The third sector moved differently from the upper two.
Cael had run enough hollows to have a working vocabulary for the ways they moved. Stable hollows drifted. Unstable hollows shifted. Hollows in active formation did something between the two that you could feel in your back teeth and your inner ear simultaneously, a slow wrongness that the body registered before the mind caught up with it.
This one churned.
The geometry wasn't collapsing. It was rearranging itself on a cycle that was just irregular enough to prevent you from trusting any pattern you'd identified thirty seconds ago. A corridor would extend, hold, and then quietly become a wall while something that had been a wall became a floor.
The Ethereal matter here had the particular density of old, pressurised hollow space, dense enough to be structural but not stable enough to stay structural, and it pulsed a deep amber-grey that was nothing like the clean crystalline glow of the upper sectors.
Paz moved six paces to his left and slightly ahead.
He would have preferred she was behind him, which was a preference he was going to keep entirely to himself.
They had not spoken since the boundary line.
That was fine. You didn't need to talk in a hollow. You needed to watch your footing and your geometry and anything that moved with intent rather than drift, and doing all three simultaneously left limited bandwidth for conversation.
He understood this.
She clearly understood this, too.
The silence between them was therefore entirely professional and not at all the specific quality of silence that existed between two people who had very recently tried to take each other's heads off and were now obliged to function as a unit.
A wall shifted to their left.
Cael stopped.
Paz stopped three paces later, which was the reaction time of someone who had been watching their own geometry and not his, which was also correct behaviour, and which was also slightly annoying in context.
"Route's closed," he said.
"I can see that."
"We go right."
"We don't know what's right."
"We know what left just became."
She turned and looked at him. The mask gave him nothing, as it always gave him nothing, but the angle of her shoulders communicated something he was starting to be able to translate. This particular angle said: I'm considering your suggestion, but I won't tell you that I think it's good.
She went right.
He followed.
Two minutes later the right-hand route narrowed to a width that required them to move single-file, which resolved the six-paces-ahead problem by making him the lead, which he was not going to comment on either.
Observation, not instinct. Useful when you have to explain your reasoning to someone else afterwards.
He kept that one in his coat pocket.
The corridor forced them into single file.
Paz took that as an invitation to look at his back more closely than she had before.
"You always dress like that?" she asked.
Cael didn't look back. "Like what?"
"Like you walked out of a damn museum. I can see the title written on it, Old civilisation exhibit. Cowboy section."
He adjusted his grip on the revolver slightly. "Clothes were cheap."
"That coat isn't cheap if its not looking like its been gunned to shreds."
"That's because it used to be on a man who didn't need it anymore."
"Sounds like bullshit…"
"Then what you want me to say? I bought it? In this economy?"
She was quiet for three steps. Then—
"And the hat? Looks custom made."
That got a pause. Not long. Just enough to exist.
"Hat's different," he said.
"How."
"Doesn't fit the 'cheap' narrative."
"I assumed you had one like the coat."
"I do. It's just not useful right now."
"Convenient."
He gave a short, humorless breath. "You want the long version or the one that keeps us alive?"
"We're walking in a straight line."
"In a hollow that eats straight lines."
"…Short version."
"Fine.. It was a gift."
"From?"
He stepped over a seam that hadn't been there a second ago. "Someone who liked bad movies."
"Bad?"
"Objectively terrible. Men with hats solving problems with poor life choices and worse aim."
"And you decided to become one."
"I decided they had the right idea about one thing."
"Which is?"
He finally glanced back at her, just briefly.
"People remember the damn hat."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I expect you to keep moving."
She did. But her head tilted slightly, just enough to show she wasn't done with it.
"You fight like it means something," she said. "People don't do that for a reason. You love it don't you. The movies."
"People do a lot of things for cheaper reasons."
"Not you."
That one landed closer than she probably intended.
He let out a quiet breath through the respirator.
"You profiling me now?" he said. "Didn't know that was part of your skillset."
