TC was waiting for them when they returned to the rock Yi Cao realized he’d begun to think of as home. The warm familiar stench of piss waited with the Talyaya mutt along with the continuous murmuration of pedestrian crowds moving between work stations through the rock’s major concourses.

Zihan gripped his forearm in greeting while the girls floated from the docking port in the ceiling to land behind them.

“There is trouble.” TC told him without preamble. “Trouble with whatever plan you and Feiruhn have cooked up.” He glanced nervously at Yi Cao and rubbed his talons together. “Trouble Feiruhn said you’d want to attend to personally, and discreetly, if possible.”

Kalemal managed to snag Bealtiel’s hand as they both made the jump from the gate in the concourse ceiling and giggled as they pirouetted slowly towards the ground, hair streaming behind them like an imitation Ying and Yang. Bealtiel looked particularly unimpressed.

“Probably best if you leave your companions behind.”

Zihan sighed and glanced at the girls. “I suppose Feiruhn didn’t give you any details about the situation.”

TC shook his bald head and shuffled nervously in place. “He only asked me to get you, and just you.” He scratched at the side of his nose with a claw and looked away with a scowl. “Get the feeling he doesn’t like me.”

Zihan gave the mutt’s shoulder a friendly slap that staggered him. “No one likes you TC. That’s why you’re so useful to me.” He turned to Yi Cao as the girls joined them. He looked them over and Kalemal stopped giggling.

“We have errands to run,” Zihan said, “and we’re running out of time in which to run them.” He pulled the technomancer’s card out of his pocket and tossed it to Yi Cao. “Go get the scriptures you need,” he said, reaching back into his robes to retrieve the sub-space wallet, “and anything else you think might be useful or just hard to get at our next stop.”

Yi Cao caught the sub-space wallet and felt the hum of power in the little device through sensors hidden in the palms of his new hands. “Anything in particular?” He asked.

Zihan sucked his teeth and stared into the middle distance for a moment. “Kispuhru seems interesting,” he said, refocusing on Yi Cao, “might not have access to their lore for a while. See if you can find something of note.” He nodded to the girls. “You two stay with him. Answer his questions if he has any. I’ll find you at Te’klub.”

Kalemal pouted at him and he blew her a kiss as he turned to go. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Yi Cao watched him follow TC out of the concourse then told the girls to follow him and set off in the opposite direction.

When they’d switched to one of the major concourses and joined the current of pedestrians moving through the station Kalemal fast walked to catch up with him. She walked beside him for a couple of minutes then snaked an arm around his and ran her fingers into the brass plating of his palm.

“Kal…”

Kal glanced back at Bealtiel with a smirk. “What?” she asked, “the young master isn’t here, and I saw he left you with the wallet.” She winked at Yi Cao and pulled herself a little closer against his arm.

“What do you say?” she asked, “Care to have a little fun at your master’s expense?” She reached up to run a finger down his cheek, along the line where the metal sockets for his eyes met flesh. “From the sounds of it he’ll be busy for some time. Might not get another chance.”

She wiggled, provocatively.

Yi Cao shook her hand off of his face and turned his attention back to the concourse.

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Kalemal practically snuggled into him. “I know I’ve been dying to feel these, fingers,” she caressed the brass that had replaced his hands, “on my breasts.”

“Would you shut up?” Yi Cao asked. He glared at her, or tried to, past the glass lenses of his new eyes.

She pouted. “It’s not like it would cost you anything.”

Yi Cao fell silent and continued marching down the concourse. His metal foot pinged each time it met the yellowed tiles of the path and he felt it’s extra weight with every step in the base of his spine.

“Over here,” Kal said after a moment. She pulled him towards a door in a wall that also served as a floor in the bizarre geometries of the concourse. She pointed. “There’s a hostel, 8 Nights in Paradise. It specializes in fun.” She curled a bit of her hair to caress Yi Cao’s face as he stumbled after her and gave him the same mischievous grin she often gave Zihan. She giggled. “I’d like to see if the servant can surpass the master.”

