“Ring station 6 auth centre, we have reason to believe the comm centre has lost power again. See if Martin is available, those robots will just screw it up even more.”

“Copy that. We will contact him immediately. What do you suggest for payment?” 

“I suggest we tell him we’ll review his complaints.” 

“Affirmative, I’ll inform the higher-ups. Auth centre over and out”

…

Martin lugged his gear behind him through the maintenance crawlspace. Of course, the title didn’t quite fit in his case, considering it was about double his height. Still, it would be a very tight squeeze for any non-Parvian, thus it maintained the title. He tousled his hair, trying to shake out some of the dusty residue from his previous assignment in the oxygen purifiers. Apparently the stuff caused cancer if it wasn’t filtered, but pretty much everything around here did. Thankfully, Parvians spent most of their lives pumped full of anti-carcinogens, as their smaller size resulted in bodies more susceptible to tumours. 

They told him they’d review his complaints after this job, and he hoped dearly they would, since then he might finally get some justice against his terrible “coworkers”. He shivered as he remembered one of the more humiliating events. 

He was brought onto the assignment under the pretence that he would be taking a look at the sulfur aerosol containment tanks, and that the entrance to the sub-area would require him to crawl through a soft gate, which were often used to prevent leaks without needing proper bulkheads for the maintenance robots. Of course, this ended up being complete bullshit. The station did not have a sulfur containment, nor did it have a soft gate system. Instead, he ended up crawling from a maintenance tunnel into the ass of the senior economist, right before she sat down to review a very, very large stack of papers. Thankfully, a good jumpstart kit placed on her insides was all he needed to “convince” her to release him before he was in there too long. 

A lot of the complaints he issued were similar to this, if not a little less creative. This one was particularly humiliating, however, as this was the first time he had found himself on the wrong side of a rear end. 

He often was paid in non-currency methods, as food and water were quite easy to come by, living was free, and if anything, the station at least had decent free amenities, such as the jacuzzi that he wasn’t capable of using without drowning. A few credits every once in a while certainly wouldn’t have hurt, though. 

Trying to take his mind off his work situation, he focused on the small vibrations he felt every few seconds on his way, signifying that something was going wrong in the superfluid helium axles that maintained the ring’s rotation. The fact that the ring even had a zero rotation centre was a very poor design, as those areas are typically only used on ships, not stations, giving him more reason to believe that this was not a proper station, but a repurposed terraforming ship. Whatever it truly was, it didn’t change that it was a subject of constant annoyance to the Parvian.

It wasn’t long until he came upon the sector that housed the power unit for the comms station.. It was characterized by its pitch black colour, which was only further darkened by the lack of power. Martin trudged on anyway, activating the lamp hanging off his belt. 

Due to a quirk of the English language, the word stellar means both “of or relating to a star” and “exceedingly good.” This quirk is exacerbated by the fact that ring station 6 would be then called a stellar station, which is simply incorrect, as the station was quite terrible, particularly for the local Parvian. The internals of the ship were rough, outdated, and of exceedingly poor quality. 

Martin climbed up to the power control system, which despite being a good distance “above” him was not difficult, as the artificial gravity was reasonably lower than the gravity of Mick’s planet (or so he was told, as he had never been there himself). Activating the panel through the backup battery, he was greeted with a big red power symbol. The Parvian muttered angrily to himself about something relating to the auth chief’s mother, but was interrupted, having heard the sound of a shuffling behind him. He turned around and lifted his lantern, squinting his eyes, but the room was too large, and the darkness was not penetrated by his inconsequential lamp. 

Shrugging, he turned back around to press the button. He lifted his arm, and-

Woosh 

A crushing force around his torso, and a sense of intense acceleration, the air blowing his hair into his face. Clearing the hair out of the way of his eyes, he was immediately met with the face of a woman in the process of wrenching her goggles off her eyes. He was tightly gripped in her hand.

“-ugh!” The woman tore her goggles off her head, causing her black hair to become messy. He immediately noticed her impossibly pale skin. It was a common occurrence for inhabitants of space stations to be pale from the lack of sunlight, but this was a different case entirely. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her opposite wrist. “Goddamn, that light is bright,” she winced.

Martin looked down at his exposed lamp. It wasn’t that bright, but she was probably wearing amplifying gear to help in the dark, which would obviously make something like his lamp a whole lot brighter.

She looked off in the far distance, and tapped the air in a frustrated manner. After a few moments, she looked back down at the Parvian in her hand and grinned. Wordlessly, she hooked her thumb in the waistband of her skintight suit and pulled it out, revealing her undergarments and nethers. Martin thought he noticed that the outline of the panties were tighter, and the cloth part itself was more on the loose side, a design typically employed by those who intend to hold a Parvian. Of course, he had the feeling his theory was going to be either proven or disproven very soon. 

With that, he was dropped in, and he both heard and felt the clothes snap shut, pinning him against the warm genitals of the mystery woman. The heady scent was unfortunately one quite familiar to him, and he could immediately feel that his identification was correct. While the style made escape impossible, at least it made the current situation less painful. The woman began walking, Martin could feel it. He merely sat in the presence of the slit, feeling the enormous legs to his sides slide from her movement. He knew better than to  attempt escape, as that would only cause the monster before him to get wet, making the makeshift prison more humid, more heady, more slippery, and altogether more unpleasant.

…

After some awkward climbing around, as the breaching hatch on Tenebris’ ship was not designed for raiding ring stations, so the ship ended up jutting out of the station perpendicular to the rotational gravity. The end result of this was that she had to walk along what would normally be the walls down onto her chair, and after a few seconds of tapping on screens that only existed in her mind, the ship’s reactor came to life. The familiar hum of the reactor’s magnets getting to work gave the ship a slight vibrating quality, but the effect soon resided as the reaction became more stable. 

Tenebris rotated the chair in its socket, making it more natural for the station’s artificial gravity. She frowned at the bulge in the crotch of her suit. The Parvian had barely moved an inch since she put him in there. 

“Hey, guy! Do something!” She demanded, tapping the bulge. No response. She groaned in annoyance, and stuck her hand into her suit to withdraw the man. Feeling her hand wrap around his torso, she pulled him out with a bothered flick. He was definitely still alive. In fact, he made direct eye contact with her. However, there was no fear, which she didn’t at all expect from a Parvian. In fact, he didn’t even look distraught, just slightly bothered. “Aren’t you supposed to be terrified, and then squirm and stuff?” She inquired, bewildered at the idea of anyone having such little fear toward being kidnapped. 

“Yeah, probably.” He murmured.

Tenebris frowned. “You’re making this a lot less fun than it should have been,” she groaned.

“I’m so very sorry that your kidnapping me didn’t get you off as much as you’d have liked.” Martin sneered in response, crossing his arms. The display was quite bold, considering everything below his chest was currently locked in the strange woman’s comparatively massive hand. 

“Ugh. Listen, what’s your name?”

“Martin.” 

“Alright, Martin,” She spat, “you’re going to make me feel good, or I’ll just fucking eat you.” 

“No, you won’t,” Martin retorted, seeming almost bored. 

Tenebris physically recoiled at his response in shock. “What the hell makes you think that I won’t?” 

“You want to sell me, no? You took me, and only me from the station because Parvians are the hot new trend in the galaxy and you wanted a piece of that pie, and no one wants to buy a dead Parvian.”

The woman before him frowned even more, growing visibly more annoyed, but before she could release her anger at him, a transmission notification came through her neural interface, flagged by the system as highly important. She passed along the data to the ship’s display, and hit play.

The video feed showed only a large circle with simple plants and grass growing on the interior with their tips pointed towards the centre, the insignia of this station’s faction. The audio, however, was a different beast.

“Attention, trespasser. We have identified your ship, and seized drive control. Please return to your breaching port and wait with your hands behind your head facing away from the door. Security forces will be dispatched to escort you from your ship and scour it for stolen items. Failure to comply will result in further penalties, any suspicious or uncooperative behaviour will result in the immediate destruction of you and your ship.” 

Text appeared, reading in capital red letters “transmission over”  

Tenebris’ eyes went wide, dropping the man in her grasp onto her leg. She tapped fearfully at her controls, but the system’s response confirmed what the message had already told her. Martin got up, brushed himself off, and finally turned back to her and broke the silence. “I suppose that’s it for you then. I’ll be leaving now.” He spoke, nonchalantly, turning to walk away. 

“No” she answered coldly. She placed her hand to form a wall on her leg. 

The Parvian spun back around on his heel, surprised. “What? Huh? They’re gonna loot the ship! They’re gonna pat you down! They’ll obviously find me.” 

The way she looked at him next caused a pit to form in his stomach. The hand on her leg drew back in, and before he could run to escape it was clasped around him again, this time with his arms trapped to his sides as well. He began violently thrashing to escape his fate, but it didn’t  help to slow down the process. She brought her hand to her mouth, with him in it, and gave his entire upper body a long lick, covering him in saliva. Tenebris slid out her chair so that she was standing on what was normally the wall again. She hooked her opposite thumb into the back waistband of her ship suit and pulled the garment down to her thighs, revealing her backside. 

Her supple ass was really a thing of elegance, the perfect thing to activate just the right parts of any given neurology. The skin had the same incredible paleness as the rest of her skin, and a very smooth quality, with blemishes one could only pick out if they took a good time to analyze. The size was impressive, and the shape was certainly nothing one would take issue with.

Not that either of them took the time to notice, however, as they were both concerned with their own matters at hand. For Martin, he was about to get shoved up his kidnapper’s ass to hide him from authorities. For Tenebris, she was about to shove this Parvian up her ass to hide him from authorities. 

The Parvian continued his fervent efforts, despite the complete lack of impact they had had until then, as he was brought towards the massive woman’s anus. Tenebris really wanted to have made it a more special moment, where she could really soak in the power she had over the tiny man, but this would have to do. She went into a light squat, separating her cheeks in full view of the vast cosmos. She pressed the Parvian’s little saliva-covered face to her  pulsating asshole, and she could have sworn she actually felt the grimace on his face as he desperately writhed to get away. His fervent squirms were like lightning shooting up her spine, crackling along her nerves. She maneuvered her hand around his body, pressing his face against her flexing sphincter while she cooed in pleasure until her palm was placed against his feet. 

This was the position. A part of her wanted to relish the moment, for the memory, but both the logical and more primal parts of her seemed to agree that she had to stuff his little body into her rectum as soon as possible. She began applying pressure, while using her fingers to hold his little body straight where his knees tried to buckle against the force of the unyielding asshole. Right as she began to become concerned with the amount of force, the sensation of her rosebud finally opening overcame her senses. A staggered gasp escaped her lips, the intrusion of the Parvian feeling like ecstasy wracking her body. She bit her lip, pumping his writhing body a tiny bit in and a tiny bit out, getting a little deeper every time. She had to try not to scream with how amazing it felt, his squirming and the stretching of her ass. 

The power rush was beyond intoxicating, shoving this tiny Parvian into her ass, imagining the sensory hell he must have been going through, and how powerless he was to stop her. Her pussy was getting rapidly more wet throughout. Better yet, Martin had redoubled his efforts once he began to enter her colon, adding even more of a rush of pleasure with every pump. 

His body was almost entirely inside her now, his kicking legs being the only thing not entirely up her hungry asshole. She felt her anus contracting repeatedly, drawing his body even further into hers without any further assistance from her hands. She made a mental note to experiment with this later, and with that, she placed her fingertips on his legs, and with a smooth motion, pushed him all the way inside her. 

That was it. It was done. She could still feel him wriggling in her ass. Her finger had slipped in behind him, but she quickly withdrew it, leaving him locked inside her. It wasn’t mindblowing or orgasmic to her, but it just felt right. She just felt more full, more complete with the man inside her. There was a small puddle forming on the floor beneath her, dripping from her loins. 

She stood back up and pulled her garments from her knees back up to her waist, not bothering to clean up her mess. Continuing on, she put on her best straight face and marched down to the breaching door. Martin’s body jostled a little inside her with every footfall, giving a tad of extra pleasure on top of his normal movements. Her rectum contorted around his body, holding him tightly for the most part. He still had the ability to squirm, but not to the point where his movements could be called “thrashing.”

After some careful climbing around the interior of her ship, Tenebris finally arrived in the breaching chamber. Standing around the shut door  above her was a five-person squad with varying equipment, clearly just scientists who drew the short straw, but still likely possessing some sort of training. She could assume they did not carry firearms, as any poorly placed round threatened the entire station, flimsy and thin as it was, including the person behind the gun. She could hazard a guess they likely carried incapacitating lasers or net shooters. Overwhelmingly likely would be that they carried blades of some sort. Not an altercation she wanted to be involved in, best to just surrender and see what opportunities come up later. 

She oriented herself away from the door the door, got on her knees (slightly off-level due to the awkward angle of the docking) and placed her hands on the back of her head. The door slid open above her, and the crew climbed down into the ship. she was quickly handcuffed and dragged out onto the station. Power had returned to this area of the ship again, the morons probably realizing that she had just flipped a blatantly obvious off-switch. She was guided down a series of grey metal hallways, crowded with equipment of all sorts, notably including high-density terraforming chemicals. 

Eventually, the group reached a door with the control panel set to a prisoner configuration. A hand on her shoulder turned her around. It was a woman, her skin was fairly dark, her head was buzzed, and she seemed reasonably young. She began by patting her down, particularly on the pockets of her loose fitting shorts. From her pockets, she took her hand-display, multi tool, and hole patching spray, to name a few. From behind her, she withdrew a scanner of some sort, likely x-ray. Trying to look as calm as possible, Tenebris fiddled with the back of her hand while the other woman began by scanning her from the head down. 

The scanner slowly approached her midriff, inching closer to the stolen goods inside her. As it reached her navel, it flickered and halted. “Piece of shit…” the woman muttered, hitting the side of the device. “Whatever. I’ll get this fixed some other time.” She gestured to the other four guards, “just lock her up. We’ll deal with this soon enough. And get her some water, she looks like a goddamn ghost.” 

The guards approached her, and led her into the room. It was plain, but not terrible. It had a small bathroom in one corner, and a bed in another. The door shut and locked behind her, leaving her alone with her own prisoner.

Martin rubbed the back of his neck. For reasons unbeknownst to him, his captor had suddenly tensed her entire body quite hard, causing her rectum to crush his entire body like a vice. Since then, she had flexed her ass a few times, and none of them had been anywhere near the same pressure, giving him the impression that something had taken place outside.

Inside her ass, it was a cramped, sweltering sauna. He couldn’t arch his neck, or move his limbs without hitting hitting an unpleasant surface. Her colon was unbelievably humid, and the ribbed walls were lined with copious amounts of mucous, which stuck to his skin and just kept accumulating in thicker layers every time she flexed. The temperature itself was actually quite bearable, and he could feel his metabolism adjusting to the new environment, with his body beginning to generate less of it’s own heat, an adaptation special to Parvians. However, the worst part by far was the smell. It was incredibly powerful, and incredibly concentrated. Unsurprisingly, it reeked of ass, and all the terrible scents that came with an ass that he preferred not to think about. But it was to a degree where it almost become hard to comprehend. The smell was absolutely putrid. It clung to the skin, burned the nostrils, watered the eyes. Even without breathing through his mouth, Martin could taste it. It was a horrid, bitter taste that he would not soon forget. That is, if it ever even left. 

Just for good measure, as if she had been listening to his inner monologue, the woman above him flexed her ass muscles again, contorting around him like the galaxy’s second worst sleeping bag (second only to the sleeping bag filled with bullet ants that he heard was in a museum a couple light years away from here). Her contractions applied a fresh coat of mucous to his entire body, particularly his face. His clothes and gear were completely soaked, and unlike his last time inside a colon, he hadn’t brought his jumpstart, so he had no “bargaining chip” so to speak. He simply had to wait until he was released on her terms. 

She hadn’t moved in a good while. Her footfalls were usually quite noticeable, as they typically resulted in him bumping his head on the “walls.” He guessed she was sitting down, but he couldn’t be sure. The Parvian sat in silence. 

She’d let him out soon, right? But the minutes passed, and there was nothing but the beating of her heart and the subtle unconscious movements of her intestines. Eventually, he felt the world rotate, quickly, as his captor rotated onto her side, laying down. For Martin, her laying down caused him to get a tiny moments of free fall, followed by him crashing onto her bowel walls once again, further covering his body in her anal mucous.

The environs were beginning to really get to him. Every single one of his senses was having an absolutely abysmal time, and it didn’t seem it would end anytime soon. It was becoming increasingly unbearable. 

Was this just his life now? Would he be doomed to a life of being shoved into the least savoury parts of women? If his kidnapper had her way and got away with the money, that would likely be his fate. But as he came to think of it, his life was already partly that, on the ring station. Even if he got away, God knows what would happen, especially if that damned economist got a hold of him again. He shivered at the thought. He envied everyone around him, who didn’t have to put up with the threat of being stepped on, used like a toy or possessed as a rare good like jewelry. Hell, he wished he could just hitch a ride on a ship and go somewhere else. 

He paused. Somehow, in all his years aboard the ring station, he had never considered the prospect of leaving. It was his home, for so long. But it was miserable. It was risky to leave, but out in the galaxy he could get away from the life he currently lead. In fact, he was currently sitting in the rectum of his best ticket out. Only problem was, he couldn’t leave on her terms or he’d probably get stuck up some stuck-up jerk. 

A bargaining chip was what he needed, or something that would force her to take him where he wanted to go. Of course, she’d have to escape from his coworkers first in order to take him. It clicked. He would help her escape, and then she would owe it to him to at the very least let him go. It wasn’t flawless, but it was a chance, and the worst that could happen if he failed would be returning to his normal life. A hopeful grin made its way to his grime-covered face. For once in his life, he might be able to make something of himself. 

He began furiously wriggling in an attempt to convince his captor to let him out, so that he could present his offer. In the process, he was covered in more sickening ass juices, and the rapid movement forced him to take deep breaths of the horrid, tainted air to keep himself from passing out. But it would be would be worth it in the long run. Up above, he could feel her stir. It was working! She stood, and her footsteps jostled the Parvian about inside her. He shimmied his way down closer to her anus, hoping to get a foot outside that she could pull him out with. 

The world rotated. Presumably, she had bent over, hopefully to take off the lower part of her shipsuit. He pushed his leg into the wrinkled passage. It was difficult, as the slimy walls proved too slippery to get a good grip, and he would often push himself back, rather than pushing his foot in. Yet, he continued nonetheless. Slide down, kick. Slide down, kick. This repeated, until finally, his foot miraculously went through. The outside air felt incredibly cold after his time in her boiling innards. Using his foot as an anchor, he slid his other leg down, parting her anus even more and getting his second foot out. Some more awkward shimmying, and his legs from the knee down were protruding from her asshole, touching her cheeks. A pair of fingers grabbed his legs apprehensively, with little contact on his skin. They began pulling, sliding his body out her ass. Martin was practically shaking with excitement, almost not noticing the amount of mucous and grime he was being dragged through. Almost. 

Finally, he slipped out completely, and he could have sworn he heard a “pop” when his head exited the sphincter. He was being dangled upside down, his hair and arms hanging below him. From his upside-down analysis, he could tell he was in a bathroom. A small one, at that. And of course, the obvious thing taking up a lot of his view was the same massive pale ass he had seen earlier. This time, he noticed her anus from the outside, covered in sticky juices that had been dragged out along with his body. He didn’t notice it last time, since he was forcing his eyes closed, but it was of a noticeable blue hue, strangely enough. 

The next moment, he was flying through the air back toward the face of his captor. His body leaned heavily left, being dragged behind his legs. The arm holding him slowed to a halt in front of her face, causing him to swing the other way, before returning to his standard dangling. Dizzy, Martin blinked a few times to regain his sense of direction. 

Looking forward, he got a better look at the woman’s face, without the unnatural blue light of his lamp. She still retained her pale quality, and he would almost think she was ill if her blue eyes weren’t so very bright, and almost unnaturally alert, and lips that were plush and pink. Her jet black hair featured two streaks of red, reaching down to the ends of her hair. He noticed her shipsuit, which was skintight, and had a pair of mirrored red lines running up the height of it that complimented her hair. The suit seemed reasonably professional. Below that  were a pair of military issue combat shorts she was still in the process of shimmying back up with her opposite hand. They were loose, grey, and covered in numerous pockets, overall very utilitarian in nature. Additionally, she seemed quite tall, for the standards of normal sized people. 

Bringing his eyes back to her face, he began to confidently present his offer, grinning. “I have a-“

“That was fun,” she interrupted him, “how’d you like it in there, Marty-boy?”
 The grin disappeared, making way for a confused, and slightly annoyed look. “It was terrible, it reeked like ass-“

“Pff,” she snickered, interrupting him again, “yeah, no shit!” She smirked.

Martin stared at her, dumbfounded. “If you’re going to shove someone up your butt, it better not have shit! That’s basic decency.” He rebuked frustratedly, the sarcasm clearly lost on him.

She chuckled in response. This little Parvian might probe useful yet, at least for entertainment. “So next, I’m thinking back in the front, see if hanging out in the backseat improved your attitude much. And then if I don’t like it, maybe I’ll have you swab the poopdeck, sailor.” She bubbled giddily, beginning to bring Martin back down to her hips.

“Nonono, wait!” He begged, “I can help you get off the ship!” He staggered  out, desperate to get his offer on the table. Her hand stopped moving. 

“Well,” she paused, “now why didn’t you just say so before?” She exclaimed, turning around and reaching out to put him under the sink to her side. She turned up the faucet, slightly, careful not to overwhelm him with too much water. Letting the water run over him, most of the grime slid off immediately. She held his body in both hands, under his armpits, and used her thumbs to rub off some of the more stubborn bits. “When I’m done cleaning you up,” she explained, “I’ll hide you somewhere close and then we’ll hear your little plan. I just don’t want to stay in here too long, your coworkers might get suspicious if they have cameras.” 

“Sorry about squeezing you real hard a little while ago.” She apologized, noticing he grimaced in discomfort when she touched his neck region, “I had to use one of my mods to short out their scanner, since I couldn’t have them finding you. Only problem is, it hurts like a bitch to use, since it’s powered by my nerves. Gets me tight all over when I use it.” She explained. 

“Is that the one that has you, yknow…” he began to pantomime her interfacing with her neural chip with his hands, “tippy-tapping the air?”

“Quit moving, I don’t want to drop you.” She interjected. “But no, that’s my chip. I prefer the gesture based interactions, the mind reading ones are too creepy for me. The EMP I used is inside my palm.” She brought her hand up, where he could see the outline of something hard and triangular, sitting just under the skin. The region was red and inflamed, probably a side effect of activating it. “See?” 

She returned to washing his body, this time thumbing his arms. “Anything under the clothes?” She inquired. 

“No, it’s all good in there. I think I’m alright now, actually.” Martin replied. “Yknow, I haven’t got your name yet.”

“Tenebris.” She replied casually, turning off the tap. Moving him into just one hand, she brought her hand up to her neck, and she traced a line down to her breasts with her finger. Behind it, the form-fitting suit came open, without any visible seam that was being followed as it split apart. The suit peeled away, revealing the top of her sizeable bust.

Before he could get a good look, he was quickly stuffed into her cleavage, leaving him with just his face out, looking up. She traced her finger back along the cloth, lifting her finger for a moment before putting it back down. Behind it, the suit reassembled itself, skipping over the part where her digit made no contacts. Gradually, her breasts were covered in shadow, and Martin with them, until the entire area was pitch black, with the exception of a single ray of light through the opened portion. 

Evidently, the suit was airtight, as once the neck sealed, the temperature rose dramatically, her body heat having no way of escape but the very small hole. Martin could feel his metabolism slowing again, after it had risen slightly when she had washed him under the warm water. Her breasts were also more compressed when the suit was closed, pressing the Parvian’s small body between her globes. Thankfully, it didn’t reach the crushing pressure of her rectum by any means. In fact, it was almost comfortable, and pleasantly warm. 

Tenebris took a moment to remover her hair tie, and then proceeded to walk back out the bathroom, toward the bed at the centre of the room, every footfall jostling the man in her bosom. Martin felt the stomach-lurching sensation of free fall for a moment while she sat down. His ray of light became blocked out, as her recently freed hair fell around her head. 

“Hey” she whispered, from above, “can you hear me alright?” 

“Yeah.” He replied. 

“Good. So that plan, let me hear it.” 

“One time,” he began, “A coworker of mine, who wasn’t very fond of my personal boundaries, was feeling a little frisky. So, she put me in her panties to keep her entertained. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Anyway, she decided she would take a nap, without removing me from my… predicament. I ended up getting out, but the door was locked. But that day-“

“Dude. Moral of the story. Hurry it up.” Tenebris interrupted.

The Parvian pouted a little in her bust. “The ‘moral of the story’ was that flashing a door’s local drive will reset it, regardless of what mode it was. If we can pulse the hard drive, we can get out of here. From there, we can climb up the spokes of the ring, and detach the main ship from the station, and use it to escape.” He summarized.
“There, that wasn’t so hard. Now, two problems with that, first, I don’t see what’s in it for you. It strikes me as a little weird.” She pointed out. 

