There’s a light.

We’re about to crash and then suddenly there’s a light, with no time in between the two things, just one scene turning into another like a switch has been flipped.

I stare at it, uncomprehending. We’re not moving any more, at least, or at least I think we’re not moving. Maybe we’re moving and I can’t tell, or maybe I’d dead and heaven is this blurry flickering blue-orange light and toes I can’t feel.

Fingers I can’t feel, either, but I can feel my head and the rest of my body and it all hurts like hell, half stiff and half sore and all bad.

I move my fingers. I realize that my hands are in gloves that I don’t remember putting on, and I flex them, knock them clumsily into something. My glasses, neatly folded from the feel of it, and without thinking I put them on and bring everything into sharp relief at last.

I’m still in the plane. Still in the seat, slumped half against it and half against the window, the orange-blue light only a reflection in the windshield and mirror.

All my joints move. If I’m dead at least it’s not that bad. It hurts but it’s not that bad and I shove my mittened hands over my hair, wonder if in the moments before the plane crashed I put on mittens and just don’t remember it. I don’t even know if I had mittens, I’m not usually the mittens type but it’s true that they’re more efficient than gloves at storing heat, just less dexterous.

“You awake?” Wilder’s voice asks behind me.

I guess he survived too. I shouldn’t wish otherwise. It’s not nice and I’m a nice person, not someone who wishes death on other people, but the prospect of spending even more time alone with the one person I’m fairly sure is my own personal hell is daunting.

I flail at the release on my harness until it comes undone, pull it away from myself, joints protesting though I don’t think anything is broken. I turn in the seat and finally look at him, sitting on a suitcase on the floor of the plane, two feet behind me.

The whole plane cabin is at a slight tilt, making me lean to one side. Wilder’s got a tiny camp stove flaring in front of him, propped up so it’s level. That’s the light I saw reflected a moment ago.

My lips are chapped, my mouth dry.

“We’re gonna die of carbon monoxide poisoning,” I tell him.

There’s a tiny pot sitting on the tiny stove, obviously all part of some emergency kit he’s got. Wilder doesn’t respond to me, just rips open a package and peers inside.

I’m still slightly woozy, dizzy, having a hard time keeping my balance even seated in this little plane.

“Do you really want to survive a plane crash,” I say, and swallow, squeezing my eyes shut. “Only to die of a totally preventable—”

“I propped the back door open,” he says without looking at me.

I glance back. He’s right, the door to the cargo area is propped up with a rock, but even that makes my brain go all spinny so I close my eyes again.

“That’s not enough air circulation,” I point out, eyes still closed. “If you’re going to use that thing in here we need real ventilation.”

“This is plenty of ventilation,” he says. “Unless you wanted to die of hypothermia instead.”

“It’s making me dizzy.”

“Carbon monoxide doesn’t do that.”

Shit, he’s right. I’ve still got my eyes shut, and I’m still fighting the tilt in this airplane cabin, trying to maintain control or something like it.

“It’s probably the concussion,” he says, still not looking at me. “Those’ll do that.”

I take a deep breath, leaning sideways against the headrest of the seat, letting my eyes drift closed. There are so many questions that I need answered, like where we are or how we got here, but I’m just so tired that I let myself rest like this and fade away.

It’s carbon monoxide poisoning, my brain whispers right before I’m asleep again. I always knew Wilder Fucking Flint was going to be the death of me, one way or another.

The next time I wake up it’s light. Not really light, but I can tell that it’s not night time any more, the snow-covered gray light of dawn seeping through the tiny plane’s windows.

I’m not in the seat any more. I’m on the floor of the plane, lying on top of an emergency tarp or something, coats piled on top of me.

And I have to pee. Jesus Christ, do I have to pee.

I shove myself up with one arm, every joint protesting, not to mention my bladder. It makes my eyes water, but I grit my teeth, force myself up to sitting.

Everything is sore. Everything, every single part of my body feels like I’ve been hit by a truck, not to mention the plane is at an angle so everything feels strange and off-kilter and also, I feel like I might puke.

And I don’t know where we are. I don’t know if rescue’s coming, I don’t even know where Wilder is right now but those are all problems that can wait until after I pee.

I get on my hands and knees. Every part of my body hurts and my glasses are off again, so the inside of the airplane is more lights and shapes than anything else.

I inhale, exhale, will myself not to pee my pants and glance to one side. Right in front of me, on the floor, is a shape I’d recognize anywhere, in any context, no matter what.

My glasses, neatly folded. I grab them and shove them on, finally able to see, and with one last deep breath, I push myself to a squat.

