So she remained in the dark and worked to keep her breathing slow and her muscles soft while she imagined sinking through the mattress and into the deck.…

She did all those things, and yet sleep continued to elude her. Words and thoughts could not erase the nearness of danger, and because of it, her body refused to accept the lie of safety—would not relax, would not allow her mind to do anything but keep watch against the fanged creatures that instinct insisted must be lurking in the surrounding shadows.

In a few hours she might be dead. They all might. Finito. Kaput. Done and done. No respawning. No do-overs. Dead.

Kira’s heart began to jackhammer as a slug of adrenaline hit, more potent than any rotgut. She gasped and bolted upright, clutching at her chest. A deep, wounded groan escaped her, and she hunched over, struggling to breathe.

Around her, dark whispering sounded as thousands of needle-sharp spines sprouted from the walls of the cabin.

She didn’t care. None of it mattered, only the ice water pooling in her gut and the pain stabbing at her heart.

Dead. Kira wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not for a long, long, long time. Preferably never. But there was no escaping it. No escaping what tomorrow would bring.…

“Gaaah!”

She was afraid, more afraid than she’d ever been. And what made it worse was knowing that there was nothing that could fix the situation. Everyone in the Wallfish was strapped to an express rocket heading straight toward their doom, and there was no getting off early unless they wanted to grab a blaster and put it against their temples, pull the trigger, and ride the short trip to oblivion.

Had Gregorovich’s dark dreams infected her mind? Kira didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered—not really—except the terrifying pit yawning before her.

Unable to hold still any longer, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. If only Gregorovich were there to message with. He would understand.

She shivered and sent a thought to the Soft Blade that activated the light-producing nodules along the corners of the room. A dim green glow brightened the bristling space.

Kira gulped for air, struggling to get enough. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about. Don’t … She let her gaze roam across the room in an attempt to distract herself.

The scratch on the surface of the desk caught her eye, the scratch she’d put there when she’d first tried to force the Soft Blade off her body. That had been, what, her second day on the Wallfish? Her third?

It didn’t matter.

Cold pinpricks of sweat sprang up on her face. She hugged herself, feeling chilled in a way no external warmth could correct.

She didn’t want to be alone, not then. She needed to see another person, to hear their voice, to be comforted by the nearness of their presence and to know that she wasn’t the only speck of consciousness facing the void. It wasn’t a matter of logic or philosophy—Kira knew they were doing the right thing by helping the Knot of Minds—but rather animal instinct. Logic only took you so far. Sometimes the cure to the dark was to find another flame burning bright.