“Yeah? Was that before or after they killed her?”

As soon as he said it, Gareth snapped his mouth shut, but it was too late; he couldn’t take it back. Leo could see the hurt in his father’s eyes. The guilt. Not so much from Gareth, because Leo knew his brother didn’t mean it. Not really. It wasn’t Calvin Fender’s fault, what happened that day. But he knew there were days his father blamed himself anyway. One of the smartest men in the world. He probably should have seen it coming.

A black cloud settled over the table. Leo set down his last bite, not hungry anymore. He watched as his father wiped his hands with his napkin, then took the time to fold it and set it gently beside his plate. It was his way. Everything measured. Everything precise. Though it was still a moment before he spoke.

“Someday you will be a father,” he said at last.

He gave Gareth an awkward smile that seemed full of love and hope and remorse and so many other things. Leo waited for the other half of the proclamation, for the and then you’ll understand, but there was no follow-up. That was it.

He wasn’t admonishing Gareth or trying to give him some perspective.

He was making a wish.

Someday they would grow up and have families of their own. Him and Leo.

But only if Dr. Fender could keep his promise.

And keep them safe.

Leo wished he hadn’t eaten it all. Especially not right before the jump.

He sat in the Icarus’s mess area, his stomach roiling, the empty jar in both hands just in case he needed to put it all back where it came from. As he sat, he watched his father, the ingenious Dr. Fender, offer an earnest plea to some stranger named Zirkus Crayt, begging him or her or it to somehow thwart the Djariks’ plans to weaponize ventasium and use it to obliterate whole planets, including, presumably, Leo’s own.

No pressure or anything.

With Skits’s help, Leo had downloaded the recording to his watch, a gift from his parents and now the only Earthly possession Leo had left. At first the watch started freaking out, blinking off and on and then giving Leo the spiral icon of death, and Leo was sure he’d just infected it with a virus, but then it finally restarted, informing him that the video was loaded and ready to view. Now, in addition to watching his late mother caress a blade of grass on his front porch, Leo could watch his father beg for help, pleading with his tired, sunken eyes, speaking in a faltering voice about an end to the war that could not be allowed to happen. Not in this way. Not at this cost.

“With such a weapon at their disposal, the Djarik could destroy any planet where the element is found. . . . There has to be another way.”

Dr. Fender’s voice was full of desperation. The recording spoke of a galaxy at war. Of the clash of alien empires. Of the decimation of entire civilizations. And yet all Leo could think about was the two of them, his father and his brother, and how much he missed them. Nowhere in the recording did Leo’s father say anything about Gareth. That plea had been spoken in Leo’s ear the moment before he and his father were separated. He’s out there somewhere. Go and find him. Stay together. Keep each other safe.