After one last sweep to confirm that I hadn’t missed any pods or lockers on the trawler and quite a few hours of helping Okeria load the rest of the signaleech oil into containers later, Keratily informed us that we had less than fifteen minutes to get the hell out of the trawler. Before it disappeared into the depths below to resurface at a completely unknown time.

Okeria walked in front of Jun and I with Keratily, but his invisible drone buzzing next to my ear carried on a completely separate text conversation. {From the drones I’ve left in these deathtraps, I can say confidently that it takes between eight months and three years for a trawler ta resurface.}

{Interesting.} I responded. {And why can’t you say this out loud? It doesn’t seem like the thing you have to keep secret.}

Jun beat Okeria to the punch, reminding me that my interface wasn’t that private any more. Not with her, Okeria, Mortician, and The End able to message me at any and all times. This chain, however, was just her, Okeria, and me. Not that it would stop The End and Mortician from seeing it.

{I think he’s just happy to have people that listen to him.} She wrote with a quiet chuckle. {Even if it's against our better judgment.}

{I resent that.} Okeria messaged almost instantly. {Keratily listens ta me. It’s the fact that the two of ya are responding ta me that makes me happy.}

I shook my head and sighed. If I wasn’t wearing my helmet right now, they would see the amused smile on my face as they bickered through text, but I was saved by the piece of dented metal covering me. Keratily gestured for all of us to stop under the hatch that led upwards while also signaling for Jun and I to step back.

“The trawler has completely stopped, but we don’t know what kind of slyk are attached to it. Stand back as I open it.” She said firmly, waited for Jun and I to grudgingly step back, then reached up to grab the hatch. “Be ready for the worst, Okeria. Protect Juniper at all costs.”

“Gotcha; don’t protect Sebastian.” Okeria said with a nod. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

Keratily leaned back slightly while she sighed and shook her head. “You know that’s not what I meant. Now grab your side of the hatch.”

Jun elbowed me and shook her head. {I think Okeria was right about Keratily only really caring about me.}

{No way.} I messaged back. {What gave that away?}

The hatch hissed open, letting in air that was visibly tinted with dirty black smoke. All conversation, both out loud and text died out while smoke leaked in and curled around us. Keratily gestured once more for Jun and I to stay in place before leaping out of the hatch, the sound of her boots slamming onto the top of the trawler reverberating all around us. Okeria looked back at us then jumped to join her in a burst of electricity, leaving Jun and I alone with a trawler that was rapidly filling with smoke.

I swept my hand through the cloud that grew ever closer, pulling it back with a hiss of surprise as its heat assaulted me. It wasn’t boiling hot, but it was just a little hotter than uncomfortable; like going from freezing air to completely submerged in a hot tub. If it was that uncomfortable even through my armor, then how hot would it be to my bare skin?

“Ow!” Jun hissed, yanking her hand from the smoke. “That’s not smoke. I don’t know what it is, but there’s no way that’s smoke.”

“Hazards are weird.” I offered. It was my catch-all answer in my old life, and it was right more often than it wasn’t. But it was also wrong enough that I knew not checking my interface for location information would be fucking stupid. “If the entire layover is cloaked in this smoke, we’re about to be in for a miserable however-long-we’re-here-for.”

“Yeah, ‘however long that is’ is going to be awful.” Jun agreed. She looked up at the hatch that was now completely overtaken by smoky-something and clicked her tongue. “Are we supposed to wait for a signal?”

The drone next to my ear buzzed loudly, then flashed a blinking blue arrow that pointed upwards. “I think that’s the signal. I really need to remember that Okeria’s always eavesdropping on us.”

I let Jun jump up first, grabbing onto the edge of the hatch and pulling herself up. She disappeared into the smoke with a cough and a grunt of discomfort, and I took that as my cue to join the others.

The thick smoke overtook me. It was like diving headfirst into a sauna that had been saturated with boiling steam, the air around me taking on a sort of resistance that air definitely shouldn’t have. Not quite the level of water, but somewhere between wearing heavy winter clothes and walking into a heavy breeze. And against everything my mind told me was right, I could see perfectly.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Welcome ta the layover.” Okeria said grandly, cutting through the air with his hand to make sure I looked at everything. “The entrance ta the abyss, and the place we’ll be staying until we find a trawler with the right markings for the nexus. Might be a few hours, might be a few days, and for every minute of it we’ll be under siege.”

I laid eyes on everything around us, which wasn’t much to behold if I was honest. The trawler was docked next to a rather large station that didn’t have a light like the first one we’d been at; an almost perfectly square thing with too many ramps and outcroppings for any sane architect to have signed off on. It screamed ‘over designed on purpose’, and if we were supposed to weather a slyk siege, that purpose was probably to give us a fighting chance.

