t precooked, because that won’t work. You could deliver it personally, or you could send a drone with the package. Again, four kilos of algae and fungi, eight kilos total.”

“That’s all you want from me?”

“The panels will be done soon, and we’ll find a way to get the gas out of the jetpack.” She stopped, hesitated, turned to me again. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I truly am.”

“I believe you,” I said. I did.

“There’s one more thing, actually.”

“What?”

“The remote control for your shuttle. If you don’t have any use for it, it would save us the trouble of building another remote from scratch.”

Why not? I opened the Velcro of my pocket and pulled out the small, now useless object. I recalled how Anaxagoras had decided on a whim to give it to me, thinking it would permit me to live. If I did make it out of here, I’d remember that above anything else, with or without the object itself, long after the man who’d given it to me had had his suit cut open by loving hands. I tossed it slowly at Ctesibius, who caught it mid-flight.

“I’m assuming you’re going to give me another rocket?”

“I’ll explain in due time. Don’t worry.”

Why was it so hard to get a straight answer, here? Even blowing up my shuttle had a purpose, but this just seemed petty; needlessly cruel. For a moment I considered kicking the Egg, or ripping apart the delicate circuitry with my hands. Would it be apt revenge for constantly keeping me in the dark? It didn’t matter. This woman was going to die soon, and it didn’t make sense to take revenge on the Ctesibius that had already died. None of it made any sense.

“It’s time we returned,” she said and turned to leave. “Electricity’s being wasted here.”

“Are you also going to threaten me?” I asked, as I followed her out of the room. “If I don’t hold up my end of the deal?” From around the corner, Second and Third could be heard, speaking softly.

She untangled the wires, killing the lights, then lifted the fake wall from the floor and placed it gently against the opening, unconcerned about turning her back to me. It slid perfectly into place, leaving no hint of what’s hidden behind. “Unfortunately, yes,” she said as she turned around. “Looking at you now we trust you, but we don’t trust the person you’ll be tomorrow, once you’re breathing freely on the inside. We imagine that Diocletian acted similarly.”

“Diocletian…” I looked at her, realizing what I’d forgotten. “You expect me to follow through on their deal and yours?”

“Forget about Diocletian’s threats. Ctesibius will take care of it.” She started moving towards the main hall, and I followed her.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to explain the situation, calmly and plainly. We have superior claims, superior weapons, and it seems that they have even less to offer us than we thought. They won’t be pleased, but they’ll see reason.”

I couldn’t help but recall the way Diocletian’s boot went up into Third’s stomach, striking without any warning. If they were going to come over here to hash things out, I’d rather be somewhere else when they did.

She chuckled, and for a moment seemed very similar to Diocletian; but as the moment passed the difference became clear—she chuckled at herself, in embarrassment, not as some display of control. “Could you imagine that we spent a lot of time talking about you? Not you, specifically, but The Visitor, when they came. Trying to plan how to manage you, we expected you to be smug, condescending to the executionees.” She wrinkled her nose at the made-up word. “But here you are, cooperative to the point of submission.” She chuckled again and turned away from me before I managed to decipher her expression. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. "For what we’re doing to you.”

Second chimed in, heard around the corner. “Easy on the I word. We need him to think of Ctesibius as a single entity, if we want his compliance on the inside.”

I entered the main hall and saw him once again crouched on top of the pile of electronics, even though his helmet wasn’t connected to anything. “Is that why you talk about yourselves as ‘Ctesibius’, and not as individual people? So you can make threats and promises?”

When he lifted his eyes from the piece of metal he was using the sandpaper on, looking down at me, he seemed focused, coherent like a laser beam. “The lines weren’t invented with you in mind, if they were invented at all. You want these kinds of answers, you follow the tracks southward to Pythia. But Ctesibius have always been pragmatic. The system works because day-old entities can’t plan ahead, but lines can, and that’s good enough for us.” First smiled.

Third’s voice came on the radio, from the entry point that she was guarding. “But does that really work? I mean–”

“Enough,” First said, softly but firmly. “Second’s right. This isn’t Pythia’s shuttle, most of all right now. Third, I need you to stay focused, and keep guard. Second, it doesn’t look like you’re going to finish the spear gun, so be a dear and get both of us rifles before they get here. You,” She turned to me again. “We should get you on your way before anything else comes up.”

We all straightened, even Second in his crouch, even I who had nothing to do with the line and its order. Third made an approving sound, still out of sight, seemingly pleased that things returned to their natural order, but her tone changed when she spoke. “Do you guys hear that?” I didn’t. “Sounds like two people, just outside of the tunnel.”

“So soon?” First’s eyes moved to the corner of her visor. “They must have really legged it. Prepare yourself, Ctesibius: we are going to witness history in the making.” She looked back at me, and her expression changed to one of impatience. “We told you not to worry. They’re going to present us with their scariest faces, trying to impress on us how insane with rage they’ve gone so we’d give them more concessions than they’re worth. But they aren’t. No one survives this long without reason.”

#

Ctesibius are lucky: Everything’s falling into place, just like they planned. True, for a moment they were on the verge of going insane, fracturing, but the coming of Diocletian focused them, united them to a cohesive whole.

