Editing Summary:Cytonic

Spensa emerges out of the nowhere portal, M-Bot with her but Doomslug missing. She finds herself in a jungle, an unfamiliar sight for her. She tries to sense Doomslug but can’t feel her. She tries to reach for Detritus, but can’t sense it or any other familiar location. M-Bot expresses his anger at Spensa for abandoning him on Starsight, and flies off angrily into the jungle, crying. Feeling alone, Spensa goes over her supplies, which include an energy rifle, her jumpsuit, and her translator pin. She also finds a small pile of silver glowing sand, and her father’s pilot pin. She finds it strange, since she didn’t have it on her when she entered the nowhere. Another cytonic speaks into her mind, and Spensa asks for help. It warns her to be quiet, and to describe her position. Before she can describe it well, something attacks Spensa.

They crash through the jungle, and M-Bot follows, expressing fear. The pirates notice that the grig feeds on energy, and the beast grows sluggish. Spensa introduces herself and M-Bot, and Chet is disturbed by the fact that Spensa brought an AI into the nowhere. Chet calls M-Bot an abomination, and M-Bot practices insults by calling Chet a noodle-brain. He then asks Spensa to rate his insult from one to ten. Chet offers to be Spensa’s guide in the nowhere for the price of one reality ash per day, the silver dust that is produced by reality icons. Chet tells her about the Path of Elders, a series of the first nowhere portals, left by ancient cytonics, and Spensa tells him that she must follow the burl with the melting face, crashes through the forest towards them. It chases them, its eyes glowing white. Spensa and Chet break out of the jungle, and before them is the edge of the floating island, only empty air out in front of them.

Spensa follows Chet along the edge of the fragment as the burl continues to chase them. M-Bot talks about his emotions to Spensa, who doesn’t reply. Chet leads them towards a close fragment near by, and Spensa has M-Bot go connect his light-line to it. He returns, but the light-line isn’t long enough to reach across. With no other choice and the burl right behind them, Spensa and Chet jump towards the other fragment. Spensa grabs on to M-Bot, Chet missing and hanging onto her waist. M-Bot’s acclivity rings aren’t strong enough to keep them in the air, so Spensa hangs on, Chet says he would drop if he was to much weight since one falling is better than two. M-Bot retracts the light-line, bringing them up and onto the next fragment. Spensa inspects Chet warily, finding it strange and convenient that he happened to find her.

Spensa asks Chet about the nowhere, saying it looks different from when she hyperjumps, and Chet tells her that she normally passed through the lightburst at the center of the nowhere, whereas they are in the belt. He tells her that things from their world, like jungles and oceans leak into the nowhere and form fragments, the floating islands in the belt. He tells her that the Path of Elders contains memories from ancient cytonics, and that he’s never walked the path. He tells her that eventually she’ll have to travel all the way to the lightburst, which is roughly fifty thousand klicks away. He also tells her that she could hypothetically hyperjump home from the lightburst. She asks him about his past, and he says he doesn’t remember his life before the nowhere, just some caverns and old ruins. He says he’s been in the nowhere for around a hundred and seventy years, and that he can make himself not age using his cytonics. Chet jogs off to secure a cave for sleeping, and Spensa has M-Bot do some math to figure out that he crashed on Detritus right around when Chet entered the nowhere. Spensa realizes that Chet is M-Bot’s pilot, and they take off towards the cave.

Spensa leaves Jorgen, and hears Brade communicating with the delvers, speaking for Winzik. He offers to silence the annoying buzzing if the delvers help destroy all cytonics. The delvers agree to consider the trade. Spensa drifts off into true sleep.

M-Bot wakes Spensa up, telling her that Chet woke up and left the cave. Spensa walks over to him, and they discuss their cytonic abilities. Chet says he also has the ability to visualize the entire belt in his head. As they cross several fragments, Spensa notices the great variety to the different fragments, and the journey is physically challenging. Chet tells her that there’s a pirate base near their destination where they could steal a starfighter. On one fragment, Chet stops Spensa just before she steps into a sinkhole. They approach a desert fragment, and several starships fly overhead.

M-Bot wakes Spensa and Chet hours later, and they cross to the next fragment. There are mysterious markings, and Spensa insists that they mean something, but aren’t a language. M-Bot grows frustrated, and whacks Spensa on the head with his drone body. They find the portal, which is locked, preventing them from getting back to the real world that way. Spensa opens her mind and senses the portals, and accesses the memories within. She sees a fragment being formed over hundreds of years, time being sped up rapidly. Spensa notices that there aren’t any delvers during this time. A dione steps through the illusory portal, then ages and dies, with no way off the fragment. Spensa discovers that cytonics are made when the nowhere leaks into the somewhere. At Spensa’s questioning, M-Bot tells them that the first delvers were documented during the First Human War. Their discussion is interrupted by an impact shaking their fragment.

