My eyes ached.

My eyelids scratched every time I tried to blink.

I couldn’t break focus. I couldn’t think about how my eyes hurt, or how my chest started to hurt when I forgot to breathe.

The only thing that mattered was the data and numbers on the monitors. Those little symbols were everything.

I had surrounded myself with six monitors. Three projected the perfected formula for the scent bombs, as well as the results of more detailed simulations I’d been able to come up with over the past few hours.

Or was it days?

The other three contained my research.

While the data compiled from my first set of queries, my mind started to drift.

No.

Frantically, I pulled up the rest of my data and cross-referenced it with the medical records of everyone I could get my digital fingers on, both human and alien.

Maybe I shouldn’t be looking through those files, but nothing but the research mattered now.

Nothing.

Not a thing of value in anyone’s records. Just another dead end.

I slumped back in my chair, pulling at my hair. Something, something I was missing.

For a flickering second, I thought of strong green arms to hold me, but I shoved the memory aside.

Never again.

What else to try, what else?

My stomach gurgled. I might have been hungry, but I didn’t have time to eat. I had work to do—far, far too much work.

Just as soon as I could remember what the next simulation should be.

The door to my lab opened and shut. I pretended I didn’t hear anything.

Whoever it was, couldn’t they see I was working? Hopefully, they would have the common sense to leave me alone. Didn’t they know how important my work was?

“Leena,” came a soft voice. Melodic. Mariella.

I didn’t want to talk to her.

Last time she came in, she tried to get me to leave. She wanted me to go to sleep.

Didn’t she understand that I couldn’t do that? Every moment I wasn’t working, memories flooded my brain and suffocated me. Even seeing the Xathi simulation on my monitor made me feel like I had a mouthful of blood.

I avoided looking at the simulation itself. I focused on the results. The results were all that mattered.

Something good had to come out of all that horror.

“Leena!” Mariella said in a harsher voice.

I knew that voice. She rarely used it, but when she did, she meant business.

“I’m busy, Mari,” I said dismissively.

I heard her footsteps. Assuming she was leaving, as any intelligent person would have, I paid her no mind.

Suddenly, all of my monitors went black. The overhead lab lights flickered on. They were so bright, I had to squint just to see anything.

“Mariella, what the fuck?” I screeched, whirling around.

I moved too quickly. Black dots populated my vision, and the world tipped a little bit.

Mariella reached and grabbed me by the shoulders.

Probably to keep me from falling over, but also to keep me from bolting. Mari was smarter than she let on.

“I’ve had enough of this,” she snapped.

“Somebody’s got to try to find a cure for our illness,” I shot back.

“Don’t even pretend that’s what this is about,” Mariella scoffed. “You’re using your dead-end research as an excuse to run away from everything.”

“So what if I am?”

I tried to wrench my arms out of her grip, but she was stronger.

When did my baby sister become stronger than me? I rarely stood this close to her. When I did, I was always taken aback by the fact that she was taller than me.

“And it’s not dead-end,” I added, sounding like a petulant child.

“You’re right,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I said that. I was frustrated. But Leena, listen to me. You’re going to make yourself sick if you keep this up. Have you even eaten today?”

No, I hadn’t, and I don’t think I ate yesterday, either. It was hard to tell. All of the days blurred together in the lab.

“Turn my monitors back on, please,” I said weakly.

“No,” Mariella replied firmly. “Not until you hear everything that’s happened.”

“I don’t need to hear about it,” I seethed. “I was there.”

“Not for all of it,” Mariella argued. “Do you know what happened when you passed out?”

I tried to tune her out. I didn’t want to think about it.

I remembered the blood.

There was so much blood on the floor, and Axtin was in the center of it.

No one could survive that kind of blood loss.

“I don’t—”

“I know you think you don’t want to know,” Mariella said gently, completing my own thought, “but you need to. Tu’ver told me everything. When you passed out, Axtin picked you up and carried you. He fought the Xathi with you in his arms, shielding you from it all. He brought you outside. Thankfully, reinforcements had gotten there in time. And then he went back in. He continued charging through the Xathi ship until he was certain every human that survived was out. Even the doctors in the med bay don’t know how he did it. The blood loss should have rendered him unconscious before he even made it out with you.”

“How many are still alive?” I asked. I didn’t recognize the grave, hollow voice that came out of me.

