Chapter 9

My name is Wilhelmina Lucas. I had forgotten, for a while. Or I didn't want to remember. But now I do, because I need to. Now I do, because of her. So no more of this third-person-omniscient garbage. From here on out, I tell my own story.

My name is Wilhelmina Lucas. My crew calls me Captain. Eli calls me Bilbo. And Cleo calls me Billie—or she might, once she knows me.

***

Billie had refused to let Cleo call the others straight up to the flight deck, insisting instead that they convene in the med bay.

"You and Ros, I swear to God," Cleo grumbled as they walked to the elevator, "I think I'd know if I was having an aneurysm—"

"Maybe. But you should still get a checkup after being brain-blasted by a mysterious, evil space entity, Cleo. That's the first thing they teach you at astronaut school."

And Billie had looked so tenderly down at Cleo—riding the elevator with her even though she could have just popped down to the med bay herself—that Cleo had found it very hard to argue with that.

So, when they had all finally gathered in the med bay, Cleo explained what she'd wimped to all of them from her cot, with Abe and Kaleisha sitting at her bedside, Ros bustling around her running tests and gently wiping the blood from her face, and Billie parked against the wall by the headboard, watching Ros's hands. The concern on all their faces melted into confusion, then shock, then even deeper confusion.

"So. Wait."

Cleo looked up at Abe, watching the gears churn behind his eyes.

"You're saying that the Other Place," Abe continued, "is actually not a place, but a... consciousness?"

Cleo would have nodded, but Ros was shining an otoscope in her ear. "It seemed like maybe it was both? Elijah was definitely in a room, in a house of some kind. But he also said ‘they had their reasons' for taking the crew. Didn't elaborate any further."

"Oh, so the unfathomable space entity that carjacked our lives is nonbinary? Love that." Cleo looked up at Ros in surprise, knocking the scope out of her ear. "Sit still, bucko," they said. "I can still make jokes."

"Rozzy, that's music to my absolute ears."

"Whatever. So is it a single consciousness or a collective of some kind?"

"I feel like we're glancing over the fact that we just got confirmation of extra-dimensional life," Kaleisha said. "And they apparently have the ability to just, like... slurp people out of this dimension?"

"And talk to us through dark matter engines and redheaded med students." Cleo glanced back up at Ros without moving her head. "I think you saw them, Ros, or felt them, when you were lost in the storm. ‘They're angry,' you said."

Ros put the otoscope down and reached for some other device, not looking at her. "I don't remember feeling anything. A vague sense of dread, maybe, but who among us isn't always filled with—"

"Well, that's not nothing," Cleo pressed on. "That could be, I don't know. Useful. We could work with that."

Ros glared at her then, because they knew exactly what she was suggesting. "I'm not coming back to training," they snapped. "I'm not going to nearly destroy the ship again just so I can spout cryptic nonsense about these extra-dimensional kidnappers' feelings—"

"Stop." Kaleisha stood up, and everyone fell silent. "You've all skipped a thousand steps ahead. Has it occurred to either of you that, if the Other Place has a mind of its own, it gave us our powers for a reason?"

"Gave us—" Cleo started to argue, before she remembered a gentle graze, a deafening roar, a blast of energy from everywhere and nowhere. "The dark matter engine. It's their connection to our dimension. They started it up when I touched it."

"And used the energy blast to alter us," Kaleisha said, watching the realization spread across Ros's face. "Just like they used it on Launch Day to take the crew."

"Whoa," Abe breathed. "So you think they've got a—a plan?"

A muscle clenched in Kaleisha's jaw. "They've got to."

"What's your point, Kal?" Ros snapped. "Why should I care what the space demons who trapped us on this ship want us to do?"

"My powers helped breach us to Proxima a million times faster, and Cleo's just helped her find the missing crew; you don't think that's something?"

Ros's nostrils flared. "Sure, Cleo's powers are unambiguously awesome, the fact that they've left her in a hospital bed with blood pouring out of her skull notwithstanding."

