"Over here, Miss! This way!"

Luna scrambled to her feet, rising into the smokescreen that had erupted above her, seeking the voice that had called out. The cops who'd accosted Luna and dragged her from the Green Sun bar were stumbling about futilely in the white smoke that had filled the yard. Not just white smoke, really: as Luna peered through the smokescreen it was accompanied by gossamer-thin arcs of lightning suspended between particles of dust, and flashes of ultraviolet light bursting at unpredictable moments from all directions. But even as the police officers were driven back, the visors they wore overwhelmed by the smokescreen, Luna's eyes adapted.

There! In a crooked alley off to the right of the bar, in the direction the smoke bomb had come from, a figure shone in infrared light. They were about half Luna's height, and as Luna took a step that way they beckoned, one hand waving her over in a cheery 'hurry up!' gesture.

Luna did so. The leader of the police squad was in front of her, as clear as day to her eyes even though he clearly couldn't see a thing. Luna carefully side-stepped round him as he blundered about, his furiously waving arms going nowhere near her. Then she was free and clear.

She emerged from the cloud of white smoke at a full sprint. The figure that had launched the smoke bomb and called her over was now clear. It was a small boy, dirty-blond hair covered by a thick brown helmet, his khaki-green jacket fluttering around as he turned to face down the alleyway. Luna was about to call out to him, but the boy just beckoned her along once before jogging away.

Luna hurried to keep up with him.

Just like the alley Luna had arrived by, this one was twisting, dark, and with several branches. It wasn't more than a few moments before Luna and the boy were far enough away that the police couldn't have pursued them even without their current impairment. The boy gradually slowed to a halt, turning his head to be sure Luna had kept up with him.

Luna looked down at the boy's innocent eyes. "Quark?" she asked.

The boy tilted his head, showing as much confusion as Luna felt. "Miss? You know my name?" Quark asked.

Of course Luna did, but she couldn't explain to him how it was she knew. Not without seeming crazy to the Quark of this alternate universe. "What were you doing there? If you hadn't rescued me…"

"I was sent to get you!" Quark exclaimed cheerily. "Didn't our message say something like that?"

Luna had only seen the small scrap of a note in her birdcage. She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I only knew where to show up. Not what would happen after." She glanced back the way they'd come, where the first howls of alarm were emanating from the police they'd left in their wake. "I'm glad you got me out of there, though. Thank you."

Quark beamed. "You're welcome!" He pointed further down the alley they'd escaped through. "You can keep going, right? It's not far to where we're going."

Luna nodded. She was just relieved to have a chance at some answers.

Quark led Luna further on, down more twists and turns, ducking past a hanging net of glowing cables into a small passageway that Luna hadn't even realised was there, even doubling back at one point. The two of them didn't encounter anyone as they went along; had Quark chosen the route for that purpose? Eventually the young boy came to a stop at a seemingly unremarkable spot, turned to face the wall of the alley, and crouched down.

"It's down here, Miss Luna," Quark said as he swung open a disguised hatchway just above floor level. "Will you be able to manage it?"

Luna simpered politely. "I'll do my best."

Quark nodded happily then swung himself through the opened hole, dropping into the darkness to a floor some way below. Luna was less graceful about it – she just about managed to slide herself to sit on the lip, then dropped down – but she too was able to enter Quark's hidden passageway. They turned around and closed the hatch behind them, removing even that meagre shaft of light.

Luna had found herself inside the guts of the city. Sewage pipes and electrical wires and cables that Luna didn't know the purpose of surrounded them, leaving just a single claustrophobic path in between. Quark began walking down it, clearly having taken this path many times before. Luna did her best to keep up. She found herself grateful that she wasn't wearing her usual dress. Her hoodie was going to get grimy once again.

"Why are you down here?" she called out to Quark.

"We've gotta be," Quark's voice echoed back. "If we're not careful the bad guys working for Father will catch us."

'Father'? One of the police officers who'd accosted Luna had used that title as well, with a very different tone. "But he can't get you down here?" she asked.

