06:54, Firstsol 7th M6, 2226

Workers hurry through the market district, keen to avoid the eyes of patrolling wardens after the previous sol's riots. A mist descends from geodesic heaven, shrouding hovs and alleyways in a cloying haze. Jaya drops into a crouch behind a green hov and beckons me to scuttle out of the foetid alley that I'm hiding in.

I join her at the hov, tugging at my borrowed steel-grey shirt with trembling fingers. Thankfully Daiyu wears her clothes loose, yet her superintendent's uniform suddenly feels uncomfortably tight, like it's shrunken onto me. "Who's ever heard of a twenty-five-year-old superintendent? Nobody will believe us."

"All they'll see is two wardens. Trust me." Jaya adjust my medals with reverence, careful not to catch exposed skin. "Daiyu will love seeing you like this."

With that, they strut up to the glass door of the Kida Building. When the iris scanner flashes in red, they rap furiously on the glass.

May the Goddess give me even a tenth of Jaya's courage.

An azalea-pink receptionist activates the door, letting Jaya sweep into the foyer. "We would like to talk to Megumi Kida."

The receptionist tilts her head and offers us a keep warm smile. "I'm sorry but the CEO of Kida Biotech is currently in important meetings. You can leave her a message."

"The Warden Station received incriminating images and PCR files yesterday, collected from Kida Biotech."

The receptionist's smile remains, though her eyes lose focus and she whispers apologies to whomever in her lenses is roundly berating her for letting wardens in.

A guard emerges from the atrium and saunters to the reception desk. "Kida-sama is busy today. I'll ensure that any files are returned to her."

"In that case, we'll show these files to the Governor-General." Jaya turns on their heel and marches back across the foyer. I scamper after them looking like the most sheepish superintendent to have ever darkened the doors of the Warden Station.

"You can't because the Governor-General is here, in meetings with—" The guard pauses, their forehead corrugating in realisation that they've just divulged information about the meeting to plan Pluto's meatware trials.

Jaya's restraint belies the vengeful fire in their eyes. "We merely want to discuss this delicate matter to ascertain the extent of Kida Biotech's data breach. For all we know, the contents of this data key might have been sent to governors' offices on Pluto or Makemake."

The guard beckons us along an atrium corridor to a lift that emerges in the dark labyrinth of Kida's underground laboratories and warehouses; the belly beneath the crown of brick and glass. They hold open the door to an ornate meeting room, when Jaya pounces.

One hand slapped across the guard's mouth, the other twisting an azalea-clad arm painfully backwards, Jaya bundles the guard along the corridor. I trail after them, my heart beating in my throat as Jaya slams the guard's head against iris scanner after iris scanner until we reach the main lab.

Jaya whisks the guard through the door before pummelling their forehead against a steel wall. They slither to the floor, unconscious. 

"Where's Daiyu?" Workers mill around the room to the tinkle of stirrers on hotplates, startled by the calamity. They look at Jaya with unseeing eyes before returning to their menial work.

"She was in this lab when I came here with Shiro. She'll be around."

A grasping hand pushes aside an azalea-pink curtain and a worker stumbles out of the surgical theatre section of the lab, pawing at a stitched gash in their scalp. They sit at a bench in silence, a new automaton.

Jaya near-rips the curtains aside and storms into the surgery area. Five of the stretchers are empty. On the sixth lies a man.

My love. Seemingly asleep, possibly comatose, still Shiro shines brighter than the sun.

Jaya leans over Shiro and prods a finger to his neck, searching for a pulse. "He's alive. Barely."

The lack of feeding tube or monitoring equipment sends me into a panic; either Shiro is not in a coma or he's been dumped here to expire. Shy is crumpled on the floor next to the stretcher, a section of her hair crudely shaved and sporting a trail of ugly stitches. She looks up at me with unfocussed eyes. It takes all of my restraint not to scoop Shiro into my arms.

