It feels like the floor opens up beneath me, but my feet are not even on the floor. I’m still floating slightly in my seat, only the seatbelts holding me stationary. Still, I try to dispel the fear clawing at my bones. “What could cause that?” I refuse to face the most obvious answer. “We were just on our way to Arizona. We can’t be… How would we be in space?”

The woman’s jaw tightens and I can tell she doesn’t want to say it either.

“We’re in fucking space?!” Jacqui exclaims and in the next second, there’s a hum of voices raised in panic and distress like an echoing wave through the bus.

“I know I shouldn’t have trusted that job ad. I knew it was too easy,” the same woman behind us mutters.

I gulp. There must be a way out of this. We can find a way out. “Hey, what’s your name?”

The woman doesn’t answer immediately. Almost as if she’s swallowing down a bout of the same fear swelling in my gut.

“Mikaela,” she says after a few moments and I nod, swallowing hard to get rid of a wave of nausea that rises within me.

“And you?” I direct my gaze to the woman beside Mikaela.

“Erika.”

“Okay. I’m Justine. This is my sister, Jacqui.” I glance at Jaqs only to see her clenching her fists so hard her hands have gone white.

“I’m Hannah,” the woman in the aisle seat across from Jacqui says, the fear in her eyes clear as she looks over at us. I nod, gaze shifting to the woman beside her. Her head’s bowed, breaths coming heavy as she looks over at me sideways through her glasses, her eyes darting away the moment our gazes lock.

“Tina,” she says. “I’m Tina.”

The commotion in the bus increases even though outside is eerily quiet. There’s no more Xyma bot, the driver has disappeared into thin air, and I don’t hear anything except the panic echoing inside my chest.

“Alright. Erika, Mikaela, Tina, and Hannah, any of you know what the hell’s going on?”

Unsurprisingly, they all shake their heads.

“No idea,” Hannah gulps. “This was just supposed to be a side hustle.”

“Same,” Erika murmurs. “But it’s clear this is something else now.”

“My head feels funny,” Jacqui groans.

“Mine too,” I force back another wave of nausea. “But we can figure this out.” We have to figure this out.

“Where’s the driver?!” Someone from the back shouts. “Why’s he left us here and what happened to the bus?”

The bus shudders again, and our bodies sway in their restraints.

“Don’t take your seatbelts off!” Erika shouts, looking over her shoulder. There are three women still just floating in the air, hindered only by the roof of the bus. At Erika’s warning, other gazes shoot in our direction and the fear in their eyes is pronounced. “What now?” Erika turns her attention back to me.

She has an authoritative tone to her voice, as if she was a manager or something, and I get the sense she should be taking the leadership role here. Not me. Erika doesn’t seem to be freaking out like the others and all I feel is pure panic in my blood. But when I glance at Jacqui and Hannah, they’re looking at me with a flood of hope in their eyes, waiting for my answer.

And Jacqui. Poor Jacqui. If this goes to shit, I’m the one who took her along with me. I’m the one that put her in danger. The thought makes my heart wring underneath my ribs. I swallow hard. I have to find a way out of this. But I don’t get the chance. The bus tilts. It’s slow, like being on a fairground ride that’s just starting up. It tilts till we’re all upside down, held in place only by the seatbelts digging into our hips. More women scream and Jaqs and I both grip the seats themselves, hearts in our throats.

“What’s happening? Why is it moving like this?” a woman cries out from the back.

“We’re rotating,” Tina says quietly, then pushes her glasses up with one finger as they start to float away from her face. “In space, without artificial gravity, objects tend to tumble unless stabilized. It’s like…like when you toss a book in the air. It doesn’t just go straight up and down—it spins.” She pauses, then adds even more softly, “Though I have to say, my expertise was mainly in the Dewey Decimal System, n-not orbital mechanics.”

Well. Fuck.

“Everyone just stay calm and keep your belts on!” I raise my voice, trying to project confidence, but there’s a betraying tremor underneath my tone.

I’m fucking terrified.

“Jus? I’m scared,” Jacqui whispers. Her brows dive in a worried frown as if she’s using willpower and thought to turn this all around.

I nod, pushing back my own fear. “I know, I know. Just breathe.” Maybe I’m saying it more for myself than for my sister, because my lungs are burning as if I’m forgetting to fill them up. “We’ll get through this.”

Jacqui nods. “Remember that time we got stuck on the Ferris wheel at the county fair?” she says, her voice trembling only slightly. “We were what, eight and nine?”

A pang swells in my chest at the memory, but I nod, grateful for the distraction from the worried cries of the others. “Yeah…yeah I remember. The ride had gotten stuck at the top, and we were dangling up there for over an hour.”

A shaky laugh escapes Jacqui’s lips. “You were so scared. Crying and clutching that stupid teddy bear you’d won like it was a life raft.”

I swallow hard, a chuckle that sounds more like a sob coming from my lips. “Mr Sparkles was supporting me while you were busy making jokes about how we’d have to eat each other to survive.”

“I was a morbid little shit, wasn’t I?” Jacqui says with a watery grin.

“The toughest little shit.”

She grins at me, water falling from her eyes as she sniffles.

But the bus is still moving. Still rotating. Soon we’re sideways. The only thing alleviating the strain on our bodies is the fact that gravity seems to be absent.

“What are we going to do?” I hear Tina whisper, and Hannah grabs her hand, squeezing it tight. At least, for now, no one else has released their seatbelts and one of the women who had floated up from her seat seems to be making her way back, grabbing on to other seats to push herself forward. Another of the floating women is watching and starting to make her way back, too.

I gulp hard, my hands shaking as I reach for my handbag. But it’s not in my lap anymore. Must have floated up and away. I spot it floating near what would’ve been the windscreen, but is now just a wall of metal. My heart falls. I wanted to check my phone. See if there’s a signal. I don’t know. Call 911 from space? Stranger things have happened.

“It can’t have been that long,” I say out loud, pulling on the well of hope that has kept me surviving this long. “Maybe this is some kind of training thing? Some kind of hidden camera thing?” I’m grasping at straws. “This is an adaptation program, after all.”

“A hidden camera thing?” Jacqui asks hopefully, and a murmur goes through the bus even as the speed of the rotation picks up. “Please make this a hidden camera thing. This is a survival test after all, right. That’s what we signed up for. What if it started the moment we got into this bus?”

Yeah, that sounds plausible. Maybe this is a part of orientation. See? Nothing to freak out about, Justine.

“Wait wait wait. You could be right. We’re still here. Still alive although the bus is…” The woman at the back who was beaming when the trip started forces a smile on her face again. She seems to blink away the dark cloud of fear that was encroaching on her brow. “Maybe we should all introduce ourselves and try to stay calm. Get to know each other if we’re going to be working together.” She grins, but even I can tell it’s forced. “I’m Pam!”

Somebody curses at the back. “Who the fuck wants to know your name when we’re all about to die!”

A commotion immediately rises and I feel my chest tighten. Pam might be overly positive, but she’s right.