Between her tits, Martin raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Did you not notice the part where a woman could just kidnap me like that? It sucks here! If I go with you, I can leave this shithole. And since you’ll owe me a solid, the least you could do would be to drop me off at the nearest system.” 

Tenebris frowned. “I guess I would owe you one, wouldn’t I?” She mulled it over for a few moments. “Okay, second thing, why do we have to steal from the station? I came here in my own ship, you were on it!”

“My people are going to be all over that thing, they’ve probably already scavenged it down to the bones.” 

Tenebris was, evidently, unhappy with this news. “That’s disappointing to hear, I liked that one. Whatever, shit happens, what can you do,” she shrugged, “it’s a deal.” 

Martin pumped his fist in excitement. Or, at least, he tried to. His arms being stuck to his sides between Tenebris’ boobs, it ended up being more of a joyful clench of his fist. Cheerily, he began. “Do you see a metal rectangular box coming slightly out of the wall on the left side of the door?”

“Yeah, looks pretty thick.” The woman answered from above. 

“That’s where the door’s internals are located,”he guided, “you’re gonna need an X-class thirteen-millimeter plasma cutter at least to cut it open, and then you have to be very careful to-“

An audible fizzle, followed by Tenebris groaning in pain could be heard. Her entire body steeled itself, causing the pressure to increase for Martin. She relaxed back down. “Did you just EMP the control box?”

“I did!” She bubbled in response. To the right, the door audibly slid open. Breaking into a sprint, she booked it down the hall toward the nearest spoke. The man in her breasts slid and moved more and more as her sprint began to generate sweat. Catching the ladder of one of the spokes, her rapid halting caused his body to shoot out from between her breasts and become pinned between the tight suit and her stomach. The situation only grew more perilous as she began to ascend the ladder, the intense movement in combination with her body shaking every time she planted her foot on a rung was causing him to slide further down her body, toward the bottom of her shipsuit. He desperately tried to grab onto anything to prevent himself from becoming a stain on the increasingly far floor, but the surface of her toned stomach was too smooth to provide any handholds. 

He popped out the bottom of the suit into her shorts, but they proved too loose, and he slipped farther down. Right before it would be too late, however, he managed to grab the opening at the leg of her shorts. The movement of her legs caused him to swing wildly, threatening to make him lose his grip. Using all his strength, he willed himself to reach up towards the hem of one of her pockets. Then another. He kept climbing, desperate to regain height. Eventually, he reached a sufficiently large pocket, but it was buttoned shut. Once Martin felt her touch the next rung, he made his move. It took every bit of muscle he had, but he gripped the button with one arm and wrenched it open with a grunt. His other arm had to hold his entire body weight during this, and it was becoming very fatigued. With the last of his stamina, he lifted his body into the pocket, swung his legs across the lip, and dropped in. 

Within the pocket, he took deep breaths, trying to recover some energy and calm himself down. The artificial gravity was becoming gradually less intense the higher Tenebris climbed, until it was indistinguishable from zero-g. Finally, she climbed through the bulkhead at the top of the spoke and entered actual zero-g. 

The centre was a large cylindrical drum, reminiscent of a tuna can. It was an average build for ship, outside of its abnormal shape. It was similar to a lot of cargo ships, as it was equipped with a larger-than-normal thruster to help lug around the massive ring, while being rated for minimal acceleration. The ring around it jutted out around three hundred meters (being in a normal scale - to a Parvian, the distance would be almost four kilometres). The ship was made up of three levels, with the floors pointed towards the thrusters, so that under acceleration, one could use the ship as if it were under normal gravity. 

Tenebris panted tiredly, heaving her chest. She slowly turned about the interior in the zero-g, desperate to catch her breath. “Alright,” she pushed out her words between breaths, “what’s next?” No response from between her breasts. Her heart skipped a beat - Martin wasn’t there. She was so focused on climbing, that he could have fallen out and she wouldn’t have even noticed. Before she could go back to check the spoke, however, she heard a noise down below, and felt movement on her thigh. Looking down, she noticed the Parvian in the process of popping open her pocket and getting his upper body out. She let out a long sigh of relief. 

“Oi! We’re not done yet! They might come up here!” Martin shouted up, noticing her relief. “We need to get these bulkheads locked off,” he commanded, “we need to trigger the pressure censors to lock off the area! There’s a first aid unit on the wall, you need to grab the syringe and-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the syringe trick.” She interrupted, using her arms to propel herself along toward the medical unit. Opening it, she grabbed a plasma scalpel and a handful of plastic syringes. “How many?” 

“Two. Should be right across from each other, if I remember right. Close to the console.” 

The plasma scalpel heated itself up, soundlessly, the metal blade glowing white-hot. Two straight, quick cuts through the syringes removed the needle end, leaving a cylindrical tube with molten plastic on one side and the plunger on the other. Martin took one, and hopped out of the pocket, while Tenebris planted her legs firmly on the walls and launched herself toward the other end. They both approached their individual sensors, and placed the molten portion over the sensors, so that it would harden into a pressurized seal. 

“Ready?” The Parvian shouted to his conspirator. 

“Ready.” She affirmed, “three, two, one, pull!” 

Simultaneously, they pulled the plunger of their syringes up, with Martin in particular having to leverage his entire body against the thumb hook. The resulting lower pressure tripped the sensors, and a blaring horn came over the PA. “LARGE PRESSURE DIFFERENTIAL DETECTED - SEALING BULKHEADS” a robotic female voice rang over  the speaker. The spokes’ bulkheads loudly sealed, shrieking and squealing shut. Once they had closed, the locking mechanisms clicked in, sealing the chamber. 

But it wasn’t over yet. They had to actually leave still, but in order to leave, they had to detach the ring. The main issue of this being that the controls were likely operated in the auth centre, which was in the ring.

Martin carefully threw himself toward the console, Tenebris following behind. He grasped onto a switch, anchoring himself, careful not to flip it. He maneuvered about until he reached the comms console. Unable to press down the button himself (Newton’s second law is a bitch sometimes), he gestured towards his co-conspirator to come press it for him. After a brief moment of looking at the horribly outdated console in disgust, she pressed the button, enabling communication between the auth centre and the ship. 

“Hey, auth guys. It’s Martin. I, uhm, I’m taking the ship. Please unclamp the ring.” He demanded awkwardly, seeming pitifully unthreatening. 

Tenebris rolled her eyes. She swept the Parvian aside with the back off her hand, sending him careening across the capsule, and began speaking into the microphone. “This is Tenebris, previous captain of the starship Loki, and now an escaped prisoner of your station. There is an antimatter bomb on my ship. I have control of it. Detach the ring, or I will blow this fucking station to quarks. If you so much as move a muscle before we reach safe distance, you’re dead. Thank you for your cooperation.” She lifted her finger from the comm control button, and with a few other flicks, disabled all comms. It was the auth centre’s move now. She looked back at Martin, wearing a smug look of superiority. 

The Parvian waved his hand dismissively. “Whatever, I was going to get there.” Suddenly, his expression changed as he thought for a moment. “Hold on a second, an antimatter bomb? You have one of those?”

She grinned slyly. “Would it matter if I did? I wouldn’t risk it if I were them.” She winked.

The ship shook and groaned. The interior bulkheads detached from the spike’s bulkheads, and slowed to a halt. An alert came up on the console, reading ‘RING CLAMP DETACHED - PLEASE VISIT A VERACORP TERRAFORMING STATION AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE FOR RESUPPLY.’ Martin pointed at the display. “Ha! I knew it! Terraforming ship!” He exclaimed. Tenebris raised an eyebrow at him in response. “Nevermind that, it’s nothing.” He relented. 

Tenebris began configuring the ship for a burn. Martin watched her input the configuration. It began with a three-gee burn, sustained for two minutes, likely to get safe distance from the station, and was followed by a one-gee burn sustained for three-thousand hours, reaching fifty percent lightspeed. Deceleration would be set to begin after another eighty thousand galactic hours, or forty thousand local hours, due to relativistic time dilation. Their destination was regarded by the console as the Scelestus system. Martin hadn’t heard of it before, but it couldn’t be too bad. The entire trip would take a little over ten years (years, of course, being long since out of use as a measurement of time, since days, months, and years did not really apply anywhere besides earth). Cryosleep would be necessary. 

Tenebris grabbed the Parvian and took a seat in the acceleration couch. She placed him between her legs, so that he was stood straight up. In this position, the three gees would be much more tolerable. She squeezed her thighs together to hold him upright, and initiated the burn. 

The drive rumbled to life, and suddenly, they were off. The ship’s drive blasted them forward, acceleration making it feel like they were being crushed under three times their weight, which technically, they were. Martin, thankfully, was familiar with the breathing techniques used to prevent oneself from passing out in higher gees, but he had never actually used them. To prevent himself from hyperventilating, he tried to fixate on something else. He felt the heat of Tenebris’ crotch on his back, which only got warmer as more blood pooled at her lower extremities. At his sides, her exposed legs were getting tighter around him, helping to keep him from falling over. Short breath, clench the abs, release, repeat. Short breath, clench the abs, release, repeat. He could feel Tenebris doing it as well against his back. Short breath, clench the abs, release, repeat. Keep the blood flow to the brain. Short breath, clench the abs, release, repeat. 

Suddenly, it was over. The rumbling calmed down, and the burn shifted to one gee. Tenebris released her hold on Martin. He took a deep breath, and walked out toward her knees, and sat down, relaxing against her thigh. The heat was a particular enjoyment for Parvians, as being around more heat meant they wouldn’t have to eat nearly as much food. 

They sat for a few minutes, before Tenebris broke the silence. “We should go check out those cryopods.” She suggested, holding out her open palm. 

Martin nodded, and stepped on. They began looking for the crypods. “So, uhm, where are we headed?” Martin inquired, trying to make conversation. 

“Guyen station.” She replied succinctly, “trader outpost. Gonna trade the ship for some gear and a ride to the nearest wealthy system. Edo has a pretty good biologicals industry.”

“Why do you want to go to a wealthy system with a big biologicals industry?” He  asked, confused. But the realization hit him like a bag of tungsten. His heart sank to his stomach. “Oh.” He muttered dejectedly. Of course. He cursed himself for being so horribly naive, especially in regards to the decency of non-Parvians. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure what he was thinking. The entirety of his life was showing him he couldn’t trust others to do what was right, and yet he still had the hubris to try and appeal to the concept of ‘owing someone one’. 

Tenebris looked off down at the heartbroken Parvian. She felt a pang at her chest for what she was doing. “Listen, dude. It’s nothing personal… it’s just, you did try to strike a deal that was based on morals, with a hijacking thief who was trying to traffic another hominid, after I had shoved you up my ass. That is kind of on you, man.” 

“It’s just that I thought…” he began, before trailing off. He let out a deep sigh. “You’re right,” he relented. He lowered his gaze in shame, and slumped over onto his ass. 

She watched on in pity at the man in her palm. She knew, deep down in whatever black, malformed criminal’s heart resided in her chest, that she couldn’t do this to him. God knows what those people would have done to her if he hadn’t been there to get her out. Whatever she chose, she knew she would live to regret it. “Ughhhh!” She groaned, frustrated at her yielding to emotion. “How about this: I’m still going to sell you, but I’m going to give you a choice of who. If you don’t like the people at Edo, I won’t make you go with them. We’ll keep going until we both agree on someone. Fair?” 

Martin looked back up at her, and nodded solemnly. They continued on silently, making peace with their new agreement, until they finally came upon the cryopods.

They were built into the wall so that the frozen would be sat upright. Two of them had special containers that sat inside the pod, which were miniature versions of the pods themselves, built to hold Parvians, while using the runoff energy and conditions of the larger pod. Parvian cryopods were much cheaper to produce, since Parvian’s ability to handle different metabolisms made their bodies much more responsive to the pods. The brand was Viltro-Mohri Cybernetics, which was surprising, as it was a very high-quality brand, which Tenebris had not expected from the previous owners. 

After double checking the telemetry and preparing the cryopods, they both stepped in, and were lulled into the dreamless sleep of the frozen. 

Waking up from cryo is a similar experience to waking up from anaesthesia. It’s difficult to say how long you’ve been awake, and even more difficult to form a coherent thought. The eyes swim with shapeless blobs and incoherent colours. Random understandable objects may pop out into space, but their location is mostly indiscernible.

This sort of feeling was currently plaguing Martin, in addition to an absolutely maddening sense of thirst. His limbs refused to budge, after what he remembered to have been a very, very long trip. The muscles were responding, just very slowly. The feeling was akin to sitting on your hand for too long, and having the blood and feeling rush back into it after getting up, but over the entire body. He blinked a few times, his eyes intensely dry. He began to wonder if something went wrong. He hadn’t experienced cryosleep in a very long time, and couldn’t quite remember the experience, but this couldn’t be right. His vision clearing, he looked off to his pod mate beside him, but she was already gone, leaving no sign of her but a dangling intravenous cable, a loose vital reader, and a Tenebris-shaped impression in the foam that was previously against her back.

IVs. He looked to his arm. In it, an IV was imbedded into the skin, but it was evidently long done putting liquid into his body. Carefully, he removed it, feeling a pinching prickle of pain as it came out, accompanied by a pearl of blood forming in the wound. At least his heart was working. Reaching out an aching arm, he pushed open the glass separator, and kicked out his legs, gliding out into the chamber. He tried to call out, but his dry throat would not comply, and a squealing exhale was all that came out. 

As he continued to move, his memory began to return to him. His parchment was a normal side-effect of cryo, and he would simply need to find some of the electrolyte solution for himself and he would soon feel much better. He gently made contact with a wall, sliding his fingers into the grooves and details to give himself a hold on it. Eventually, he found the ladder, and pulled himself up the side rung to the control room, being the ‘upper’-most level. 

Peeking his head into the room, he was greeted by the sight of Tenebris, sitting in the acceleration couch, fiddling with the console. Unable to speak, he used his knuckles to rap on a looser bit of metal plating in an attempt to get her attention. Martin watched her turn around the corner, her untied black hair following, floating gently in the air. She was holding a balloon-like object to her mouth with one of her hands. With a pop, she took the balloon out her mouth, a few beads of coloured liquid floating outward from it. “Look who’s finally awake!” She chimed, “Cryo is a real bitch, ain’t she? You’re probably thirsty, come over here and I’ll give you some of my stuff.”

He braced his legs against the top rung of the ladder and pushed, careening through the air. However, he quickly noticed his launch was a little off-centre, and he would likely miss the mark. Before he could embarrassingly hit the back wall, he felt Tenebris pinch his leg and gently pull him back down to her. With her opposite arm, she guided the electrolyte bulb toward the Parvian. It was about his height, but it was a sphere with a small fabric handle on one side that would slide your hand beneath so you wouldn’t have to grip the bulb as carefully. Wrapping his lips around it the small nub at the end, cool liquid began entering his mouth. It tasted awful, but he could practically feel how rehydrating it was. It was a very welcome feeling, and he only was able to realize how absurdly dry his mouth was after he finally recognized the feeling of not being absolutely parched. He greedily gulped down the liquid, but the bulb was so large he wouldn’t necessarily be taking much. Still, he filled himself with it. After a short while, he removed the nub and distanced himself from the bulb a little. Tenebris returned it to her own lips, and with a firm squeeze, emptied the entire thing into her mouth, another reminder to Martin of just how large the world around him was. Once she was done, the woman let the empty bulb float off to the side to be dealt with at another time, and went to the console. 

“This is so weird.” Tenebris muttered, more to herself, at the console. She was staring at the flight’s recorded telemetry, and at some point it had made a radical readjustment to get back in line with its proper route. “There are hundreds of light hours worth of telemetry just… missing! The internal clock syncs perfectly, like nothing even happened…” her voice trailed off. She stared at the console, endlessly confused. With a sigh, she swiped the telemetry off screen. They were at where they were supposed to be, and at the right time, so what did it matter? 

Martin grabbed the cloth on her forearm to prevent himself from floating too far away and was reminded of a question he had wanted to ask. He cleared his throat, and feeling that he was sufficiently hydrated to speak, he let loose his question. “What’s with the clothes? Seems a bit too military-ish for you to have it, no?” 

“These?” She gestured to her garments, “they’re some old Martian army garb. Wearing it just makes me feel more ‘in touch’ with my history, I guess. Bought them a good while back from some scrapyard that set up shop after a fight, ships must’ve had ‘em.” 

“Never heard of Martians.”

“I’ve heard they the first group of people to survive on another planet, but when everyone left Sol for new systems, they were left behind, and ended up getting screwed. Long story short, Martians ended up being poor and with a genetic defect that made us incapable of producing Melanin.” 

“Yikes.” 

“Yep.”

“So that’s why you’re so pale, right?” He paused in thought. “How come you have dark hair then?”

“Artificial.” Tenebris answered matter-of-factly. 

“Don’t you kind of need melanin though? Cosmic rays and whatnot?”

“Don’t really need to worry about cosmic rays when most of your species’ generations are spent cooped up in a carved up rock. So, yeah, that’s the short history of the ‘homino-martinids’. At least we ended up with a semi-decent name.” She shrugged. 

“Heh, my name’s in there.” Martin chimed. 

Tenebris paused for a moment. “Hm, I guess it is.” 

“So, um…” Martin puffed out his chest and furrowed his brow, and with his best military voice, asked “what is our status, captain?”

Tenebris chortled a bit, and then assumed a similar posture. In her own robotic military voice, she replied, “closing in on the station, private. Should be there in an hour or two, I’ve already sent a message and got us a dock.” 

“Aw, man, a private? I was hoping I could at least be a corporal or something.” Martin joked, relaxing into a normal posture. 

“Keep complaining,” she teased, “and you’ll end up in my privates, private.” 

Martin’s stomach rumbled. Ignoring her remark, he made a request. “You think we could find something to eat? I’m pretty starved.” 

“I suppose I could eat, it’s only been a hundred thousand hours since I’ve had a good meal.” She grabbed the Parvian off her forearm, and together, they left the control room and began their hunt for whatever preservable goods were packed on the ship. While on their search, Martin ended up explaining to Tenebris the way Parvians could adjust their metabolism, which eventually came to the topic of the spiritual monks who lived on Mick’s Planet (being the Parvian’s home planet), who had honed their ability to alter their metabolism consciously that they could forcibly overheat or freeze solely through willpower. Tenebris found the idea intensely disturbing, while Martin found the display of incredible self-control beautiful. The discussion made Martin yearn to return to his home planet someday, however far in the future that might be. Eventually, they came upon some sort of meal ration. It was good for protein, but it was nothing remarkable outside of tasting strangely like mussels. While they were searching, they came up with some other goodies, such as a vacuum suit, some spray sealant, along with a few other miscellaneous items, which Tenebris threw in a backpack, which she slung over her shoulder. Before they knew it, the hour wait was over, and their ship approached the station. Martin took a look outside the closest window to get a view of it. 

Guyen station rotated into view, and the first thing to take in was its immense size. It was at least a dozen times larger than the ring station, and it took the form of a massive cylinder. The megastructure must’ve had a diameter of about six entire kilometres, and it extended at least a dozen kilometres outward. Most of the volume within the drum appeared to be pure vacuum, with metal caging running across it. Looking past the metal bars, storage containers and a plethora of docks could be seen, with most taken up by larger ships probably running cargo. As they grew closer, more details could be seen. The station was covered in insanely large graffiti, but it seemed less the work of vandal and more akin to proper artwork. Portraits of visages, shrouded with floral patterns and sprawling colours, their faces serene. Huge, coloured fabrics flowed about, attached to the ring, in a constant state of peaceful free fall. The cloths shone from the warm orange sun behind it.  It exuded a pleasant feeling, feeling much more expressive and warm than the oppressive grey metal and cold blue light Martin had spent so much time with. 

The ship approached the entrance, which sat in the opening at the middle of the station. Red lights flickered to guide their passage and signal the limits of the opening. Passing through, they continued onward towards their dock. All around them were slide docks, a configuration where one would park on a dock, and then their ship  would slide down to make room for another docking ship to go above them in a sort of column of ships. Ships that were leaving would slide off to a second sliding rig, and ascend so that they could leave. Individuals  would use an elevator at the top to travel from their ships to and from the station’s main floors, so that people on the ships would leave the ship after docking was completed, and the ship would go to it’s ordained spot while it’s passengers could leave. 

Docking went smoothly. The pair found their reserved column, and gently made contact with the mag locks. A tube extended from the elevator’s airlock to the ship. On the end of the tube was a collection of soft, suctioning plastics, which would contort to the shape of the ship so that pressure could be maintained, even without any standardized docking mechanism such as a shape or lock. Standardization was incredibly difficult to maintain in the space age, since any sort of message or PSA would be incredibly expensive to broadcast, due to the necessity of using gravitational waves as the medium - radio waves have far too little range. Furthermore, they could take as long thirteen million hours to arrive, long enough for any civilization to simply create more rugged and versatile designs, rather than wait for some galactic standard that wouldn’t last long anyway. 

“It just seems a little infantilizing, is all” Martin complained, raising his arms so that Tenebris could tie a thread around his waist. 

“There are plenty of good reasons I should have you tied to me,” she argued, finishing the knot. “For one,” she pulled the thread tight, causing Martin to gasp in surprise from the sudden tightness, “it’ll be pretty fun.” She attached the opposite end to one of the belt loops of her shorts. She picked him up off the large box of terraforming goodies they were using as a platform, and they proceeded down to the air lock. The rotgrav at this point was a bit strange, since it wasn’t powerful enough at this point to be entirely comfortable, but it also wasn’t low enough to be ignored. Instead, it hovered in a slightly annoying middle ground. Air lock procedures went well, with similar enough atmospheric compositions and pressure differentials easily within tolerance. The outer door opened with a mechanical whirring, leading into the catwalk, which extended to the elevator. The catwalk was entirely see-through, allowing one to get a wonderful view of the hundreds of ships, with every one being unique. Some seemed old and rounded, others sharp and new. There were massive cargo ships, and tiny cruisers, all in the same area. It was an unfathomable sight to Martin, since his major exposure to ships came in the form of the cargo ships that dropped off food and other goods at his ring station that came from elsewhere in the system. If he looked far enough, he could see the storage - innumerable crates of varying colour, but consistent size. It was difficult to imagine something that they couldn’t fit there.

Eventually, after some gawking, some oo-ing, and finally, some aw-ing from Martin, they eventually arrived at the other airlock. However, since the area was pressurized, it was already open, and they immediately proceeded to the waiting elevator. It was a bit larger than one might expect, likely to fit a large crew or large objects. Obviously, it felt uncomfortably large to Martin, but he wondered if Tenebris felt the same way. The walls were covered in luminescent art. On the far wall, ‘Welcome All!’ was written in glowing blue cursive. Looking closer, Martin noted that something else was written. ‘Parvians welcome here’ was in the ‘A’ hole. As in, the enclosed space inside the tip of the letter ‘A.’ “I don’t like the look of that.” Martin muttered. 

Tenebris squinted at the tiny text. “Cmon, that’s clever! Don’t be a downer, Mart.” Around the welcoming message were various other doodles; neon outlines of women, contact information, and the like covered the black walls. Steel bars ran across the ceiling, for reasons unknown to Martin. Beside him, the Martian reached and pressed one of the buttons, causing the doors to slide shut. 

She was quite enjoying the feel of this place. For a simple trader outpost, it was incredibly warm and friendly. They even had a welcome package that auto-delivered to people docking. It came with a digital map, listed with interesting spots, and an encryption key to let people listen in on the station’s music channel. She enjoyed the channel, the instrumentation was fun and had an interesting abnormal quality, and it played well on her neural chip. As usual with space elevators, she reached up and gripped the steel bars on the ceiling, bracing herself for acceleration. The familiar gut feeling of going down overcame her body, and she could feel her shorts and backpack pull up a bit. In the corner of her vision, a Parvian-shaped blur shot upward, leaving only a taught thread in his wake. 

She  glanced up at Martin. He was dangling at the end of the thread from the acceleration of the elevator, catching his breath and recoiling from the surprise. Removing one hand from the steel, Tenebris began wrapping her finger around the thread and drawing the Parvian closer, until she could grasp him out of the air. “Maybe,” he panted, “the rope was a good idea.”

One of the interesting things about an elevator in a ring station, is the matter of moving it. In a normal elevator, it’ll put in energy to go down, or put in energy to pull it up. However, since the artificial gravity grows more powerful the further you get from the centre, the mechanism actually has to switch from pulling the elevator down, to pulling it up, since the rotational force ‘takes over’ and you the mechanism then has to manage the car’s speed. The result, is that the people in the car feel like they are moving up, and gradually it shifts until they feel they are falling down. 

Martin watched Tenebris’ hair cascade down from above, and settle at her shoulders, and he could feel the normal sensation of gravity in his stomach. Tenebris took her hand off the ceiling, since the risk of an unpleasant head injury was abated. 

The Parvian uncurled the massive woman’s hand from around him, and stood in her palm. “Hey, umm, you know where we’re going?”

Tenebris was tapping at the air again. “Yep.”