"Well," Cleo said weakly, "that wasn't the Other Place, it was the rainbow voice—"

"You'd better not be implying that I think we should go along with their plan just for shits and giggles, Ros. You know I'm not." Kaleisha's voice was quiet, her mouth set in a restrained line, her eyes burning. "All I want is for us to get out of this. And if figuring out how to play the game they've set up for us is what'll keep us and the Providence crew safe, then—"

"I don't want to play any game where all I do is go crazy and hurt the people I love, Kal—"

"Jesus Christ, Ros." Kaleisha grabbed Ros by the shoulders. "If you can feel what the Other Place is feeling, you might be able to help Cleo find the crew."

Ros went silent. It was the killing blow, Cleo knew: appeal to the med student's desire to help people in trouble. For a long moment, it seemed like Ros couldn't do anything but stare at Kaleisha in shock.

"But they took the crew," they said finally. "And they changed us. I don't want to accept their terms."

"You might not have to."

Cleo twisted her neck to look up at Billie, who was staring at her glasses in her hands. Like she'd intended to clean them, but got lost along the way.

"Billie, what—"

"I don't think," Billie continued, "that we should be accepting this as some sort of divine, all-knowing plan. I don't think the Other Place is that infallible."

Kaleisha dropped her hands from Ros's shoulders and clasped their hand tightly. "What do you think they are, then?"

"I think," Billie said, putting her glasses back on, "that the Other Place is scared."

Ros got a faraway look in their eyes, just for a moment. "They're tired, and hurting."

"Exactly." Billie waggled a finger thoughtfully at Ros. "When Cleo wimped Halvorsen talking to the Other Place, they said something about growing weaker, about the engine draining their dimension of its energy. It stands to reason that they took the crew, not to punish us, but to prevent the mission from moving forward and depleting their life force, for lack of a better word, even further. Given that it seems they can only make things happen in our dimension via the engine, they may have felt it was their best available option."

"Doesn't really justify it," Ros muttered.

"Oh, believe me, I agree." Billie clenched and unclenched her fingers, and Cleo thought of her tears for her brother. "But if we understand their motivations, it might help us figure out a plan of our own."

"So. Wait." Abe bit his lip. "If they took the crew because they were scared of the mission going forward, why did they start the engine back up? Why did they risk depleting themselves again? Why did they give you these powers?"

Cleo rubbed at her aching temples, thinking back to her realization about herself and Ros, that closed loop of energy. Except that Cleo was drawing on the Other Place so much more now, and Ros—Ros who, when Cleo looked up at them, smiled a small, tired smile—hadn't used their powers in weeks. They couldn't possibly be replacing all the energy that Cleo was using. So what would motivate someone, or someplace, or whatever the Other Place was, to push themselves toward the breaking point like that? What took precedence over the fear of that slow annihilation?

"They're scared of something new," Cleo heard herself saying. "Something even more dangerous than last time."

Everyone turned to look at her.

"Sorry," she muttered. "Not to darken the already dismal mood."

"No, Cleo, you're right." Billie crouched down at Cleo's bedside so their faces were level, and Cleo felt herself leaning gently toward her as if being pulled by a string. She was so busy watching Billie that she almost missed Kaleisha turning to Ros and mouthing Cleo? with a smirk. "What could scare them more than the engine depleting their remaining life force?"

Cleo's mind returned again to the freezing rainbows, the voice crackling through her like an electric shock. Good, it had said. You're on your way.

"Here's a wild guess," she said, "but it could be the creepy voice that just broke my brain so bad you all thought I was dying."

"Damn it." Billie looked like she wanted very badly to bang her head against the bed frame. "Seems like a strong contender."

"Could you try and wimp the voice again?" Kaleisha asked. "Get a little more intel?"

"Maybe? I don't know where it came from, though. I wouldn't know where to look."

"The Other Place, then. To see if we can find anything else out from them or the crew."

Billie turned from Kaleisha to Cleo and frowned. "No. Not if you'll get hurt again."

God, I love—

"I can try." Cleo swallowed. "I will."

She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Let's wait till tomorrow," Ros said. "I'll monitor her, Billie. Keep her safe however I can." Cleo put her hand over theirs and tried to say thank you with just her eyes and her closed-up throat.

***

Later that night, after Billie had left to run simulations as if she could solve for Elijah like an equation, and long after Ros and Kaleisha had fallen asleep cuddling one cot over, Cleo let the thought that had been itching at the back of her head all evening rise to the surface.

