The Scarab, design-name Kappa-5, skittered forward on six needle legs, each footfall tapping the stone in a tight, nervous rhythm. Its sapphire eye-gem cast a thin cone of light that jittered with every vibration. Dust motes skated through the beam, swirling up whenever its carapace brushed the wall. That wall—Kappa-5's logs insisted it used to be solid shale—now showed a seam that stretched like an unhealed scar, edges damp and faintly pulsing.
Two days ago this passage had not existed. Nest maps proved it. Rodion's central archive held scan after scan of this stratum: straight corridor, dead end, nothing more. Yet the drone's position marker glowed here, ten paces past the old terminus, inside brand-new emptiness.
