I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, staring at the same ugly stretch of peeling paint. It looks like a shipping container, thick and sturdy and tacky with machine smells, oils and acids. The walls are patchwork rust and grey enamel, but someone has tried to patch the holes with strips of salvaged insulation. A string of bulbs and heat lamps buzz, just enough to take the icy edge off my cheeks.

The floor is scattered with the remains of a dozen emergency kits: little piles of spent hydro sachets and empty bandage wrappers, lines of unrolled sleeping bags and empty bottles of blackout pills.

I catch the reflection of myself on a curve of something glassy, but I don’t get the whole picture all at once. I look like battlefield leftovers, propped in a corner and twisted over on myself, like someone tried to haul me into cover but couldn’t get all the way. Like I’m destined for a POW brig, or a meal for scavengers, whatever gets to me first.

The glass is my visor, I realise, resting at an angle and looking up at me.

Where are you?

But it doesn’t have an answer.

The thought drags me to my knees, pulls me forward on fingertips. One hand is wrapped in suit-glove, but the other loses skin as I fight for friction. Jesus Christ, Christa Isabella and all the fucking second-volume saints, it hurts. I snag a fingernail and almost tear it loose, but it buys me grip, and the pain earns my head a second in the clear. One foot on the deck, boot locked and muscle-fibres tensing. I haul my weight into the air, but the floor tilts and shadows creep in around the corners. I find a lock on the other sole, bite my tongue to keep myself here and now and the world from turning around me.

I risk a fall to find my helmet—

My flesh and blood.

It closes around me, feeds me familiar smells and animal warmth, but the counter doesn’t move.

00.00

“Where are you?”

The words grate my throat, call thick phlegm up from battered lungs. A shudder travels through me and panic ties knots across my chest. I’ve been cut in half, left a whole body somewhere I can’t see. Worse, I don’t remember the dismount. I don’t remember the break, the last time I felt connected. Fear turns me around, makes me howl.

WHERE ARE YOU?

“Easy,” from nearby, but I can’t see the source.

My eyes are full of sparks. My head swims.

“Easy,” again, and a hand around my shoulder. “Crash protocol,” this to my suit, quiet but clear. “Technician override, confirm voice sample and ID; NHC-782-081. I have authority to work this suit. Call out.”

“Override confirmed,” says the speaker built into the outside of the helmet.

“Good. Let her down slowly.”