“Hey,” I say. “Hey!” I raise my voice like a schoolteacher, but it seems to work. Everyone’s looking my way as the bus continues to rotate, putting us right-side up. “Pam’s right.” Pam beams at me and I push past her sunshiny face. “We have to keep calm. Otherwise, it will simply be chaos and if this isn’t a hidden camera thing, then…”

“Then we’re really fucked in the ass,” Jacqui murmurs. “Zero lube.”

“Well, anal sex isn’t bad if you do the right preparations.” Tina doesn’t seem so shy anymore as her head pops up, eyes meeting Jacqui’s. The moment the words leave her mouth, she turns red. “I—I mean⁠—”

Mikaela rolls her eyes. “God help us.” She presses her head back against the seat as the woman beside her—what was her name again? Erika!—stifles a giggle.

“Not exactly where I was heading with this, Tina…” I murmur. Tina blushes harder. “But it’s better than us screaming and freaking out.” I watch as the two women who were making it back to their seats manage to do so. The other woman still floating seems to be trying to find a weak spot in the roof.

“This is a waste of time!” Someone shouts and the murmurs start again before one woman raises her hand.

“I’m Alex. I’m a nurse. I saw the job and thought, why not? It seemed like a not-so-stressful way to earn a few more bucks.”

Some more murmurs, ones of agreement this time. We’re on our sides again as the bus tilts and I try not to think about us going upside down once more. “Ok,” I say loudly so everyone can hear. “That’s good. Any other nurses here?”

A timid voice speaks up. “N-not a nurse but I’m in medical school.” I don’t know who spoke and my belly threatens to expel everything as we go upside down. “Name’s Mira.”

“Okay!” I say, closing my eyes as the tilting happens again. It seems to be going faster as the minutes tick by. “That’s good. Now, did anyone hear about an orientation for this job?”

If this is orientation then safe to say, I’m failing.

There are murmurs but the consensus is no. So this isn’t an orientation of some sort. Probably not a secret camera thing. Even as the bus rotates, I can’t pick up a camera anywhere on the metal walls. But I couldn’t pick up the speaker either and we’d all clearly heard the Xyma bot before the zero-gravity kicked in.

The bus continues shifting, rotating almost lazily now. That feeling of being sick rises as my sense of up and down is completely thrown off. The cold metal presses against me as the side of the bus becomes the wall, then the ceiling.

“What are they doing to us?” someone sobs. “I just wanted to pay off a loan I have…”

As we turn again, Erika leans forward. “I get what you’re doing,” she whispers. “But you do know this isn’t some test, right? Did you hear the recording when we just woke? Something about cryosleep? Payload? You know what that means, right?”

My gaze slides to hers and I see her lips tighten when they read what must be a myriad of emotions in my eyes.

“We’re in space.” Mikaela leans forward, too. “And we’re fucked. In the ass, like your sister so eloquently said.”

On the other side of the aisle, the woman sitting beside Tina—Hannah—is shaking her head in a nervous sort of way, her vision unfocused as she stares at the metal before us, and it’s clear she’s reaching the end of her tether. “Why would they put us in space without our permission? We’re just normal people trying to make ends meet. We’re not astronauts. At least, I’m not. How did we end up here?”

By her side, Tina shifts, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she takes out her flyer from a bag that’s still strapped to her side. She brings it close to her face and it’s obvious she’s reading through it.

“You know what? Fuck this!” A woman who hasn’t introduced herself yet unbuckles herself. She floats away immediately, sneakers connecting with someone’s face before she hits the wall. “Ow! Watch where you’re going!” The woman flails her arms like she’s swimming and somewhat gets the gist before she heads straight to the back, pounding on the metal with her fists.

The dull echoes seem to amplify the more she does it, hurting our ears. But despite that, others start to do the same in their seats. Fists pound the walls and soon it’s like being inside a steel drum.

Pressing my hands over my ears, I want to tell them to stop, but a part of me wants to pound on the walls too. I’m about to say fuck it and try to find a way out of this when a violent shudder rocks the bus. Screams echo through the metal chamber. The lights flicker and I only now notice the fluorescent strips lining the top of what is essentially just a metal rectangle. The woman who was floating loses her grip, her body flying through the air as the not-bus spins slightly faster. There’s a sickening crack as her skull meets the floor. She lets out a cry of pain.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Pam calls out, panic edging into her voice.

The woman just groans, blinking dazedly as a trickle of blood runs down her forehead. Someone else cries out at the sight of it and there are audible prayers and pleas for mercy. The pounding on the walls increases, and I risk a glance at the front of the bus. Still sealed. No signs of an exit.

Not that we’d want to exit right here in the middle of space. But I guess a part of me is still hoping we’re in a simulator.

“It’s like we’re trapped in a metal coffin,” Jacqui murmurs.

Her words make my throat constrict with panic. Suddenly, I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Meanwhile, the other women are losing it—screaming, crying, praying. Jacqui is pale and shaking like a leaf.

Just as I feel I’m about to completely lose my grip on reality, the shuddering increases. So much, it feels like even the atoms in our bodies begin to vibrate.

The bus suddenly tilts, going vertical, our backs floating towards our seats.

“Jus?” Jacqui whimpers.

I grip her hand. I don’t know how I can tell. Maybe some part of my body feels it before the rest of me does, but we’re moving. Going down.

“Hold on!” I shout, just as the sensation of movement increases. Our backs are suddenly pressed into the seats and I hear piercing screams as gravity suddenly kicks in. Looking over my shoulder, I see the two women who were unstrapped suddenly fall to the front of the bus. There’s another sickening thud as they land in a tangle of arms and limbs. One of them is screaming so loudly I know she must have broken something while the other with the head wound isn’t moving at all.

“We’re falling.” Erika says from the seat behind me. “They brought us into space and now we’re falling.”

“Of. Course.” Mikaela grunts. “Fucking Xyma.” But despite her cynicism, I see the terror in her eyes.

Squeezing Jaqs’ hand, I pull in a shaky breath.

“What now?!” Jacqui shouts over a deafening roar that sounds outside the shuddering metal cube. The movement increases so much, it would be an effort to rise from the force of the pull.

“Now…now we wait.”

Jacqui nods, her chin meeting her chest a thousand times. “And we stick together.” She squeezes my hand. “No matter what, Justine.”

“No matter what.”

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Chapter 3

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AND I THOUGHT THE JOB MARKET WAS TOUGH

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JUSTINE

There’s a deafening groan as metal tears. I whip my head around to see the back of the bus beginning to peel open like a frickin’ sardine can. Air rushes in with a whoosh, and my hair flies around my head like I’m sitting in front of a fan.

“Oh god…we’re falling! We’re really falling!” I hear myself shouting, my voice shrill with panic.