The girls pressed on. The next door was painted azure, decorated with smiling sea creatures like one might find in a nursery.

“This looks promising,” Charlotte said, twisting the knob.

An explosion from the other side blew the door to pieces and knocked her staggering and Sue sprawling. Something like a very large firework blasted through, pulled a hairpin turn, and vectored down the corridor, ricocheting off the walls and throwing sparks, its roar fading into the distance.

Charlotte stared after it for a moment, then turned and hurried over to Sue. She was covered in sawdust and paint chips, and a graze along her cheek was bleeding.

“You’re hurt.” She ineffectually tugged at the hem of her gown, then bit it and tore a strip off to try to clean the cut as well as she could.

Sue lay there, dazed. “What just happened … and how is there not a scratch on you?”

Charlotte ran her free hand over herself, then checked it. No blood or other mess. “I was a little off to the side. Do you think you can stand? I don’t think this dress is actually very sterile.”

Sue winced. “Give me a hand?” Charlotte helped pull her up. “Thanks. Seriously, though, what was that? I saw a white flash, then –”

There was a distant noise like a very loud car door slamming, and the noise of the firework thing abruptly cut off. The girls whirled, and Sue swayed until Charlotte steadied her. There came five more slams in rapid succession.

“Is that …” Charlotte began.

A man’s voice called out from the same direction. “Is there someone there?”

More memories clicked into place, and she could see snatches of him in her mind’s eye. Dark hair and eyes, buzz cut, a crisply ironed suit that strained against his broad shoulders. Huge and powerful, easily twice her weight; a warrior rather than a bodybuilder, with solid, lean musculature that could have made him a graceful ballet dancer if he had chosen a peaceful life. Accompanying the image and his voice was the knowledge of what he could do, what would happen if he caught her, a primal fear with only one response: get away.

“Yeah!” Sue called, “we’re over –”

“No!” Charlotte hissed, shaking Sue’s arm. “No, not him …”

“Huh?” Sue asked. “Don’t we want him to come to us? He might know something.”

He could undoubtedly run either girl down, and fighting him was right out. That left hiding. Even in the gloom, their starched white gowns would stick out like billboards.

“In here,” Charlotte said, darting into the room. “Drat everything!”

Inside were rows upon rows of glass aquariums. Inside each was a rocket, as long as a baseball bat and slightly thicker, with what looked like a live octopus strapped to the rocket’s nose, all partially submerged in water. Metal bands with electrodes were wrapped around their tentacles, with wires leading back to their rockets. One aquarium near the front was smashed and empty. The octopuses were wriggling slightly, apparently watching them with detached interest. The walls were painted soothing blues and greens; a speaker somewhere was playing a relaxing track of waves and whale song, interspersed with the squawking of seagulls.

“Whoa,” said Sue, looking around, but she put her questions about the room on hold for a moment. “Lottie, do you know that guy? Is he dangerous? I can’t tell, you’re so lame at swearing.”

“Yes, he is. Help me look.”

They split up and went down different aisles. Sue reached gingerly toward one octopus as she passed, touching the glass of its aquarium; it reached a tentacle out to touch the same spot, and a red LED on the rocket went on. She hurriedly pulled her hand back. “What are we looking for?”

“Something like … this.”

The wall on their right had a half-cylinder cut out, opening to a tube leading up and down with metal rungs in the far side, an access shaft. Cool air filtered out from it.

“Up or down?” Sue asked.

Charlotte leaned into the shaft. It was lit by cool blue lights, extending a long way in either direction. She repressed a swoop of vertigo, seeing how far down they could fall. She wasn’t sure she’d have the stamina to climb all the way to the top, but if they went down, he’d be above them. She had a mental image of him dropping down and using Sue to break his fall. “Up. You go first.”

“No, you go. I’ve got an idea.”

Charlotte took the first rung and began pulling herself up, unwilling to leave Sue behind even though she knew, intellectually, that it would be better to hurry up so she wouldn’t be in the way. Sue cast around for the heaviest object in the room that was still light enough for her to throw, and spotted a metal folding chair. She collapsed it so it was easier to hold, then brought it down, up, and let go; it sailed through the air and smashed into a stack of aquariums. The octopuses inside panicked and activated their rockets; they promptly blasted into the next stack, startling those octopuses too.

