text: Well, no sense in putting it off. You remind yourself that if her story is to be believed, poor, stupid, terrified Matti made this jump not once, but twice, and carrying Markov’s bloody body behind her the second time. Aiming yourself carefully in the direction you want to go, an airlock that leads to the last section of this wing, you use your legs to launch yourself towards it in a single smooth motion. On instinct you’ve angled your body into an aerodynamic shape, legs straight behind and arms stretched out in front of you, although you know it doesn’t really matter. As you sail across the gap, you stare downward into infinity. You feel like you’re flying. You feel like...a bird...
  
  Green grass. The smell of it.
  
  A long blade of green grass, striped by the horizontal bars of sunlight and shadow cast by its fellows. An ant crawls up the blade, in and out of the stripes. Another ant tickles your arm.
  
  New shadows race across the sun. There are silver wings in the distance, and a beautiful white light.
  
  “Look at the birds, Mommy!”
  
  “Zani, get inside!”
  
  The fresh smell of grass is replaced by acrid smoke. Screams and shouts. Muffled explosions in the distance. You are underground, but not deep enough. Boots thud overhead. Your sister is crying. You want to cry too. Everyone is afraid, even the adults. Especially the adults.
  
  “The Order!”
  
  “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!”
  
  “We’re not infected! Listen to us, please!”
  
  “Zani, Nyla, run to the woods!”
  
  You’re running hard, pulling your sister behind you. There is another explosion, not so distant. The force hurls you hard against the ground. The grass is gone, the earth is a scorched and blackened wound. You and the earth are the same now. Where is Nyla? The pain is incredible. Blackness. You--
  
  --you stare down into the blackness. You hit the wall on the other side hard but somehow instinctively grabbed the metal bar next to the airlock. The metal will surely bend, if you squeeze it any harder. Your eyes sting. Your chest aches like its simultaneously been hollowed out and is just about to burst. Physically you’re fine. But from your memory--and you know now for certain that it was a memory--you know now that this is what it feels like to want to cry.
  
  No tears stain your cheeks, of course. Your brain may be human, but most of the rest of you decidedly is not. Still, you feel weak, shaky, and can’t bring yourself to continue on for quite some time. Unless you deliberately keep your thoughts focused elsewhere, your mind drifts again and again to the memories.
  
  “The Order!”
  
  “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!”
  
  Those two sentences in particular, shouted at a near hysterical pitch by a voice that seems hauntingly familiar plague you the most. You don’t like the implications.
  
  At some point you realize your communicator has been going off. Hinsman’s voice is speaking to you, sounding worried.
  
  You take a deep breath. “I’m fine.” Your words are faint, barely audible.
  
  “Are you sure, Zee?” He sounds skeptical.
  > You you're fine.
  “Y-yeah, I just...had some trouble getting across this section with the worst of the damage. It’s bigger than it looked on the images we had. I’m fine now though, just had a close call.”
  
  “All right, well glad you’re all right, and be careful, Zee.”
  
  “Right. I’ll be at the turret soon.”
  
  You cut the call and take a deep breath, telling yourself you’ve got to pull yourself together. This is an astoundingly bad place and time to be having a crisis. You’re unsure if that was your entire motivation in not telling Hinsman the truth, but you know you need to focus on getting the defenses up now. The memories, and the painful questions they’ve made you ask...you’ll dwell on that later when there’s no danger of attack.
  
  Meanwhile you’ll just hope that they don’t return, or at least not with such force that you can’t function. You need to stay focused.