“Captain,” the Titan scientist intoned gravely. “You just sent us these reports minutes ago. Allow us the time as a courtesy to study them. We’ll develop a working hypothesis. You go be with your son. Your family.”

Stacia slinked back to the med lab. Betraying no emotion, Yahya nodded at her approach. Without a word, he scooted over to make room for her on the waiting couch. The gulf of silence between them suckled on the teat of their indifference. A coiled spring of anger, Yahya clenched his left hand so taut, the skin of his knuckles paled. Stacia made no sound beyond the crumpling of her crisp uniform whenever she shifted positions. She hated that she’d become a cliché, a parent left to only wait while others tended to their child.

Her thoughts drifted back to when Bek was born. The moment she first held him. How she saved and archived so many mementos to mark him growing up. The time he climbed up the first tree, a Learning Tree, he encountered. Scampering up too high, he panicked. His fear paralyzed him, and he refused to attempt to climb down. Taking off her captain’s cape, she clambered up the tree. The branches could barely support her weight, so she had to stop a couple of meters below him. Still close enough to assure him that she was there with him. Her voice calmed him down enough for him to focus on making the descent. The experience never dimmed his love of climbing. He got into everywhere and into everything. That was his way.

Once he got older, the only times she could ever dote on him—the only times he’d allow her to “mom” him, as he called it—was when he was sick. Those were the times he wanted her nearby. And she remained by his bedside, all night, all day, as her duties permitted, a hawkish angel watching over him. Monitoring his breathing, making sure one breath followed another. Not too different from the first few months after his birth. Her “night vigil,” Yahya called it.

“After a while, you have to realize you can’t account for every bad thing that could possibly happen.” Yahya warned her he had no problems sleeping. Fathers could always sleep, unbothered by the possibility that anything could happen to Bek in the night. “You have to live life with a certain amount of faith or at least let your illusion of control go, or else you will go insane.”