A rumbling came from below, maybe a hundred meters deep. A tiny band of lights shifted down there, swirling one way and then the other and then moving on. It cut through the floor of the structure to both sides, all the way to the distant walls. A network of conduits branched above it, and wide, tendonlike connections bridged it far below. She started off along the rim, stepping over white, lumpy growths that seemed to sprout up out of the depths. It only took a few minutes to find a structure that crossed it, but it wasn’t a bridge.
It was mostly flat, though the edges sloped down into the void; its surface was a wire mesh over what looked like an endless length of tongue. There was nothing like guardrails, and when she stepped out onto it, the tongue reacted to her, twitching and undulating like it was trying to drag her along. She put her arms out for balance and trotted across the gap. Two meters, four meters, five, and she was on the other side. She leaned against the wall, her head between her hands until the dizziness faded. The vast winglike structure was almost directly above her now, only close up she could see that it was more complex. Thousands of interweaving growths with deep, interlocking spirals and a shifting movement whose source she couldn’t identify.
She slipped down the far side of the ledge and into something more like a passageway than she’d seen since she fled into the dark. The passage shifted left and then right. She followed it, picking her way by guesswork and hope. The ratio of floor to wall to ceiling unnerved her for reasons she couldn’t quite say. Tiny flickers of blue light like fireflies glowed and went dark all around her. She followed a broad turn and it opened into a chamber.
She screamed.
Holden was there not three meters away, a huge, insectile thing looming above him. Cruel claws reached out and spikes like daggers caught the dim and eerie light. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, unable to look away from Holden’s last moments.
The artifact shifted toward her, paused, and lifted a claw like it was waving. Holden followed the gesture.
“Elvi?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I was… We were…” She sank down to her knees, relief running through her like water. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Murtry took one of the carts when you disappeared. He followed the signal from your hand terminal. He knows you’re trying to shut down all the artifacts.” A stab of panic took her and she glanced at the clawed thing.
“That’s all right, kid,” the robot-thing said in a tinny Belter accent. “It ain’t news to me.”
“Amos and Fayez and I got another cart going, and we came after them. To warn you.”
“Okay,” Holden said. “You did great. We’re going to be fine now. How did you find us?”
Elvi held up her hand terminal, took a breath, let it out. “It was complicated.”
“Fair enough. What about Amos? Where’s he?”
“Murtry shot him. I think he’s dead.”
Holden’s face went pale and then flushed. He shook his head, and when he spoke, his voice was low and careful. “Amos isn’t dead.”
“How do you know?”
“If Amos goes down, it’s because literally everyone else there has already died. We’re still alive, so Amos is too.”
“Don’t pay too much attention to him,” the robot monster said. “He gets a little romantic about these things. If you say the bald guy’s dead, I believe you.”
“Thank you,” Elvi said by reflex.
“I am sorry about it, though. I liked him.”
“I did too,” Elvi said. “And Fayez. I heard gunshots when I was running. I think Fayez —”
“How about Murtry?” Holden asked.
“He’s coming. He’s behind me. I don’t know how far. But he’s coming to find you. To stop you.”
“Why the fuck would he stop me?” Holden asked, biting the words.
“He wants RCE to have the artifacts still working.”
“That man’s kind of an asshole,” the alien said. “We’ve got a pretty full plate, though. We’re close.”
“Close to what?” Elvi said.
“That would be the question,” the alien answered, but Holden’s gaze was fixed over her shoulder. His jaw was tight and angry.
“All right,” he said. “We’ve got two things we need to do.”
“We do?” the alien said. It occurred to Elvi that they were talking to an alien. She thought that was remarkable, and she was a little confused that Holden hadn’t remarked on it.
“Someone has to find this whatever-it-is and shut off the planetary defenses, and someone has to shoot Murtry.”
“Not to disagree with you,” the alien said, shifting its weight on six articulated legs. “One of those seems a little more important to me.”
“Me too,” Holden said, “but I don’t think it’s the same one. Elvi, I’m going to need you to go save everyone, okay?”
“Um,” she said. “All right?”
“Good. This is Detective Miller. He died when Eros hit Venus and now he’s a puppet of the protomolecule.”
“Semi-autonomous,” the alien said.
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“Okay,” Holden said. “I’m going to go take care of this.”
To Elvi’s surprise and unease, Holden walked away, following the passage she’d taken. The alien thing cleared its throat apologetically, only she was fairly sure it didn’t have a throat. So the sound was just a kind of conversational inflection.
“Sorry about that,” the alien – Miller – said. “He gets an idea in his head sometimes and there’s no talking to him.”
“It’s all right,” Elvi said. “So… um.”
“Right, saving everyone in the world. Follow me, kid. I’ll get you up to speed.”
~
“So it’s a distributed consciousness,” she said, following Miller through a low archway. She felt lightheaded, and not just from hunger. Fayez was dead. Amos was dead. She was going to die. She was on an alien world. She was talking to a dead man wearing an alien robot. The part of her that could feel things was done, shut off. Her heart was a numbness behind her ribs, and when – if – it came back, she couldn’t guess who or what she would be.
“Except it’s not exactly conscious,” Miller said. “There’s nodes in it that are, but they don’t run the joint. I’m not actually one of them. I’m a construct based on the dead guy, only I’m based really closely on him, and he was kind of a bulldog about this kind of thing. At least by the end he was.”