@auroraloon fell toward the gap along with my pants, but she was able to clasp one of the pant legs and use it as a rope while they were caught on my boots. But boots only hold for so long with someone tugging at them while a tractor beam sucks up whatever it can. She fell back again when the first boot came off, now climbing frantically to get back up to me, like someone running on a collapsing bridge trying to get to solid ground.

  She wrapped her arms around my right foot as I watched my boots and pants go speeding away into outer space. I considered myself lucky to still have my boxer briefs, but ... let's just say I was having a day. I was having a really wonderful couple of days actually. On the bright side, I got a cat.

  "Why aren't you wearing a belt?!" she shouted, dangling toward the gap. I half expected her to bite into my shin if she thought it would help keep her from spiraling off toward the pirate ship.

  "If you knew what I've been through," I started to say, but she was right. She always seemed to be right. I should get a belt, a really cool belt that turns into a whip like the one @horsehead had, except without the horsetail. "Just hold on!" I yelled.

  She did, and she slowly started trying to climb up my legs. She grabbed below my knee, squeezing my right leg against her side so that my foot was in her armpit. Then she reached up for the other leg, tightening her grip above the knee.

  I spasmed and accidentally kicked my left leg out. Lucky for @auroraloon, she still had a solid grip on the other leg.

  "What the hell! Are you trying to kill me?"

  "That tickles!"

  She reached for me again, this time mindful not to pinch my leg. She slowly worked her way up, carefully clasping her arms around the boney parts of my body. Foot, knee, and hips.

  "Don't pull me there," I screamed as she brushed against the front of my boxer briefs.

  I heard her groan as she struggled to hold on. "If I need to, I'm going to grab whatever I can!" she yelled.

  I closed my eyes and prayed to @3Beak as she worked her way, carefully, over my hips to put her arms around my waist, while I tried not to fart in her face. Then she twisted her legs around mine and squeezed her legs together. @auroraloon was strong. I could feel her muscles working as she held herself in place against me.

  "I'm glad they didn't eject the cargo," I yelled out. If they had, we would have just been thrown into space to be collected by the pirating ship, and we would have died for certain. At least this way we had a chance.

  "I'm holding on for life, and that's what you're grateful for!" she shouted between deep breaths, reaching up for a firmer grip on my jacket.

  Now that she could also grip with her legs, it made it easier for her to climb. I thought she'd stay there, but she made one final move up, scaling me like I was a tree.

  I winced as she grabbed my shoulders and pulled herself up. One she had her arms around me and her chest snug against my back, she let go with her legs and then wrapped them around my hips, like she was riding piggyback. She brought her hands together around my chest, clasping her wrists with opposing hands in a tight lock.

  I tried not to complain, the force of her pull exacerbating the pain running through me from the electric burns and whip gashes. I can only imagine what it would have felt like if I didn't have some of the vampire medicine in me, but I could tell it was wearing off more and more. I also noticed my breathing was labored and more rapid. I was gulping more with each breath. We were losing breathable air from the puncture in the ship.

  "We're going to run out of oxygen," I called out.

  She moved her head closer, her cheek touching against mine. Her breath was warm, and I suddenly felt very cold. Losing my pants didn't help me protect myself from the frozen temperatures of space now flooding the ship.

  "I'm starting to wonder if every time we meet, we die," @auroraloon reflected.

  "That's a morbid thought," I said. "Do you think that's a me problem, or a you problem?"

  Stolen story; please report.

  "I'm not the one without pants," she said, adjusting to whisper into my ear. Her lips wisped against my skin as she spoke, making me twitch.

  "I was supposed to be the one riding piggyback," I replied with a snicker.

  But she got me thinking. I wondered how many people out there in the cosmos I had met before but couldn't remember. Once again, that's the problem and frustration of memory gaps.

  "How many times do you think we've met?" I asked.

  She pulled herself back so we were cheek-to-cheek. She had an amazingly strong grip and wasn't going anywhere. I started to relax a bit, just hoping now that the grappling hook would hold.

  "Who knows?" she responded. "How many times have you died?"

  "771," I stated.

  "771?!?" she exclaimed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  I didn't understand what the problem was, so I tried to explain. "I've been alive as an aiways since UC60, so I'm 230 years old." She didn't respond right away. I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

  "I doubt we've met many times," I said, answering my own question. "I only remember meeting you once, and you clearly don't remember me, right?"

