Dotty shook herself awake in the backseat of an abandoned hovercar.
"Aunt Em?" said her mouth as her eyes opened.
She realised she was speaking out loud and she leapt forward into the driver's seat. She scrutinised the shadows beyond the broken windscreen but the immense tunnel stretched off into the distance. Nothing.
She had seen the twin suns rise three times through the holes in the tunnel's roof. Three days had passed since that android had abandoned her in paradise.
"Paradise," she muttered to herself. How twisted that word had become for her. This infinite metal labyrinth was a dead zone. All she had stumbled across were vandalized buildings or sealed doors, impossible to open. Without T1N's help, at least.
Looking at her reflection in the rear view mirror of the car, she didn't recognise herself. She didn't look sixteen, turning seventeen in April (if you didn't count the three years she was frozen on the Hermes). What day even was it? What month? She had no idea.
Her eyes transfixed her in the mirror. She had always had a sad look about her, but now her pupils were dilated from all this time in suffocating darkness. Dark bags beneath her eyes accentuated her pale skin and her tangled hair was almost black in that gloom. It hung in wild clumps about her face.
She returned to the back seat to pick up the arc rifle that she had left in the footwell. A shiver ran down her spine as the memory of all those creatures pouring onto the ship forced its way into her mind again: her aunt and uncle and all the other passengers killed in cold blood, with no way to defend themselves. She and T1N had killed a good handful in retaliation but she still saw those monsters everywhere. They scurried over the landing platforms, through the airways, and up the walls of the towering skyscrapers.
She raised the heavy barrel of the gun and aimed it down the tunnel. It was hard not to think of T1N and what might happen to the Earth when the Hermes landed. Her friend, her companion, forced to become the executioner of her home planet. Was that awful woman really telling the truth? She couldn't be. There was no way.
"Damn Witch!" she shouted into the empty darkness. The cloud of her breath rose up until it dissipated. That frigid, mouldy air clogged the arteries of the moon-city. Dotty felt it weighing on her chest despite the protection of the exosuit.
She lowered the rifle, calmer now, satisfied that there was no danger approaching, and checked the weapon's display screen. A thin line showed that she had only enough energy for one shot, maybe two. She leaned the weapon on the buckled doorframe of the car and set about packing up her improvised campsite. In her backpack she still had three cans of food, two empty water bottles, and one half full.
The hunger was bearable, but she had a desperate need for more water. That half bottle was all she had left and that storage room in the guard outpost — filled with litres of water, and weapons, and all the food she could want — seemed so far away now.
She wet her lips and rubbed them with filthy fingers.
Going back there wasn't an option. Even with T1N it had been a suicide mission. Those creatures would have discovered the secret room by now and consumed all the water. That's what Bella said they were looking for, right? Dotty thought they must see her like a canteen with legs.
She threw her backpack and her rifle onto her shoulders, but just before leaving she had one last check in the glovebox, the footwells and under the seats. This had become habit because her survival could depend on any chance discovery. Without much hope she went through it all until, as she opened the glovebox—
"Bingo."
Below a pile of crumpled brochures and pamphlets there was a pair of individually wrapped sweets. Putting them in her backpack, she looked at one of the pamphlets. "Reserve your stay at Pacific Blue now," it said. The cover showed a man and a woman kissing on the end of a dock. Behind them were a number of white rowing boats holding other couples.
Opening the pamphlet she found a map that stretched across two pages: a big blue circle dotted with hundreds of small islands. There were one or two houses on each island, in different sizes and architectural styles that ranged the entire course of human history.
"24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the weather is always perfect and the fish are always biting at Pacific Blue. Come and spend a few days in comfort and privacy. You'll find us in sector R4."
For a moment, Dotty imagined throwing herself into the water and splashing around in that infinite lake. She needed water, fast.
The brochure went into her bag with everything else and she set off between the abandoned cars. There had to be some way to find more water. T1N had taught her to keep fighting, until her last breath, no matter how hard circumstances became. And that was exactly what she planned to do. Until the very end.