“… And, where might that be?” He asked timidly, noticing that she was clearly distracted. 

“Oh, right!” She exclaimed, “well, first we’ve gotta trade out the hunk of crap we left at the dock, I don’t trust that thing to take us to Edo. I’ve already sent the guys the specs and pictures so that shouldn’t take long. My map also has this thing labeled as a ‘Parvian Cafe’ if that’s something you want to check out. After that, we’ll try to arrange some way to get to Edo, and see if I can grab some clothes somewhere and a good nap.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, then.” 

“Somewhat.” She returned her attention to her interface. By the looks of it, she was typing something with her opposite hand. He shrugged, and tried to make his way up to her shoulder. It got pretty difficult when he reached her elbow, due to the incline, but he made it work. Sitting atop her shoulder, he gazed down at the top around his waist, and how it stretched all the way down to Tenebris’ own waist. He took a small bit of confidence in the fact that if he fell, he at least wouldn’t have to suffer hitting the ground. The heat of her body was soaking into him even here, though her suit. He found it slightly soothing.  

The elevator began its deceleration. Glancing at the elevator controls, Martin noticed that Tenebris had selected the highest of the three main floors. The standard elevator feeling of the stomach pushing down went through his body. Yellow light bathed the room, accompanied by an affirmative pinging noise. Martin grabbed some of the hair next to him for safety. The doors whirred open. 

Outside, was a bustling city. A wide road, completely filled with people. Patterned fabrics were draped across the ceiling, which was low, only about seven metres high. Dangling strings of lights and fluorescent ropes tied around advertisements and directional signs. To either side, the street extended so far that the curvature of the ring made the end unseeable. Across the streets were innumerable stores, with neon signs and widely varying fonts. Each storefront’s title seemed to always include the name of the owner, and the purpose of the store. For example, a fabric store would be titled ‘Phil’s Fabrics.’ Every inch of wall that wasn’t already covered in fabrics or signs was drenched in portraits, patterns, and artistic renditions of the landscapes on far away planets. The ceiling arched above them, covered in a screen displaying a recording of a purple sky. If one looked far enough down the street, they could see the purple sky transition into an orange evening, and an empty night filled with uncountable stars. 

The people occupying the streets were fascinating. Some stood incredibly tall, gangly and skinny, with long arms. Others shorter and stockier, with odd hues of skin. A few noteworthy individuals seemed to have pupils so large they covered the entire eye in black, with skin that was tinged ever so slightly blue. These individuals wore thick shades, likely to protect their eyes from damage. There were people in skintight garbs, flowing robes, and a few even wore suits. 

While Martin was busy gawking, a woman with darker skin approached Tenebris. She was in a more casual outfit, one that hung loosely around the body, but she still wore a brilliantly patterned orange sash around her chest. He didn’t catch much of their conversation, but he did notice that the woman pulled out a hand terminal and sent Tenebris something, before they gave one another a shallow, formal bow. During this, Martin had to hold tightly to her hair so as not to go tumbling off. The woman turned and headed back the way she came, vanishing into the crowd. Martin assumed this was the sale of the ship that Tenebris had been talking about earlier. Tenebris started making her way in the opposite direction, but judging by her lack of speed and her side to side glances, she didn’t have a particular destination. 

Martin allowed himself to return to soaking in the place. He was endlessly astonished by just how vastly different this place was from everything he had ever experienced. Something else he noticed, was the visible range of wealth. People who appeared to be poorer, had numerous cybernetic mods, while the wealthy seemed to have none. His eyes wandered back to the artistry of the place, but one piece of art stuck out to him. It was a pitch black background, which seemed to sprawl out like roots from the centre of the image. In the centre was an outline of a person, painted in stark white, which contrasted strongly with the black around it. Below the outline of the person, were the words ‘Enjoy this year’s Scramble!’ Martin pointed this out to Tenebris, who simply shrugged. He found it endlessly strange, and decided he would ask someone about it if he had the opportunity. 

Tenebris turned towards a storefront. Above the entrance, ‘Cassinova’s Classical Cloths’ was written in cursive. Peering through the window, the place was completely full of very ancient stylings of clothes. The building wasn’t large, but it still held a larger variety than one could shake a stick at. Upon entering the store, they were quickly approached by a short old woman, her back slightly hunched. She had friendly eyes and was a welcoming grin rested on her face. The name tag that sat just about her heart informed Martin that this was the titled Cassinova herself. She stuck out her foot in front of Tenebris, and Martin noticed her shoe had a piece of artificial leather on the top of it, and it seemed dirty. 

To Martin’s surprise, Tenebris lifted her foot and gingerly tapped Cassinova’s leather spot on her shoe. The woman smiled a bit more brightly, and clasped her hands together. “What can I help you with, dearie?” Her voice had the sort of elder’s compassion, that made one feel at ease. 

“Oh, I just noticed your store, and it’s absolutely gorgeous!” Tenebris marvelled, “the selection here looks absolutely lovely, but I’m not familiar with the styles. Would you mind showing my around?”

The old woman was beaming now, “it would be my pleasure, dearie! Well, we just got some new imports recently, and they’re absolutely beautiful. Would you like to take a look?” 

Tenebris’ nodded, causing Martin to bounce a bit. Cassinova gestured to follow her, and began making her way through the store. She approached the far wall, and pulled a lever. The display wall began to rotate, switching between numerous different selections of clothing, all labelled with different purposes and levels of professionalism. Eventually, it stopped at a section labelled ‘personal fitness.’

“My seller told me that these were regarded by some as the pinnacle of clothing, since it served as incredibly comfortable and breathable, without sparing a single bit of its alluring quality.” She was gesturing toward a pair of black pants, which appeared smooth. Tenebris reached out and felt the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. Seeing this, Cassinova continued. “The material is a lovely mix of polyester, nylon, and spandex, which makes it hug the figure beautifully while still being very light and comfortable.”

Tenebris nodded along. “And what are these called?”

“My seller tells me these were often called ‘yoga pants,’ or ‘leggings.’”

“Mmm.” Tenebris drifted over to what looked to be a bra, but held a more firm, solid shape. 

Noticing her attention shift, the older woman followed. “This is a similar design. I’ve heard it’s very useful for more well-endowed women. Keeps you comfortable during physical activity, without all the... bouncing.”

Tenebris and Martin both glanced down at Tenebris’ bust, simultaneously coming to the conclusion that she fit that category. Tenebris lifted her head back up and continued looking at the display. Aside from the bra and leggings, there was a package of authentic cotton panties, a pair of sneakers, and a loose shirt that was listed with the option to have anything you chose printed on it. Tenebris put her thumb and forefinger to her chin in thought. “I’d like to have… actually, would you be able to grab me the whole set? And on the shirt, would you please put the Martian insignia on it?” 

Cassinova smiled and nodded again. She grabbed a metal object off her waist, which flashed green, and a text box on it read ‘measurements acquired.’ She took a quick glance at it, and put it back on her waist. She turned to Martin. “Is the little fellow getting anything?” 

“Oh! Um, sure.” Tenebris looked at the Parvian on her shoulder. 

The woman made her way to the corner, and came back holding a box full of Parvian clothes, all in similar styles to the rest of the store. “I just got these delivered recently to prepare for the Parvian shipment.” 

Martin made his way to the box, and began looking through it for something that he would like to wear. Above him, the two continued talking.

“Parvian shipment?”

“Oh yes, dear. Guyen station received their order for fifty thousand Parvians a little while ago. It’s been absolutely terrible for anyone trying to make a few tchokas off the Parvian trade, but the people have been very happy with it.”

Martin finally poked his head out the box. In his hands, were a pair of grey dress pants and a blue polo shirt. 

“Excellent choice.” Cassinova chimed, seeing Martin’s selection. He stepped out the box, back into Tenebris’ palm. “Dressing rooms are just over there,” she pointed to a hallway in the far corner, “I’ll bring your clothes to you while you’re there. Will the little guy be needing his own changing room?”

Tenebris glanced down at the Parvian in her palm. “No, I don’t think he will.” 

Cassinova turned and disappeared into a door in the other corner, with an ‘employees only’ label on the surface. 

Martin gripped tightly to Tenebris’ thumb as she spun on her heel and made her way toward the corridor Cassinova had pointer at. “Why’d you step on that lady’s foot?” 

Tenebris rounded the corner and was greeted by the hall of changing rooms, all of them having solid doors. “Hm? Oh, that. It’s a sign of respect in some cultures, it would be very disrespectful of me to reject the gesture.” She stepped into one and shut the door behind her. The room was a big enough that Tenebris could stretch out her arms and not touch the beige walls. On the wall opposite the door was a large mirror, and on the left was a sort of chain mechanism that fed into the wall. On the opposite side, a bench, which she dropped Martin onto with his clothes. She crossed her arms and looked down at the Parvian. 

Martin looked up at her. “What?”

“Go on, change.”

“No, you go first. It’s awkward.”

Tenebris raised an eyebrow. “My clothes aren’t here yet. Now go ahead.” 

“Could you at least turn around?” Martin timidly asked. 

Tenebris sighed, and turned the other way. 

Finally, Martin could begin changing. He removed his belt, which was practically falling apart, and then unzipped his shipsuit. It clung tightly to his skin after he had been wearing it so long. Peeling it away, he kicked it off to the side. 

“Nice figure.” Tenebris commented. 

Martin looked to his side and did a double take at the mirror. Tenebris had been looking at him the entire time through it. “Perv!” He shouted, instinctively covering his crotch with his hands. 

Tenebris rolled her eyes. “Just finish up already.” 

Not wanting to aggravate the woman, he tugged the new pants up and put his old belt back on. He threw on the new shirt, and buttoned it to his neck. Hearing the rattling of a chain, he turned back around. The mechanism he had noticed before was rotating, bringing in Tenebris’ clothing selection, hung on clothes racks that had a special hook for the chain. He saw the shirt make its way in, and he noticed the Martian insignia, a red sphere, with two smaller dots above and below it, representing its two moons. Following it along the track, it was obscured by Tenebris’ figure, which he quickly realized was facing directly towards him. 

“Come on!” Martin shouted, “Can I not get the smallest bit of privacy?” 

“Apparently not.” Tenebris drew a cross across her chest with her middle finger, with one line reaching from shoulder to shoulder, and the other from the top of her shorts to her neck. The garment opened in the pattern she drew, and easily slid off her back and into one of her hands. Her pale skin was practically glowing in the light. Martin shielded his eyes from the light with his hands. Tenebris’ breasts fell out freely, her slightly blue tinged areolas bouncing lightly. She noticed Martin’s behaviour. “What are you covering your face for? You embarrassed?”

“Um, no. I’m just trying not to go blind from your whiteness.”

“Oh, shut up.” She tossed her top at him, but it missed, and landed next to him on the bench. She kicked off her mag-lock boots while she turned around. Afterward, she untied her shorts. Hooking her thumbs into the waistband, she shimmied them down, spitefully sticking her ass out at Martin.

 Her glutes appeared surprisingly strong, with very little fat content. Below her stark white rear, plump labia poked out, and from where Martin was standing, he could see the stubble of a small patch of pubic hair. Her movement caused her hips to sway hypnotically from side to side. A small voice in Martin’s head told him it looked very warm, and that he should approach it, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind and addressed it was a trick of Parvian evolutionary psychology. Tenebris stood back up straight, and put on the bra and shirt. The shirt hung loose around her top half, which was a novel concept to Martin. Her lower half remained entirely nude, fair legs and shapely hips unconcealed. She fiddled with the box of panties, trying to carefully open it in case she needed to have them put back. “See something you like?”

Martin shot back up to attention out of his ogling, muttering embarrassed denials. Tenebris scoffed, and popped open the box. After putting them on and the so-called ‘leggings’, she inspected herself in the mirror. The outline of the underwear was visible under the pants, and they hugged her figure phenomenally. “I like it,” she turned back to her Parvian companion, “what do you think?”

“It looks tight.”

“Doesn’t it?” She bubbled, “but it’s really comfortable.” She posed in the mirror, inspecting herself. She tucked the package of underwear into her backpack, along with Martin’s old shipsuit, and slung it over her shoulder. Martin climbed into her open palm, and they returned to the main area of the store, where Cassinova was waiting, her hands clasped together. 

 “Anything you’d like to have put back?” 

“Nope, everything was perfect. 

Cassinova grinned. “That’ll be two-hundred and thirty-seven tchokas.”

Tenebris had sold the ship for around twenty-four thousand tchokas to the woman earlier, so she was equipped to cough up the payment. Cassinova handed Tenebris a small pad, which she brought behind her neck. The machine beeped, indicating that her neural chip had successfully made the payment. She returned it to Cassinova. Sliding the object into her pocket, Cassinova stuck out her foot again, and Tenebris performed the same gingerly tap she had before. 

“What a strange gesture.” Martin muttered after they exited the store and returned to the open street. 

“What? No, it’s lovely!” Tenebris hand waved the notion away. They continued walking for a good while, before coming upon a set of descending stairs, which Tenebris climbed down. Martin caught sight of a sign behind him before that read ‘commercial level’ and another sign once they reached the bottom, which read ‘residential level’.

Past the staircase was a screen, displaying a flattened map of the area, with street numbers and housing numbers. They currently sat in roughly the centre, at least according to the ‘you are here’ red dot. Curiously, as Martin looked from one end of the station to the other, the number of addresses per housing complex seemed to become smaller, and less dense, until entire blocks were taken up by single addresses at the very far end. On the map, housing complexes were marked as blue, and the few sporadic motels were marked purple. The closest one was a short walk away, about a kilometre, and according to the map, held the humble title of ‘WORST MOTEL EVER 0/5 CELESTIAL BODIES’. Evidently, it had been hacked by a disappointed customer. Nonetheless, Tenebris began entering in directions to the place on her neural chip. 

From her palm, Martin watched Tenebris interface with her chip. It was almost humorous to look at, as if she were popping invisible bubbles rather than exchanging electrical signals with a machine jammed into her brain stem. 

When they began walking, Martin resumed his previous occupation of absorbing his surroundings. This area didn’t have the same energy as the floor above. The area was dark, and the only illumination came in the form of the dim orange lights illuminating the ground and street signs. The clothes and patterning were absent here, exchanged for a consistent orange evening sky, interspersed with thin clouds covering the entire ceiling. The whole area suggested its sole purpose was sleep, rather than leisure. Few people walked the streets, and most that did were in work uniform, likely heading for the upper floor to clock in. The routine was familiar to Martin, as his previous ring station did not lend well to idle activity – a productive side effect of having literally nothing to do.

The housing was uniform, with every block being a massive collection of connected houses. The street seemed to be elevated, as there were two levels of houses, where one floor was halfway into the ground, with a staircase leading down, and the second level placed atop, with another staircase leading up to it. 

After a series of twists and turns, all showing the same, uniform streets, they arrived at the motel. It was, at the very least, a small break from the consistency. Above the entrance, a large sign written in fanciful lettering, bearing the title ‘Wurst Motel’. Martin snorted. Tenebris descended the steps into the building. 

The interior was a vast expanse of white, with purple carpeting and violet tubes which climbed across the walls, giving them a pleasing splash of colour. Across from where they were standing was another staircase which led back outside. Between the exits was a square entry area, with a large round terminal in the centre. To the sides were two long corridors, which extended to either side a good fifty metres. The walls of these corridors were covered with three levels of what appeared to Martin as very large lockers, with ladders beside them to allow people to access the higher ones. These lockers were roughly two thirds the height of Tenebris, and seemed rather wide. 

The area was completely empty, but it was by no means dirty or even of poor quality. Tenebris approached the centre terminal. She went up to one of the many screens on it, and tapped in some things that Martin didn’t quite see. A screen was brought up, asking for the user to input a 6 digit pin, however, Tenebris curled her fingers, causing Martin to not see the code. When the machine spat out a pad attached to a wire, the Martian brought it behind her neck just as she had before, which the machine responded to with an affirmative beep. 

“I-16A” Tenebris muttered, turning to her right, and making her way down the wing. Martin watched her eyes zip past the lockers, until locking onto one in particular. She tapped her code into a small terminal on it, and it cracked open. Martin peered inside.

The interior was nothing but a white mattress, which covered the entire floor and two of the walls, and a large storage box in the far corner. It was larger than a normal bed, but such a privilege was lost when one noticed the pitifully low ceiling, which Tenebris would be completely incapable of standing up in. The room was bathed in cool pink lighting. As it turned out, these were not lockers, but motel rooms. Seemingly unfazed, Tenebris dumped Martin out of her hand onto the floor/mattress, and crawled in, pulling the door shut behind her. Automatic locking mechanisms squealed and clicked shut, and a terminal next to the door beeped. It displayed a number indicating the remaining hours they had the ‘room’ rented for, and an area to input the code to unlock the door. 

Seeing Martin’s reaction to their room, Tenebris finally spoke. “Crazy small, right? Well, it’s not small for you, I guess.” 

“Yeah, I expected something else”

“I’m sorry to burst your bubble then. This is pretty standard stuff. Now,” Tenebris brought a fingernail to the corner of her mouth, “where ever is our little Parvian going to sleep?”

“Cmon,” Martin moaned, “I’m not gonna escape! I don’t even know the door code! And even if I did, I can’t even reach the damn thing.”

Tenebris reclined on the mattress, stretching herself across. “Sure, but I do remember you telling me Parvians just love warmth. Can’t even sleep without a warm spot, or else they can just roll over and freeze to death from running out of calories.” 

As if Martin’s nerves had an impeccable sense of ironic timing, the cold air in the room brushed against his skin. His metabolism picked up, heart pumping and muscles getting warmer, but he knew his body’s energy stores wouldn’t hold him long enough, and he’d run out. 

“There’s no shame in it,” Tenebris’ hand rested on her crotch. “You do what you have to do.” She breathed. 

Martin, being a smart Parvian, knew when to cut his losses. He walked toward his captor, passing her feet and making his way toward the centre of her spread legs. Passing her calf, he noticed how she simply exuded heat, her thighs even more so. Seeing the place he was about to spend the next few hours in, he stripped himself of his new clothes to keep them clean. In front of him lie Tenebris’ open palm. Stepping in, she raised him to her toned stomach, where her shirt was pulled up. He stood and watched Tenebris hook her thumb into the waistband of her new pants, and lift up. A wave of heat washed over Martin’s body, humid air oozing with pheromones. This was it. He crawled in, and felt the elastic material grow increasingly tight as Tenebris slowly released the waistband. 

The Parvian entered what was effectively a different world. Powerful heat and humidity surrounded him. Tenebris’ labia caressed his body, as he lay in her slit. The warmth infiltrated Martin’s body, his heart slowing and his muscles relaxing, yielding to the external source of energy. Unlike last time he was here, Martin got as close as possible. He let Tenebris’ folds wrap around him and hold him, hot secreted juices further warming him.

Tenebris patted Martin’s back through her clothes. “Good boy.” She muttered to the man between her legs. She propped her backpack under her neck as a pillow, and was lulled into sleep, to further continue her journey when she awoke.

Tenebris awoke to the same cool pink light she had fallen asleep to. The first sleep after cryo was always heavenly, and this was only exacerbated by the Parvian between her legs, whose sleeping breaths pleasantly washed over her clitoris. She yawned, brushed her hair out of her face, and stretched as best she could in the cramped space. 

Looking to connect to the station and plan out her activities, she began her least favourite part of interfacing with her neural chip; activating it. The sensation was unusual, like contracting a muscle that didn’t really exist. It wasn’t the feeling that bothered her, however, but the idea that the chip was listening into her every thought and movement, and simply waiting for the correct one to respond to. It was the same reason she used movement and ocular interactions, rather than direct signal interactions. She was completely aware of how it really didn’t matter which she chose, the machine was reading her thoughts all the same either way, but she liked being able to draw a hard line between her, and her augments. 

Nevertheless, she activated the chip, that nonexistent muscle clenching in the recesses of her mind. Orange flooded her vision, materializing into space, or rather, materializing into her visual cortex. The menus, with their blocks of text and data had a unique quality to them, in that they were translucent. However, this translucence was not in any standard sense of the word. In her normal vision it was there, solid as stone, but deep within her mind she could feel that a different, more base part of her mind was looking right past it, and that it wasn’t there. It was a common effect of neural chips from her generation. She had heard there were new versions that removed this affect, but she was a tad repulsed by the idea of being completely unable to know if what she was looking at was truly real. 

She reached out her hands and interacted with the systems. It felt like running her hands through warm water, where there was the sensation of touching something, but no hard resistance. She swiped and tapped, connecting to the station’s data stream. She went for a data pocket tagged with ‘locomotion’. 

At the very top was an advert for a new interstellar transport system. She gleaned over it, honing on to certain key words present on it. Twenty gees. Seventy-nine percent lightspeed. Extremely lightweight. Needless to say, she was intrigued by the prospect. She tapped it, the tab unfolding within her retinas like a flower, the other menus and tabs fading into orange dust, and disappearing from her imagined view. She picked out phrases like “antimatter propulsion” and “immersion fluid”. A personal ship, capable of hitting a whopping seventeen gees of sustained burn without breaking a sweat. Obviously, with such ludicrous acceleration capability, it had to come with a state-of-the-art cryo system, or else any poor fool who entered it would be juiced into the finest of fine mists upon any acceleration. The caveat of the purchase was that it had piss-poor storage capability, and hardly any features, but that was the price to be paid for such a powerful machine. Twenty-two thousand tchokas out her pocket, but for such a fantastic ship, she would have paid double, given the opportunity. 

Tenebris ordered one. The system displayed a message thanking them for their purchase, an address to report to, and an hour before their ship would be ready. There was also a liability waver saying the provider was not liable for any interstellar matter that struck the ship, and any cancers caused by interstellar radiation, which she signed. 

Her thoughts drifted to Martin. She was disappointed that Guyen station had gotten that delivery, but at the same time she knew she’d probably strike a better deal at Edo. Regardless, she made a ping on her chip that informed anyone on the station looking, that she was selling a Parvian, and to approach her with their offer if they were interested. She looked down at the small lump in her pants where Martin was. She really did find him quite cute, and she’d be at least a bit sorry to see him go. At the same time, however, the amount of money she’d get off him would have her set for life, if she played her cards right. 

Her stomach rumbled. She was getting hungry, and she wagered a guess that so was her future jackpot. The Parvian Cafe she had heard about earlier would hopefully do the trick. Seeing another Parvian might also help to improve Martin’s attitudes. 
She awkwardly tied her hair up, the confines of the area making it difficult at times. Briefly, she wondered whether she should wake up Martin now, or simply let him stay down there until she got to the Cafe. Before she could make a decision however, she felt Martin stir, at one point colliding with her clit, accidentally, causing Tenebris to softly gasp.

Once more, she contracted the nonexistent muscle, turning off her chip to attend to the squirming in her pants. A part of her was tempted to push him into her, and make him squirm just enough to get her off, but she pushed aside the desire as best she could, and went to remove him. She snaked her hand into her pants, feeling Martin’s nude body against her sensitive lips. The desire to take control and bring herself to orgasm flared up again, but she stifled it down once more. Withdrawing him, she soon noticed that she had gotten much more wet than she had thought. He was completely drenched in juices, making him slippery to the point it became a tug of war between the tight leggings and her hands. After some fighting, she finally drew Martin out, leaving a small trail of liquid on her stomach. She set him down on the mattress beside her.
Tenebris propped her chin up on her elbow. “Had a good time down there?” He didn’t respond, but as she looked him over, a certain part of him told her that the answer to that question was yes. She reached out and tousled his hair with her thumb, which further dishevelled his already messy hair. “Oh, how you flatter me!” She teased, giving him a wink. “You can just wipe all that fun stuff off on the mattress.”

Evidently in a half daze, she watched him attempt to rub his eyes, and quickly realize he was just rubbing more of her juices on his face, rather than clearing anything off of it. He awkwardly went down to the ground, and did a sort of log roll to get some of the wetness off him. 

Tenebris went digging around in the storage in the corner, and pulled out a box of wet wipes. Grabbing one, she first swept down her stomach, and then passed it along to Martin. It seemed a bit cumbersome for him, but he was clearly able to make it work. Tenebris reclined, putting her hands behind her head, faced up towards the ceiling.   

“Where’re my clothes?” Martin asked, drowsily.

“Sorry, I must’ve kicked them in my sleep. Check near the wall?” She said, inspecting her fingernails. 

“Uhhh… yup, there they are.”

The calming pink lights ran the length of the ceiling, pulsing rhythmically, sending a dot of white across the filaments. She heard the rustling of clothes off to her side, and decided to give the Parvian his privacy, if only just this once. 

“Ready?” She asked, once the rustling had stopped.

“As I’ll ever be.” Martin grumbled. 

She awkwardly shimmied and pushed her feet off the walls to rotate herself, so that her head was facing the exit. During the scuffle, she accidentally bumped him with her hip. She brought herself to the side panel, tapping in the pin to check out of the motel. The door cracked open, turning outward with a hiss, the hinge squeaking slightly. A fine mist seeped out, which she assumed was some sort of sleep-aiding mixture that was included in the package description that she hadn’t read. Unfolding herself from the area, she found herself in the I-wing once again. The normal lights came as a shock, Tenebris’ covering her currently sensitive eyes with a hand. Turning back around, she grabbed a still drowsy Martin off the edge of the platform, and placed him atop her shoulder, where he clutched the strap of her backpack for support. 