A cry from beyond the surgery alcove has me whipping around. Jaya is on the ground, squirming underneath the azalea guard, now fully conscious and punching Jaya's face with unmitigated glee. 

I throw myself towards them but a gloved hand catches my uniform from behind. Another guard has appeared, and another hoves into my peripheral vision. Guards pile into the lab in a flood of azalea-pink.

Shiro lies on a stretcher, his sister curled in a ball next to him. Daiyu is lost forever. Jaya sobs as gloved guards pin them to the lab floor. 

It's over. 

I gaze at Shiro's sleeping form. Goodbye, my love.

A crepitation. 

A high-pitched whistling. 

Then, a sickening boom tears through the air.

The building shakes, sending us all toppling. Earsplitting roaring rends the air around us. My ears ring with the noise.

Guards fly backwards and bounce against the lab walls in a splash of pink. Glassware tumbles and shatters. Chips of recycrete dust rain down on us.

An explosion.

Another rumble jolts us, sending guards scattering again. The lab's iris scanners wink green.

Now or never.

My ears throbbing, I drag Shy up by her shirt and ram the stretcher through a cluster of panic-stricken guards, whisking Shy after me.

Jaya follows hard on my heels, slamming open door after door until they find another lab. They toss me the data key. I can barely hear them for the ringing in my ears, but I make out the words: "I'm getting Daiyu out."

I stow the data key in my sock, words of thanks trapped by the lump my throat. I offer Jaya a teary smile and hurry along the debris-strewn corridor towards the foyer, and the safety of Eris-1's streets beyond.

Except the foyer is no longer there.

A yawning gap opens up before me. An explosion has taken out the entire atrium. Caving walls and twisted steel are all that remain of the magnificent brick-and-glass ground floor. Sections of the building's vast underground maze peeks up through clouds of dust. Isamu Kida's glorious facade is now a pile of rubble exposing the dull recycrete and steel underneath.

I whirl around searching for guards but they've long-vanished, keen to evade wardens now that the entire building is prised open for all of Eris to explore. Meg is nowhere to be seen. The Governor-General of Eris emerges coughing out of the haze, an arm wrapped around a stricken-looking lady whom I assume is the governor from Earth. 

Someone climbs out from behind a steel girder and joins them. Ying.

I realise it then. The only people on Eris with explosives are the mining companies. Could Ying have been moved by our pleas enough to sabotage the Earth governor's meeting?

Ying has evidently blown up Kida Biotech whilst representing IndoChina Mining in meatware trials. Perhaps she'll pledge loyalty to whomever is victorious, or perhaps this is the only way that she can safely extricate herself from this conspiracy.

Screams echo from the street beyond the shattered shell of the Kida building. Sultry city air suddenly whips up into a hot wind: Eris-1's air supply, thermoregulators and filters are inexplicably working in overdrive. The Earth governor begins to screech in Ying's arms, pointing up to Eris-1's geodesic dome. Ying too looks up at the sky, her face white with dread. My eyes follow hers.

The pale blue sky of the city's protective dome now has a gaping hole in the middle. I'm gazing not at the sunlight-mimicking luminaires of the dome, but at the stars of Eris's eternal night pricking the fabric of space. My heart tumbles in my chest.

The explosion has punctured a section of Eris-1's main dome directly above the Kida Biotech building. The city's precious heat and air is leaking out through the hole and into the Edge.

The dome alarms begin to ring out, sending residents scattering. Screams cascade around me. The streets beyond the building's wreckage are suddenly awash with helmetted wardens shepherding people into pods to wrestle on counterpressure suits.

A dusty apparition stumbles out of the rubble towards me. Meg dusts off her shirt and scrambles towards Shiro's stretcher, her trousers flapping to reveal a scarlet gash from ankle to thigh. "My family belongs here."

