NOEMI GRABS ABEL’S HAND, TOWING HIM WITH HER AS she jumps off the platform—

—and into the underground river flowing beneath them.

The frigid water’s not very deep, but it’s enough to break their fall. Noemi pushes up with her feet to the surface and discovers the river only comes to her shoulders. Grinning, she dunks her head backward to get her hair off her face and wipes droplets from her eyes and cheeks. Abel surfaces next to her, blond hair now plastered down over his forehead, clothes sodden and stuck to his body, and his expression so completely disgusted that it reminds her of the way the Gatsons’ cat sulks when it gets caught in the rain. Noemi laughs out loud before clapping one hand to her mouth; the sound of the gentle current flowing past them should muffle any noise their pursuers could overhear, but it might not.

Still, her shoulders shake with the giggles she’s trying hard to suppress.

Abel doesn’t like being laughed at any more than a human would. “Did you know there would be water down here?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have jumped otherwise. It was clearly marked on the map; this river flows into the water purification systems for this area.”

He goes silent, and she realizes he’s reviewing the plans in his mind. Considering the perfect memory Mansfield has given him, he can probably study the diagram in as much detail now as he could when it was projected in front of them. “Of course,” he says, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I concentrated on areas of tactical importance. You took in details that should have been irrelevant but were instead useful.”

She’s not going to rub it in, even if he was acting so superior with her at first. But she can’t help wanting to show off a little more of the “irrelevant” information that’s currently saving their asses. “It’s also marked as an emergency shelter. So I knew we’d have room for us to stand, plenty of air for us to breathe. It looks like it leads right into the center of their operations. But we’ll have to come up later on, check out another map.”

“You’re suggesting that we walk through the river?”

“Why not? It gets us where we want to go, or closer at least, and there’s almost no chance anyone’s going to find us down here.” Noemi can’t help smiling wickedly. “Unless you’re scared of getting your hair wet again.”

Abel retorts, “I would last longer submerged in water than you would.”

“You’d sink, wouldn’t you?” She doesn’t like the idea of having to tow Abel up from the depths.

But he shakes his head. “I’m designed to float.”

“Yeah, well, so am I. Let’s get going.”

Together they begin sloshing through the river, heading downstream. Their journey is a shadowy one, illuminated only by yellowish emergency beacons dangling high overhead, and those beacons are spaced out widely. Walking through water is hard work, but Noemi’s glad of it. The river’s chill is matched by the cool air above; if she weren’t exerting herself, she’d be too cold to function.

The warmth flowing through her doesn’t only come from the exercise. She’s energized by the quick thinking they’ve had to do. By the thrill of knowing she’s outwitted their pursuers. Even by the danger, now that they’re out of it for a while. For the first time—except for one split second when they entered the Kismet Gate—her journey through the worlds of the Loop feels like the adventure she always dreamed of.

Her grief for Esther lingers, a dull inner heaviness. But for the moment, Noemi can bear it. She knows it will be harder when—if—she returns to Genesis and goes to the places they used to go together, when she sees Esther’s empty room, when she has to tell the Gatsons how bravely their daughter died. When she has to break the news to Jemuel. But Noemi can move forward now.

This mission is the most important thing she’ll ever do. It’s also the one chance she’ll ever have to travel through the galaxy. Noemi doesn’t want to lose sight of either of those things, not for one second.

“Obviously the river’s only a temporary solution,” she says over the sound of rippling water around them. Drips and drops echo along with her voice. “But if we found one platform, we’ll find others. One of those might turn out to be a safe place to wait until nighttime. Wait. Cray’s cities are underground. Is there a night here?”

“An artificial night, but that’s sufficient for our purposes.” Abel holds his arms over the surface of the water, like he’s repulsed by the idea of getting any wetter than he already is. “Labs will shut down. Scientists will sleep. And that gives us a chance to find and steal the thermomagnetic device.”

“How long can we hide out from the Queen and Charlie?”

“They will have ordered the Georges to report any unusual arrivals in the past several hours. Ours will be one of them.”

Noemi’s gut clenches. “That means they’ll find the Daedalus.”

“Perhaps not immediately, but eventually,” he says, like that’s no big deal. “We’ll have to steal another ship for our escape.”

Stealing a ship? That’s someone’s livelihood. Maybe their home. What would happen to Zayan and Harriet if someone stole their vessel? They’d be ruined, forever. They might even starve. “Maybe we could just—stow away, or something.”

“Few ships will be large enough to hide on for any length of time, and most of those will be Earth fleet vessels with strict security.” Abel glances sideways at her, then slowly adds, “The visitors here are not Vagabonds. They’ll be leading scientists and businesspeople. Government officials. Representatives of various corporations. In other words, they’ll be people who can afford a new ship.”

He understood. Abel followed her thoughts, recognized her concern.

