Instead of the familiar, soothing chime of the AI, there was only the low, rhythmic hum of auxiliary life support—and a wet, dragging sound from the dark corridor outside.

I

at the base of my skull. "Status!" I croaked, my voice sounding thin and alien in the physical world. The station's AI didn't answer.

My teeth chattered, a psychosomatic reaction to the simulated frostbite still clinging to my synapses. Around me, the control pod hissed open, releasing a cloud of stale, recycled air. The

...link with a ragged, desperate thought-command, tearing myself out of the sensory web.

I gasped, my physical lungs seizing as if they had actually inhaled the vacuum of Sector Nine.

If those fields faltered for even a microsecond, the roaring, multi-million-degree stellar furnace below would swallow the station like a drop of morning dew.

I severed the neural