Mother received me in her quarters. It was a rare summons, for I could count on one hand the times I'd been invited into her personal space. The room was minimalist and cold, dominated by her painting of a waterscape. Its sparse oils on thin metal created an illusion of infinite depth that always drew my eye, but today, I barely noticed it.

  Yeller stood behind her chair, its eye a steady red. Mother sat straight, her elegant hands folded on the polished surface of her desk. Her face betrayed nothing, no anger, no disappointment, merely the blank assessment of a problem requiring solution.

  "You understand what you've done," she said.

  "Yes, Mother."

  "You engaged with Rashala's husband without supervision. You took him to restricted maintenance corridors. You initiated physical contact." Each statement fell like an executioner's blade. "Why?"

  I swallowed. "I...I wanted to show him the voidhold."

  "Why?"

  The question hung between us.

  "I don't know," I said finally.

  Mother's mouth tightened. "I expected better from you, Shade. You have always been reasonably compliant. Reliable. I allowed you certain freedoms because you understood your place. I shall now have to reformulate my opinion of you."

  My heart sank.

  "The functionaries report that you and Larkin have in fact engaged in multiple unauthorized interactions. Is this correct?"

  "Yes, Mother."

  "This ends today." She smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her sleeve. "You will be relocated to new quarters immediately. Level B.”

  Level B? The lower spaces, beneath the wardroom, where only maintenance functionaries operated. Far from the living quarters, the thren, the Garden Room, and my family.

  "You will maintain your human-present duties," Mother continued, "but your access to family spaces will be restricted. You will take meals separately. You will not approach Rashala's husband without explicit permission. Do you understand?"

  “Yes.”

  "You will report to Redd tomorrow afternoon for physical evaluation. We are going to administer stronger stabilizers, and your option to refuse them is being removed. Until then, go to your new quarters and reflect on your failures."

  "Yes, Mother."

  She returned to her datapad, dismissing me without another word. I turned and left. Yeller followed close behind, its heavy hand closing around my arm to escort me to the lift that would take us to the lower levels.

  The lift doors opened on Level B. The air tasted metallic, as if it had been recycled a generation ago. The corridors were narrower, and the lighting was fuzzy yet bright. Conduits and access panels lined the walls, exposed rather than hidden behind coverings.

  The voidhold's underbelly.

  "There are your new quarters," Yeller announced.

  “Do you mean this?” I asked, pointing at the dank corridor.

  “Level B lacks official accommodation,” Yeller stated. “However, its facilities have been evaluated as adequate for human needs. You will remain here until summoned. Your meals will be delivered by Brons. All other protocol restrictions are now active."

  It returned to the elevator, the door sliding shut behind it.

  , said a functionary voice through my earpiece.

  “Who’s that?” I asked of Level B.

  , it replied.

  ?

  The night passed slowly in my corridor "quarters”. I curled up on a ledge beside a power conduit, its faint warmth the only comfort in the chill. Sleep came in fitful bursts, broken by the distant rumble of the voidhold's systems and the constant comments from Monitoring Unit Epsilon:

  Morning arrived without fanfare, the lighting merely shifting from dim to slightly brighter. Brons appeared with a tray, its movement halting as it took in my dishevelled state.

  "Your nutrition," it said, placing the tray on the floor. "You will be collected for human-present duties in thirty minutes."

  I nodded, mechanically consuming the cubes while my mind wandered through empty corridors of thought. What would happen to me now? How long would this exile last? Any answers I could think of seemed as bleak as my surroundings.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  True to Brons' word, Magent arrived exactly thirty minutes later. I heard it coming through my earpiece before the elevator doors had opened.

  "Morning rounds," it stated when it actually arrived. "We will follow standard protocol."

  We began our familiar route, but as we approached the secondary life support junction, something unexpected happened.

  Magent stopped.

  Mid-stride, its limbs froze. Its sensor eyes flickered, then dimmed to a dull glow. I halted beside it, confused by the interruption to our rhythm.

  "Magent?" I waited for a response. Nothing. "Voidhold positioning?" I tried the familiar prompt, thinking perhaps I had missed a cue.

  Still nothing.

  "Magent, please respond." My voice echoed in the empty corridor. Had I done something wrong? Failed to authorize something essential?

  A soft hiss came from behind me. I turned to see a maintenance panel sliding open. A hand emerged. Human, not functionary, beckoning urgently.

  Larkin's face appeared in the gap, his expression tense. "Shade! Come here, quickly!"

  I glanced back at Magent, still frozen in place. "What's happening? Is it malfunctioning?"

  "Not exactly." Larkin squeezed through the opening, dressed in what appeared to be a flight suit, its pockets bulging. "I’ve initiated a targeted disruptor pulse. It's temporarily scrambled the voidhold’s operational protocols."

  "You did this?" I stared at him in shock.

  “Yes! Although, I could never have done it without you."

  “What!” I almost held onto Magent in shock. “I would never—”

  But he was grinning. “Remember that cargo you lied about? The one from my dowry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well there you go. DIYing a disruption emitter was tricky enough, I had no other way to smuggle it in. Thanks to you, I managed.”

  "But…why?"

  "Because I'm leaving." His eyes met mine with fierce intensity. "And after what I heard happened to you, I think you should come with me."