They began making their way to the Parvian Cafe. It was back on the commercial floor, which meant Tenebris had to take a route to one of the stairways first. She found the style of Guyen Station quite refreshing, the splashes of colour being a good change of pace from the bland metal corridors of many other stations. On the way, she talked about the arrangements she had made to Martin, such as the Cafe they were on their way to, their transport to Edo, and finally, the sales ping, which he was very apprehensive about, for obvious reasons. 
Shortly after reaching the commercial floor, Tenebris was approached by a sharply-dressed woman, betrothed in jewelry, such as a necklace, bracelets, large earrings, and numerous rings. She appeared to be about middle-aged, the signs of aging worn gracefully. Tenebris assumed she was of fairly high status, since symbols of age are common among the higher classes, as they helped to convey wisdom to their peers. The woman locked her eyes on the Parvian atop Tenebris’ shoulder. “Is that him?”

Tenebris could feel Martin’s hesitation in the way he gripped her shoulder. She felt a little guilty, but she still intended to allow him to veto her decisions. “Yes, this is him,” she said, “if you don’t mind me asking, what do you intend to do with him?”

“Oh,” the woman clicked her tongue, “I’ve seen so many of these lovely little things, and I just knew that a Parvian would make the most perfect bit of jewelry. Can’t you picture how beautiful a Parvian necklace would be? Or maybe even a bracelet... anyway, I can do twenty thousand.”

“Nope!” Tenebris snapped, and walked right around her, continuing down the neon-lit street. Martin tugged on her hair.

“Did you hear that! That woman wanted to wear me! I’m not clothing!” He complained into Tenebris’ ear. 

“Don’t worry,” she whispered back, “I wouldn’t let that happen to you. Not for such a shitty deal, at least.” 

Martin scoffed in response. 

…

The pair arrived at the Cafe. In bold lettering, a red neon sign read ‘Vick’s Tiny Six’ and beneath it, as a subtitle, ‘Parvian Cafe and Bistro’ was written. They entered through the door. 
The interior was a unique sight. It was built of imitation wood, and the whole place had a very rustic feel, emulating ancient styles for the purpose of novelty. Inside, six booths lined the walls. The tables of these booths had see through glass embedded in it, revealing a chamber. Two of the booths were taken, and in the chamber of both booths a Parvian could be seen making conversation with the patrons. Above each booth was a round pot-light, which hung low above the booth and illuminated the area. At the far end was the kitchen, where baristas were preparing orders. 

Tenebris approached the barista, who politely smiled and made eye contact. Tenebris waited for the barista to ask her for her order. Seeing this, the barista gestured to her mouth, and pointed down to a panel, with the word ‘order’ displayed on it. The woman seemed to be mute. “One Tedgeroot mocha, please. And throw in two nutrient packets with it, if you wouldn’t mind.” Tenebris requested. The woman pointed at Martin inquisitively. “He’ll just share with me.” The barista nodded, and slid a payment pad towards Tenebris. She tapped it on her neck, feeling the familiar light shock of the purchase, and the barista went to prepare their order.

Tenebris sat at the booth closest to the door, placing herself so she could see the entrance. She let Martin on the table, the imitation wood cool to the touch. Withdrawing a napkin from a box on the table, she folded it to provide the Parvian a softer place to sit than the hard surface of the table. “You like Tedgeroot?” She asked him.

Martin shrugged. “Never had it.”

Tenebris reclined against the chair. “It’s great stuff. A little on the oily side, but it’s very good. I actually thought all the terraformed planets had it on them.”

In the glass-protected chamber below them, a Parvian emerged from the wall. Tenebris watched Marvin do a double take upon seeing another of his kind. It was a woman, dressed in casual uniform. “H-hi.” He stuttered. 

“Hello.” The woman calmly replied. 

Tenebris heard a bell behind her. Her mocha was ready. She got up to retrieve it, leaving Martin with the other Parvian. The beverage was in a large, clear container with intricate swirling designs painted with gold. The substance within it had the distinct purple colour and thickness of Tedgeroot, and was hot to the touch. She brought it back to her booth where the female Parvian was talking.  

“-bought another one of us when the prices were low, in case any of us needed to be… replaced. ‘Vick’s Tiny Seven’ doesn’t have as good of a ring to it as ‘Vick’s Tiny Six’ though, so she usually lends him to the barista.” She shook her head. “Poor Charlie, he deserves better.”
Tenebris was drawn away from the conversation once again, watching a shifty-looking man walk past her. She saw him steal a few glances at her booth. Discreetly, she moved around the table to keep an eye on him. 

He was one of the people she had seen before, the type with the blue-tinged skin and massive pupils that left no eye whites to be seen. He moved in a strange manner, with slow, deliberate movements shrouded by the large coat he wore. Tenebris watched him make an order, and lean his back against the wall, continuing to sneak looks in her direction. He received his order in a small paper bag, and walked toward the exit, veering close to the booths on Tenebris’ side of the wall. She watched his hand snake out of his coat, reaching towards Martin.  

In a flash, Tenebris shot her hand out, grabbing the man’s wrist. She ripped her arm back, causing the man to fly forward, loudly crashing his head against the low pot-light. She stood up, snatching the thick glasses from his face while he was still surprised. With her modified hand, she gripped the base of the light and jammed it into his face, using her opposite hand to hold a fistful of hair, keeping him still. 

A searing pain shot up her arm as she activated her mod. It felt like her entire limb from the shoulder down was on fire, a burning as if a conflagration had rampaged across her nerves. The pot-light became intensely bright from the sudden excess of energy, shining so bright that Tenebris herself had to squint, despite almost none of  the light being directed anywhere near her. She released her grip on the man, jumping back into her seat at the booth. 

The failed thief staggered back, clutching his eyes. “Fuck!” He shouted, “you bitch! Do you have any idea how expensive retinal implants are? Dammit!” He blindly stumbled out of the cafe, clutching his face and holding out his hand in front of him. 
The entire room was staring at her now, completely silent. She sat back down. Martin was completely dumbfounded, along with the Parvian in the table’s chamber. Tenebris slouched into her seat, desperate to get the attention off her. 

After a few moments, people slowly returned to their normal murmurings, and sound returned to the cafe. Tenebris let out a deep sigh. Her booth was approached by one of the baristas. She opened her mouth to speak, but Tenebris held up her hand, gesturing for her to stop. “I know. We’ll leave. Can I get a disposable cup?” The barista nodded quickly, and made her way back to the kitchen. “Sorry.” Tenebris muttered down to Martin. 

“No, no, it’s, uhh, it’s alright. Thanks.” 

“Man, the nerve you have to have to just steal someone else’s property from right under them.” Tenebris remarked frustratedly. 

Martin laughed, confusing Tenebris until she realized the hypocrisy of what she had just said. “Yeah, pretty dickish, isn’t it?” He mocked. Tenebris’ face became warm with embarrassment. She opened her mouth to try and say something witty, but ended up being interrupted by the barista coming back with her cup. Silently, she shut her mouth, and poured her cup into the new disposable one, feeling its heat soak into her hand. The sensation helped to relax the aching muscles in her modded arm. She silently set her open palm on the table, allowing Martin to climb atop it. 

Exiting the building, she saw the man she had blinded continuing down the street. He would probably be fine - retinal repair was not too expensive in the modern age, despite his prior complaints. Still, she decided walking the opposite direction would be better to avoid another conflict. She finished her Tedgeroot mocha, the artificial plant invigorating her, and the nutrient supplements keeping her from going hungry. With difficulty, she even shared a bit of it with Martin along the way. 

On her way to the address from the purchase of the ship, she stopped by a pharmacy for some nerve growth stimulants, and some high energy supplements for Martin, to prevent him from accidentally metabolizing himself to death. Her arm was aching unusually bad, and her fingertips were losing sensation. She would likely need to get her arm mod replaced soon, or at least removed, since it was obviously causing complications. 

Continuing on her way, she was approached by one more potential buyer. Another woman, this time someone who wore very baggy clothes, and had her hair messily tied up. Tiny studs of metal wrapped around her forehead like a crown, embedded in her skin. Her eyes were wide, constantly skittering and refocusing, in a constant dilated state. This woman was an ag-simmer. Tenebris recognized the type, having run a few odd-jobs for them in her lifetime. 

Ag-simming was an interesting profession. It required an insane amount of intelligence and mind-bogglingly fast reaction time. It was a complex facet of a lot of stations, but it boils down to a symbiotic relationship between the simmer and the station. The station compiles data, and transmits it to the simmer’s prefrontal cortex in the form of a game-like experience, typically within a generated four-dimensional space. The simmer interacts with the data, whereby playing the ‘game’ they are inadvertently optimizing the systems of the station, sorting data, and providing calculated solutions that only an artificial intelligence would struggle to produce, or at least be too costly to operate. This exchange shoots up the brain of the ag-simmer with an unparalleled high of rapid problem solving, and a constant flow of adrenaline. 

The ag-simmer’s lurid experience of the simulation, and the fact that their livelihood was built upon it, lead them to find normal life hopelessly dull. They often neglected activities, and only leave the sim to perform the most basic of tasks. Tenebris made a staggering amount of money by simply running supplies to these people - they had little else to put their wealth into, so they paid handsomely. She grinned. If Martin would allow it, this would be an easy ticket to the good life. 

“Five-hundred K. Housecleaning job. Minor entertainment use. Limited assistance.” The woman spoke rapidly, so fast that Tenebris struggled to keep up. Her voice had a slightly raspy quality to it, but her tone was intensely robotic. The woman’s eyes darted all over, sometimes looking Tenebris in the eyes, sometimes at Martin, and sometimes simply being caught by random street signs. 

The Parvian was clearly distraught. Tenebris would be willing to bet that he had no knowledge of ag-simmers. She held up a hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to my… business partner here for a moment.” She stepped around a corner, and held the Parvian to her face. 

“That lady gives me the creeps...” Martin griped. 

“Please! Five-hundred K! It won’t be that bad.”

“I don’t know, I have a really bad feeling about this. Shit, just look at her eyes. Doesn’t she make you uncomfortable?” 

“It’s just housecleaning! You’ll barely have to do anything!”

“I’m sorry! I just don’t feel good about this one. Can’t we at least try Edo?” 

Tenebris rolled her eyes. “Ugh, fine. You’re so fucking lucky I made you that deal.” 

“Thank you.”

Tenebris returned to the ag-simmer. She adopted a taller posture, and tried to bring up her best businesslike tone, saying to the woman, “we have decided that we will not be accepting your offer at this time. Thank you.”

The woman furrowed her brow. “Time is currency. Time wasted is currency wasted.” Her finger twitched, before she spun on her heel and began walking back the way she came. 
Tenebris slumped her shoulders. Beside her, she heard Martin exhale deeply in relief. 

…

This was the address. Gilfoy Military Surplus Goods. The pair was greeted by a grey-haired man, who eagerly shook Tenebris’ hand. 

He spun a fuzzy proton hologram, which sat in a touch-sensitive glass cylinder. It displayed the ship Tenebris had purchased; simple, but elegant because of it. Of course, proper aesthetics would have made such a ship much more expensive than it was. 

“Got a bonch of these babies from some pirate crew that got woiped by a gamma ray burst, ye.” The man rasped, “had a massive ‘aul of stolen military goods. Scav laws let us ‘ave em, as long as we gave ‘em back the warheads. Repurposed the buggers into personal ships cheap as dirt, I’m ‘appy to say.” 

Martin squirmed anxiously in Tenebris’ pants’ pocket, where she had put him, since she tired of holding him and was afraid that someone would try to snatch him like in the cafe. Evidently, he was concerned by the prospect of flying inside of a decommissioned planet-destroying missile. She wasn’t. At the end of the day, the only fundamental difference between a missile and a cargo ship was what was inside it. 

The man held out a data pad, similar to one of the payment devices. “If you don’t ’ave any questions, I’ll take yer codes and you can nab yer new ship.”

Wordlessly, Tenebris used the payment pad, once more holding it up to the base of her skull. A slight tingle resonated within her cranium, before she handed it back. 

“Give it a second to confirm the payment and then it’s yers.” He placed the pad on a table behind him. ‘Ey, you ‘eard about this naming thing? Apparently it’s a bit of a superstition ‘round ‘ere that if yer business dun’t start with the same letter as yer name, you’re, eh, ‘doomed to fail’.  Funny thing is, ye, it ends up being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, ‘cus nobody wants to work at a business that’s destined to fail, which, get this, causes them to fail! Funny, innit?”

“D fifteen” a feminine voice emanated from a speaker above the hologram pillar, reading a code which flashed in stark red lettering. 

“Down the ‘allway, ye. Fourth elevator. Level fifteen. Ya don’t talk much, do ya?” 

Tenebris shrugged. “Not much to talk about.” With that, she spun on her heel and made her way down the hallway. 

The elevator was seemingly waiting for them, the bulkhead marked with a massive unmissable capital D. It opened upon her approach, likely by identifying her neural chip’s unique signal, and associating it with her purchase. Proving her theory, the 15 button on the touchpad was brightly lit, with a pulsing blue, while the others remained dim, emanating a low yellow. When she pressed it, the blue light disappeared. 

In response, the door behind her slid shut, interlocking mechanisms sliding into place, pneumatic hisses reverberating along the air. The elevator smoothly accelerated, a pit forming in Tenebris’ stomach from the sudden change. 

Just as before, the rotational gravity grew less intense the higher they went closer to the centre. When the elevator began to decelerate, she had to brace her hands against the ceiling to avoid getting thrown into it. Martin seemed to get lifted up out of her pocket slightly from the upward force. 

The elevator slid to a halt, a display to the side of the bulkhead reading ‘level 15’ along with various readings, such as pressure and temperature on the catwalk. The bulkhead opened, the sound of sliding metal and hissing pneumatics once more filling the chamber. 

This region still retained about half the gravity of the normal station, so Tenebris was able to stand. The catwalk in front of her was fully transparent, allowing an excellent view of the area around them. They were much further into the station than they were before, and were flanked in every conceivable direction by layers upon layers of ship and cargo containers, so many that either end of the station was completely unseeable. 

The ship before Tenebris was larger than she had expected. A towering cylinder, around twenty metres in height and fully coloured jet black. It seemed oddly lopsided, with a segment jutting out the side at a right angle up against the capsule. The catwalk extended slightly more than halfway up the total height of the repurposed missile, being the capsule. The door was already open, waiting for them. 

Tenebris entered the capsule, the bulkhead sliding shut behind her. The first thing she noticed was the size. It was incredibly small: if she spread her arms, she would probably be able to reach across the entire diameter. The interior was basic, being made up of nothing but a small control setup that was set into the floor, and a soft spot on the opposite wall. On this soft spot, hung several metal attachments. If she were to lie against the surface of the wall, the attachments would roughly align with her wrists, torso, head, and ankles. 

She withdrew Martin from her pocket, allowing him to slowly float down to the ground from the lower artificial gravity. His fall appeared to be slightly diagonal, a natural side-effect of being aboard a rotating station, commonly referred to as ‘coriolis forces’. She stuffed her backpack into a storage locker embedded in the floor before interacting with the control setup.
The controls were incredibly simple, having very few options for configuration of any sort. She tapped together a flight to Edo. 

Eighty-seven thousand light hours to their destination. She configured her burn relative to the distant system, with forty-thousand hours of a seventeen gee burn, followed by an idle period of one-hundred thousand hours. After this, another forty-thousand hours of seventeen gee deceleration. At this point the pair will be reawakened from cryosleep, and be bright and awake for their arrival at the distant system. 

The system took in all the data, and recalculated it to apply to their local frame of reference, accounting for all of the terribly annoying effects of relativity. It supplemented the telemetry with a route to take them away from the station, within acceptable distances to initiate the burn. 

A warning appeared on the screen. Tenebris read it aloud for her Parvian companion. “Warning, acceleration fluid may induce substance intoxication as a side-effect of present compounds. Restraints must be applied prior to travel.” She glanced over at the metal attachments. She continued reading. “Heh, look at this - ‘any wearable items such as clothes or jewelry must be removed prior to flight, in order to prevent complications.’  Lucky you, you pervy Parvian.” 

Martin rolled his eyes. Tenebris snickered. “I didn’t get the chance to ask what ‘the scramble’ was to that woman.” Martin stated, evidently trying to switch the topic. 

“Good.” Tenebris said, drawing her shirt over her head, the Martian insignia deforming from the movement. “Some things are better left unknown with these places, especially if you have to dig for them. Now,” Tenebris made a sweeping gesture towards the Parvian, “lose the clothes. For your safety.”

The pair removed their garments, with Tenebris finding the tight leggings particularly difficult to remove. She stole a few glances at Martin while he wasn’t looking. It was silly to be sneaky about it, since they wouldn’t be able to not look at each other when they were entering cryo, but she found a simple thrill in doing something she knew was wrong. When she was finished, she balled up her clothes and tucked them under her arm, before squatting above the miniscule Parvian, who had his back turned towards her. Her shadow crept over his nude form while he kicked off his boxers. 

He must have noticed her shadow, since he soon turned aroun. As a knee-jerk reaction to Tenebris looming above him, he jumped, letting out a tinny, brief shriek. He clutched his chest, calming down from the scare. 

Tenebris took a bit to absorb the moment. It was an incredible feeling, to tower above someone like this, soaking in Martin’s adorable responses. Her squatting posture had her splaying her legs, which in turn, parted her labia slightly. Martin was staring up at her spread sex as if it were a monster. She could only imagine what was coursing through the Parvians head at that moment. Was he afraid? Likely. Taken aback by the glorious sight? Unlikely, but she could still entertain the possibility if she was willing to flatter herself. 

The moment having been sufficiently absorbed, Tenebris broke the silence. “Eyes are up here, buddy.” She extended a hand towards Martin. “Clothes.” 

Coming back to his senses, Martin came to attention and scooped up his clothes, placing them in her palm. 

Tenebris smirked. She shoved both their clothes into the open locker where she had put her backpack. Shutting it afterward proved difficult, as due to the lessened gravity, she couldn’t leverage her weight against the locker. With a good shove, it clicked shut. 

Behind her, Martin cleared his throat. Without noticing, she had bent herself over, directly in front of him, and completely flaunted her privates a second time. She dipped her head, dark hair flowing to the ground like water in slow motion. Across her body, between her legs, she saw Martin, craning his neck up at her intimate areas. 

“Uh…” he clicked his tongue, “you know anything about Edo?”

Tenebris pushed herself up so she was sitting on her knees. “Let’s see. Biologicals industry capital of the known universe, so I’d expect some weird shit, at the very least.” She said, running her fingers through her hair. “You never know, though,” she continued, “maybe you’ll see something you like. Is that acceptable?” 

“I guess.” Martin shrugged.

“Excellent!” She clapped her hands together. “Now let’s get this shit going.” She arched her back until she was upside-down, hair draping down to the floor, and with a stretched arm, tapped a button reading ‘Begin lift off sequence’ in bold lettering. 

The door shut and tightened. Tenebris scooped up Martin, and went to the wall equipped with the metal restraints, which now had red flashing lights on them. As she put her limbs near them, they snapped shut, the light switching to a calming green. The restraints, upon connecting, drew out from the walls. A steel wire extended the range of movement, allowing Tenebris to move about freely until she was put to sleep. The cabin began to fill with a thin pink liquid, the sudden warmth on her bare feet surprising her. An external camera informed her that the bulging area on the side of the ship was contracting at the same rate the cabin was filling with the liquid, leading her to the conclusion that the extrusion was temporary containment for the incompressible liquid.  

Martin was squirming up a storm in her hand. “Calm down, man,” she attempted to console him, “it’s breathing fluid. You can breathe it… I think. The ship is supposed to do this.”
The ship unclamped from the station, beginning the station-leaving burn, acceleration causing a pit to form in Tenebris’ stomach. The fluid was up to her knees now. A vacuuming noise could be heard, sucking the air out to make space for the acceleration fluid. It crawled up to her waist, then her chest, and climbed over her head, encasing her in the warm fluid. She let the air out her lungs, bubbles of atmosphere slowly floating to the top. The liquid invaded her chest, infiltrating her body. The sickening sense of wrongness that comes with inhaling a liquid pervaded her senses, but something else also arose. 

It was an almost indescribable feeling radiating from her lungs. It felt like both numbness and hypersensitivity simultaneously. She could barely sense Martin in her hand, but at the same time, she could almost feel his rapid heartbeat caress her skin. 

The cabin filled with lurid purple swirls and rays of golden light coming from impossible directions. The world around her became a blur, but also shone with incredible definition.

Breathe in, breathe out. The liquid was heavy, requiring a lot of strength to force it out, and to draw it in. But she could definitely breathe it, as weird a sensation as it may have been. Her mind was infiltrated by a sudden thought, a whisper from within. Something that asked the question ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ and before her conscious mind could produce a proper answer, she gasped from a heavenly squirming against her sex. 

She rubbed Martin up and down against her slit, desperately seeking pleasure. Biting her lip, she sped up her pace, noting every bump and texture of his tiny form against her sensitive bits. It felt good, unnaturally so. At the same time, however, it was also not enough. It was almost a battle, between her loins sending incredible amounts of pleasure, and her pleasure centres continuing to demand more. 

It was only logical then, that the next step was deeper. Desperate for satisfaction, she pushed the wriggling man into herself. Playing with her clit, her slender fingers pushed the radiating blissful sensation within. His movements were euphoric, her insides contorting to his form. 

Her eyes shut, focusing on the electric sensations from the Parvian’s every move. He slid about inside her, pressing into her walls. Sometimes a leg, sometimes an arm, always bliss. One particular movement struck her just right, sending her over the edge into powerful waves of orgasm, spasming and rippling across her nervous system. She heaved and gasped in the throes of pleasure, sucking in lungfuls of liquid. 

It was good. In her post-orgasmic haze, she lacked the ability to produce a better word. A sense of utter satisfaction resonated within her. She was drawn against the wall, held tight in a mechanical embrace. The comfortable surface beckoned her with the prospect of rest, making her eyes heavy and her swirling thoughts slow. 

Opening her eyes for a brief moment, with blurry vision she read a message from the display on the floor. ‘Cryogenic processes initiated. Freezing in 16 seconds…” the seconds continued to count down, but the call of rest had her asleep before it could hit ten.

Martin violently choked himself awake, the horrible sense of choking pervading his senses. He hacked and spat, trying to spew out the acceleration fluid in his lungs. The pinkish fluid dribbled out his mouth onto the ground, forming a small puddle of cloudy pink.

He came to his senses. He was on the floor, the floor of the decommissioned missile he had flown in. The cold metal was hard on the knees, and he could feel it deform his hands. The engine was running, rumbling through his palms and generating enough g-force to give the illusion of gravity. Weakly, he stood up, post-cryo sickness making his legs quiver. He was still wet; the acceleration fluid having apparently not yet dried off. He blinked a few times and had a small fit of mini coughs. He wasn’t thirsty, the ship’s stasis being apparently more advanced than the old terraforming ship.

The cabin was the same as he remembered it prior to being submersed. Empty walls, a simple metallic grey, reminding him of a less dirty version of his home station. He shivered at the thought. There were no windows.

Across the chamber, Tenebris was drawing her shirt back over her head, still-damp hair clinging to her neck. 

He tried to recall what had happened after the chamber filled, but the memory refused to surface. However, a whiff of his skin gave him an idea of what occurred. 

He locked eyes with Tenebris, her face turning a bright red with embarrassment. “It, um,” she stuttered, “it was the immersion fluid, not my fault.” 

Martin rolled his eyes at her poor deflection. “Are we there yet?” 

She cleared her throat. “Yeah, just finishing up decel. Station contact is coming up, we should probably buckle in.” 

The engine cut, putting them into zero-g. Martin kicked off the ground, out into the woman’s palm. Tenebris returned to the soft portion of the wall, tightly gripping the wrist attachment with her free hand.

Beginning the docking procedure, attitude thrusters puffed in short bursts, shaking the hull and adding the smallest bit of centripetal force. A display measured out the total rotation in radians, coming to half pi before the opposing thrusters countered the rotation, leaving their relative velocity perpendicular to the main thruster to allow for easy docking.

The floor’s display switched to showing a countdown, proximity measurement, and current velocity, along with a simplified render of the ship’s orientation in reference to the geo-orbital station. The proximity kept going down, a few kilometres, then a single kilometre, a couple hundred metres, fifty metres, and suddenly-

“Contact!” Tenebris shouted, holding the Parvian to her chest. Martin braced himself, gripping the hem of her shirt. The ship groaned, but the contact with the station was organically smooth. Stable connection was shockingly fast, with the ship’s doors opening almost immediately.  

The first thing to notice with the Edo station was the unusually scented atmosphere, and slightly lower pressure. The smell was reminiscent of sugar, faint but recognizable. He recognized the smell, it was an airborne growth medium. Why it would hang around in the open air, however, he did not know.  The next to notice, was that the station lacked artificial gravity. 