Chet and Spensa find a wooden building, and take the doors off their hinges. They make [[Not-ilus|a rough raft]] out of the doors and large nuts, and set sail across a large ocean fragment. A [[garqua]], a sea creature, comes up to their raft, and Spensa names it Gnash the Slaughterer. Using fruit to motivate it, Chet uses Gnash to let them traverse the ocean fragment faster, having the creature tow them along. They reach land, and Chet tells Spensa that the Broadsider base will pass by the next day. Chet tells her that when he had a ship, he tried to fly towards the lightburst, but lost all of his memories in the attempt, slowly losing himself the closer he got. Spensa thinks about the frightful passing of time in the nowhere, and drifts off to sleep.

The pirates tie Spensa to a chair, and Spensa sees that there’s only one human among them. Most of the pirates are diones, though there are several [[heklo]], a [[varvax]], and a [[tenasi]]. The pirate captain is slightly impressed at Spensa’s audacity, and tells her that she is their new cleaning slave. Spensa sees that M-Bot is pretending to be an ordinary cleaning drone. Spensa introduces herself, and tells the captain that cleaning drone has some illegal programs, which let her hack into the ship. The captain introduces herself as [[Peg]], and tells her that Chet ran off. Peg tells the others to keep Spensa on a leash and to keep her away from M-Bot.

Spensa is leashed to a wall with a light-line, and she is set to greasing parts. Spensa is glad for the work, glad she has something to make her angry. She talks cytonically to Chet, who has been shot by a destructor. Spensa learns to whisper when talking cytonically so as not to draw delver attention. Spensa confesses that she changed the plan in case he’d betray her, and felt his great pain and feeling of betrayal from him. She apologizes, and Chet tries to act as if he doesn’t care. Spensa observes the Broadsider, and sees that they only have nine starfighters. The human pirate, who introduces himself as Maksim, gives Spensa more things to grease at her request. Maksim talks to Spensa, trying to find out more about her past life, but Spensa doesn’t say much. Chet talks to Spensa again, and expresses his self doubt about who he really is. He says that if he isn’t a gentlemanly hero and explorer, he doesn’t know who he is. Spensa apologizes again, and Chet accepts it.

Spensa learns more about the pirates, mostly through Maksim. She learns more about the pirates who work in the hangar, called Cutlass Flight. She notices that the Broadsider have a long-range scanner, and she tells Chet. Chet says that they’ll have to sabotage the scanner if they’ll want to flee and continue. The next day, Maksim takes off Spensa’s light-line, and Spensa volunteers to take on a harder task. She is set to fixing Shiver’s defective destructor. Spensa talks to Shiver as she works, who is a [[resonant]], and is thus made up of crystals. Spensa compares resonants to [[figment|figments]], which Shivers disagrees with. Shiver’s relaxed nature reminds Spensa of [[Kimmalyn]]. Spensa gets permission from [[Nuluba]] to use M-Bot to help clean the destructor, and Spensa fills him in on what has happened. M-Bot tells Spensa that she’s been with the Broadsider for two weeks, which shocks Spensa, who thinks it had been much shorter. Chet tells Spensa that it is dangerous to stay in one place too long.

Peg gives Spensa their best ship, and Spensa uploads M-Bot to it. Chet doesn’t want his own ship, preferring to stay in the ship with Spensa. At Peg’s request, Spensa helps teach Cutlass Flight some formation exercises to help improve their group flying. She helps them practice working in pairs and using their IMPs. They exchange casual banter as they fly, reminding Spensa of time with her friends. Peg explains more about her past, and tells Spensa that the Superiority uses non-lethal destructors as well. They come up upon their destination, a fragment covered in ruins, and the location of the next step in the Path of Elders.

As they approach the ruins, Peg figures out that they are both cytonics. Spensa tells Peg that she’ll join in on the attack of the Superiority base. Peg tells them more about the other pirate factions, two led by her sons Gremm and Semm. M-Bot, Chet, and Spensa discuss what they learned from the portals. Spensa mentions Jason Write, who M-Bot identifies as the first human to initiate contact with the greater galaxy. He indirectly caused the First Human War. Peg asks about what they saw, and Spensa relays the information to them. They talk about the delvers’ ability to possess people, and Peg says that large groups repel them, and they prefer people who are isolated and alone. As they fly towards base, they get an alert that a group of enemy pirates are flying towards the Broadsider base.

They arrive back at base in the midst of a full firefight, and M-Bot highlights enemy ships on Spensa’s display. The enemy pirates are from the [[Jolly Roger Faction]], led by Gremm. Spensa goes for the weaker fighters first to prevent her flight from being overwhelmed. Spensa deals with the enemy ships with relative ease, surpassing the enemies in skill greatly. She shoots down three enemy ships in under five minutes. She uses her IMP to give Cutlass Flight easy targets. Gremm chases after her, and they engage in a fierce duel in the air. Gremm prevails, scoring several hits on Spensa’s ship and locking it up. Spensa laughs, excited by the thrill of the fight. Chet wakes up, having lost consciousness during the dogfight. By the end of the battle, Spensa has four kills and three assists, astounding Peg. With the Jolly Rogers still soundly defeated and Gremm impressed with Spensa’s flying, Gremm agrees to officially duel Spensa the next day.

