Page 38 of A Long Way Home

Clayton interrupts,“Update, gentleman.”

“We’ve located a breach. Moving towards it now.” Luca says.

“Moving towards it?” I ask. “What’s the noise I can hear then?” A thump against the outer hull echoes through and has me lurching back.

“There is a lot of debris out here,”Luca says.“Yuri, careful. Your line is caught.”

Another thump against the hull, and I'm scrambling over to the racks by the door. Rummaging through the boxes, hoping for a miracle. The comms break down into static, and I tune out what little I can make out, focusing on my search.

“What’s that?” Matthias calls out.

I look back at him, following the line of his pointed finger over my shoulder to the metal lockers. One hangs open with what looks like the leg of a space suit hanging out. “The suit?”

“You have a suit in there?” He jumps up, pushing his face to the glass, trying to examine the suit closely.

“It’s damaged. Been damaged forever. Since before I got up here. Yuri threw it in here so we wouldn’t get it mixed up with the others.” I say, continuing to search for something remotely useful.

“Damagedhow?” One of his brows raises.

I shrug, “Does it matter how broken a broken suit is? I’m all for fixer-uppers, but that phrase is usually when referring to a house, or car…”

“Can you show me?”

“...or even that one time I got a bee in my bonnet about that rundown canal boat. Remember that?” I laugh.

“Alex?”

“Besides space suit design, really isn’t my forte.”I wouldn’t trust myself not to fuck it up. I prefer cold, hard steel, or carbon fibre, even plain old silicone. “What even is a space suit made from? Nylon-fibreglass blend?”

“Alex. Breathe.”

I turn to face him, taking a deep breath.

“Show me the suit.”

A snarky retort is on the tip of my tongue, until I see it - excitement flicking across his face, and something else. Relief?

Does he think this could actually get us out of here?

My legs burn, muscles protesting as I push myself up, gently gliding over to the locker and its strewn contents. My body complains as I pull the suit from the locker, ignoring the stitch forming in my side.

It’s not heavy, not in space. If I had to guess, I would say the oxygen in the room has dropped enough that each breath has my lungs straining to get enough O² tokeep my muscles in peak working order. Exhaustion is setting in. Or I got more banged up than I realised during all the excitement earlier.

I roll the suit around, inspecting it. It looks mostly intact, except for a severe tear in the leg.

“There's only one suit.” I point out, as I finger the torn edging of the fabric.

“One problem at a time.”

I turn back to him, my mouth dropping open, “Matthias, you cannot choose me over Chelenko.”

“Alex. Stop.”

“Just promise me, you'll get us both out.” I look down at Chelenko’s slumped form.

He sighs, scrubbing his palm over his face. “Ja. I’ll get you both out.”

“Matze?”

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