Like a squashed cylinder, the corridor they follow is wide with a ceiling hung low, the steel gray gloom illuminated only by globs and streaks of glowing blue issuing from some variety of noxious mold. Jupiter her nose wrinkling as if she wishes she dare squeeze it shut, balances atop one ribbed, black cable, thicker than her shoulders are wide, yet slick with moisture so that each stride threatens to slip and slide into the sluggish black goo which runs like a sickly river not far enough below. She spares a glance over her shoulder, where Kiza follows, Bob and his Gemma burden close behind. Ahead, Felicia and Night skip on through the eerie forest of hanging, looping cables, some thick as a car or thin as wire, leaping and scuttling over, between, and under the maze. The pair of heavies are not so lithe, and the cables bounce and sway beneath their weight.
Unstable on the already spare footing, Bob with his unbalanced bundle, slips.
Jupiter dives sideways, grasping Bob's wrist as he swings like a crazy pendulum, but she herself begins a steady slide forward over the side, until Kiza snatches at her calf, and there they hang. The strain pulls at Jupiter's shoulder, her face twisting with the pain. Bob's eyes are wide with fear, more so when he dares a downward glance, and notices a pale, blank eyed face rolling upward in the noxious fluid just inches below his tucked feet.
"Leave them!" Night shouts.
"Yes," Gemma says, muffled against Bob's shoulder.
"All or none," Jupiter wheezes up where Chickanery sneers back over his shoulder. With a grimace, he points to one of the heavies, and then to at the struggling, slipping knot of human, splice, and sim. Kiza's eyes go wide as their bouncing perch threatens to dislodge them for sure.
"Gemma's right," Bob says, staring into the pit of thickly running ooze. "I'm just a long out dated model. You don't need me." Jupiter opens her mouth to reject those words, even as her grip is failing, and Bob slips a little farther, when a thick fist grabs Kiza by the back of her black vest and pulls hard, while the second fist catches Bob's wrist just as Jupiter's grip gives way.
Kiza recovers her balance quickly, and reaches out to help steady Bob and Gemma, while Jupiter crouches where the heavy drops her, before climbing to her feet. She throws a scowl toward Night, but his attention, his eyes hazy and red, is taken by some unheard communication.
"Quickly." Felicia, standing where the cables converged into a fat ring, gazing upward, lit by a weak shaft of light streaming from high above, gazes upward. A wind rises, fresh air from the world above. Jupiter closes her eyes and draws in the clean scent, while the gold and black belly of a small ship emerges from above.