Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
NORA
“You called me here for a fucking sandwich?” Nora Shaw fought against the shoving crowd in the space terminal’s loading zone.
She gripped the safety rail just shy of the airlock bay with all her might.
Already, two dock workers had shouted at her to get out of the way before she’d found her Uncle Joe, who’d demanded her presence in a frantic SkyText she could barely afford to accept.
“Not just any fucking sandwich,” Joe said, presenting the daintily wrapped package to her, oblivious to the odd glances from passing dock workers.
“This one’s your favorite.” He smiled, and the sight of it stopped Nora’s breath—he was her father’s identical twin after all.
Dark hair, silvering at the temples, and tan skin that persisted despite sunlight’s absence on the space terminal they had both been stationed on for the past eight months.
Only he had earned the privilege of aging, unlike her dad.
Hot tears welled up at the thought.
“Th-Thank you.” She took the sandwich before Joe could make a scene. She knew why he’d really called her here. It had been exactly twenty-two years since that day.
You’d better not cry—it won’t change a damn thing. Plus, there aren’t any crying closets on the Abeona.
The Abeona, the first space terminal of its kind, had been inspired by the sprawling train stations of previous centuries, only it hung in low earth orbit and was shaped like a spinning wheel with spokes.
Any private closets would have been barred from someone like Nora, whose job was strictly in the medical bay.
She was the lowest tier of worker aboard the massive structure, built as the first stop for humanity’s wealthiest to escape to the stars.
The pamphlets promised a 99.8 percent guarantee that they’d find another planet less plagued by natural disasters, turbulent weather, and the resulting growing famine and disease.
Joe’s work on the HyperGates had helped pave the way for both the Abeona and the Valhalla Research Colony on Mars.
They were a series of three transport portal gates—one in Washington, DC, one by the Abeona’s loading dock, and the last just outside Mars.
Her father had also been part of the team, away from home for days and days at a time while she’d been in elementary school.
Nora didn’t know how they worked, only that they required programming—god save anything under Joe’s control, the mastermind behind it all.
When a specially made pilotless vehicle went through one gate, moments later it would appear on the other side, intact and in one piece.
Joe’s recent fixation, however, had been sending things through without the protective vehicles to speed up supply transfers, presumably working his way up to people.
She wasn’t sure even he knew how the HyperGates worked—only that they did.
Joe was the reason Nora was here on the Abeona, given the grand purpose of counting boxes and stowing supplies in neat, tidy rows…
ironic since her own life was a mess. She was the only medical-inventory technician aboard—a made-up position, she was sure, as a favor to Joe, one of the chief engineers for the HyperGates, and the memory of her father.
You can fuck off and sink into those weird moods of yours, Joe had told her all those months ago to convince her to come aboard.
But as long as you’re doing it where I can see you and make sure you’re alive, then I can at least sleep at night without your dad showing up in my dreams, pissed that I’m letting his other baby down, too.
Both of them had sins to atone for. And it hadn’t taken much to convince Nora.
When Joe had assured her she could go days without seeing the ocean, as long as she didn’t look out the port windows, she’d followed him into space.
To the edge of Earth’s reach, where, other than the small settlement on Mars, no life—as far as anyone knew—could thrive.
Over the past eight months, she had become the most efficient inventory technician a space terminal could have.
She even had a cute pin on her work pack that read I’m a superstar.
Which was how she knew that if this morning’s scheduled supply freighter was truly missing, as the rumor said and the reason for the disarray in the loading bay, they were all fucked.
A frenzied worker pushed past her, pressing her against the port glass which overlooked Earth.
She shut her eyes tight. Don’t fucking look, or you’ll have a panic attack right here, and everyone will know how you really are.
So far, she’d been successful in keeping panic and anxiety attacks isolated to her dorm.
But the Abeona’s simulated gravity was weakest at the loading dock—in the center of the “wheel” structure—and Nora fell forward. Sweat broke out on her skin. She hated it here. It felt too much like the ocean.
Joe yanked her away from the airlock, as if she weren’t a grown woman. “Jesus fucking Christ, Nora. Sometimes I think you want to die.”
Embarrassment flooded her cheeks, hot with shame at the implication and, worse, at the fact that what he said wasn’t exactly a lie.
