THEY FALL BACKWARD, GAINING SPEED. NOEMI CAN ONLY clutch the metal that’s clearly not doing a damn thing to keep her from tumbling down into the open maw of the crashed ship. She winces, preparing herself for the worst—

—and the framework stops hard. The reverberation through the metal carries into her bones, and the jolt of it nearly makes her lose her grip, but she manages to hang on. Her blaster tumbles down, a brief flash of moonlight on metal before it vanishes.

What just happened? She looks around as best she can and realizes the metal framework is still connected to the ship by various cables and one twisted but unbroken beam. It sways precariously, suggesting that connection won’t hold much longer. The framework’s fallen from being parallel to the sides of the ship to perpendicular—stretched across the deep gash, but not nearly long enough to reach to the other side.

“Noemi!” Abel calls. He must be moving closer to her, because the entire framework trembles; she hugs it tighter and tries to ignore her aching muscles. “Are you all right?”

“I didn’t fall, if that’s what you mean. But this is not all right. Not even close!”

Don’t look down, she tells herself. Just go hand over hand back to that side of the ship. Like the monkey bars!

She’s always hated monkey bars.

Abel reaches her side, which would be reassuring if it weren’t for the buck and sway of the metal frame with every move either of them makes. One extra-violent dip makes Noemi break her own rule and look down; immediately she wishes she hadn’t. The bottom of this gash in the ship lies too far below; the crevasse in the wreckage looks like a deep canyon through stone, except more ragged, uglier, deadlier. She stares into the jumble of sharp wreckage and snow beneath her, knowing at any second she might become part of it. And if they fall, she wants to be holding on to Abel. Maybe then she could bear the feeling of air rushing around them. Maybe she could endure the cold, and the terror. It will just be hanging on to Abel until the obliterating end.

“I doubt Simon’s mechs will pursue us here,” Abel says. “His control lacks the finesse necessary for bringing any of them across.”

“You’re wrong.” At any other time, she’d be proud of finally getting one step ahead of Abel. Now she just wants to throw up. “He won’t send any of the big mechs, but the—the severed things, the hands and arms—he could send those.”

It would only take one mechanized fist slamming down on her knuckles to send her falling to her death.

“True.”

“You could fire on them, though. Give us cover. You’re strong enough to hold on with one hand, aren’t you? So you could still fire your blaster.”

“Of course I’m strong enough to hold on with one hand.” He sounds almost offended. “However, my blaster, like yours, was shaken loose during the fall.”

“Just great.”

Abel finally reaches her side and slings one arm beneath her, helping to hold up her weight. Trying to be encouraging, he adds, “The mechs may simply wait to see if we make it back to that side of the ship, to capture or kill us then.”

“Fabulous.” Noemi’s breathing hard with the effort required to hang on, even with Abel’s help. “I don’t think this framework’s going to hold very long. Especially not if we keep moving.”

“Agreed.”

For a second they hang there in silence. Noemi turns her face from the crevasse below to the luminous moons overhead in Haven’s sky. This might be her final experience of beauty, of wonder. Cold wind whips around them, and ice crystals sprinkle her cheeks and eyelashes. Despite the chill, terror has made her hands start to sweat. Oh, great, this is exactly when I want to be slippery.

Abel says, “Attempting to return along the framework may be unduly dangerous, if not impossible.”

“Yeah, but what else are we supposed to do?”

“I might be able to jump to the other side of the ship. You could hold on to my back.”

Noemi cranes her neck to look at the cavernous gap around them. She can’t tell exactly how far away the other side is, but—it’s far. “Not even you can make that jump with me weighing you down… can you?”

Abel remains silent for a second, then says, “We’ll find out.”

“Not reassuring.”

“Unfortunately, that which is reassuring is not always true.”

She swallows hard. “You’d just be swinging over, using your arms. Not jumping.”

“The verb is imprecise, but I felt it would sound more encouraging.”

“It did until you explained it!”

Apologetically, Abel says, “You did ask.”

