“You didn’t even notice anything weird until they literally asked you for your blood!” they shouted back. “Would you have given it to them? God knows, you do everything else that stupid job asks you to do, even though you hate it.”

“At least I wasn’t almost eaten by a chair, you ass! You’re the most impulsive, infuriating—”

“The FINNA led us here!” Jules roared. “It pointed us toward the pit, I saw the wormhole, and I jumped. What would you have done? Agonized about it until they ate us?”

It was true, but that didn’t mean she had to accept it. “A warning might have been nice,” she pointed out. “Or a quick, ‘Hey, there’s a wormhole, let’s make a getaway.’”

Jules rolled their eyes. “I already apologized, so I don’t know what else you expect from me. You’re welcome for saving your life, anyway.”

They stared at each other in a stalemate. Then Ava realized something.

“Where’s the FINNA?”

She was intimately familiar with Jules’s Oh, shit face, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach when she recognized it flitting across their face. Jules’s personal chaos field had struck again.

“You dropped it, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Shit,” Jules muttered. They looked down into the water, past their feet, searching for it.

“Of course you dropped it,” Ava said. She wasn’t sure how far they’d fallen, but they’d hit the water hard. She would have been more surprised if they’d managed to keep hold of it.

Jules dove down beneath the surface of the water, then came back up. “I can see it!” they said. “I can dive down and get it!”

Ava ducked under the water to look. Far below them, she could see the purple light from the FINNA, its glow barely cutting through the murky salt water.

Ava resurfaced and shoved her hair out of her face. “It’s too far,” she said. “There’s no point—”

But Jules was already taking deep breaths, flooding their lungs and blood with oxygen.

“Jules, don’t—!”

But they were gone, disappearing into the murk beneath the surface of the water. Ava looked around. They had landed in a world made of water, flat and gray-skied. The water, at least, wasn’t too cold, and it was still as glass, mirroring the clouds above. As the seconds ticked by, Ava became aware of how alone she was. The horizon was impossibly distant.

How long had Jules been underwater? Every time Ava had watched a movie when someone went underwater, she’d instinctively held her breath as well. Now, she felt dread stealing the air from her. “Jules?” she said. Then again, louder, “Jules!”

Nothing. No bubbles broke the surface of the water. No ripples. Nothing moved except for her.