Now that I was less distracted by everything new on the station, I noticed a few things I hadn’t before on the way back to the medbay. Firstly, that I was drawing far more eyes than I liked. It could have been the fact that I was being pushed in a wheelchair by the very large owner of Brock Station, but I happened upon the real reason as we came to a junction in the walkways.

“Wait! Wait, stop! What is that?” I shouted, pointing to one of the information displays. Flashes of my own face were just barely visible through the crowd.

“Hm? Oh.” Helga pulled up short, then pushed the wheelchair closer, so I could see. 

It was a wanted poster, displayed on a screen. For the return of the separatist Casey Black, dead or alive, whoever brought me in would be given… something. The reward was blacked out, and the word ‘Amnesty’ was printed in large, red block letters over my face. My face… looked horrible. One eye covered by bandages, the other sunk deep, gaunt features, my short hair sticking out at all angles. It had probably been pulled from the cockpit feed when the Uthean recovery team found me. I realized I hadn’t seen a mirror in a long time.

“Do… I look like that?” I asked, reaching out to touch the screen.

“Well, a litt— oof!” Helga began, but was cut off by a dull thump. I heard Dr. Skisk chitter reproachfully. “Okay, no, you don’t look that bad. I’m sure it doesn’t feel good to see, but I had to make sure visiting bounty hunters knew what the score was with you. They won’t try anything here.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Aren’t there like, pirates and stuff in the Frontier? I thought this place was lawless. Wouldn’t anyone just do it anyway?”

“Some might elsewhere, but they know better than to try that with me,” Helga said, turning the chair and setting off again. “They know how Brock Station works. If I give someone amnesty, that’s the final word.”

I thought about how angry she got earlier, and decided that she was probably right. Still, the looks I continued to get were making me nervous, so it was a relief when we made it back to the medbay. Once I was safely back in bed, and the various monitors were hooked up again, I voiced the question that had been in the back of my mind since I woke up. I had just been too scared of the answer.

“Dr. Skisk?”

The Vespian was double checking a monitor while Helga looked on. “Yezz?” 

“Is anyone going to be able to fix my legs?” I looked between them and Helga.

Dr. Skisk tugged an antenna in thought. “Yezz, Yezz, I tink zo. Z’ka…”

They said something in Vezek, and Helga nodded. “I’m going to translate for you,” she said, looking to me. “It’s a bit more complicated than the good doctor’s Ulthean vocabulary can handle.”

I nodded, and Dr. Skisk began their explanation. Through Helga’s translation, I learned that my situation was not uncommon. What was uncommon about it was that I was a civilian, or at least relatively, as I had been a Navy mechanic. Either way, I was the first Ulthean civilian they had heard of to break out of Ulthea’s borders. Given the drastic measures it required, I understood why. Ulthean soldiers deserted with some regularity, and certainly more success, due to their remote work and stressful conditions. The Frontier wasn’t exactly full of them, but it was enough that some enterprising cybernetics engineers began to take note of a new brand of strange limb prosthetics that couldn’t be removed without some serious effort and know-how. As a result, there were a few that decided to specialize in repairing them instead. 

The good news was that my legs could be restored to full functionality with a kind of surgery. It was a bit like disarming a bomb, except without the explosives. Crack open the shell, remove the signal blocker, seal it back up, and the limb would be like new. The complicated part was the synthetic muscles. I had been aware of them already, but now I learned that the signal blocker that kept them from working was implanted deep inside the fibers. It had taken Frontier cybernetics engineers more than a few tries to figure out how to remove them without destroying the limb completely, and even then, it wasn’t always successful.

That was only partially the bad news. The rest of it was that — due to the low population of Ulthean escapees, and by that logic, prosthetics — there were very few Ulthean cybernetics specialists, and none currently living on Brock Station. It would be a month before anyone could get in contact with one, and likely up to six more until they could resolve what was already on their schedule and get to the station. 

I stared at my legs in disbelief. It had been so easy to take the prosthetics of Ulthea for granted. This miracle of technology, as simple as going to sleep and waking up with different limbs. PaliTech constantly advertised new styles, new gadgets, different ways to modify yourself. So normalized, that no one ever thought twice about entering any of their facilities for an update, or tune up, or to blow their whole paycheck on some gaudy status symbol. Now, they were even more of a burden then I had thought.

With a jolt, I realized Dr. Skisk and Helga had still been talking, and only the Blessed knew how long I hadn’t been listening. My panicked look stopped them, however. 

