Simon tried to keep his anxieties under control as he stared at the heart monitor. Nick was soaked in sweat, his skin pale except for the glaring red marks left by the Velcro straps that had held his body down. Nick’s breathing had become irregular enough that Simon had finally ordered his little brother hooked up to an oxygen tube. He hoped Nick’s deteriorating health did not worsen more than that. Given the dark quarantine, there would be no help coming from afar.

  “It’s getting better,” he told himself as he leaned back in the padded chair that was rapidly becoming his second bed. Over the past few hours, Nick’s heart had pounded at 160 to 180 beats per minute, as if he were locked in a constant, heavy jog. Every other test indicated high levels of stress. But in the last twenty minutes or so his heart rate had fallen to 140, and then 120. Simon dared hope that, whatever the reason for his struggles, his brother had overcome it.

  That hope appeared to come true when Nick lurched up to a sit. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed in a vague similarity to a fish tossed upon land.

  “Hold up, I have you,” Simon said, reaching over to pull the thin oxygen tube out of Nick’s nostrils. “There we go. Sorry.”

  Nick rubbed his nose and blinked.

  “You put me on oxygen?” he asked, glancing sideways at the little machine that had joined the litany of other medical devices piled atop his bedside table.

  “Just a precaution, nothing more.” Simon smiled to hide the lie. “It seemed like you were having a rough go of things in there.”

  Nick grimaced and plopped back down onto his pillow. “You could say that. I was…captured.”

  Simon hated the sound of that. “Captured? By who? And why?”

  His brother refused to answer. Instead he put a hand over his eyes and slowly breathed in and out with a lengthy, consistent pause between inhalation and exhalation. Simon recognized the technique. He’d been the one to teach Nick how to deal with minor panic attacks.

  “It’s not all bad, though,” Nick said after composing himself. He dropped his arm and smiled. “I think I might have made a friend.”

  “A friend…” Simon laughed. “You finally met someone who doesn’t want to kill you? What’s different about him?”

  “Her, actually. And I…” He blinked and shook his head. “I don’t think I know enough yet. Not to endure the thousands of questions you’re going to want to throw at me.”

  Simon sat back down in his chair, shifting in a futile attempt to get comfortable. The padding, while never the thickest or most comfortable, had thinned considerably over the past two days. He was not only sleeping in it but working, too. His laptop lay closed on the floor nearby, for a station director’s responsibilities never relented, and with the dark quarantine enacted, those responsibilities had doubled.

  “Whenever you’re ready, you tell me what you’re learning,” he said, deciding he wouldn’t push him. It wasn’t like Simon wasn’t keeping secrets, either. He had no intention of telling Nick about Lemley’s sabotage attempt, nor the dark quarantine. No reason to add burdens to already burdened shoulders, not if he could avoid it. “My colleagues may be impatient, but I’m willing to work on your schedule, because unlike them, I’m not blind to the strain it’s putting on you. These deaths, simulated or otherwise, are harming your body in ways we don’t yet understand. Enduring it can’t be easy.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Easy.” Nick chuckled. “Frost sure makes it seem easy.”

  “Frost?”

  Nick shook his head, again refusing to answer. Simon hated to have information kept from him, but it seemed like that was the way it would have to be. Silence followed, heavy but not uncomfortable. Simon studied Nick, an expert at interpreting his brother’s various tics and quirks. That expertise was hardly necessary, though, to tell there was something weighing heavily upon him, something he wished to discuss but could not bring himself to broach on his own.

  “Remember, I’m always here to listen,” Simon said, volunteering that opening. Nick smiled, briefly and in passing. He shifted in his bed, and Simon followed his younger brother’s gaze to the framed photograph of their parents that was propped up on his bedside table, halfway covering the oxygen monitor. Both looked happy and likely intoxicated at a celebration for their mother’s appointment as lead scientist for the terraformed planet of Ventio. Their mother’s black hair was loosened from its normal bun to fall long past her shoulders, whereas their father, normally proper and trimmed to perfection, looked ridiculous with a yellow-and-red party hat at an angle atop his mussed hair.

  “What do you think his final words were?” Nick asked.

  Simon leaned back in his chair, and he had to suppress a frown. Their father had been director of Research Station 68. After their mother passed away, Nick had visited the station often so he wasn’t completely abandoned to the rotating cast of caretakers back home on the planet Taneth. It was during one such visit that tragedy had struck Station 68.

  While the research their father performed had remained classified, the cause of his death was not. The worst of all possible fates occurred: a reactor failure. Their father, as director, remained aboard, holding to protocol that he be the last to leave the station, and to use that time to do everything in his power to prevent disaster.

  Nick, only sixteen years old, had been loaded into a life pod as alarms blared and researchers panicked. It was a tale Simon had heard multiple times, and always with the same ending—a frightened Nick had watched the metal doors seal over the entrance of the pod. As they closed, their father had spoken amid a cacophony of screams, alarms, and the pressurization of the life pod.

  Words unheard.

  Final words.

  The reactor went critical, the ensuing explosion vaporizing two-thirds of Station 68 and scattering the remaining debris thousands of miles an hour in all directions.

  “I know it still bothers you, but you have to let it go,” Simon said. He grabbed his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “Our father was a good man. He was smart; he was kind. You want to know what his final words were? I bet they were telling you he loved you. That he’d miss you. Or maybe that you’d need to look after me, because we both know I’d need the help.”

  Nick’s gaze lingered on the photo.

  “If you could speak with him again, what would you say?” he asked. “What would you tell him?”

  Simon pushed up from his chair.

  “I’d tell him to come join me for a late-night snack,” he said. “Which is what I’m demanding of you. Enough melancholy. You’ve been adventuring in a strange world, and I want to hear stories.”

  “You’re making it sound more fun than it is,” Nick said as he sat up. He noticed the IV stuck into his left arm and frowned. “Not sure I can join you in the cafeteria wearing this thing.”

  A quick twist, and Simon disconnected it, then hit a button to shut off the protest of the heart monitor when he removed that next. Finally free, Nick scooted off the bed and landed unevenly on his feet. Simon pretended not to notice how much thinner his brother looked, and how dark the circles were around his eyes.

  “Come on,” Simon said. “I’d give you a hand, but, well…” He gestured with his cane at the thick brace around his knee. “I think we’re both a little banged up.”

  “What happened to your knee?” Nick asked with a frown.

  “It’s nothing, an accident near the oxygen tanks,” he said, as close to the truth as he dared. “Don’t worry about me. Tonight is about you. While everyone sleeps, we’ll use my directorial privileges to raid our monthly confectionery allotments. Chocolate? Sour chews? Say the word, Nick, and they’re all yours.”

  “I don’t want candy,” Nick said as they exited through the door to his room.

  “What do you want?”

  “I…I think I want a steak.”

  Simon laughed, and the humor allowed him to pretend all was well with his slowly sickening brother as he limped along the corridor.

  “Believe it or not, I think I have exactly two on ice, a perk of being director. I’m not an expert on the grill, but that’s why the universe invented steak sauce.”