Maul’s lungs were screaming.
He’d already lost track of how long he’d been underwater. Time had twisted back upon itself and lost all meaning. Both his hearts were thudding faster, pounding through his entire body in an attempt to circulate any remaining air. Blackness crowded in around the edges of his vision, threatening to bury his consciousness beneath an avalanche of oxygen debt.
When the other inmate had first swum at him, he had slammed Maul in the diaphragm, driving out the breath he’d inhaled just before going down for the last time. Maul swirled around, pulling himself down by the zip-ties that fastened his ankles, coiling down alongside the submerged bench.
What he saw was an Aqualish swimming back toward him, cutting smoothly through the water—the one Maul hoped was Rook. He sprang up and plunged his fingers into the other inmate’s bulbous eyes. The Aqualish recoiled and disappeared—only to come at him again from behind with a violent strike to the back of his skull.
Maul sucked in a mouthful of contaminated water and gagged, expelling it in an involuntary contraction. Around him in the near-darkness, nothing stirred. A thin sediment of silt and filth seemed to have settled across the bottom. His gaze settled on the blurry glow of lights from the other side of the cell, and he became aware of how little time he had left.
He looked down at the bench to which his ankles were still fastened. The pressure seemed to be squeezing his chest like an enormous fist. If he weren’t bound here, if he just had one more breath of air—
Stop it. It was his Master’s voice, unmistakable in its scorn. Your inadequacy is worse than disgraceful. It’s nauseating.
Maul steeled himself. The cold words sobered him. If he was destined to die here, even under these humiliating circumstances—if such was the fate that the dark side had selected for him—then it would not be with the whimpering of his own weakness in his ears.
Yanking himself down to the very floor of the cell, he flattened his body beneath the bench, groping in darkness until his numb fingertips located the rounded shape of one of the bolts holding the steel plating together. There were several such bolts, but this one felt like the loosest. Raising an elbow, he drove it down against the bolt, then lifted it up and hit the metal again until the screw loosened enough that he was able to twist it loose and pluck it free.
Putting his mouth to the newly exposed hole, he sucked in fresh air and blew out bubbles through his nose before drawing in another deep breath, letting the oxygen replenish his bloodstream. The results were immediate. The blackness around his vision began to fade. Yet he made himself wait here beneath the bench for another moment, until he saw the vague shape of the Aqualish swimming just above him.
Maul shot up through the water as far as the ankle restraints would allow and seized the other inmate by its tusks, snapping one of them off. The Aqualish trumpeted out a nasal shriek of surprise and pain, and Maul hammered him in the abdomen. When his opponent bent forward, he pounded Rook’s skull into the cell wall. Blood seeped from the Aqualish’s head as he rounded on Maul, cutting back through the water.
Gone again.
Maul squinted, scanning the depths. Where had the other inmate taken himself? Had the hatchway been left open so that Rook could come and go, attacking him at his leisure?
He pulled himself back down under the bench, pressed his lips to the hole in the floor, and was about to inhale another breath when he felt something thick and slippery and hideously alive squirt up inside his mouth. Recoiling, Maul spat it out and saw a thin white worm floating up past his face, wiggling defiantly, its tiny mandibles working fiercely to grip hold of something. He narrowed his eyes and looked back down at the hole. More of the things were beginning to push their way up into the cell through the hole, pulsing up from below in a steady stream.
Maul turned away. Was there any manner of foulness that this place did not specialize in? How much longer—
Wham!
White-hot pressure exploded against the back of his skull, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. In his peripheral vision, he was narrowly aware of the Aqualish coming back around, his body rippling effortlessly toward him, cocking back its fist again to deliver another blow. Maul fought to anchor his thoughts. With his supply of air shut down, he knew he had to finish this now.
Slimy to touch, greasy to feel, but mix me with blood and I’ll eat through steel.
He stuck one hand down under the bench, scraping his fingers against the thick accumulation of sticky reddish-brown gunk that had made a home for itself in the seams between the metal plates. Cupping the stuff in one palm, kneading it together, he held still and waited. He had one chance to get this right. He knew he would not have to wait long.
