Which one now?

“Eight…Or Nine. I can’ tell. They’re so close.”

And what do you think Mother will tell them?

Zero shook his head, sending waves gently splashing away from his submerged head.

She’ll tell them the same thing she told you before the launch. No hope, no tomorrow. No Sixth Resurrection. The probes picked up nothing from the Outer. We haven’t found anything out here…There is nothing left to find.

“They must have left something…Somewhere. They couldn’t have come from the empty between the systems.”

Whatever they left behind, it’s gone now. Mother saw to that, I would imagine.

“We have to find a way…We have to get back.”

Zero, shut the fuck up.

Fleur held limply on to the edge of the drop vessel as it plummeted to the bottom of the vast silver tube. The wind blew her hair up, where it whipped back and forth, the frenzied brunette fronds of a hurricane palm. Snarls of dark hair, defying gravity, lashing at her mouth and eyes. She let go of the railing, absently pulled several trapped strands from her mouth, where it had made a feeble attempt at strangling her.

Nine placed his large hand on the small of her back. “Hold on.”

She smiled at his concern, but the corners of the smile dropped a bit in realization. “You’ve never seen her, have you? This is your first visit.”

Nine looked off into the distance, the hypnotizing blur of silver and fire and speed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Sometime I forget that you’re not—”

“—him?” Nine did not look at Fleur as he said it, but his hand retreated from her back. Fleur held the railing again with both hands.

Whistler stood at the center of the drop vessel with Hank, who had the most ridiculous goggles covering his eyes. His hat, secured to his neck with an ancient leather cord, whipped around his head much as Fleur’s hair created a halo of dun around hers. Hank clenched a cigarette between his teeth, the ashes flying straight up as the structural integrity of the tip destabilized, sending a glowing crimson shower of miniscule firespots into the heavens upon heavens above. As the vessel slowed, less ashes were torn away from the cigarette tip, which eventually regained the standard physics of smoking, and lazily grew a beard of gray ash.