Ctesibius reach the end of the hall, The Visitor at their heels, and peer into the tunnel. It is empty except for the shadows of their helmets stretching forward on the floor and walls. They can see the platform right at the end of the tunnel, faintly lit by the open sky, empty. Behind it, far away, they glimpse the crater, shifting in shades of gray as the sky changes. They stand there and wait, watching.

Eventually a hand rises from below the platform to grab at the edge. Another three follow, and soon Diocletian throw themselves over, slowly enough not to drift too high, and smoothly continue into a walk.

Diocletian shuffle in unison into the tunnel, squinting at the light, kicking at the walls at an even pace. Slowly, compared to what they must be capable of to have gotten here so fast. The blades are clasped at their sides, one for him, two for her, their edges gleaming greenish in the electric-yellow light. The expressions on their flushed faces, a grin for one and a blankness for the other, are as cold and sharp as their blades.

“No weapons past this point, Diocletian,” Ctesibius say. “Stop where you stand, and put down your knives.”

Diocletian keep approaching, their pace unchanged, their weapons dangling beside them.

“We’re very insistent on this policy, I’m afraid,” Ctesibius add, and lift their rifles to eye level.

Diocletian stop a dozen steps from them, each by a different wall, grabbing on to a hand or foothold to stop their momentum without falling over. They stand there silently, inspecting. One Diocletian looks at The Visitor, and the tiniest wrinkle appears above his nose. The other’s gaze follows, and her smile widens to a wolf’s grin.

“Diocletian,” Ctesibius say as they lower the muzzles of their rifles. “There’s no need for this show. Do you expect us to believe you’d risk your precious immortality by bringing literal knives to a gun fight? And knives that we forged for you, no less. We implore you to discuss this. We’re certain a deal can be made that leaves everyone content. Again, for no one’s sake but your own, Diocletian, put the knives down and let us speak.”

Shrugging silently, Diocletian unclasp the blades from their belts and let them drop slowly in the micro—g. Everyone can hear The Visitor’s sigh of relief.

“You knew about the appeal, didn’t you?” Diocletian ask, smiling coldly.

“We did.”

“You knew what this would mean to me.” The pitch of her voice rises by the tiniest fraction.

“Me…” Ctesibius consider their words for a second before proceeding. “We mourn hearing you use that word, Diocletian. It should be about us, not about me.”

“What it should be about is not dying. Everything else is a waste of time.”

“Word of advice, Diocletian. Whatever we decide here won’t last forever. This is not a threat. You were right: we do need you to break the Law, if only so we’ll have some leverage over you. But if you cannot play this smart, no one will ever remember Line Diocletian.”

“Fucking lunatics,” one Diocletian whispers to the other. “Calm down,” says the other in response. “You’re losing it. I’ll talk. Ctesibius, you took something that is ours, and the equipment you gave us as part of a deal had been deliberately sabotaged. That’s theft and betrayal.”

“As far as we’re concerned, Diocletian, we took nothing from you. The rocket was never intended for the kind of distance you were counting on. You sent this man to a journey an eighth of Ceres’s circumference long with a tool designed to cover forty kilometers between recharges. The most likely outcome would have been him getting suborbital velocity before the propellant ran out, and even if he’d somehow managed to reach the airlock, he’d have done so with deadly speed.”

The Visitor turns from Ctesibius to Diocletian and back, the panic clear on his face.

“It’s not as unlikely as you make it sound, but let’s not beat around. You must have a better way to send him back. Something tells me you had no plans for him to keep his deal with us, even though it would cost you nothing.”

“Nothing? Imagine, Diocletian, how suspicious he would have looked coming back from the most boring trip anyone ever took, appealing in the name of someone thrown out of the interior days ago, and suddenly buying great amounts of supplies. You must have heard of the Shadow Man. Pythia say the stories trace a very clear image.”

Diocletian bend down, and a wave of tension goes through Ctesibius for a moment, and passes when she picks up a piece of discarded trash from the floor, a paper-thin rectangle of some metal. They examine it, pretending to be bored. “We are very much aware of the concept,” Diocletian say bitterly, “even without Pythia’s theories.”

“You really should pay them a visit. They can be really helpful, and it looks suspicious when you don’t.”

“Perhaps when we set up a new Line Pythia, hmm?” Diocletian smile, but Ctesibius’s expression turns into a snarl.

“Don’t throw away everything we worked for. This can still work; we just have to update the deal.”

“Let’s hear your offer, then. We,” Diocletian say as if offering Ctesibius a gift just by saying the word, “are listening.”

“The Visitor will return inside using our…” Ctesibius smile, and look at The Visitor, deciding to keep the secret to themselves a little longer. “…Vehicle. He’ll send us the supplies we asked for. After he receives confirmation from us that the delivery reached its destination, he may appeal in your name, or, if he has any wits about him, pay someone else to do so to put one more step between him and the Shadow Man. In the meantime, you and us will complete our earlier deal, to… restructure Last Day town.”

The visitor glances at Ctesibius, perhaps recognizing the sound of murder in their voice.

Diocletian look at each other for a long moment. She nods, finally, and he, after a slight hesitation, nods in return.

Ctesibius sigh with relief and smile, “See,” they say, “All it takes is communication, and-”

Diocletian flick the piece of debris at Ctesibius, so fast it takes everyone by surprise. Then they dive for their blades.