Being in the Drift is…

Mako has read everything she can get her hands on. Accounts of former pilots, theories from experts who helped Dr Lightcap and Dr Schoenfeld create Drift technology. She has heard pilots – Sensei, Tamsin, the Kaidonovskys, the Wei Triplets, even Chuck – talk about it. She knows what to expect.

And then Tendo says "Initiating Neural Handshake in fifteen."

She knows nothing.

There's a flash, and suddenly –

– suddenly she's in the middle of the Anchorage Shatterdome. Somehow, she knows Yancy is in LOCCENT, finding new ways to annoy Tendo, and that the couple who have just waved out to her are named Saraswati and Rakesh Chawla, a couple from India who pilot Tango Tasmania –

– she's fifteen and asleep on her bed. Yancy's screaming for her. Jazmine's at the doorway to her room, and all she says is "You've got to see this now," before she's being pulled towards the living room and her parents at staring the television screen with speechless horror. And all she thinks in that moment is that the monster looks kind of cool –

– but now she's in Manila with Yancy at her side, and cool is the last thing she thinks when she stares up at the Kaiju. Her parents and sister are far away, and she really, truly hates these beasts for separating her from her family –

– the one person who knows her better than anyone else, the first person that springs to mind when someone says the word family because she may have parents and another sibling, but you aren't truly close to someone until you've shared a mind with them. But Yancy's being pulled away from her, and she's the one screaming now. He's saying I love you, always remember that, don't lose yourself, fight for me somewhere in her mind, and then –

– it's the thing she dreads the most about the funeral. Seeing him burn was hard enough, had broken her enough, but her parents are there and Jazmine, and she can see the hate it their eyes and itshouldhavebeenher –

– and suddenly she's no longer Raleigh Beckett. There's a younger version of herself beckoning her, and she knows she shouldn't follow. It's the R.A.B.I.T pulling her away, the R.A.B.I.T that she knows she shouldn't chase, but somehow it doesn't feel as dangerous as being Raleigh. She's knows who she is, and if chasing the R.A.B.I.T means that she'll still remain Mako –

– she's chasing down a long, winding path, trying to keep up with the little girl with the lost shoe, the one who is and always will be her.

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