Blackbridge, Pomorum - February 9th, 2554 CE.

Marfisa had honed the calculus of measuring prices in hours of her life to the point of compulsion.

Her habitation unit’s air filtration system, engaged in response to the front door opening, cost about 20 minutes of her labor. The automatic hour of uptime chipped away at the 100 hour life expectancy of the filter, which ran 35 or so hours of labor per replacement service. Of course, it also used power, and would run again if she returned before work.

A personal filtration mask and boots were essential to safely traveling out of doors. Both of hers, dispensed via company health insurance, would suffer wear and tear. There were too many variables to estimate the cost of this evening stroll, but it would nudge their impending disrepair that much closer. The boots, she could tolerate a while longer, but this mask was nearly toast. A 4 hour expense coming up, that.

The text messages she insisted on sending before they all departed would take their own toll. Each brief message cost minutes of labor for upload postage to major data centers via overnet relay. Fortunately, she hadn’t much to say or many folks offworld to say it to. A few got a “Hey! I love you”. Fewer received a “Going out early w/ A&K!” Just one or two earned “Tell u how it went”.

She knew it was unlikely they would be received, or even sent, by the time she could provide an update. Pomorum’s Universities demanded a frequent exchange of relay drones, so the planet’s network response times were downright decent compared to other colonies. Not too decent, since the war started.

Enough of the folks Marfisa cared to reach out to were planetside, though, and costs for internet data messages were negligible next to overnet. She made her final rounds, checking for contacts that slipped her mind as she scrolled down her recent DMs. Kiran and Acre were accounted for, she mused. Then, a dawning realization that she was missing the other piece of her friend-family hit her square in the forehead with enough force to knock her back. She swore and stamped her face into her datapad.

Kiran and Acre turned to her, concerned and expectant. Marfisa looked between them, sodden with the strain of standing in the middle of an unhealing divide.

“Ziva.”

Kiran shrunk down inside their large frame. Acre puffed up as his temper warmed from the mere mention of the name, and said, “What about Ziva? Haven’t talked in months.”

“I know. That’s…I know you haven’t. And that’s. I have to tell them about this.”

Acre fumed, “Marfisa. Why?”

Marfisa sighed. She wished she could make this about the incident that carved a rift between the sides of her family. How she felt like she was the only one left trying to span it. She wished she could make them listen to each others’ needs, and take hold of their bonds as stubbornly as they clutched their pride.

But this was not the time, and there were more pressing matters on her mind.

The Compact is landing there soon.

“Ziva is due to ship out tomorrow- shit. Today.”

Acre became confused, which only barely quenched his anger, as cold realization dawned on Kiran whose eyes grew increasingly distant.

“What do you mean, ship out today?”

“With the Navy.”

Ziva Levvy’s devil of choice, if a choice it could be called. They were unlucky. They suffered an accident, too minor to file for liability. It had exacerbated their chronic illness and left them disproportionately injured without recourse. There was no way for their family, blood or chosen, to provide the support they needed, and no way to compensate for the wound without being buried by medical debt. They had opted for Cosmic Navy service over a corporate loan, which had long left Marfisa wondering whether the shattered relationships with Acre and Kiran drove that decision.

Acre expressed limited sympathy. “Really? Sucks they actually went through with it. Didn’t know they finished recovering, either. So what?”

“Damnit, dude,” Marfisa said. I wish I wasn’t the only one to bother to reach out, Marfisa thought. “They didn’t get better. But the ship’s leaving today, and they’re shipping with it. And I don’t just want to message them, I want to tell them what we’re doing, in case…” the Compact is… “In case something happens. They deserve to hear it!”

“Okay, Marfisa. Sure, you can do it, if you want it done. I wanna hear why the fuck you think they deserve it, first.”

“Fine. Not deserve, maybe, but I want to tell them.” Marfisa’s anxiety was not clean burning, but damn if she wasn’t already burning, and she decided to make a stand. “It’s probably nothing out there, but if it’s trouble, we’ll have another set of hands. They’re at the hospital by the shipyard, so it’s practically on the way. In an absolute worst-case, we’re-fucked-either-way scenario, and there’s something not human there? They can decide if they want to come with us or try it on the Navy ship.” And maybe you could finally attempt to repair what you did to them, she held back at the tip of her tongue.

