As Bor-Yann approaches, Nuna releases me a centimeter at a time. She hovers around my shoulder, her body rigid as if preparing to jump between me and a bullet.

Filthy with black patches of ash covering his red atmosphere suit, Bor-Yann storms over, ripping his helmet from his head and throwing it to the floor. He stands only a little taller than Moon, but somehow doesn't seem nearly as imposing as my dark captain.

For a fraction of a second, I'm impressed by Moon's stance and the power he commands. There's nothing that would outwardly be impressive—with his arms crossed over his chest, his long black hair falling over his eyes, his black gloves tucked under his elbows and his black coat heavy on his body, he exudes calm. But there's more to him than calm. A fierceness I can't identify the power's source, but it radiates from him like heat waves from the lava. It's a glow that beams from him or maybe an forcefield surrounding his body. Regardless, he's a different man—a different species—than the drunk I nearly slugged when I was at the bar at the beautiful, peaceful port a million years ago.

Moon holds his ground against Bor-Yann who snarls, curling back his lips and showing his front row of tiny, sharp teeth.

Teeth that look perfectly suited for tearing apart my flesh.

Modeling Moon, I push aside my fear and replace it with rage. Rage has always been my great motivator. Why stop now?

"A deal isha deal," Bor-Yann whistles in English. His words wheeze through his hundreds of teeth, distorting our language into something acutely recognizable. He points a long, knobby finger at me. "Mine."

Nuna presses her front against my back and leans toward my neck. "Survive," she whispers, her lips inches from my ear. "It is what we do."

Bor-Yann shoves Nuna aside and clamps a wide, black device around my wrist. He pulls my other hand up to trap it in the contraption's grasp. He tightens it, forcing my wrists to cross over my chest.

There's nothing to fear here. I'm still alive. I'm filled with hatred for the thing brushing its rubbery skin against my hands. I turn to Nuna and, for the first time in what feels like forever, I smirk. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

I imagine hearing this would give her some peace of mind—I want to let her know that I'm not scared and I can handle this on my own, but instead of keeping her cool, she bursts into loud, wailing tears.

"No! Janika!" She screams, turning from me to my captor. "Bor-Yann, she is so new to the universe, do not take her from us. What else can we give? We will barter anything."

Bor-Yann pauses. Slowly twisting his body until he faces Moon, he grins his malevolent grin. "Any-shing?"

"You already get our payload, Bor-Yann. We don't have much else to give you right now. But if you'll be patient—"

Bor-Yann sticks his nose high in the air. "Pah. If I let her go, you will dish-appear. Pah!"

"Please, Bor-Yann." Nuna stumbles forward, holding his disproportionately tiny hands between hers. "Take me instead."

He shoves her away again and turns to Moon, squeaking in his native language.

"We understand," Moon says, translating for us. "She is the marketplace instigator. Her hide is worth more than the payload, Nuna or me combined."

I roll my eyes. "If I'm worth so much, why waste it on eating me?"

Bor-Yann tugs on my restraints, dragging me closer to him. "Food should be digesh-ted, not heard."

I lean away, avoiding direct contact with his meaty breath. "I don't go down easy."

Nuna loses it. She covers her mouth with her hands and sobs into them, fat tears wetting her gloves.

I gingerly close in on Nuna, terrified by her sudden breakdown. The usually composed woman's perfect calm is gone and replaced with this wreckage. Her sobs stem from her core, her body clenching as her haunting wails pierce the heat. Having comforted Simon, Saguro—that little shit—and a select few others in my past, I mold my body around her. Even if I'm the one headed off to be eaten, I hold her chin and lift her gaze to mine in my awkward restraints. It's going to be okay, I want to say. I'm not worried and you shouldn't be either. But before I can utter a single noise, she throws her body against mine, wraps her hands around my face, and kisses me.

I'm too stunned to move.

Her lips against my lips melt my rigid shock. The pressure of human heat against me transforms my blood to lava. It's molten and thick, lapping at my gut. She clutches me to her and opens her mouth, prying mine open with her tongue.

My brain shuts down.

I open my mouth and kiss her back.

Something small and flat passes between our lips. My eyes shoot open. The tiny object fits perfectly against my cheek. It melts into my gums, fizzing, adding to the electric heat flaring between us in this spectacle for Bor-Yann and Moon and the entire panel of race officials and whoever the hell else might be tuning in. It dissolves in my mouth, leaving a stinging metallic taste.

"Nuna, that's enough," Moon puts a hand on her shoulder.

She cups my face.

