Escaping. Again.

Yellow smoke coils around my suspended legs: one boot wedged over the splintered window still, the other dragging behind, still swaying on the fire escape. Five floors below, an armed guard draws his breath from his cigar. It snags between the mouth piece of his rusty gas mask.

I inch my hips closer over the ledge. The dark brown sky hangs low over my head, watching.

One last push, and I’d have it. Have everything. My eyes find the towering, gleaming metal tank. Mere steps away, inside the ragged fortress. My nostrils flare, smelling the leather seats tucked inside the tank.

Impossible. I nailed the air-sealing strips myself. Still, my fingers twitch, burning with the phantom feel of her matted, cotton car seat lining. When her toes barely scratched the floor. Before I traded her, my beautiful daughter, for this.

More smoke claws upward. My chest tightens, and I shift my weight, painfully slow, over the window ledge. Carefully, I raise my heel—

Crack

The wood beneath my hands gives. My palm plummets into the molten wood. I jerk forward, losing my balance. Five floors’ worth of oxidized metal shudders beneath me.

The guard’s chin cocks up. His gaze slices through the iron rails. His scaly neck catches light in the golden hue of his cigar.

Shit!

I lunge into the dark room, palms stinging, and stumble. My chest slams against the icy tank. A web of electric green fractures over my glass visor.

Memories rush through me: two green wires, entwined, spark to life. I glance over my shoulder at the Director and my lab associates. I flick the time dial, eyes shining, giddy with arrogance. Too hungry to notice the heaviest absence of the room: She’s not here.

My teeth grate together. Plain flares over my chest, biting into my stomach. I grab the metal wall to steady myself. Frosty, familiar.

Outside, the fire escape groans.

I reach over the smooth surface, until my fingers wrap around a microwave handle. The one I stole from our kitchen, in lieu of science, at the expense of her leftovers.

I pull it now, hands shaking. The door protests, untouched for more than a decade, before, finally, hissing wide open.

A wet snarl reverberates through the room. I whip around back toward the window—the guard spits foreign, undecipherable words. His claws curl into the broken wood, and his green eyes bulge against his visor.

I dive into the tank. Dust and shadows swallow me whole.

The door swings shut, cutting off my thin lifeline of light. I whisper, praying: My daughter, my daughter, my daughter.

I shove my hands across the control board, over the leather seats, into a knot of wires. It’s impossible. Without seeing, I cannot—

A bulb flickers overhead. Shadows jump across the tank walls, over my bony fingers. A mercy.

I grab the plastic time dial. Roll the numbers: 0 8 / 2 0 2 7

My final lab demonstration. Her 8th birthday.

The tank roars to life, engine whirling. My lungs seize, and I cannot breathe. A soft hiss. More light.

I promised to return in time for unwrapping presents, giving her my own. A new life, sharing my newfound prestige.

I’m ready to give it all up. Trade anything to get back, to return to the beginning of the end.

Sinking backwards into my seat, I yank the flimsy seat belt over my chest.

Fuck the labs, the papers, the science behind it all. All I want is her.

Two boots hit the floor. The tank jolts to the left.

I yelp. Jump. Collapse back into my seat, strained by the belt.

The guard’s mouth piece flips open, and he releases an ear piercing screech.

“Stop!” I cry, slamming my fists against my ears. “You don’t understand!”

But neither do I, when two tusks split through his mask, snapping. Thick, murky fluid flicks off them.

I kick my feet forward. “Stop!”

A siren reverberates through the tilted tank. Lights flash across the control board.

“Leave!” I beg. “Please!”

Outside, the room walls waver and melt into another. Too late. I grab the arm rests, and the tank hums to life.

The guard whirls for the open door—Yes! Go!—then whips back around and slams his fist into the rolling time dial.

“NO—“

It cracks in half.

The world shrinks and warps together, twisting and spinning. The guard staggers to the floor and bursts into billions of glowing atoms.

My ribs deflate, collapse together, dissipate into nothing—then rematerialize whole again.

The tank stabilizes. An upright, perfect landing. My best design.

The guard reappears, sprawled over the control board. His obsidian skull stitched back together. His breath rags out of his mask, hoarse. Alive.

I throw the belt buckle away and hurl myself out of the open door. I tear my gas mask loose. “Baby! I’m here! My baby—”

The smell of sulphur knocks me backward.

I clutch the tank once more, blinking. Familiar iron bars glare back. I spin around.

A worn mattress, slumped in the corner of the holding cell. An overflowing chamber pot.

And unnatural, deafening silence.

Except—

The guard’s boot slams into the tank. The metal wall dents, caving into itself. His talons tear into the door, ripping it free. It shatters against the cell wall.

He grabs a fistful of wires from inside, snaps them in half. Throws them under his boot. Grinds them to green dust.

My knees hit the ground.

The guard’s tusks retract. He steps back and surveys my life’s work, my last redemption, demolished into rubble.

I stare, immobilized.

He passes me and unlocks the cell door. I hear the flick of a lighter. A long drag, then he roars.

I turn, but his gaze is beyond me. Eyes narrowed into two mocking slits.

The sliver of a window at the far end of my holding cell glows white. Three full moons overlapping each other.

Again.

My throat convulses. A manic, wet laugh bursts free.

The guard tips his head backwards, his guttural laugh rattling the bars.

We laugh together, prisoner and guard, as the eclipse dies, ten minutes before my escape plan is due to begin.