Out here, you had an unimpeded view up to a pocket of Ninth sky. Then came the long hike up twenty-two flights the back way, not one light relieving the greasy dark, heading to the splitoff shaft and the pit where her ride would arrive: the shuttle was due in two hours. This was pure sentiment, as her mother hadn’t been there since Gideon was little and would never go back in it now. Leaving her cell and swinging her pack over one shoulder, she took the time to walk down five flights to her mother’s nameless catacomb niche. Then Gideon whistled through her teeth as she unlocked her security cuff, and arranged it and its stolen key considerately on her pillow, like a chocolate in a fancy hotel. She dressed herself from head to toe in polymer and synthetic weave. This late in the equinox no light would make it here for months, in any case you could tell the season by how hard the heating vents were creaking. Having done this every day for over a decade, she no longer needed light to do it by. She shook out her big black church robe and hung it from the hook.
In the absolute darkness before dawn she brushed her teeth without concern and splashed her face with water, and even went so far as to sweep the dust off the floor of her cell. IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD-the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!-Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
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