“Until what?”
“Until it burns itself out. And that will take a while.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I should have seen this in the readings. I should have warned you.”
“You did warn me,” he said firmly. “You told me we had to land before it reached full intensity.”
“But I didn’t realize—”
“Zara.” The use of my first name stopped my spiral of self-recrimination in its tracks. “You gave me the information I needed to make the right call. That’s your job. Getting us down safely is mine.”
Before I could respond, every light on the command deck went out.
Emergency power kicked in a heartbeat later, bathing everything in red light that made Torven’s grim expression look even more forbidding. Alarms wailed from every system like a symphony of warnings that basically amounted to “we’re all going to die.”
“That’s it.” Torven shut off the alarms and turned to the main cabin to address Cleo and I, and the other eight members of the crew. “Everyone to your assigned escape pods.Now.”
They were the very last words anyone wanted to hear. Escape pods meant abandoning ship. It meant Torven saw no way to land safely.
“Move!” he bellowed, and suddenly the small crew was in motion. The four pod hatches had been closed, making them look like a simple metal cabin wall, but now they opened up to reveal red-lit chambers. We’d all been assigned one when we first came on board. I was in pod number one.
I unclipped my own restraints with shaking fingers, and Cleo appeared beside me, her face taut but determined. “We’re going to be okay,” she murmured into my hair. Oh, how I wanted to believe her. We clung to each other as the ship bucked around us, trying to maintain our footing as we made our way toward the pods.
The bay had become a scene of controlled chaos. Elevencrew members, including Cleo and me, stumbled toward our assigned pods as the doors hissed open along one wall. Each pod was designed to hold three people, except for one, which held two.
“What pod are you in?” I asked her. We’d never discussed this. We never imagined we’dhaveto discuss this.
“Three,” Cleo said. “You?”
“One.” Stricken, I looked frantically around, terrified of being separated from my friend. “Can we trade—?”
Cleo grabbed my arm. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, but she was trying to put on a brave face for me. “We’ll be okay. The pods are designed for this. We’ll find each other on the surface.”
“I know,” I said, but my voice came out as barely a whisper. “Iknowwe will.”
She gave me one last fierce hug, and then she was stumbling toward pod number three. The two other crew members were already in there. I watched the pod door seal behind her with a horrible sense of finality.
What if I never saw her again? What if the pods scattered across the planet’s surface and we couldn’t find each other? What if—
“Rivers!” Captain Korvath’s voice cracked like a whip. “I won’t tell you again.” His eyes were like green fire, but there was a desperate edge to the corners of his mouth. His skin swirled with chaotic shades of red and yellow.
I stumbled to my assigned pod—the last unit near the end of the bay. My legs felt like they were made of jelly. Inside, the pod was small, just large enough for a few bodies, basic life support and emergency supplies. It looked like a coffin. Ofcourse they’d given me the only two-person pod. The antisocial scientist who didn’t play well with others. But everyone else was gone. That meant I had to share it with…
“Torven,” I leaned out of the opening and called to him, “aren’t you coming?”
“Get in thetrankingpod andgo,Rivers!”
I retreated back into the cramped space with my heart racing. The control panel was simple—just a few buttons and a display showing the pod’s status. Torven!” I shouted. “Come with me! There’s room—”
“Hit the eject button,” he shouted back. “That’s an order.”
An order. Right. He was the captain, I was a passenger, and this was his ship. His responsibility.
I looked at the eject button, a red circle protected by a clear cover. All I had to do was flip the cover and press the button, and I’d be falling toward safety while he stayed behind to…what? Go down with his ship like some old-timey storybook ship captain?
Like hell.
“I’m not leaving without you!” I shouted.
“You don’t have a choice! Eject, now!”
