He started to ask Joshua about the effect, then saw they had almost reached the base of the large tower. About ten meters wide and perfectly round, it appeared to have a flat top—like a squat cylinder sitting on one end. The tower rose up from the center of this platform: thin and wide like a blade, but with dozens of slits running its length.

As his escorts led him past the structure, Cole thought he sensed it twist a little, the entire cylinder rotating slightly. The people in the distance moved even slower now, nearly at a stand-still. Some sort of game they were playing on him?

One of his feet hit the back of his ankles, and he nearly tripped forward, but the arms at either side caught him. Another hand smacked the back of his head, the blow echoing with laughter.

“Enough,” he heard Joshua say.

Cole tried to look over at Joshua, and then he noticed the world had returned to normal: everyone had picked up their pace across the moving village. To his side, the tower definitely moved a little, twitching and rotating. They led him around the perimeter of the base to the forward side of it.

Meet his maker? The phrase rang in Cole’s ears again. Was he about to be strung up? Executed? Simple as that? And why cut off Riggs’s legs to put them back on? How was that even possible? And why put them back on if they were to be executed? What in hyperspace was going on?

Cole felt his pulse quicken as he ran through the questions and the likely answers. He still felt shaken up from the crash landing, from the strange voices in his head, from the fight with Riggs. There was too much going on and none of it made sense. He needed one thing he could understand, something to somehow web the rest of it together.

But he had nothing. His entire environment felt out of focus as they pulled him in front of the tower’s base. He saw a steep flight of stairs there, cut into the flat cylinder and leading all the way up and aft toward the top of the platform. They started pulling Cole up the stairs while some inner self yelled: fight back. But as soon as he put his feet out to resist, they just lifted him up and carried him. Now and then, the entire tower would twitch to one side, and the men would sway together, grabbing handrails and dragging Cole roughly.

Definitely an execution. A flogging at the mast. The more Cole strug-gled, the more hands he felt on him, some coming swiftly and in the shape of fists.

Suddenly, the world started flashing by around him. He must’ve been going into shock. Everything moved at a blistering pace, the snow a blur to either side, people whizzing across the deck below. He squirmed and kicked and felt himself picked up by all four limbs, laughter filling his ears.