I rush towards Kariza. I find her sitting in the captain’s chair, her eyes twitching as she sends commands to all the different parts of the ship.

“Kariza,” I say. “Caia is awake and doing well!”

Her eyes snap back to their clear selves, and they focus on me. “Really?! That’s great!”

“Yeah, it is,” I say. I take a deep breath and steel myself for the worst. “Have you accessed the entire database of prisoners yet?”

She nods. “I have. You want to know about Rinor, don’t you?”

“I do,” I say. “What can you tell me? How bad is it?”

“According to the data, he was last registered in cellblock 34D15. However, that was several days ago, and I haven’t been able to access the data of all the ‘processed’ prisoners yet, so...”

I exhale through my nose. “Right. You can’t be certain.”

“No. I wanted to talk to you about the next step. I can open all of the prisoner’s cells with a snap of my fingers, but I figured it would be better to do so if you could talk to all of them.”

“Why is that?”

“Look at me,” she says, gesturing to her synthetic body. “Are they going to take my word for it that I’m one of the good guys? They’ll all have a very healthy distrust of synths by now. No, I think it would be better if the first friendly face they see is yours.”

“Very well. How many prisoners are we talking about?”

“Right now? Let me scan all the lifeforms on board.. carry the two... sixteen levels... repeating, of course... oh, about 1634.5”

“Point five? How is there half a person?”

“Well, there’s a pregnant woman on board.”

“How long is this going to take me?!”

“If you talk to them one by one, I’d estimate about 270 hours or so.”

Already I feel a headache coming on. “Okay, release them in blocks of, uhm, 100.”

It will still take me most of the day, but this way, it won’t take me an entire month. With a heavy heart I descend to the prison levels, preparing myself for the worst.

The first group hangs on my every word. There are humans, Zorans, Marbits and Rathnids in the crowd, all of them tired and malnourished. I explain to them that they are safe, and that we are headed to New Exon.

I repeat myself again and again to every new group. By the end I’ve got it down to a science, anticipating every question before it comes up.

Every group I scan the crowd for a familiar face, but I don’t see Rinor among them. I lose faith, bit by bit, group by group, until it’s time for the very last one. At first the excitement of the freed peoples energized me, but after talking non-stop for ten hours, my body is broken, and I am close to giving up all hope.

And then I hear him.

“Leto?! Get the fuck outta here! No way?!”

I look up to see Rinor’s fire-red face, his eyes as bright as smoldering embers, looking back at me. He’s a bit leaner than I remember him, but it’s Rinor alright. He pulls me up to my feet and gives me the biggest bear hug of all time.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Saving your sorry ass, fire-face!” I say enthusiastically. “Why’d the hell you get yourself abducted?!”

He slaps me on the shoulder so hard it leaves me spinning. “You know how it is, they offer you a free shot, you gonna say no?”

“YES!” I say as loudly as I can. “YOU SAY NO THANK YOU! HOW HARD IS THAT?!”

“Ah, hindsight is a bitch, ain’t it,” Rinor sighs. “You know, you’re just in time to join my prison gang.”

“What are you called? The Fire Fairies? No, let me guess. The Fuc—“

“Hey, hey, be nice,” Rinor says. “I’ll let you know that the Rinor Rousers are one the most infamous gangs of the entire 34th floor... or the D wing of it anyway...”

The other freed prisoners, a hundred in total, are crowded around us, looking at us like they’re seeing water itself burning.

“What’s going on?” A human male asks. “Rinor, who is this man?”

“Prox, this is Leto, my good friend and confidant. And to tell you the truth, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on either. Leto, enlighten us. Please.”

I rise to my feet, pure happiness filling every vein in my body. This is not quite as good as the feeling of first kissing Caia, but it’s damn close.

“Listen up, everyone,” I say. “My name is Leto, and I’m a Zoran warrior. I’m sure that you by now have realized that you have been kidnapped by the Wellington Consortium, a subsidiary of SINTRA Corp. It might interest you to know that Casper Wellington is now dead, and you, my good people, are free.”

A cheerful murmur passes through the crowd.

“Really?”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“Is this another synth trick? He does look awfully muscled. Is it even possible to have that many muscles?”

“If Rinor trusts him, I trust him.”

“Will we go back home?

“What about the ones who have gone through processing?”

I hold my hands up to try and calm the crowd down.

“Please, everyone, may I have your attention please. First off, we are not returning to Corlis Station, unfortunately. That place is still under the control of SINTRA, and so it is not safe.”

The crowd murmurs.

“I know you have family and friends there, but please understand that I’m doing this for your own good.”

“Where are we going then?” A voice calls.

“New Exon.”

“Ah, home sweet home,” Rinor says. He turns to a woman at his side and leans down. “You’ll finally be able to taste that cuhla I’ve been telling you all about!”

“And what about the processing?”

I take a deep breath. This question has come up with every group, understandably, and every time I struggle to tell them all the truth. It’s not the type of thing you want to say, but I can’t lie to them either. No, they deserve to know the truth, as gruesome as it is.

“Processing... it means something quite literal in this sense. Wellington, he... well...”

I can see the faces in the crowd turn ashen grey.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s just like that. The people who went to processing, they are... no more. I am sorry.”

A silence envelops the room.

“I wish I could have gotten here sooner, but...”

Rinor slaps me on the shoulder. “Cheer up, mate. I know you did all you could — you saved all of us! We owe our lives to you.”

The whole crowd bows and thanks me, though it does little the alleviate the dark feeling in my stomach.

Rinor wraps his arm around my shoulder as we climb the stairs up to the command center.

“How are you doing, big guy?” He asks.

“I’m dead tired,” I say. “I’ve just done this talk for the 16th time in a row.”

“I can sense something different about you though, a glow that wasn’t there before.”

I glance at him. Am I that obvious?

“Well, I have met someone... special.”

“You sly dog,” he laughs. “Who is she?”

“Caia Mercier,” I say. “A human female.”

“Ah! I didn’t know they were your type.”

“Neither did I,” I admit, “but so it goes.”

“So it goes indeed! Tell me all about her!”

I gush wildly about my new mate, and my friend listens attentively.

“It seems you have found you true mate,” Rinor says, impressed by my continuous rambling. I could talk about Caia all day.

“I think I have, man. In fact, I am absolutely sure of it.”

“That’s amazing. I can’t wait to meet her.”