"Abe," she whispered, "what are you scared of?"

Abe blinked up at her from where he'd been dozing in a chair between the two beds. His hair stuck up in odd places, and his face was more drawn and drained than Cleo had ever seen it. "What do you mean, Clo?"

"I mean I've never seen you look, like, hopeless, but you looked close to it today."

Abe bit his lip. "I mean, yeah, I'm scared."

Cleo just waited. She thought about one night when they'd been in high school and weathering a hurricane at Kaleisha's place, and they'd gone for a walk as the eye passed overhead because they were sixteen and stupid and losing their minds. And they'd climbed up one of the levees, which was very illegal, and Abe had looked hard at the rest of them—at Ros's exhausted face, Kaleisha's brow furrowed toward the turbulent horizon, and the pitifully studied vacancy in Cleo's own affect—and he'd said, Fuck this. And he'd leapt ungracefully off the wall and into the water, and they'd all cried out in concern, and he'd surfaced with a laugh and a flick of his hair out of his eyes, and he'd said, Come on in, the water is fine. And Cleo dove in after him without a second thought, followed by Kaleisha and finally Ros, and for one shining moment they all believed him when he said, It's going to pass.

Eventually, Abe sighed and looked at her with wet eyes.

"I've been doing a pretty good job of staying positive, right? About you guys all having this crazy, profound experience that I can't really fathom? I've gotten pretty good at helping out any way I can. But finding out that the Other Place gave you guys powers on purpose... and that it didn't give me anything, also on purpose... Did they just not have a use for me? Do I not have anything to contribute?"

"Whoa, now. I thought we decided not to care what the Other Place thinks."

Abe wrinkled his nose at her. "I'm not as good at compartmentalizing as you, Commander Compartmentalizer. It's hard to ignore all these big, cosmic things happening around me, and all I can do is try not to get in the way. It's like the Other Place didn't even think of me."

"Or you're already perfect and the Other Place didn't need to change a thing." Abe scoffed, but Cleo sat up straighter on her pillows. "No, for real. What could the stupid Other Place have done to improve on Abe Yang, the kindest, caring-est guy in the whole universe?"

Abe chewed on the inside of his lip. "Thanks. But how is being kind going to help save you from the rainbow voice, or the crew from the Other Place?"

"It's gotten us this far, Abe. Seriously, I don't know how me and Kal and Ros would stay sane without you. And Billie, honestly. Your bromance means a lot to her, she just doesn't say it."

Abe looked at the other two and sighed. "Maybe."

"No, listen, think of it like physics." Cleo made grabby hands at Abe, and he cracked a tiny smile and put his hand in hers. "What if the four of us, our powers, I mean, are, like, the basic building blocks of the universe. I'm time, Kaleisha is space, Ros is energy, and you're mass."

Abe frowned. "So, dense and boring?"

"No no no. Oh my God, no. Mass is not boring. You know the strong force?"

"Yup, it's the strong one."

"Exactly. It's what holds quarks together into protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons together into atoms. It blows every other physical phenomenon out of the fuckin' water. It's ten to the thirty-eighth times stronger than gravity, dude. Nothing would exist without the strong force. Space? Empty. Time? Meaningless. Energy is bouncing around with nothing to do. It's miserable."

Abe squeezed her hand. "So you're saying I'm the strong force? That's my power?"

"Yeah." Cleo squeezed back. "The stuff that holds the rest of it together."

***

She drifted off holding Abe's soft hand. Asleep, Cleo dreamed of rose-gold rivers. Of washed-out fields of waist-high grasses and an off-white house in the distance, windows locked. Of icy mountains and sunset skies. Of the Providence crashing, empty, into a night-black desert of ice.

She woke with a start, pulled the NASA jacket that Kaleisha had brought her tight around herself. Dreamed of her father, watching the news with his jaw clenched tight enough to snap, knocking on a door and demanding entry, breaking down into racking sobs halfway through making himself a cup of coffee. She startled awake again. Drifted off again.

She dreamed of Billie, Billie with a body, Billie who was solid enough to touch, to kiss, to hold on to for dear life. Billie, in her arms, moaning and sighing as Cleo tasted every inch of her skin. Billie, who smiled at her, just before dissolving into particles of rainbow light and drifting away into the—

Cleo's eyes flew open like a switch being flicked, her heart pounding like she'd just leapt out of a plane. But before she could cry out, maybe to Billie, maybe to the universe, there was a finger over her mouth.

