Lili's dreams are fitful and hardly chaste at all. Hardly chaste from the seductive wiles that come from rebellion, that is. She is whole and all-encompassing, and yet she is no bigger than a speck—if someone were to take a duster and a dustpan, they could sweep her off the universe with one quick scour. It was unbelievable how easily the taste of rebellion could rip you from the world and displace you onto a new layer of existence. She's never felt this great. She feels like she could eat the world, whole and uncooked, like a bite-sized canape on a clean, hot plate.
Something blares over the intercom. Lili knows that it's the intercom even in her sleep, because the voice is heavily distorted and sounds like shit. As expected of a commercial junker, she supposes.
She rolls over. Avett is covering his ears with his hands and groaning.
And then she really, really starts to tune in on what the guy over the intercom is saying.
"This is the IRC convoy, requesting that you land now before we are required to use lethal force. Once again, requesting Commercial Liner, license plate 09MK of the Hive sector to land. This is the IRC…"
Well, shit.