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“Then give me a very generous twenty.”

She looks down at the shard case strapped across her body, then at the gap between us. My hearts seize as I understand the shape of her thought.

“No,” I say.

She unclips the case.

“Anita, no.”

“I’m not throwing the shard away, calm down.”

“There is nothing calm about this.”

She loops the case strap around one of the amber anchor cables Brakk has secured to the shuttle frame, then locks it with shaking fingers. “Brakk, can this cable hold weight?”

Brakk leans out from the ramp. “Define weight.”

“Ghar weight.”

He looks up at me, then at the cable, then at the dying planet around us. “I hate the universe.”

“That is not an answer!”

“Yes, if the pulley doesn’t shear, the anchor doesn’t fail, and reality does not suddenly decide mass is a rumor.”

“Great.” Anita grabs the cable and starts across the gap hand over hand.

My blood turns to ice.

“Anita!”

She grits her teeth, dangling above white rupture light with the shard case sliding beneath her along the line. “I swear to God, if you yell at me instead of getting ready to grab the cable, I will be so mad when we die.”

“You were supposed to evacuate.”

“I did evacuate. Then I un-evacuated because my partner was stranded.”

The word partner hits me even through terror.

She crosses the final stretch, boots scraping against unstable air where no floor exists. The cable jerks. She swings hard, slamming into the edge of my walkway with a cry of pain. I drop flat and seize her forearm before she falls.

For one awful second, she hangs above the rupture, looking up at me with gritted teeth and furious eyes.

“I came back,” she says.

“I see that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You are impossible.”

“You chose impossible.”

“I did.”

I haul her up with one arm despite the agony through my ribs. She collapses against me, breathing hard, then immediately pushes the cable into my hands.

“Now we cross.”