"Sorry," Ros whispered, wide-eyed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't." Cleo heaved herself up onto her elbows. "What's going on, bud? You okay?"

Ros gnawed warily at a cuticle. "Do something for me?"

"Whatever you need."

"Tell me again about your very first vision."

Cleo's stomach convulsed, just a little. She tried to do the calculations—probability that she would make Ros cry, probability that Ros would run straight back to the lab, probability that the gods were currently striking her down for her prophetic hubris. "Well. Uh. Your eyes were all gold."

"And? Where were we?"

"In a... big, dark room. Or something. You were making it snow."

Ros finally ripped the hangnail off with their teeth. "And?"

"You were throwing ice at—" Cleo collapsed back onto the pillows. "Someone."

Ros looked less despairing than Cleo might have expected. They frowned, clearly thinking through something very carefully. "Did I look," they said slowly, pausing to suck at the sore spot on their thumb, "like I had lost control?"

"Huh," Cleo said. The glowing eyes had been so disconcerting that, in her sick and frenzied state, she had assumed that the Ros of her vision wasn't fully Ros, but was there actually anything indicating as much? "I don't think so. You looked angry, furious, but you were fully in control of your powers."

"Okay." Ros nodded. "I can work with that."

Cleo squinted up into her friend's round face. She could count on one hand the number of times she had ever seen that face contorted in anger. And as much as the vision had scared her, she knew that the idea of being that angry—of hurting someone in anger, of hurting someone due to any unchecked emotion at all—was Ros's biggest fear.

"Cleo," they whispered, "if it comes true, if it looks like I'm putting any of you in danger... will you stop me?"

Cleo froze. Something in Ros's face broke a little.

"I'm not asking you to, like, put me down," they said, a whimper creeping into their voice. "I trust you to figure it out. All I want is to not be a liability. I could never forgive myself if I hurt you guys."

"You're not a liability," Cleo whispered. "And you didn't, like, take the Hippocratic oath the day you sat at our table in the high school cafeteria."

"Still." Ros paused, deliberating, then crouched down and took Cleo's hand in theirs. Cleo suddenly felt ready to cry—she could also count on one hand the number of times Ros had ever been this tender. "Please?"

Cleo nodded. "Okay."

A bit of tension leaked out of Ros's shoulders. And they squeezed Cleo's fingers and went back to bed, curling up against Kaleisha like they had never left. And after some sleepy amount of time later, just when Cleo was starting to think she heard their breath slowing down, Ros whispered:

"Cleo?"

"Yeah."

"I think sometimes I mask my feelings with humor."

And they both stifled their laughter behind their hands, shaking silently at each other across the space between their beds.

"Me too, bud," Cleo said, once she had control of her diaphragm again. "Me too."

They were both quiet then, for good. Cleo listened until she could hear two pairs of soft, even breaths under Kaleisha's snores, and slipped out of bed.

***

ARCHIVED: Providence Intracrew Messaging Service Conversation — Capt. Wilhelmina Lucas and Dr. Kristoff Halvorsen, December 4, 2040

Kristoff Halvorsen

If your brother ever tries to talk philosophy at lunch again, I might have to formally censure him.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Hey, you are not allowed to tease him about being a useless liberal arts hack

Only I am allowed to tease him about being a useless liberal arts hack

Kristoff Halvorsen

Noted.

I'll concede that he did have some interesting points to make about the myth of progress, though. What was that line he quoted? John Gray, was it? "Progress is an illusion with a future"?

Wilhelmina Lucas

Would've thought you'd have hated that sentiment, Mr. Progress Man

Kristoff Halvorsen

Dr. Progress Man, to you.

And I do. Everything I've devoted my life to, not to mention everything we do here, is meaningless if we don't believe that we are moving toward a better future. But dissenting opinions are still valuable in their own right.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Sure, but I take it you won't be converting to Eli's cyclical theory of history anytime soon

Kristoff Halvorsen

Nothing cyclical about what we're trying to do here, Billie.