Acre turned and grumbled to herself, “Less fucked than us on a Navy ship, in exactly that one scenario.”

Kiran was just dead quiet. Marfisa saw, but they had their own hand in this problem. She didn’t have patience to spare to help them right now. Even for everything to turn out fine, today, there were too many moving parts.

Marfisa knew that Ziva wasn’t fully recovered from her treatment, and last she heard from them, the Navy didn’t care. Her hope lay in that she didn’t know whether their transfer would take place at the last minute, or whether they had already been embarked.

The ‘hospital’ facility Ziva was recovering in barely qualified as a clinic. It was near the old districts of Blackbridge and the shipyard that was once the city’s center, ensuring those receiving treatment or rehabilitation would be treated to the local specialties of nigh-constant noise and pollution. It currently provided only emergency services except to those unaffiliated with the shipyard’s corporate holders, or the Cosmic Navy whose adjacent compounds were swelling in cancerous growth as of late. Training and transport casualties made for a plentiful stock of injured patients. Only those made it back.

Marfisa could barely lead her friends within view of the clinic before they insisted on staying behind. Acre was no longer fuming, but wanted nothing to do with the check-in. Kiran was utterly and clearly out of it, and hadn’t been fully lucid since the subject of Ziva came up.

It can’t be helped, Marfisa told herself. She went on with the feeling of being alone for company.

The clinic’s lobby was minimal. It was cramped, dim, and the air was unfiltered. The figure behind the front desk, sealed in the next room by a pane of glass, wasn’t one of the employees that Marfisa had seen in her prior visits. His coat and badge marked him as a doctor or nurse, and was the only staff she could see. He was full-figured but his years weighed heavily, in the way they did on Pomorum. There was a haze of grief about him his thin smile didn’t try to dispel, the tiredness of a long night worn over the tiredness of long years of caring too much.

“Good morning. What can I help you with?”

“Good morning, sir. I was hoping to see a friend of mine who was staying here, but I haven’t heard if y’all have sent them home yet. Or, well, sent them off. Could you tell me if Able Rate Levvy is still in?”

The doctor, she gleaned from his badge, turned to a computer as his smile waned.

“It’s not quite visiting hours, or waking hours, but let’s see if your friend is still here.”

Not promising. Marfisa tried not to bite her cheek as she waited, hinging on each click and clack of the desk’s computer over the small speaker.

“Hm.”

She tensed.

“Still here.”

Thank goodness. First hurdle. She hoped for the best, even though each step towards that was more complicated yet.

“Recovering from…heavens above. I wouldn’t sign the girl out without another week of therapy, at best. Ships out today, says here.”

She couldn’t tell what he mouthed at the screen, distracted by that choice of address, and how the whole damn Navy might refer to Ziva. He turned to her again before that new line of worry could go far.

“Your friend’s not leaving for a few more hours. But, I expect they’ll be gone before visiting hours proper. So, say; why’d you want to see her?”

Marfisa was bad at lying, is the thing. She was bad at keeping track of what her face was doing at all, and being read like an open book was part of what made her so bad at lying. She knew these things. Growing up and navigating life had given her many, many reasons to learn how to lie, though. She had prepared herself for just this turn of conversation with the best method she knew. She started by telling the truth.

“I couldn’t stay asleep. I didn’t know if I’d get to see Rate Levvy before they left, and I’ve been torn up about it. Worse, I’m not alone. I have a couple of friends outside, other old friends, who had an argument with Ziva. Before they messed up their spine, before they signed on with the Navy. To put it brief, my friends fucked up. All four of us were a family before, but lately I’ve been the last thread holding on to Ziva. They didn’t do their part to help out, and none of ’em haven’t talked. Didn’t even know about Ziva shipping out, until I told them. I managed to wrangle them out here at this ungodly hour, because…”

And when Marfisa was done venting throes of passionate truth, she added a little lie she hoped wouldn’t stick out.

