“The illusions are nothing to me, Alanik,” Morriumur said. “We didn’t realize, during training. We treated me like anyone else—but I can see through them as two overlapping, shadowy images. I can do this. I can reach the heart.”
I undid my buckles with trembling hands, barely aware of what I was doing. I ripped off my helmet, then curled up, holding my head, trying to escape the visions. I bounced against the inside of my ship as Morriumur pulled me one direction, then the next.
“A lot of these tunnels are fake,” Morriumur said. “I think the maze would have led us around in circles . . . It’s really just a big openness in here, Alanik.”
I trembled beneath an infinite weight. I don’t know how long it took, but I felt us getting closer. I was a child alone in a black room, and the darkness was pressing against me. Growing deeper, and deeper, and deeper . . .
“There’s something ahead.”
Deeper and deeper and deeper . . .
I dropped inside my cockpit, pressing against the seat.
“This is it!” The small voice came from my dash. An insect to crush. “Alanik, we’ve entered a pocket of air and gravity. What do I do now? Alanik? I never got to the heart during our training!”
“Open. My. Canopy.” I whispered the words, my voice hoarse.
A short time later, I heard a thumping as Morriumur forced open my canopy with the manual override.
“Alanik?” Morriumur asked. “I see . . . a hole over there. The membrane is an illusion. It’s just a blackness, like a hole into nothing. What do I do?”
“Help. Me.”
Eyes squeezed closed, I let Morriumur assist me out of the ship and onto the wing. I stumbled, clinging to them, and opened my eyes.
Nightmares surrounded me. Visions of dying pilots. Hurl screaming as she burned. Bim. My father. Hesho. Everyone I’d known. But I could see it too, the hole. Our ships had settled down on something solid. It looked like one of the caverns from back home. The hole was right next to my ship, a deep void in the ground.
I let go of Morriumur, pushed off them. They cried out as I dropped from the wing. And plunged into the void.
44
I entered a completely white room.
The pressure on my mind vanished immediately. I stumbled to a stop and looked around at the pure whiteness, somehow familiar.
I let out a long sigh, turning around until I saw myself standing beside the far wall. Not a mirror image. Me. Standing there. That was it, the delver. It looked like me the same way the one in the recording had. I wasn’t sure why it chose that shape—or even if it did. Perhaps my mind simply interpreted it this way.
I walked to the delver, surprised at how confident and strong I felt. After what I’d just been through, I should have been weak, exhausted. But in here, in this white room, I had recovered.
The delver was staring at the wall. I leaned forward and saw that there were tiny pinpricks in it. Holes? I could hear a buzzing noise from them. The more I focused on it, the more awful it sounded. It was an annoyance that marred the otherwise perfectly serene room.
I looked back at the delver. It wore my face, which should have been strange. But . . . for some reason it wasn’t? I prodded at it with my mind, curious.
Curiosity came back. I cocked my head, then closed my eyes. I felt . . . pain, agony, fear from the spots on the wall. The delver sensed those emotions, and reflected them back out the way they’d come.
“You don’t understand emotions, do you?” I asked it. “We’re misinterpreting you, like I misinterpreted Cuna. You don’t hate us. You just reflect back what we feel. That’s why you look like me. You’re only sending back at me what I’m showing you.”
It looked at me, its face impassive. And . . . I could tell that what I’d said wasn’t exactly true. It did hate the buzzing sounds, the annoyances. But much of what we showed it—much of our experience of the universe—was completely foreign to it. It reflected those back at us, part of a fundamental inability to understand.
“You have to go somewhere else,” I said to it, and tried to project the location of the delver maze.