Her voice rings out over a pink-sand beach: Get up, Ambrose. You’re racing me to the point.

Now Minerva’s drowning. Her strong arms chop ocean but bring her nowhere.

I try to yell, but my dry throat gapes.

Minerva has never needed help, not in her whole life.

I can’t open my eyes.

I’m not where I thought I was. I try to call out again, despite the burning in my throat. I’m coming! I’ll save you!

Clatter of hard polycarb on hard polycarb, ringing and rolling. A whirring hum.

When I open my eyes, the world looks no different.

I’m blind.

Ting-ting buzz.

I haven’t been blind—I have been in the absolute dark. Now there is light.

“Is someone there?” I ask, blinking against purple burn.

A voice comes on. I recognize it. “There has been an accident, Ambrose. You have been in a coma. I’ll let you know when you can move.”

“Mother? Where are you?” My voice sounds like a sob. She’d hate the weakness of it.

“I am not your mother, though I may sound like her,” she says. “I am using her voice skin.”

Voice skin. Ship. Right. I’m on the Endeavor. “You’re the operating system,” I say. My eyes jerk around in their sockets. White polycarbonate walls, “04” printed in large block numerals beside a doorway. There is no sand. This is not a place for sand. I’m on my mission. “Give me an update on my sister.”

My mother—my operating system—needs no time to think. Her words begin before mine end. “You are on a mission to retrieve Minerva, or Minerva’s body.”

“I know that, OS,” I spit. “I asked you for an update.”

The floor hums. An image returns: my parents, my brothers and sisters, frolicking on our Cusk-branded pink sand, Minerva splashing through waves of steaming seawater in her white racing suit, my mother yelling “Faster, Minerva, you can go faster,” my molten bronze fingers searching the scorching artificial grains for a seashell. My family’s spaceport is distant in the blue, radio arrays wheeling. Pleasure satellites haunt it.

“Are you delaying because you have no information, or because Minerva is dead?” I say. I want to add more, but speaking hurts too much.

“I will fill you in once you are ready.”

I manage to shake my head, vertebrae grinding. “That’s not how this works. You’ll fill me in now.”

“The launch had complications, but was ultimately successful,” OS says. “You are on board the Coordinated Endeavor, weeks past Earth and its moon. We are well on our way to the Titan distress beacon. There has been no change in her signal.”

Of course my sister is alive. Dying would be a failure, and Minerva Cusk doesn’t fail.