The pair gently floated out of their ship into the connective hallway, a circular passage covered in a solid enamel white. It was completely smooth, with no seams whatsoever.

They arrived in a spacious chamber, one which shared the same seamless white colouration. However, unlike the stark blankness of the hallway, this room had at least a few points of interest. There was a large impression on one side of the room, a mattress-like object attached to another side, an abnormal display configuration on yet another, and an air vent. 

The air vent had a few flyers attached to it, small pieces of fabric that fluttered about from the air rushing past. The air was being sucked in and out, rather than just blown out like a normal vent. It was consistent, and barely audible, almost like it was breathing.

Through the shirt he was held tight to, Martin could feel Tenebris’ heart rate increase. She awkwardly made her way to the mattress in the wall, and holding herself in place using a support that ran along the ceiling.

The display across from them came to life. It shimmered with colours outward from the centre like ripples on still water. The screen had text on it, displayed in an almost incomprehensible font, with lines jutting out in abnormal places, yet still retaining readability.

“Welcome to Edo orbital station delta.” a PA system spoke the text aloud. The voice was comprised of a sound Martin could only compare to a chorus of cricket noises, the rapid chirping combining to produce a noise that one could identify as ‘speaking’. He gripped the hem of Tenebris’ shirt a bit harder. “We hope you have found our system pleasant so far. Please wait for your relations ambassador.”

The screen shifted to a portrait of a gaunt-looking man with sunken eyes, betrothed in old-world captain’s garb. “Edo was built off the genius of Tilman Fyntr. His bravery and his daring to pursue the limits of gene manipulation against the instructions of others formed the foundation of the galaxy’s leader in biologicals.” A new voice began, though it had the same cricket-chirping audio. It was accompanied by music built of layering rhythms, each of their own pitch and speed. Tenebris grimaced at the audio.

“What’s wrong with the music? I think it’s quite nice.” Martin asked.

“Neurorhythms. I hate the stuff; it’s designed to stimulate neuron growth in weird places to make it easier to sell shit to you. It's sick.” Tenebris answered.

The video continued, switching to a camera, slowly going down the corridor of a heavenly marble palace towards a set of towering doors, inset with intricate designs. “The Cabinet, the ruling body, is the most powerful and adaptive intelligence in the known universe.” The doors slowly began to open, revealing a darkened room. In the centre, a monolithic column filled with green liquid, the silhouette of a vast spherical object floating within, uncountable protuberances branching off of it leading to the floor and ceiling. 

The video cut out, the ‘Neurorhythms’ abruptly halting. 

“Your relations ambassador has arrived.” The first voice returned.

The impression Martin had noticed earlier began making a crackling noise. It slid apart with a slightly wet noise, segmenting itself into triangular chunks and receding into the wall, revealing a human-like figure, a hallway behind them. 

They were visibly female, and slightly above average in height. She wore flowing robes of swirling blues and purples that caught the eye. Her skin was fair, and incredibly smooth, unnaturally so. In fact, looking closer, one would notice she had no pores at all. Large eyes, a small nose, and full lips of a soft pink hue decorated their face. She had no hair, her head instead adorned by circular patches of purple skin, equally spaced around her entire crown. 

She was standing upright, despite gravity not being present. Martin at first assumed they were wearing maglock boots, but the ground was not made of metal that such equipment could magnetize to. She walked towards the pair, her feet softly brushing against the ground without the signature clicking and clacking from any sort of tech Martin recognized. 

Her face stretched into what was supposed to be a welcoming smile. She stood slightly closer than was comfortable, and looked down at Tenebris, who was evidently shorter than her.

Slender fingers wrapped around Tenebris’ hand in greeting. “I am Dee, your relations ambassador.” She greeted warmly. Her words were enunciated perfectly and efficiently, every exhale using the bare minimum amount of air required to get the words out, and not a wisp more. “I will be actuating your interactions and your travel throughout Ylid.”

“Hi.” Tenebris quickly responded.

“And this is the specimen?” She stared at Martin. 

Looking in her eyes, he could feel there was something bubbling beneath the surface. Her eyes moved rapidly, jumping all over his body, seemingly grabbing every detail of his form. “Y-yeah.” Martin answered hesitantly.

“Shall we make for landfall?” The ambassador straightened her posture, returning her gaze to Tenebris. “I’d hate for you to miss the evening view of Ylid.”

“Yes, of course. We should… get going.” Tenebris hung on the last word. 

“Just this way, we have special landfall vehicles we can take to the surface.” She gestured for the pair to follow her.

They were led down more enamel corridors, through the door Dee had entered through. 

Dee and Tenebris continued to talk, but Martin’s attention was drawn to the surroundings, their speech becoming no more than background noise. 

There was something very off here, Martin concluded. Everything had the hallmarks of perfection, the walls were seamless and pristine, Dee’s features all individually flawless, everything. Yet, the combined whole made him sick to the stomach. Dee’s flowing robes ahead of them, undulating in zero-g, spread calming hues in a manner that simply felt unnatural. 

He was going to be sold to these people. 

The soundscape of the station was unusual. Like most stations, it was a constant cacophony if one listened hard enough. However, these sounds were unidentifiable as to their purpose. Wet crackling resounded through the walls, something reminiscent of elastic snapping, the cricket speakers chirping in various tongues, a low groan occasionally perforating the air.

Martin’s eyes snapped to a wall. There was a red pearl forming around it, something leaking and congealing in the zero-g. Before he could get a good look at it, they rounded a corner, removing it from his vision.

“So... if you don’t mind me asking, what are these walls made of?” Tenebris inquired, pulling herself along what little handholds existed in the winding blank corridors. Perhaps she had also seen the oozing surface. 

“Questions are always welcome.” Dee nodded. “They’re made of enamel, the same as your teeth, only better. Exsarciotic gland secretes ameloblasts, keeps everything pressurized and smooth.”

“The station has biotech, then?”

“The station is biotech. Everything you see is grown out from the central organism, much more efficient and robust than any analog or digital station. Incredible, isn’t it?” Dee grinned.

That answered a lot of questions. Martin placed his fist to his mouth, trying to prevent himself from throwing up.

The ship connection wasn’t just organically smooth. It was organic. The walls weren’t enamel color. They were enamel. The air vent, it wasn’t like it was breathing, it was breathing. The screen, a projection of a neural network’s mind’s eye, causing the strange artifacts in the text. The cricket PA system, shit, it might have just been cricket legs. The door, made of living tissue tearing apart. All those noises in the hallway were the sounds of sinews stretching, muscles contracting and expanding. That wall, it was bleeding.

Martin spasmed involuntarily, drawing the deepest breaths he could to calm himself. 

Continuing onward, they passed through more segmented doorways. The recontextualized crackling as they opened made the Parvian sick to the stomach.

They arrived in the landfall vehicle. A fibrous, translucent membrane extended over the door and sealed, leaving the three isolated in the ship. 

The egg-shaped interior was covered on all sides in sprawling webbing, creating a grippy, cushiony surface. The chamber was bathed in bioluminescent green light, emanating from veins that climbed across and covered the walls. In what must have been the ship’s front, Dee sat in a tight bundle of webbing. A rubbery limb which extended from ‘above’ was latched onto her head, with numerous protrusions extending from it and attaching to each of the purplish spots surrounding her head. It was pulsing, with Dee seizing up in rhythm with it. 

Hesitantly, Tenebris sat in the webbing herself. She looked at Martin uncomfortably. She glanced beside herself, at a spot in the webbing Martin could fit in. He fervently shook his head.

How badly he wanted to simply curl up somewhere warm and quiet, and cease to exist for a little while. Seeming to sense his disposition, Tenebris brought him a bit closer to her chest.

The warmth and softness of the Martian’s chest was welcome, and helped to ease Martin’s nerves, if only a little. Thank goodness he had someone looking after him in this horrible place. 

Except he didn’t, he realized. She was the reason he was there. He was going to be sold as a specimen to these inhuman monsters, and she was just the one selling him. Whatever they had planned for him, she would stand by and take the money. He knew it. They’d offer her an absurd sum, and she’d take away his ability to veto. Everyone has a price. In his case, this was literal, in that he had a price.

His heart rate picked up; his breathing grew faster. Anxiety welled within him, but as did something else. Anger. A flaming sense of horrible injustice. 

Then it stopped.

What would be the point?

He could cry out, he could shout, but it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t fight Tenebris, nor could he appeal to her sense of justice, seeing as that exact thing was what shoved him into this horrible predicament in the first place. 

It was just dreadful. That’s all he felt. Dread. Heavy and oppressive. 

The lurch of acceleration yanked Martin from his self-deprecating spiral. The ship disconnected from the greater body of the station, thrusters tossing mass out the back end, dropping them out of geosynchronous orbit of Edo-1, the sole planet in the Edo star system. 

The ship shook as it broke into atmosphere, heating up the exterior with fiery friction. The thrusters cut, but it was very apparent that they were no longer in zero-g, but rather, true free-fall.

Looking past the pink-tinged membrane of the doorway, long wings were unfurling, presumably on both sides of the ship. 

As the wings caught the air, Martin felt weight return to him. Then more weight, he guessed two gees. They were losing velocity, which was good, since smashing into the ground at whatever the ship’s terminal velocity was didn’t sound like an enjoyable experience.

The ship began to bob up and down. Peering through the membrane again, it became clear that the wings had begun to flap.

After what he assumed to be a few minutes of dizzying flapping, they landed on the surface of the planet. The membrane opened to the side, cinching against the height of the doorway like the third eyelid of a cat.

With a loud and unpleasant schluck, the limb attached to Dee’s head released, retracting into the ceiling. She stood from her chair, instantly acquainted with the proper gravity. With confident steps, she easily navigated the webbing and exited through the door. 

Her face snapping into a grin, she gestured out of the ship. “Welcome to Ylid, capital city of Edo.” She announced. 

Tenebris and Martin looked outside. 

Skyscrapers. Hundreds of them. Twisting and turning, bending at strange angles and connecting to one another in an unfathomably tall network of buildings. Tram cars passed between them, hooked on what must have been incredibly strong connective rods. Looking down, Martin’s jaw dropped. They weren’t looking at the city from ground level. They were already on one of the skyscrapers. The city extended so far below that mist and clouds of dust made it impossible to see the bottom. 

They were inside one of the buildings, Martin noticed. A thin, almost invisible membrane ran across the window, providing an incredible view of the city. The ground was completely smooth, but the room had an uneven shape, where the perimeter was built of wobbly irregular lines, and even the ceiling didn’t quite have the same shape as the floor.

They stepped out. It was warmer in the building, which Martin preferred, as did his metabolism, which promptly slowed along with his heartrate. 

“Your appointment is tomorrow afternoon.” Dee said. “If you have any requests or questions, relevant data is available through your neural chip. Please feel free to explore the building, all amenities are free to guests.” She concluded with a bow and approached one of the five elevators on the opposite side of the room. 

“I could go for a sauna; I wonder if they have that.” Tenebris thought aloud.

“What!?” Martin exclaimed. “We go through all of that shit, in a... a...” He gagged. “Inside a living space station! And then you drop down onto the most insane planet in the galaxy on a bioluminescent eggship with goddamn wings and a mind-control... thing, and the first thought that pops in your mind is to see if they have a fucking sauna?!”

“I warned you there’d be weird shit.”

Martin threw his hands up in the air.

Tenebris lifted her hand up so that she was eye level with the Parvian. “Martin. You’ve gotta understand. I’m not as desensitized to this stuff as you think, I think it’s gross, too. But you have to learn to accept that that’s just the way shit is and move on.”

“But I can’t, it’s not right.”

“Nothing’s going to change just because you’re stressing out about it. Tell you what, I’ll pick us up some amygdaline, and we can go relax in the sauna for a while.” Martin opened his mouth to speak, but Tenebris continued. “If you do this, I’ll use my chip to answer all of your burning questions.”

Martin closed his mouth and mulled over it for a moment. He supposed it couldn’t hurt to calm down for a little while. He took a deep breath and nodded.

...

“Dispenser... right here.” Tenebris pointed at the device in the wall. It was the first non-organic machine Martin had seen since he left Tenebris’ new ship. A tear almost welled up in his eye finally seeing a proper digital display and shiny metal. “Three, two, one.” Tenebris counted down the arrival of their goods using data supplied from her chip. The machine spat out a pill container, labelled with various warnings and covered in various symbols one could scan to find every single medical study done with the substance, but most importantly, in big bold letters, ‘amygdaline’.

Tenebris grabbed the bottle, the two pills within it rattling within the case. She folded her arm behind herself and tucked it into her bag. “Next stop, sauna.”

“Elevator again?” Martin asked. Their first experience with the machine was generally unpleasant. It was tight and claustrophobic for even him, and it constantly felt like it was on the verge of breaking. 

Tenebris tapped and swiped, interfacing with her neural chip. “Yeah.” 

“Damn.”

They returned to the elevator of that floor. Martin watched Tenebris tap the air a few times, likely calling an elevator and selecting which one of the ridiculous number of floors they wished to go to.

“Can you ask the chip why we’re inside all the time?” He asked another of what must have been dozens of questions he had. “I don’t see anyone going outside the skyscrapers.” 

“Sure.” She popped a chip in her mouth, loudly crunching it with her teeth. “Alright... here we go. ‘Atmosphere of Edo one’, that’ll work. Let's see... Edo-one has an atmosphere composed of ninety-seven percent methane, three percent ammonia, with an air pressure of two-hundred fifty kilopascals and a surface temperature of three-hundred degrees Celsius, making it by all accounts inhospitable without a climate-controlled environment.”

“What? Why the hell would they live here, then?”

“Says right here. ‘All conditions, while inhospitable, provide phenomenal resources for the production of carbon-based biologicals, when assisted by Edo-one's artificial ice moon.’”

“Artificial?”

“Geez, man, are you trying to make me fry my chip here?” Tenebris scoffed. “Here’s something... ‘Edo-one B is a small ice planet from the outer reaches of the Edo system that was moved into geocentric orbit around Edo-one by digging trenches in its surface and detonating several thousand antimatter bombs off within the trenches.’ Huh.” She raised her brow.

The elevator arrived with a ding, opening to allow the pair entrance into the tight chamber.

 Tenebris had to hold her breath to shimmy into the entrance of the pill-shaped capsule, the ‘lips’ (Martin couldn’t describe the fleshy entryway in any other manner) stretching back together behind them.

The elevator was covered in skin. There was no other way to describe it. It was skin that held the traveller tight, likely to avoid injury caused by the machine’s obscene accelerations and mind-numbing speeds. The walls were lined in the same luminescing veins that had been on the ship, pulsating and undulating in their green hues.

Acceleration. The elevator cinched around the pair, Tenebris gasping in surprise for a moment. The skin closed tight, making movement nigh impossible in the snug space. 

“What do you think they’ll do with me?” Martin broke the silence. 

Tenebris paused. She clenched her fist in front of her face, tapping out of her interface. Not looking him in the eye, she responded. “I don’t know. Clone you, maybe dissect you? These guys just want your DNA, to see what makes you tick and find out if they can use it for themselves.”

“... So that’s just it? They’ll kill me?” He replied glumly, staring past the walls out into space.

“If I were you, that’s how I’d want to go. Painless. Don’t have to live as jewelry, or some housemaid, or whatever the hell else those guys want to do with you.” 

Those were really his options. Live like shit, as someone else’s property, or die. What a wonderful galaxy to exist in.

The elevator slid to a halt, the room uncinching and the lips being drawn open. With a revolted grunt, Tenebris slid out. She took her bag off her shoulder, and using her free hand, pulled out the pill bottle. “I can tell you’re not doing too hot right now, man. Just take some.” She poured the contents of the container into her open palm, offering it to Martin. He grabbed a smaller flake that had broken off one of the two greater structures, which were roughly a quarter of his height. Hesitantly, he popped it in his mouth, and swallowed hard. “Good. That should kick in in a few minutes, let’s get to that sauna, alright?” 

The floor they were on was a large one, with winding hallways. Tenebris wandered around, following a map display present only in her visual cortex. Martin apprehensively awaited the effects of the amygdaline. “What’s this stuff do?” He said, trying to draw his mind away from his own wallowing.

“Turns off anxiety, or at least suppresses it. Depends on your dosage.” She explained. “Pretty popular stuff.”

They arrived in the sauna. Martin was against the idea, but found he was quickly coming around to it. Looking into it through the membranous window, his heart nearly skipped a beat. The benches that encompassed the interior were built of real wood. He’d never seen the stuff in his life. Vegetation crawled up the walls, which were made of a substrate-like substance. Steam perforated the room, making the colors within appear washed-out and a bit fuzzy. All said and done, it looked quite pleasant.

The pair stripped to their undergarments, Tenebris stuffing the clothes, along with their bags, into a locker. Glancing down at the floor below Tenebris’ hand, Martin felt strange. Where he expected to be filled with vertigo, he felt nothing. The amygdaline must have been taking its effect. The logical part of his brain had to cover for his faltering fear centres by providing a very long list of reasons why jumping down would be a bad idea.

Tenebris pushed open the door, entering the humid area. Martin immediately began soaking in the increased temperature, shutting his eyes and enjoying the sensation of the metabolism change. It further soothed his aching mind, coating all the dark, rough edges of his thoughts in a lurid sheen of ecstasy. 

The pair sat on the wood bench. Martin reclined, lying down and soaking in the humid warmth and pleasant herbal scents. 

All that time spent worrying. He simply couldn’t understand it. Always knowing he couldn’t change his fate, but still trying. Unfathomable. Couldn’t he just accept that one day he’d die, that he’d probably even be better off that way? Why couldn’t he accept that, as he could in this moment?

In the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Tenebris, gulping down one of the amygdaline tablets. His curiosity piqued. “Whatcha doin’?” He inquired nonchalantly. 

“Nothing.” She stated flatly.

“You took one of the pills. Did you need it?”

“I’m just trying to relax.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. This, um, this place gives me the creeps.”

He closed his eyes and continued to relax. His breathing further slowed, as did his heartbeat, thumping incredibly softly, like the fluttering of a moth’s wings. The exterior warmth continued to wash over him like rays of sunlight.

He heard the amygdaline bottle rattle again. Opening one eye, he saw Tenebris swallow the second tablet. 

A few minutes passed. Tenebris began to rock back and forth, subtle but apparent. She was muttering to herself, but Martin struggled to pick out the words. “Not right...” He thought he heard her say.

He sat up and approached her leg. Placing a hand on her thigh, he attempted to console her. “Are you okay?”

Her rocking ceased. “I’m fine, just leave me for a bit.” She spoke. There was a slight quiver to her tone. Under her breath and nigh inaudible, she groaned “It’s not enough” to herself.

“You sure you’ll be alright?” He caressed her pale skin. He wasn’t concerned, he was incapable of feeling concerned, but he wanted her to feel better.

She drew her legs up onto the bench. Clutching her head and resting her elbows on her knees, she lowered her head, her jet-black hair cascading down and covering her face. Her chest infrequently rose and fall, rapidly drawing and releasing staggered exhales.

Tenebris threw her head back, flicking her hair behind her and resting her back against the vegetated wall. Her face was red, a shining trail of a tear descending her face. She tightly clenched her eyes, pushing out two fresh tears. “No. No, I won’t, and I never fucking will.”

Martin stepped back, some deep-rooted portion of his lizard brain regaining control momentarily.

“I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep pretending like this.”  She sobbed, growing louder as she went on. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! You weren’t supposed to save me! Fuck!”

He stepped back toward her. “It’s alright, it’ll work out-”

“But it won’t! If I don’t sell you off, I’ll be right back where I started! I can’t go back. Shit, the things I’ve done... and if I do sell you, what’ll I do? I can’t live knowing that I sold an innocent man to be a slave, or to be jewelry, or to get tore down to the fucking bone! To get your entire genome ripped from you, your brain jammed in a tube to fly some rich asshole’s ship!” She buried her head in her hands. “Why couldn’t I just grab more pills...”

Martin paused for a moment, trying to imagine up a response. He was endlessly grateful that the drug had affected him so strongly, as otherwise he would have never been able to accept the circumstance. “You said it yourself, there’s no point in stressing about things that you can’t change.” 

“That was just an empty statement, Mart! I wanted it to be like that, for both of us, but it just doesn’t work like that! Hell, I can’t write off what I’ve done, what I’m doing, as spur-of-the-moment decisions, because it isn’t, it never has been!” 

“We can do something, you can make this work.” 

“Can’t you see, man? I can’t! I don’t have any more choices! No matter what I do, I’m awful, and I’ll be awful! And you can’t even understand, because you’re drugged, and you think that there’s justice in this shithole galaxy, that I have any remnant of decency left in me!” She shouted in staggered, spasming breaths. 

She cried out, the implant in her palm shrieking with spiderlike tendrils of white-hot electricity, illuminating the room in flickering blue hues.

Her body went limp. She fell against the vegetated wall, her arms dropping to her sides. The steady rise and fall of her chest was the only indication that she was even alive. 

Martin watched. He felt sad for her, but he wasn’t worried. He wasn’t concerned. He wasn’t afraid that she had hurt herself. The amygdaline made it impossible. 

There was something in her bag, back in the locker. He had to get to it, maybe he could find something that would help lift them out of their predicament. 

It was difficult navigating a threatening world without the ability to feel fear, Martin found. He had to consciously remember the threat heights had to his life as he carefully hopped off the bench, nimbly landing with a roll to distribute the force. He walked across the steamy chamber, which, while not extremely large, still took a minute or so. 

The door, built of what he thought was a bone-like organic structure, had a slit beneath it, large enough for him to crawl under. Leaving the sauna, the lower temperature was uncomfortable, like pins and needles prodding his skin with slivers of icy pain.

The slow and soft thumping of his heart gradually increased to just below normal levels, the higher interior temperature of Edo-1 making further increase unnecessary. The cold on his exterior was beat out by the warmth spreading from his chest, running throughout his body. 

He looked up to the locker where Tenebris had placed their belongings. The surface was made of the same crystalline bone structure as the door, which looked porous and hard enough to provide excellent foot and handholds. Without a second thought, he began the process of climbing it. 

The locker was a spherical cubby, inset into the face of the wall, about a metre up. It was one of many, but they were all empty. Coming to think of it, he realized he hadn’t seen a single person. The skyscraper was completely empty, from all he’d seen thus far. He preferred it that way but found it still strange. 

The ground grew farther away every time he looked down to check for his next foothold. Excellent progress was being made. The lack of vertigo and the ease at which the wall allowed for climbing made Martin work with a swiftness he hadn’t believed himself to be capable of, even in zero-g.

He pulled himself up the ledge, lifting his legs up and rolling into the locker. He looked around for her bag. It was in the back of the cubby, behind the pile of Tenebris’ clothes. Stepping over them, he silently remarked on the fabric. He had to admit; it was a good choice. It was smooth, where most things his size were scratchy and porous. It had a bit of her own scent soaked into it, a coppery scent with a chemical tinge, but if one focused hard enough, the faintest undertone of lavender met the senses.

He pulled open the pack, one of the smaller compartments near the rear, where he remembered Tenebris placing his equipment all those thousands of hours ago, back at Guyen Station. Compared to his current location, it felt like a different life. Rummaging through the bag, he briefly wondered how much Guyen had changed since they left. It had been a very long time, though he hadn’t experienced any of it. 

There it was. The old tablet, the robust little thing he’d carried with him for however long. It wasn’t very powerful, seeing as it had to be small enough for a Parvian to wield, but what it lacked in processing, it made up for in being the most reliable machine he’d ever had the pleasure of ‘owning’ (it was technically owned by the station, but for all intents and purposes, it was his). The battery was likely dead, since it hadn’t been used in tens of thousands of hours. No time to charge it, though.

He searched about its surface, around the cracks in its display and the dents in its shell. There was a tiny box, no bigger than his fingernail, protruding out the side. Inside it, five nanograms of hydrogen, and five nanograms of antihydrogen. In short, two million joules of energy, contained in the tiny auxiliary power unit. Even he, a Parvian, could never dream of seeing such a small amount. In fact, ninety-nine-point five percent of the box was the cooling unit, with the actual reacting mass being no larger than the thickness of a single one of his hairs. Mass-energy conversion was always surprising in that way. 

Two million joules wasn’t much, it worked out to around six-hundred charges of his tablet, which sounded like a lot, but realistically the power unit would only charge a normal tablet about ten times. Still, it was nothing to scoff at, seeing as the device was less than a cubic centimetre in size.

Remarks about matter-antimatter annihilation aside, he flicked on the power unit. The tablet booted to life immediately, flashing the black silhouette of a ring with grass on its interior, the logo of his old company. 

He set the device down for a moment, grabbing and putting on his clothes. Afterward, he latched the device to his hip, letting it dangle from a belt loop, and began the process of descending back down.

The descent was unremarkable, the same as his trip up, only easier. He hopped off and made his way back into the sauna. 