  "Leaving? But that's impossible. You’re married to my sister, you can't go."

  "Yes, but also no." He pulled a device from his pocket and glanced at it. "I’ll tell you all about it, I promise! But we don't have much time. The pulse will only last another six minutes before its backup systems engage. We need to be gone by then."

  My mind raced to catch up with his words. "We? No. I’m not going anywhere."

  "Shade," he said, his voice dropping lower. "You need to come with me. Come to Voidhold Two. You don't belong here, surrounded by machines that dictate your every heartbeat, your every thought."

  "My family—"

  "Your sister cuts you as practice for worse things. Your mother treats you like an afterthought. Your father barely registers reality. On Two, you could be free. Choose your own path. Breathe without permission."

  The idea sent terror spiralling through me. A life without protocols meant free-fall into the endless void, with nothing to catch me. "You...you've been planning this?"

  "I've been planning it since before I arrived." His voice dropped lower. "But after yesterday, I can’t leave you here. This is your chance, Shade. Leave before the functionaries take complete control.

  A faint buzz warmed my ear.

  "That won’t happen here," I said.

  "Not yet," Larkin replied. "But they're already deciding who deserves what space, what resources, what privileges." He glanced at my veil. "They're already deciding who gets to show their face."

  I touched my veil. "And Two is different?"

  "Completely. Humans control the systems, not the other way around." He checked a device on his belt. "Four minutes, Shade. I have to go, with or without you."

  My thoughts whirled like storm clouds. Leave? The very concept seemed impossible. Zero was my entire universe, all I'd ever known. Mother, Father, Rashala, the functionaries…they were the sum total of my existence.

  But now I stood exiled. Cast down to the depths for the crime of curiosity. And tomorrow would bring Redd and its physical evaluation. And enhanced stabilizers.

  "But I don’t know about Two?" I asked, my voice barely audible. "What if I am not right?"

  “Shade,” Larkin's voice softened. "I've watched you these past weeks. The way you observe, the questions in your eyes. There's so much more to you than they've allowed you to be. You'll do really well, trust me."

  A distant alarm began to sound—faint but growing louder.

  "That's an automated alert. Soon they'll start rebooting to evade the disruptor," Larkin said urgently. "Three minutes. What's your choice?"

  I glanced back at Magent, still frozen in its rigid pose, then down the corridor that led back to my exile. The corridor suddenly felt smaller, as if the walls themselves were closing in. Each breath through my veil grew heavier.

  "What will happen on Voidhold Two?" I asked, my voice barely audible even to myself.

  "You'll be free," Larkin said, his eyes intense. "No functionaries dictating your movements. No protocols binding your thoughts. You could speak whenever you wanted." He gestured at my face. "You could even remove that veil if you chose to."

  My hand rose to touch the familiar fabric. The thought of my face exposed made me dizzy, but it also sparked something unfamiliar—a quickening in my chest that might have been fear or...something different. In my mind, I saw Mother's impassive face as she forced me to take Redd's pills, Rashala's vindictive smile as she suggested new ways to break me. I thought of Yeller's single eye watching, always watching.

  "The White Room," I whispered to myself. "What it that's me someday."

  "What?" Larkin leaned closer.

  "Nothing." I straightened. "How do we get to Voidhold Two?"

  Relief flashed across Larkin's face. "In my craft. It's been ready since I got here. You can get us through the waygate, right?"

  "Yes." I did still have that authority, Mother hadn't revoked that.

  "Great! Come on." He extended his hand. "It'll be tight, but we can make it if we hurry."

  As the alarm grew louder, I hesitated one final moment, the weight of a lifetime of obedience pressing against me. Who was I without my veil, without my protocols? What value did I have beyond being human-present?

  I took his hand and together we ran through corridors I'd only ever walked. The sensation was alien—my legs pumping wildly, my breath coming in gasps through the veil. Freedom tasted metallic on my tongue, like blood or like fear.

  The inner door of the waygate was sealed, waiting for human authorisation. Larkin reached for the controls, but I suddenly felt weak, and caught his wrist.

  "Wait." My voice trembled from the fear flooding me. "What if this is a mistake? What if Two is worse?"

  His eyes met mine, surprisingly gentle. "It will certainly be different. I can't promise Two will be perfect, but it can’t be worse than this."

  "Is different enough?"

  "It's a chance." His gaze held mine steadily. "Look, I’ll die before I go back to Four, so I’m going. And let’s face it. What future do you have here?"

  I thought of my days stretching endlessly forward. The morning walks, the afternoon corrections, the nights alone in the voidhold belly, with only the hum of monitoring systems.

  A life of obedience.

  No.

  I took a deep breath and placed my hand on the control panel. "I authorize emergency waygate access."

  Authorisation accepted. Inner door opening.

  The massive door slid upward with a hydraulic hiss, revealing the waygate airlock beyond. Through the small viewport, I caught a glimpse of the Larkin's craft, its controls glowing with promise.

  Larkin stepped through, then turned back, hand extended. "Shade? Come on."

  Behind us lay my voidhold. Yeller, eye burning red, its grip unyielding as it brought me to Mother. Rashala, watching my punishment with gleeful anticipation.

  I stepped through the doorway.

  "Close inner waygate door," I commanded.