The emergency lights cast long, distorted shadows across the engine room, painting the metal walls in a sickly amber hue. The hum of the life support was a fragile, lonely sound against the vast silence that had swallowed the rest of the ship. Blake sat with her back against the cool plating of the bulkhead, her mechanical fingers absently tapping a rhythm against the deck while her flesh-and-blood hand maintained a white-knuckled grip on the stun baton she'd pried from a dead guard's grasp. The orange prison uniform was stiff with dried sweat and smeared with grime from crawling through maintenance shafts, a fresh bruise blooming purple across her cheekbone where she'd been thrown against a console during one of the explosions. Blake's mind churned through the possibilities, each one bleaker than the last. The ship was crippled. Dead in the black. She'd rerouted what she could, bought them time, but time for what exactly? To sit here and wait for rescue that might never come? To be collected by the authorities and delivered right back to the cell she'd tried so desperately to avoid? Her fingers tightened on the baton. She thought of Melissa, of the workshop. A sharp ache settled behind her ribs. The sudden scrape of a boot against metal on the other side of the sealed door shattered the quiet. Blake heard the hiss of an access panel being pried open, the frustrated tapping of commands that went nowhere. Her hand flew to the manual override lever, confirming it was still locked in place. It wouldn't budge. They weren't getting in unless she let them. Blake pushed herself up from the floor, every muscle screaming in protest, and moved toward the door. She stood close to the metal, her breath shallow, the stun baton raised. Through the small, reinforced viewport she could see nothing but the vague shift of a shadow. Her voice came out rough. "Who's there?"