Sam had barely made it to sleep when the alarm buzzed her awake. She almost turned it off to sleep again, but then remembered her plan. The realization woke her as surely as a bucket of cold water. "What the hell am I doing? This is insane. No. I am Samantha frickin' Wilcox. I learned under the eminent badass Stateira Cassandane. I can do anything I set my mind to. Maybe. I hope. Argh!"

She dressed in two sets of clothes, one atop the other, and went outside. Her gaze swung one direction and then the other. In the dark, it was hard to tell, but Sam didn't think anyone was watching her. She flew up from the balcony and moved down the street towards the building that had housed her when she first stepped foot on the Angelship, reversing the route she had taken beside Cassandane. In the darkness, she took a moment to ensure she stood before the right building. Then she reached out her corona to unlock and roll up the delivery entrance.

Inside the bay of the first floor, Sam moved carefully towards the door leading onto the stairs. That one had an alarm, so she would need to figure out a way to get around it.

Careful inspection using the teleotic talent let her spot the security measure. Electrodes in the door frame sent an electrical current through the door. Sam laid down a pattern with gravitas to get the current to jump directly between the electrodes and then used animas to mechanically undo the lock. The door swung open, then she shut it behind her and let the security system revert to its normal operation. At no point did the door emit the beep indicating it had been opened. Unable to help herself, Sam began to hum the Mission Impossible theme as she crept up the steps.

On the fifth floor landing, Sam repeated her trick with the electrodes to bypass the security system. She closed the door behind her and snuck through the darkness using her corona to avoid objects. Once into the hall holding the sleeping berths, Sam turned on the lights. If she remembered correctly, Jess slept in . . . that one. Sam studied the hatch to the sleeping berth for a moment checking for alarms. There didn't seem to be anything suspicious, so she used her kinetic talent to force open the hatch.

A startled Jess stared up at her. "What? Sam?"

"Come on, Jess, we're getting out of here."

"What? No, Sam. I can't talk to you. No Sam. No Sam. No Sam."

With a touch of her corona, Jess slid out of her sleeping berth to collapse on the ground. The woman clambered to her feet and backed away, muttering to herself. Sam chased her friend to a corner, then placed a hand firmly on her head. A surge of precursor passed through the contact and Jess gasped in shock. Sam removed her hand cautiously. "Are you good now?"

"Sam? What is happening? How did you get back here? They said you were gone . . . . Oh my god, Sam. They did something to me after you disappeared. Put something in my head. It won't let me concentrate on things. It's a damn parasite!" Jess squeezed her head between her hands. "I can't beat the thing. It just controls me like a puppet."

"Jess! Relax, just relax. It's called an agent and it's gone now. When I charged you up, your mind threw off the agent."

Jess stared at her. "I don't have a clue what is happening right now. How are you back?"

"Long story short? I trained under Sarah Conor to become Luke Skywalker."

"So . . . badass mentor taught you mystical powers?"

"You have no idea how much I missed you," Sam said.

A beep from the door startled both of them. The burly form of Darla marched towards them. "I don't know how you got out of your berth, but you . . . you!" Darla's stern face went pale upon spotting Sam.

"Yeah. Me." Sam lashed out with her corona, pushing Darla into the air. "My friend is coming with me."

"You will both be punished for this!"

Sam shrugged. "By the time the authorities get to us, Jess will be attuned. The fleet can naturalize another English if it wants."

Darla's brow drew down and she began to meme cast a feeling of fear. The memes were so faint that Sam could barely feel them. "You're all clogged up with residue, Darla. You can't call for help like that."

"Help!"

The woman's exclamation startled Sam. After a few more yells, Sam used her corona to shove Darla into Jess's berth face first and then closed the hatch. The sound of Darla's shouts grew fainter. Sam concentrated on the hatch. Animas with just a touch of nous. The hatch groaned as a continuous effect kinetic field came into existence, forcing it to move constantly in the direction of the berth. While the structure of the tube would prevent it from going anywhere, the result was a door that could not be opened until the kinetic field ran out of juice. So five minutes. Ish. Five minutes-ish.

Sam stripped off her extra layer of clothes and passed them to Jess with terse instructions to put them on quickly. When Jess had dressed, Sam guided her back the way she had entered, using the door trick to prevent any alarms from going off prematurely. When they exited the loading dock, Sam seized herself and her friend in her corona and flew them rapidly towards the base of the spindle. Once they made it inside, Sam went almost as fast up towards the zero gravity portion of the ship.

"Where are we going, Sam?"

"Earth. We're going to Earth."

"How are we supposed to do that?"

"Don't freak out, Jess, but we're going to fall to Earth."

"I mean, I'm not freaking out, because that was obviously a joke."

"Not a joke. Remember, super powers. Also, I know where they keep the space suits." As she spoke, Sam led Jess through the well lit but sparsely occupied corridors of the hub. Whether because of the hour or because of the way Jess was dressed, no one looked at them twice. They made it to the walk-in closet where they suits were kept without incident and Sam opened the door with her corona. Sam pulled free a size two suit for each of them and started climbing inside hers.

Jess hesitated. "Sam. Are you sure you know what you're doing? If this goes wrong . . . we're dead."

"It won't go wrong. And it's getting caught you should be worried about." Sam helped Jess get her suit on, then hesitated before placing the helmet. "Small confession. I don't know how much oxygen these backpacks carry in them. So try not to hyperventilate and use up all your air. We are twenty-two thousand and two hundred miles above the surface. We are going to go fast until we hit atmosphere, which is something like sixty miles from the ground. Just have faith in me, Jess. We're going to make it and then I am going to teach you so many cool powers. Do you trust me?"

Jess nodded. "Let's go spacewalking, bestie." Sam smiled in response and helped put the helmet on. Before it fully sealed, Jess shouted. "And I want buried on the moon if you get me killed!"

Sam got her own suit on and made sure both of their backpacks were connected and operational. They exited the suit storage area and floated around the corner to the corridor holding the airlock. The guard on duty saw their approach and her eyes went wide. The guard raised a device to her mouth and spoke into it something Sam couldn't hear from within her sealed suit. As they neared, a burst of piercing white noise assailed her mind. Beside her, Jess went catatonic under the assault.

Vasting her mind prevented the attack from influencing her. A solid kinetic push sent the guard tumbling end over end to crash into a wall and bounce off at an odd angle. Sam pulled the handle of the airlock door and got inside, pulling Jess with her. She sealed the interior door behind her and turned to look at the exterior door. Her corona could not penetrate its surface at all. Upon inspection, her teleotic talent reported that the material of the door and external wall were frozen into perfect stasis, as if no change were possible. A tug on the handle did not even budge it. The control panel flashed the words 'controls locked' when she attempted to use it.

"Oh, shit," she said as the interior door began to thud from the fists of the guard. They were trapped.

But trapped by whom? "Navigator! I don't know if you really need that metal body to know what's happening inside the Angelship. But if you don't, I could really use your help right now. I'm trying to go down to the planet with my friend. I promise I am going to do my best to turn her into a paragon. And if you help me get outside, I promise I will train other people. I will give away the talents like they're candy. Just please, please, please open that door for me."

Jess pressed their helmets together and mouthed the words 'at least you tried'.

Sam sighed. "Do or do not, there is no . . . ."

The airlock popped open all at once, sending them tumbling out through the exterior door equal in height and width to the airlock itself.