While Spensa sleeps, she tries to cytonically reach out to Jorgen as she did before. She senses something blocking her however, and instead finds Winzik sitting on a throne, and Brade speaks to her. Brade says she’s been blocking Spensa from reaching out cytonically during her dreams. Winzik orders Brade to trap Spensa’s mind, but Brade says she doubts she can do it. Brade attacks Spensa with her mind, and Spensa fights back. Jorgen’s mind joins her, and together force Brade away. Spensa talks to Jorgen, again catching each other up on the past weeks’ events. Jorgen leaves, and Winzik speaks to the delvers through Brade. He tells them that cytonics like Spensa are out of control and loud. Spensa realizes that Brade had provoked her to make a lot of cytonic noise that would anger the delvers. The delvers say they can deal with the cytonics on their own, but Winzik convinces them otherwise. The delvers agree to Winzik’s deal.

Spensa and the other pilot duel. Spensa notices white patches on some of the rocks in the arena and she is able to hear the delvers communicating with her when she gets close to them. She starts to notice her opponent performing DDF maneuvers and realizes that her opponent is Hesho after communicating with him. Spensa wins the duel by tossing Hesho out of the arena with her light line causing him to be shot by the pirates waiting outside the arena.

In her sleep, Spensa communicates with Jorgen to catch him up. Spensa apologizes to Nuluba for being aggressive towards her, as she had thought Nuluba to be a horrible person like Winzik. Spensa asks Nuluba if she wants to be a pilot, but she replies that she likes things simple. Spensa talks to Shiver, who thanks her for making the assault possible. Spensa asks how Dllllizzzz is doing, and Shiver says that she varies a lot, sometimes almost making full sentences but sometimes only sending tones and hints at meanings. Shiver says that there is a reality icon at Surehold, that appeared with Peg when she was thrown in. Shiver says that icons sometimes move around on their own, so that Spensa’s icon probably wasn’t stolen, but just moved. As Spensa leaves, Shiver requests that if Spensa escapes, if she would open a path for Dllllizzzz and her to leave. Spensa promises to try. As Spensa goes through her pre-flight checks, Chet asks to fly with Spensa into battle. Spensa warns him that it will be dangerous, but she agrees to take him with her.

As Hesho flies, Spensa notices that the delver is still using Hesho’s skills. Many of the other ships have been locked up, and the other ships have agreed to a temporary truce because of the dangerous battlefield. As Spensa chases Hesho, she opens a direct line to Hesho’s ship. She acts as if they're in training, ordering the flight to fall in line and call roll. Instinctively, Hesho stops, the old habits drilled into him being too difficult to ignore. Spensa shoots him down, locking up his ship. Spensa approaches his ship, then exits her ship and jumps onto the wing of Hesho’s ship. The delver possessing Hesho is afraid of Spensa, saying that being around Spensa corrupts and changes them. The delvers tell Spensa that if she doesn’t pass beyond Surehold, they will strike up a truce with Spensa and the other cytonics, ignoring Winzik’s deal. They’ll leave Spensa’s friends alone. The delver stops possessing Hesho, leaving him very confused.

Spensa awakes to find Hesho in the room with her, who had watched over her as she slept to keep her safe. Spensa takes a shower and changes clothes, and contemplates the lightburst. She thinks about staying in the nowhere for just a while, but fears that she’ll forget her friends and stay in the nowhere for decades. She is in inner turmoil over wether to accept the delvers’ offer of a truce. Spensa asks M-Bot what he thinks. M-Bot says that his processing speed is faster in the nowhere, and will likely slow down considerably back in the somewhere. However, he is okay with going back, and considers possibly inhabiting one of Detritus’ platforms. Spensa searches out her father’s pin, which is nearby. She communicates with it, and it comforts her, feeling familiar. Spensa finds the pin and another icon, and the pin tells her that it and the other reality icon hid when the fighting started, since some people would’ve tried to steal them. Spensa thanks the pin for helping, and in response, she hears a happy fluting sound coming from the pin.

Spensa doesn’t fly towards the lightburst at full speed, giving them time to plan. Spensa explains to the others what she’s learned about delvers, Chet, and Doomslug to M-Bot and Hesho. Chet says that the delvers hate AI because they see AI as a possible threat that could conceivably replace or harm them. The delvers have trouble seeing into the belt, and don’t see Spensa’s ship, but Spensa warns the others that they will see them soon, probably when they reach the final portal. Spensa plans to bolt for the lightburst as soon as they retrieve the memories from Solitary Shadow. They just have to get past whatever obstacles the delvers present, and then hyperjump back to Detritus. Chet warns that the delvers can likely form bodies to try and stop them. He also says that they will likely try to destroy him as well. Hesho suggests getting them to choose from a set of random options, to get them to choose different options from each other, but Chet says it won’t work. M-Bot tries to understand Spensa’s emotions better, and Spensa says that many good things come about from emotions, like courage being created by fear. As they finish their conversation, they reach the final stop of the Path of Elders.