Cytonic (Skyward #3)(3)

I knew from the delver’s impressions that this was the nowhere. That felt right to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain. Somehow I had to find answers in this place. Which seemed a whole lot more daunting to me now than it had moments ago. I…scud, I had barely escaped the Superiority with my life. Now I thought I could find answers about the delvers, one of the universe’s greatest cosmic mysteries?



Not merely about the delvers, I thought. About myself. Because in those moments when I touched the nowhere, and the beings that resided in it, I felt something that terrified me. I felt kinship.

I took a deep breath. First order of business was an inventory. M-Bot looked fine, and I still had my stolen energy rifle. I felt a ton more safe holding it. I wore what I’d escaped in: a standard Superiority pilot’s jumpsuit, a flight jacket, and a pair of combat boots. M-Bot hovered up to eye level in his drone, his grabber arms twitching.

“A jungle?” he asked me. To him, the time I’d spent communing with the delver would have passed in an instant. “Um, Spensa, why are we in a jungle?”

“Not sure,” I said. I glanced around for any sign of Doomslug. She was cytonic like me—slugs were what made ships able to hyperjump—and I hoped that she’d done as I’d asked, and jumped to safety on Detritus.

To be certain, I reached out with my powers to see if I could sense her. Also, could I jump home? I stretched outward, and felt…

Nothing? I mean, I still had my powers, but I couldn’t sense Detritus, or the delver maze, or Starsight. None of the places I could normally hyperjump to. It was eerie. Like…waking up at night and turning on the lights, only to find infinite blackness around you.

Yes, I was definitely in the nowhere.

“When we entered the black sphere, I felt the delvers,” I said to M-Bot. “And…I talked to one of them. The one from before. It said to walk the Path of Elders.” I rested my fingers on the wall behind us. “I think…this is a doorway, M-Bot.”

“The stone wall?” M-Bot asked. “The portal we entered was a sphere.”



“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the sky through the trees. It was pinkish for some reason.

“Maybe we passed through the nowhere and came out on another planet?” M-Bot said.

“No, this is the nowhere. Somehow.” I stomped my foot, testing the soft earth beneath. The air was humid, like in a bath, but the jungle felt too quiet. Weren’t these places supposed to be teeming with life?

Beams of light filtered in from my right, parallel to the ground. So was it…sunset here? I’d always wanted to see one of those. The stories made them sound dramatic. Unfortunately, the trees were so thick that I couldn’t make out the source of the light, merely the direction.

“We need to study this place,” I said. “Set up a base camp, explore the surroundings, get our bearings.”

As if he hadn’t heard, M-Bot floated closer to me.

“M-Bot?”

“I…Spensa, I am angry!”

“Me too,” I said, smacking my hand with my fist. “I can’t believe that Brade betrayed me. But—”

“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of…of… Gah!”

I set aside my own concerns and focused on how he sounded. When I’d first found M-Bot in the little drone, his speech had been sluggish and slurred—like he’d been on heavy pain meds. But he was speaking clearly now, and quickly, more like his old self.

He buzzed back and forth in front of me like he was pacing. “I don’t care anymore if the emotions are fake. I don’t care that my routines simulate them. I am angry, Spensa! You abandoned me on Starsight!”

“I had to,” I said. “I had to help Detritus!”

“They ripped my ship apart!” he said, zipping the other direction. Then he froze in place, hovering. “My ship…my body… It’s gone…” He drooped in the air, sagging down almost to the ground.



“Uh, M-Bot?” I said, stepping up. “I’m sorry. Really. But look, can we have this conversation later?”

I was pretty sure that jungles like this were full of dangerous beasts. At least, in Gran-Gran’s stories people always got attacked in jungles. It made sense: anything could be hiding out among those shadowed trunks and deceptive ferns. I remembered how intimidated I’d felt when I’d first stepped out of the caverns and seen the sky. There had been so many directions to look, so many open places.

This was even more unnerving. Something could come at me from any direction. I reached down to touch M-Bot’s drone, which still hovered near the ground. “We should map the area,” I said, “and see if we can find a cave or something for shelter. Does that drone of yours have any kind of sensors? Are you picking up any signs of civilization, like radio broadcasts? There are mining operations in here, I think.”

When he didn’t reply, I knelt beside him. “M-Bot?”

“I,” he said, “am angry.”

“Look—”

“You don’t care. You never care about me! You left me!”