Like most intrepid spacesailors looking to brave the Uncharted, June and Domansky had gotten caught in the Anomaly's gravity ring. It wasn't so bad most days. There was a silent city here, built by who knew how many stranded sailors, each finding an abrupt end to their unfortunate adventure. So the city had grown in patchwork clumps and clusters and lurching skyscrapers, all around the ring like so many space age stalactites and stalagmites, one becoming the other as the ring spun on and gravity persisted no matter where you stood.

Just now, June and Domansky sat on the roof of an unnecessary apartment building, ostensibly upside down, but right side up because all ways were right side up. The twilight was constant and purple. The silence was always, except for their own breath, a reassurance and a countdown. There was a reason the apartment building was unnecessary, and there was a reason they were the only two left in the city.

Except for the cats.

The true inhabitants of the gravity ring were everywhere, sleeping, licking, having scuffles in the alleys. Just yesterday they'd started following Domansky. Whole trains of pattering cats, tails a-swish or raised up high, a chorus of curious, anticipatory meows parading at his heels. That's how June knew the end was coming. That's why Domansky wouldn't look her in the eye, despite being married to her for five years and having already told her every embarrassing secret he'd ever had.

This was worse.

This meant the Anomaly had gotten under his skin. It was calling him home.

They sat on the roof in the silence of tense lungs. The air happened to be breathable; it somehow wasn't strange here on the brink of everything stranger. But the air was also filled with things unspoken, sharp words, apologies, protests, and the outrage June felt welling in her chest like an exploding star. Domansky was all she had left. They'd bet everything on each other coming out here. She couldn't make a bet with no one on the other end.

Domansky kicked his legs. He had a cat on his lap, a cat on his shoulder, another threaded through his arm, and still another perched on his head. They watched the Anomaly somberly, whiskers glowing and twitching, eyes full purple because they weren't truly cats anymore. The Anomaly didn't want them, so they'd survived and become more.

A vending machine rattle-gasped behind them, and that was enough to break the glass.

June swiveled on the rooftop, folding her legs beneath her and staring full on at Domansky so he had to look or go red with the effort of not looking. "What does it feel like?" she asked. They hadn't talked about this yet. Domansky had never admitted it. He didn't need to. The cats told all, and June had seen the marks on his skin in the night when he'd thought she was sleeping. The writing, the language that called.

He worried at his fingers, then worried at his hair, chewed on his lip and then sighed hard through his teeth. The sigh became a whistle around the tooth he'd chipped during a drunken game of two-person dodge ball. That had been their first day here. This might be Domansky's last.

"It feels like a song. Like the sirens of Old Earth," he said, quiet in that reluctant way of his. He blinked a lot, lashes brushing the freckles on his cheeks. It was a tic of frustration. June had watched it so many times during their arguments, counting the blinks until the fighting ended. Now she wanted those eyes to open and close, on and on forever. "It feels," he continued, "like light inside you. Warm. Humming. Like cocooning yourself in blankets on a winter night. It feels like you're wanted."

"You are wanted, you idiot," June said, bumping her forehead into his arm. One of the cats swatted at her indignantly. He was their human now.

The light of the Anomaly churned between them. So far away and so present. A constant vortex of dream-light, purple and yellow and orange and deep-space blue spinning slow and sure just beyond the ring's rim. A sleepy eye. A slow motion whirlpool. But June couldn't hear its song. She listened, she did, but it didn't want her. Not yet.

"Come with me," Domansky said, taking her hand.

June took her hand back. "You know it won't let me. Anyways, I don't want to. That's giving up, Dom."

"Going home isn't giving up." The words sounded like someone else and June hated them. She hated the way they shaped Domansky's lips and made him someone else. Brainwashed by space-sirens.

"I'm your home. We're home." She folded her arms and glared at the cats. They glared back, unfazed, purring smugly.

"I don't know what else to do, June. It's got a fishing hook in my guts, I'm reeling in." Domansky pet the cat in his lap anxiously. "If I ignore it, I'll get torn apart."

"Will you?" June scooted closer, putting her nose in his face. "That's what they say in the logs they left, but no one ever tried. Try, Dom. Try for me."

He swallowed dry, blinking again, blinking like her heartbeat. A fickle thing. An irregular thing. A thing that would stop when the Anomaly swallowed him. "I don't know how," he said.

The Anomaly began to burn. Bright as a comet. Wide as a mouth. The colors braided into each other and June saw them spin out and light up Domansky's eyes too. He stopped blinking, gray irises replaced by the spiraling Anomaly. The cats purred as one and climbed off him, nudging him with their heads. June scrambled up as Domansky unfolded to his feet.

He took a step off the building and the air held him like it was solid ground. She could see an echo of his footstep glowing vibrant, glowing purple. June grabbed his hand. His fingers were cold but they held her back.

"Try," she said, leaning out after him, holding, holding tight. "Damn you, try."

The Anomaly spun faster and Domansky made a choked sound, his skin now effervescing particles of light. If he didn't walk through the door, it would take him atom by atom. "I'm going home now, June," he said, more incandescent particles bursting from his lips. His features softened, fuzzing, piecing away like cotton in the wind.

"The hell you are," June said, tears on her cheeks, anger in her mouth.

His fingers, wrapped in hers, became luminescent and then broke apart, bubbles of light coasting away. June cried out, her hand tingling. He was almost gone. "I bet on you, Dom. Don't you dare back out now, you galactic jerk. I bet on you."

June fumbled with her pack. They'd always taken essentials with them everywhere because anywhere in the city was a viable place to sleep or eat when you were the only ones. There had to be something—Domansky was looking at her. He blinked one more time, his slow smile just another curve in the Anomaly's spin.

June pulled a jar out of her pack and popped the lid, scooping the glass through the air as far as she could before vertigo curtailed her desperation.

Domansky was gone.

June shrieked, she sobbed, she hurled curses and insults at the careless turn of the Anomaly. Its colors settled. Its brightness dimmed. June held the jar to her chest, specks of light flickering inside, blinking on, blinking off.