Other than the building and the tracks which the trawlers would come in on, there really wasn’t much to see. We had what I guessed was about two square miles worth of flat ground to call our own, dotted randomly with little outposts that were connected to the main one with wires high off the ground. Some of them were multiple stories, or tall like lighthouses, but the vast majority of them could have been abandoned convenience stores back on earth. Of course, everything I’d just described was nothing compared to what was locking us into the arena.

A wall of jet-black billowing smoke rose from massive cracks in the ground that glowed white-hot, spitting pebbles and dirt with the smoke that crackled and popped as they rained down far away from the fissures themselves. It billowed upwards and upwards before closing in towards the center of the arena, creating a ceiling of jet-black that pulsed and wafted and sent tendrils snaking down to random parts of the arena. Like beacons beckoning him to danger.

Then what Okeria had said actually hit me. “Wait, did you say under siege? By more slyk?”

“Well, yeah.” Okeria said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, in hindsight, it was. I’d even assumed that myself. “Won’t start until the trawler leaves the dock, and then we get another trawler coming in exactly an hour after ours disappears. Remember ta pay attention ta the times printed on the trawlers, and look for one that’s got a split nose capped in dull yellow. That’s the beast that’ll take us straight ta the nexus, and then we can finally get back ta Rainbow Basin.”

“That’s putting it rather simply, but he is mostly correct. There will be masses of slyk assaulting us, but they are not the same slyk that we have found so far.” Keratily said, then nodded at me with acknowledgement. “The monstrous one you and Okeria defeated is far and beyond anything the layover could hope to produce, and even the insensate slyk that I crystallized for you would have proved more dangerous competition if they were free from the switchport’s stilling. These are something of…”

Keratily paused and crossed her arms in thought.

“Fodder?” Jun suggested.

“Yes, fodder. That is the word I was looking for. Thank you, Juniper. There will be waves upon waves of fodder, with far more dangerous slyk thrown in with the masses.” Keratily clicked her tongue. “Of course, I say ‘far more dangerous’ in comparison to the fodder alone. If we encounter a signaleech here, it would be weaker than what Okeria had expected to find in the bowels of the trawler that brought us here.”

“Weaker and made of much worse stuff.” Okeria cut in. Keratily turned to look at him silently, but Okeria didn’t give a single shit and kept talking. “Whatever’s making the slyk in this place don’t got the same finesse as the rest of the hazard. Mass-manufactured monsters mean measly… mmmorsels? Pretend I said another m-word that means treasures.”

“No.” Keratily said curtly. “I will not, and I will remember that you failed to alliterate for the rest of my days.”

Okeria recoiled at that. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was being dramatic or if he was actually hurt by Keratily’s promise not to forget.

The trawler shuddered under our feet. Which meant it was time to leave it behind. Well, more like time for it to leave us behind. “Are we holing up in the biggest building?”

Okeria nodded and Keratily shook her head. They turned their heads to stare at each other, and Okeria relented. “Apparently we aren’t.” He said bitterly.

“We’ve had this argument a dozen times, Okeria.” Keratily sighed. “The main building gets overrun far too easily. We need to make our home in one of the buildings with no ground entrance while only heading to the main building when we need to venture into the tunnels for something.”

Okeria didn’t say anything in return. He simply jumped off the trawler and onto the main building below. I watched as he trudged along the roof, kicking rocks from it as he went, and couldn’t help but feel something was off. It wasn’t in Okeria’s personality to sulk like that.

Keratily followed him down with an annoyed tut, leaving Jun and I alone on the slowly moving ship. She glanced up at me while opening her interface, making an obvious sign of writing a message so I knew to wait for one.

{That was way too weird to be normal. If it was an extension of an old argument, I feel like Okeria would’ve fought to get his way even if he knew his way wasn’t the best way. We have to be missing something here.} She wrote, then looked to me to signal that she was done.

I agreed with her, and didn’t really have anything else to add. “I can make guesses all day, but we can just ask Okeria.” I said aloud to make sure Okeria overheard us. I could’ve typed in our shared chat, but talking was faster. “He’s a weirdo, but he’s been pretty honest with us so far. Weirdly honest. As long as he hasn’t only been lying to us all this time.”

Jun shrugged. “Keratily backed up all his stories. I think we’re safe to believe him.”

“Unless he’s been lying to…” I started, then frowned. Jun’s first sentence sounded off for some reason. It took me a few moments to piece together what it was, but when I did, I found myself trusting Jun just a little bit more. “When did you start calling your grandma Keratily?”