“…they want to apologize. I was hoping to see them out to talk for a while. This could be the last chance, before…stars know what will happen after they go out there.”

The doctor peered at Marfisa. Whether he was scrutinizing her response or not, her anxiety would have taken any hesitation as a dreadful sign. He kept her waiting mercifully briefly, perhaps precisely because she wore her distress plainly.

“Let me see what I can do. I better make sure…they’re awake. If they are, I’ll mention that you brought your friend to apologize. What’s his name, then? And yours?”

“Kiran is our friend’s name, I’m Marfisa Cam.”

Gods, was she relieved. Almost relieved enough not to worry about whether her relief would be so transparent, the doctor would somehow learn all of why she was relieved and bring it crashing down. He gave her a weary smile and headed back into the hallway beyond the kiosk.

He didn’t take more than five minutes.

“Right. I passed along that you, and Kiran, were here. Quite a strong reaction to that. Can’t allow visiting hours, but…we do let our patients take walks, when they can. There’s not much of a grounds to walk, here. Not like there used to be. We’re not supposed to let folks leave the lot, but I always thought it best for patients to get some space from the shipyard. Just you do me a favor or two. Make sure Able Rate Levvy’s back in no more than two hours, and fully sober. Navy boys’ll make their life hell, if they’re not.” He paused, putting on a distant grin. “You know, my son’s in the Navy. It’s been too long since he was home. Take care of your friend. They’ll be along shortly.”

Marfisa waited by the door of the clinic, overwhelmed by sheer catharsis. For the moment, things were going okay, in the middle of this ridiculous night. She wondered idly what circumstance lead to such a helpful doctor stuck alone on a graveyard shift, but she had desperately needed his kindness. She slunk onto the ground and hugged her backpack, and on the edge of tears, found herself meditating on gratitude rather than fear.

Shortly after collecting herself she sensed the familiar cacophony of a mechanical door and artificial wind that rose over the din of the shipyard. Marfisa had passed through the crude decontamination room for each of the few visits she’d paid here; just a barrier that blew dust off. The excitement and nerves of this gambit burrowed into the pit of her stomach.

At least she’d be able to see Ziva. No matter what came next.

“Hey, M.”

She was really, really glad for that.

“Hi, Ziva. It’s really good to see you.”

Ziva was too reserved to leap at her, which was well enough given the brace on their lower back. Marfisa, hugger though she may be, mirrored the restraint but opened her arms in offer. The wind got squeezed out of her as Ziva took her up quickly and put much more oomph into it than Marfisa dared to.

Marfisa let the embrace linger. She couldn’t pick out what to say from her tangled thoughts; guilt, excitement, exhaustion, relief, fear, and conviction wove a knot that was only undone as Ziva cut the silence. That is, the droning background noise of transit in the morning shipyard, and the distant engines of a vessel that neither soul could have known was christened Il Silenzio.

“What happened?”

Her anxiety was, after all, easy to read.

“I lied about why I’m here, and I’m sorry. But I really need your help. I need you to look at something that I couldn’t text you about.”

She fished out- “Kiran’s datapad?” Ziva interjected.

“Yes. It’s on here.”

Ziva sighed deeply.

Marfisa added, “I do want to make them say something before today, but…” She clicked through menus, pulling up the same conversation she’d been shown earlier. “I really would like you to read this. But, um. I recommend you let me skip forward after you read the part about time travel.”

Ziva didn’t share Marfisa’s penchant for backtracking and pausing to analyze what they read, yet, their pace was slower overall. Marfisa was wary of distracting them. She stood by, biting back the urge to pace or interrupt to check their progress. She nervously bounced her legs, one at a time, until they clicked the screen off and handed it back without an uttered breath.

“What the fuck,” they said at last.

“Yeah, same. I mean, I agree. See why I didn’t text you about it?”