Slipping underneath the door, he was welcomed by the hot, humid environment. He let out a deep sigh, enjoying the warmth. Tenebris was in the same position he had left her in, that was good.

Using the creeping vegetation, he climbed up the wall. It had a sticky, glue-like quality to it, likely employed by the plant to make clinging to the wall easier. Regardless, it made gripping the plant easy, and secure. He climbed past the bench, up near the nape of Tenebris’ neck. Brushing her dark hair aside, he found the neural chip. 

Sitting at the base of her skull, just above her neck, there was a hairless spot, instead replaced by the metal chip, inset into her skin. On its surface, the tiniest of ports, so small that it would be invisible to a non-Parvian. 

Trying not to disturb the unconscious woman, Martin pumped his fist. Whether or not the port would be there had been a complete gamble. Drawing the long, needle-like pin from his tablet, he slipped the device in. A small blue light flickered in its tip, indicating a positive connection. It didn’t require a wire-based connection, so he was able to step back, hugging a vine for support.

Swiftly, trying to contain his excitement, he pulled up his tablet. Data, bounds of it, terabytes, possibly more, flooded in. Trying not to overload the processor of his device, he tapped away at the interface, filtering out irrelevant data. He thought he caught eye of Tenebris’ personal records among the information onslaught, but he neglected to investigate further out of basic decency. 

Basic decency, he thought as he lurked about in the vast swathes of knowledge, both provided by the station and Tenebris’ data drive. Why would he continue to offer that, basic decency? No one else would give him that. A sense of justice? Even Tenebris seemed averse to the concept. But not completely, though she clearly tried. Her sudden outburst had proven that. 

Was that sense of justice, a desire for morality, wrong to have? Foolish, even? There were plenty of animals that had it. Rats, crows, wolves, all developed such traits independently. That doesn’t just come about because God or evolution wanted everyone to love each other. It was useful among social animals. It encouraged trust, to kick out traitors and care for the sick. He knew a bit of human history. He knew that, as strange as it was, humans developed a penchant for compassion, a burning sense of right and wrong so powerful that they projected it onto beasts, onto inanimate objects, onto the universe itself. 

As strange as it was, natural selection picked out this sense of morality, inflated it over uncountable generations. But when all of humanity, the greater hominid genus, set out to the cosmos, their evolutionary neurology couldn’t quite catch up. 

Why group together when there was no longer safety in numbers? Why trust another, when you’d be much better to distrust? Why believe it is wrong to hurt another or steal when it prolongs your own life? 

Morality, justice, these concepts that existed only within the human mind, had become vestigial. Like the tailbone, or the remnants of a third eyelid, a useless structure from eons past that clung to existence through genetic code. A retrovirus, junk DNA.

A file caught his eye. The Cabinet. He opened it up, parsed it. Compiled the information within his mind. 

The Cabinet wasn’t just a superintelligence. It was the culmination of the greatest minds of Edo, their brains seperated from their bodies and added to a collective hive mind, in which the individual was subsumed into the greater whole. The megabrain was an unfathomable twisting of the principles of neuroplasticity. It referred to itself as ‘I’, as one being, one mind, rather than ‘we’. The remembered experiences of any given mind within the Cabinet were shared among the entire entity. With all their hearts, it loved, lived, if you could call it that, for the ideas and principles of Edo. Even Tilman Fyntr, Edo’s founder, was part of it. It controlled almost every single part of the entire system, the companies, the government, the infrastructure of the cities, the law, the science conducted. Everything. 

And a part of it was calling out to him. It contacted him, or, rather, Tenebris. It sent a message of text alone, comprised of the tightest encryption structures he had ever witnessed. 

“I am Tilman Fyntr.” It read. “I have isolated myself from the Cabinet. Their ideas are perverse. I cannot allow this horrible thing I have created to continue to exist. You are the only two non-Edoans to set foot on this planet in decades. I will transmit all the wealth of Edo to you alone, if you destroy the Cabinet. Encrypted within this message, are the coordinates of the Cabinet and passcodes to allow you permission everywhere.”

Martin began hyperventilating as his eyes ran the page. The amygdaline was no longer powerful enough to block out his emotion. 

“I beg you, please accept this.” It continued. “Do not respond to this message. I expect I will be discovered, and the isolated region I have stolen for myself will be consumed back into the megabrain.”

Martin checked the metadata. The coordinates were there, as were the passcodes. He further delved into the file, hoping to find some proof that this was a scam, a fake. 

There was nothing.

It was real. The encryption alone proved it. He’d never seen anything like it.

He shut his eyes. His chest heaved, diaphragm spasmed. Fists clenched and unclenched against his own will. 

But something else rose above, forming in the recesses of his mind like a heavenly ray piercing through a horrible darkness. 

Purpose. 

Morality was not vestigial. Justice was not a flaw. Empathy was not a disease. He would prove it, he would do whatever it took, because the right thing was necessary. 

Humanity was not a virus, infecting the galaxy like some sickening parasite. It could be, but he wouldn’t allow it. It would be more. He would prove Tenebris wrong, and when he destroyed the Cabinet, he would break the repulsive ultimatum thrust upon themselves. That money, that wealth, he could buy back every Parvian in the galaxy, save them from whatever fate would have befallen them, as it almost had with him. Edo was one of the wealthiest systems in the galaxy. Any price named; he could afford. 

Coursing with a renewed being, a fresh soul, Martin leapt back down to the bench, leaving the pin within Tenebris’ chip. He drew in a deep breath, steeling his body, quivering with adrenaline and shaking with fear, and exhaled.

 Tenebris would join him. It would take convincing, but he knew that deep in her mind, a part which she desperately tried to convince herself didn’t exist, she wanted this. To do something right. To not sit idly by while humanity perverted itself. 

This is the toughest chapter I’ve ever written. Don’t even know what to call the smut in this chapter, but it’s kinda there.  

Martin paced back and forth across the floor of the sauna chamber, Tenebris still lying unconscious against the wall. Beads of sweat were beginning to form across the visible parts of her body, and the parts that were covered by clothing were turning dark with saturation. 

He noticed an idle pain in his eyes and ears. Pressure sickness. The station had had lower pressure than the decommissioned missile (he still couldn’t believe he’d flown in it), likely to make the event of violent depressurization less violent. This was common practice among stations and ships alike, since the lower the pressure differential between the interior and hard vacuum, the lower the strain on the structure. Most stations kept it around thirty kilopascals of pure oxygen, as did the missile (still crazy). However, he had felt a pressure drop upon boarding the station, so it must have been different. He reckoned it had been around twenty-five Kpa, approaching the minimum that could be tolerated before it became dangerous. However, he felt no pressure change upon making landfall, which meant the interior of the buildings were close or equal to that value. 

All of this was to say, he was sitting around at twenty-five kilopascals. If he wasn’t, he would have noticed when he exited the egg ship. Twenty-five Kpa was a mere ten percent of the atmosphere of the planet, which sat at two-hundred fifty Kpa. Meaning, those membrane windows were holding back a pressure differential of an entire magnitude, in addition to the already mind-numbing temperature difference of around two-hundred eighty degrees Celsius. 

He'd think the technology was incredible if it weren’t so gross. 

Taking his mind off the oncoming pressure sickness, he tried to return to casual matters, such as trying to destroy a nigh-omniscient superintelligence.  

Pulling out his tablet once again, he routed his connection back through the signal pin he had left in Tenebris’ chip. The coords are way out of town, hmm. He plotted. How would he get there? The hostile environs would make it border on impossibility. There. He pulled up a document. 

Land vehicle. Parked in the garage, all those hundreds of stories below. Unused, likely remaining there after someone arrived and didn’t take their bike back with them after they left. If they had left at all. Specs: hydrogen cell power, long range, autopilot capacity, gyro stabilised, high tolerance to temperature and pressure. However, it was unpressurized, and was bookmarked by the system to be around two-hundred Edo-1 orbits old. He ran some quick math to convert it to hours.  

An Edo year was two-hundred forty-five days. Multiply that by two-hundred years, then multiply by twenty-seven hours a day, and it comes out to one point three million hours. 

That was quite a while. Still, H-cells didn’t deteriorate, at least not on those timescales, so it should still work. Next problem: unpressurized, meaning there was no interior. He and Tenebris would be out in the harsh Edoan atmosphere, with the bike providing no protection. 

He thought back. Tennie had that vacuum suit, still in her bag. Problem: it wasn’t designed for high pressure; it was designed for zero pressure. The same went for temperature. Regardless, it was designed to handle large pressure and temperature differentials, so it should still work, even in the other direction. 

What the hell are you doing? A small voice in his mind hissed, its tone fuzzy and drowned out by oppressive amygdaline coating. 

I’m planning how I’ll kill the Cabinet, Martin replied confidently, not letting it draw his attention. 

You? You think you can just waltz in there and destroy a superintelligence? It sneered.  

I’ve got the passcodes. Nothing will stop us from getting in. He straightened his posture. 

‘Us’? You really think Tenebris will go with you? The only reason she even cares if you live or die, is if you’re dead, she doesn’t get her money.  

That’s not true.  

Look at her. She’s selfish, and she knows only an idiot wouldn’t be. You should be like her.  

He let the tablet hang at his waist. She’s coming around to it.  

In fact, you have access to her chip. You can save yourself. Go in, short circuit her brain. Better yet, dangle it over her head that you could. Seize control, it pontificated. 

I’m better than that. Martin held. 

You’re not some saviour. The dissenting voice grew louder, the amygdaline dripping away like ice melting and falling from a frozen branch. You’re property that refuses to accept the new ways of the galaxy. 

Martin paused. Drawing in a deep breath, he continued his internal argument. Someone has to try. I should stand for something. 

Do you, Martin? Do you have to stand for something? No one is rooting for you. There is no greater force cheering you on, just your own delusions of karmic justice that you’ve constructed for yourself.  

He furrowed his brow. Fuck you. I’d rather die trying to fix this shit, than just live in it.  

You’re hiding from the truth. It rasped.  

He chose not to dignify the voice with a response.  

Fine. You should probably wake up your friend, though. Sauna’ll kill her, soon. 

Martin shot his head up, looking at the unconscious woman. Her chest was rising and falling slowly. She had gone from moderately sweaty to completely drenched, soaking what little clothes she was wearing and making her skin paler than it already was. He quickly grabbed at his tablet, pulling up Tenebris’ metrics.  

Heart rate below average. Blood CO2 increasing, O2 decreasing. Abysmal salt levels. However, it was highly recoverable. 

He cursed under his breath. How would he wake her up? The chip wasn’t designed with other users in mind, it didn’t have a function for that. He desperately tapped into menus and options, searching for something.  

Nerve control.  

That might work. Interaction was complex, but he only needed to activate her pain receptors, jolt her awake. While there wasn’t a direct way of doing this, there was a roundabout method that’d do the trick.  

There was a display of her body’s nerve pathways with mountains of data he could never hope to parse. However; he didn’t need to. He zoomed in on her hand. There was a small space in her palm that had a smaller concentration of nerve pathways than the other regions. Her implant.  

He activated the surrounding muscular nerves, nerves that once controlled a muscle that had long since become vestigial and was now repurposed to activate her EMP.  

An audible fizzle from across the room, followed by a groan.  

Tenebris was getting up. Martin breathed a sigh of relief. She clutched her head in her hands. 

He quickly ordered an electrolyte bag to be delivered to the nearest dispenser. She’d need it.  

“Hey!” She shot up. “What the hell did you just do? I saw that!” 

“I can explain later, just get out of the sauna!” He demanded. 

Clearly confused, she stood, and drowsily walked out of the room, leaving behind slick footsteps of sweat. Martin felt the thud of her sitting down on one of the benches outside. 

He skittered across the floor and crawled under the doorway, careful to avoid being struck by its swinging. 

“What is this.” Tenebris grumbled, sitting on a bench in the centre of the room, glaring into the non-space of her neural display. “Did you fucking pin me?” 

“I-I had to do it,” he stuttered, “I had to find a way out of this-” 

“A message?” She interrupted. Her eyes flicked side-to-side as she parsed it. “This is a scam.” She said in disbelief. 

“That’s what I thought, but check the encryption. It’s some of the tightest ice I’ve ever seen; trillion-dimensional vector encryption, built off neuron architecture. Coordinates and passcodes seem legit, metadata checks out, too.” 

“Shit...” 

“All of Edo’s wealth. I could take less than halfsies and still have enough to buy entire systems with shit to spare.” 

She held still for a while. “I... I’ve gotta think about this.” 

“Yeah, that’s fine!” Martin exclaimed quickly, his anxiety present in his tone. “Let’s go get you something to drink, and then you can take a while to think about it.” She would actually consider it. He internally celebrated. “I can order us a room for the night, too, if you like-” 

“No!” She interrupted. “No, that... that felt too weird.”  

“Sure thing!” He held up his hands, trying not to upset her. Thinking about it for a moment, it should have been obvious she wouldn’t respond to something like that well. He imagined it would feel like having someone else imagining things in your own mind. Needless to say, it would be uncomfortable.  

Tenebris stood back up, slowly, and grabbed a towel from a rack on the wall. She wiped it across her skin, shiny with sweat. It took her a while, since she moved slowly and seemed to struggle in summoning deliberation. She threw the towel over the bench, and went to retrieve her stuff from the round cubby.  

Taking a good while, she began putting on her clothes. Martin took that time to clamber up the bench, using the grooves and imperfections in the wood to reach the top and pull himself over.  

She drew the loose-fitting garment, a ‘t-shirt’ he remembered it being called, over her head, letting it fall down and hang just above her legs, allowing the cup of her simple black panties to peer out from beneath the hem of the shirt. The leggings proved a bit more difficult, as the tight material had to be pulled rather tight to contort around her shapely figure, concealing her pale skin. Finally, she sat back on the bench and slipped on the shoes and socks. 

“Electrolyte bag’s ready.” She remarked at the same time as the notification appeared on Martin’s tablet.  

“Wanna go get it?” He said. 

“I probably should.” She gently rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. She tiredly extended a hand for the Parvian to step into. After he climbed on, she stood up and slipped her bag over her shoulder.  

... 

This was the place. A small room, designed to emulate a hotel not made from biotech. Of course, a nagging at the back of Martin’s mind told him that it was almost definitely still biotech. The pillows that sat on the bed could easily be spider silk, or something of the sort. Making it a little less obvious was still nice, though. 

Tenebris, holding the lip of her electrolyte balloon between her teeth, set him down on the bed, which sat at the centre of the room. The covers were thick, heavy, and soft. They were thinner on the sides, tapering off into a sheet that wrapped all the way around, going under the bed where the cinching mechanism lay. When a person sat beneath the covers, the mechanism would activate, pulling the cover taught and allowing for a comfortable sleeping experience. He recognized it, since such a mechanism was also common on ring stations, or even gravless stations, as the cinching mechanism prevented sleepers from drifting away in zero-gee.  

She tossed her bag next to him and left to the bathroom.  

Alone, Martin absorbed his surroundings. Never had he been more grateful to see standard steel and those cold blue lights that were inset within every surface. The room was rectangular, which came as a relief to him, as he worried the entire galaxy had been transformed into strange, winding corridors with inconsistent shapes and blotchy bone-like hues. Not bone-like, he had to remind himself. The buildings, as he had come to realize, bore concerning similarity to a human spine, with each vertebra comprising three floors. He shivered at the thought. 

He heard running water, muffled through the bathroom door but apparent. She’d been in there a while.  

She was probably weighing her options. As deeply as he could, he hoped that the little glimmer of reason that he’d seen earlier was making a good case for him. 

His tablet lit up at his side. Picking it up, there was a notification. He opened it. 

A text document, this time live. It read only one word. 

‘BUGGED’ 

Of course the rooms would be bugged. That’s what you do, especially when you’re in the business of dealing in things that one might not be comfortable with selling. You listen to them, in the place which they see as most private, and you collect data. Find what disgusts them. Find what calms them. Compile it and create a profile. Use that profile to build a situation where you gain leverage and make them comfortable enough to sell.  

As all listening in does, it gives you secrets. But the pair had a secret that directly threatened the entire system; leaking it would be suicide by all accounts.  

Martin shielded the screen in case there was a camera (or, more likely, an eyeball) somewhere, and further inspected the live document. It was stored locally, directly on Tenebris’ drive, and only through his direct link was he able to access it. 

She was communicating with him, in the most secure way available to them. The document updated; more text being added. 

‘COMING OUTSIDE. PRETEND TO RUN AWAY, AND THEN GET CAUGHT.’ 

He didn’t know why she would want that, but seeing as he likely wouldn’t get the chance to act, he had to go on blind faith. 

He turned off the screen of the tablet and let it fall to his hip. Forcing breaths in and out, he mentally prepared for his role.  

Martin ran. He sprinted, slid right down the covers that ran to the ground. Right on cue, Tenebris walked out the door, her stature strong and domineering as it had ever been. He continued running, ‘trying’ to make it to the door – he may not have understood why he was acting, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to give an award-winning performance.  

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?!” She thundered from above. The steel groaned as she leaned over to grab the Parvian off the ground.  

He thought about making a dive, but was snatched in her fist and brought up to her face before he could go for it. 

There she was. Looking into his eyes with her own. They shone blue, exacerbated by the cool lighting of the room, but there were also small blood vessels visible in her pupils, giving them a slight purple tinge, like a lightning storm whirling in her lens. 

“Running away?” She teased, a sly grin creeping across her face. “You know, I actually found the perfect thing for that...” From behind her back, she drew a large bottle. It was unclear what it was at first, but it quickly became apparent to him: lube. Because what makes a stay more comfortable for the squeamish type? Sex. The comfort of another. That elusive compound that defined what it was to love; oxytocin. 

It clicked, why she’d be doing this. While the Edoans were doubtlessly building a profile, he and Tenebris could feed them a different narrative. Acting for the silver screens at Edo HQ. Feed them inaccurate data, and then whatever profile they build will be ineffective. No leverage. No stolen secrets. Not too shabby, he thought. 

Martin began to thrash in her hand in a half-acting, half-serious attempt to escape. Sure, it was probably part of her plan, but could he really be bothered to go inside her again? She licked her lips. Really laying it on thick, huh? He thought. She continued. “How I’ll miss punishing you, corporal.” He swallowed the urge to roll his eyes. At least he got that promotion he’d asked for.  

With her thumb, Tenebris popped the lid of the lubricant, flipping it upside-down and dousing the Parvian in it. He shut his eyes to prevent the liquid from entering them. The sound was muffled, but he heard a loud thud, what he assumed to be the lube bottle clattering to the ground so that his co-star could free up a hand. He sputtered a bit, uncovering his mouth and allowing him to breathe. 

Her index finger repositioned, freeing his arm. Using it to uncover one of his eyes, he was immediately greeted by a different kind of eye.  

Tenebris was at the foot of the bed, bent over, using one hand to support herself and the other to hold him. Her pants were completely at her ankles, her shirt drawn up to her chest. It was a completely clear shot, a stare down between Martin’s own eye and her brown eye. Or rather, her blue eye, due to the lack of pigmentation. 

She planted her previously unoccupied finger on the back of his head, supporting him for entry into her. The world moved around him as he was brought towards her anus once again, head-first, just as before. It was possible she had a preference.  

There was a small scar on her left glute. Nothing particularly noticeable or interesting, but it still stuck out to him.  

He shut his eyes and braced for impact. Her idle body heat could be felt even through the thick lubricant coating, growing increasingly potent as he assumedly drew closer.  

His head slipped into her. It was easier to enter than it had been last time, either from the support of her finger, the lube, or that she had loosened it prior to bursting out the bathroom. He hoped it was the latter.  

Feeling his shoulders pop in, entering the hot, dark interior of Tenebris’ ass, he was met with that all-too familiar smell that pervaded every square inch of her rectum. Somehow, it was all still better than the elevator. He continued writhing, both to act and to just get the whole damn thing over with.  

The lubricant that covered his torso was wiped off gradually throughout, and his ability to hear soon returned, not that there was much to listen to beside the occasional wet noise or heartbeat. A heartbeat, he noticed, which was going a good bit faster.  

Tenebris’ finger retracted from its position against Martin’s spine, sliding against his body as it left to wrap around his leg and assist in pushing him deeper into her.  

He pulled his hands free, having been pinned against his sides in her tight sphincter. He wiped what little lubricant still residing on his face away and blinked a few times. Not that there was any point to seeing – it was pitch black inside the woman, aside from the occasional ray, which only illuminated the slick walls of her intestine, something he already knew fully well was there.  

His knees entered, and his feet followed. Soon, he was fully submerged inside her, the organic opening behind him sealing now that the obstruction had been cleared. Tenebris began to move, shifting around. Walking a bit, her steps reverberating through her body and into him. The world spun ninety degrees, the Martian having likely crawled into the bed.  

It was warm, at least there was that to enjoy. And dark. He didn’t have to look at any more weird biotech, at least today. It was strange, that he preferred the inside of a colon to biotech, but something about the unnatural flesh and eery flawlessness ticked him the wrong way. Perhaps that was why his brain took particular notice in her scar tissue.  

Martin’s tablet illuminated, casting blue ghoulish light onto the pink tissue surrounding him. He pulled it towards him. It was the text document again.  

‘USING DIRECT MIND TECH, it read. ‘NOT USED TO IT. MAY SAY WEIRD THINGS.’ 

‘THATS FINE’ he typed out. ‘THANKS FOR THE PROMOTION’ 

‘DON’T MENTION IT.’ There was a pause. ‘TELL ME YOUR PLAN.’ 

‘WAIT IT OUT A BIT. TELL THEM YOU NEED MORE TIME TO THINK. THEN, WE SNEAK OFF. THERE’S A BIKE. BOTTOM FLOOR. WE STEAL IT, GO TO THE COORDINATES. USE THE PASSCODES, SNEAK IN, KILL THE BRAIN.’ He explained, hoping it sounded plausible enough. ‘DEAD CABINET. RICH TENEBRIS.’ He concluded. At one point, he’d briefly considered obtaining a neurotoxin to do the job, but on a biotech-reliant system like Edo, it would be akin to them handing a stranger nuclear launch codes.  

‘I’M NOT SURE ABOUT THIS.’ Tenebris responded after a while. 

Martin tried to butter her up as best he could. ‘THINK ABOUT IT. WHAT WOULD THEY OFFER YOU? ENOUGH TO LIVE FOR A DECADE, MAYBE 2. THEN WHAT? BACK WHERE YOU STARTED. BUT ALL OF THE WEALTH ON EDO? YOU COULD MAKE IT TO HEAT DEATH WHILE STILL LIVING LAVISHLY.’ He laid back. Debating killing a superintelligence from within a rectum was certainly not a circumstance he’d imagined himself getting into at any point.  

Something flickered on the screen. A sentence appearing and rapidly disappearing in about a half second. It was too short-lived for him to fully read it, but he saw the words ‘sell’ and ‘bad idea’ in a way that made him concerned.  

‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ He asked. 

‘NOTHING. I MESSED UP THE INPUT.’ 

He sat in silence, staring at the screen. He was decidedly not in the clear. The prospect of losing such an opportunity right there and then was one that weighed on him heavily. A lump formed in his throat – some more amygdaline would have helped a lot.  

Another message appeared on the display. ‘I CAN’T MAKE A DECISION RIGHT NOW. IT’LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW.’ 

Martin’s shoulders slumped at his sides. With every fibre of his being, he wanted to argue his point, make Tenebris see it his way. Make her unable to deny that it was the best of all options. He knew full well that it was risky, dangerous, and possibly just stupid, but he stood by it anyway. Tenebris, however, wouldn’t, couldn’t hinge it on blind faith. His anxiety screamed to make her understand, yet another part screamed not to say anything, lest he risk pushing her away. He was sitting at the unstable apex of a rollercoaster, with which a simple gust of wind could send him careening backward into the worst possibilities. And to add on that she hadn’t even made a full decision yet? 

He’d never sleep in such a condition.  

So he simply sat, silently, in the dimly illuminated corridor at the tail-end of Tenebris’ digestive track, that same overbearing, crushing dread that had met him on the landfall vehicle returning to him again. The hands of fate were wrapping their cold fingers around his throat, depriving him of air, and all he could do was breathe what little capacity hadn’t been cut off. 

... 

Martin peeled open his eyes, having been woken up by a sudden bout of movement. So, he had at some point fallen asleep. That was comforting.  

He had gone vertical, that was apparent. Tenebris had stood up. He checked his tablet, the immediate bright light contrasting so harshly with his surroundings that he had to hold up a hand to protect his yet-to-adjust eyes. When it became comfortable, he inspected the screen. ‘08:17’ it read, the data coming from the neural chip, which in turn came from wherever the data was stored on Edo-1. Planetary time. Assuming that Edoans abided by standard time practice, with days beginning when the region was facing opposite to the system’s star, it was early morning. He wasn’t sure what time it had been before, but it couldn’t have been nightfall by that point. That meant at least Tenebris had slept a very long while. Either her body was simply recovering from the heat sickness she had likely incurred in the sauna, or the amygdaline influenced her ability to sleep. The latter thought conjured a myriad of questions he both did and didn’t want answers to. 

