Casting Off

There were numbers on each of the pockets. Juliette could look down at her chest and read them, and so it occurred to her that they must be printed upside down. They were there for her to read, and for no one else. She numbly stared at them through her helmet visor while the door behind her was sealed. There was another door, a forbidden one, looming in front of her. It stood silently as it waited to be opened. Juliette felt lost in this void between the two doors, trapped in this airlock full of its brightly colored pipes all jutting from the walls and ceiling, everything shimmering behind a plastic-wrapped shroud.The hiss of Argon being pumped into the room sounded distant through her helmet. It let her know the end was near. Pressure built against the plastic, crinkling it across the bench and walls, wrapping it tightly around the pipes. She could feel the pressure against her suit, like an invisible hand gently squeezing.She knew what was to happen next. And part of her wondered how she had gotten here, a girl from Mechanical who never cared one whit about the outside, who had only ever broken minor laws, and who would’ve been content for the rest of her life to live in the deepest bowels of the earth, covered in grease and fixing the broken things, little concern for the wider world of the dead that surrounded her—