Noemi feels again the unease that first stirred in her when Abel made that pun about digging deeper. When he teased her about setting off security alarms. It had been jarring to realize Abel had a sense of humor. His earlier snarking might simply have been his superiority complex at work, but those gentle little jokes… Mechs aren’t supposed to be able to think that way.

And they certainly don’t show insight into human feelings. Not like this.

It’s an illusion, Noemi tells herself. A simulation of consciousness instead of the real thing. She knows artificial intelligences can be programmed to mimic human thought to an uncanny degree. Supposedly even Earth outlawed that practice long ago, as part of the regulations that kept AI from evolving to the point of endangering humanity rather than serving it. But someone like Burton Mansfield might consider himself above the rules. He might have used the old tricks that could make wire and electricity simulate the workings of a human brain.

That thought scares her. However, the other alternative is far worse—that Abel isn’t merely mimicking consciousness. That he is, in some small way, alive—

Heavy metal clanging startles Noemi from her reverie. Abel freezes in place. “What was that?” she asks.

The nearby machinery seems to answer her, rumbling as gears or turbines begin to move. Are they deeper into Cray’s substructure than she’d realized? Have they walked beneath some critical piece of machinery, maybe something that would have the thermomagnetic device she needs?

But the metallic thumps she’s hearing sound… primitive.

“I can’t be certain without control audio to compare it to,” Abel says, “but this is almost certainly the sound of water-flow mechanisms switching into gear. An automatic function, probably set to a timetable.”

“Does that mean they’re about to shut the river off?”

“… I believe it means they’re turning it on.”

Behind them, upstream, a roaring sound begins to grow—louder and louder by the second. Noemi’s eyes widen. “We have to get out of here.” Safety ladders, emergency beacons, I know we saw some—

But there’s no time. The roar blots out everything except the vast dark wave crashing toward them. Beneath her, the water of the river swells slightly, and then the wave’s on top of them, slamming into her.

Noemi might as well have crashed into a wall of pure iron. The force of the water knocks the breath out of her lungs and spins her violently upside down, side to side and back again. She reaches out desperately, trying to figure out which way is up, but it’s impossible. The torrential current scrapes her along rough stone, but she has no way of knowing if that’s the river bottom, the wall, or even the ceiling.

It’s too strong for her. She can’t find purchase, can’t help herself in any way. The river has her now. She’s been underwater, unable to breathe, so long that her chest aches and the world’s getting dizzy around the edges.

Her fear is on the verge of becoming panic when an arm wraps around her waist and tows her to the surface. Noemi gasps for breath as Abel holds her back against the wall. The river’s so high that the ceiling, once ten meters overhead, is almost close enough to touch—and the current has grown even stronger, churning and frothing the water rushing around them. Abel clings to a metal strut with one hand and her waist with the other, holding them in place without any sign of strain.

Bruised and winded, Noemi can’t talk at first. Finally she manages, “I always—thought—I was a—good swimmer.”

“No human could withstand currents this strong.” Abel says it without any of his usual superiority. “We need to find another platform, like the one we jumped from in the first place.”

The ceiling of the tunnel had been higher there, if Noemi remembers correctly. Some of the platforms would be built up taller than the river even at its fullest flow—not much taller, but enough for her to get out. “How do we do that?”

“I take us along the wall. You hold on to me.”

Noemi hesitates only briefly before sliding her hands around Abel’s neck as if embracing him. He has broader shoulders than she’d realized, wide enough for her to rest her aching arms on. She turns her face away from his, resting her head at the curve of his neck, so she can look out for the next platform or anything else up ahead.

Abel says, “It would be advisable for you to use your legs as well.”

Of course it would. Noemi wraps her legs around his waist, pressing their bellies together, embarrassed by her own embarrassment. How ridiculous to feel shy about clinging to him so intimately. It’s no more personal than sitting in the seat of her fighter.

Or it shouldn’t be. But now that they’re this close, she’s reminded powerfully of how human his body feels. He’s warm despite the cold water, strong despite the current. His hand feels good along her back. And there’s even a scent to his skin—not artificial, but natural and even pleasant—

Please stop sniffing the robot boy, Noemi tells herself, jerking out of the trance.

Not that Abel noticed. He’s concentrating on carrying her, even though he doesn’t seem to have any difficulty making his way along the cavern wall. His pale fingers find handholds on the tiniest ridges or swells in the rock. They move forward with painstaking slowness, Abel never faltering.

She remembers what he told her about being able to remain submerged. “If I weren’t here, you could just walk along the bottom of the river, couldn’t you?”

“If you weren’t here, it is highly unlikely I would be here either.”

“Good point.” Noemi sighs. “I guess my great escape plan wasn’t so great.”

This is his chance to rub it in, but Abel doesn’t take the bait. “You showed considerable ingenuity and quick thinking. You couldn’t have known the water-circulation schedule would work against us to this extent.”

Abel saving her life is just one of those things a mech is programmed to do. A mech being nice to her is something else entirely. Once more, disquiet stirs within Noemi, but she’s too exhausted to dwell on it.

