“No.”

She heard the anguish in his voice and didn’t press. “I’m fogged, Kuna, I don’t know… what’s happening?”

“Don’t you understand? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” His slitted nostrils fluttered, the muscles of his face worked under the soft loose skin. “I’m following voices… no… it’s not… I’m not… listen to me. We have to get out of here.” The panic was beginning to break through his control.

“Klar, ’s klar, Kuna. Calm down. Let me see…” She looked at her robe. It was filthy with dust and thick soft webs, but those would shake off well enough. The privacy fields in their cowls were gone-from the burns on her neck which were starting to hurt like bites from the devil, the Null must have shorted hers out when she went down.

They could pull the cowls forward and avoid lighted areas, it might be enough.

“You have your tools?” She shook her head. “Of course you have or you couldn’t ’ve popped me awake. Any idea where the nearest shuttleport is? Vision or whatever, we’ll run with it.”

He dropped to a squat, closed his eyes, pressed his hands hard against them.

She went to the door, stood beside it listening. Heavy silence. Not even the scratch and scrabble of vermin. She could hear her own heart beating, could hear Kikun’s too-rapid breathing. Then a sound like a door closing, a clang of metal against metal. Footsteps. Someone talking, word fragments, scattered, nothing she could make out.

A hand closed round her arm.

She started, swallowed a yelp.

“I see it,” he whispered at her, the see hissing against her ear. She flinched, she didn’t much like snakes. “Let’s go,” he said, pushed past the torn curtains, and scurried off along the gallery.

Rose grimaced, limped after him, catching up with him when he stopped at a gate into the pneumotube system. He reached for the caller.