"I read patterns," she replied. "You're inconsistent."
"That sounds like a you problem."
She stopped.
Not because of the conversation.
Because the corridor ahead shifted wrong, a slow vertical pull that turned the far wall into something that might become a floor in the next cycle.
She raised a hand slightly, signaling hold.
He stopped behind her without comment.
For a moment, neither spoke.
The hollow pulsed.
Then—
"My father liked them," Cael said.
Paz didn't turn. Nor move. Not even dared to interrupt.
"Movies," he added. "Old ones. Grainy. Bad audio. Heroes who talked too much and still somehow got shot less than everyone else."
A beat.
"I thought it was stupid. But… there was a charm to it."
Another pulse of the hollow. The wall ahead stretched, stabilized—temporarily.
"We going?" she asked quietly.
"In a second."
He didn't elaborate.
Didn't need to.
"He got you the hat," she said.
Not a question.
Cael's jaw tightened behind the mask.
"Yeah."
"Still cheap?"
He let out a short, dry chuckle.
"Yeah," he said. "Cheap."
She resumed walking.
Slower this time.
* * *
The constructs found them twenty minutes into the third sector, which was later than he'd expected given the shift in ambient hum when they'd crossed the boundary.
Three of them, mid-sized, formed from the same dense Ethereal matter as the walls and moving with the lurching asymmetric acceleration of constructs that had developed in high-pressure hollow space.
They came from ahead and slightly above, which in the churning geometry of the sector meant they had been waiting rather than hunting, and waiting constructs were more structured than hunting ones.
More dangerous, in the specific way that patience was more dangerous than speed.
Paz had both swords out before the first one reached the corridor mouth.
"Left two are mine," she said.
"No, I have the left two."
"You have a revolver. I have two swords. I'm better suited."
"I also have a shotgun."
"In a space this narrow the spread pattern will—"
"I know what the spread pattern will do!"
"Then take the right one."
"That's what I said."
"You said you had the left two!"
"STOP DISTRACTING ME!"
"You were establishing the wrong priority, Idiot!"
The first construct reached them while they were still at it. Cael stepped left on reflex, which put him square in the path of Paz's sword arc. She had to abort the swing and redirect, and the construct went through the gap between them and hit the wall behind them and rebounded faster than a construct that size had any right to rebound.
"Move," Paz said, with the flat precision of someone who was done establishing anything.
He moved.
They didn't talk again for the next ninety seconds. The fight sorted itself out the way fights in tight spaces sorted themselves out when both people involved were competent: by necessity, by proximity, and by the mutual understanding that whoever was in the way of a useful angle needed to not be there.
Paz drove the two left constructs into the wall with a crossing sweep of the first blade and pinned their momentum with the second. The hollow constructs weren't making it easy, they bucked, shed mass, tried to reform around her guard, and Cael could see that she was buying time rather than finishing them.
"Anytime now," she said through gritted teeth, holding the line.
"Working on it."
"'We're so going to die."
"Dying is not one of them, so—"
He reached back and pulled the shotgun from his back carry and it rapidly unfolded. Not the standard load. He cracked the breach, checked the chamber, and seated two Ether Slug rounds from the case on his belt, matte black shells with the faint amber sheen of processed Ethereal matter pressed into the propellant. Experimental-grade. The outer ring's black market occasionally threw up things that officially didn't exist, and Ether Slugs were one of them.
He'd fired three in his entire career. He knew what they did.
He raised the shotgun, aimed at the construct on the far left, the one Paz was having the most trouble with, and fired.
BOOM!
The round hit and the world around the impact point changed its mind about physics for approximately one second.
The Ether Slug didn't just punch through the construct. It opened a pocket in the hollow's Ethereal matter. Its like a tight, violent singularity that lasted just long enough to pull everything nearby toward it with the greedy hunger of a drain being unblocked. Construct mass, loose crystal fragments, the ambient Ethereal particles that drifted in the corridor, all of it yanked toward the point of impact in the half-second before the pocket collapsed.
