Xaleyp immediately stopped moving and looked directly at Oliver, their eyes locking on to one another’s. His heart leapt into his chest as he comprehended the words his friend had said, realizing just how close Mian might be.

‟What do you mean in the medical bay?” Eve asked before Xaleyp had the chance. ‟I thought Ardus said he had no idea where she was.”

‟He lied, just like he lied about the attack on Nevermoor Hold and the entire Siatian Concord bullshit.” Xaleyp felt a sudden rise of fury in his chest, and he struggled to keep his breathing under control and his arms from shaking. ‟He acted like we were doing some great favor for the galaxy when really he was just manipulating us to do what he wanted for him to get power.”

Even as he said the words, Xaleyp’s face burned with his accusation of someone else doing exactly what he desired for so long. The difference between the two of them, he convinced himself, was that he, Xaleyp, wanted power to help others in the galaxy, whereas Ardus wanted nothing more than to strengthen his own position. He looked at the ground to try to keep the piercing, inquisitive eyes of Eve off him, but knew that it did no good.

Before he could do or say anything else, Eve gripped his wrist and started pulling him down the hallway.

‟It was nice meeting you, but we’ll see you later, Oliver,” she said as she raised her other hand in farewell. He returned it somewhat nervously, stuttering out a goodbye before stumbling over his feet as he returned to his work. When they were around a corner, Eve frowned and shook her head, muttering every few steps. ‟That asshole acting like he had no idea where she was when she was here the entire time.”

Xaleyp struggled to keep up with her as she pulled him around corner after corner, heading deeper into the underbelly of the ship as if on a rail going directly to the medical bay. The corridors were empty, which didn’t bother either of them in the slightest, though it left a somewhat ominous feeling to the ship.

How could he let her go out on her own and, worse yet, even encourage her to do so? If he had tried harder to convince her to go with him, or just agreed to stay with her and go to New Alexandria like she wanted, maybe she wouldn’t be hurt. Deep down, however, part of him blamed Ardus: He was the one who sent them to Arcadia, who had lied to them about everything, had kept things secret that had no reason for being so. If anything, he was the one to blame and should be made to suffer, not Xaleyp.

‟We should be going to Ardus and demanding an explanation and getting him out of control of Siatia.” Xaleyp didn’t believe that the voice was his own, but he felt his lips moving and assumed it must have been. ‟We have to stop him before it’s too late, before he does too much damage to the galaxy and we can’t do anything.”

‟Listen, I’m the last one to trust Ardus,” Eve said, her voice cutting through his and coming between quick gasps of air, ‟but if we’re going to do this, we can’t let Ardus think he can’t trust us. If Mian is here, we have to make sure he thinks we’re on his side for as long as possible, because there’s no way we’re going to succeed with just the three of us—or four with Oliver, I guess.”

Xaleyp didn’t say anything, instead using every breath to push himself harder to keep running towards the lift that would bring them to the medical bay. Finally, it came into view, the frosted glass doors crystallizing the inside and making it appear fragmented from the outside. The symbol of a red cross behind a black staff with a snake wrapped around it was emblazoned in the center, and the material used to create it seemed to shift in the light, as if the snake were curling around it.

The door barely opened in time for them to burst into the lift, doubling over and placing their hands on their knees as they panted heavily and the lift door closed with a gentle hiss. It seemed to read their thoughts, silently gliding downwards deeper into the Starkiller to where the medical bay lay. Xaleyp bounced from foot to foot, unable to stand still in the quiet of the lift as he tried to silently will it to go faster.

‟Will you stand still?” Eve let out a frustrated sigh, glaring in his direction.

‟It’s my fault that she’s in the hospital in the first place,” Xaleyp said, bouncing his fists off one another in an alternating pattern to keep his body occupied. ‟If I had just gone with her, she wouldn’t have ended up here.”

‟You don’t even know if she’s actually here, let alone what’s wrong with her, so you shouldn’t be worrying about it yet. Let’s get in there, find out the truth, then take this one step at a time until we know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

Xaleyp felt each of his heartbeats against his chest, and he was sure that Eve heard every thump as it tried to break free. The one time he wanted the lift to move quickly was the time it felt like it was taking an eternity.

Finally, it came to a stop and the door hissed open, revealing the interior of the medical bay floor Xaleyp had visited only once before, when he was first taken to the Starkiller. A strong smell of sterilization mixed with the metallic smell of blood hit them like a wall. Dozens upon dozens of square pods ran in neat rows far into the distance of the cavernous room, each separated by narrow pathways, and lights hung from the ceiling illuminating the floor in bright circles. Tubes, one red and one blue, stretched overhead in clean lines, branching off and diving down into each of the cubes. Doctors—robotic and humanoid—walked along the rows, taking notes and poking their heads in some while completely ignoring others.

