“We aren’t even outside yet,” I counter, but I feel it, too, creeping through my bones.
Charonwas modified to withstand the Daylands’ extreme heat by absorbing as much cooler air as possible. In the Shadowlands, that means my ship eagerly offers itself to the lashing, icy winds. Already, ice forms around the dome in jagged lines like wintery webbing. I grip the control stick so tightly that my bone-white knuckles ache.
“TEMPERATURE FLUCTUATION DETECTED,” the ship says brightly, before adding less hopefully, “AT ALTITUDE 2,500 FEET.”
“I know—Iknow,” I stammer, uselessly hitting the air jets as a reflexive response to low visibility. It does nothing to clear the rapidly forming mosaic of ice along the window.
Aspect unleashes a string of four-letter words that they undoubtedly learned from me. I shush them, face burning, and lean closer to the main window, desperate to maintain some view of what lies ahead. I can’t fly like this, but switching back to autopilot will launch us out of the Shadowlands, back into the Passage from which we came.
“No.No.” I blink hard to clear tears, which nearly freeze as they roll down my cheeks. “We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
“Kori.”
“Not now, Aspect.”
The mech waves their arms wildly. “Kori.” When I ignore them, again, they screech, “KORI!”
“What?” I snap through my chattering teeth.
“Aspect—is”—their voice rattles from the cold, but it’s a convincing facsimile of human terror—“afraid.”
There’s no time for comforting words, not that I have any to offer. The entire ship whirls sideways, weighted down by gathering ice on the right wing that I can barely see through the iced-over passenger side of the dome.
“Shit.” Now I’m the one cursing (terrible robot parenting, but also entirely reasonable given the circumstances).
I tug the control stick with both hands, as hard as I possibly can, but the ship doesn’t budge. Instead, it pivots into an uncontrolled spin. My harness holds me fast to the pilot’s chair, as does Aspect’s, but the sudden jerk knocks all the air from my lungs—or maybe that’s the scream I can’t restrain. Panic-stricken, suddenly more concerned with survival than success, I smash the autopilot button that should be above my head and is now, I think, dangling below it. My center is gone, everything careening off its proper axis. It’s a blessing my tiny table and associated bench have always been secured toCharon’s floor, because they might have caved in my skull by now otherwise.
“ALTITUDE 2,400 FEET,” the ship chimes.“SIGNAL NOT AVAILABLE.”
“Yes it is,” I gasp, punching the button again. “Yes the hell it is, come on, come on …”
SYSTEMS EXPERIENCING TEMPERATURE FLUCTUATION.This message is written, not spoken, and it shimmers, cracking apart just like the ice on the windows before vanishing altogether.SYSTEMS MUST REB—OOT—REB—OOTI—NG—
Charoncontinues spinning, careening through the air like a discarded toy.
“Dizzy!” Aspect shrieks. “Aspect—is—dizzy!”
We can’t keep hurtling like this, completely out of control. With a final choked scream, I let go of the stick altogether. Instead, teeth gritted, I put both hands on the emergency brake pulleys, yanking them toward my chest with all the strength I can muster, trying to hard stopCharon’s forward momentum.
Three things happen in rapid succession.
One: Some two thousand or so feet above the planet’s surface,Charondoes, in fact, stop spinning. We’re still upside down, and my neck stings something fierce from the whiplash, but we’re stationary again, the ship hovering silently in the sky’s black expanse.
Two: Like a cruel joke, every light in the cockpit blinks out.
Three: Before I can even exhale, before Aspect can release a poorly timed victory shriek, beforeCharoncan possibly complete a system reboot, it falls like a dislodged star.
A distant, eerie blue light—the strange fire? the asteroid?—is just enough to illuminate the rocky ground as it lurches to meet us. I’m screaming, Aspect is screaming, and the alarms would be, too, ifCharonhad any power.
If we don’t eject now, this crash will almost certainly kill me. And if I eject without my anti-radiation gear, which I never don until landing, Pagomènos itself will poison me the moment its atmosphere makes contact with my skin. I’ll lose my mind, maybe even my body, most definitely everything that makes me human and not merely a mutant monstrosity. And if somehow, against all odds, I survive both this crash and the Shadowlands’ unrestricted radiation, I won’t really be me anymore. And there will be no going back.
An awful groan of metal on stone.Charonbounces off a nearby mountain spire, one I can only hope is close to our destination. In my disorientation from all the spinning, what I thought was the ground just ahead was, in fact, the side of a peak.
High, sharp cracking noises fill my ears. The dome above (below?) us looks to be a light breeze away from shattering entirely, then spitting us out into the Shadowlands raw.
I choke on a gasp. “Aspect, my gear—”
Since first activating their too-curious eyes, Aspect has caused me no small share of trouble: Inedible birthday cakes. Existential crises. Commentary on my sleeping habits. But this time, the universe takes pity on me. Aspect’s optical processors blink, their head bobs, and I know that somehow, they understand how dire our situation is.