Paz saw it. She didn't need to be told.
She let the pinned constructs go.
They lurched toward the collapsing singularity, drawn in, half-coherent, their structure disrupted by the pull — and she came through behind them with both blades coated in the low orange flame of her W-engine active, the fire-edge shearing through the mass of two constructs simultaneously as they were pulled past her into the pocket's collapse radius.
The constructs dispersed. The singularity collapsed.
CRACK!
The violent implosion kicked a shockwave through the corridor that knocked dust from the crystalline walls and made the amber glow stutter once before it steadied.
Paz stood in the aftermath with both blades still burning, chest rising and falling, looking at the space where three constructs had been.
He chambered the second round and did not fire it. That was two Ether Slugs remaining. He put the shotgun back in its carry.
"That," Paz said, with specific emphasis, "you could have led with."
"It's experimental ammunition. I try not to use it in enclosed spaces."
"This was an enclosed space."
"It was a productive enclosed space."
She didn't move immediately this time.
"Nice pull," Paz said. "You timed it."
"That's generally the idea."
"No," she said. "You trusted me to read it."
Cael shrugged. "You looked like you knew what you were doing."
"I did."
"I know."
A pause.
"You didn't hesitate," she added.
"Neither did you."
"That's different."
"Is it?"
She didn't answer that. Instead—
"You don't talk like a raider."
"I don't talk like anything."
"Why do you talk like you're quoting something."
"I am?"
"All the time."
"Well… I guess it helps pass the time."
"In a hollow?"
"Especially in a hollow."
She shook her head slightly. "You're strange man, Cael."
"I've been called worse from other raiders, such as yourself."
"I was in the Defence Force," she said suddenly.
That made him look at her properly.
"You? In the Defence Force?" he asked.
She nodded once.
"That explains the footwork." Cael said rolling his eyes.
"They don't teach that anymore."
"No," Cael said. "They teach people to stand in lines and hope the line holds."
"And you?"
"I don't do lines."
"Clearly."
Another step forward. The corridor shifted again, but slower this time.
"How come you're raiding and not on the frontlines dealing with those rebels which keeps popping up?
"I got discharged a while back," she said.
"Dishonourable? Did you accidentally throw a grenade into a someone's tent? "
A pause.
"…Administrative," she said.
"That's an shit answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
He considered that.
"Fair enough."
She looked at him then, just slightly.
"You didn't ask why."
"You'd tell me if you wanted to."
"I wouldn't."
"Then asking's a waste of breath."
That earned him that same almost-laugh again.
"You're either very respectful or very lazy."
"Both," he said. "Depends on the day."
Another beat.
"You work solo now?" he asked.
"Mostly."
"That sounds expensive. Especially with those gears."
"It is."
"You got a family?"
That one landed.
"…Yeah."
"That also sounds expensive."
"It is."
He nodded once, like that confirmed something he already suspected.
"Then try not to die," he said.
She blinked. "That's your advice?"
"It's the only one that scales to one. Unless you want it to be one."
She turned off the W-engine on her blades. The fire went out. She sheathed both swords and looked at him with the mask-equivalent of an expression he couldn't fully read but felt was related to exasperation.
"I'm confuse… You have two weapons," she said. "A revolver and a shotgun. In the last two encounters you've used the revolver exclusively. Why do you have the shotgun if you're not even going to use it as a primary?"
"For situations where a shotgun is necessary."
"Which you define as—"
"Three constructs in a narrow corridor trying to kill us. Apparently."
"You could have mentioned the Ether Slugs before we went in."
"I don't brief my loadout to people I met this morning. especially to ones who tried to kill me."
"We've been in this hollow for two hours."
She made a sound. It had a specific character, not quite a scoff, not quite a laugh, something that lived in the difficult territory between the two, and she walked past him deeper into the sector without another word.
He followed. He did not point out that the spread pattern, in that corridor, with those constructs, would in fact have been problematic.
That information was his to keep.