Through the tears, her eyes glint with mischief. She closes them, and leans in, kissing me one more time. It's a gentle brush. It's so soft, I barely realize it's happening until she's already gone. I lean forward to follow those delicious lips, but Bor-Yann jerks me closer to him.

He chuffs at Moon and leads me away. The asshole is a lot stronger than I thought he'd be. The bubbling lava tunnel gurgles behind us as he drags me toward Moon's payload that seems to be newly decorated in streaks of bright blue, brown, and red. The festive vehicle's backdoor swings open when Bor-Yann approaches.

Inside the cargo hold are at least fifty enormous, plump, slugs. Their bulbous bodies, fattest around the middle, ooze neon blue slime out both ends. The cabin is covered in it, coating the floor and parts of the walls.

I shrink away from the hoard of slugs. "I'm sitting up front with you."

He shoves me in and shuts the door when I stumble forward.

If it wasn't for the vibrant glow of the fat worms, I would have been encased in the windowless black of the cargo-hold.

By now, I should be totally comfortable with goo and darkness. Spending months with the Xani, basically living in their guts, there's no reason I should be repulsed by my predicament.

There's an uneasiness to the cargo-hold—something isn't right about these creatures. They radiate malice despite not having faces with which to express their feelings. The negative charge dirties the air. It pulses, making my hair stand on end. Finding the only dry corner, I leap to it, avoiding the bigger, thicker puddles of slime. The creatures don't acknowledge me. They slink around my boots shitting streaks of neon blue slop.

The engine rumbles, shaking the cargo. A few slugs that had climbed up the wall fall off and plop into the middle of the larger pile.

We're out. Away. I spend nearly an hour wondering what the terrain will look like when we arrive—what tools I'll have at my disposal when I gut the rat and feed his corpse to these goddamn worms.

A wind-sucking jolt punches me through the belly and I collapse against the wall.

For seconds, I struggle to breathe and worry if we've been shot. Is that Moon and Nuna planning their hostile retrieval? Are the yaks back for more? Has this all been an elaborate rouse to get me back to the marketplace for a higher price?

The scenarios tumble through my mind until my arms and legs rise in weightlessness.

Oh. We traveled on the tracks. I remember this from the few times we did it on ARC10.

This means we're far away. Far, far away from where I left HMS Valediction. Far away from ARC10.

As I settle in again, I wonder how far away I am. In such an enormous galaxy, how will they find me? How will they know where I've gone? Who is coming for me? Who will tell ARC10 what happened?

I'm alone.

The slugs have returned and are struggling to climb up the walls again. I lean left to give them more space.

Rising, my hands still tied in front of my chest, I take stock.

I'm bound, unarmed, and literally in the dark in an unknown location without much hope for backup. I'm surrounded by galactic worms gusging shiny blue sludge through their heads and asses. I have no contact with anyone, and I have to pee.

Shoving myself farther into the corner, I slide down and squeeze my thighs together. "I hope we make it to wherever we're going soon," I tell the worm inching its way up on my right. "For your friends' sake, mostly."

The ship rattles, shaking the slugs from the wall. My conversation partner, who had made it a little farther up past my head, plops back into the pile it had freed itself from. With slow, agonizing precision, it struggles to liberate itself again.

As I watch the ugly thing squirm, a chuckle builds and bursts before I can clamp it down.

I finally get what a "metaphor" is.

This, this heaping pile of slime and alien worm is a metaphor for my life.

"Dean would be so proud," I tell my friend as it begins its tedious trip back up the wall.

I lean back, banging my head against the wall, thinking of nothing else to punctuate the silence. I let the world fizz into static as I stare into the cargo-hold's bulkhead and wait for whatever it is that's coming next. What will knock my cosmic glow-worm from the wall this time?

I close my eyes.

My weary brain can't gather any more images of death and destruction. It's so tired of perpetually digressing into a catastrophe, that I can't even drum up a single new scenario to dwell on. Maybe it's because each bad thing I've lived through has been totally beyond the scope of my imagination. When something bad happens, my doom is something so off-the-wall unexpected, I can't even imagine what's around the corner.

So I will let my brain rest. I let it think of anything it wants.

A light appears.

Normally, I despise the light, but this light is familiar. It's tinted with orange. It's a warm light, one that doesn't remind me of Xani slime or HHP examination tables.

It's the orchard. It's a reconstructed beam of sunlight reflecting off dew-misted trees in the early morning hours of the URE. A large shadow stands beside me.