Quark's voice came back again, far too unruffled for the subject matter at hand. "We've just gotta keep an eye out."

As they rounded the next bend, Luna having to twist her body one way then the other to get past the various pipes, a faint glimmer of light came from ahead. It was clearly their destination. When they reached the glow Luna saw that it was coming from a crack in the wall at the end of the passageway. Quark placed his hands against it and pushed, revealing a door as the crack grew wider and more light streamed through.

Inside this door would be the people who'd summoned Luna there. The people who'd left that message she'd found in her blue bird ornament. Stroking that golden cage where it lay in her pocket to steady her nerves, Luna headed on in.

o-0-o

The room Luna arrived in was fully lit, two rows of slender lightbulbs having been mounted on the ceiling by whoever now used this place. The pipes and cables and other bits of infrastructure that had cramped the tunnel outside also worked their way into this chamber, and at various points improvised devices had been attached to siphon them off for the benefit of the room's occupants. Cables ran from one of those devices to a bank of computer screens that were set up along the side wall, while on the other side were a series of flat pallet like bunk-beds that reminded Luna of the ones in her Rhizome Nine's crew quarters. Finally, hanging between the cabinets along the back wall and lit up from below, the symbol of a gold cross with a loop in place at the top was emblazoned. It was the same logo that had signed Luna's message, and seemed to emanate an aura of determination and defiance the longer Luna stared at it.

But apart from the two of them, the room – almost a bunker hidden below the guts of the city – was empty of people.

"Is the person I'm supposed to meet…?" Luna began to ask.

"Don't worry! She'll be here soon," Quark replied. Waving a hand around, he enthusiastically asked, "You wanna make yourself at home?"

Luna wasn't sure how to respond to that. She didn't really know how to make herself at home; she couldn't exactly take any drink or refreshments even if she knew where to get them. But she didn't want to appear ungrateful by declining, either. In the end she settled for lowering the nearest bed platform and sitting gingerly on its edge.

She was saved from having to decide on anything more when the entrance hatch opened once more. A woman stepped through, her face weathered by age and her expression hardened by time. To Luna's surprise, the old woman was missing an arm: though the one side of the off-white shirt she was wearing had an arm poking through as expected, the dark-brown skin surprisingly smooth for the lady's age, the other arm of the shirt just hung limply from the shoulder. But what was most striking was the jewellery the woman was wearing. It was a figure eight of pure gold, the top loop going round the neck while the lower loop hung down in front of the woman's chest.

As the new arrival turned to close the entrance behind her a name escaped from Luna's lips. "Alice?"

The old woman slowly turned round, each movement gradual but dignified and controlled. "You know," Alice said, a low murmur laced with a hint of warning, "I should be a little more concerned about being recognised on sight by someone who couldn't possibly know me." She held it there, one threatening second. Then she sighed, shook her head, and stepped past Luna further into the bunker. "But right now I don't have a lot of better options."

"What…" Luna had so many questions it was impossible to settle on just one. "What happened back there? I was just waiting where we were supposed to meet. Then… It all happened so quickly."

Alice grimaced. "Just bad luck, by the looks of it. The so-called law enforcers that work for Father often go looking for chances to throw their weight around. On this side of the city, they know they'll get away with it. If any of my agents had ever acted like that they'd have been shit-canned faster than you can say 'boom'." She took a moment to scrutinise Luna up and down. "I wish you'd been capable of avoiding their attention, though. Guess I shouldn't have expected more from a civilian."

"But it was okay," Quark exclaimed. "'Cause I jumped in and saved her!"

"You did well," Alice said with a nod. Then she looked back over at Luna, her stare intense. "We took a lot of risks to bring you down here. More than we'd planned on."

And Luna couldn't feel anything but gratitude for that. But it wouldn't be right for her to continue stringing her two hosts along. "I'm sorry," she said, bowing her head. "I don't think I'm the person you want. I'm not sure what I could tell you that could help."