Ziva shook their head with a distant stare, but Marfisa knew what to look for to tell their gears were still turning. They didn’t freeze up like Kiran did, anymore. She bit her chapped lip behind the shield of her respirator filter.

“This sucks.” Ziva blinked and coughed up a nervous laugh. “That can’t be real. Did they actually run off to this? That asshole is gonna get mugged, or worse.”

Marfisa grimaced. Yeah, she thought; Me too. She wasn’t sure if the pair was in earshot.

“Ish. They were gonna. But Acre,” she said his name carefully, as if walking across a rotted floor, and watched the flare in Ziva’s eyes, “…heard about it, and stopped them. Then they both came to show me. Now I’m here, because I didn’t want them to go alone because they probably still would.”

She saw those connections click into place. “Fuck- fuck off. You don’t have to do that for them. I think you really shouldn’t, M.”

“That’s…fair. I don’t have to,” she told herself as much as Ziva, unwilling to unpack whether this was an obligation or desire or why. “I am going with them, though. So’s Acre. I came here to ask you to come with me.”

Ziva lifted their arms out before dropping them in an incredulous shrug. They did it again, faster and higher, to reiterate, shaking their head all the while. “Dude. They haven’t even talked to me. Kiran texted me once. Acre didn’t. Neither of them have asked how I am, or apologized, or fixed jack shit. I’m not gonna do this for them, on my last…morning, before I’m stuck on a ship in space where there’s actual killer aliens.”

Marfisa strained. She couldn’t fault them. What do I even say? How do I even explain why I’m doing this? Decision tree.

“Decision trees. This really isn’t that bad. First branch; most likely answer is that the message is fake, nothing’s actually there. You get to spend the morning out, and get to see me, and if we’re lucky maybe they finally reach out and things get a little better. It can’t get much worse, and if you want, you can tell them whatever the fuck you want before we come back here.”

“Branch two. It’s muggers, or pirates. There’s no reason there would be, and we would just leave our shit and go.” That did not sound so convincing, she realized, when she said it in that order. “We can, uh, turn around if we see anything shady.”

“Branch three. If there’s honest-to-goddess aliens there, we are turbo-fucked whether we show up or not. Your call if you want to find out there, or after you’re stuck with a uniform on.” Wow, this feels less convincing when I’m awake.

“This is our last night to go out and do weird shit together that we know we’ll have. I decided I’m going, I’ll take criticism later. I’m just gonna ask once, would you please come with me for this?”

Marfisa extended a hand.

Able Rate Ziva Levvy stepped backwards.

Shit. She only just noticed the tears flowing over the edge of their respirator.

“I can’t. It’s stupid. …I don’t have any of my stuff.”

“We, um. Don’t really need stuff. We only brought backpacks, in case we do lose it somehow.”

“You all have backpacks, and you want me to come with nothing?”

Marfisa frowned. She could think of one solution to that.

She took off her backpack, schlepping it to the side and dropping it on the ground. “There. Even.”

Ziva gawked, fresh annoyance flushing despair. “You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have to.” They didn’t step back any farther. They hung, one foot in front of the other, between.

“That’s…okay. That is okay. You don’t have to. It’s okay if you can’t. But Ziva,” she pressed, trying to keep herself together so that someone would be, “do you want to?”

They sobbed, once or twice. “No. But. Yes. Both, but yes.”

“Is it something you can do, if I help?” She opened her arms to offer another hug and was suddenly choking back pain as the edge of Ziva’s respirator mask clipper her boob as they pressed forcefully into her chest. She fought back her own tears as she squeezed her friend, who eventually noticed.

“Did I-”

“Y-yes, but I’m okay.”

She considered it best practice not to release the hug until the person who needed it did, which left them there for a good while. When they released, Marfisa watched Ziva go over to her backpack and start rifling through it.

“You brought a towel like normal, didn’t you? Or tissues?”

“Yeah, there’s a towel. Front pocket.”

“Good. I don’t want those assholes to see I cried. And,” they grabbed the underfilled backpack, shoving it towards Marfisa. “Carry it. I’m not supposed to, with the brace.”