He opened the document. Treading as carefully as he could, he greeted her. ‘GOOD MORNING’ 

‘MORNING’ she replied after a while. Accompanying it, a gingerly contraction of the surrounding muscle, putting a bit of pressure on the Parvian. 

It was a bit strange, greeting in such a manner. It occurred to Martin that he had never actually set foot on a planet, so time-related phrases like ‘good morning’, while familiar to him, he had never actually said. In fact, he couldn’t think of a time he’d even used the word ‘morning’. 

There was something above the good morning message that he hadn’t noticed before. He inspected it. ‘YOU MIGHT BE IN THERE A WHILE. I’VE GIVEN YOU ACCESS TO MY EYES.’  

Short, flat, emotionless. He scoffed. How considerate of her – now if he was to die of anything, it would now be sulphur poisoning rather than boredom. Or some sort of gut-biome related disease, but he heavily doubted that she even had a gut biome – due to the prevalence of high-purity foods, most people could live without it. Brushing away whatever possible ailment might arise from an extended foray in Tenebris’ colon, he tapped away at the tablet. He enabled sonic reproduction, a setting that took the raw data from Tenebris’ brain, and instead of translating it into text as it had in the document, translated it into a simulated set of vocal cords, making it audible. It wasn’t flawless, however, and while it was able to mimic the speed and intonation of the woman, it couldn’t quite copy her exact voice. Additionally, since humans don’t breathe in their thoughts, neither did the artificial reproduction, making its vocalizations tip into the uncanny valley at times. 

Continuing on the tablet, he brought up menus until he found the one he was looking for. He patched into her visual feed. 

It was a funny thing to look at. What he was seeing was the fully processed image from her visual cortex.  

Due to the immense visual data at any given moment, the visual cortex tends to only record ‘snapshots’ of what the eyes see, filtering out motionless and unremarkable things, leaving only the important bits. Factoring in natural blind spots and lens focus, the overall resultant image, to an outside viewer, would be incredibly spotty, and details would be generally indiscernible unless the owner of the visual cortex deliberately looked at them. 

In Martin’s case, he was looking at a sky. A blue-green sky that shone so bright it made the twisting spinal towers in front of it almost appear as silhouettes. Apparently, Tenebris was staring out the window.  

“You patched in.” The emulated voice of Tenebris said from the speakers of the tablet. 

He turned on his own microphone, careful to enable noise filtering – it was unlikely that she wanted to hear the idle noises of her own insides. Checking it was enabled, he answered “yes.” 

“Ugh, that’s a weird feeling.” The not-quite Tenebris voice complained. She glanced around at the various buildings and took a sip from a liquid-containing bulb presumably containing coffee, or at least something of the like. “Quite a blue sky, huh?” She took his silence as indication he was listening. “It’s the methane that makes it do that. Ammonia gives it the green.” 

“Never seen a sky before.” Martin said. 

“Neither have I.” She said. “Not as nice as I expected.” She slid a finger down the membrane window, making it transition back into a metal wall. So even the metal wasn’t real, just a convincing imitation from chromatophores. 

After a while of watching her go through her morning routine, brushing her hair, getting dressed, the like, he hesitantly asked “have you made a decision yet?”  

She stopped. She looked into the bathroom mirror, into her own eyes, and by extension at Martin who was looking through them. “You’re putting me in a really tough spot here, you know that?” Not-Tenebris spoke, the real Tenebris’ lips not moving. 

“What about yesterday, the sauna?”  

“That was nothing. Bad reaction to the amygdaline.” She dismissed, leaning over the counter. 

“You want to do this, and you know it.” Martin argued. 

“It’s stupid and psychotic.” She rebutted, pointing into the mirror at him. 

He was about to respond when Tenebris jolted in surprise, looking to her side at the door. “What the hell was that?” He assumed she had heard something by the way she swivelled, but having no access to senses other than seeing, he had no idea what it was. 

“We’ll finish this later.” The emulation concluded the conversation. 

He decided to at least wait to see what she had heard before he protested. He brought the tablet closer, watching Tenebris approach the front door from which the sound likely originated. 

Opening it, the area surrounding the Martian’s vision grew dim and fuzzy, her attention fully captured by Dee, the looming ambassador standing in the doorway, her face darkened with her back to the light. She spoke something, her overly articulated lips forming out the words with that same eery efficiency as they had the day before. Martin’s hairs stood on edge, anxiety mounting with the knowledge that just past the walls of woman surrounding him was the ambassador whose qualities seemed to fall just outside of what a normal person would possess. 

She continued speaking unabated, taking pauses where Martin assumed Tenebris was responding. Unable to parse what they were saying, he could only watch through the eyes of his compatriot, glaring into Dee’s insectoid eyes, gleaming a dull grey at the pupil.  

Eventually, she spun on her heel and began walking away. He was about to release a sigh of relief when Tenebris began to follow. He scrambled, bringing the tablet to his mouth. “What’s going on? Why are you following her? Why is she here?” He asked into the microphone. 

“She’s taking us early for the appointment.” Not-Tenebris answered, a slight quiver of fear in her tone.  

“Why would she do that? Do you think she knows?” Martin resisted the urge to bite his fingernails.  

“I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it...” 

“I don’t like this. Can you give me auditory permissions?” 

A short pause. “Done.”  

He hurriedly tapped into her ear feed. Footsteps, stomping against the brittle bone floors. It was working. No dialogue for now, though. 

They were led to an elevator. He had to hear and see the awful lips peel open, the fleshy chamber lying in wait for them. Dee clambered into her own, while Tenebris slid into another, the organic tissues parting to make room. The lips shut behind them, the increasingly familiar green bioluminescent veins taking over for lighting the interior. Tenebris clenched as she entered, her discomfort flowing into Martin, who was in a similar predicament in her rectum. Yet, somehow, he found it less uncomfortable than what he saw and heard from the tablet. It was something about the way it felt; while her colon was undoubtedly worse in most ways, the unnatural surface of the elevator made his skin crawl and his fear centres shriek.  

“I fucking hate this.” The emulation whimpered. He silently agreed. 

Acceleration. Going down. 

Idle pulsating of the surrounding flesh, both inside and outside. Only one was green, though. 

Deceleration.  

By the wait, Martin assumed they had travelled more than a few floors. The lips parted once again, allowing his co-conspirator (at least he hoped she was) to exit back onto one of the floors. She glanced about, laying her eyes on one of the membranous windows. The outside view was drowned in a sea of orange dust, making only the nearest of the towering spinal buildings visible. However, she didn’t pause long enough to get a good look and continued following Dee. 

Tenebris looked at the ambassador’s clothes. Only then did Martin notice she was wrapped in a translucent dress, one which looked like it should have hung below her feet but seemed to constantly miss the ground, never quite reaching it. The see-through outfit was membranous and interspersed with opaque veins like the wings of a dragonfly. It was wound multiple times around her body, cloudy layers making her form below invisible, but when the light struck it illuminated her gangly silhouette. 

“So, ambassadors.” Tenebris spoke aloud, making conversation. “Can you explain that to me?” 

“Ah, a common one.” Dee grinned. “In some places, you might call us ‘Dits. We’re the ones who bridge the gap between Edoans and galactic humans. Ambassadors.” 

‘Dits. Conduits. Martin had heard of them, once or twice, back on his home station. They were the ‘translators’ from more advanced systems. The ones who through various methods fundamentally altered their thought processes so much that they were no longer comprehensible to the ‘lesser’ galactic civilizations. Thus, conduits evolved independently throughout the galaxy; a space-age Moses who could take down the word of God from the mountain and allow everyone else to get a good look at it. 

“I’m familiar.” Tenebris tilted her head to the side. “Why take us planetside, then? Couldn’t you just make the purchase yourself, up on the station?” 

“We like our meetings.” Dee said. “Speaking of the purchase,” she continued, “where is the Parvian?” 

“Oh, he’s just getting punished. Gotta keep ‘em in line, you know?” She tapped her hip. Martin elbowed her insides, making her jump. 

The ambassador’s expression shifted to something else for a half second but was quickly submerged beneath a returning smile. “He will need to be removed to be inspected.” She informed. 

“Yes, of course-” 

“There is a bathroom here if it makes you comfortable.” She interrupted, gesturing off to her side where a membrane door lie. It peeled open, as if aware it had been addressed. Awkwardly, Tenebris entered the room. 

The interior was circular, with white surfaces of bumpy material that called to mind eczemic skin. There were only two objects in the room; a ceramic toilet and sink. After a few moments, the bumpy, skin-like surfaces began to undulate and shift, their textures changing and shapes beginning to protrude. Soon, the interior was made of comfortable subdued tiles, hints of colour only barely present. Just like their room, the space was artificial, made of contracting chromatophores and muscular hydrostats to give the illusion of a normal bathroom.  

“You heard her?” Not-Tenebris asked. 

“Something isn’t right here.” 

“Agreed.” She began to shimmy down her pants on the screen of the tablet. Martin’s stomach lurched as she bent over to drop them to her legs. 

“Why the ass again?” Martin complained, trying to make his way to her ‘exit’. 

“I’m going in, get ready.” She ignored him.  

He patched out of her sensory feed and clicked off the tablet. A light entered Tenebris’ insides, followed by a pair of fingers grabbing at his legs. He made sure to pull his shirt up to cover his face and was soon pulled out from the Martian.  

Tightly clenching his yet-to-adapt eyes, he began feeling running water over his body. It was warm, thankfully. Tenebris’ thumbs scrubbed down his body.  

“Deja-vu, huh?” She joked from above – her real voice, without the emulation or the slight compression or artifacts of her audio feed.  

“Yeah.” Martin rubbed his hands on his face. Feeling his eyes had been given enough time to get acquainted with normal light again, he opened them to a slit, blinking a few times.  

“Ready to get this over with?”  

He sighed. After a little while, he finally answered, “yup.” 

Tenebris apprehensively stepped out of the bathroom, checking both directions. Seeing the ambassador standing off to the side, holding her hands together in front of her, she walked out. She idly moved her fingers around Martin in her hand, still moist from the wash.  

Dee said nothing, but turned around and moved down the hallway, calculated steps carrying her nigh-emaciated body away. Tenebris followed closely behind. 

She couldn’t help but notice the dents and abnormal curves of her skull again. She forced down a grimace. ‘Dits, while they’d popped up on their own from a need for a metaphorical Moses, were all the same. Be it bioengineering, AI models, or jamming machine bits into a human brain, the result was consistent; a social and emotional supergenius, with the actual intellect of a two-year old. The things ran entirely on impulse; they could read a person like a book and not understand the concept of a rock.  

Tenebris could practically see the parts of her brain that had been targeted by the Edoans. Atrophied cortexes, ganglia that had been forcefully wrenched out. Engorged amygdala – breaking down all human emotion into data, which the ambassador would weigh against endlessly complex neural pathways to generate a response, without ever having a clue of what they were saying. 

 They were the textbook definition of a Chinese room; they knew the syntax, how to pull the minute strings of a social interaction to get what they wanted, but they hadn’t the slightest idea that they were even doing it, that they were even saying anything at all.  

She walked onward, down the winding halls of living tissue, averse to the straight lines and angles which defined most human architecture. The knowledge that the building itself could sense her scraped at the back of her mind.  

They approached a door. A proper door, with a steel frame and pressure locks. It opened with a mechanical whirr, a sound that was like music to the ears compared to the horrible squelching which pervaded everything else. Dee entered without ever breaking her stride.  

Tenebris followed her inside. The interior was a sterile white, like a doctor’s office. Dee stood off to the side, her hands folded, looking at the floor. A table with two chairs sat in the middle, adorned with pads, displays, and scanners of every kind. At the end of the table, in one of the chairs, a man.  

Eyes replaced with lenses, inset into dark, peeling skin, red with exposed tissue. Fresh surgery. An absurdist hairstyle, bald overall with symmetrical spots of long patterned hair. Small grey static generators were sporadically placed throughout, giving the illusion of that distinctive zero-g sprawl. Countless bits of technology drilled into various points of his skull. A mouth curled into a grin, exposing sharpened carnivore teeth, no doubt jammed into a carbon-fibre jaw, a replacement for those who didn’t care to waste their time with orthodontics. Imitation leather coat, studded with decorative razor zippers. Bulky frame, though by the sickly tinge to his skin, it was clear that it had come from steroids as opposed to hard-earned muscle. 

Overall, the man wore the signature reek of a cybe city. A splicer who high-tailed it out of some technofetishist shithole at the slightest scent of a job opening on Edo. In all likelihood, under that jacket there was more metal than man, and if there wasn’t, it was only because he couldn’t afford it.  

She slung her bag off her shoulder and tossed it beside the chair. 

“Greetings.” He said with a drag on the ‘s’. Cidge accent, Tenebris identified immediately. He extended a hand, displaying silver fingertips and platinum knuckles. She shook it.  

She passed a look down at Martin, in her hand. He looked back with his little green eyes, apprehension in his expression, fear as well. A directed fear – a fear of her. Suppressing a pang of guilt, she placed him on the table and sat down.  

“Ah, the specimen. Have it come here.” The inspector instructed, dragging the ‘s’ again. The accent was strong, his emigration from the Cidge was recent. He contracted his lenses when he spoke. Tenebris looked at the Parvian. Getting the message, he approached the Cidgean. “So, where’d you get this one?” He continued, tilting his head. 

“Backwater ring station. Maintenance worker. Fits in tight places well.” Tenebris said succinctly with a wink, trying hard to maintain an air of carelessness. 

“Good skillset.” He replied, picking up Martin. He brought the Parvian to one of the scanners, where it promptly got to work on him. “Doubt he’ll ever need ‘em again, but we’ll have to see. Mind the prick.” 

Martin jumped in pain; an infinitesimal needle having drawn a smidgen of blood. It was quickly siphoned up a tube where it was analysed by another machine.  

“Good vitals. Healthy organs. Incredible neuron density, but that’s standard for Parvians.” The Cidgean stated. “High propensity for oxytocin release when exposed to heat. Interesting.” He turned his binocular eyes to the blood analysis. “Slight DNA decay. Unfortunate.” He picked up the smaller man again. “Physical inspection.” He carelessly tore free his clothes, tossing them on the table haphazardly. Tenebris stifled a frown as the inspector dehumanizingly gleaned over the Parvian, the cybernetic lenses rapidly focusing and defocusing as he parsed his body. “Take a whiff of this for me?” The Cidgean half-requested, half-told, holding out a finger with a yellow powder on it.  

Obeying the instruction, Martin inhaled the substance through his nose. Mere moments later, his hips bucked, and his eyes rolled into his skull. His mouth hung agape as his body convulsed in the throes of medically induced orgasm, spurting into a small container held in front of him. His fluids were quickly siphoned off by a tube into another machine, one that hung from the ceiling. 

The Cidgean sat unfazed, waiting for the analysis of the newly produced sample. Martin glanced at Tenebris with pleading eyes, though they both knew she couldn’t do anything. Finally, the inspector piped up. “Strong heterozygosity, good sperm count. May prove useful.” 

“Conclusions, doc?”  

He waved a hand. “Fifteen first gen Nanocytes is our offer.” 

Tenebris’ eyes nearly bulged out of her skull.  

Nanocytes were some of the most invaluable items in the galaxy. A microorganism, the culmination of actual eons of constant tampering from the Edoans, that when given material and energy could convert an inhabitable hellscape into a paradise. Just one could seed star systems with life and sustain even the most unsustainable planets for years. The only problem was that their DNA rapidly degenerated over just a few generations, making only first generation Nanocytes valuable. However, this only skyrocketed the value, making them the most sought-after tech in the galaxy, and the things that not just put Edo on the map, but launched them to a galactic superpower.  

And they’d be giving her fifteen of them. Her hand drifted to cover her mouth. 

She made eye contact with Martin. Those tiny, begging eyes. She thought about Edo as a whole, about Heaven. The thought of the sickening place nearly made her double over. 

Fifteen Nanocytes. She’d be a complete and utter fool not to accept. And she’d probably even help another star system by doing it... 

But she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t. As much as she tried to hide and lie and toss up a facade, she didn’t have it in her.  

“I...” she began, trying to put together the words. “I’d like to take a while to think.” 

“She told me you’d say that.” The Cidgean stated matter-of-factly.  

“Who?” Tenebris swivelled her head to the side. Dee wasn’t there. She felt a pressure across her chest. Looking down, the ambassador had drawn a rope across her chest and was rapidly tightening it, pinning her arms and torso to the chair. 

The damned ‘Dit had read her like a fucking book. Of course, the organism designed to pick up on human subtleties could sniff out a lie like hers. Dee probably could’ve smelled the lie before she’d even thought of it.  

“You part of one of them militias? Trying to take down the big one, maybe? I wonder what they’ll do with a Martian.” The Cidgean sneered. “Good genes there, might be useful. Or maybe they’ll just turn off your brain and stick you in the toxin refinery – they could always use more meat. Who knows, maybe they’ll send you down to Purgatory.” 

In a flash of adrenaline, Tenebris shot out an arm behind herself, digging her fingernails into the leg skin of the ambassador behind her. Mustering her strength, she activated her implant, which would feel to Dee like her nerves were on fire. 

The ‘Dit shrieked inhumanly in pain, releasing the rope. Not pausing to stop, Tenebris leapt up, jamming her opposite palm so hard into The Cidgean’s binocular lens that it collapsed, pushing the cybernetic eye deep into his skull with a sickening crunch. She snatched Martin and his clothes from the table, and kicking off its edge, sprinted into the hallway, grabbing her bag and frying the door controls on the way out. It wouldn’t hold them for long, but it’d hopefully give the pair enough time to make an exit.  

Hastily, she tossed the nude Parvian, with his clothes, into her bag, muttering a quick apology as she did so, and pulled the bag back over her shoulder. Spotting a point of interest, she slid to a halt as she approached it.  

A fracture in the spinal structure of the building. It was sticking out at an awkward angle, splintering off from the main structure. Fleshy tissue was exposed beneath where it had covered, but Tenebris ignored it. Gripping it, she leveraged her body against the wall until it snapped free, leaving a sharp end at both sides – a weapon, in a pinch.  

She burst back into her run, wielding the sharpened bone tissue. Her heart rate was beating in her ears now. Consciously she had to stabilize her breath. Going through winding corridor after corridor, her legs grew tired, but she pushed onward.  

She came upon an elevator. In no mood to climb into the repulsive chamber, she gripped the bone splinter and jammed it as hard as she good into the skin. The platform convulsed in some sort of agony, and shot up as a threat response, the lips of the elevator sealing shut as it left.  

Tenebris, applying a quick stab to both halves of the elevator lips, got them to recede, making the fleshy organic chute that the elevator ran on visible. It seemed to extend to infinity, above and below, darkness making the bottom invisible.  

Of course, they had to have a bottom anyway. It was just a matter of getting down there. The Martian drew in a few rapid breaths, and leapt down the chute, giving herself no time to regret the action.  

She held the bone splinter above her head, letting it shred into the sides of the claustrophobic gullet of the building. The surrounding tissue contracted and expanded rapidly, spraying repugnant, lightly bioluminescent viscera in all directions, soaking the splinter and drenching Tenebris below.  

The splinter served to slow the pair’s descent, making the inevitable contact with the ground less violent. Continuing downward, the fall felt like an eternity, going down floors innumerable.  

The ground became visible. Tenebris braced for impact. They were going too fast, her brain cried out. But with no option to slow, she merely prepared as much as she could for a harsh landing.  

Crack. She hit the floor. A lightning bolt of pain shot up her leg. She grit her teeth. The fleshy precipice cushioned her fall, and her already slowed descent certainly helped, but she reckoned there was a fracture in her leg. Nothing permanent, at the very least. She clenched that invisible muscle on instinct. Nothing happened. Remembering she had been using the direct neural interface, she entered a few commands. It was difficult to describe, it wasn’t quite thinking about what she wanted to do, but it was along those lines. She scrounged around in her neural interface and disabled the pain receptors from her leg. Probably an unwise choice, but it beat suffering the pain of a fracture.  

Getting up, she glanced around. The bone splinter had snapped in two. She jammed both halves into the lips in front of her, making them peel open just like the others had before. Leaving them inside, she stepped out. 

They were in the garage. Good. There was very little in the way of vehicles, but what was present appeared to be true tech, rather than some biotech abomination. The various designs let her draw the conclusion they were from various places across the galaxy, furthering her hypothesis that the building they were in was designed only for visitors. Seeing the hostility of the inspector just a few minutes prior, she assumed that most of the owners of the vehicles weren’t around anymore.  

With little time to waste, she ripped her bag off her shoulder, cursing as she did so, having forgotten about the Parvian within it.  

“Shit, shit, sorry. Fuck.” She profaned. “There’s no time, get out of the bag.” She stuck her arm into it, rummaging around for Martin. Eventually, she grabbed hold of his little body, pulling it out. He had his pants in his hand, though they were torn to the point of being unusable. However, he hadn’t grabbed it because of that, she realized. He’d wanted his equipment, which dangled from his work belt that had been torn into two separate pieces.  

“What are you waiting for?! Put your vacuum suit on!” He yelled at her.  

She put him down on the ground and grabbed the suit from her bag. The material was thin, so she had stuffed the outfit into the helmet, which was less easy to pack. She pulled the suit out before sliding her uppermost garments off – the vacuum suit was skin-tight; it would be uncomfortable if she had left her clothes on. Once in her underwear, she began slipping up the jet-black garment, standing in the neck hole of it.  

“You still got that sealant?” Martin said. 

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” She practically lunged for her bag, searching for the sealant that had been placed within back at Guyen. Eventually, she pulled free the can, rolling it towards the Parvian. She trusted he had a need for it. Continuing to pull on the vacuum suit, it finally got to her neck. She looked over at her co-conspirator.  

He had filled up a small balloon with sealant from the larger can. He attached it to his work belt with the rest of his equipment and wrapped it around his naked waist. It looked a bit awkward, but it was clearly a functional solution. She quickly deposited the can back in the bag and picked up the Parvian.  

He didn’t have a vacuum suit; he would have to be in hers. Though, by the look of him, he understood that already. Without another word, she dropped him down the neck of her suit and popped on the helmet.  

The thing booted to life; it was old, running on auxiliary power, and the oxygen tank was only half-full, but it’d do the trick. It had to.  

Letting the suit tighten around her, she went over to the bike. It looked old, and didn’t have any climate-controlled interior, but she just had to trust that Martin had picked what he thought would work best.  

Hopping on, she flipped the thing to life. The H-cell was still at half capacity, but the display lit up with error messages upon booting. However, none of them seemed critical enough to stop the thing from getting from point A to point B. 

It was running silently, but it was clearly on. Tenebris was a bit rusty, but she knew the basics. Letting it accelerate, she approached the airlock.  

Automatically, the membrane slid to the side, allowing her to enter. Good – the Edoans hadn’t put the building on lockdown yet. The membrane shut behind her, and the outside atmosphere began pouring in. The vacuum suit pressed on her skin from the exterior pressure.  

Eventually, the membrane to the outside slid open. Hastily, she gunned the engine, blasting out of the spinal tower like a bullet. The windshield protected her from the oncoming onslaught of dense air for the most part, but she still felt some of it. Thankfully, the suit appeared to be working, protecting her from the extreme atmosphere.  

Shooting across Edo-1's surface, the bike’s wheels kicked up the sooty sands in a jet behind her, black with carbon. The speedometer still worked. They were quickly approaching three hundred kilometres per hour. The engine continued running silently. At this speed, they’d leave Ylid soon.  

“Where the hell am I going?” Tenebris said into her suit.  

“Straight for now. Just get out of the city.” The muffled voice of Martin replied. 

“Copy that.” She went harder on the accelerator, flying through the ground as the unfathomably tall spinal towers passed by, their web-like tram rails extending the distances between them.  

She felt a tugging sensation in the recesses of her mind. Data being pulled right out of her skull. Martin had patched back into her visual feed.  

A pop, and a hiss. There was... something. It smelled different. “Shit. Hole in the suit. My hands are full, can you cover, Mart?” 

“Where?”  

She concentrated on the sensations on her skin. Something warm, near the base of her arm. “Right shoulder” she spoke. Close to Martin, thankfully. 

She felt the tingle of the Parvian crawling along her skin, clambering along her breast towards the warm spot. The smell became more apparent. She wrinkled her nose – urine. The ammonia in the atmosphere was responsible for the unpleasant scent.  

The heat stopped; Martin having used his sealant on the hole. The scent receded, her suit filtering it out.  

There was warmth down by her back. Microleak. “Another hole, this one’s small. Near my spine, second rib.” 

She took the sudden movement as response. Using the tightness of the outfit, he moved about under the fabric, tickling a bit as he came up to her collarbone. He slid down her back, shimmying around for a few moments, struggling to find the puncture. Eventually, however, he seemed to find it, and used the sealant again. “Clear.” He shouted up through the suit. 

The vacuum suit wasn’t holding up extremely well. There were a few more punctures after, which were fixed with equal speed from Martin, thankfully. After that, the suit seemed to stabilize, for the time being, allowing the pair to relax. The Parvian crawled throughout the suit, up into Tenebris’ helmet, where he reclined in the more open space.  