“Gogogogogo!” Sue screamed, barely audible over the deafening noise of thirty or more rockets all going off at once.

She staggered slightly as she reached the shaft, still dizzy from the blast earlier. Charlotte hooked herself into the ladder, swung out to the side, and put her hand under Sue’s bottom to push her upward. Sue didn’t argue the point any more and just climbed, Charlotte soon following behind.

The chain reaction of octopus rockets had spilled out into the main corridor, which would hopefully buy them a little time. After a minute, the noise began dying down, punctuated by more gunshots.

“Please hurry,” Charlotte pled, not saying it loud enough for Sue to hear.

Luck was on their side. Only a few metres up, there was an alcove with a glass door to an elevator. Sue fell against it, slapping at the button, and the door slid open; she slumped against the floor. Charlotte glanced down; it was the perfect moment to see a huge human shape leap out from the doorway and onto the ladder. She darted into the elevator and hit the close button. There were three floors labelled, 1 through 5, with 3 coloured to indicate their current location; she made to press 5, then thought better of it and chose 1 instead, hoping to confuse him.

To her irritation, the elevator began going up anyway. “What? No, you – ridiculous thing, I want you to go down!” She hammered the button, without effect.

Sue snickered. “That’s what he said.”

“Hm?”

“How’d you know that would be there, anyway?” She was a little singed from the rocket exhaust, and looked like she needed nothing more than a solid ten hours’ sleep. “An elevator stop somewhere other than on a floor is not standard architectural design.”

“I didn’t,” Charlotte said, sitting down opposite her and tickling her with her toes. “I thought we’d have to just keep climbing. Sorry; I didn’t realise how tired you were.”

“Yeah. I got exhausted.” She snickered again. “Pun intended. But I meant, how’d you know the shaft would be there at all.”

“I didn’t know that either. I don’t remember anything about the layout of this place. I was actually hoping there’d be a cubby hole or somewhere we could hide.”

Sue blinked. “If you wanted to hide, why not run to the ticket room, empty out a cabinet, and hide in there? Or we could have buried ourselves under like three hundred board games or tins of paint. It might not have worked, but it’d be something.”

“Well,” Charlotte said, “obviously I would’ve … look, I panicked, okay? He’s scary.”

“No kidding. Who is that guy?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I don’t know his real name. He calls himself Mr Truth.” She let her head tilt back and her vertebrae click. “He works for the Tchaipros Agency. He’s the operative assigned to my file.”

“And they want to – what, kidnap you?”

“Mm-hmm. It’s very inconvenient.”

“You’re being pretty blasé about it, compared with sixty seconds ago,” Sue observed.

“I’m still scared, but I’m used to it. They’ve been after me for years. I don’t want to let it control my life, so I try not to make a fuss when I don’t have to.”

Sue raised her eyebrows. “So who are they? Why are they after you?”

Charlotte shrugged. “My memory’s still fuzzy and I never really understood it in the first place, but I think the root problem is people thinking they know what’s best for you when they don’t. It’s not that they’re bad people, they try to put themselves into your shoes and think what they’d want someone to do for them, but you can’t ever have the full picture of another person’s entire life, and if you don’t, how can you know you haven’t come to the wrong conclusion?”

Sue looked at her for a moment longer, nonverbally prompting her to elaborate, but she left it at that. “I guess you can’t. What’s the plan, then? If we’re on a ship, this is a classic closed circle scenario. How can we get away from him?”

Charlotte chewed a knuckle. “We can’t just keep running around forever. He’ll catch us eventually. Or we’ll accidentally blow the ship up first,” she added, wondering whether there were any more rocket octopuses around, and why for that matter there had been any in the first place. Art supplies, board games, rocket squids. If there’s a pattern, I don’t see it. “I don’t think he was a refugee. I think he probably has a small, personal craft of his own docked to this one. He wants to get me to that, then return to the Agency. It doesn’t make sense to kidnap me if we’re both stuck here going to where I would have gone anyway, right? So … if we disabled his boat, he’d have to give up. Or we could trick him into going onto it and leaving without me …”

“This is a big ship,” Sue said. “Maybe it has a security system we can sic on him? Or we could try waking up everyone and dog-piling him. He can’t stand up to everyone at once.”

