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“Boss…” Thraxa says.

“I know it’s not ideal—” I say.

“Not ideal?” Clown interrupts. “The alarm goes, the subs will know we’re here and we’ll never get back to the trawler.”

Underneath my scarabSkin, my son’s key dangles from its chain, cool and heavy. I didn’t leave him to tuck tail and run at the first sign of friction.

“Do you want to leave empty-handed?” I ask, my tone even, but the implication lacerating. They shake their heads.

“Boss!” Thraxa shoves me hard from the side, almost knocking me down.

“What?”

She jerks her head to the Obsidian. “I think he knows how to find 1126.”

WE LEAVE THE OMEGA detention block behind and follow the Obsidian guard, now wearing an ill-fitting uniform he pulled off one of the subdued Grays. The pants come only to his lower calf, leaving exposed a strip of runic blue tattoos and pale skin. The jacket is a better fit. I’m wary of the man, despite his claim of being a guard. He was in that cell for a reason. Still, he’s our best option here.

Tight behind him, our heavily armed pack ascends up exposed switchbacked stairwells with precipitous drops to either side. Beyond the stairwell is a dingy coliseum where the central processing facility sprawls. Prisoners toil at conveyor belts, sorting the trash from the seafloor. Guards patrol through their ranks with stun batons. High above this, hanging in clusters from the ceiling like the rusted eggs of some giant metallic spider race, are the cellblocks.

On a newer level, we glide over metal floors buffed smooth as glass. We pass myopic cameras and closed doors and the echoing coughing of prison guards abed in their barracks. The sound of a morning news program from Old Tokyo drifts through the halls. I miss a step when I hear my wife’s voice. Just the holos.

We snuff out somnolent guards without breaking pace. The Reds and Grays don’t stand much of a chance, but the rare Obsidian guard is taken down with extreme caution. Some can fight for a minute with three rounds of spider venom in their veins. In passing, I muse how it would be easier to kill them, but then shudder afterward at my own reptilian coldness. These are my people.

The guard certainly has no qualms as we lay waste to his colleagues.

What did he do to end up tongueless and imprisoned? Something either very good or very bad.

True to his word, the Obsidian leads us to the warden’s quarters. The door is locked from the inside, beyond Winkle’s control. Sevro kneels to melt through the lock with a plasma charge. As he lays out the components to his charge, the Obsidian sighs impatiently, steps past him, knocks on the door, then steps back. Inside, a dog begins to bark.

“Shut up!” Someone on the other side of the door screams in vain at the dog. There’s a thump and a yelp. The barking stops. Behind me, Thraxa grunts. I look at the Obsidian and he motions for me to wait. Metal unlatches and the door pivots backward into the room, leaving me standing sternum to nose with a cadaverous, gecko-eyed Copper with a long-slack mouth, a cup of coffee in one hand, and the bunched folds of his black and gold silk robe clutched closed at his waist with the other. Sevro grumbles and disarms the plasma charge.

Staring at the asp-black sternum of my scarabSkin, the warden gibbers something unintelligible. His mug shatters on the metal floor and spatters coffee over his bare calves and the festive brocade of the Venusian rug that he now backs onto. I jab two rigid fingers into his right brachial plexus and then his femoral nerve to stop him from running. He stumbles back from the nerve strikes and I bend to fit under the door and follow him into the room.

A dog, some kind of terrier, barks and growls at our approach, backing away and leaving a trail of urine across the floor. Following my team in, the Obsidian walks toward the dog, crouches down, and holds out his hand. The dog approaches with its tail between its legs. When the man makes a whistling sound, the dog spurts timidly forward to lick his bony hand.

“Warden Videli cu Yancra, I presume?” My helmet’s speakers distort my voice to a gravelly rumble. The door clicks shut behind my men.

“Yes…” he says, shaking from the pain of my light assault. But he’s not a stupid man. He looks up with quick, adaptable eyes at our combat gear, at the Obsidian, where his eyes linger in fear and confusion before returning to me. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“We’re wearing masks for a reason, dumbass,” Sevro says. He walks behind the warden and pulls out a chair for the man. “Sit. Hands where we can see them, my goodman.” The warden fumbles to find a chair and sits down. Sevro takes a seat behind him on the edge of the table and puts a hand on his shoulder.

I sit across from the warden and pour him a glass of water from a decanter as Thraxa spins her hammer at the door and Alexandar waltzes about the room thumbing the warden’s possessions with a practiced eye. The warden looks to his bedside several times. The Obsidian fetches the warden’s datapad and gives it to Sevro.

“Your men aren’t coming, pleb,” I say. “And lucky they are for that.”

“What do you want?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten how to speak to your masters.” Sevro slaps him hard on the ear. “You will address us as dominus, you quivering whelp.”

The warden looks over at the Obsidian, then back to me. I’m not sure who he is more afraid of. “I can help you, dominus. It would be my honor. Just tell me how.”

“You have a man in your charge. Prisoner 1126. He is not in his cell, even though his collar places him there. If the prisoner had been there, cuprum, we would be gone from this place and you would still be lord of your little fiefdom. But he is gone, and so I am here wondering whether to make your crown out of your toes or your fingers.” I lean forward. “Where is prisoner 1126?”

He pales at the mention of his charge.

“He’s dead. He died a year ago. Took his own life by starvation.”