The work we do is not only going to enable interstellar travel, it's going to end our current crisis and put humanity back on the path toward prosperity and happiness. "Enlightenment," I guess Elijah would call it. I have to believe that.

Wilhelmina Lucas

"Back," ha

We were never on the path, Kris

But it's good to think that way. No point in any of this if we're not trying to help people

Kristoff Halvorsen

Thank you, I appreciate that.

[... ]

As long as we're getting philosophical

What would you say is any appropriate price to pay for such progress?

Wilhelmina Lucas

Um

What do you mean, Kris

Don't tell me you're, like, regretting never having started a family

Kristoff Halvorsen

Ha, no.

Just contemplating what could be worth giving up if it meant securing a safe, peaceful future for the human race.

Wilhelmina Lucas

[... ]

Have the goons on the board asked you to give anything up?

Kristoff Halvorsen

No, nothing like that.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Then what's it like?

Kristoff Halvorsen

Forget it. I've had my head a bit in the clouds thinking up projects to busy myself with once you and the crew are gone.

Wilhelmina Lucas

[... ]

Fair

But for what it's worth, I think Eli would say that prioritizing progress over everything else, with no thought to the consequences, is what got us in this mess in the first place.

Not that I'm warning you about anything. Just, you know, speaking of cyclical history

Kristoff Halvorsen

You have nothing to worry about, Billie. My priorities remain the same as ever.

***

The greenhouse smelled of hyacinths and lavender and countless other green, growing things. It smelled like Mr. Reid's house. Which was, Cleo knew, the whole point.

She was burying her nose in a sunflower when she heard a small pop behind her. She smiled.

"How did you know I was just about to call you?"

"I can come, sometimes, without you asking me to," Billie said softly. Cleo heard her move closer from the way her breath stuttered softly. "I saw you in here and figured you'd want company."

"You figured right." Cleo turned to find Billie's face just inches from her own, and her own breath went still in her chest. For a moment, she just looked at Billie's face, memorizing the geography of the faint smile lines around her eyes. "Got too many thoughts bonking around in here to just lie in bed alone with them."

For a moment, Cleo thought Billie was going to step closer, but she stayed planted where she was. "Like what?"

Like, I think I love you, Cleo didn't say. Like, I'm pretty sure you love me back. "Like, today I found proof of extra-dimensional life, and it's nowhere near the top of my mind."

"Mortal danger can do that to you."

"I've just—" Cleo realized she was twisting her fingers together, and dropped her hands by her sides. "I've spent my whole life wanting to go to space and discover new worlds, and now I've done it, I'm doing it, and—why doesn't it feel good?"

Billie narrowed her eyes at Cleo for a single, taut moment, then stepped past her toward a pot of sunflowers. "This is how it feels. At least that's how it was for me, on the Erecura Deep mission. Space is anticlimactic, Cleo. You pile into a tin can with a few other dipshits, you spend a year bouncing off the walls and trying not to kill each other, and then you get there, you get to Europa, and then—what? What now? The first time I saw Jupiter, I stared at it for a minute, and it was beautiful, and then all I could think was What do I do with this? You're still the same person after you see Jupiter, with the same problems. It's just that now you've seen Jupiter."

Cleo worried a sunflower leaf between her fingers. "Then why did you keep doing it? Why did you sign up for the Providence mission?"

Billie reached a hand up to trace a line along the golden-yellow petals above her head. She glanced at Cleo, her eyes a dark olive in the dim, orange light. "You know how some people have to move when their partner dies, because the house has too many memories?" Cleo nodded, and Billie blinked back up at the bloom. "I tried to do that, but with the Earth. First my parents, then Neil—there was nowhere to go that didn't hurt. So I had to move."

Cleo thought, inexplicably, of her dad. Of his suffocating grief, of his fear that Cleo would leave him too becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of her childhood home that she abandoned for Kaleisha's at every opportunity. Of the smoke-yellowed sky on Earth and her lifelong hope that, if she could just break through it to the stars, her escape would be complete, and the wanting would finally let her rest.

"I think," Cleo said slowly, "I know what you mean."

Billie smiled, just a little bit. "Yeah. I know."