Quark tilted his head to the side, something rattling in his helmet. "Huh? But you contacted us, Miss."

Luna had contacted Alice? Her lack of the full picture was becoming more and more troubling.

Alice grunted, her reply to Luna's confused silence. "Are you braindead?! How could you forget what you approached us for?" She scowled Luna's way, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. "It's too late for you to get cold feet on me. What you promised us was supposed to make everything we've done so far worth it."

Before Alice could continue her grilling Quark piped up. "Maybe if we remind Miss Luna why it's all so important, it'll jog her memory." He then leaned Luna's way, raising his hand next to his grinning mouth and lowering his voice to a hushed, excited whisper as though entrusting Luna with a crucial secret. "I was scared too, when Miss Alice picked me up. I just had to keep at it so the bad guys wouldn't win."

"Heh. Only kid who even calls me 'Miss' anymore", Alice said, chuckling as she gazed down at Quark. Then she raised her head to meet Luna's eyes, her stony-faced expression utterly unreadable. "Fine, then. But if you haven't got your nerve back after this I won't waste any more time on you. I'll leave you here, and whoever finds this safehouse first can do with you what they will."

Luna nodded respectfully. She wasn't comfortable with leaving Alice and Quark with the wrong idea about her. But there wasn't a chance she'd be able to explain what was actually going on in a way that they'd accept. Plus, this was a chance to find out about the world she'd found herself in.

"I don't know how much you're already aware about how Rhizome Nine was founded," Alice began. "There's a lot of sordid details there. Details that people ought to realise, if they were paying attention, but most of the 'citizens' just prefer to keep their heads in the sand and carry on with the rat race. It's… convenient, for the people in charge."

Quark clapped his hands together decisively. "That's why that Father guy and his goons don't like it when we tell people what's really going on."

"Yes, that's right. The city was announced during the Radical-6 epidemic on Earth, right after the April thirteenth explosion of the antimatter plants. Should have rung some alarm bells for people, really. But at the time people were desperate. And now, for most of them, it's just history as ancient as the pyramids."

"Are you saying that the founding of Rhizome Nine was connected to the epidemic?" Luna asked.

Alice nodded. "The virus was released by a cult known as Free the Soul." She proceeded to explain Free the Soul's background, beliefs and leadership. All info Luna already knew, at least in her own timeline, but she listened attentively as though she was hearing it for the first time. "So that's why the Myrmidons thought the virus would create their perfect world. Utter madness."

"And right after that this city was founded…" Luna murmured. She could see where this was heading.

"Seemed like a dream," Alice said, a sardonic grimace plastered across her face. "I mean, it would have been astounding even beforehand. An entire city, on the moon? We barely had more than a few isolated moonbases when I was young, and most people didn't even know about them. But once the surface of the Earth had been burned to ashes the chance to escape to the moon and start a new life would have been miraculous. The man calling himself 'Father' broadcast his announcement across the world, declared the new city open, and got a torrent of volunteer immigrants within days. That's how Rhizome Nine came to be.

"Of course, Father was involved in Free the Soul up to his neck."

Luna gasped. She couldn't help herself. "Why would he…?" she began to ask, only to find herself unable to say the final words. Luna still couldn't understand why anyone would do anything alongside Free the Soul. At the same time, she couldn't disbelieve it. The city's founder calling himself 'Father' was entirely in line with how Free the Soul named their leaders.

"It's like the thing with the carrot and the stick," Quark replied. "The Myrmidons made the Earth really bad for everyone. And Father makes this place to reward people who do what he says."

"That's how he got control," Alice said, her scowl deepening. "The tech you need to survive here, he doles it out crumb by crumb to the citizens who act as he desires, moulding them into the sort of perfect human from Free the Soul's prattle. You've seen that slogan he blares everywhere, in all the propaganda pieces and on that statue of him in front of the palace."

Luna hadn't, in the short time she'd been here. But that wasn't the sort of thing she could say. She just nodded timidly.

