by Amie Kaufman
Okay, now imagine one corner of that paper is where you’re sitting. And the opposite corner is alllll the way over on the other side of the galaxy. Even burning at the speed of light, it’d take you one hundred thousand years to trek it.
But what happens when you fold the paper in half? Those corners are touching now, right? One thousand centuries of travel just became a stroll to the end of the street. The impossible just became possible.
That’s what the Fold lets us do.
Thing is, impossible always comes with a price.
Dad would tell us horror stories about it. The storms that spring up out of nowhere, closing off whole sections of space. The early exploration vessels that just disappeared. That breath-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling of never being alone.
Turns out the effect of Fold travel on sentient minds grows worse the older you get. They don’t recommend it for anyone over twenty-five without being frozen first. I get seven years in the Legion, and after that, I’ll be flying a desk the rest of my life.
But right now, it’s a little over an hour ago and I’m flying my Phantom. Crossing the seas between stars in minutes. Watching those suns blur and the space between them ripple and distance become meaningless. But still, I’m starting to feel it. That breath on the back of my neck. The voices, just out of earshot.
I’ve been in here long enough.
The Draft is tomorrow.
I should be getting my zees.
Maker, what am I even doing out here?
I’m prepping a course back to Aurora Academy when the message appears on my viewscreen. Repeating. Automated.
SOS.
My stomach drops as I watch those three letters flash on my display. The Aurora Legion’s charter says all ships are duty-bound to investigate a distress call, but my sweep detects a FoldStorm near the SOS’s origin that’s about four million klicks wide.
And then my computer translates the distress call’s ident code.
IDENT: TERRAN VESSEL, ARK-CLASS.
DESIGNATION: HADFIELD.
“Can’t be…,” I whisper.
Everyone knows about the Hadfield disaster. Back in Earth’s early days of expansion, the whole ship disappeared in the Fold. The tragedy ended the age of corporate space exploration. Nearly ten thousand colonists died.
And that’s when my computer flashes a message on my display.
ALERT: BIOSIGN DETECTED. SINGLE SURVIVOR.
REPEAT: SINGLE SURVIVOR.
“Maker’s breath…,” I whisper.
* * *
• • • • •
“Maker’s breath!” I shout.
Another arc of quantum lightning rips the Hadfield’s hull, just a few meters shy of my head. There’s no atmo and my ears are full of liquid anyway, so I can’t hear the metal vaporizing. But my gut flips, and the water filling my helmet suddenly tastes like salt. It’s covering my mouth now—only my right eye and nose are still dry.
It had taken me a while to find her. Trawling through the Hadfield’s lightless innards as the FoldStorm rushed ever closer, past thousands of cryopods filled with thousands of corpses. There was no sign of what killed them, or why a single girl among them had been left alive. But finally, there she was. Curled up in her pod, eyes closed as if she’d just drifted off. Sleeping Beauty.
She’s still sleeping now, as the tremors throw me into the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of me. The water in my helmet sloshes about, and I accidently inhale, choking and gasping. I’ve got maybe two minutes till I drown. And so I just drag the breather tube out of her throat, rip the IV lines out of her arms, watch her blood crystallize in the vacuum. The whole time, she doesn’t move. But she’s frowning, as if she’s still lost somewhere in that bad dream.
Starting to know the feeling.
The blob of water covers both my eyes now. Closing in on my nostrils from both sides. I squint through the blur, hold her close and kick against the bulkhead. We’re both weightless, but between the Hadfield’s tremors and the water near blinding me, it’s almost impossible to control our trajectory. We crash into a cluster of pods, full of corpses long dead.
I wonder how many of them she knew.
Bouncing off the far wall, my fingers scrabble for purchase. The belly of this ship is a twisted snarl, hundreds of chambers packed with pods. But I aced my zero-grav orienteering exam. I know exactly where we need to go. Exactly how to get back to the Hadfield’s docking bay and my Phantom waiting inside it.
Except then the water closes over my nose.
And I can’t breathe anymore.
Which might sound bad, I know…
Okay, it really is bad.
But not being able to breathe means I don’t need my oxygen supply anymore, either. And so I aim myself at the corridor leading away from cryo. Reaching to the back of my spacesuit, I find the right set of cables and rip them loose. And with a burst of escaping O2 acting like a tiny jet propulsion unit, we’re flying.
I’m holding the girl tight to my chest. Guiding us with my free hand, squinting through the water filling my helmet. My lungs are burning. Lightning shears through the wall, carving the titanium like butter. The ship shudders and we bounce off walls and consoles, my boots kicking, somehow keeping us on course.
Out.
Away.
We’re in the docks now, my Phantom sitting on the far side, just a dark blur in my underwater vision. Vast, swirling clouds of the FoldStorm wait just outside the bay doors. Black lightning in the air. Black spots in my eyes. The whole galaxy underwater. I’m almost deaf. Almost blind. One thought building in my mind.
We’re still too far from the ship.
At least two hundred meters. Any second now, my respiratory reflex is gonna buck and I’m gonna inhale a lungful of water, and within sight of salvation, I’m gonna die.