She let him drag her to the center of the main loading area—a huge, cavernous space with large windows along one side—and pushed the anger down.
He was the only family left in the world who’d talk to her. She had to forgive him.
Still, she didn’t belong here. “I’m leaving,” she said, hiking her work bag high on her back.
He tapped the sandwich in her hand. “Just have this first. Your favorite, like I said—roast beef from Gemelli’s.”
“What?” She squinted at the label, reading the date on the packaging. “I thought the shipment was late—this was made last night.”
Joe nodded with another self-satisfied grin.
“That’s right, Egg. And none of that ‘beyond the farm’ bullshit from the cafeteria, either.
This is the real deal.” He walked them to one of the benches lining the massive dock.
“Now sit. Eat. There’s nothing for you to do right now at the med-bay anyway because there’s no shipment.
The freighter isn’t late. It’s missing.”
Nora stumbled to a seat, and not because he used the nickname she’d begged him to stop using in public.
But because supply freighters never arrived late.
Every two weeks, one entered the Earthside HyperGate at 0600 hours and exited the HyperGate adjacent to the Abeona Space Terminal’s gate at 0602 hours.
She looked around the loading dock. Workers had lined up against the far wall, peering out the viewports toward Earth. There was an odd energy thrumming throughout, but no one was screaming or crying, and that had to be a positive sign, right?
Deciding that maybe she didn’t understand the complexities of stocking a space terminal that housed five hundred workers, she shrugged and shoved the sandwich into her bag.
“If the freighter is missing, how did you get this?” Special orders, like a sandwich, were sent on the supply freighters, with the last shipment having arrived over two weeks ago. “Did you use the crew shuttles?”
Joe looked at Nora as if she’d just suggested he’d parachuted down to Earth and bounced back up on a trampoline.
“For a fucking sandwich?” He smoothed his dark blue uniform, embroidered with the Roman goddess Abeona on the left side of his chest, then turned back to the ports.
“Absolutely not. I obviously used the H-Gates. Part of testing with the Earthside team.”
A throng of workers hurried past them. One of them accidentally stepped on Nora’s toe—of course, not bothering to stop—sending a jolt up her leg.
“Fuck!” she blurted, then covered her mouth, hoping no one heard. At five feet, two inches, trampling was a real risk for her in the heightening chaos. She turned to leave again, but Joe caught her, saving her from being mowed down by a group of humanoid robots meant to do the dock’s hard lifting.
“You’re gonna die, Egg, if you keep screwing around. Now, eat that sandwich.”
Nora eyed him, confused by his obsession with the sandwich. He knew she didn’t eat breakfast.
The number of workers had now doubled. Some threw distressed glances at the clock over the airlock doors, which Nora had missed before. The supply freighter was now over two hours late. Dread grew palpable with each minute that ticked by.
There was no protocol in the Abeona’s handbook on what to do in a situation like this—Nora knew because she read it in her room when she couldn’t sleep.
In a system where every movement, every arrival and departure was calculated to the second, a late freighter could serve as nothing but a bad omen.
Joe sighed, waiting until the next group of workers rushing by went out of earshot.
“Shit’s gonna hit the fan, Egg. After you eat that sandwich, I want you to run back to your room and pack a bag, like for a long weekend.
And make sure you pack enough of that gourmet hair shit you waste your money on. ”
Nora stared at Joe, an odd tingle in her fingers.
Before she could ask what the hell was going on, three engineers, evident by their badges, swarmed Joe with tablets, the worrying sheen of stress across their brows.
“Get away from me, people!” Joe flailed his arms until they backed off. “Do I look like I know what the fuck is going on?”
He turned back to Nora as the others’ mouths fell agape. He smiled weakly—uncharacteristic of her uncle. “Are you sure you don’t want to try looking out the window today? Maybe wave hello to everyone? It might be your last chance.”
“Who is ‘everyone’?” Almost all of her family was dead. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold loading bay set in. “And…what do you mean by ‘last chance’?”
Joe paused before smiling again. He stepped back then ran a hand through his messy curly hair. “Forget it. It’s the day—it’s getting to me. You know what I mean, right?”