“What?” Helga asked. “Isn’t that good news?”

“Is what good news?” I asked, my eye darting between the two of them.

They shared a somewhat concerned look, one I had seen plenty of times before. I never liked it. “That we have robotic braces,” Helga said. “So you can get around on your own. Are you feeling alright?”

I shook my head, feeling my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “No, I mean, yes, I’m fine, sorry. Um. Braces. Robotic braces?”

“Yeah,” Helga said, still looking at me oddly. “I said, they’re a frame you strap to your legs, and they read nerve signals to help with basic locomotion. Usually they’re for heavy lifting jobs, but they function as mobile assistance in a pinch. You wouldn’t be doing any running around, but at least you would be able to get to the bathroom by yourself. Dr. Skisk thinks you could possibly get back into zero gee work within a month of getting used to them.”

“Oh!” I said, perking up a little. “Thank you! That’s perfect! How soon can I get them?”

“Two week,” said Dr. Skisk. “Ztill healing. Two week.”

Two weeks. I took a deep breath and nodded. I could handle that. 

I couldn’t handle two days. Just the knowledge that there was something I could use to finally be mobile again — and that I couldn’t use it for my own good — was killing me. There was nothing except a tablet full of icons and symbols I didn’t understand, and I was getting antsier every hour. By the second day, I was begging for Dr. Skisk to let me start using the robotic braces. Of course, they would always turn me down. This back and forth occurred every time they came by to check in on me, and when they left the room in the middle of one of our arguments, I hoped I had finally wore them down enough. After ten minutes, I began to worry that I had made them angry. Instead, an hour later, they returned with a box and another tablet.

“Benni zayz you reztlezz. Brain… data pulled from zhip. Need keep buzy. Here,” they said, handing me the tablet and opening the box. The tablet had a list of what appeared to be the same newsfeeds, but they were translated to Ulthean. The box had a few puzzles inside, jigsaw and otherwise.

I hadn’t expected Dr. Skisk to talk to Benni. It must have been difficult with their limited Ulthean vocabulary. Maybe I had been getting on Dr. Skisk’s nerves more than I thought. “Oh, thank you. I’m… I’m sorry. My mind just kind of goes crazy if I don’t have anything to do. I shouldn’t have bothered you so much.”

“Yezz, yezz, know, underztand,” Dr. Skisk said. “Have patientz like you before. Took too long to recognize. Lan… Lank — k’rzackk — zpeech. barrier. unique problem, az well. Enjoy.”

With that, they left the room.

I started with the tablet. Frontier newsfeeds were nothing like Ulthean ones, which fascinated me. In Ulthea, they mostly proclaimed major victories for the military, recited grand feats of the Seven Blessed (our leaders), and did highlights on high performing production worlds. There were also a lot of really interesting pieces on various new products coming from the seven companies and conglomerates that made everything we used.

In the Frontier, the news seemed to use much less exciting language, but that somehow made it more compelling. Plus, there were so many different ones to read from! Pirate attacks, reports on costs of goods in different spaceports, random interest pieces on whatever topic the writer was fixated on that day, it felt like it was endless. This was also where I began to truly realize how the rest of the galaxy viewed Ulthea.

It had been easy to shake off or ignore the comments Helga made, or the frustrated rambling of Dr. Skisk. What was harder to shake off was article after article of Ulthean invasions, unprovoked wars, and the desolation of planets stripped of all resources. The juxtaposition of my perception of the Ulthea I grew up in, to the Ulthea I was being shown felt like it was actively twisting my brain into knots. It made me physically ill. I began to actively avoid any articles that brought it up, with the justification that stress was antithetical to healing. Besides, I was just a civilian. None of this was my fault. The fact that I had been repairing the military’s ships stuck in my mind as a cognitive dissonance that I desperately needed to ignore.

None of that helped, of course. I couldn’t stop thinking about Ulthea, and my mind finally drifted back to Nate. There was a sudden pang of guilt at the realization that I hadn’t thought of him once since I escaped over two weeks ago. We had been incredibly close. Once or twice we even joked about dating, but it never happened. Outside of work, we hung out all the time, and regularly shared meals in the canteen, even if it wasn’t entirely allowed. They said he had been detained for retraining. Had he been on the station when Benni and I destroyed it, or had they already taken him elsewhere? 

If there was any information on him, Ulthea kept it inside their borders. I wouldn’t find out by simply reading articles. Sleep didn’t come easy that night, but it came regardless.