“I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Letho answered.

“Yeah. I heard you took on a bunch of mutated things and killed them all. That’s crazy, bruin. Next you’ll probably be shooting lightning bolts from your fingertips and breathing fire,” Deacon said, following up with a jumble of weak laughter that dissolved into a coughing fit.

“Maybe you’re right. I’ll make sure to point it your way if either of those highly unlikely events occur. So how’s your head?”

“It feels like there’s an electric eel swimming around in my skull, and it has a penchant for shocking me every three or four seconds.”

“Oh yeah, the head shocks. I remember those,” Letho said, rubbing his own temple. “Just try not to think about them too much. Try to keep your mind blank. It helps.”

“Hey, Letho?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we all right here? I mean, are we going to make it?”

Letho inhaled, filling his lungs, then held the breath. The muscles in his back and chest protested at the sudden expansion. After a moment he let the air go, causing some of dust on the floor to swirl away from him like a tiny djinn. His mind felt clearer, and he was glad that he had taken the breath, because his first instinct had been to lash out at Deacon for the doubt his question implied. Deacon was just scared, Letho decided. Like everybody else.

“Well, we’re going to make it somewhere, that’s for sure. We didn’t come halfway across the galaxy to die in a busted-up old school.”

“Okay,” Deacon said. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, no doubt suffering from another head shock as the cocktail of chemicals that he had been fed his entire life continued to break down inside his body. “Hey, man. I didn’t mean to imply that—”

Letho interrupted Deacon with a wave of his hand. “Forget it. We’re all just tired and freaked out from our unhappy landing.”

“Right.”

Letho might as well have slapped his poor friend in the face.

“And now it’s my turn to apologize,” Letho added. “You did a damn good job getting us here in one piece, all things considered.”

Deacon nodded. “Thanks.”

Letho looked over and saw Bayorn watching the exchange between him and Deacon. Bayorn gestured for Letho to come over to him.

“Look likes old grumpy wants to talk to me,” Letho said. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

Deacon said something unintelligible and rolled over on the couch, nestling into it and pulling the anti-shock blanket tight around him.

****

Letho and Bayorn walked together to a cavernous room on the backside of the building. The exterior wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows that were shot through with cracks and bullet holes. The moonlight struggled to shine through centuries’ worth of grime. Letho scanned the room for any signs of life, and saw an animal that he recognized as a rat from his studies in the formal-ed sequence. But really it was little more than an emaciated sack of skin flitting past them on skittering claws.

“Well, at least we have one thing going for us. Not all of the life forms on this planet are trying to kill us,” Letho said as they watched the creature disappear into a pile of waste in the corner of the large room.

“There’s no food in this building,” Bayorn mused. “We scoured the place while you were unconscious and found nothing. I wonder what it’s eating.” His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stood perfectly upright, scanning the windowed wall with sentinel eyes. Sounds of rustling emerged from behind a row of metal countertops that fronted what looked like a kitchen area along the far wall. Above the countertops loomed faded signs proclaiming a variety of foodstuffs that made Letho’s stomachgrowl with desire.

This is a cafeteria. A lot like the ones on the Fulcrum station.

“Hey, we could eat those rats, if we could catch them,” Letho said, smiling.

“Maybe. Or maybe their flesh is plagued, like the beasts we encountered earlier,” Bayorn replied.

The two stood silently for a time, and Letho’s mind followed a line of thought that ended with him weighing the prospect of starvation against the risk of consuming contaminated or diseased animal flesh. Letho could tell from the look on Bayorn’s face that he was likely entertaining similar thoughts.

“Let me guess. That’s what you want to talk to me about. The food situation,” Letho said.

“Yes, that is one thing we must discuss, but also—”

Letho huffed and interrupted. “Look, Bayorn, I am sick of talking about Thresha, I don’t want to hear—”

“Letho, that is not what I wanted to talk about!” Bayorn roared.

The two stared at each other with such intensity that a stream of sparks exploding in the air between them would not have seemed out of place. Letho turned away from Bayorn and stepped farther into the cafeteria, kicking a rusted can with all his might. It crashed through one of the windows on the exterior wall, causing it to explode and rain down a glittering avalanche of shattered glass. Pristine moonlight flooded the room now, causing the glass to sparkle like worthless diamonds on the floor below.

“Well played, Letho!” Bayorn shouted. “Perhaps we can kill some more of those foul creatures and eat them, because you’ve surely just alerted their entire species to our presence.”

The can smashed into something in the distance, and the sound rang out like a pistol report. Letho flinched and offered a shrug of his shoulders.

“You gotta admit, that was a pretty good kick, though,” Letho said through a smile that did not extend to his eyes, which glimmered in feral fashion in the shadows beneath his brow.

“Are you crazy? Joking at a time like this?”

“What the hell do you want me to do, Bayorn? Rebuild the ship, conjure us a time warp and fly us back to the Fulcrum station ten years ago? We’re screwed, plain and simple, and everyone keeps looking at me, expecting me to fix it! I didn’t want any of this! I never asked to be the leader. I never wanted to be the chosen one for anything!” Letho’s chest was heaving, his words ragged and excited.

“In that case,” Bayorn said, his own voice rising now and slipping into Tarsi, “perhaps you shouldn’t allow them to worship you as their chosen one then! Sartan-Sien, indeed!”

Letho felt a little bit of his anger fade as the thunderous sound of Bayorn’s voice filled his ears, rattling them. Throughout all of their shared misadventures, Letho had never seen Bayorn lose his cool, had never heard such razor-sharp menace permeate his voice. But he couldn’t stand being mocked, and he allowed himself to swell back up with all the anger and frustration that had been building within him for some time.

“Oh, so here we go,” he spat. “What’s the matter? Jealous? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid that I’m cutting in on your whole Elder thing.” Bayorn scoffed and threw his arms up in a gesture of marked frustration. “Listen to me, Bayorn. I haven’t done anything to deceive the Tarsi. I’m just trying to survive all of this. If they’re dumb enough to believe that I’m some magical space savior guy, that’s their problem.”

As he spoke, Letho hammered the tip of his finger into Bayorn’s chest. Enraged, Bayorn grabbed Letho’s forearm and twisted. A bone or two inside Letho’s wrist broke with a popping report, and he gasped, staggering back, a look of disbelief in his eyes. He couldn’t believe that Bayorn, of all the creatures in the universe, had just broken his wrist.

All of the anger rushed out of him, replaced by the jagged pain that shot up his arm. He staggered on wobbly legs, clutching his wrist. And then, just like that, the pain was gone. The bones had knitted themselves back together.

But the emotional pain did not dissipate so quickly. Letho shoved it down somewhere deep in his chest where he locked away pain to be digested later, just as he always had. Left behind was an unpleasant numbness that he could feel in his face.