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Nova’s next thought sounded thin, almost frightened. Mama, you must leave. Now.

But Mira’s feet had already begun to slide into the floor. She tried to lift them, to run back down the passage, but movement made it worse. She was stuck, and sinking.

JO-JO RASTEROVICH

The sound of a voice woke him, and he lay, confused, trying to remember where he was. Cave. Island. Araldis. Survivors. Shit.

The voice was in his head. Sole?

Go now, where? The Entity was so clear and loud that he wanted to plug his ears.

Back there? No way!

The imperative was so strong that he jerked upright.

Randall stirred and rolled over. Next to her, Catchut lay on his back, breathing evenly.

Jo-Jo barely had time to accustom his eyes to the darkness before the next imperative surged through him.

Sole hadn’t been so directly – so forcefully – in his mind since the Entity had driven him to the pseudo-world of Belle-Monde, back when he’d first encountered Tekton and wound up with a Hera contract on himself.

He’d tried disagreeing with Sole. Told him to go fuck himself, if he recalled correctly. But the concept had been meaningless to the Entity, and soon enough Jo-Jo had found himself sitting in the tyros’ bar on Belle-Monde, doing exactly what Sole wanted him to do.

When he’d thought about it afterwards, he figured Sole’s power over him was born from the mind reconfiguring that had saved his life.

Talk about strings attached! He couldn’t believe that the tyros on Belle-Monde had actually chosen to have the process done to them. Shafting, they called it.

Unlike them, Jo-Jo had been an innocent bystander, quietly dying on the bridge of his ship after the environmentals had carked it. He hadn’t been given a choice; Sole had just resurrected him.

And now, again, it seemed he was being robbed of choice.

His body took itself carefully through the cave, keeping to the narrow corridor between those still sleeping. He tried to pause at the mouth and take in the night-time vista, but his limbs climbed down directly toward the AiV.

An ’esque spoke to him, a sentry, but he didn’t bother to reply.

By the time he’d climbed inside the flyer and had run his fingers over the com-sole, the sentry had alerted others. Jo-Jo thought he could see Trinder Pellegrini, and Bethany’s girl, Djes; then Randall and Catchut. They scrambled from the cave towards him. Randall bellowed his name.

He wanted to stop and explain. She’d think he’d crossed her, and after the things they’d been through the notion pissed him off. He fought Sole’s compulsion with everything he could: tried opening the door and throwing himself to the ground, but his hand wouldn’t leave the com-sole, his feet wouldn’t lift from the floor, and soon he was in the air, with the mountainside and the island diminishing into the deep dark.

The energy cell red-lined as he descended onto the beach near the chalet. Dawn was close, fuelling his sense of urgency. With quick, surprisingly efficient hands he transferred the cell from the other AiV into his, and was back in the air again before Leah broke the horizon.

Setting the auto, he dozed without really sleeping deeply. Since escaping Medium it had been that way, light, fearful sleep. And now here he was, on a course heading straight back to the object that had so terrified him. Restless half-dreams brought him images of Mira Fedor – stroking her skin – and arguments with Rast Randall, his hand to the mercenary’s throat, her strong fists punching deep into his stomach.

He woke in pain, wanting to vomit. The AiV’s locator told him that they had covered a large distance. He peered out. Even through the tinted windows, the brightness of the sun told him it was early afternoon. He searched through the emergency packs and found some protein biscuits and a tube of nutritional gel. They tasted better in his stomach than the raw fish and gritty roots he’d eaten the night before.

With food in his belly, his thoughts drifted to the surviviors. They were pitifully thin and worn, and their Principe