My room was cool and dark. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but I had heard the sound of large groups passing through the dormitory corridor earlier, which told me it was some time after lunch. The skin around my eyes still felt raw, and my nose was still stuffy, no matter how much I sniffled. At least the catharsis of crying had brought my deep and hopeless depression up into an aimless malaise. Now I just wished again that my CDrive had exploded all those months ago, taking me with it. This was better than my earlier thoughts, which will not be repeated here.

Then the knocking came again.

“At least talk to us, would you?”

“I said go away!”

Vulka and Listher. I didn’t know how they knew to come look for me, but now they were here, interrupting my desperately-wanting-to-be-alone time. While some part of me appreciated that my friends wanted to make sure I was okay, I couldn’t see a scenario in which I was able to talk to anyone with any degree of civility. Unfortunately, and regardless of my instructions, Vulka knocked this time. I could tell it was him because he used our knock. Knock-knock… Knock-knockknock.

“Whatever!” I groaned. “Just come in already!”

The door slid open, and the light from the corridor cut into my room like a lathe. Listher and Vulka peered in through the threshold. I glared at them from the bed, hoping my expression showed equal parts angry and despondent.

“What is going on?” Vulka asked, stepping into the room with Listher in tow. “Your ship said you were fighting with Nate, but then you went to medbay when he collapsed. Now you’re here. Is he okay?”

“I don’t care,” I lied, then my ears caught up to what else he had said. “Wait, you talked to Benni?”

“You named it?” Vulka asked. 

“When you didn’t show at lunch, we wanted to check if you were okay,” Listher said, cutting in. He half-sat on the desk. “We figured you would be on your ship, but then it told us what happened through the door.”

“Very impressive ship AI,” Vulka said, nodding in a way that felt approving. “But that’s not important. You look like you’ve been making water from your eyes again.”

“Crying,” Listher corrected.

“Yes, crying,” Vulka said. “What happened?”

“My whole life is a lie, and nothing matters anymore,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.

Listher and Vulka shared a look. “Okay, can we have that again without melodrama?” Vulka asked.

“Excuse me?” I snapped.

“Vulka!” Listher admonished.

“What? Talking like that is useless and confusing,” Vulka shot back. “I asked what happened, I think it’s fair to expect proper answer.”

The jolt of anger that ran through me was almost too much to resist. What did he know? How could he understand how deeply I was hurting? But that was the point. He couldn’t know because I was being pointlessly obtuse. I bit back the words that I knew would hurt him just as much, and sucked as much air as I could through my teeth. It all came out in an explosive sigh. “Nate… Is not who I thought he was,” I said.

“What?” Listher asked, confused. “Is he a clone? An actor?”

“A robot?” Vulka asked.

“No, no,” I said, waving a hand as I forced myself to sit up. I wiped at my snout with a forearm and sniffled. “I mean, kind of. Before I ran away, his entire job had been to keep tabs on me and report to the Department of Cooperation, but he was pretending to be my friend to do it.”

Vulka and Listher were silent. As always, Vulka’s complete lack of expression made it hard to tell what he was thinking, but he seemed a little more limp than usual. Listher, on the other hand, was aghast, his beak hanging open in shock.

“That’s… I don’t even know, that’s sickening,” Listher said. “For two whole years?”

“And a little more,” I mumbled.

“Why were they keeping tabs on you?” Vulka asked.

“Because Ulthea can’t let anything go!” I growled. All the anger towards Nate and my home I had been stuffing down was bursting out of me, and I couldn’t stop it. I just kept getting louder. “Because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and people who were doing the right thing got hurt because of it! Then, even though I wasn’t one, they treated me like a potential separatist for the rest of my life, and look at what happened! They just had to control every little variable! Now Nate is here, and I get to learn that our relationship has been a fabrication from the start because the seven biggest egos in the galaxy are so fragile that they can’t bear to just let me live!”

I spat out that last sentence with such ferocity that there was a pause while the three of us took a moment to process what just happened. The only sound was my heavy breathing as I tried to calm down. Then, Vulka applauded.

“Well done!” he said cheerily. “I’ve been waiting for that rant for months!”

“Wow,” Listher said.

I shrunk back, embarrassed at my loss of control. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a really rough few days.”

Vulka sat down next to me on the bed and wrapped an arm around me in an attempt at comfort. His suit wasn’t the most plush when it came to hugs, since it felt like treated poly-canvas with a few harder angles underneath, but I leaned into it anyways.

“So, what do you want to do?” Vulka asked. “We can probably make Nate… disappear… You know, if you want.”

Despite everything, I snorted in laughter, which turned out to be a bad idea with how stuffed up my nose was.

“Ugh, sorry,” I said, rubbing at my snout with a forearm.

Vulka delicately unwrapped his arm from around me, wiping at his arm with a stowed handkerchief. “It’s okay, my fault for being too funny,” he said.

“Does Helga know about this?” Listher asked tentatively.

