‘Good good,’ she said, fetching herself a spoon and heading for the door. ‘You can ride it out anywhere you like. Bed’s best for it, though, if you’re not flying. Doesn’t take long, but most folks like to lie down.’

‘Okay, cool,’ Sawyer said, having even less of an idea of what was going on now. ‘Is there . . .’ He had no idea what they were talking about, much less what to ask. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Nah,’ Nyx said, grabbing a spoon. ‘Muriel or Oates’ll call you when it’s your time to shine. Go put your feet up.’ She winked. ‘Let the snapfruit ghosts do their job.’

Sawyer chuckled and nodded, feeling utterly lost as she left the room. Well, it was his first day. Feeling lost came with the territory, right?

He headed back to his room and lay down, as instructed. His body sank into the bed with gratitude. SoberUps were great and all, but he still felt like he was balancing his brain on stilts. A bit of rest, and he’d be good to go.

He passed the time quietly, skimming through feeds on his scrib and letting the helpful drugs smooth out his edges. He’d almost forgotten about all his questions until another one appeared: What’s that sound?

It was a sound he knew, but he couldn’t place it. A mechanical sound. An engine sound. Something that had been activated. Something . . . different. He started to sit up, but the vox stopped him. ‘Hop time, everybody,’ Oates said. ‘Sit down or lie back.’

Sawyer lowered himself back down. His heart quickened. His head puzzled. And then – oh fuck.

Space disappeared. Time disappeared. For how long or how far, nobody could say, because neither of those things meant anything anymore. Everything doubled, tripled, folded in on itself. Sawyer tried to look out the window, but his vision swam and his head begged to hold still, hold still, everything’s wrong.

Then, just as abruptly, everything was fine.

Sawyer sat bolt upright and held onto the edge of the mattress. Nausea – a whole fun new version of nausea – pushed at him in waves. He knew that feeling. Not well, but he knew it. He’d felt it once on a trip to Hagarem, when his sedatives hadn’t quite kicked in before the deepod got going. That’s what had happened. That’s what the sound had been.

They’d punched through the sublayer. The Silver Lining had a pinhole drive.

Sawyer knew, as any kid who’d taken a shuttle licence lesson did, that pinhole drives were dead-ass dangerous, that making tiny collapsing holes in the space between space was risky business, that doing so outside of designated transport lanes was illegal in the GC. He frowned. Well, it was illegal in Central space, anyway. Was it in the Fleet? He didn’t know.

There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. These folks were professionals. They had a clean ship, a registry number, kids and families back home. Besides, he didn’t know jack about scavenging. He didn’t know—

Something tugged at the edge of his vision. He looked up. He froze. Slowly, he got to his feet and approached the window. ‘Stars,’ he whispered. In the blackness hung what was left of the Oxomoco. A shell. A corpse. A ruin clasped in a sphere of flotsam. He’d seen pictures. He’d known where Muriel and her crew were taking him that day. None of that had prepared him for it. Nothing had made him ready for the tangible presence of this once-mighty homesteader, torn to shreds by something so seemingly simple as one moment of air meeting vacuum. Sawyer stood at the window, awed and shaken.

What was he doing here?

The sound of the vox switching on made him jump. ‘All right everybody,’ Oates said. ‘You know what to do. Sawyer, meet us at the airlock. Time to suit up.’

Sawyer didn’t waste a moment. He headed down the walkway, getting his head on straighter with every step. This was new, and he was just nervous. Time to shove that aside. He had a boss to impress. A crew to join, maybe. There’d be plenty of opportunity for questions later. For now, he had a job to do, and dammit, he was going to do it right.

Kip

Kip knew, theoretically, that things weren’t always going to be like this. He knew that he wasn’t going to be sixteen forever, that exams would be a memory one day, that if other people lived away from their parents, he could, too. He would.

But right then, it sure as shit felt like life was never, ever gonna change.

Bored wasn’t even the word for it anymore. There was something biting inside him, something shouting and endless sitting right at the bottom of his rib cage, pressing heavy with every breath. He wanted . . . he didn’t know what, even, but he was always reaching, always waiting, and not knowing how to fix it was making him crazy. He thought about the vids he watched, where everyone was cool and clever and knew how to dress. He thought about the sims he played, where jumping meant flying and punches exploded. He thought about the spacers he’d see in the shuttledock sometimes, coming home with armfuls of expensive shit for friends and fam, handing their belt guns over to patrol before crossing that invisible line between out there and in here. Squish all of that together, and that’s what he wanted. He wanted aliens to nod hello to him when he walked through spaceports. He wanted to look in the mirror in the morning and think something other than well, I guess that’s as good as it gets. He wanted. He wanted.

Yet he knew, as he made his way to his usual bench after trading for his usual lunch, that he was full of it. He was still seething at his parents after the whole patch thing – which, of course, had gotten around school, too, and was doing such fucking wonders for his social life – but deep down, there was some snivelling, traitorous part of him that . . . ugh . . . that had been glad, kind of. Glad that his parents had showed up at the Nova Room. Glad that he’d been given an out. And that was his whole problem, really, more than parents or job trials or the slow crawl between birthdays. The problem was that what he wanted, more than anything, was to fuck someone or fight something, and he knew – from experience, now – that if given the opportunity, he’d be too scared to do either.