Nora rubbed her lip, a habit she needed to break. “I know.” How could she not? The heavy fog of grief—old and new—had nearly choked her at night with increasing force for weeks leading up to today.
Looking away, she turned her focus on a large screen behind him.
The Abeona’s welcome reel played on a loop.
It was beautifully animated—a mother, father, an older girl, and a younger boy captured in a moment of glee and hope.
Except that they all smiled with an uncanny maniacal edge like their puppy was held at gunpoint off-camera, and if they didn’t look happy to be aboard the Abeona, something awful would happen to Bingo.
With his wild hair and blue eyes, the little boy clawed into Nora’s heart.
Like Theo.
Her right knee faltered. She braced against the wall, relieved that Joe had been pulled back into conversation with the others and was now too busy to notice.
The murmured conversation grew and echoed off the metal and ceramic walls of the loading bay, making it hard to hear Joe’s voice over the nervous mutters.
A red-faced engineer, Rex, hesitantly shuffled toward them.
His hand twitched over his tablet. “Joe, they’re still not here.
” He bounced on his toes. Nora wanted to put a hand on his shoulder to make him stop.
“Do you think that…you know…maybe they accidentally went to Mars? Should we maybe initiate comms with Valhalla?”
“Yeah.” Nora couldn’t stop herself from talking. She always said stupid things when she was scared, and this close to the windows, where she could be faced with Earth’s oceans, her brain didn’t work right. “Maybe you broke the gates trying to send mayo back and forth from DC—”
Joe slapped his hand on the crate beside them, sending a sharp crack through the open space. “The H-Gates are not broken.” He glared at her, and suddenly she was a ten-year-old being shouted at for doing another thing wrong. “And no one accidentally goes to Mars without me knowing about it.”
“But maybe it rerouted them somewhere else, like they’re lost,” Rex retorted. “Maybe they’re on Saturn or something? Or maybe they went…” Rex’s eyes went wide and unfocused. “Farther?”
“Routed farther where?” Joe yelled. “There’s nowhere else these things go.
Earth. Here. Mars. That’s it. Those are the only coded exit points.
A lot has gone wrong during trials, but never—in the history of ever—have these gates opened up elsewhere.
What the fuck do you people think I do all day? Play Alien Invaders on my terminal?”
Everyone in the loading bay turned to stare at them. Nausea rose in Nora’s throat. “We’re okay,” she said quietly, though no one would have heard or listened.
“No, we aren’t.” Joe looked back at Nora and frowned, which now meant all eyes were on her.
Before she fell into a full panic, Nora got up. “I’m leaving,” she forced herself to say.
A chill crawled down her spine as Joe studied her, holding her gaze. Rex and the others, unwilling to be caught in another of Joe’s moods, backed away, joining the crowd that Nora swore had now tripled.
But ultimately, Joe sighed once more. “Just pack that bag, all right? I’m not saying anything bad is gonna happen—we’re okay, like you said. But having a go bag…it’s just a good habit, you know? Can you do that?”
This is Tin Foil Hat Joe. A version of her uncle Nora had learned not to challenge, because it only made him talk faster and louder.
The one who raved every morning about the Ascended, a group of teens and twentysomethings who lived in hand-sewn tents in the deep country and worshipped reptilian beings or, sometimes, tall, stone-gray angels who looked almost human.
The few followers who had managed to defect described a different “god” each time, which confirmed to Nora that it was all shit and that they were clearly insane.
So she never paid attention to the details, though Joe was convinced they were hellbent on expediting the Apocalypse on Earth.
They’re getting help from the outside, Joe had said yesterday during lunch service. Nora had been wise enough not to ask what “outside” meant.
Joe waited, his eyes glistening. It was the day getting to him, as he’d said.
This was the Joe Nora couldn’t stand the most. The Joe who loved her more than she loved herself, which didn’t take much to do.
The Joe whose face had lines so deep in his tanned skin that he barely resembled the man who had zipped her up in her coat when her parents had been too busy with Theo or racked with grief in the years after.
“I’ll pack a bag,” she replied, knowing she had no intention to do so.
“And you’ll eat that sandwich? It’s just for you.”
Nora sighed. That day all those years ago, reduced to a day-old sandwich she should have been grateful to have.
“Yeah, Joe. I’ll have it for lunch. I promise.”