A wave of anxiety slammed through me. “Oh Blessed,” I swore. “I haven’t told her, but Dr. Skisk might have. They were in the room when Nate told me.”

“Then Helga doesn’t know, not unless Nate told her himself,” Listher said, crossing his arms. “The Trust takes doctor-patient confidentiality seriously.”

“Wait, is that a thing?” I asked. “What if someone tells the doctor something dangerous? Our doctors always reported everything to higher ups, in case they needed… oh. That was probably bad, right?”

I looked to Listher and Vulka, who were both nodding. Listher looked disgusted. “The Trust helps everyone, from pirates to spacers. They don’t discriminate, and they hold confidentiality sacred,” he said. “If people didn’t, y’know, trust them, they wouldn’t be able to help anyone.”

“Well, then I guess Helga doesn’t know,” I said. “But I don’t know if I should tell her. Nate said that we got into this mess because he started having feelings for me, and the DoC found out. I don’t think he’s still a spy.”

“That’s not really a decision we get to make,” Listher said. “It’s important information that she needs to know.”

I frowned, looking down at the soft carpeted floor. It felt like a betrayal to turn Nate over to Helga. She didn’t seem to like him very much, and had complete control over his future. It felt as though there was a real chance she didn’t care if he lived or died, as long as I – and especially Brock Station – was safe.

“What if she sends him home?” I asked.

“Then we have to follow her orders,” Listher said, his face apologetic. “If it helps, I don’t see that happening. She already figured he’d be reporting everything he saw to Ulthea anyways. The fact that he’s being upfront and honest about it might even help his case. Maybe you could ask your friend to tell her himself?”

“I really don’t want to see him right now,” I said, avoiding meeting anyone’s gaze. “This whole thing has me really messed up, he feels like a complete stranger.”

“Then I have good news,” said a voice from the door.

I looked up as the others turned around. Helga was leaning on the doorway, one arm braced near the top. Her expression was neutral, but seemed to hold some satisfaction in it. Whether it was for getting to deliver said good news, or because she was feeling vindicated, I couldn’t tell.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He told me everything,” Helga said with a shrug. “I thought I’d save you the trip to my office.”

That threw me completely off balance. “Everything?” I repeated.

Helga nodded. “Every little thing, and of course the one very big thing. He even told me what he’s been reporting to that Blessed All Seeing Eye these past few days. Looked like hell, too. The guy was just about ready to cut open his own belly if he wasn’t already spilling his guts out of his mouth.”

“Yuck,” Vulka said, shuddering at the image Helga painted. “You people can do that?”

“Figure of speech, bud,” Listher said.

“Where is he now?” I asked, worried that Helga may have brought him with her.

“Went back to his ship,” Helga said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “He wanted to leave for home right away, but I told him to wait a while for you to come talk to him. No need to go rushing into his own death before thinking about it, right?”

So Nate was waiting for me to come to him. That was fine. I preferred that to him pushing into my personal space just to clear his own conscience. Unfortunately, now I had to figure out what I was going to say, and what to do with him when all was said and done. There was no way I’d let him go back to Ulthea. Stranger or not, I wasn’t going to have his blood on my hands.

“Right,” I echoed. “But, I don’t think I can talk to him today.”

“Thats fine, I’m sure he expected that,” Helga said, waving a hand of dismissal. “Sleep on it. I’ll have a message sent to his guards so they can let him know.”

I just nodded in reply, already getting lost in my head again about what to do. Helga waited a few seconds to see if there was anything more, and when there wasn’t, said her goodbyes to the others and left. Listher and Vulka tried to keep me company a little longer, offering up little nuggets of conversation that I barely heard (and when prompted, failed to engage in properly) until it was time for dinner. For the most part, they talked to each other, Vulka sitting next to me on the bed, and Listher on my desk. I appreciated their company, but being unable to focus long enough to join in made me feel even worse, like I was letting them down. Like their efforts weren’t enough, even though they were putting so much time into making sure I wasn’t alone. 

When it came time for them to leave, and I stopped them to apologize for not being present, Vulka knocked at the side of one of my horns in reproach. “We were here because we wanted to be with our friend who is going through difficult time,” he said. “Don’t apologize for struggling.”

“We know how it feels,” Listher added. “What’s rule number two in the maintenance department?”

I furrowed my brow. “Team lift heavy loads?” I ventured.

“Yep!” Listher said cheerily. “This is a pretty heavy load, if you ask me.”

“Come get dinner with us,” Vulka urged. “Get your mind off of this.”

A well of relief and warmth grew in my chest at my friends words. I may have felt as though I lost a friend in Nate, but it would be stupid to ignore the ones I still had. As much as my entire being wanted to stay, I knew I should go. If I stayed in my room, I would just end up rotting on my bed until someone else came to bother me, or I fell asleep. Eating food improves mood, according to Dr. Skisk, and I liked being around my friends. My stomach also chose this time to remind me that I literally hadn’t eaten anything all day by gurgling loudly, which made the three of us laugh. 

I shrugged and said, “Looks like I don’t have a choice.”