Charlotte considered it. “We could try, but I’d rather not. Tchaipros is big and powerful enough that I wouldn’t trust that they haven’t got someone to tamper with any security systems; they might even turn on us. And I don’t want to get into a fight. Is that ever a good idea? Especially when it’s with someone who’s better at fighting than you?”

“Hmm. Well, we could at least look around.”

The glass door slid open, revealing a metal grate and a short corridor before a ninety degree turn. There came irregular sounds from further in that Charlotte couldn’t identify: weird, but not threatening. She made to help Sue up again, and they both bounced and almost hit the ceiling.

“Whoa!” She jumped again experimentally, and touched the ceiling easily. “Is this low-gravity or something?” She fanned the air; it felt about the same as usual. “It’s not just thicker air.”

Sue hopped from one leg to the other, much higher than she could normally jump. “I think so? I mean, I have no idea what low gravity feels like, but either my muscles are a lot stronger or I’m a lot lighter. Did it gradually happen without us noticing for the entire elevator ride, or was it sudden?”

“I don’t remember. I wasn’t paying attention.” She glanced back at the elevator. “Come on. Mr Truth isn’t far behind.”

They walked on and rounded the corner. Ahead was a huge room housing what looked like an obstacle course, with monkey bars, tyres, and rope webs connecting twenty plastic platforms to each other.

There were eight trampolines scattered around. A girl was bouncing from one to another, giggling and clearly having the time of her life; she was somersaulting, kicking off the walls and ceiling, twisting around the ropes, entirely oblivious to the kinematics of her skirt, enjoying the low gravity for all it was worth. The sounds were her jumping on the trampolines and pulling against the ropes.

She presently saw Charlotte and Sue; she caught a bar, spun around it one final time, and dropped to the floor. She straightened her skirt and watched them with interest, not saying anything. She stopped laughing, but couldn’t entirely wipe the grin from her face.

“Um, hello,” Charlotte said nervously. “Would you mind helping us?”

The girl was actually a few years older than them. She was slightly taller and, her giggles notwithstanding, had an air of maturity. Charlotte felt that if she were around, nobody would ever dare dump butter on anyone. She had glasses, brown hair in a ponytail, and wore a light grey jacket and dark grey knee skirt, over a skintight black bodysuit that covered everything below her neck.

“Okay,” she said. Her voice was very soft. “What do you need?”

“There’s a man chasing us. He’s probably a few minutes behind. Do you have anywhere we can hide?”

The young woman considered this for a moment, then nodded. “It’s a bit dangerous, but I have an idea. Follow me, please.”

She led them through a doorway to a small antechamber with a metal sliding door and row of lockers. She opened three, revealing two more bodysuits and three fishbowl helmets with clear visors and antennae. “You’ll have to change into these.”

“Shouldn’t we be hurrying?”

“Trust me.” She turned around. “If either of you are modest.”

Sue and Charlotte exchanged glances, but arguing about it would take longer than changing. The bodysuits didn’t breathe well at all, but they were still cool and contoured to their bodies. They still didn’t have shoes, but the soles had thick padding.

“This feels vaguely pornographic,” Sue said, checking Charlotte out.

“You say that about everything,” Charlotte said.

“I suppose they’re flattering,” the woman said, looking down at her hips, “but they’re a little too difficult to remove. Helmets on, please.”

The helmets were bulky and unwieldy. The woman had to help them adjust them, then deal with a bundle of catches that could secure them to a bodysuit’s collar.

As they were finishing, there came the sound of pounding footsteps, and Mr Truth shouting, “Where are you?!”

The woman pressed a button beside the metal door to open it, revealing a cramped room like an elevator. She walked in and beckoned them to follow, then pressed another button, sealing the door behind them. Machinery began humming, and they felt prickling on their skin.

“What’s going on?” Charlotte asked, but her voice echoed strangely in her ears.

