Cytonic (Skyward #3)(2)

We were invaders.

I tried again, more desperate this time. They rebuffed me. As if…they’d seen what I’d done to the one of their kind, and had prepared themselves to resist the same sort of approach.

I recoiled at the wave of their terrible anger. And I heard a terrified scream. Doomslug? Her shout projected something into my brain, a location.

Home.

The delvers withdrew. I unnerved them, it seemed. They hadn’t expected to find me here. That gave me an opening.

Thanks to Doomslug, I could feel the path. I could get to Detritus. I could see Gran-Gran, and…and Jorgen. Scud, I missed him. I wanted to be near him again, talk to him again. I needed to get home to my friends and help them. The war was going to escalate now that Winzik had seized control of the Superiority.

I almost hyperjumped. But I lingered. Something held me back. An impression, an instinct.

What am I? that singular delver projected in a pleading tone. What are WE?

I’m Spensa Nightshade, I sent to it. A pilot.

Is that all?

It used to be all I cared about. But now…now I’d discovered another side to me. Something frightening, something I didn’t completely understand.

There is a way to learn, the delver sent. In this place. We call it the nowhere. You sensed that, didn’t you?

Yes, I had. But I didn’t want to stay here. I tried to put that option out of my mind. I needed to go home.

But…did my people need me? Just another pilot? I visualized something then. A projection of my own fears? Maybe it was an effect of the nowhere. I saw myself return and rejoin Skyward Flight, fighting…and failing. Failing when the delvers inevitably returned, because a fighter pilot—no matter how skilled—couldn’t defeat them. Failing when the Superiority marshaled the power of its cytonics, hyperjumping whole fleets. Worse, they could manipulate cytonics such as me, exploit weaknesses in our powers.



They’d done that to my father. Turned him against his own flight. Led him to death.

I was a pilot, yes. But pilots weren’t enough.

We knew so little about any of this. We didn’t understand what the delvers were. How could we hope to fight them? We didn’t understand cytonics—up until recently, we’d considered those who had these powers to be “defects.” How could I face opponents like Brade, skilled with their talents, if I ran from who I was?

Home called to me, and I yearned to return. But home didn’t have answers.

Can you show me? I asked the delver. What I am?

Maybe. I don’t even know what I am. There is a place we can learn, a place in the nowhere. A place where…we were all…born…

There are no places in the nowhere, I sent.

Not in its heart, no. But at the fringes there are settlements.

I saw the meaning—the delver spoke of a region where acclivity stone was mined. Another mystery I had never quite understood. How did people go into the nowhere and harvest that rock, if the nowhere was a formless void?

Yes, there were actual places on the fringes. Places important to cytonics. Important to me. The delver put one of these locations into my mind.

I hung trapped between two opposite pulls. One, my desire to go home, to hold Jorgen, to laugh with my friends. The other, something frightening. Unknown. Like the frightening, unknown things in my own soul.

If you come here, the delver sent, it will be difficult to return. Very difficult. And you might get lost…

I felt Doomslug’s mind trembling. The rest of the delvers began to reappear, eyes opening—piercing white holes in reality, burning and hating. They did not want me going where that delver directed.



In the end, that was what prompted my decision. I’m sorry, Jorgen, I sent—hoping he could at least feel the words. I had to choose the path that led to answers. Because in that moment, I was absolutely certain it was the only way to protect the people I loved.

You go home, I told Doomslug. I will find my way later. I grabbed hold of the destination the delver had sent me.

Thank you, the delver projected. I could feel its sincere relief. Seek to walk…the Path of Elders…and remember to not get lost…

Wait! I sent. The Path of Elders?

But the delver withdrew, and I felt the others preparing to attack. So I gave Doomslug a final push to go home, then activated my powers and threw myself into the unknown.





I dropped out of a wall.

Like, I emerged straight from the stone. I flopped forward in a heap of tangled clothing and limbs. M-Bot made a grunting noise as his drone body fell out beside me, but there was no sign of Doomslug.

I scrambled to my feet, orienting myself, looking around to see…a jungle? Like, a real jungle. I’d seen pictures in school of Old Earth, and this place reminded me of those. Imperious moss-covered trees. Branches like broken arms, twisted and draped with thick vines like power lines. It smelled like the algae vats, only more…dirty? Earthy?

Scud. It truly was a jungle—like where Tarzan of the Apes had lived in Gran-Gran’s stories. Were there apes here? I’d always thought I’d make a good queen of the apes.

M-Bot hovered up, turning around to take it in. The wall we’d fallen out of was behind us. A flat stone freestanding in the jungle, like a monolith. It was overgrown with weeds and vines, and I recognized the carvings in it. I’d seen similar carvings on a wall in the tunnels on Detritus.