“Okay.” A stronger gust of wind sends shudders throughout the framework. It won’t hold their weight much longer. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself together the best she can, turning her head to face Abel. They’re so close together their noses nearly touch. “All right. I know we have to do this. I just don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it much either,” Abel admits, “but in this situation, the best solution isn’t necessarily a good solution.”

“You are the absolute worst at comforting people ever.”

One corner of his mouth lifts, half a smile, but his mech focus remains absolute. “Our first difficulty will be adjusting your weight onto my back.” The air currents whirl around them, dusting them with ice, as Noemi’s brain tries desperately to think of a better way out of this, any other way out of this, or maybe how she could’ve avoided being out here to begin with.

“Hold still,” she commands, and he braces himself, becoming even more unyielding than the metal they hang from. Noemi calls on her memories of basic training. They had to climb plastic webbing, nets made of thick rope, even trees. She always scored at the top of her squadron. If she did it then, she can do it now.

Swing your arm over OH GOD OH GOD okay you’ve got it GOD HELP ME grab on to him HARD—

“Okay!” she yelps as she clutches Abel around the neck with her arms, and around his waist with her legs. She dangles from his back like a sloth from a tree branch. “Okay, okay. Got it.”

His voice is slightly strangled as he says, “You’re lucky I don’t have the same respiratory needs as humans.”

“I know you could probably hang here all day, which is great for you and everything, but could you please jump already?”

“I need to brace myself.” With startling speed, he swings around the edge of the framework so that he’s crouching atop it instead of hanging beneath. Having him between her and the deep crevasse below feels irrationally reassuring—until the metal framework groans ominously, and a shudder sends vibrations through both their bodies. They don’t have long. Abel senses it, too. “Are you ready?”

Noemi grips Abel even more tightly. “Go.”

He jumps with such force that it knocks the breath out of her. For one terrifying, surreal instant it seems as though they’re flying—the other side impossibly far away until it’s rushing toward them, into them. Noemi goes dizzy when they hit one of the floors, pure metal, and hit it hard.

Abel manages to grab the edge of the floor, delaying their fall. She hangs there for a terrible moment, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, until he hurls her over him.

He lets go of her—a terrifying sensation—but Noemi rolls onto the other side of the ship, onto a jagged, raw structure.

She lands rough, tastes blood, but instantly scrambles to the edge to help him. He’s not pulling himself up for some reason. Then she realizes one of his wrists is badly bent. It must have been damaged in the jump; he broke it to save her, and now he can’t save himself.

Noemi leans forward to grab his undamaged arm. “Come on,” she whispers. “I can get you inside.”

Abel shakes his head. “I’m too heavy for you.”

“I’m strong. Look, I can brace my feet.”

“My left ankle is broken.” He must have hit that wall even harder than she thought. “I can’t push myself up. You’d have to take my whole weight. It’s too dangerous.”

“So, what, you’re just going to fall to your death?”

“…I believe you can escape and contact Virginia on your own.” Still, he’s only worried about her, not about himself.

“Listen to me.” Noemi grabs his arm with all her strength and leans so close that he has no choice but to meet her eyes. “You’d better try to help me. Otherwise, you’re going to fall and drag me down with you. Because I won’t let go of you, Abel. I will never let go.”

Abel hesitates, but only for an instant. “On three.”

They count together, silently, nodding on each number—and then Noemi pulls back as hard as she can, towing Abel with her. He gets his broken forearm onto the edge of the wall, which must be agonizing, but it takes enough of his weight to pull him over the edge. Then they flop down side by side, wounded and stranded—but alive.

Distantly she hears the metal framework give way, clattering against the sides of the gash in the ship until it smashes into the wreckage. Another ninety seconds, she thinks, and we’d have been smashed with it.

Once they can breathe again, she and Abel take stock. “Wait, what is this?” she pants. They’re surrounded by solid metal, with no doors to speak of. “Some kind of storage tank?”

“Possibly.” He remains on his back a few moments longer than her. “As there is no direct means of leaving this spot, we’ll need to devise an escape once—once we’re capable of it.”