I close my eyes harder, squeezing my eyelids so tight, the image sharpens and I can make out Dean's shape. I hold on to his silhouette, the hard angles of his jaw and broken nose, the strands of his mousey hair that flop in front of his eyes, the soft curve of his lips above his prominent chin. I order the image to smile. Smile at me. Smile at me because I need to remember who you are, that you will still love me after all of this, even after I almost kissed Nuna and then got kissed by her anyway. Smile at me because it was a mistake and it meant nothing but what he and I have will carry us through our journey through these hundreds of lightyears and beyond.

He smiles. My gut twists.

With my eyes closed, I reach out with both restrained hands as if to touch him, to hold his face in my hand and to run my hand through the hair that's grown out too long.

"I miss you," I say.

He closes his eyes and exhales-releasing that big burst of air that all his problems ride from his body. I can feel his breath on my face, on the tip of my nose and on my lips. He visibly relaxes, touches my hand and leans in until all I see are his hazel eyes.

He parts his lips. Yes. This is what I want. This I all I've ever wanted.

I hold my breath, waiting for my dream to come true.

"Boo."

My eyes shoot open.

Moon's face is in my hand, his nose inches from mine with a sneer as devious as the devil's.

I shove him away and sputter, spitting out the taste of almost kissing him. "What the fuck is your problem?" I wipe my chin with my arm.

"I'm here to save you. Great show of gratitude, by the way."

"I didn't need you to save me. I was handling it."

"Yes, and you were doing a spectacular job. Were you going to kiss Bor-Yann to death?" He pulls a pin from his coat pocket and jams it into a crevice on my restraints. It pops open.

"I was making a plan."

He snorted. "If your plan was to make him gag, choke and die on your romantic performances, that might have worked."

"What I imagine for my motivation is my own business. Keep out." I keep my chin up despite how totally aware I am that my whole face is burning red.

"Fine. But I have one final question." He walks through the pile of grubs, kicking them out of his way as he traverses the cargo-hold. One squeaks and splats as it lands on the other side of the cabin. "Was it Nuna?"

With my newfound affinity for the creatures that symbolize my own disastrous life, I cautiously grab the kicked creature by its middle and place it right side up, apologetic that it is suffering abuse for no reason. "No. It's not Nuna."

He twists to gaze at me over his shoulder and raises the eyebrow over his organic eye. "Was it m—"

"Don't even finish. There is no scenario in the entire codex of scenarios the universe could concoct where that scenario would ever exist. That thought dies now."

"That sentiment is astonishingly mutual." Moon crouches down and examines the seals at the bottom of the cargo hatch, running his black-gloved finger along the seam.

"Wait. How the hell did you get in here?"

"If you weren't dreaming about your lovers, you would have seen me come through the air system. Since there are living creatures as the cargo, they had to adjust the payload ships to include air systems. These things are double-lined acting as one thin airlock."

I shook the shock from my head. Duh. Why hadn't I thought of that? "Yeah, but how did you know where I was?"

"Bacteri-bot trackers." Moon pointed to my face. "Nuna was so kind as to volunteer to deliver them for me."

I pressed my fingers against my lips. The tingle from before, when Nuna had captured my face and my tongue, it was all a setup. That static fizz, that electric current that shot from my mouth to my bones was a gadget and nothing more.

Thank the Heap.

"So how are we busting out of here?" I step through the pile of slugs and inch my way around to where Moon crouches at the doorway. "Anything drastic and we risk losing the payload."

"What makes you think I am one who does "anything drastic"?"

"Because... how else are we going to get out of here?"

"Simple." He stands and spins around, his coat flaring dramatically behind him.

He opens his black jacket and pulls one of the golden rods from his pocket. It snaps, elongating into a full, six-foot spear in a second.

Before I can ask him what his stupid stick is going to accomplish in a closed container, he puts his finger to his mouth and bites the tip of his glove. His hand slides out slowly. Curled smoke unfurls from under the rim and wafts into the cabin, mingling around our heads.

I cough as the thick scent of burnt flesh makes its way to me. I know that smell so well. "What the fuck is—"

I want to finish my statement, but when Moon exposes his hand, his hand that's as red as a glowing ember, I've lost all ability to speak. It radiates heat from his palm, disturbing the air above it, rippling heatwaves around his face. I can't tear my gaze away from his disfigured appendage, but I can barely make out his intense glare in my peripherals.

"Reticulan skin," Moon says. "It's one of my more distinct enhancements."

I fumble with questions. How? Why? When? How? How?

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

I nod. A need to touch it rises, so I cross my arms over my chest and focus back on his face. "How are you doing that?"

"It's a transplant. A long time ago, an evil empress convinced me to make improvements on my weak Earthen body. I have to admit that some have come in... handy." He flexes his fingers and takes hold of the golden spear. The bar in his clutches begins to glow violent red and spreads until the entire spear smolders.