Yi Cao pulled up short before she could pull him into the lip of the tunnel. He yanked his hand from hers then stood studying her, trying to imagine what kind of person she was to give a spaceship the size of a moon.

The blonde whore raised an eyebrow. “Coming?” She asked.

He shook his head, then turned and limped back down the concourse.

“I told you he wouldn’t go for it.” Bealtiel told her.

“Oh shut up. I’d like to see you get him in bed.”

Yi Cao’s metal hands clenched reflexively.

The motion felt insufficient, impotent, without actual flesh and blood.

“You’re going to have to learn,” Kal added as she fell in beside the other whore, “I’m not going to share with you forever.”

After three weeks of navigating alien corridors through an alien station in an alien world, it continued to surprise Yi Cao whenever he found himself in a part of the station outside of Te’klub that he recognized.

“Work the shift you deserve.” Mesmeric stones whispered to them as they approached their destination.

A red clad cultivator plucked ethereal music from a pipa cradles in his lap. “Inner peace is just a vacation away.”

In only a couple of turns down side passages, they arrived.

Library. The sign said, in Imperial script.

He’d approached the hallway along the wall this time, so the offshoot from the main concourse looked like a pit at his feet. To his right an old man occupied the stall where he’d found the girl who’d been his introduction to the place. The smell of his spiced cake mingled poorly with the vinegar stink of piss wafting up from the captive engine at the base of the pit/hallway just behind the sign for the library.

Yi Cao hesitated on the threshold. “You two stay out here,” he told the girls after a moment. “I won’t be long.”

He dropped into the tunnel, then twisted to land on his feet in the new orientation while Kalemal and Bealtiel looked down at him.

“What are we supposed to do out here?” Kal asked.

Yi Cao turned to them, then gestured to the stall now standing upright to his own orientation. “Get some spice cake.”

Kalemal made a face, and Yi Cao turned his back on them to approach the door.

Only three and a half weeks had passed since Yi Cao visited the Library at the start of this adventure, and yet, now that he returned to the first place he’d ever visited on the station, it felt like an eternity had passed from then to now.

A new “Pissers will be prosecuted” sign had been painted along the wall next to the library at some point since his visit but the place had otherwise remained much as he remembered. The featureless steel door slid open when he touched it, and he stepped inside to find old man Guo Gang bent over his desk exactly as he had been the first time.

Yi Cao stopped in the entryway as the door closed and his brass hands clinked as he brought them together in a bow.

“The student greets his teacher.”

Guo Gang looked up from whatever he’d been reading with a befuddled look. “Ahh, what’s that? Whose there?”

He peered at Yi Cao through his huge reading glasses and frowned. “Imperial.” He said. “But you don’t look like you’re from the old world.”

Yi Cao’s smile faltered. “I didn’t look like this the last time I was here. There was an accident.”

Guo Gang fiddled with his glasses with a nervous expression. “A fairly serious one, I see.”

Yi Cao held out his brass hands and looked at them. “I guess I… didn’t think… how much I’d changed.”

The old man looked nervously around. “I don’t know that I know you young man. Perhaps, there is something I can help you find?”

Yi Cao nodded with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I’m looking for a scripture.” He said. He opened his mouth but paused in disappointment. “I… sold you a pamphlet last time I was here, on the North. You told me that I should return, if I could.”

Recognition dawned on the man’s face like the slow rising of the sun. “Ahhhh. You’re that boy. The one with the oath.”

He bobbed a finger at Yi Cao with a smile. “Why didn’t you say so?” The old man stood and bustled around the desk to take Yi Cao’s arm. He felt the brass under his hand and rubbed it as if to make sure that it was real, then looked up into Yi Cao’s false eyes.

“What have they done to you?” He asked. “Poor boy. Ah. What have they done.” He shook his head.