Then: a hand gripping. Gripping the rail. Both hands now, clutching the metal bar, stopping his plummet. One of them was whole, the other a disgusting mess. Above, several men gathered, their pants and gasps puffing out like smoke. They looked down over the rail, black goggles wrapped with fur. Cole watched from his prison as they scrambled for the arms, trying to pull the body back into the nightmare.

The view turned, forcing Cole to look back down at the ground, at the inhospitable wasteland of snow racing by. When the view returned to the rail, the hands were leaving the arms, one man pushing the others away.

Cole recognized him, recognized the blonde hair and small goggles.

Joshua.

Joshua smiled, almost as if he could see Cole through the goggles, could see inside the body’s skull where he was cowering, confused and afraid.

Joshua held something over the rail: a wooden stick, hanging from another wooden stick.

Cole froze. He leaned closer to the inside of the body’s eyes; he pressed his palms against the pupils and peered out, staring at the familiar device.

Joshua swung the invisible thread right at him—right at the skull he’d receded into. Cole screamed at the hands to let go, at the arms to come up and block the blow.

The good arm still had enough fear in it to obey, but the mangled one did not. One hand let go, coming up in front of the skull to protect him; the ruined hand somehow kept its grip. Cole braced himself as the body  he was in rotated on the single grasp of that bloody, pulped hand. He watched as the invisible thread flew past, seeming to miss everything.

But then, he started falling away. He fell into the sinking embrace of open air even though one arm remained fastened to the rail—remained there, frozen in the shape of a claw.

Cole stared at it from within the head, watched it slide away from the body along a neat line of red separation.

My body, Cole thought.

This is me.

That arm, still grasping the railing, he finally understood it to be a part of him. He came to the realization moments after it was no longer true.

His good arm waved in the wisps of snow, but he focused on the other one. He watched the dismembered limb as he fell away from it, watched it remain up high, dripping blood through the whizzing white. The arm became smaller, a tiny piece of meat stuck to the side of the ship, as he fell away, down to the snowy drifts below.

Air roared past his ears. Accelerating. Stomach rising with the speed. He landed with a pained crunch, a thump of lifeless heft. His body smashed through the hard, frozen exterior of the snow and drove down, deep down into the soft wetness.