Feferi floats deep, and the ocean presses in on her, black and heavy and sweet.

Feferi wakes.

She orients herself quickly, head up and feet down, but it barely matters. Gravity doesn't matter here, not way down deep where the anglerfish swim. The mass of Alternia pulls her down, but the ocean of Alternia holds her up. The water is her second lusus, and it cradles her in its arms. And like her first custodian, she has always shared it with another.

"Where are you?" she shouts, her words glubbing and bubbling upwards. She turns her head and her hair twists after her in a cloudy mass. Her gills flutter violently, sucking the seawater in and in and in, and her heart beats in a panic.

There, in the darkness, floating beneath her. A body.

All around them, the ocean is pink with blood.

"Hello?"

It was difficult to open the airlock from the outside, but Feferi is stronger than she looks. Strong enough to kill, she thinks. There is still pink under her fingernails. She remembers how the Condesce's hands felt around her neck, scaly and sharp-clawed. Not warm like Eridan, the only other troll she had ever touched. But not cold either. The same as Feferi, exactly the same.

"Hello?" she calls again. The water is still pouring in from the airlock— she braces herself against the floor and pushes it closed, her feet slipping in six inches of water.

She wanders the halls of the ship, occasionally calling out. She should be quiet. She should deploy her weapon from her strife deck and turn corners quickly, like a cautious soldier. But she is still only a child.

She wanders past a row of ejection pods, empty except one. The green "in use" light switches off when she opens the door. She coughs at the rotten smell. A automatic voice recording is echoing out of the pod speakers.

"—in deep space. Please wait for atmospheric conditions and try again. Ejection not recommended in deep space. Please—"

Feferi pushes the door shut and throws up all over the floor. Like everything else, her vomit is pink.

"Is there anybody alive in this glubbing ship!" she screams.

She is so tired, and alone. She looks down at the scratches on her arms, still Tyrian and raw. I'm a killer, she thinks, and it's not just because of the dead empress who floats in the blackness outside. No, now she remembers all of them, the countless lusii she has snagged in her net and dragged down, deep down. In the light from Gl'bgolyb's luminous limbs she has seen them, still twitching and bleeding and scared, staring at her with their milky eyes. She thinks of Eridan, the self-styled Orphaner. How many have I orphaned? she wonders.

"Hello," a voice says.

For a heart-stopping moment Feferi is sure it is coming from the rotting soldier in the pod, but then, there— a console in the wall to the left. She approaches it warily.

"Who are you?" she asks.

The console switches off.

There is a pink room at the prow of the ship. This room holds the ship's engine, and the ship's computer. This room is the ship's brig. The door to this room, like every door to every room that it is worthwhile to enter, is locked. But Feferi has fought an Empress. She can break a lock.

"Hello," she says to the room's occupant. He does not reply. Those horns, she thinks, curious.

"What is your name?"

"I—" he says, but the word cracks. His voice is hoarse with disuse. "I am the Helmsman." His face twitches, a reflexive frown. "But my name—" he wets his lips. "My name…"

He trails off into silence.

"It's okay. My name is Feferi." She approaches him tentatively, trying to meet his eyes, taking each step slowly. She is not being courteous. She is scared.

"Are you hurt?" she asks.

"You sound like her," he says. "Your voice."

"Like who?"

"Do you look like her? I can't see you." The Helmsman coughs, wetly. He moves his head in an absent way. "I can't see anything inside."

"Inside?"

He has been here for years. Sometimes, it is the blackness of space that presses in on him, and he hears the Condesce whispering, but all he can watch are the distant stars. Sometimes, she is gone and he is left alone in the prison he has never seen, and the bright air of a planet flows around his bow and makes him shake. Never before has he done this, though, submerging, swimming under the water. The Condesce had let out a cry of exhilaration as they dived, and hummed her pleasure at returning home. For the Helmsman, all he could think was: I hope that I will drown.

"Maybe everybody sounds like her. Maybe she sounds like everybody," he says. He doesn't think that this is a trick. Why would she trick him? She has him, she owns him. Why would she open the airlock with brute force and let water spill inside? But if this is not her, where has she gone? And if this is not her, who is it who speaks to him now?

"Are you the Handmaid of Death?" His voice has dropped to a whisper. He remembers the swirl of dark hair, the green dress, the light dripping from her eyes as she floats above them, watching Darkleer nock his arrow. Could this be her, this soft voice? He speaks again, quieter still. "I've been waiting for you."

"N-no—" she begins. The Handmaid of Death. She thinks about the Condesce, breaking under her hands. "I'm not—" she says, but a new idea has already seized him.

"Is it you? Meulin? Meulin, is he here?" He is suddenly frantic, straining against his bonds. He wants to reach her, to touch her wild hair. "Is it time? Mother Maryam, is it you? Is he coming?" He twists and struggles, desperate for the Dolorosa's embrace. "I've missed him so much. I've missed him so, so much."

"I'm sorry," says Feferi, and as always, she truly is. "But my name isn't Meulin." And then, her voice stronger, trying to be proud: "I'm Feferi Peixes. That's my name."

"Peixes?" he whispers. He is still now, still and trying hard to remember something he has long forgotten. He thinks for a long moment, and then there it is. "Peixes!" he crows, triumphant. "Meenah Peixes!" And he begins to laugh.

"Meenah?" Feferi says. "Who's Meenah?"

The Helmsman just laughs and laughs and laughs.