Ætherglow #16

You climb across the little pod and hold onto the wall next to the hatch, signing that Vik should do the same, across the door from you. Whoever was knocking on the door opens your hatch from the outside and pokes their head in, looking side to side at both of you.

“What the hell are you two doing? Come on, we’re having a meeting.” They are a student a few years older than you, a tall girl or perhaps enby, with hair dyed white and shaved close on the sides, with icy blue eyes—not original eyes, there was a distinctive glow to them. They wear tight black pants with light blue fluorescent accents that glow as a ray of sunlight passes by your window. Their black vest leaves their arms exposed, and under their pale skin you can see the traces of the implanted nodes and wires of an internal neural interface.

They push themelf out of your pod with the grace of someone experienced in microgravity. Out in the central corridor, the few other students and school workers are gathered at the entrances to their pods. Confused and distressed faces glance at you as you emerge.

“Alright everyone,” the upperclassman who summoned you says. “We're Synth, they/them, year 3. And a lot of you probably suspect the same thing I do, that incident back there was no hardware or software issue. I’ll be blunt with you, we will arrive at TLA in less than eight hours, and one of the eight of us aboard this ship might be a saboteur who attempted to kill us all.”