We’re both gonna die.
Maker, help us.
Lightning crashes. My lungs are screaming. Heart screaming. The whole Milky Way, screaming. I close my eyes. Think of my sister. Pray she’ll be okay. There’s a rush of vertigo. And then I feel it under my hand. Metal. Familiar.
What the…?
I open my eyes and there we are, floating right beside my Phantom. The entry hatch under my fingertips. It’s impossible. There’s no way I—
No time for questions, Tyler.
I tear the hatch open, drag the pair of us inside, and slam it closed. As the tiny airlock fills with O2, I rip my helmet loose and paw the water from my face, breath exploding from my lungs. I’m curled over, floating, gasping, dragging great heaving lungfuls of air into my chest. The black spots burst in my eyes. The Hadfield rocks and lurches, tossing my Phantom about in its docking brackets.
You’ve got to move, Tyler.
MOVE, DAMN YOU.
I claw open the airlock, pull myself into the pilot’s chair. Lungs still aching, tears streaming from my eyes. I slap at the launch controls, hit the burners before the couplings are even loose, blast out of the Hadfield’s belly like my tail is on fire.
The FoldStorm swells and rolls behind us, my sensors all in the redline. The thrust pushes me back in my chair, gravity pressing hard on my chest as we accelerate away. Oxygen-starved already, it’s more than I can take.
I manage to activate my distress signal with shaking hands. And then I’m sinking. Down into the white behind my eyes. The same color as those stars, twinkling out there in all that endless black.
And my last thought before I pass out completely?
It’s not that I just saved someone’s life or that I have no idea how we covered the last two hundred meters back to my Phantom’s airlock or that the both of us should most definitely be dead.
It’s that I’m gonna miss the Draft.
I’m made of concrete. My body’s carved from a solid block of stone, a
nd I can’t move a muscle.
And this is the only thing I know. That I can’t move.
I don’t know my name. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I can’t see or hear, taste or smell or sense anything.
And then there’s…input. But like when you’re falling and you can’t tell which way is up or down, or when a jet of water hits you and you can’t tell if it’s hot or cold, now I can’t tell if I’m hearing, or seeing, or feeling. I just know there’s something I can sense that I couldn’t sense before, so I wait, impatiently, to see what happens next.
“Please, ma’am, just let me have my uniglass, I could tune in to the Draft remotely from here. I might be able to catch the last few rounds, even if I can just—”
It’s a boy’s voice, and in a rush I understand the words, though I don’t know what he’s talking about—but there’s a note of desperation in his tone that kicks up my pulse in response.
“You have to understand how important this is.”
* * *
• • • • •
“You have to understand how important this is, Aurora.” It’s my mom’s voice, and she’s standing behind me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “This is going to change everything.”
We’re in front of a window, wisps of cloud or smog visible on the other side of the thick glass. I lean forward to rest my forehead against it, and when I look down, I know where I am. Far below, there’s a glimpse of muddy green. Central Park, with its brown patchwork quilt, the roofs of the shantytowns and the little fields carved out by its residents, the gray brown of water beside it.
We’re on West Eighty-Ninth Street, at the headquarters of Ad Astra Incorporated, my parents’ employer. We’re at the launch of the Octavia III expedition. My parents wanted us to understand why they were going. Why we were looking ahead to a year of boarding school, breaks spent stranded with friends. This was about two months before they told Mom she was bumped from the mission.
Before Dad told her he was going without her.
Then, as I watch, the trees of Central Park start to grow, shooting up like Jack’s magic beanstalk. In seconds they’re the height of the skyscrapers all around them. Vines leap across to twine around our building in fast-forward. They squeeze like boa constrictors, and the plaster on the walls starts to crack, fine dust drifting from the ceiling.
Blue flakes fall from the sky like snow.
But this part of the memory never happened, and the sight is painful—unwelcome and unpleasant in a way I can’t put my finger on. I shy away from it, shove myself free of it, stumbling back toward consciousness.
Back toward the light.
* * *
• • • • •
The light is bright and the boy is still talking, and as I return to the confines of my body, I remember my name. I am Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley.
No, wait. I’m Auri O’Malley. That’s better. That’s me.
And I definitely have a body. This is good. This is progress.
My senses of taste and smell are back, and I’m immediately wishing they weren’t. Because holy cake, my mouth tastes like two somethings crawled in there, fought a battle to the death, and then decomposed.
There’s a woman’s voice now, from farther away. “Your sister will be here soon, if you’ll just wait.”
The boy again: “Scarlett’s coming? Maker’s breath, is the graduation ceremony over already? How much longer do I have to wait?”
* * *
• • • • •
How much longer do I have to wait?
I’m in a vidchat with my dad, and that’s the question doing laps around my brain. The uplink delay is dragging on my very last nerve, the broadcast system making me wait a couple of minutes before my replies reach him on Octavia, a couple more before his bounce back.
But Dad’s got Patrice sitting beside him, and there’s no reason she’d be here except to break the news herself. I think I’m about to hear that the wait that has dominated my life for two years is nearly over. I think that all the work I’ve put in is about to pay off, that I’m about to be told I’m slated for the third mission to Octavia.
