“For fuck’s sake.” She let her head tip back until it was resting against the wall. “I don’t suppose you know where we’re going, either?”

“Not a clue.”

I glanced at the elevator’s transparent hatch. Because I couldn’t feel any sense of motion, it seemed the wall outside was moving, zipping upwards at a tremendous rate while we remained stationary. Preston had his nose almost touching the glass. He spoke without turning around. “We’ve misplaced the food and water, too.”

Clay couldn’t be bothered to reply. She scrunched her face against the pain and closed her eyes. Her dreadlocks spilled out across the makeshift pillows like a tarantula’s legs. The tube I’d inserted would relieve the pressure on her lung, but it was a temporary solution at best. She needed proper medical attention, and quickly. My own partially healed shotgun injury hurt where I had pulled it while dragging the others into this cramped shelter. Every time I moved, I felt a hot tearing sensation in my gut, and worried some piece of surgical adhesive had ripped loose. I stood as close to the wall as I could, trying to keep my bulky exoskeleton from monopolising too much of the elevator’s overcrowded interior; Clay took up most of the floor, and Preston crouched by the sealed entrance. We were like three children hiding in a wardrobe large enough for two. But we weren’t playing hide-and-seek. The stakes were infinitely higher. Two of us were seriously hurt and in danger of deterioration without outside help, and we were unarmed and being hunted through an alien maze by a squad of trained killers. The loss of the food and water only underscored the fact we were running short of time. All we had to be thankful for was that Preston had somehow managed to hang on to the medical kit and the rest of the painkillers.

I looked down at my feet. We were almost certainly doomed, and yet I felt an odd and unexpected euphoria. I’d escaped the rotting tedium of the Cichol jungle airstrip. No more flight schedules or biting flies, no more arms shipments or hot sleepless nights spent listening to animal cries while the sweat pooled on the mattress beneath me. The shackles had fallen away and left me free. I no longer had to worry about the past or future. Nothing mattered any more. For the first time in my wasted life, I felt genuinely alive.

And then the light changed.

I looked up as Preston cried out in surprise, and found myself staring through the glass doors at a small orange sun.

“What the hell…?”