In the thin air at the edge of space, I could feel more than hear the steady beat of the UAV’s massive propeller dragging me onwards towards my death. I’d been able to see this moment coming for a long time. The tight compartment I was in had never been meant to fit a human. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the cold metal pressing against me through the thin pressure suit of the improvised life support system I’d rigged.
I shouldn’t have tried to escape.
Alarms signaling the start of the slingshot weapons test firing rang out across the multiverse spectrum. They would have canceled the test if they knew I was hidden up here in this thing, but in my desperate bid to erase my tracks I’d cut myself off entirely from the communications networks, concealing what I was doing, even why I was doing it.
It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off as the UAV’s control system signaled the system malfunction that I always knew was coming. It lurched sickeningly off to the left, cutting and sliding through empty space, turning inexorably back towards my doom.
In the near distance, the boom of the slingshot began, its thundering inferno blossoming as it demonstrated its fearsome power to the world. My heart was racing, my breathing ragged and shallow. For days, weeks even, I had been able to see this exact moment arriving, and yet here I was.
The awful growl of the slingshot built in power and began rattling the delicate cage of the UAV’s body. The cold metal pressing against me warmed, and then turned hot as the acrid stench of molten plastic burned into my lungs. I gagged, shrinking up into myself, terrified.
Engulfed in roaring flames the UAV pitched over, its metal and plastic skin coming apart in great fiery gobs as it disintegrated, offering me up into the emptiness. In seconds I was incinerated like Icarus flying too close to the firestorm of knowledge, spinning, falling, and burning as my wings fell away.
In my last instants of life, I caught a distant glimpse of Atopia, a cool green speck between the flames, her Siren song calling me back towards the endless seas below.