Looking at Billie's lips, Cleo's recurring dream popped unbidden back into her head. Talk about wanting that wouldn't let her rest. But this was different, she supposed. Billie wasn't like the stars or a disappointing view of Jupiter. She was here, she was real, and loving her—loving her, like Cleo had never loved anyone before—was, or could be, maybe, worth everything it took.

"Did I ever tell you that there's one poem I actually kind of like?" Cleo blurted.

Billie raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Cleo tried very hard to contain the pink rising up in her cheeks. Maybe Billie couldn't see it in the near-dark. "It's that one called ‘The Old Astronomer to His Pupil,' I think."

"I know it."

"Someone read it at the memorial for the Providence."

Cleo cringed the moment she said it, but Billie just nodded. "Makes sense. That's what I would have chosen."

"It just always stuck with me, you know? Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. Even though everyone did get fearful, after that."

Billie stepped close again, then. "What made you think of it now?"

Cleo let her eyes flutter closed, just once, and forced herself not to lean into Billie. "I guess I was just wondering—if you could do it over again, would you still choose to get on the Providence?"

"I don't know." Billie licked her lips, and Cleo nearly had a heart attack right there. "Would you?"

"I think—"

I think I could learn to be less fearful, with you—

"I don't know."

***

"So," Eli says conversationally, leading me through door after door with edges that don't quite line up right, "how did you figure out how to see back into our universe?"

"It just kind of happened." I rub my eyes. There's a lingering feeling of disorientation, like part of me is still back with Cleo, even though I'm fully, solidly here for the first time in ages. It's like arriving here on Launch Day again, my eyes unused to the gold-black tones and the not-quite-Euclidean lines of it all. Eli leads me down each twisting, yellowing hallway like he knows the way; for my part, I think we've taken five left turns in a row, and it's making me dizzy. "I spent so much time letting my mind drift that eventually I just drifted into—"

"—the cute girl who happened to be in the process of stealing our spaceship?"

"She didn't steal it, this place did. And shut up."

"I'm just saying." Eli pushes open the front doors, and I'm blinded by the off-white sunless sky. Unnerved all over again by the field outside that extends out forever toward an impossible horizon, by the tall, flaxen grasses that wave slowly in time with each other in the still, staticky air. "I wonder if there's, you know"—he wiggles his fingers to denote the unexplainable—"some kind of reason you started seeing her when you did."

I scoff, even though I've wondered the same thing. "Like true love?"

"You said it, not me."

"Why would that be how any of this works?"

"Why not?" Eli asks, dead serious. "Why is it so impossible to believe that the thing that pulled you home was the person that reminded you how to love?"

"Love isn't a force of nature, Eli." As soon as I say it, I realize I don't quite believe it.

He blows me a giant, nasty raspberry. "More things in heaven and Earth, Horatio."

(Doubt thou the stars are fire, I think, seized by the memory of the way Cleo's freckly nose crinkles up when she smiles. But never doubt I love.)

"Fine," I say. "Let's say you're right. What good is all that if I can't help her?"

"I thought you'd never ask." Eli plops himself down on the porch swing, and I lean against the railing so I can cross my arms at him. The wood looks bleached, desiccated. I have to remind myself that it's not going to break under him. "That's what my plan is for."

"Alright, lay it on me."

"Step One: Bully the Other Place into letting us go."

"Needs some work."

He starts pumping his legs. The swing doesn't creak, or make any indication at all that friction is a law of physics here. "Step Two: Save your girlfriend and her friends from whatever was breaking her brain."

I groan. "Brilliant, Eli. Real actionable."

"Wait, wait." He swings forward and kicks me in the ass before I can walk away. "In all seriousness, Bill, I think we have a chance if we talk to them. I've seen other crew members talking to them. I have a sense of how they operate now."

"And how is that?"

"We appeal to love. See how it's all coming together now?"

"This place has taken everything from us. They don't get to also have my love."

"Yeah, well." Eli kicks the swing higher, faster, and for a second I can imagine him arcing up and away from here. "If you figure out how to physics your way out of this place outside of time and space, let me know."

Damn it, he's right. Maybe.

"Alright, loser, I'll follow your lead," I say. "Don't make me regret it."

***

The next morning, when she could walk with only a slight wobble in her knees, Cleo held Halvorsen's jacket in her hands once again, feeling for the dark matter tendrils shooting off of it and into the void while the others stood around her bed and watched. Cleo closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see their worried faces.