"That slogan's a promise," Alice continued, "that anyone who toes the line and keeps striving to meet his impossible standards will get elevated to the same status Father's crafted for himself. No-one ever does, of course. But it keeps the sycophants grasping and climbing over each other.

"On the other side there's what happens to everyone who can't keep up with Father's standards. Your bandwidth gets choked, your implants degrade, it becomes just a little bit harder to succeed the next time on the merry-go-round, with less tools to make it work. If you don't keep climbing you fall behind. The guy likes people desperate."

"I was born up here," Quark interjected, "and that's what happened to my parents. They got themselves in some trouble. And, well… you've gotta have seen how guys up there treat people they think aren't as good as them."

Luna most certainly had. "How can people be so cruel? So uncaring?" she asked.

Alice shook her head. "That's what fear does to you. The fear of being on top but only conditionally. Back in the day, it was one of the tools we used to do our jobs. Now?" A somewhat guilty twitch curled the corner of her lip as she fell silent.

"Anyway," Quark continued, "it all meant my parents didn't get any help from their friends. When they got in trouble, they couldn't find a way out. If Miss Alice hadn't found me…" He clasped his hands together ruefully.

Alice gestured Quark's way, as though to say, 'exactly that'. "Rhizome Nine, a Free the Soul paradise," she said with a bitter sarcasm. "But they didn't count on me. If he thinks I'm ever going to co-operate with the bastards who killed my father he's got another thing coming." She gestured around the hideout, a lazy wave of her hand. "Even if all I can rely on is what little bits of equipment we can smuggle away and a couple of dozen brave souls."

"You're able to fight against Father's agents, all those police officers, the entire city, just with that?" Luna asked, a hint of admiration entering her voice.

"Sure," Alice replied, shrugging with nonchalant confidence. "The old SOIS training hardly went to waste." Then her expression grew serious. "But that could change. Signs are that the bastards running this city are gearing up for something. Something big. Everything's pointing to it: whispers on the streets, those informants I can still get to talk to me…"

"Hacking into stuff, too!" Quark interjected eagerly.

"That too," Alice added. She turned back to Luna and spoke again, her tone utterly grave. "But whatever is coming, we still don't know. Whatever it is, this little resistance needs whatever it can get, and soon, if we're going to withstand what's coming."

Luna's mind connected the dots; this was something she could potentially help Alice and Quark with. "I think I might know what that thing is," she said. "Or at least something about it."

"Is this what you contacted us to tell us?" Alice asked.

Luna honestly didn't know. "Maybe," she replied. "There's a factory, hidden away underground beneath the giant statue." It had been horrifying to wake up in such a place, but if that experience could be useful to someone… "They're producing Gaulems."

A quick glance at Alice's face to gauge her reaction: there was none. She wasn't familiar with that term.

"Humanoid robots, I mean. Hundreds of them at a time, on this long production line. Do you think that might have something to do with what you're worried Father's going to do?" As Luna asked that last question a hint of hopefulness entered her voice, hope that she'd been useful.

"It might be," Alice replied. Her eyes narrowed. "Yes, I think it is." She sighed, then turned away from Luna and headed towards the row of cabinets at the back. "I'd hoped for something actionable from you: a weakness we could exploit or a target we could aim for. This isn't that. But at least we know what we're up against now."

"Oh! What is it?" Quark exclaimed as he scampered after Alice.

Alice shook her head. "Give me a moment. Right now, I need to –"

Mid-word, Alice turned on one heel, reacting to events a half-second before they happened on what could only be pure instinct. Then her voice was drowned out by the throbbing wail of a siren.

o-0-o

The siren's blaring noise filled the stale air of the cramped hideaway. Red lights pulsed on their various mountings around the walls. Luna had no idea of the cause. Only that it couldn't herald anything good.

