What else is new?

Eric got painfully to his feet, having to reach up to open the panel that was normally only four feet off the ground, and he got hold of the manual level for the door. A hard yank opened it enough for him to wedge his hands in and pry it open, not a lot, but enough to work with. Eric slipped out of the bridge and into the corridor beyond, where he had to pause to get his bearings.

Wait, do I go left or right to get to the closest armory locker?

He blinked, trying to clear the double vision from his eyes while he was wrapping his mind around that. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem: Step out the door, walk right around the curve of the habitat, and he’d get to a security room.

At the moment, however, standing on the ceiling of the corridor with double vision and a splitting headache, Eric couldn’t remember what direction right was without making a signing gesture with his right hand to confirm it.

He finally worked out that he had to go left, and that was when he realized that he had a bigger problem.

Oh shit. The drum isn’t rotating. I’m in Earth gravity and that means this whole damn thing is more of an amusement park ride than habitat section.

He sighed, looking over the situation, and slowly shook his head. This is going to suck.

He got down onto his hands and knees and turned around, slowly lowering himself down the curving corridor until he began to slide. Eric quickly latched on to the frame of a door to stop himself, feet kicking around until he found another purchase, and then he began to ease himself down.

He had made it about a quarter of the way down when he lost his grip, slid off the ledge he was balancing on, and pitched into the black of the unlit corridor, swearing at the top of his lungs the whole way down.

Lyssa Myriano was having the mother of all bad days.

It had started with a fight that led to a breakup with her boyfriend, and now the whole damned solar system had apparently decided it was time to pay a visit to the Big Apple.

Just fucking peachy.

“Get down!” the NYPD patrol officer snarled as a dozen people came screaming in her direction.

They scattered as she pumped the old Remington shotgun she’d pulled from the truck of her cruiser. The twelve-gauge slugs were old school, but they still put down damn near anything short of straight-up MilSpec armor, and so she’d never felt the need to change over to the high-powered stuff.

Now she was regretting that decision.

The shotgun roared six times as she pumped and fired as fast as she could, emptying the weapon into the oncoming horror that the crowds were running from. The creatures looked like something out of a movie, only maybe a little less realistic, lumbering on insect-like bodies that appeared to weigh as much as a large truck.