Houston had both arms stretched outward, hands clawed. “It’s alive!” he shouted.

Romy stepped back as the doctor erupted into manic cackles. The sound cut off abruptly and Houston rounded the table to Deimos’s side.

He took in her shocked expression. “Haven’t seen Frankenstein?”

Romy shook her head warily.

“Ah well,” he replied. “You won’t need to now. That was an Oscar-winning rendition.”

He grinned at Romy, who turned her wide blue eyes instead to what the man was doing to her friend. The lanky doctor made sense most of the time, but Romy wondered if he walked close to the edge of madness. Then there was the fact that he wore his archaic glasses when the tech to restore his vision was ancient. Houston was a conundrum.

Deimos was moving his head side to side. Very slowly, as though floating in zero-gravity. It wasn’t long before his eyes visibly moved under his eyelids. Romy held her breath, leaning in to kiss his forehead.

“Dei,” she whispered, stroking his matted black hair. “Wake up, Dei.”

“Ro—” His voiced cracked. His throat worked as he swallowed, painfully judging by the resulting wince on his unmarked face. “Ro?”

Tears burned her eyes, and she swallowed back emotion. “I’m here. You’re okay.” She kissed his forehead. “You’re okay now.”

She looked over Deimos’s head at Houston, only to find the eccentric man’s hazel eyes glistening with their own sheen of tears. The doctor smiled at Romy and bent to his work, racing between Deimos’s side and the screen over and over again.

Deimos blinked his eyes open with clear difficulty. “Ro. The others? What happened?”

“All safe,” she assured him. Romy gave him a quick account of what had happened to date, excluding the details of the Mandate’s astronomic subterfuge, and puberty. Phobos or Thrym could have that honour.

Even her flash recount was too long. Deimos started to drift off less than a minute afterward. Romy darted a questioning look at Houston, who came around the bed to pat her hand.

“Just asleep, little skyling. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

Houston didn’t take his eyes off of Deimos as he spoke and for the first time Romy detected a bit of relief beneath his charismatic façade.

“How close was he?”

Houston pushed up his ever-slipping glasses and gave her a serious look. It sat oddly on his face.

“Close.”

* * *

Romy propped herself up on her elbows atop her bunk as her knot trailed in through the door.

Phobos grinned at her, covered in dirt from his day in the garden.

Elara had the intense focused look she got when processing information—she must have learned something interesting today. She muttered a “hello” to Romy and sat, tense, on her own bunk, brow furrowed.

Thrym entered last, pissed off and arms raw up to the elbows.