“If you don’t need me…” There’s no reason for me to be here.
Drift nods, his focus fixed on Kilo now that he knows the other brother is here. Breaker waves a deadly hand at me, and then, I’m forgotten… or maybe just ignored.
Either way, I can’t find it in me to be upset about it. I want to get to the escape pod, and then, I want to get home.
The first is easy enough. My bike eats the distance, and even without being told, I know exactly where it is.
I know that I’m completely alone when I kill the engine and hop down into the snow, and I also know… that she didn’t pull the release mechanism herself when she ejected from the crashing ship.
Someonegot Chrys out before the rest of them died.
I just wish I knew who.
No markings on the outside, not even a ship name.
The identifying panels and information screens have been ripped out. No clues there.
No clues anywhere… except the material of the innermost compartment.
The exterior was standard ship material. Metal made to withstand both vacuum and atmospheric reentry. The inside is all soft cushion and survival support.
But between them… the tube that would have wrapped around Chrys while she fell to Isia is made of Lasap.
The metal has numerous applications. But this escape pod was made for smuggling. And as soon as I touch the metal that Drift can’t see through and even Breaker can’t manipulate, Iknow.
The Company is involved in this somehow.
It makes my skin crawl, and a chill seeps through me, too.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
There’s a bag tucked away, right where Shock said it would be. It’s probably a good thing I’m the one who came for this… I don’t know if either of them would have known itwasa bag. It looks more like a stuffed toy. Some creature I can’t even begin to classify, with a zip in its back.
The only other thing inside the compartment is a pair of shoes. I pluck them out, unsurprised when they’re just as bright as everything else. They’re purple with a green and bluecheckered pattern, and I can only imagine what they would look like with the pattern of her current clothing.
I tuck them away and realize… I might get to find out.
Grabbing Arc’s helmet and kicking the bike back to life, I go home, hoping that the answers to the things I don’t know reveal themselves soon.
CHRYS
I feel like movies always show people screaming back to life after a traumatic experience has knocked them unconscious.
I don’t wake up on a sharp inhale, jerking upright, like they so often do.
No, I claw my way back to consciousness.
There’s something heavy in my veins that keeps trying to drag me down.
It succeeds… more times than I can count.
Each time I fight it longer. I don’t manage to open my eyes, but I hear what’s going on around me…
First, there’s a burble of a computer, and what I imagine skin tingling would sound like.
Later, I hear voices, but I can’t understand them.
When I’m finally able to open my eyes, it’s barely enough to see by. My vision is so blurry…
