“Well, you’ve got a concussion,” Ana Marsh said as she flashed a light into her son’s eyes. “You’re just lucky that’s all it was. You could have broken your neck or, worse, ended up like that poor girl. That is the last time you’re stepping foot on one of those death machines; you’d better believe that. The last time you’re taking part in any outdoor event, for that matter. I hope they permanently cancel that awful race.”

  Zed had been put onto a stretcher and brought into Naug through the hangar airlock. After being carefully removed from his turtle suit, he was taken quickly to the medical wedge. His mother was the doctor on call at the time. Rules about doctors treating family members didn’t really apply on a planet with fewer than half a dozen doctors to choose from.

  Lucky me, Zed thought.

  Ana Marsh had spent the hour alternating between prodding and testing, interspersed with complaining to anyone who would listen about how “that damned race nearly took my baby” and “poor girl.” Zed couldn’t help but feel like she was more genuinely upset about “that poor foolish girl” and he was just a convenient prop to garner sympathy.

  “I want you to head straight home, Zed. You need to lay down and rest, do you understand?” Ana said, hands on her hips.

  Zed recognized this posture as one not worth arguing with. Not that he felt he could have done much else anyway. He had felt fine in the immediate aftermath, but now he just felt sore all over, and the pounding in his head was only growing louder.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Zed slid off the examining table, gripping the edge in case his legs betrayed him. He stood slowly, sore but steady. He gave his mother a thumbs-up.

  “Bed. Rest.” Ana lowered her chin and widened her eyes as if her tone needed additional emphasis.

  Zed nodded mechanically and made his way out the door and down the corridor toward their quarters, trying to process all the implications of the day’s events.

  Zed found his way to their quarters as instructed and collapsed on his bed. He had one last thought as his exhaustion asserted its stranglehold on his brain. It was a selfish thought in light of everything, but he couldn’t help it. He felt a twinge of resentment at losing another friend. First Miranda and George, and now Alina.

  Zed knew it wasn’t a reasonable thought. No one had chosen the circumstances that had led to this point, but he was so tired—so very tired of losing people.

  ***

  Zed made his way from the mess to his quarters at a begrudging pace. He’d just watched his second funeral in as many months. It had taken literal begging for his parents to let him be a part of Alina’s funeral procession. They finally relented but had forbidden him from ever putting on a turtle suit again unless it was an emergency.

  It was hard to sort out the mix of emotions he felt in this moment. Grief, anger, helplessness, and self-pity all took turns bubbling to the surface as Zed put one foot in front of the next.

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  “Hey, Zed.”

  Zed looked in the direction of the quiet greeting and saw Janice coming down a side hall from the direction of one of the turtle suit bays.

  “Hey, Janice. Did you help with the burial?” Zed asked with as much warmth as he could muster.

  Janice rubbed at her red eyes with the back of her wrist. “Yeah, just got back in. I guess at least this time there was an actual body to bury, right?”

  Zed just nodded. “You wanna walk with me? I’m supposed to go straight from the mess to my quarters, but my mom didn’t specify speed.”

  Janice gave a short laugh that might have been a sob. “Yeah, that sounds nice. I don’t really want to be alone, and I just lost one of the people on my very short list of friends.”

  “I know the feeling. It’s like we’re just bleeding life and joy lately. I was still trying to figure out all the stuff with Jacob and losing George and Miranda. I don’t even know what to do with Alina being gone.”

  Zed shook his head. Saying it out loud really drove home just how much had happened in the last few weeks.

  “I know, Zed. You’re way too young to have to deal with all this.”

  “Is there any age where death is easy? You don’t exactly look like you’re ready to go skipping down the halls either, you know,” Zed said.

  It wasn’t so much that he felt offended, but rather that he really didn’t want outside pity right now. Self-pity was one thing, but getting it from others made him feel oddly vulnerable.

  “Fair enough,” Janice said. “Goodness knows my brain has been trying to cope in some pretty strange ways. I’ve even been making up conspiracy theories to try and deal with what happened to Alina.”

  Zed felt something stir in his sadness-soaked mind. “Conspiracy theories? Like what?”

  “Oh, nothing real. Just some stuff Alina talked about a couple of days before she died. I think my mind just went there to try and bring some sense or reason to it all.”

  Zed stopped walking. Janice noticed and stopped a few paces ahead. “You OK, Zed? Did I say something?”

  “What did she talk about exactly?”

  “Just some stuff that she was tracking down with her whole IT thing. I don’t remember exactly—just some kind of hack she was worried about. She thought she’d narrowed it down to one of the CIG games. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Did she say which game?”

  Janice sighed and rubbed her eyes again.

  “Bubble Pop, or Bubble Time maybe. I don’t really remember.”

  “Could it have been Bubble in Time?” Zed asked. It came out with more aggression than he had intended, and he saw Janice flinch.

  “Jeez, Zed. What’s up with this? Why the sudden fixation?”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, it’s probably nothing. I’d just really like to know.”

  Janice’s shoulders relaxed, but she looked somehow sadder than before.

  “Uh, yeah, I suppose it might have been Bubble in Time.”

  ***

  Zed and Janice finished the rest of the walk to Zed’s quarters in silence. When they got to the door, Janice gave Zed a surprise hug.

  The unexpected affection threatened to let Zed’s sadness come pouring out in a way he wasn’t ready for.

  “We’re gonna be okay, Zed. We’re gonna find a way through,” Janice said, her words barely loud enough to cover the short distance between them.

  She gave him a final squeeze and turned to walk back the way she had come.

  Zed stood motionless in his doorway for a moment. He refused to let himself feel comforted. He didn’t have time for that right now.

  If he let himself fully feel what was just under the surface, he wasn’t sure where the end of it might be.

  He had an idea, and more importantly, he finally had something he could do that didn’t involve having an emotional meltdown just yet.