A single loyal guard appears and flanks her, masked and begloved. Another materialises out of the dust. I consider shunting Shiro's stretcher into the chaos of the streets to escape Meg, but I need to get him into a suit before the air supply of the city's dome finally dies. My only choice is to retreat into the innards of the Kida building to find airtanks, and hope that Meg won't risk her life following me. I nudge at Shy to follow, and plunge Shiro's stretcher back into the clouds of dust and creaking recycrete, praying that Shy and Shiro aren't crushed by falling debris as we flee.

Each corridor leading off from the atrium is blocked by rubble until we reach the final one, a dim and dust-strewn warehouse that reeks of ammonia, but must certainly contain counterpressure suits and airtanks. I stop dead on the threshold; Meg would never locate a warehouse on the ground floor; she's usually keen to keep the sight and smell of Kida's industries underground in the darkness. We teeter in the doorway until the stomp of approaching boots drives us inside.

It's only when I set my lenses to night vision that the room is revealed to be a hangar. Given the acrid stench that charges the air, some of the ammonia cannisters lining the hangar's far walls must have been punctured by the blast.

A set of three neat azalea-pink squids — light spacecraft for the elite of Eris to journey between the Dwarf's six cities — sit ready in the hangar. Aside from a layer of dust and a few nasty gashes in the pink paintwork, the explosion seems to have left them unscathed.

Ever full of love despite her mind being bound by worker worms, Shy is already bundling Shiro into one of the pink squids. I bound after her and help her to settle Shiro inside, scarcely daring to touch his clothes lest I send him into a coma. The squid is made for two slim passengers, and the three of us struggle to squash inside.

But we're too late.

Three of Meg's masked guards crash into the hanger, pulsers raised. Meg limps along behind them trailing a red leg.

I pat my pockets, finding nothing but Shiro's shade pen and Jaya's broken pulser collimator. With no choice but to raise them in imitation of a pulser, I leave our fate in the Goddess's hands. 

Meg titters into a sodden red sleeve. "Your pulser waves will cancel out ours. But we have more."

I swivel my non-pulser towards the fuel canisters lining the hangar's back wall. Meg would never risk me igniting the leaked ammonia, sending the entire hangar to the heavens. Despite my trembling hands I try to speak with Shiro's voice, all fluid confidence that teases hidden knowledge. "Then it looks like I'll have to brighten up the Earth governor's undoubtedly successful visit with a second explosion."

Meg raises a hand motioning the guards to ease their aim. They don't lower their pulsers, but stand wary.

"Run to Eris-3 if you want. My people will find you, like they always found Shiro."

"We're not going to Eris-3." I clutch at my fake pulser with quivering hands, too afraid to even hide the fact that it's merely a shade pen, but it seems that Meg is truly convinced. "We're getting off Eris. You'll never find us."

Meg laughs so heartily that my nerves begin to waver. "You think that a squid can take you through the Pinhole to another Dwarf? If Spaceport Customs haven't shot you out of the sky by then, the squid's hull isn't even insulated. You'll freeze to death in the Pinhole."

Meg's chuckles ring out across the hangar. Her guards join in for good measure.

Unsure how it has breached the membrane of terror enclosing my mind, a sweet memory slides into my thoughts unbidden. Shiro and I on the 'porter, shade-brained and on the brink of love and death. He looks at me with hopeful shade-eyes, and I quip, "Freezing to death is better than Eris." Despite it being only ten sols old, our love feels like the most ancient of bonds.

We won't make it to Pluto. We won't claim refugee status. Shy won't get access to a bionics lab to work on a cure. But it doesn't matter now. After forty years Kida Biotech is finally falling apart. In ten sols Shiro has made my wretched parasite life new and shining and brilliant. I'm reborn, and together we've begun to illuminate the darkness of Eris.

I set the squid door to close and compress, the non-pulser trained on the line of ammonia cannisters until the door snaps shut. Meg and her guards watch in horror, not daring to fire.