Without even the slightest wasted motion Alice rushed to the row of computers; as she pressed a button all their screens came on at once. They showed camera footage from various angles of the dilapidated streets and dusky alleys of the surrounding neighbourhood. And on each of those streets masked blue figures could be seen lined up, their entire postures tense with anticipation. Several dozen police officers just like the ones that had accosted Luna earlier… No, that wasn't right. Through the grainy footage of the cameras Luna could see the small details that indicated their even greater augmentations. These weren't just another group of bolshy street cops, but something more dangerous.

As one, the columns of police moved forward, entering buildings and disappearing from the screens.

"This location is compromised," Alice stated: all business, no dismay or chagrin. She turned away from the computers and strode purposefully back across the room.

Luna clasped her hands in front of her humbly. "This… it wasn't me! I didn't –"

Alice shot Luna a piercing look as she interrupted. "If it had been you, I'd have known." She paid Luna no further mind, instead kneeling in front of Quark and putting her hand on his shoulder. "Quark, this is an emergency. But you don't need to panic. Remember the training I gave you."

After a moment, the young boy nodded.

"Good. What do we do first?" Alice asked.

A moment's thought; Quark scratched his chin. "We have to decide what documents we're taking with us. And destroy the rest. Make sure the bad guys can't learn anything from it."

"That's right," Alice replied. As Quark turned and bounded off towards the cabinets she stood up, turned back around, and extended a slender, bony finger Luna's way. "You. Come this way."

Luna nodded. She let Alice lead her over to the wall where the large gold symbol hung. Alice spent a moment fiddling with something on the back of the logo, right where the gold loop met the crossbar. A faint but decisive click sounded and the wall behind the symbol opened up, a crack that hadn't given even the slightest hint of its existence widening into a full doorway. Alice stepped aside and gestured with a lazy wave of her hand.

"Head to the back," she instructed Luna. "Don't touch a thing."

Luna complied. On reaching the back of the hidden space – barely more than a small cubicle, and utterly dim with light only coming in through the entrance – Luna turned to watch the flurry of activity and Alice and Quark continued their arrangements to leave. One thing followed another, and each time Luna thought that the preparations were complete the two of them started on something else. Even as systematic as Alice and Quark were being Luna couldn't help but fret that they wouldn't complete it all in time. She could hear the distant sounds of the invading police officers barging through the buildings above. They were getting closer.

As Quark finished what he was sorting and scurried into the hidey-hole with Luna, the first impact hit the entrance door like a battering ram. As Alice joined them a second crash sounded out from the front of the hideout, and the metal buckled. The entrance burst open on the third blow and Alice closed up the wall just in time.

Moments later, zapping shots pinged against the other side of the wall, all the way across. The attackers had opened fire the moment they stepped through. Luna couldn't help but duck, covering her head with her hands, but Alice and Quark took it in stride without even a flinch. Alice instead calmly reached out for a lever, and pulled.

It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but Luna could feel the cubicle drop away from the hideout as the lever came down. The entire space had separated away from where they'd previously been, drifting away like a lifeboat. Luna made to ask how that was possible, but found Alice intently focused on a computer tablet she held in her hand.

The screen showed the hideout they'd just escaped from. The attacking police swarmed in: rummaging through the cabinets, attaching strange, glowing devices to the computers, two of them tearing the gold symbol, now marred by a dozen burn-like scorch marks, from the wall.

Alice nodded calmly, then pressed an icon on the tablet's screen.

The image shook. The cops who had gone under the camera were thrown onscreen like a violent wave; moments later similar explosions from other directions impacted other cops around the hideout, their gleaming armour splintering under the blow. Then a roil of bright flame washed across the camera's lens, and the image went black.

Luna trembled. She slumped back against the wall of the escape compartment, her head bowed forward. "Those people…" she murmured. "They… They're dead. All of them, in a moment."

Alice looked down on her with a pitying gaze. "Did you think there was any leeway for playing easy in this? If those men had caught us they'd have done far worse to you and me. They'd have done far worse to Quark. This is what's necessary, in a city ruled by people like Father."

The rest of the escape compartment's journey passed in silence.