Incoming vessel.

“Identify.” Hank blinked at the croaking sound of his own voice. How long had it been since he had spoken out loud?

Agent Whistler. Agent Nine.

“Anyone else?”

One human passenger.

“Identify.”

The Catalyst of the Sixth Extinction.

“Fleur.”

“We’re in the tube.”

The Agents’ corvette slid into the silver passage to the interior, a great reflective phallus cleaving the retracting miles-thick doors of the Vegas Gate. Centuries of accumulated debris from the surface fell away before them along the sporadically-illuminated drop, creating a dun-colored light show as the corvette’s thrusters shifted prevailing weather patterns in the vertical hole in the planet.

Nine stood at the porthole, looking out into nothing but polished silver drop. Fleur was lost in her thoughts, sitting in the vacuum chair with her arms looped around her knees, which were drawn up to her chest. Whistler observed her from the shadows he dragged around him wherever he went…Was she shivering? It wasn’t cold in the vessel, or at least he didn’t think it was too cold for the organic.

“Something wrong, poppet?”

Fleur’s head snapped around and her gaze traveled up and down the form projected before her. “What does it matter now? We’re here, aren’t we?”

Nine sat back down, looked from Whistler to Fleur. “Mother will not be pleased, but she is forgiving. She is a creature of—”

“Divine Mercy and Wisdom. Don’t. Just don’t. We know why I’m here.”

They fell.

Hank stood on the edge, looking up for any sign of the approaching vessel. He could not yet see it, couldn’t even really hear it, but there was something…He could sense a change in the pipe. A resonance. Something different in the natural resonating frequency of the metal tube that had been his kingdom for centuries. He lit another smoke, inhaled, exhaled, tapped ash off the edge of the hole in the world and waited.