Right now, they aren’t. Noemi scraped the side of her face badly in their rough landing, and one jagged bit of metal sliced a small cut at her temple. The self-inflicted wound in her arm is bleeding more now than it was before, too, but she’s less worried about herself than she is about Abel. He manages to use a bit of torn upholstery to bind up his bent ankle with his good hand, but he winces every time he tries to move the other wrist.

“That joint has been compromised more seriously than my ankle,” he reports so calmly he might as well be talking about someone else. “Self-repair would be easier if I hadn’t extracted the auxiliary power module in order to speak to Mansfield. Just because I hadn’t called on it in thirty years, I thought I never would. I believe this is close to what humans call ‘hubris.’”

Noemi doesn’t have any tools that would allow her to repair him, even if she knew how. “This is bad.”

“The damaged components are organic. Even without the power module, I can repair myself within a few hours if I go into a regenerative state.”

She nods. “By then it’s going to be very late at night, but still dark, right? We can get out of here without anybody seeing us.”

“We’ll make a plan once we can assess our situation more fully,” Abel says. He’s talking to himself as much as to her, she suspects. “For now, we should rest.”

“Is a regenerative state like sleep?” Noemi doesn’t much like the idea of spending hours in this icy tank without anybody to talk to, but if that’s what Abel needs, she’ll deal. Maybe she can fall asleep, too. Dozing off somewhere so cold and uncomfortable would be impossible, normally, but at the moment she’s so exhausted it seems possible.

“It will be. But the transition takes several minutes.”

Abel tries to get comfortable, though there have to be few places in the galaxy less comfortable than a debris-filled, ice-cold metal tank. Noemi lets him choose a spot where he can lie on his side, then spoons behind his back, wrapping one arm around him while the other serves as her pillow. When she touches him, he goes very still.

“You need to stay warm,” she says. “If it weren’t for this parka, I’d have frozen down here already.”

“Even with the parka, you would die of exposure within forty hours. I would go into a dormant state not long thereafter and would require a full reboot to awaken.”

“Well, we’re not going to be down here that long.”

Either they’ll be out of trouble by then, or they’ll be dead.

Abel’s quiet for several seconds, and she thinks the regenerative cycle must have begun until he breaks the silence. “Aren’t you going to tell me how badly I’m comforting you?”

“…You didn’t seem to enjoy it, before.”

“Humans are better at defusing tension through humor.”

“Whaaat?” She drags out the word; if Abel wants to be teased, she’ll oblige. “The greatest mech of all mechs just admitted humans are better at something?”

“For now. I might figure it out eventually.”

“Yeah. You might.” Noemi hugs him, rests her forehead against the place between his shoulder blades. He’s not as warm as a human would be, but she hopes she has enough body heat for them both.

They might’ve lost each other. So many things between her and Abel are unsaid—so many she’s unsure of.

But Noemi knows at least one thing she wants to say to him, and she doesn’t intend to waste any more time. “Listen. About before—what I said when we were discussing Simon, and Inheritors—I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“I don’t know if ‘hurt’ is the right word,” Abel says. But after another moment he adds, “It will do.”

“You’re not ‘lesser’ than me or any other human. I told you once that you were more human than your creator, remember?”

“That proved not to be a very high bar to clear.”

She closes her eyes, concentrating to find the right words. “I don’t pity you for being a mech.”

“But you do pity me.”

If they were in any other situation, Noemi would walk away now. She’d give him time to consider; she’d think up smarter, better things to say. This would all be so much easier. Yet this is the hour they have. “I pitied you for being so alone. That’s all.”

“If other Inheritors come into being, I wouldn’t be alone. But you said their creation would be a sin.”

“Think about it, Abel. Those Inheritors—they’d be hunted across the galaxy. Mansfield never intended to reserve these just for himself or his family, and Gillian Shearer—she thinks her role in this universe is to destroy death itself. Every human who’s afraid of mortality, which means every human ever, would try to capture one. The Inheritors would spend their whole lives on the run. On your own, you can hide, but a whole race of mechs like you? The word’s going to get out. After that, you’d all be hunted down every second of your lives.”

“…That’s your objection?”

“You don’t think it would happen?”