Today’s my seventeenth birthday, and I can’t think of a better present in all of time and space.
Patrice hasn’t spoken yet, though, and Dad’s rambling on about other stuff, grinning like his Megastakes numbers came in. His tent is gone—they’re sitting in front of an actual wall, with a real live window and everything, so I know the colony must really be progressing. On Dad’s lap is one of the chimpanzees he works with as part of the Octavia bio program. When my sister and I misbehave, he teases us by calling them his favorite children.
“My adopted family is very well,” he laughs, petting the animal. “But I’m looking forward to having at least one of my girls here in person.”
“So will it be soon?” I ask, unable to hold the question in any longer.
I groan inwardly, tipping my head back and resigning myself to a four-minute wait for a reply. But my heart drops when I see my question finally arrive at their end. Dad’s still smiling, but Patrice looks…nervous? Worried?
“It’ll be soon, Jie-Lin,” my father promises. “But…we’re calling about something else today.”
…Wait, did he actually remember my birthday?
He’s still smiling, and he lifts his hand up into view on the screen.
Mothercustard, he’s holding Patrice’s hand….
“Patrice and I have been spending a lot of time together lately,” he says. “And we’ve decided it’s time to make things a little more official and share quarters. So it’ll be the three of us when you arrive.” He keeps talking, but I’m barely listening. “I thought you could bring rice flour when you come. And tapioca starch. I want us to have just one meal that didn’t come from the synth to celebrate being together again. I’ll make you rice noodles.”
It takes me a moment to realize he’s done, that he’s waiting for my reply. I’m looking at the pair of them, their hands interlocked, Dad’s hopeful smile and Patrice’s pained grin. Thinking of my mom and trying to process what this will mean.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I finally say. “You want me to…celebrate?”
Arguing back and forth with a four-minute delay doesn’t really work, so I keep my transmission on. Saying everything I need to before he gets a chance to answer.
“Look, I’m sorry you have to hear this, Patrice, but obviously Dad wasn’t considerate enough to tell me in private.” I turn my stare onto my father, my finger pressing the Transmit button so hard my knuckle turns white. “First off, thanks for the birthday wishes, Dad. Thanks for the congratulations about winning All-States again. Thanks for remembering to message Callie about her recital, which she nailed, by the way. But most of all, thanks for this. Mom couldn’t get clearance for Octavia, so what…you just replaced her? You’re not even divorced yet!”
I don’t wait to hear their delayed reply. I don’t want to hear new versions of the same old excuses or apologies. I stab a button to kill the transmission. But before I can rise from my seat, the frozen image of the two of them wavers.
I see a flash of light.
It’s so bright, the whole world burns to white. And as I squint against it, put my hands out in front of me, I realize I can’t see anymore.
I can’t see.
* * *
• • • • •
I can see.
I’m lying on my back, and I can see the ceiling. It’s white, and there are cables snaking across it, and somewhere above me is a light that hurts my eyes. I hold up my hands in front of it like I did in my dream, almost surprised I can see my fingers.
But weird dreams aside, I have my name now. And I remember my family. I was part of the third shipment of colonists to Octavia III. Progress!
Maybe I’m on
Octavia now, and this is cryo recovery?
I stare up at the ceiling, eyes half-closed against the light. I can feel more memories hovering just out of reach. Maybe if I pretend I’m looking this way, away from them, they’ll come creeping out. And then I can pounce.
So I focus on something else and decide to try and turn my head. I pick left, because I think that’s where the guy’s voice is coming from. I feel like one of those strongmen you see in vids trying to tow a whole loader drone by hand as I strain against the inertia, putting every atom of myself into the effort. It’s the weirdest sensation—immeasurable exertion without feeling a thing.
I’m rewarded with a view of a glass wall, frosted to about waist height. The guy’s on the other side of it, pacing like a caged animal.
My brain goes haywire, trying to process too much information at once.
Fact: He’s hot as all get-out. Like, chiseled jaw, tousled blond hair, brooding stare with a perfect little scar through his right eyebrow, this-is-just-ridiculous hot. This fact takes up quite a bit of my mental real estate.
Fact: He’s not wearing a shirt. This is now making a play for Most Important Fact and currently seems very relevant to my interests.
Whatever those are.
Wherever I am.
But wait, wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen and everyone both otherwise or in between. We have a new contender for Fact of the Century. All other facts, please step aside.
Fact: Though the frosted glass obscures all the interesting details, there can be no doubt about it. My mystery man is not currently in possession of pants.
This day is looking up.
He frowns, making the very most of that scarred eyebrow.
“This is taking forever,” he says.
* * *
• • • • •
“This is taking forever.”
The man in front of me is whining again. We’re lining up for cryo, hundreds of us, and the place smells like industrial-strength bleach. There are butterflies in my stomach, but they’re not nerves—they’re excitement. I’ve trained for this for years. I fought tooth and nail for my apprenticeship. I’ve earned this moment.