The opponent made his move. As he darted toward Maul, Maul grabbed him by the tufts of hair on either side of his face and shoved the handful of toxic girder mold into the open laceration in the Aqualish’s scalp, grinding it as deeply into the wound as he could.
The results were even more gratifying than he’d hoped. The Aqualish recoiled and began to scream, bubbles flooding out of him as he clutched at his head with both hands. The wound was already sizzling and bubbling, flecks of tissue drifting away.
Maul seized his head and locked his arm around the Aqualish’s neck. Grabbing another handful of girder mold from under the bench, Maul reached down and smeared it into the zip-ties that bound him here. Then he pulled the Aqualish down so that the blood from his wound churned through the water to interact with the mold. The resulting catalyst attacked the Nylasteel instantly, cutting through it. All at once Maul’s legs were suddenly, shockingly free.
Kicking loose, turning around in the water, Maul dragged the other inmate down headfirst toward the submerged floor of the cell and held him there, watching the steel plating dissolving beneath it. A ragged hole had already begun to open, widening while he watched, water siphoning down through it. Within seconds it would be sufficient for what he required.
He and the Aqualish were sucked down together, pushed through on the current, Maul holding tight to his neck. A moment later they spilled out into an open drainage shaft. The pipe opened below them, and Maul threw the Aqualish up onto a platform overhead and sprang up alongside him into the open air. He whooped in a deep breath of air, filling his lungs, and turned to fix the other inmate with his gaze.
“Are you Rook?”
The Aqualish nodded and barked out a froggy, croaking “Yes.”
“You know what this is?” Maul asked, still holding on to a handful of the girder mold that he’d brought from the cell. “And what it can do to you when it interacts with your blood?”
The Aqualish faced him. His face was horribly disfigured from the acid, his eyes badly wounded from the puncture attack, but beneath the physical trauma there was no mistaking the disbelief in his expression.
“This—this can’t be happening. I’m not supposed to be matched, ever. He said I was never going to have to fight.”
“You’re going to die,” Maul told him. “Right now. Slowly. I’ll burn the rest of your face off. Unless you tell me everything.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“About Iram Radique.”
The one called Rook made a poor show of not understanding, but it didn’t last long. Maul held the mold up to the bleeding head wound, in close enough proximity that the inmate’s flesh actually began, faintly, to sizzle. The Aqualish tried to jerk back, but Maul held him fast. When he spoke, the words came out in a scream.
“What do you want to know?”
“You can’t! Nobody can! Even I don’t speak to him directly!”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, I swear!”
“Then you’re worthless to me,” Maul said, and prepared to smear the rest of the mold over Rook’s face.
“Wait—wait! I can tell you this,” the Aqualish panted, his gills flapping as he tried vainly to salvage what remained of his composure. “The weapons—they arrive in different pieces.”
“I already know that,” Maul said. “What happens after the gang members smuggle them in? Where do they go? How does Radique retrieve the pieces from them without being seen?”
“The birds,” Rook said. “They collect the different components. Bring them to the shop. If you follow the clawbirds, you’ll find Radique.”
“When does the next shipment arrive?”
“There’s a supply ship docking tomorrow during the first watch, but that’s—that’s truly all I know.”
“Is there anyone else between you and Radique? Another link in the chain?”
Gaping at him, his wounded eyes darting back to the handful of mold packed into Maul’s fist, the Aqualish murmured some oath in its own native language. “Please, I cooperated. I told you everything.”
“Answer me,” Maul said. “Who else is there?”
Rook’s three-fingered right hand swept out, smearing something on the wet surface of the pipe. Maul looked at it. It was a circle.
“What does that mean?” he growled.
The Aqualish made a wet, shuddering noise. “It’s all I know. Don’t kill me. Don’t—”
“You were dead when you were matched with me,” Maul said. “But I will give my word to you. It will be quick.”
He took hold of Rook’s head with both hands and cracked the thing’s neck in a single, instantaneous jerk. The Aqualish shuddered and fell motionless, slipping backward and toppling from view.