Wishing that I had Shiro's hacking skills, I jab clumsily at the pink squid's controls, directing it out of the hangar and into the punctured dome of the city. The Spaceport lies a few kilometres to the south, dotted by little domes housing hotels and fuel stations, and beyond it the absolute blackness of the Pinhole hangs in Eris's starry ever-night, surrounded by a gravitational lens-halo of pure white.

An alert from Spaceport Customs appears in the console display. I prepare for Customs to open fire on us, but the message simply reads: "Respected, you are out of the designated Spaceport traffic zone. Please return within Spaceport traffic limits."

Of course Meg can go where she pleases with nothing but gentle warnings. It's unlikely that Customs would ever shoot a Kida spacecraft out of the sky, but if we're forced to land, how will I escape Meg with Shiro near-comatose and Shy a heavily pregnant cognitive ghost? If we attempt to reach Pluto through the Pinhole, we're likely to freeze to death, just like on the 'porter. Perhaps this was always the fate for Shiro and me: ten sols of love preserved in ice.

I aim for the black maw of the Pinhole at full speed.

A dark void engulfs us. Broken images of the star-studded backdrop of Eris stretch and twist, then the squid is encircled by a whirring streak of light. We enter a realm beyond physics. 

The temperature plummets and Shy clings to Shiro, pressing her belly against him to shield the baby from cold. Unable to touch my loved ones, I wrap Daiyu's uniform tightly around me and nestle deeper into the squid's seat.

My entire body numbs with a cold so bitter that dread descends on my heart. This is nothing like  the brisk cold I'd experienced on the 'porter with Shiro. I wiggle my toes but they may as well be pebbles in my boots. I'll get frostbite soon. It's so cold that I'm losing the ability to think.

A strange pain in my head begins to throb. The agony sends waves of unconsciousness lapping against my brain. What is this light-headedness? Frostbite? Hypothermia? Am I dying?

Memories flit through the pulp of my mind.

The brick and glass of the Kida Biotech building looming above me. Meg's endless public service announcements in my lenses. Her concerned keep warm smile on every street corner. Jaya punching a poster of Meg into smithereens.

Keep warm.

Meg's mantra to Eris's residents rings clear in my head.

Keep warm.

The pain in my skull becomes unbearable, like my head is about to burst like a balloon. 

Then, a strange lifting feeling. The pain dissipates into the frigid air of the squid. My head is suddenly lighter. 

It's emptier.

Keep warm.

I understand this light feeling now. Nematodes must die when their host gets too cold. Not a sharp twelve-degree 'porter chill, but severe cold whereby the host can no longer regulate its body temperature: a regime of hypothermia, possibly even frostbite.

Meg must have known that the only way to remove meatware was with extreme cold, hence her fearmongering to keep warm at all costs.

There had always been a cure.

I can feel the healing. Perhaps I'm mad from hypothermia, but I swear that my head feels lighter.

Am I no longer a parasite?

The cold has set in too deep, and I can't stay conscious much longer. I press a numb hand to Shy's sleeve. She's conscious, but unresponsive. Afraid to touch her skin, I settle back into the seat, my vision streaming with black.

A frozen hand grips mine. No. I'll drain Shy but I'm too numb with cold to move away from her. But rather than weakening and fainting, she grips my hand tighter, and tighter still. She's no longer an automaton. And I'm not draining her with my touch. 

Are we both free?

It doesn't matter anymore. It will take nine more hours to reach Pluto, and Meg was right: this rattling little squid was truly not built for Pinhole travel to the Dwarfs. Afraid for Shiro, his radiation sickness rendering him too weak to withstand hypothermia, I retreat into my mind, the bright sun of Shiro's love warming my heart as my body shuts down.

My swimming vision tries to focus on the smeared-out lights winking on the squid's console. The destination countdown timer reads 1.2 light-hours remaining until arrival. 

That doesn't make sense. It takes twelve light-hours to get from Eris to Pluto, and we've only been travelling for three. If not Pluto, then which Dwarf are we going to?

The thought barely nucleates in my mind before darkness swallows me.

Earth.