Playing along

Charlotte froze on the ladder. She stared down, transfixed both by the canal widly raging by, and Taffy's one-sided rictus. When his ruined features twitched she shuddered, as the motion of such disastrously reattached muscles rippling under his skin mimicked the chaotic mess of the water below. He looked away trying to track her gaze beneath him, and in the brief moment he wasn't visible, she managed to collect her thoughts, immediately rejecting the instinct that had caused her panicky outburst. Olar spoke, giving her an extra second to think.

"Well, girl, what is it?" he said, "Did you lose something vitally important without which you'll die, or did you just leave the oven on?"

"A-actually, she said, "I just, um... How long am I going to be with you people? Alone? Could I ever be allowed back home?"

He shrugged, "I haven't the faintest idea. This isn't a remotely normal raid..."

When the sphere started moving, Charlotte only knew because she already had her face flattened against the window of her cabin. She saw that the hull's light reflected on the walls of the tunnel suddenly grew brighter, and then the water flowed gradually slower. For a moment the wavy surface appeared stationary, and then started flowing in the opposite direction. The ship continued accelerating until the view outside blurred into a hundred indistinct shades of orange.

It was a cramped ship, only designed for short excursions, and for a handful of people. The engine took up almost half the available space inside the hull, leaving only two separate compartments, the control room and a pressurized cabin accessible by a ladder. The pirates gave Charlotte the latter location all to herself. There was a simple bunk against one wall, with the transparent section right above it.

Her eyes tired from staring outside. The last she'd seen before this painful light show was that the ship was about to pass through a jagged hole in what ostensibly used to be a sealed wall straight ahead. Perhaps she could ask Skund how he had managed to park down here, whether they'd had to blast their way in or if the hull was simply that strong. She knew it was nearly two feet thick, at least around the hole she'd climbed through to get in. But he might not be so chatty anymore.

Charlotte flopped backwards onto the bed. The mattress was not uncomfortable, and the full circle cloak gave her an instant blanket. With nothing better to do, she lay back and tried to think. Her situation had turned a new shade of grim upon entering the sphere. Olar Skund had dropped all pretense of sweet-talking her into docility after following the last of his men inside. He snapped open her cloak and let it drop. While the other crewmen leered at newly exposed breasts and a hint of muff below, he went through her pockets, even opening the ones that were compromised because of the windows in her clothing. Her phone, ID, money, the key to her room in the hotel, all these he chucked away through the opening in the floor to be drowned and forgotten in the canal. His first and only words to her after this search were simple orders to climb the ladder and wait in the cabin above. No one prevented her from bringing the cloak along, and so here she was, not quite off the planet yet, but completely cut off already. She hoped Harold would have more luck than she did.

Abruptly the cabin went dark. Its own lights were switched off from the beginning, so either the hull was no longer glowing orange, or the ship was somehow clear of the tunnels. Charlotte began to rise to her elbows, and found her head spinning. She swung her legs off the bed to help her get into a sitting position, and her feet hit the floor hard. Every limb felt double its own weight. A struggle to stand brought her falling back to the bed, but on her knees. She leaned against the window for support. Her eyes were closing of their own accord now, so she rubbed them furiously, fighting the inexplicable drowsiness overtaking her.

Through the window Charlotte glimpsed tall angular shapes, poking out from inside thick white foam, which she realized was a view of the cloud sheet from above. The ship was shooting straight up at incredible speed, and these skyscrapers would be her last glimpses of the City - of the planet - before disappearing to wherever the pirates were taking her. It was a landmark event, if only because it might mark the unraveling of her life, and yet she couldn't keep her damned eyelids from drooping.

There was a noise now. Charlotte became aware of it after collapsing onto her bunk the final time. It was just audible over the constant, gentle hum of the engine beneath her, yet permeated the cabin. Soon she fancied it resonated right within her bones. The noise was just two tones alternating, the same two notes one after the other. They grew louder, and with each passing second it was harder to stay awake, the pull of a deep black sleep tugging Charlotte down relentlessly. She thrashed and writhed while her world rapidly shrank and faded around her, clawing at the edge of the abyss, but the effort was in vain. Her eyes clamped shut for good and blackness swallowed her whole.

Returning awareness opened onto a vast open plain, red sand and rust coloured rocks stretching across a featureless flat in all directions around her. Barely looking up from the ground were gone all of the city obstructions, no houses or high rise buildings; the deep mauve sky freely enveloped the visible world from horizon to horizon. Charlotte's waking senses came with dizziness and wobbly knees, so long living always far inside labyrinthine artificial structures left her with a borderline agoraphobia. She shut her eyes tight, settled down low, resting one hand on the sand, and breathed. While her guts stabilized a myriad questions fluttered through her skull.

Geography was not her strength, and red deserts were plentiful on her little planet. She knew some had landmarks in the form of carefully preserved tire tracks belonging to vehicles driven by the first Terran explorers aeons ago. She knew that her home city was named because it sat on a point where several of the canals cutting into the deserts crossed each other, at the Lake of the Sun. No helpful hints she knew of could be seen here. Rising to her feet with more assurance now, she turned slowly on the spot staring into the distance.

There were people some way off; all huddled together, their shapes blending into a dark mass with little knobbly sticks poking at the sandy ground. She could see movements of their feet shifting all the time, flashes of pink and alabaster where faces turned or hands gestured vaguely in her direction, yet they made not a peep. And though neither she actively moved away nor could they be said to be moving as a group, the gap between her and them felt wider with each second.

Charlotte tried to move forward. The instant her foot left the ground reality once more dissolved around her. Red and mauve spilled into each other like ink into an oily black stain filling drowning her vision. In that void where she suddenly flailed and fell weightless was restored the previously missing element; screams tore out of the abyss shrieking calls for names and help over an infernal chorus of anguished moans. For mere seconds it lasted, but the same sensation was felt of the gap growing, the noise deafening at first then rapidly fading. Faster than it was possible for her to even have a conscious reaction, it was over, the world tumbled and spun round back to a solid state and red sand met her cheek with a dry, brittle kiss.

The scene was identical, equally barren, silent, the same voiceless crowd over there, their unheard cries now echoing in memory. Charlotte had a myriad thoughts speculating how to link the vision to recent events, and with them a sense that nothing in her power could change anything now. Still, knowing their feeling, those people over there only made her want to run to them even more. A small thread of rational thought held her steady in place. That and plain fear of returning to that slick swirling blackness.

Someone else stood far away, alone like her, just discernible as person. Only this time, when Charlotte recognized the figure it became sharper, and a little closer. That person turned slowly on the spot and the effect was doubled. He was male, judging from the unaltered looking overcoat, and native, his face a rich pink oval. He raised one hand as if to wave only to let it drop again. Instead he made to step forward. The fabric of space stretched swallowing him whole, only to spit him out almost at her feet.

"Oh," Charlotte said as the stranger rose uneasily to his feet, "Hello again."