Pan knew her tugship would be identified the moment she entered the shipyard. The Soffigen knew Pan’s tug. They just didn’t know where it came from, thanks to the railway company’s use of unofficial tug suppliers.

Brynn knew Pan’s tug would set off alarms too. Brynn had gone ahead, arriving about two minutes before Pan did. She caused some interference in the form of ghostly static. Security cameras wouldn’t work, and the shipyard couldn’t call for help. Brynn couldn’t expend ghostly energy forever, so Pan hurried.

Her tugship slowed and stopped – right ahead of the bigger Soffigen warship. Pan curled her toes. Her windshield was not two feet from the Soffigen ship.

Pan took a deep breath, snapped her shields on, and prepared the tug to fend for itself.

She stood and sighted the Soffigen bridge, lit but deserted. Pan traced her fingers in the air, and a portal popped into existence. Pan stepped on to the shiny, new bridge.

She couldn’t steal this ship. It sat locked in space dock, and not even her tug could pull a ship out of a space dock. Pan needed to visit engineering and send the ship to pieces.

She ran off the bridge and found herself in a sloping hall. Pan portaled to the end and discovered a choice: left or right. She picked the right fork. As Pan ran, she sighted far down the hall, drew a portal, and kept running. She moved through the ship in seamless leaps.

She expected to find Engineering at the back. She’d been on many Soffigen ships, and that was their way – engines in the rear. Pan thought it made a lot of sense, even if she found it inconvenient for her purposes. Worse yet, Soffigen ships didn’t have windows anywhere, beside the one on the forward bridge. Pan had one way in and one way out, and it just happened to be farthest from her destination.

Lucky for Pan, she didn’t need to find a specific deck. Soffigen ships, unlike most ships, possessed tall Engineering columns. Out of thirty decks, Engineering touched all of them. Why so tall? Pan didn’t know, but she had a clear memory of the space. The engine would be a glass tower, surrounded by catwalks. Rails guarded the workers from falling into the engine. Pan thought the rails were set too wide, but she didn’t care to police the Soffigen’s safety regulations.

Pan looked ahead and smiled. Through an open door, she spotted the glass column. Ladders framed the entrance, allowing access to the rest of Engineering’s floors. Every odd level should have a place to stand and work. Pan kept that in mind. She’d start at deck one.

She skidded to a stop and looked across the threshold. Pan drew a portal. The portal gave her a view inside Engineering. Pan looked through and saw no one. She drew another portal and another, using them as little spy holes to check how safe the first deck might be. No one worked on Engineering Level One. Pan entered.

From below, came frazzled voices. Pan didn’t speak Soffigen fluently, but she’d learned some in the past two years.

“Get the doors closed!” Someone shouted.

“I can’t.”

A woman cried something about a haunted console.

Pan smirked.

Then, the doors slammed shut. Pan whirled, and her smirk fell off her face. She had been locked in.

“Good work.” The voice was deep and stately.

Pan crossed the walkway and looked over the rail. She spotted him: barrel chested and mature.

The relieved man circled Engineering’s Level Five. He seemed to be the chief. “Can we call out?”

The engineers had a conversation about Brynn’s ghostly jamming. Pan caught very little.

She backed away from the rail and stood by a console. Pan frowned. She didn’t expect so many workers, let alone engineers in full uniform. Pan needed to get these Soffigen off the ship, but she doubted they would evacuate with haste.

I should make it easy for them.

Pan returned to the rail and leaned over. She saw people on level five, eleven, seventeen, and twenty-one. She couldn’t see all of the catwalks, but she saw enough.

Pan straightened, and with telekinesis, she grabbed all of them. The Soffigen screamed, but Pan ignored their cries. She treated them like delicate porcelain figures and floated them over the rails. She smiled a little to see one man spinning head over heels. He’d started the spin himself as he tried to escape. Screams echoed in the Engineering column, and Pan gently sent the engineers down, all the way to deck thirty.