Mariella didn’t answer right away.

“Mari, tell me how many,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Sixty-nine,” she replied softly. She looked at her feet.

“Sixty-nine,” I croaked. From one hundred. I’d failed so many of them.

“They are all alive because of Axtin,” Mariella said quickly. “He refused to stop until he knew he saved everyone he could have saved.”

“He did what I couldn’t,” I murmured.

“Leena, stop that! Don’t you dare blame yourself for what happened.”

Mariella shook me gently. The world spun once more.

“You and Axtin, I swear. You’re acting like children, thinking the world is on your shoulders.”

Children.

Oh no.

“Where’s Calixta?” I whispered.

“Who?” Mariella asked, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

Dread settled in my stomach. If Mariella didn’t know who I was talking about that meant she…Calixta was…

“Oh! The little girl?” Mariella said brightly. “I didn’t realize that was her name. She’s here on the Vengeance. She doesn’t say much, poor thing, I think she’s quite shaken up. And who could blame her after everything?”

“She’s alive,” I whispered and stumbled back into my chair.

With a wrenching pain, the icy wall I’d built around my heart crumbled. I was repulsed with myself for locking myself away in the lab so that I could pretend that my research and results were all that mattered in the world.

“She’s a sweet little thing too,” Mariella repeated. “She made paper flowers for Tu’ver, Axtin, and everyone else who helped get her out of that ship.”

“That sounds like her,” I said, a faint smile on my lips.

“Has she asked about me?”

“She checks your room in the med bay every day, even though she knows you won’t be there. She doesn’t know where else to look, and I think she’s too shy to ask anyone.” A familiar smirk twisted Mariella’s lips. “Pity you’re too busy to spend time with her.”

“She knows a lot more than she lets on,” I mused. “I have to go see her.”

“Anything to get you out of this lab,” she chuckled, following after me at a more leisurely pace.

“Wait,” I paused suddenly. The words Mariella said earlier clicked in my brain like magnets snapping together. “Did you say something about Axtin?”

“Yes,” Mariella nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I said you both are stubborn fools who’ve convinced yourselves the weight of the world rests on your shoulders.”

“You spoke to him?” I asked, the words forming slowly.

I’d already forced myself to emotionally let him go. The way he looked so lifeless in the med bay, I made myself let go of all hope that he would wake up.

“Yes, not too long ago, actually,” she said, eyes sparkling with amusement.

“You care about him, Leena. It’s okay to admit it. Liking someone makes you vulnerable, that’s true.” She nodded as if she knew more than she was letting on but didn’t elaborate. “But after everything, I think Axtin’s earned your trust, hasn’t he? Do you really think he would do anything else but protect you?”

Logically, Mariella made very solid points. Axtin had risked his life for me multiple times since the day we met.

For the most part, I’d been a prickly bitch towards him. Though I still suspected he liked pushing my buttons. And I had to admit, I liked my buttons being pushed every now and then.

But the feelings that stirred in my chest when I thought of him were so wonderful and warm that the thought of losing them paralyzed me with fear. I would rather never experience the full effect of those feelings than get comfortable and have it all taken away.

“Mari, I’m scared,” I whispered as tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. “I don’t want to see him. It’s too much!”

Mariella closed the distance between us and wrapped me up in a hug.

“Of course, you’re scared, Leena,” she said running a hand along the back of my hair just like our mother used to do when Mariella woke up from a bad dream.

Just like I used to do for her after our mother died. Just like I did to comfort Calixta in the dark room on the Xathi ship.

“But you’re not the only one who’s scared. All of us are terrified out of our minds. And that’s okay.”

“You’re scared?” I asked her.

I found it hard to believe. For so long she seemed so at peace with everything in her world, even in our illness.

“Yes,” she admitted. “But I know that when I’m scared, there are people around me who will help me through it. People like you and Tu’ver. You’ve just got to learn to let people support you, that’s all.”

She gave off a small laugh.

“Oh, is that all?” I chuckled dryly.

I pulled back from our hug to wipe a tear off my cheek.

“Let’s tackle that in baby steps, eh? I need to check on Calixta,” I said.

Before Mariella could speak, the lab doors flew open.

“Leena!” A familiar voice that I never expected to hear again called out to me.

Axtin.