I step back. He is more dangerous now than ever before.

He fishes for something in his pocket and throws it at me. "Here. You'll need this."

The clear, rubbery blob is cool in my hand. "What is it?"

"A bubble. Put it over your mouth and nose."

Tentatively, cautious and definitely suspicious that it might be a trick, I raise it up and push it against my face. It sticks to my skin and expands, forming a dome over my head. It feels like a plastic shield for a helmet. It locks into the rim of my atmosphere suit around my neck.

"Grab a glucker."

"A what?"

"The slug things. Grab one."

The one he kicked is still at my feet. I hoist it up and hold it against my chest, hugging it around its middle. "Glucker secured."

Moon poises his glowing spear above the cabin deck, the spearhead inches from the metal separating us from the dark matter. "Hold on."

"To what?" I squeeze the glucker harder and frantically search for something else to clutch.

He stabs the deck, slicing through the alloy like it's soft cheese.

Nothing.

Adjusting his grip so both hands grab the length of the spear, he swirls it around, cutting an enormous circle through the bottom of the transport.

"Are you insane?" I scream.

Before he answers, I'm jerked hard, feet-first through the hole and into the universe. I blink and am spinning through the vacuum of space. The momentum keeps me spinning, my vision a looping warp of starlight and electric blue blotches. I can't breathe, the spinning presses my lungs and heart against my bones. The glucker might be in my arms, it might not be. It might have been replaced with a boulder, a moon, an entire planet, I don't know but I can't breathe.

Spinning.

Like my nightmares.

Spinning. Spinning out. Spinning away.

Spinning so fast, it doesn't feel like spinning anymore. It's combustion. It's stagnation with the weight of the sun on my chest. The streaks and colors fade to black and when I open my eyes, it's the same.

I'm dying.

This is what it feels like to slip away from consciousness, from life. I gasp for air, but the galaxy presses down on my lungs, choking me.

I didn't think it would end this way. At the hands of an idiot on a rescue mission.

In my head, I laugh. How many times have I had that thought?

My hollow laugh echos through my subconscious.

A black, endless void sparks before my eyes.

From the black, figures of my life emerge. My father, his bald head shining under the flickering bulbs of The Sink, his apron over his neck and his famous hand-made knives in his grasp-Moyra, as she was when she was a little girl, my baby sister, her braids whipping around her head as she gives me her million-watt smile over her shoulder—she ages before my eyes to the woman on ARC10, her eyes and smile as brilliant as before despite the courage radiating through her—Coodi steps up and salutes followed by the rest of my VIPERs—Knuckles folds his arms across his chest and scowls at me, raising one of his bushy gray eyebrows—John clicks his way into my vision, as gentle as I've ever seen him, his head still attached, his mouth wide open and blowing bubbles that pop and dribble into his nostril.

All my friends and family are here.

They're here to see me go. This has never happened before. This must be it. The end.

It's true. When I die, I don't remember my adventures, my acts of courage, or my battles against my enemies.

I can't tell if I'm still spinning, but the pressure in my chest increases. I don't know if it's from my breaking heart or my somersaulting journey into oblivion.

The image dissolves.

All I see now is a hand. His hand. The hand offered to me a million times through my life, the large, calloused, scarred hand I've loved since the moment I met him seventeen years ago but was too chickenshit to say a damn thing. I follow his hand to his large, muscular arm covered in his pristine Tactical Recovery ATACs. His wide, barrel-chest, his chin, his lips, his hazel eyes bursting with warmth and love.

"Dean," I say. The word echoes in my head, through space, through time and all the worlds we've touched together.

He reaches for me.

I reach for him.

He grabs my wrist.

My trajectory snaps in a different direction. I'm whirling around in a huge circumference, the hand holding my wrist keeping me from flinging myself away on a new path to a different quadrant of the galaxy.

"Dean?" My stomach, after such an abrupt change, burps up bile I didn't know I had in it.

"Whatever you do, don't vomit in your bubble."

I open my eyes.

Moon clutches my wrist in his black-gloved hand. We're whipping through the stars, the two of us—three if I count the glucker squeezed in my left arm—with no way to stop our momentum.

If I open my mouth to respond, I will puke. For sure.

I remain passive, tensing my body, squeezing the glucker with all the strength in my arm. Moon holds my wrist tighter. I fear if he holds me any tighter, he'll crack my bone. The only steady image in my vision is him. The rest of it is a black and light-striped blur.

"Brace yourself," he says.