  "771 times," she said again.

  I knew she didn't mean we had met 771 times. She was still fixated on the number of times I had died, so I asked the obvious question. "How many times have you died?"

  "15," she said, "and we're about the same age."

  "15!" I yelled too loudly. "How have you avoided the war?"

  "I haven't," she said. "I just try not to get myself killed."

  Well, at least I learned that she was an Introvert solider of some kind. I tried to learn more. "What do you do?"

  She thought about that. Normally there was no way she would answer that question, but with the prospect of suffocation or death by some other means close at hand, she must have figured there was no harm in keeping secrets. "I'm an Infiltrator."

  Infiltrator! I told myself. That made a lot of sense, what with her coy behavior and the snakeskin suit, her knowledge of the quantum keys. Infiltrators were scouts, spies, assassins. She must be deadly in a fight.

  "That's one of the most dangerous positions." I tried to look at her eyes, catching just a hint of violet, but our heads were too close.

  "I know!" she said.

  "Well, Thunder Ops dies a lot. I'm a Wavepilot, so I die all the time." But wait, I'm not a Wavepilot anymore. "I mean, I was a Wavepilot. I'm a Vanquisher now."

  "How does your brain still work?"

  I thought that was an odd question. "It works like it always does. I'd argue better than most. I can futurecast." I stopped myself. That was my own word for it. "I can sort of predict the future."

  "You mean you hallucinate?" she asked.

  "No," I said, trying to explain. "I can foresee future events and all the moving parts and connections. I can understand the path through the possible outcomes."

  "You're lucky they haven't terminated you," @auroraloon said. "What you're describing, for Introverts, is a sign of dysfunction and mental shattering, memory corruption."

  I was kind of offended, and I am rarely offended.

  "I'm not an Introvert," I said, perhaps a little harshly.

  "So can you foresee what's going to happen now?" she asked.

  I didn't like the interrogation creeping into her tone, but I thought about that and engaged my futurecasting. Again, I don't know if it was the electrocution, fatigue, or just @auroraloon's disturbing but alluring presence. I didn't know what was going to happen.

  "No, I can't," I admitted.

  She spun around somehow, rotating so that we were face to face, our hips close as she tightly rewrapped around me. Her hair fluttered through my vision, dark curls that made me feel at peace. This moment felt familiar somehow, familiar and peaceful and good. But I searched and had no memory of it.

  "I think I'm going to live," @auroraloon said to me, staring at me with a look of pity. I didn't understand. I couldn't understand.

  She kissed me. Despite my vomit mouth, my face burned from the electric shocks, and the bloody slash across my eye, she kissed me. It was a simple kiss, a quick peck on the lips really. I was too shocked to do much other than catch her kiss.

  And then she was gone.

  She let go. She pushed away even. She sped off in a twirl down through the twisted metal opening in the side of Flipper toward the raider's binocular ship.

  I gasped. What had just happened? Where did she go? Why did she do that?

  I wondered if I should follow her. I thought long and hard about that, trying to see the future again, but it was still blank.

  My heart sank.

  Was I broken?

  I'm not too ashamed to say I cried. I cried and hung there in the middle of the empty cargo hold. It was only the rustle of Sango that brought me back to life.

  "I guess it's just you and me," I said, and that renewed my spirit. I had to keep Sango alive. We needed oxygen, and we needed it soon.

  I scanned the ship with my ARM's sensors. The bridge was still connected. They hadn't ejected the bridge, or maybe they couldn't. The levels above me had been raided, all except the level filled with fake flamingos. I had no doubt they would raid the four floors below me next, before zipping away with a DEAD drive.

  Since ventilation shafts seemed to be my thing, and they would be pumping oxygen through the broken ship, I knew exactly what to do. I plotted a course through the ventilation system toward the bridge.

  "Thank you for the ARM, James," I spoke out into the void. That ARM really saved our lives, Sango's and mine.

  I tried not to concentrate as I released the grappling hook from the pipe. Sango and I started to float toward the opening, but the force was easing off now that this level was basically cleared. Still, I knew I had to act quickly. I fired the grappling hook at the vent on the side of the room and pulled us to safety.