Page 44 of Full Speed to a Crash Landing

There’s a red light blinking over the door. The alarm’s going.

I initiate the escape hatch depressurization. The screenby the door starts counting down. The depressurization starts, and I know.

It’s too late to go back now.

There’s no override for an emergency protocol, especially not on a government-regulated ship. There’s no way to open the inner door and go back inside. There’s no way to stop the outer door from opening into black space. There’s no way to keep me from stepping out into the nothing. One minute and fifty-four seconds, and it’ll all be over.

I’ll be gone.

Outside, through the porthole, Rian’s face appears. Eyes wide, mouth open, shouting, but I can’t hear anything through all the steel and carbonglass between us.

A new light flashes, a green one. The ship’s open communication system. I tune my suit’s comm link to the channel.

“Ada!” Rian roars, clenched fist on the porthole window.

“Sorry,” I say.

“What are you doing?” he says. “Why are you here? Why—”

Then his face goes slack with horror. He turns away from the comm sys in the wall, shouts something.

He thinks I’ve stolen the cryptex drive.

But I haven’t, and whatever response he gets from down the corridor confirms that. He whips back around to the porthole, staring through it like he wishes he could melt thecarbonglass, reach through, and pull me back into the ship. Into his arms.

My stomach swoops. The gravity generator is shifting here in the airlock, prepping me for open space. According to the countdown, the depressurization is right on time. Forty-two seconds before the door opens and I step into the black of space.

“Sorry,” I say again. I almost mean it. Just not for the reasons he thinks.

“For what?” Rian’s voice is desperate. No one else is here. The others are probably at the shuttle still. It’s not even been a full ten minutes since I walked away. The captain probably raced to the bridge when Rian realized I had been telling them goodbye with my delaying tactic.

I never had to go to my room to get my data recorder. It has not left my suit’s outer pocket since I put it there just after Nandina gave it to me.

I’ve not answered Rian, but I know he’s ticking through the possibilities. I doubt Nandina told him I got a data recorder, and even if she did, my excuse of wanting to talk through my problems to myself was a decent one. He didn’t know the recorder was in my pocket the whole time yesterday.

The same pocket that held the cryptex drive.

I lean closer to the porthole window, watching his faceas the truth settles on him. The gravity’s so low now that I’m floating. The air in this room is already gone; all my oxygen comes from my suit. Twenty-one seconds left. My helmet bumps against the window, and his eyes meet mine.

There’s nothing left to say, no time to say it.

His fist unclenches, the flat of his palm on the glass.

I had the data recorder in my pocket when I put the cryptex drive I rescued inside. My jetpack was never broken. As if something like lava would mess with jaxon jets. I’vebeentelling them that my pack is good quality. It’s not my fault no one listened. I put the jetpack on standby and forced myself to do the excruciatingly slow climb up to give the drive time to copy its contents onto the data recorder. Everything I did while climbing up the rift was a delay tactic.

I never had to steal the cryptex drive. I just had to steal the information on it.

“But you don’t have the key,” he says.

The outer door opens. Behind me, there’s the wreckage of my ship,Glory, the hull breached. And there’s all of space and eternity, countless stars surrounded by the killing void.

In front of me is Rian.

“You’re asking the wrong question,” I say.

“Then what should I be asking?” His voice is raw, desperate.

And I think,He’s thinks he’s supposed to ask me to stay.

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