Ash was screaming. Or, at least, her mouth was open like she was, but no sound came out, just the crushing silence that swallowed everything whole. The wind still roared around us, yet I couldn't hear it, only feel its force pressing against my skin like a pushing weight. The deck was chaos, figures moving in frantic desperation as Ash's body was lifted, pulled, claimed by the singularity above. Her hands clawed at the railing, her boots scraped against the slick deck, but she was slipping, inch by inch.
They were all trying to pull her back. Void, Kath, and the others gripped her arms, her legs, anything they could reach. Their bodies strained, their faces were twisted in desperation. Every muscle in them screamed defiance, but they were fighting against something far greater than themselves. I stood apart from them, my gun still raised. I can't help but feel that it had already fired at one point. I couldn't hear the shot, but I had felt it, the weight of it, the recoil rattling up my arm.
My fingers curled around the trigger, yet I hesitated. I told myself this was the right thing. This was the procedure. So why wasn't I pulling the trigger? Ash wasn't special. She was no more important than anyone else here. A crewmate. A coworker. Someone I had been assigned to work with, nothing more. But still, my body refused to move. I couldn't understand why.
She slipped further, her fingers barely hanging on. Someone was screaming at me, his face contorted in fury. His mouth moved, but I couldn't hear a single word. It didn't matter. I already knew what he was saying. "Shoot, damn it. Shoot!" But my hands trembled. My grip faltered. I thought it would be easy, an instinctual reaction. This time, it wasn't.
Then I saw it, her eyes. Fear was there, but also something else. Anger. Hurt. A look that told me she expected this. That she knew I would do it. That I had done it before. A horrible, sinking feeling twisted in my gut. My chest felt tight, suffocating. I could barely breathe.
For a moment, I blinked.
Everything began to unravel, the ship, the storm, the rain, all of it froze in place. It wasn't a sudden collapse. It wasn't an explosion or a violent erasure. It was slow, deliberate, as if time had been stretched thin just for me. The darkness slithered in, consuming the sky first, swallowing the clouds and the distant flickers of lightning, reducing them to nothing. The rain that had once battered the deck now hung suspended in the air.
Then, the ship. The edges of the deck began to dissolve into black, not breaking apart or disintegrating, but simply ceasing to be. The railing, the masts, it all faded as though it had never been there.
The people were next.
Void was the first to go. One moment he was yelling, pulling at Ash with all his strength. The next, his body crumbled into the darkness, piece by piece, vanishing in a way that defied all reason. Not like he was being devoured, but as if he had never existed in the first place.
The others followed. The crew I had known, the people I had barely known yet worked alongside. heir shapes flickered and blurred before fading into the abyss, their voices stolen before they could even scream. Ash was the last to go, her form stretching, distorting as the void coiled around her limbs, swallowing her whole. Her eyes never left me, even as she was erased.
Then, it came for me.
It was slow, agonizingly so. The nothingness crept up my hands, fingers dissolving into the darkness. My arms followed. The weight of my own existence became fleeting, my own presence in the world slipping away inch by inch. My legs buckled, but there was nothing left beneath me to stand on. The ship had long since disappeared. There was no sky, no sea, no ground. There was only me, suspended in the void.
I felt my chest hollow out, my breath stolen, my vision narrowing as the last traces of myself were unmade. Time stretched thinner and thinner, yet I could feel every agonizing second as I was slowly pulled into nothingness. I had no mouth to scream. No voice to call out. No body to move.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I jolted awake, my breath catching in my throat as something yanked me back from the abyss. My body tensed, fingers gripping the worn out metal seat beneath me as if I had been falling.
"Oi, you good, mate?" A voice cut through the haze, sharp and familiar. Hands gripped my shoulders, firm but not aggressive. I blinked a few times, the dim interior of the RT slowly coming into focus. The low hum of the engine, the faint scent of dust.
I turned my head slightly and met Nara's gaze. They had one brow raised, arms crossed as they leaned back slightly, their usual laid-back attitude laced with a hint of concern.
"You looked like you were about to cark it in your sleep," they said, still watching me. "Thought I'd wake ya before you started scarin' the others."
I forced a breath out through my nose, trying to ignore the tension coiling in my stomach. "I'm fine." The words felt automatic, empty, something I said more for myself than for them.
Nara gave me a look, the kind that said they didn't buy it, but they didn't push. Instead, they just shrugged, leaning back in their seat. "Right. Well, get your head on straight, yeah? We've still got a ways to go."
I nodded, rubbing a hand over my face as if I could wipe away the exhaustion pressing down on me. My body ached from the awkward way I had been sleeping, my neck stiff, my mind foggy. I barely even remembered getting into the RT.
After hearing we'd be stuck waiting a day before heading out, I hadn't even tried to rest. Instead, I had buried myself in work, running deliveries through Nottingpad, trying to keep my mind occupied. It was easier that way, constant movement, no room for thought, no room for her.
