hand, squinting through the water filling my helmet. My lungs are burning. Lightning shears through the wall, carving the titanium like butter. The ship shudders, we bounce off walls and consoles, my boots kicking, somehow keeping us on course.
Out.
Away.
We’re in the docks now, my Phantom sitting on the far side, just a dark blur in my underwater vision. Vast, swirling clouds of the FoldStorm wait just outside the bay doors. Black lightning in the air. Black spots in my eyes. The whole galaxy underwater. I’m almost deaf. Almost blind. One thought building in my mind.
We’re still too far from the ship.
At least two hundred meters. Any second now, my respiratory reflex is gonna buck and I’m gonna inhale a lungful of water, and within sight of salvation, I’m gonna die.
We’re both gonna die.
Maker, help us.
Lightning crashes. My lungs are screaming. Heart screaming. The whole Milky Way, screaming. I close my eyes. Think of my sister. Pray she’ll be okay. There’s a rush of vertigo. And then I feel it under my hand. Metal. Familiar.
What the … ?
I open my eyes and there we are, floating right beside my Phantom. The entry hatch under my fingertips. It’s impossible. There’s no way I—
No time for questions, Tyler.
I tear the hatch open, haul the pair of us inside, and slam it closed. As the tiny airlock fills with O2, I rip my helmet loose and paw the water from my face, breath exploding from my lungs. I’m curled over, floating, gasping, dragging great heaving lungfuls of air into my chest. The black spots burst in my eyes, the Hadfield rocks and lurches, my Phantom tossed about in its docking brackets.
You’ve got to move, Tyler.
MOVE, DAMN YOU.
I claw open the airlock, pull myself into the pilot’s chair. Lungs still aching, tears streaming from my eyes. I slap at the launch controls, hit the burners before the couplings are even loose, blast out of the Hadfield’s belly like my tail is on fire.
The FoldStorm swells and rolls behind us, my sensors all in the redline. The thrust pushes me back in my chair, gravity pressing hard on my chest as we accelerate away. Oxygen starved already, it’s more than I can take.
I manage to activate my distress signal with shaking hands. And then I’m sinking. Down into the white behind my eyes. The same color as those stars, twinkling out there in all that endless black.
And my last thought before I pass out completely?
It’s not that I just saved someone’s life or that I have no idea how we covered the last two hundred meters back to my Phantom’s airlock or that the both of us should most definitely be dead.
It’s that I’m gonna miss the Draft.
2
Auri
I’m made of concrete. My body’s carved from a solid block of stone, and I can’t move a muscle.
And this is the only thing I know. That I can’t move.
I don’t know my name, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I can’t see or hear, taste or smell or sense anything.
And then there’s … input. But like when you’re falling, and you can’t tell which way is up or down, or when a jet of water hits you and you can’t tell if it’s hot or cold, now I can’t tell if I’m hearing, or seeing, or feeling. I just know there’s something I can sense that I couldn’t sense before, so I wait, impatiently, to see what happens next.
“Please, ma’am, just let me have my uniglass, I could tune into the Draft remotely from here. I might be able to catch the last few rounds, even if I can just—”
It’s a boy’s voice, and in a rush I understand the words, though I don’t know what he’s talking about—but there’s a note of desperation in his tone that kicks up my pulse in response.
“You have to understand how important this is.”
•••••
“You have to understand how important this is, Aurora.” It’s my mom’s voice, and she’s standing behind me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “This is going to change everything.”
We’re in front of a window, wisps of cloud or smog visible on the other side of the thick glass. I lean forward to rest my forehead against it, and when I look down, I know where I am. Far below, there’s a glimpse of muddy green. Central Park, with its brown patchwork quilt, the roofs of the shanty towns and the little fields carved out by its residents, the gray-brown of water beside it.