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.
“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.