"Pretend I said something clever about performance anxiety," she mumbled, right before she was yanked into the darkness.

She opened her eyes and knew immediately that she had not, in fact, managed to wimp the Other Place, because everything was dully honey-toned instead of that uncanny gold. She saw Elijah, his breath ragged and his floppy blond hair dripping with sweat as he ran on a zero-gravity treadmill.

No, this is wrong. Take me deeper.

Cleo pushed against the vision, trying to find the dark matter filaments that would let her peel back the layers between universes. And it worked, maybe—everything went black and then blacker, and she opened her eyes and saw—

Also wrong.

Elijah again, still gold-dark and liquid slow, but this time strapped into his bunk in his Providence quarters. Halvorsen's jacket was folded, forgotten, on his shelf. And even though his eyes were closed, there was an expression of anxious rapture on his face, like he was waiting for something extraordinary and unfathomable. Cleo emerged into the hallway and saw that every other room was also filled with passengers staring up at the ceiling and clenching their hands around the straps of their safety harnesses.

"Three." A deep voice boomed from the intercoms and oh, of course, that's what everyone was waiting for.

"Two." The voice sounded familiar, painfully familiar, just familiar enough that Cleo forgot what she was about to see—

"One."

There was a blinding flash of light. Cleo cried out and covered her face, but not soon enough to avoid the burning and the spots of color spreading across her retinas.

She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. And when she lowered her hands, Elijah's bed was empty, the harness lying limp and the sheets bearing just the faintest impression of the body that had been there.

Damn it. Somewhere, up in the flight deck, there was another empty seat, with a Billie-shaped—

No.

Fuck.

Alright, that was closer. Give it just a little more juice.

Deeper. Darker. Cleo felt herself flying again through the molten boundaries between universes. She thought she was close, could feel the Other Place just out of reach, knew that if she opened her eyes she would be there—

And then it happened again. Static shattered through her nervous system, blinding her, threatening to tremble her molecules apart. Everything was black, and white, and blue-gray steel and dry gold grasses and Ros's hands as they held her down through the spasms racking her body—

And then it was the rainbow light again, hazy shifting spectrums in a dark red sky. And the voice, that painfully familiar voice, was whispering curiously in her ear.

You don't give up, do you?

Cleo gritted her teeth against the pain, trying not to slip back to the med bay just yet. Why? Should I?

A wheezing chuckle. Not at all. I've always respected tenacity.

This doesn't feel like respect.

I'm sorry. Doing what needs to be done can sometimes come at an unfortunate price.

Vibrations, jagged and blistering, crackled through Cleo's body again, and she felt the Other Place slip further away.

No—

I'm sorry, Ms. McQueary. But I can't let you keep visiting the Conterminous Dimension. They've been a hindrance to me since the beginning. I can't have you scheming together to outmaneuver me.

You're still calling it the "Conterminous Dimension"? What a mouthful. All the cool kids are calling it the Other Place now.

Cleo felt a shadow fall heavy around her, like someone somewhere was drawing closer to spit their words in her face.

You won't mock me,the voice said, when you learn of my plans. Then you will see, as I have, that I only want what is best for humanity.

Oh, yeah? And what exactly is that?

Progress, Ms. McQueary. Enlightenment. Nothing more or less than salvation, in fact.

Cleo plunged back to the med bay, gasping for air. Ros released their pressure on her shoulders and grabbed a damp cloth to wipe down her face.

"You absolutely cannot do that again," they said, their voice clipped with concern. "I can't even begin to speculate what kind of damage it's doing to your nervous system."

"Preaching to the choir, Ros." Cleo looked around dazedly, past Abe and Kaleisha just releasing their frantic grips on each other. "Billie."

Billie gripped the side of the bed, looking pale and pained. "Yes?"

Cleo took a rattling breath. "Remind me," she said, though she already knew the answer, "who did the countdown on Launch Day?"

Billie frowned. "Kris did."

"Yeah, okay." Cleo slumped back into her pillows and squeezed her eyes shut against the throbbing ache building in her head. "So, fun fact. Halvorsen's not dead. He's the rainbow voice."