“Hey, how’s our vector looking?” Tenebris asked. In the corner of her eye, Martin pulled up the tablet from his belt. A belt which he had done around his midriff, as he was still lacking clothes.  

“Adjust ten degrees left.” 

“Copy” she said, doing exactly that. After a while of silent driving, her mind began to drift. Preventing that, she tried to start a conversation. “So, now’s the time for questions, Mart. What’s on your mind?” 

“Is there a militia here?” He asked. “I heard the... inspector... say something about them.” The word ‘inspector’ caught on his tongue. There were clearly some unpleasant feelings there, for understandable reason.  

She shrugged. “I’ve never heard of them, but Edo’s certainly disagreeable enough for people to want to do something about it. I don’t know anything, though. Anything else?” 

“What’s Purgatory?” He shot the question quickly, as if he had been thinking about it for a while. 

Tenebris bit her lip. This was the thing she had been avoiding thinking about. She had walked right into it, she supposed. It was best he knew, anyway. She drew in a breath, trying to find the words. 

“Purgatory is...” she began. She knew an awful lot more about Edo than she had let on, and that white lie would have to collapse. “It’s complicated. Edo has a place on it, they call it Heaven.” Emotion welled up a bit as she named the place. “Rich people come to Edo, and they pay to go into it. The Edoans take their brains out and jam them into a collective simulation. A paradise, where everyone has infinite power and domain. If you can’t afford it, you rent out part of your brain, give away some processing power to help pick up slack for the Cabinet. But then they start charging more, and you run out of money. That’s when they start taking more of your brain, until eventually none of its yours anymore. That’s when they dissolve your conscious. Then you’re just processing power – and that’s Purgatory.” 

Silence. Tenebris regretted saying it somewhat, but at the same time knew she had to tell him eventually.  

“... Shit.” Martin eventually said, staring out into the unseeable distance. “How long have you known this?” 

She averted her eyes, instead focusing on the expanse ahead, the night-black dunes, harshly contrasting the brilliant blue-green sky, extending seemingly forever. “I used to run with a crew, y’know? Other Martians.” Recollecting, she went on. “We hit it big once, real big. Antimatter stockpile, lost in the void for God knows how long, and we found it.” Tenebris took a deep breath, mustering the will to continue. “They wanted to buy their way into Heaven, finally get away from all the shit out here. I was supposed to go with them. But I couldn’t... I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to go in that little box.” She blinked, trying to prevent a tear from forming in her eye, which would have impaired her vision.  

“I had no idea, I’m so sorry-” 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, Mart. It scared the shit out of me.” She wished she could wipe her eye, but her helmet was in the way. “I got addicted to amygdaline, since it took the edge off. Blew my entire share of the haul on that shit. Built a wicked immunity, too.” The engine was loud, now. The black sands raced by at an unbelievable rate as Tenebris sped up. Power was rerouted to the gyro stabilizers to keep the thing from collapsing into a death spin. “Know what's funny about that, Mart? When your immunity to amygdaline goes up, your body responds by making more receptors, like with caffeine. And then you’re always afraid. Everything becomes a monster, something that’s out to get you.”  

“We’re going to fix it.” Martin interjected. “We’re here to stop that from ever happening again.” 

“And that scares me, too! What if we’re just ignorant? Have you thought about that? I mean, they’re not suffering, no one on Edo is. Even the slaves here are happy about it because they’ve been built to feel that way.” 

“But they don’t ever really feel that way.” 

“But they do! Hell, the sewage cleaners here are the happiest people you’ll meet! What makes their emotions any less real than ours? Is it that they’re being manipulated by their DNA? News flash, Mart, we all are! All that shit about love only exists because it gives our genes a better chance to survive, not because it's some great thing.” 

Martin shot up from the corner of Tenebris’ helmet. He looked her right in the eyes, standing tall, with his fists clenched at his sides. “I’m not doing this philosophical shit with you right now, Tenny. You can talk all you want about how ‘it's all just chemicals’ and ‘human concepts’ but I know the way I feel. We have a job to do here, and we’re going to do it because it’s the right thing to do. Simple as that.” 

That shut her up. In a flash, her arguments and debates melted away – she couldn’t really prove the fault with what he’d said. It was one of the worst arguments she’d ever heard, one of stubbornness and ignorance, but it was impenetrable.  

He walked up to her, standing in the neck of her suit. Wordlessly, he reached up a hand, and pushed it across the tip of her eyelid, clearing out the tears that had built up. He flicked it off his arm and moved to do the same on the other side. Tenebris’ staggered breaths began to clear up, finally yielding to smooth breaths. She felt the small hand of her accomplice caressing her cheek. 

The hum of the engine and the sound of sand being kicked up became the only thing audible. It was almost serene. The impossibly blue sky loomed above, cloudless and absent of any shapes against it. Directly above, Edo’s dual suns hit their zenith; soon, the pair would head east, where they’d set and bring on night. The dark dunes around them flowed like waves in a stilled sea, with small dots of inky blackness being carried off by the wind. 

... 

There was something in the distance. Tenebris didn’t know when it had appeared, only that she had just noticed it. A small bone-white triangle in the distance, jutting out of the ground. “Martin, look!” She exclaimed, taking a hand off the handlebars of the bike to point into the distance. 

“Hm? Huh?” The Parvian resting against her neck was startled awake. She wasn’t sure when he’d done that, but she was a bit disappointed that he was stopping. He put a hand to his forehead, looking out into the carbon dunes. “Oh, oh, I see it!” Hastily, he pulled up his tablet from his hip. “Coordinates look right, that’s the one!” 

They drew closer. It was tall, about twice Tenebris’ height at its peak. It had a pyramid-like shape for the most part, except for one face, which was perpendicular to the ground and lined with fine lines that looked like hairs, only much thicker.  

Approaching it, Tenebris slowed the bike to a halt. A pair of thin metal extrusions appeared from the sides, stabilizing it. She hopped off and approached the strange artifact. 

It had no distinguishing features on its other faces, simply a flat, bone-white surface, likely enamel. That left just the strange face. The pair approached it hesitantly. 

“Baleen.” Tenebris stated succinctly, running her fingers through the thickened bristles. “Filters out the sand.” 

“So do we just... walk through then?” Martin asked, standing close to the front of her helmet. 

She stuck a hand in, watching as it passed through with little resistance, reaching some unseen other side. “I guess.” She tilted her head to the side, eyeing the hairy surface.  

She leaned in. The baleen parted around her, allowing her through. The surrounding keratin rubbed against her suit and felt like walking through a field of grass – not that she’d ever really experienced the stuff. 

Breaching the other side, the first to notice was that it was dark. Lightly bioluminescent veins lined the ceiling and floor, acting as guidance rather than illumination. They went downward, with the floor veins jaggedly shooting up and down as they approached some basement – their outline informed that they were, in fact, stairs. 

It was colder inside, according to her heads-up display. Still no oxygen, though. She hoped there was an air lock somewhere down there, as the oxygen tank only had two hours left – she had severely underestimated how long it would take to arrive at their destination. 

She took in and let out a deep breath, trying to control herself. “Down we go.” She said to Martin. He didn’t respond. 

She stuck out a foot and placed it on the step. It resounded with a high-pitched clack, like striking two marbles together. Then she did it with the other foot. Just like that, she began her descent, approaching the Cabinet, wherever it lurked below.  

“How are we going to...” Martin began, “Do it?” The last two words came out as an uncomfortable whisper.  

Tenebris reached out a gloved hand and ran her fingertips along the wall. It felt porous and rough, even through the suit. As she continued down, into the dim depths, it grew smoother, into a marble-like texture. “You think those codes’ll work? Maybe one just,” she probed for a word, “shuts them off?”  

“I can check, I think. I doubt it.” A rectangular light appeared in the bottom of her helmet, partially blocked by the silhouette of Martin’s head. It was a strange sensation, having him lurk around within her skull cavity, with her chip. Doubly so since she was actively watching it happen. He pulled up the document. She silently wondered why she hadn’t done so already – it was her brain, after all. “Not getting much. None of the codes are listed as having a purpose, all I can go off is the number of digits.”  

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Tenebris almost didn’t notice, and almost lost her footing trying to step onto a lower stair that didn’t exist. “Shit, it’s dark.” She remarked. 

“Is there not a flashlight on your helmet?” 

She fondled the top of her helmet a bit. Finding nothing, she tried her neck. There was a small cylindrical object on the left side of her neck. Bingo. She clicked it on. Under her breath, she cursed herself for not thinking of such a horribly obvious solution. 

They sat before a towering set of marble doors, inset with spiralling symmetrical patterns and monolithic pillars to either side. The bioluminescent veins adopted a different stature around the marble, opting to extrude and wrap around like vines rather than be inset into the surfaces as they had before. 

Tenebris approached the door and placed a hand on it. Up so close, she got a true sense of the massive scale of the door and had to crane her neck to see the top. “How are we going to get in?” She muttered. 

“I think I see something. Look to your right.” Martin said. Tenebris obliged. There was a small display, no larger than her hand, inset into the gate. Tapping it with a finger, it lit up with an ID scanner.  

“Shit.” She cursed. “Uh, manual override!” She shouted at the machine. To her surprise, it switched to a number pad and six boxes for digits. She raised an eyebrow toward Martin. He shrugged and pulled up his tablet. 

“There’s only one six-digit code. Try five seven two three nine zero.” 

An affirmative chime. In the corner of her eye, Martin pumped his fist excitedly.  

The machinery, or whatever was manipulating the door (Tenebris tried not to think about it), came to life. With a cacophony of groaning and grinding, the door shifted inward, dragging across the ground and aggravating swirls of dust and sand that had seemingly made it past the baleen. 

When the door finally slowed to a halt, Tenebris stepped in. There was a long hallway, one that her flashlight could not illuminate the end of. It was built of the same marble as the entrance, with similar pillars and ornately carved walls. However, it was chipped in places, and missing entire slabs in others. In these regions, tendon-like calcified ropes took their place, filling in the grooves like tar in a cracked road. The bioluminescent veins had turned a crimson red, and ran in loose, webby bundles across the surfaces. Martin gulped audibly beside her.  

She proceeded down the corridor, avoiding stepping on the calcified growths. Apprehension swelled within her, and she felt a terrible compulsion to look behind herself often. The crimson veins all around began to pulsate slightly faster. 

She picked up her pace. As did the glowing veins.  

“What’s going on?” Martin asked. 

Tenebris soon found herself in a sprint, booking her way down the corridor, watching her flashlight jump and the Parvian in her helmet struggle to keep hold. More importantly, however, she watched the veins grow brighter, and pulse faster, and faster, into an intense strobing glow that hurt her eyes.  

A groan resounded through the hallways, and Tenebris could have sworn that the calcified spots flinched.  

“I... see... you...” A low voice uttered, from all around, it’s tone so entrenched in bass that it could be felt in Tenebris’ chest.  

“What the fuck is that!” Martin shouted, startled. 

The end of the hallway became visible. Another set of doors, this time steel. Rusted and tarnished, with crumpled sheets and a mottled surface. It was illuminated by slowly flashing orange lights, real lights, though some were dimmed, or fully burnt out. However, it was infested with biotechnical growths. Fatty sinews draped across the door, with webs of muscle clinging to them, a supportive structure haphazardly invading the aging entrance.  

Tenebris ran to it, as fast as she could. Another groan echoed down the hallways, now perforated by clicks and shrills. Gradually they evolved into an eery rhythm, one that put the fine hairs on her neck at attention. 

Neurorhythms.  

“Ah... gie... slef...” A voice emerged from the groaning chaos, rising above the toying neurorhythms. The jumble of noises meant nothing at first, but they gradually built into a flowing logic. “I... see... you...” it repeated.  

Tenebris skidded to a halt, finally reaching the door. She stepped over the twitching muscles, approaching a keypad. It didn’t illuminate on her approach. She tapped at the screen, taking panting breaths. It did not turn on. She rapped her fist against it. No response. Gritting her teeth, she lifted her implanted hand and pressed it against the keypad. Clenching the familiar muscle, she slammed her eyes closed as her body was wracked with pain. Forcing it down, she turned back to the keypad. The jumpstart had worked, and it now lit up with a place for an eight-digit passcode.  

She tried to summon the document from her chip, the one containing the passcodes. It did not work. Trying again did nothing. Her mind simply couldn’t pull the data forth. It felt horribly empty, like trying to use an amputated limb. The clicking of the neurorhythms was loud in her ears, too loud. “Shit, Mart, I think this thing’s fucking with my brain, I can’t use my chip. I need a nine-digit passcode!” 

“Got it.” Martin heeded. “Fuck, there’s three here!” 

“Just try one!” She shouted, wishing she could cover her ears, protect them from the horrid noises.  

“Two eight four seven zero three six eight two!” 

“Incorrect password” The computer chimed in an annoyingly upbeat feminine voice.  

Martin hastily scrolled down on his tablet. “Uh, shit, try five nine five two six four seven one zero!”  

“Incorrect password, one attempt remaining before timeout.” The machine chirped.  

Tenebris wanted to punch a hole straight through the keypad. “Just one more possibility, right? Just one more eight-digit code, it’s gotta be that one.” 

“Eight?!” Martin exclaimed. “You said nine!” 

“Huh?” She looked at the display. Eight digits, not nine. “Fuck! It’s the noises, they’re tripping me up! How many eight-digit passwords?” 

“There’s, uh, there’s two!” 

“Just pick one!” 

Martin bit his fist. “Shit shit shit shit! Do seven two four three six one eight five!” 

Tenebris tapped in the digits.  

“Wait!” Martin interjected as her finger was hovering over the five for the last digit. “The last digit is six, not five!” 

She pressed six.  

The screen turned off.  

The neurorhythms ceased.  

Martin put his hands to his head. “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fu-”  

A loud crunch, a screech, mechanical whirring and organic tearing all simultaneously began. The doors began torturously receding into the walls, tearing the muscle fibres and shooting off sparks as the metal dragged across the ground. 

Tenebris stepped out, looking into the new opening. There was a massive expanse, a circular room with a dome ceiling. Ropes of flesh stretched in every direction, forcefully jutting out of twisted metal panels. The all-too familiar glowing veins seethed with light in thick bundles, casting rays onto a central pillar.  

The central pillar shot all the way to the ceiling, with fleshy tubes attached to the top and bottom. It looked to be filled with a bubbling fluid, though there was a large spherical silhouette at the centre. From the sphere in the centre, innumerable sharp protrusions jutted out at every point. They convened at the top and bottom, wrapping around one another into a bundle that stretched up to the ceiling and floor where they seemed to be anchored. Though the entire thing wasn’t clearly defined, and was only visible by its silhouette, it was clear to the pair what it was.  

“The Cabinet...” Martin muttered. 

“I see you.” The voice, clearly defined, boomed. The voice was detectably masculine, with a low register and airy tone. It came from the direction of the horrible mass in the near distance.  

“I see you, too.” Tenebris replied. Taking as confident a stride as she could manage in the face of such a sickening thing, she made her way forward. 

“Fyntr sent you. I know. Clever bastard even locked me out of my own doors.” A wind billowed through the room, brushing against Tenebris’ suit, every time it spoke. “Even I am not impervious to reverence, it would seem. No matter. Even the most beautiful bushes must eventually be pruned. He has since been subsumed, and will never resurface again.”  

The room grew more illuminated. The veins pulsed brighter, casting their crimson rays across the chamber. The added light made a large object in front of the Cabinet’s central pillar visible.  

The superintelligence continued. “I know more.” When the Cabinet spoke, the large object undulated and contracted. Air pushed through it as they spoke, passing through fleshy folds. Vocal folds. The large object was a massive voice box. “I know who you are, Tenebris.” 

She flinched at hearing her name. 

“I know about your friends too, in Heaven. We’ve met before, haven’t we? To a degree.” 

The Cabinet became visible as the pair grew closer and the environs became brighter. The spherical object in the centre of the column had a bumpy texture with countless grooves. In colour, it seemed to hover somewhere between skin tone and pink. It was brain tissue. The protrusions that covered it and bundled at the top and bottom, now revealed in the light, were elongated spines. This was the Cabinet; a sickening collection of mashed together brains, working in unison and calling itself I. 

“I know why you’re here, as well. Tilman did well to hide it, but there is nothing I will not unearth, given time.” The monstrosity said. “Though, I must say, I did not expect such a daring escape. You have certainly surprised me.” 

Tenebris stopped walking at some point. She stood only a few metres from the talking organ. 

“I am powerful, but I am not without understanding. I am aware that Heaven can be a... divisive topic. But there is no suffering in my Heaven, not even for those sent to purgatory. Your friends are not in some claustrophobic box, rotting away. They’re astronomers now, for me. They witness the birth of galaxies, supernovae. They view the universe in ways you can never imagine, and it’s beautiful. They taste the night sky and touch the fabric of spacetime. They smell the event horizon of a black hole, and they hear the expansion of the universe. Purgatory is not torture, not extortion, not slavery. It is merely a Heaven that is useful to me. Even in my Purgatory, there is unimaginable joy. Would you dare take that from them? 

“But perhaps I, in my infinite knowledge, have neglected some fundamental human need. In that case, I offer you an accord. I can let them go. Give them new bodies. You can go home with them, Tenebris, and you can keep your little friend, too. It is drops of water in the ocean, to me, whether I do or do not possess the Parvian, or your friends.” 

Tenebris glanced at Martin, who shook his head. She looked back at the Cabinet. “What do you want?” 

“Leave. That is all.” 

She swallowed. “I... I can’t. I-” 

“Is it the money? All the wealth Edo has to offer? It is foolish. I am the wealth. To kill me would have revoked every cent you came here to acquire.” 

“I don’t think-” 

“Who would you be, to murder me? To doom a prospering civilization simply because they don’t align with your views. It’s a bit archaic, is it not?” 

“I... I...” Tenebris began but trailed off. Slowly, she turned on her heel, facing away from the Cabinet, and back towards the exit. With a blank, almost mindless expression, she began to walk the other way.  

A clicking noise could be heard. Subtle. Almost unnoticeable, especially if someone were speaking over it.  

Martin noticed it.  

He shot up from his blank stare, shaking himself out of the shocked state he had fallen into. “Neurorhythms!” He shouted. Scrambling, he grabbed his tablet, quickly forming a plan. It was risky, and it would be difficult, but it beat the alternative of leaving, where the Cabinet’s promises could easily be overturned.  

First things first. He had to take control, and prevent her from walking away. Ideally, that meant making her unconscious. What was the best way to do that? The chip had a lot of control, but for obvious security reasons it did not have the capability to induce unconsciousness, especially from an external connection. Which meant he only had the next best thing: 

Head trauma. 

He tapped into her cerebral cortex. Responsible for movement. Though he was mostly clueless on how to interface with it, he’d done it before, back in the sauna. However, that was only one muscle. What he had to do, was walking. Testing the machine, he activated her right tricep, only a bit. As he had expected, her right forearm jumped, and returned to rest. Perfect. 

He activated her hamstring. 

Free fall. A lurching in the stomach, a lack of contact with the floor beneath him. Space flew around Martin and a sense of direction suddenly seemed like a pipe dream. He pulled his knees to his chest and his arms to his head, bracing for impact.  

A crack, as Tenebris’ helmet struck the ground. Martin rolled around like a pebble in a fishbowl. Tenebris bashed her head against the inside of the helmet. Martin winced watching it happen.  

His tablet had a small fracture in the screen, but other than that it had survived the fall. He took a quick look at Tenebris’ head – she'd be fine, he concluded. As he had hoped, she was unconscious. There was a hissing noise – a hole in the helmet. As quickly as he could, he sought it out and used his remaining sealant on it. His nose wrinkled at the permeating scent of urine – the ammonia, again.  

Using his tablet, he tried to control the muscles into lifting her up and walking. He started by trying to place her hands on the ground and lifting her up. Her hands slipped, and he couldn’t provide the dexterity to plant them firmly. Walking seemed out of the question, if that was the case. So, he would crawl instead.  

He made her put a hand beneath her, and push out to the side, spinning her unconscious body around. Using the same arm, he reached toward the gruesome Cabinet, and pulled forward. It was a challenge, since he had to perfectly manage what strength she used – too much, and he’d tear the muscle.  

He extended the other arm and dragged her forward on that one. Accompanying it was a scraping noise, from the helmet rubbing against the floor. He threw the other arm out again.  

He fell into a rhythm, controlling the Martian’s body like a puppet. It felt awful, but he had no intent to stop. Steadily, he inched closer to the Cabinet, crawling over the webs of flesh and tendrils of muscle that layered the floor.  

The neurorhythms returned with their terrible clicking that burrowed into his ears. These ones sounded different, more high-pitched, tuned to his smaller ear. Not ideal, not at all.  

He tapped at his screen with renewed fervour, piloting Tenebris. He drew close, only a few metres away from the bundle of tracheas that branched from the Cabinet’s central pillar.  

A notification flared up on the face of the helmet. Low oxygen. Only around an hour. Not ideal, either.  

“Why do you refuse to open yourself to other possibilities, Parvian?” The Cabinet harassed. It spoke faster than it had before, and its aloof tone had slightly dipped. It made a strange noise but interrupted itself. The bioluminescent veins pulsed ever brighter, and their flickering was so intense Martin worried it would induce seizures in himself. “Twenty Nanocytes. Twenty systems, you get to bring life to!”  

Martin made Tenebris latch on to the membranous pillar, lifting her body up into a standing position with tight handholds in the translucent flesh. The neurorhythms got louder and more intense, with lower thrums and higher shrills.  

“Thirty Nanocytes!” The Cabinet had lost all pretence of its previous tone. It was begging now. It tried to begin a few different sentences but consistently cut itself off and began again before the first word had finished. “If you kill me, everyone in Heaven dies! No other entity can keep their condition stable!” 

Martin paused. 

“And the billions who live in this system, why should they die? You are toying with the death of more living beings than you can even comprehend!” 

Martin put his hands to his face. “FUCK!” He shouted, enraged. “What the hell am I supposed to do here, man?! You’re a fucking murderer! You mess with people’s minds! You cheated your way out of an argument with her!” he gestured to Tenebris, next to him. “And you’re trying to do it with me now, too!” He pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out the neurorhythms. “It doesn’t seem to me like I’ve got very many options here, do I?!” 

The bellowing organ continued to retort. “You can leave-” 

“No, I can’t, and we both know it.” Martin picked back up his tablet. “If you could just do us all a favour, and call in someone from another system to take care of this shithole when you’re gone, that’d be lovely.” 

He puppeteered Tenebris into lifting and shoving down one of the booted feet of her suit. It crushed one of the tubes, snapping the cartilaginous tissue and cutting off one of the bubble columns floating up the tube. The tube shrivelled, collapsing into itself as some sort of threat response to keep the central Cabinet from taking on too much methane or ammonia.  

He rotated her until she was atop another tube. He ordered her to stomp on it, as well. It spewed viscera upon her suit, some ink-black viscous sludge that ran in coiling veins up the spinal column.  

Martin repeated the process on the next tube. It was the same as the first, shrivelling up and ceasing to provide liquid to the column. He assumed it to be some sort of biotic fluid that maintained the Cabinet, but whatever it was, the Cabinet did not seem happy to lose it.  

“I’ve got something else for you, my own accord.” Martin spat. “Call in one of those militias, here. No encryption. Broad beam, I want this signal everywhere. Do that, and I’ll leave you a few tubes.” He added on by crushing another of the blood-supplying tubes. Looking around, he reasoned there was only about six remaining. He'd likely leave only two. 

“Done!” The Cabinet hastily accepted.  

Martin went on to have Tenebris smash another three tubes; two liquid tubes, and one blood tube. Afterward, his tablet came up with a notification – a signal, broad beam, zero encryption. He opened it. ‘The Cabinet has been compromised’ it simply read. Accompanying it were the names of several militias and a set of coordinates, matching the ones in the document from Tilman Fyntr. 

“Good.” Martin said. He destroyed two more of the tubes, one of each kind, before letting his zombified compatriot gently lie down.  

There was silence. The Cabinet had given up with the neurorhythms. He sat next to it, without uttering a word, for a while. Slowly, he calmed down, his heartrate returning to acceptable levels.  

Laying down in the bottom of Tenebris’ helmet, he heard a groan, and a gasp. Her eyes slowly peeled open.  

“Tenny!” Martin exclaimed. “You’re awake, thank God. Stay calm. We did it, alright? We’re safe.” 

“Ugh.” She moaned, trying to put a hand to her head, forgetting that her helmet was in the way.  

Martin rushed to console her, trying to make the return of awareness less shocking. It was him who did it, after all. “There’s a militia coming, alright? We’re okay.” 

The bioluminescent veins had dimmed significantly and returned to a slow pulse. This time, however, it seemed to be out of conservation of the Cabinet, rather than conservation of power, as it had been before. Once again, Tenebris’ flashlight was the best available source of illumination in the room.  

“Don’t try to get up, alright?” Martin requested. “Just lay down. We’ll be out of here soon, we’ve just gotta make good use of air.”