Amery is not supposed to be on the dropship.
She isn't one of the hundred delinquents being sent down to a radiation-soaked planet. She's just a Zero-G mechanic making some last-minute adjustments to a project nobody will tell her anything about.
I...
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✧】0. prologue【✧
AMERY EKKER SITS straight up in her bed, cursing under her breath as any trace of sleep flees, no doubt scared away by the frustration emanating from every part of her consciousness. Swinging her feet over the side of the creaky mattress, she groans at the cold of the floor that immediately seeps into her skin. With a shudder, she snatches some pants and a flannel, tugging it on loosely over her white shirt. As she wrangles her hair into a haphazard braid, she slips her feet into her favorite worn combat boots and slips out the door, wandering down the dark halls of Mecha Station. The low buzz of machinery and the clicking of her soles against the ground are the only soundtrack against the quiet night.
"Frickin' transmitter," she mutters to herself as she walks, flashing a keycard to grant her access to the workspace holding the dropship. "Stupid, stupid." Sinclair assigned her to the comms systems, stressing that the task was "more important than avoiding Marcus Kane on Unity Day" but refusing to tell her anything else about the project.
"You need to keep this one on the down-low," he'd explained, and Amery picked up on the low waver of nerves in the familiar warmth of his voice. "Especially from Reyes, alright? Too curious for her own good, that one."
Amery had grimaced, which didn't go unnoticed by Sinclair. She hated keeping secrets from her friends, but Sinclair gave her a pleading look that reminded her so much of those cute puppy commercials that played between segments of the old association football recordings that she just nodded.
Whatever the ship updates are for, she's sure Sinclair has a good reason for keeping it a secret. She trusts him like she would a father. Like she did her father, before Kane floated him and left her another one of too many orphans on a giant space station.
Slipping through the door, Amery climbs up to the second floor of the ship and pushes the hatch open with a clang. She grips a flashlight from her tool belt between her teeth, then dislodges one of the ceiling tiles from the top of a crate and pulls herself up with ease. A strand of ratty auburn hair falls into her vision and she blows it away in a huff of irritation. She had realized in the middle of the night that she'd forgotten to rewire the main transmitter to reach the screen on the ship's first floor. She doesn't want to half-ass this job, not when it's obviously so important to Sinclair.
Lying on her back, Amery finishes rewiring and slams the circuit box closed in time with another loud, mechanical sound coming from below. She sighs, flicking off her flashlight and shoving it back into her tool belt. Sinclair must've been alerted that the door opened, and now she's going to have to explain how she wasn't thorough enough to get the transmitter wiring right the first time— at two in the morning, no less.
But the deep voice that bounces off the dropship's metal walls isn't Sinclair's.
"In a seat! Buckle up!" the voice demands, and the ship fills with the sound of heavy footsteps and confused muttering. Amery can't tell how many people there are, but they just keep coming. They all sound young– both boys and girls, some of them shouting, some of them in tears, but all of them with no idea what's going on. Instinctively, the mechanic rolls to her stomach and flattens herself against the ceiling tiles, sliding the one she's dislodged back into place and leaving a small gap to see through.