My right ankle screams in pain, and I fall over. My elbow smashes into the floor hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

“Shit,” I gasp out, not even able to move for a moment. My ankle’s hurt badly, maybe broken, and I’m afraid I just peed myself, maybe broke my elbow at the same time.

I’m going to die here.

This is the end, this is it, I’m going to die in a crashed plane in a puddle of my own pee and it’s because I trusted Wilder again like some kind of idiot.

This has to be a nightmare. It has to be. There’s no other possibility.

“Wake up,” I say out loud.

I don’t, but after a moment, the pain in my elbow and ankle starts to fade. I get my hand on the floor, shove myself to sitting again. This time I manage to stand on just one leg, my good leg, and I hold myself up against the two back seats of the Cessna, head bowed against the freezing cold roof.

Painfully, I hop forward, using the top and sides of the plane to balance myself, and when I’m almost to the cargo door it swings open, a puffy black form standing right outside it, looking at me like I’m gum that got stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“Where are you going?” Wilder says.

I breathe hard, swaying against the side of the plane.

“I need to pee,” I tell him.

He heaves the door wider until it sticks open in some snow, then steps through it. Holds out one gloved hand.

I just look at it.

“It’s a hand,” he says, a hard edge in his voice.

“I know it’s a hand.”

“What happened to your ankle?”

I wobble, then steady myself against the metal side of the plane, still staring into Wilder’s eyes. They always made me feel like I was drowning, but now they make me feel like I’m being dragged underwater, held down until I can’t breathe.

“You crashed the plane,” I say, my voice sharp. “The fuck do you think happened?”

His jaw tightens, but he keeps holding his hand out.

“Is it broken?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“All those fancy degrees and you don’t know if you broke a bone?”

My bladder is screaming.

“Just let me go pee,” I say, keeping my voice flat because I don’t want him to know that after all these years, he still gets to me like this.

“I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t need help, I need you to move so I can get off of this plane that you crashed and go pee.”

His eyes flash, but he moves, ducking his head and coming into the cabin, bracing himself against the ceiling as well. I pretend he’s not there as best as I can, focusing all my attention on the door I’m heading toward, the bright white of the outdoors beyond it.

I hop. It sucks, because my good leg also hurts and because the interior of the plane isn’t really high enough for this, but I’m sure as hell not crawling to the door in front of Wilder so I grit my teeth and bear it.

I’ve made slow, painful progress almost to the door when my knee buckles underneath me.

I scrabble at the doorframe but I’m not fast enough and my mittens are too slippery to grab the cold metal, and I’m about to go over when Wilder grabs me around my waist, catching me.

Don’t pee yourself.

I don’t pee myself. Wilder pushes me back onto my one good foot and I grab onto the doorframe for dear life, hopping forward once more and hauling myself out of the plane.

I don’t say anything. I don’t even look at him, because once we get rescued from wherever we are I’m not giving him any ammunition. I’m not letting Wilder go back to Solaris, with his rich friends and rich clients who hire him to helicopter them to the top of a mountain, and tell them about how when he miraculously survived a plane crash the girl he was with peed herself.

Wilder’s humiliated me enough for one lifetime.

The moment I’m out the plane’s back door, the wind whips through my hair, my ears and nose instantly frozen, my eyes watering. Somehow I didn’t think about how cold it would be out here.

My head still feels sloshy, dizzy, like it’s stuffed with cotton. I think Wilder’s right that I got a concussion, because it feels like I can barely string two thoughts together. Just the mental task of get through the snow and go pee is taking enormous effort, much more than it should. It should hardly take any.

The snow’s two feet deep. Hopping is hard, but I half-lean on the plane and half-scoot my foot through the snow until I’m closer to the tail, a spot slightly sheltered from the wind, and then I brace myself for the hard part, both physically and mentally.

Peeing outside in the cold is the worst. Every time I go on a research expedition I swear up and down that I’m going to buy one of those pee funnels that they sell to women so we get our business done without exposing our entire butts to the elements, and then every time I feel too ridiculous to actually make the purchase.

But right now, squatting on one leg, wind howling around me and air temperatures probably somewhere around zero degrees Fahrenheit, I’d give anything for one of those stupid things instead of freezing my vagina off out here.

Cold aside, it feels good, though. When I’m done I yank my pants back up as fast as humanly possible and lean against the tail of the airplane, finally able to think about something besides my bladder.

My brain still feels like it’s operating at half-speed, but at least that distraction is gone, and I can think about something besides whether I’m going to pee myself.

I inhale. I close my eyes. I exhale, willing myself to stop feeling like my head is stuffed with fluff, and I open my eyes.

And blink.

Shit.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but we’re in the middle of nowhere.