Deck thirty didn’t have a workspace; it constituted the end of the ship. They’d have a place to stand, but they’d find it rough. They could exit through the emergency door and take a quick run to the hangar, also on deck thirty. Or, they could take a long trek up the ladder. Pan hoped they would choose wisely.

As they landed at the bottom, some screamed. Others reached for their coms, and a few hugged. Pan looked over the rails to see them all safely arrived. She waved.

The barrel-chested chief glared back. At least, Pan thought he glared. He looked so small at the bottom of the column – just a speck.

Movement fluttered on a higher deck. Pan frowned and turned her attention to the distraction.

On Level Seven, a straggler emerged from a crawl space and ran for the ladder.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“Oh no you don’t,” Pan mumbled.

She scooped him up and sent him sailing over the rail, faster than his comrades. He screamed the whole way down.

Pan searched for other stragglers. Her eyes darted. Nothing moved, except for the pile of limbs around the engine’s base.

Satisfied, Pan set her eyes on the center tube. Inside the glass, something swirled. The cloudy substance came in deep, pearlescent colors. Pan didn’t know how it worked or what it was, but she knew it existed in a delicate balance. Pan needed to disturb that balance, and she had just the thing.

Pan reached into a bag and pulled out an old-fashioned alarm clock, gifted to her by a passing resident. The old woman had some Scaldin heritage deep in her past and had said some pretty anti-Soffigen things in her last days. Things not even Pan agreed with, but Pan decided to honor the gift, just the same. She really liked the look of this clock. Old fashioned, with a bell on top, it was everything the fancy new ship wasn’t: obsolete, clunky, and not particularly helpful. Pan grinned.

“Hey!” A man shouted with a thick accent. He spoke her native tongue and stood on Level Five, newly emerged from the crawlspace.

“Does this ship have endless Soffigen inside?” Pan peered over the rail. Those on Level Thirty filed out of the emergency exit. Pan checked other levels and saw additional trouble on numbers thirteen, fifteen, and maybe seventeen.

On Level Five, the man ran for his exit. As soon as he’d gone, Pan portaled to level five. She tucked herself away and hid from view.

“Where’d she go?”

Pan smiled. She waited. Time for a little fun.

Level Five’s man entered Level One. He looked down and spotted Pan. She smiled at him, raised her clock, and tapped its face as if to say hurry up.

He didn’t like the suggestion. “Level Five!” he screamed.

The door to Level Five burst open and a powerful looking woman stalked through. She spotted Pan and ran.

With a laugh, Pan sought the rail’s edge. She sighted level nine and portaled. She went quiet on the lower level and tucked herself away again.

“Gone!” the woman called.

The chief cried something about the reaper and how she treated them like play things.

Pan had to agree.

Footsteps came from below. They clanged on the ladder, and a large group entered Level Nine. They didn’t see Pan right away.

“Careful!” The guy from above shouted. “She can change level.”

The group on Level Nine studied their surroundings. They stayed huddled by the door. Still, they didn’t see Pan. She left her hiding place, and the group startled. She held the clock and waited, doing her best impression of an innocent. They approached Pan slowly. No one in Engineering carried a gun, but Pan checked their hands just in case.

Pan held up her clock. “I’m unarmed. I’ve got nothing but time.”

The group rounded the walk. They staggered themselves along the way, giving Pan nowhere to escape on Level Nine. The two lead men regarded Pan with disgust. They got closer. Then, they set into a run, rounding the walkway, coming from both directions.

Pan placed her clock in the air. It floated. She drew two portals, sighting both up and down. Each man entered a portal, too late to stop. They would find themselves on Level One and Level Thirty.

The remaining engineers paused. Pan laughed at them. They turned and fled.

Enough play. Time to work. Pan snatched her clock out of the air and sighted an unoccupied level. She portaled there and remained quiet.

All around, Soffigen argued about her whereabouts.

“Where did she go?” a man shouted.

“Check cameras!”

But, the cameras wouldn’t work. Pan checked them herself, and Brynn’s face flashed on to the screen. Many screamed.