The woman tapped the antenna on her helmet and motioned for the girls to do likewise.

“Headsets,” she explained. “Nobody can hear you in space. Or an airlock.”

The opposite wall opened up to reveal blackness studded by a million pinpricks of light.

“,” said Charlotte.

“Do you like it?” asked the woman.

“It’s beautiful.”

In front of them was an infinite expanse of black space punctuated by the brilliant glow of the Milky Way. Without an atmosphere to blur the stars together, they were a perfect road of point lights stretching across the galaxy, slowly spinning as they watched.

The girls walked out onto a short balcony extending just past the airlock door. Below and above them was a vast structure of white and grey; scaffolds, domes, antennae, flags, and other irregularities on a great circular surface. There was plastic, or metal, or chunks of rock, all slapped together in a haphazard patchwork. They were slightly below the middle, which housed a huge pipe pointing up into space.

“Yeah.” She looked around idly. “You shouldn’t stay out for too long. Space is dangerous, and these suits aren’t indestructible. Radiation and micrometeoroids. And that man will figure out where you went sooner or later. Where do you want to go?”

“Can we get to anywhere on the ship from here?”

“Anywhere there’s an access airlock. That’s not much of a restriction, though: they’re all over the place. I don’t have a detailed map on me, but I do have a general idea of where most important areas are. Civilians and civilian areas are in the middle with Earth gravity; most of engineering is here in the middle with low gravity; terraforming machinery is on the rim. There’s a second half to the spacecraft on the other side from here, that doesn’t rotate, so no artificial gravity; there’s more engineering over there, mostly relating to the scoops if I have it right. I’m fairly sure that’s actually the front, and we’re standing on the back. That’s the main engine there.”

“The scoops?” Charlotte repeated.

“I’m not an engineer myself,” the woman admitted, “but I gather that the ship is going through deep space. There’s gas and dust in the way, which would normally slow us down, but we have scoops on the front. They gather it all and use it. The gas is fused for energy, the dust is ejected as reaction mass, and we incorporate any rocks into the superstructure.”

“Do you know where we’re going, then?” Sue asked. “Our memories went fuzzy from cold sleep, and we haven’t fully got them back yet.”

“I have some ideas, but is this really the time to be discussing them? Time is against you.”

“Where should we go?” Charlotte asked Sue. “Double back to Roger and Michelle, then try to find a docking bay and see what Mr Truth came in, and maybe get an idea of how to deal with him?”

“I guess,” Sue said, shrugging. “I don’t have any better ideas.” She turned to the woman. “So it’s just down from here?”

“Yes,” she said, “about halfway. That red-and-yellow stripe there” she pointed “marks the dividing line. Be careful. The way centripetal force works, effective gravity keeps increasing the further out you are, so if you go too far you might not be able to move. Obviously, don’t jump off the craft,” she pointed out to the stars, “or fall off the rim, because if you do, you’ll fall for a very long time. The soles of these suits are magnetised, so you’ll stick to the floor while you walk on iron, but don’t push your luck and do anything too athletic. And don’t dawdle. You only have so much air.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Charlotte asked.

“I could, if you want, but wouldn’t you rather I stay here awhile and make sure this Mr Truth doesn’t follow you?”

“But what about you? He wouldn’t have a problem with throwing you out into space, I think.”

“He can try,” the woman said, smiling. “I’m harder to kill than you’d think.”

“I … why would you risk your life like that? I don’t even know your name.”

“Julia Martin,” she said. “Stick with Jill, though, Julia makes me sound like a Caesar wannabe. And don’t worry about it. Really. I do this sort of thing all the time.”

“What, fisticuffs in interstellar space?” Sue asked.

“Are you going to argue the point, or are you going to rendezvous with your brother and friend?”

“… Who said anything about a brother?” Sue asked.

“Your friend did just now,” Jill said. “Are you going to argue that point instead?”

The two younger girls exchanged glances.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “I hope we meet you again later.”

“You probably will,” Jill said. She began stretching. “Seriously, though, you should stop drawing this out and hurry up. Radiation aside, your helmet’s tank only has so much oxygen.”

“Right. Good luck!”