“Sir!” one called out across the open atrium. “The lifts aren’t working, and we can’t find a clear way to the bridge.”
“With us,” she shouted, then caught Puck’s eye as they jogged around the wide arc. “We need to cut through crew quarters to the aft ladders. Can you repressurize Novem from here?”
Puck bared his teeth and gave a reluctant hiss. “Technically, no.” But he approached the sealed door anyway, activating the control panel.
She used the reprieve to catch her breath and did a cursory head count as the newcomers joined them—fifteen total, sixteen including Lace. They could still save another four, if they could find anyone. She grimaced as a grating groan of metal roared and shook the ship. A shrill, onerous shriek reverberated through the walls, as if the entire deck might split at the seams. The noise vanished, the heavy silence left in its wake even more unnerving.
“Got it!” Puck called.
A much-needed swell of relief filled Adequin’s chest as the door to Novem slid open. The group of soldiers fell in behind Puck and Mesa, filing into Novem Sector. Adequin started toward the open bulkhead when a deep-seated sense of dread descended, crushing into her chest until her breaths came short and shallow. Her boots gripped the floor less and less, her joints loosening, spine rounding as the pressure slackened until she’d lost touch with the ground entirely. Ahead, concerned shouts rebounded through the group as they were all relieved of weight.
“Sir!” someone shouted, panic lacing their tone.
Adequin craned her neck to look over her shoulder at Bray a few meters behind, reaching forward as he slid backward across the decking away from her.
She pivoted around her center of gravity to face him, but her prior momentum still carried her toward the Novem threshold. She growled, throwing her arms and legs out, frustration tightening her chest as she desperately tried to grab or kick something to propel herself back out. But in the weightlessness, any seam or bar or foothold lining the corridor had become hopelessly out of reach.
Bray’s feet lifted from the deck and he tilted forward as he floated—no, fell—his body horizontal, as if only his gravity had flipped ninety degrees. He shouted as his feet clipped the railing, and he spun into the open air above the atrium, plunging straight across toward the port bow.
Adequin watched in stunned horror as pieces of the vestibule tore free—floor panels, terminal screens, fire-suppression rails, cabling conduits, light banks. Some dropped quickly, others slow, but none slower than Bray who fell away as if sinking through thickened water. The Unum bulkhead door lit with a blaze of colorless light, then—
Adequin blinked. She forced her eyes to refocus, trying to make sense of what’d happened. The wall wasn’t there anymore, but it hadn’t vanished. And there was nothing left in its place. She squinted, trying to force herself to see it, but it was futile.
For a fraction of a second, her mind tried to reject the idea, struggling for an accurate way to conceptualize it. The bulkhead hadn’t been dismantled or disintegrated or vaporized—it just wasn’t. The distinction settled in her bones unsettlingly quick. She inherently understood it, like any other force of nature—if she leapt off a cliff, she would fall; if whatever that was reached her, she would cease to exist.
A billowing suction of air yanked her sideways, then her weight slammed back into her and the deck rushed up. She tucked her chin and jolts shot down her shoulder and spine as she crashed all but headfirst into the grated metal floor, white spots flaring in her vision. She ignored the surge of pain and pushed up to her feet. But before she could take a single step to go after Bray, two sets of hands grabbed her from behind and yanked her through the doorway.
Still falling into the nothing beyond, Bray screamed, reaching toward her. Another flare of white light erupted, overtaking him.
The bulkhead siren blared, and the door slid shut in front of her, cutting off the rush of air. The hissing seal echoed in the dampened silence. Flares of white light burned in the backs of her eyes as she stared, unblinking, at the dull gray metal barrier.