“No. You’re right, it would, if safeguards weren’t in place. But”—Abel’s hand closes around hers—“humans can be killed. They can fall prey to disease, or accident, or even murder. That doesn’t mean they stop having children.”

Is he thinking of them as children already? That feels completely wrong to Noemi, but she can’t say exactly why, and she’s not going to speak carelessly again. “That’s different. Inheritors’ souls have been created only to be destroyed. Their bodies will live on to serve as vessels for the rich and powerful, but the Inheritors themselves—the innermost part of them—that dies. Humans aren’t created only to die.”

“I think your Bible might say differently.”

She blinks, taken aback. The entire shape of this question has just changed for her—like the drawing in which a vase suddenly becomes two faces. Every existence is finite; why should one have less value than another?

A creator’s intent matters, she thinks, but this is something she needs to consider in depth.

Gently, Abel continues, “You’re still thinking of mechs as living to serve humans. As… secondary. This is a natural assumption, since as of now I am one of only two mechs who lead an independent existence.” He turns his face toward the crevasse of wreckage and she knows he’s wondering about Simon within that ship, half-formed, afraid and angry. “But it doesn’t always have to be that way. Consider the potential.”

“I will,” Noemi promises. “But will you do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“Please consider the possibility that something’s not right with Simon. I know you feel for him. I do, too. When I spoke to him the first time, I imagined it was you if you were brand-new, and nobody had ever explained to you what you were. But Gillian rushed the process, and she used a little kid who didn’t understand. It went wrong in a way I’m not sure you can put right. Simon’s ‘games’ nearly killed us. They still could. I’m just afraid that—that you want a brother so badly you’ll ignore all the warning signs until it’s too late.”

In the long pause that follows, Noemi curses herself for every word, until Abel finally says, “You may be right. Not about the Inheritors, but about Simon. He’s… unstable.” Admitting that cost Abel. She hugs him around his waist, offering what little comfort she can, as he continues, “When I was speaking to him through his mechs, I mentioned his mother. I thought he would naturally want to return to her. But Simon felt nothing. He no longer loved her. I know that if I could no longer feel love, I would be irretrievably broken. Simon may be as well. I can’t abandon him until I’m sure—but I intend to investigate. And I’ll be more cautious in the future.”

“Okay. That’s all I ask.”

When Abel speaks again, his words come more slowly. “The regeneration cycle is about to begin.”

“Do you dream while you’re regenerating? Or only while you’re asleep?”

“I’ve never dreamed during a regeneration cycle before,” he says groggily. “But there’s no reason I couldn’t, eventually.”

Hugging him again, she says, “Then have good dreams.”

Abel shifts, as if he’s going to turn and look at her, but then his head droops onto the floor and his body goes slack. Regeneration has begun.

Noemi’s wired from their narrow escape, and a debris-strewn tank in below-freezing temperatures isn’t exactly the most comfortable place she’s ever tried to sleep. But she’s so exhausted that she thinks she’ll be able to grab an hour or two once the adrenaline wears off. Maybe she can try to have some sweet dreams of her own.

As long as Abel’s with her, she feels safe. Which at the moment is a total illusion, but she’ll take what she can get.

She rests her forehead against his back again, content to feel the in-and-out of his breath—slower than a human’s would be, even in sleep, but still comforting. This small comfort feels precious to her. Beautiful, and rare.

Noemi’s never questioned what she felt for Abel. By the time he told her he loved her, they had less than one hour left to be together. In the months since, she’s often wondered about the nature of his love, whether it was the same as a human’s. But there had been no point in asking what she might feel in return. It had seemed so obvious that they could never meet again.

Holding him now, though—the sense of longing and need even while he’s in her arms—well, it makes her think.

In her memory she hears what Abel said to her months ago, as they parted at the Genesis Gate: It hurts more to lose you than it did to give up my own life. Does that mean what I feel isn’t only a copy? That I do love you?

She answered, I think maybe it does.

That seems even truer to her now than it did then.

She closes her eyes and hugs Abel more tightly. Just for now, she’s going to pretend there’s nothing wrong. That there’s nothing else in all the worlds but the two of them, together.