And one instant later, she sees what they need. “A platform! Roughly twenty meters ahead.”

He still keeps looking at the stone, making sure of each handhold. “On this side of the river or the opposite?”

“The opposite. Can you make it?”

“I think so.”

Noemi doesn’t like the sound of that. “Are you mentally coming up with the exact odds of your making it across the river, and not telling me because it’s too scary?”

“I find that humans rarely want to hear exact mathematical findings, at least in the course of casual conversation.”

“That’s mech for ‘yes,’ isn’t it?”

“… yes.”

“Fabulous.”

Abel adds, “I will specify this much: If the odds weren’t better than fifty-fifty, I wouldn’t tell you I thought I could make it.”

They’re not much above fifty-fifty, or he’d say so, Noemi thinks. But there’s nothing else for her to do but hang on.

When they’re about five meters short of the platform, Abel pushes off from the wall, hard, without warning. Noemi’s already clinging to him so tightly it makes no difference, but she still gasps when they’re back in the current, at the river’s mercy.

This time, however, the river loses. Abel’s greater strength has already propelled them more than halfway across, and he kicks so powerfully that they’re pushed sideways as strongly as they’re moving forward. She lets go of her grip on Abel’s shoulders to reach out with one hand, which means she’s the first to grab the platform railing.

They crawl onto the platform together. But the moment they’re out of the water, Noemi collapses on her back, breathing hard. Now that pure terror is no longer fueling her, she realizes she’s almost completely out of energy. Every muscle quivers and aches. The scrapes along her forearms and the many bruises on her body were temporarily dulled by the crisis; now she feels every single one of them. Her wet clothes stick to her body, sodden and heavy, one more reason she feels like she’ll never again be able to move.

Abel, of course, is fine. He gets to his feet, brushes back his damp hair, and looks up. Noemi realizes the tunnel goes much higher here—another fifty meters, at least. He says, “I think there’s an observation station above us. Currently deserted, to judge by the lack of illumination. If there’s no other point of entry, we should be able to break through one of the windows.”

Noemi cranes her neck to look up at Abel from her place flat on her back. Sure enough, there’s a black metal ladder leading up. But she shakes her head. “Abel, I can’t climb that ladder. Not now, not for a while.” It doesn’t even feel like she could sit up.

“I can carry you, if you have the strength to hold on.”

She takes a deep breath as she considers this. It isn’t a question of her will; this is about her literal, physical strength. Nothing saps energy as drastically as swimming for your life. There’s no point in trying to go up the ladder if she’s only going to fall halfway there and get herself killed.

Slowly she sits up. She flexes her arm muscles, then her legs. Finally she nods. “Let’s get started.”

Abel helps Noemi to her feet, then takes his position on the ladder. She wraps herself around him once more, now clinging to his back instead of his chest. As he starts climbing upward, she realizes how much more difficult this is out of the water; as overpowering as the current was, at least her buoyancy took some of her body weight. This way, her arms have to bear it all, and they can’t bear it for long.

“Abel?” she whispers. “Can you go any faster?”

He responds, not with words, but by speeding up so much it startles her. This is inhuman speed. The ride’s bumpier, but it hardly matters, because they reach the station within seconds. It’s a half hexagon of silvery metal sticking out from the rock wall, with thin mesh screens over the windows instead of glass. Just as Noemi’s wondering how easily the windows can be tugged from their frames, Abel punches through one of the mesh screens, pulls the whole thing out, and drops it in the river.

Noemi climbs in first and slumps into a chair as Abel joins her. Strands of his dark blond hair cling to his damp forehead, and his wet clothes drip onto the floor, yet he shows no signs of tiredness or alarm. She hasn’t begun to discover the limits of what he can do.

Abel has done all this for her, knowing that she has to destroy him.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He looks down at her in surprise, then smiles. “It’s unnecessary to thank mechs.”

“I’m not thanking you because it’s necessary. I’m thanking you because you deserve it.”

The silence between them goes on for too long after that. Noemi doesn’t want to feel grateful to Abel; she doesn’t want to be awed by him. She’s letting herself get… confused, distracted. They need to concentrate on the mission.

“Okay,” she says. “From here can we figure out where we are? And where a thermomagnetic device might be?”

Abel moves toward the one computer console in this station. “Probably. We have adequate time to research this and be sure, and for you to rest.” He says the last part as easily as the first, but she still hears what sounds like genuine concern in his voice. “Your escape plan may have had unforeseen difficulties, but at least no one will find us here.”

The door bangs open. Noemi startles as she sees someone standing there—a tall girl about her age or a couple of years younger, with deep tan skin, long brown hair caught back in a ponytail and streaked with red, and a smug grin on her face. Behind her stand three other people roughly the same age, all of whom begin to cackle with laughter.

As Noemi stares at the newcomers, aghast, the girl folds her arms across her chest with pride. “See, Razers always find bugs in the system. And now we’ve found you.”