At the center of the cubes was a hexagonal desk staffed by several doctors taking datapads from others and filing them away or otherwise taking notes. A pulsing white light emanated from the top like a gentle heartbeat. In front of Xaleyp and Eve, a path of pellet-sized lights lined the edges of the path, leading up to the desk and beckoning them forward, and they obeyed.

As the pair approached, one of the doctors—a squid-like creature—looked up from their work. Large, bulbous eyes dominated the upper part of their face, blinking slowly with impossibly slow lids as they looked between them. A sort of gas mask covered where their mouth and nose would have been, and clear tubing ran water to and from a tank on its back. Tentacles ran out from under the mask, swishing back and forth to keep their skin from drying out. They wore white robes that flowed down to their feet, and a few pouches were hanging from a belt at their waist. Their hands ended in tentacle-like appendages for fingers, flowing over its work like a pianist’s over keys.

‟How can I help you?” Their voice was a high pitched, almost musical gurgle. Bubbles came out from the mask in the tubes as their words disturbed the water. As they spoke, they folded their hands on the desk, giving them their full attention. After a brief moment, their eyes landed on Xaleyp’s bandaged hand and part of its head raised as if it were an eyebrow. ‟Do you need us to take care of that hand for you?”

‟No, my hand’s fine right now, thank you,” Xaleyp said, his voice rather meeker than he intended.

‟Then what may I do for you?”

Xaleyp and Eve looked at each other for a moment, neither one of them sure of what they should say, before Eve spoke up.

‟We’re here to see Mian Wemlyr, if she is here.” Her voice faltered after the first words when she realized how weak and strange of a request it was.

The doctor blinked extremely slow, the lids covering every centimeter of their spherical eyes, before looking down at the computer in front of them and their tentacle fingers typing faster than Xaleyp had ever seen. After several seconds, they looked back up at the pair of them, staring directly into Eve’s eyes.

‟It appears we do indeed have a Miss Wemlyr in our care, but she has been placed in the restricted section and is not allowed visitors at this time.” They looked to Xaleyp after finishing the sentence, and he found it hard to look directly into their face without being mesmerized by their eyes. ‟If you would like me to take your names, I can contact you as soon as we can allow you to visit.”

‟Please, doctor,” Xaleyp said, his voice on the verge of begging. ‟She’s our friend and we haven’t seen her in months. Can we just have a few minutes with her, just to say hello and see how she is doing?”

For nearly a minute, the only sounds were those from the other doctors and the general hum of the medical equipment in the room. The squid-like doctor stared at the computer in front of them, their eyes scanning back and forth as they read whatever was in the file they had on Mian.

‟Very well. I shall allow you to have five minutes with the patient, at which point we must ask you to leave the medical bay until she is no longer restricted.” They pointed with one of their tentacle fingers to Xaleyp and Eve’s left, gesturing to the row of cubes, and their eyes blinked slowly once more. ‟She is in the tenth column across, seventeenth row back, and I must ask you to please try to not upset her.”

Xaleyp and Eve muttered thanks before taking off in the direction the doctor pointed, their footsteps echoing much louder than they expected with each movement. Some of the other doctors gave them odd looks as they walked by, but none stopped them, simply going about whatever business they had.

Some of the cubes they passed were lit up, and a few emitted groans from the occupants while others were quiet. Each door of the cubes was closed, blocking the contents from view, with doctors disappearing into or appearing from some of them. Eve gripped Xaleyp’s wrist, her fingernails digging deep into his skin with each step they took.

‟I hate hospitals,” she said, her voice barely audible over the humming of computers and the sloshing of liquid within the tubes.

‟We’ll be fine,” Xaleyp reassured her as they turned the corner and began heading down the rows towards the back of the bay. With each passing step, he swore his heart beat louder and louder, and his breathing slowly grew more shallow and ragged as he considered what they might find.

Anything could have happened to her, from being shot or stabbed, to poisoned or bones broken, or anything in between. She could be in a coma, unable to hear anything that they were saying to her, or simply bedridden. Each step—each impossibly slow step—brought them closer to finding out the truth, yet pushed him further from wanting to know what that truth was.

Finally, they reached the seventeenth row back, just three from the end of the room. The cube in front of them was quiet and seemed oddly peaceful, with its bare, frosted glass door obscuring the contents from view and telling them one thing: Go away.

Xaleyp walked up to it carefully, as if he might trigger some sort of trap, while Eve hung back, staring fixatedly at the glass. A handle protruded from the right side, and a pair of hinges kept it connected on the left. He grabbed the handle, his hand shaking as he did so, and felt the impossibly cool metal almost bite into his skin. It gently turned with his guidance, and the door began to swing in, letting out a bright white light in a widening cone on the outside floor in front of it. Someone stirred within as the door creaked as it opened.

‟Who is it?” a pained voice—the pained voice of Mian—asked.