How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I'm already so wound up I could crush rocks with my asscheeks.

He grabs another spear from his jacket, opens it up to its full length, aims, and with a force no human possesses, throws it hard.

As he throws, he pulls me into him and holds me to his chest with the glucker between us.

The force of his throw and the momentum of pulling me shoots us like a bullet in the opposite direction of the spear.

I'm tight against him, my head tucked under his.

I can't see anything but the blue skin below his black collar.

I double-take.

He has scales. Blue scales that reflect starlight as we speed away to wherever we're headed. I never noticed the gold hoop pierced in the top cartilage in his ear. His hand is burning hot at my waist, but the skin of his neck is as cold as marble.

We still speed on. His hair whips wildly around us. Under it, the lines of a scar emerge. It's a series of circles, a complex system of circles like the tracks of orbits around a cluster of suns.

I know those scars. The urge to touch my own flashes through my hand. It's a reprimand. It's a hundred reprimands around an enormous, blackened circle at the center. The circles branch out and form their own galaxies that spread down his neck.

How many times had he seen the inside of a prison? How many times had he been held down and branded like me?

My bile rises again. It bubbles up and sloshes around my mouth like acid fire.

"We're close. Swallow it if you have to."

Seconds later, a shadow appears.

He releases my waist. "Hold on to me."

With one arm around the glucker and the other around his neck, I curl in closer to him until we're cheek to cheek.

He pulls another spear from his coat, thrusts it to its full length, and, biting the tip of his finger and ripping off his glove with his teeth, exposes his smoldering hand. He heats the gold and once it's lava-red, bends the head, making a hook.

Seconds later, the edge of Moon's dropship appears in my peripherals. Using his ember hand, he holds the heated spear over his head and hooks us to his lowered landing gear.

We jostle, but the ship keeps us in place.

An emergency hatch slides open and Nuna appears. She flashes me a sideways grin. "It is wonderful to have you back, Janika."

She grabs my atmosphere suit and hoists me up.

When I'm on the floor dry-heaving, trying to keep the second-attempt vomit in my stomach, Moon pulls himself up and enters the airlock. Once he's in, Nuna shuts it, activates the ship's artificial gravity, and depressurizes us.

Scrambling, I pry the bubble from my head, turn, and spew whatever was left in my gut all over the deck.

"Could you not have waited for me to at least walk to the other side of the airlock so I wouldn't have to step over it?" Moon backed up so the stretch of my vomit wouldn't touch his boots.

Wheezing, I raise my glare to try and burn him with hatred.

He taps the gold plate at his right temple. "Lorn, calm down. Your heart rate is up again. You will have a heart attack before forty if you can't learn to control your vitals."

I spit the taste of acid from my mouth. "If you would have told me you were planning to get us sucked out into space, I would have braced myself, Moon. And I probably wouldn't have gone into minor cardiac arrest when I thought I was going to die alone in space with nothing but a fucking glucker." My screaming echoes in the tiny, pressurized cabin, coming back to make my ears ring. I realize I'm still clutching the grub to my chest. Its head is covered with my puke. I push it away and it slides across the soiled deck. I gag.

Nuna crouches on her haunches and gently rubs my back. "You'll get used to surprises. That will happen often."

"That's not teamwork." I bite back the need to keep purging. When I know my insides are done expelling whatever was in there to begin with, I wipe my mouth and try to sit up. "Where I come from, a team communicates their plans. They don't have to suffer while trying to anticipate what asinine move their captain will make next."

My eyes widen. Or did they? Is this what I did to them when I went rogue?

He scowls. "You're not part of my team. You're my prisoner."

Oh. That's right.

Shrugging Nuna off my back, I rise on shaking, weak legs. "Then I guess I'll report to the brig right away, Captain."

I stumble to the main cabin.

"What my Captain fails to say is that he did not believe you were capable of keeping up with us until this very moment. He is very impressed with your performance and wishes to offer you a position in his crew aboard the HMS Valediction," Nuna says.

"Nuna..." Moon growls so low I almost miss it.

If my near-death experience taught me anything, it's that I need my family. My life is on another ship and I will do anything to return to them. This whole debacle is one chapter of the epic I'll tell my son when I share the story of his rescue—when I catch Dean up on what's been going on these past few years.

I must return to my family.

I look over my shoulder at Nuna and Moon still standing in the airlock with my vomit and a green-coated glucker struggling to squirm through it.

"I said it once. I'll say it again. I'll say it as many times as it takes for you to hear, First Mate Kinnwah. Thanks, but," I wag finger guns at them. "Fuck. No."