Oh, thank goodness. She really hoped they wouldn’t actually make her leave it. She could lose the towel and clothes, but absolutely hadn’t followed the advice she gave her friends and had a rather sentimental plushie stuffed in there. For comfort.

Acre and Kiran were settled down about where Marfisa left them earlier. If she had to wager, they might have overheard some of the louder bits of conversation, but the beeping of cargo being hauled from warehouse to tarmac several hundred feet away really put a damper on those odds.

Her brain was working overtime writing rain checks for all the worries she was holding at once. I.O.U. weeks of backlash and whatever fun, turbulent mental spiral this night awakens in me, me. The conscious worry of what would happen as the groups converged didn’t cause any difference she could process, if only from her anxiety’s inability to dig any sharper at the inside of her skull.

So, she just said one thing. “Right. We’re all going.” She went to step forward, but nobody else stepped after, and she turned towards them helplessly.

Kiran looked intently at Ziva, who aimed an intense stare back. Acre seemed to have turned away, unable or unwilling to match that focus. Kiran wasn’t quite as dissociative, now. They broke the silence.

“Good to see you, Ziva. Glad surgery went okay. I’m. Sorry.” Kiran pursed their lips. “That isn’t the apology you deserve. S’all I got tonight. I guess, later, I’ll give you the proper one, when I can.”

The churning of the yard kept the long pause between words company.

“I acknowledge your apology.”

Ziva walked up after Marfisa, who was the only one who saw enough of their face to notice they were marginally less upset. Kiran followed. Acre harrumphed, then followed, and after a few minutes of wordless walking added “Me too, I guess. Get to me after them.”

Marfisa, and the three closest members of her weird, fractured little friend-family, walked under the dense air of the morning.

The party marched towards the unoccupied edge of Blackbridge. Infrastructure failed. Buildings and streets were unmaintained, unprotected from the dust that now choked the sky on this planet and earned the settlement its contemporary name.

The pollution had a way of warping the shape of the clouds and color of the morning and evening sun. A younger Marfisa thought the hues of sunset were magical on the days airborne poison broke its colors. It was still beautiful, but she couldn’t stop thinking of the ravages the planet had seen. She had learned too much to want to forget.

Careful conversation sprouted amidst them once they were comfortable in their pace. There wasn’t room to say anything too deep, but there small laughs and small sadnesses were shared alike. After they grew tired of talking, the air between them all was calm, nostalgic, and just a bit warmer.

None of the four noticed the ways the streets became subtly cleaner, or the sunset’s colors shone truer, or the air beyond their filtration masks tasted more clear than it should.

The family came together upon the coordinates supplied by Kiran’s dubious advisor. It must have been a meeting hall of some kind once; it was hard to imagine a community center on Pomorum, but this shell of a convention center or business park or whatever it used to be struck as though it could make a decent one. Ziva and Kiran watched their surroundings as Marfisa and Acre checked the windows, finding them in unexpectedly good condition, but all either blacked out or blinded. Nothing more suspicious than that on the outside.

Acre spoke up first as the group huddled by the entrance facing their path of approach and return.

“Okay. We did it. Nobody got mugged yet, so I’m going to take your boring morning theory as a win.”

Marfisa spoke pensively. “I suppose so. If we’re ready, could start back. There’s only so much time.” She cast a glance at Ziva, who looked down rather than meet it. “What do you say, Kiran?”

They sniffled, having pulled their respirator to drink from the bottle of water their friend made them bring. “I mean, I’m feeling pretty alright. Guess I’m not fucking a pirate captain today. To be real with y’all, we came all the way out here, though? I want to look inside. Before we go.”

Ziva chimed in. “If you have to, just try the lock. This place is too nice, and it could be a weird corporate property thing. Not my job to tell you what to do,” they shot a sudden look at Marfisa, “but don’t break into anything that will get me shot. Or you, I guess.”

Nobody really objected, and the group went together to the front door, Ziva still watching their backs. To strong and varied reactions, it was unlocked.

Kiran opened it wide.