Zero Hour, Nine A.M.

Two

The ship is huge.

It has to be; the amount of space required to sustain five people for an indefinite period of time is ridiculous. Farming rooms and equipment, stockpiles of clothing and medicine, bedrooms, kitchens, electronics and navigational tools and engine parts... it's completely overwhelming.

And while we've had the ship ready and waiting for a long time now, I stubbornly refused to believe the day would come that we'd actually seal ourselves inside it. So I never spent time familiarizing myself with the rooms and equipment like the rest of the family. And I never added any personal touches or comforts, never believed that this hunk of metal would become my entire world.

There are no pictures on my walls, nothing in my drawers or closet. My room is a complete and utter blank.

Which I find fitting, considering that there's absolutely no heading in the navigational system. No idea of where to be other than "not here."

We can go anywhere except the only place in the entire cosmos where we actually belong.

That's literally our only plan at the moment. Leave. Run. Flee.

Strip it all away to nothingness.

The ship's comm system overhead dings once, a polite warning that it's turned on. But there's just silence for a long moment, like Brandon's mother, Theresa, is trying to listen in on me.

"Gretchen?" She finally asks.

"Yeah," I answer, gruffly.

I know I should be kinder, more grateful. Theresa and her husband, Ken, graciously took me in when my parents died. They've treated me like one of their own - an equal with Brandon and his little sister, Brianna. They are the reason I had a roof over my head and food to eat for the last two years - and they're the reason I have a means of escaping our dying world now.

But they're just so... bland. Boring. White bread.

"We are having a big dinner together in the dining room in fifteen minutes to celebrate our new adventure," she says, her voice wavering a bit over the word adventure, as if it's a completely foreign concept to her. "So wear something special, okay?"

I sigh. Theresa's idea of special is a demure skirt, whereas mine is more along the lines of black leather pants and combat boots.

I'd almost rather they'd left me to burn than have to wear something frilly right now.

But I take a deep, calming breath and tell myself, be kinder, more grateful. And I nearly pull it off when I answer, "Yeah, okay."

"Wonderful! See you soon." I can practically hear the strained smile stretching her thin lips and her nervous little bird-like hands smoothing over her limp brown hair.

There's another long pause where she waits for me to respond, but I don't. The comm system finally beeps out.

Groaning, I start digging through the clothes crammed in my suitcase.

I own exactly one dress - the simple black shift I wore to my parents' funeral. It's shorter and tighter now than it was, my body having filled out in the years between ages fourteen and sixteen, but it'll have to do.

I tug at the hem stretched across my thighs awkwardly, feeling like a newborn fawn on strange legs, wobbling and at odds with my own body. Everything about this place - the constant whir of the oxygenation system, the rough tumble of the engines beneath my feet - sets me on edge.

I'm an alien here, an extra-terrestrial, and I can never so much as phone home again. So in a weird way, it's almost a relief to be wearing uncomfortable clothes - they seem to suit the situation.