Pete was lying in the darkness of his cot, weightless.

He thought of the passengers around him. They would all be frightened. No doubt of that—he himself was scared as hell. His whole world would be destroyed. Nothing would remain as it was.

And all of this because of Ralph.

A faint rumbling permeated his cot and made it vibrate. Something pushed him against the soft wall—the padded wall at the side of the cot, not the mattress on which he usually slept.

He groped through the blackness, trying to steady itself.

The vibrations gained strength. A thud from outside told him that something had toppled or collapsed.

Hope wasn't prepared for this. They were not ready.

They would burn and crash.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to slow his breathing and listened to the air as it entered its lungs and left it. He could not give in to fear now. He owed that to the other passengers. If they emerged from their cots, they would need a leader. And a leader must not be ruled by fear.

He thought back to a time when he had been with Ralph, one of their better moments together. Ralph had taken him out in one of the pods, those pods that Sophia now had jettisoned. When they had left the ship and were floating into the black void beyond, he had seen Hope, from the outside, in the light of the then still distant sun. The ship had been massive and endless, but as they gained distance, it started to dwindle, and fear took hold of Pete. A fear born from being helpless, from being a piece of cargo, and from not understanding the workings of the things around him. The time until their return to Hope had been endless. But when they finally docked, and Pete emerged from the pod, entering the dock room, he felt a strange exhilaration within him. He had survived and was back in control.

He needed to reach out for the exhilaration he had felt back then, after his return from the trip in the pod.

The thrumming grew stronger, and so did the strength of the invisible hand that pressed him against the cot's wall.