Chapter 12 – The Inbetween

The vortex races over my head, surging into the air, and lets out an enraged howl. I glance down just for a moment and glimpse the black, winding river of Idris II, and finally the universe catches on, and we’re gone.

There’s a sharp flash and now the darkness of space. It envelopes and swallows, steals us away, sets us free.

I hug Jo-lo tighter as the fall tears at me. My head swims. My limbs feel as if they are coming undone, unravelling from my torso like loose strings.

Between us, his loose arm rests, pressed in the gully between our bodies, bloody and severed neat. I want to grab it, to tuck it into my belt or my uniform for safety, but I’m terrified that I’ll actually lose my grip on it … or him.

My chest bucks and threatens to cave in on itself and all of a sudden, I can’t breathe. I’m hanging, suspended, like a poor bug in a web, and no matter what I do I can’t seem to move, even though I know I’m still falling.

But something is different now, the black seems to be shifting in bursting patterns, the distant stars are burning bright and melting together, like something from those old-school kaleidoscope realities.

Jo-lo stirs and I notice his mouth moving, muttering something in his strange language.

At the edges of my vision I begin to see long wisps of colour. Oranges and reds twisting like giant ribbons of light that I have never seen before. They flare out towards me and even though they’ve taught me, back at the Academy, to be composed, I’m panicking. What is going wrong?

Out of nowhere there’s a bright, white zap of light. I feel a thundering iciness wrap around me. My head stabs with pain and I can’t think. I’m tumbling towards something else, not into the corridors but somewhere else. What is this? I want to shout. What is happening?

Something back there, beneath the piercing pain, my mind races. A solar flare? A black hole? An artificial gravity zone? Or even some trap that Kendrick has set up for me?

I wonder if it’s the Assassin Ships, somehow on our tail, but something tells me, no. This is worse.

My body feels like it is stretching and contracting and even though I’m holding on, I feel myself slipping. Just as we race through another wave of orange, Jo-lo opens his eyes and begins, although I can’t hear him, to scream.