While the Soffigen shouted back and forth, Pan turned to the column.

She sighted inside and drew her portal. Swirling clouds of orange, purple, and deep blue waited on the other side. Without the glass, they looked less pearlescent. Pan hefted her clock, set the alarm, and hurled it inside. She let the portal go and saw the clouds, once again behind glass. She watched the alarm clock disrupt their flow. It rang, just loud enough to hear.

Time’s up. Pan smiled and looked up to Level One.

Above, a group of Soffigen panicked. They worked at consoles and tried to send a small robot into the column to retrieve the clock. They didn’t flee.

Pan needed to leave through Level One, and the Soffigen blocked her way. She couldn’t abide by that.

Below, the chief ordered more engineers to the consoles. He called for an emergency shutdown.

Pan sighed. “Just leave.”

She traced a portal on the underside of Level One.

The Soffigen engineers fell through to a new level. Their screams rose and fell as they realized they were in no danger – from the reaper anyway. Their ship would still explode...and that was Pan’s fault, so she guessed the reaper really did pose a danger to them.

Pan portaled to the empty Level One and ran to the exit.

“Just try it. Try to get past me.” The chief blocked her way, his strong arms ready to grab her.

Pan glared. “You know I’m telekinetic.”

“I’ve got my anti-telekinesis boots on.”

Pan looked at his boots. He wore magnetic footwear. The boots probably could keep him out of her grasp – if they stayed on. She thought he’d done a hasty job fastening them.

Pan backed up and put a hand to her collar. She wore a face of concern and fear.

He charged.

With a flick of her wrist, Pan unfastened his boots. He slipped free. She flipped him over her head and plopped him down on the other side of Level One. On the way, he bumped into the glass column, which swirled with whiter clouds. For a confused moment, he lay on his back.

Pan portaled down the hall.

“What took you?” Brynn reclined in the air and drifted backwards.

“I was having too much fun. How much time do I have to get out of here?” Pan asked.

“Oh, you’ve got time, but you’re in trouble still. You might be joining me in the hereafter. Wouldn’t that be something? You and me for eternity,” Brynn said.

Pan portaled ahead.

Brynn zapped to her location.

“Why?” Pan asked.

“Why what?”

Pan spread her hands. “Why am I going to die?” She didn’t wait for Brynn’s answer. She portaled again.

Brynn kept up. “Your tugship wasn’t tethered. You forgot. It’s drifted some. Plus, there’s a Scaldin ship here…”

The ship shook, and Pan grabbed for a nearby wall. In desperation, she ran to the outer hull. She searched for windows and remembered she would find none.

Pan didn’t want to go back and redo it all. She didn’t want to spend time again with Brynn’s ghost. The ghost always remembered when she used the time message and never shut up about it. Time message – the most painful power, doubly so in the presence of Brynn – would be Pan’s last resort. She could fix this mistake without it.

Brynn laughed.

“I would never forget to tether the tug. You did it.” Pan whirled and pointed at Brynn.

Brynn’s laugh ceased. She touched her breast. “Me? I’m trying to keep you alive longer.”

“I need to get out.” Pan took off for the bridge.

Brynn’s words followed her no matter how far she portaled. “Lousy saboteur. Use your undo button. You could improve every aspect of this endeavor.”

Pan burst onto the bridge. She had a little time before the explosion but no tug. Pan looked out the windshield. She could see it floating far off, like a stupid, lazy marine animal, grazing on some seaweed, hardly her partner in crime.

“This has been fun,” Brynn said. “But, you’ve spoilt it now.”

Pan spotted the Scaldin ship. It hovered just below, and unlike her wayward tug, its windshield faced her. Pan could see people moving about its semi-circular bridge.

Brynn said, “Let’s compose the message. How about you tell yourself to tether the tug, and hurry up and throw in the clock.” Brynn tapped her chin. “Am I missing something?”

Pan glared at Brynn. “Not yet. I’m not done yet.” She drew a portal and stepped on to the Scaldin bridge.