I woke up about an hour later, according to the small clock on my sleeping quarter’s wall. I had needed that rest, but I still didn’t feel completely refreshed. And I certainly didn’t feel any better. But I was going to hold onto that resolve.

Sometimes, in books, the protagonist experiences a terrible scenario- the death of a comrade or lover, or even the failure of a task. And many times, that hero still has a quest to finish. So, the hero must move on, in order to complete the final quest, using his failure as motivation to push on, ever forward. But the reason that books often have is that they don’t have the time to detail and describe the time it takes for the pain to fade away. And then add onto that the time it takes to convert that grief into motivation.

It’s exceedingly bad for your mental health to bottle up your unwanted feelings, and try to hide them in the depths of your psyche. It’s only putting off the inevitable time needed to deal with those thoughts, the psychiatrist at Spacca used to say. But sometimes desperate situations call for desperate measures.

Sitting up upon my bed, I allowed myself one final, heaving sob, before wiping my eyes dry.

I needed to eat- it was about 1:30 pm if we were to translate mission time to a regular day, and due to the increased metabolic requirements, that came with this leg of the journey home, it was imperative that we had our three meals a day.

* * *

After a lonely meal in the dining hall, I thought about what had occurred here only an hour ago. Dan had come out of hiding, just to be caught by either Saskia or Allison or both. Then they had somehow found out that the monitor room had been trashed. Had one of them checked the monitor room before coming to confront Dan? Or had Dan smashed it up before he had left- as Saskia claimed?

But I agreed with Dan’s Logic- what reason did he have to destroy the monitors, when he was effectively the only one capable of using them to the full capabilities? Sure, all of us had basic knowledge of the monitor systems, but Dan was capable of utilising the additional functions and resources- as demonstrated in his little ‘escapade’.

I walked out of the dining hall, through the back entrance that led towards the control room. This wasn’t the only way to get to the control room, I noted, two other corridors formed a cross shape 50m before the entrance to the monitor room.

I pushed open the door a crack, slowly, so as not to alert anyone of my presence if there was anyone in there. However, my attempt at subtly failed as soon as I stepped in to put my head through the crack, stepping upon a shard of glass as I did so. Fortunately for me, there was no one to laugh at my sneaking ability, as the room itself was empty.

The light flooded in from the corridor as I opened the door a little wider to allow my body access, and was refracted across the multitude of glass shards littering the floor. I closed the door behind me and took in the sight. The monitors and screens truly were beyond repair; a large central crack dominated the majority of screens, the weapon of choice lying just in front of me on the floor.

I bent down and picked up the leg of the chair, turning it over in my hands. There were no identifying marks (what did I expect, a nametag?) along the length that I could see. Although I did notice that it was the side of the chair leg that sported the most battering- meaning that the perpetrator wildly swung the leg in an overhead fashion, instead of merely ramming it down into the screen.

Dropping it to the floor, I walked over to the destroyed monitors. Even the controls, the keyboards for input and control of the security cameras among other things, hadn’t been spared. It was clear that there wasn’t going to be any video evidence of what happened, at least until we made it back to Spacca and could have the ship’s ‘hard-drive’ accessed.

I almost kicked the wall out of sheer frustration- but previous wall-kicking experience in my life and knowledge of the resultant outcome managed to stop me at the last second. This was the strongest lead we had, conclusive evidence of murder, but we were unable even to get the smallest of clues.

A crinkle of glass near the doorway alerted me to a new presence, snapping me out of my thoughts. There wasn’t anywhere to hide in the room- and besides, anywhere I moved would be accompanied by the glass as well. As I stood up from my crouched position that I hadn’t realised I’d shifted into, Dan sidestepped into the room through the half-closed door. I had heard that people often don’t see what they don’t expect to- some subconscious thing I supposed- but I hadn’t experienced it myself. Perhaps because I hadn’t turned on the lights, or maybe because he wasn’t expecting another in the room already, but Dan’s gaze passed over me before returning to the door, closing it as softly as possible.

As amusing as it was, if he did notice me now, I was going to look a little silly. So I took the initiative.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in a conversational tone.

Dan physically jumped in fright. But to his credit he didn’t turn around immediately, instead, trying to compose himself before he turned around to face me- which made it all the more funny, admittedly.

“I could ask you the same question” he replied with the snark that I had grown so familiar with.

“You definitely could, but you won’t will you? Because, one, that would lead to an underproductive cycle of us going back and forth without either of us getting any answers. Plus, I asked first. And two, I think that if we stay here, saying nothing and doing nothing, I think you’re going to be the one losing out. You came here for a reason evidenced by your attempt to sneak in here- I only came to check out the damage.”

In the back of my head, I dimly noted that this whole deductive monologue would very much have been diminished if anyone had seen my attempt at sneaking. But Dan didn’t need to know that.

“… you – You- that’s blackmail!”

He was really on the ropes now if he was grasping at these straws. One last push would probably be enough.

“Even if it was blackmail- which it isn’t- I don’t really think you have the time to lodge a complaint to HR about me. So why don’t you cough it up? Otherwise, I’ll perform the male equivalent of a girly scream to get you locked up by the rest of the crew. Wouldn’t be a stretch to claim that the perp has returned to the scene of the crime- especially since your trust levels don’t seem to be so high right now.”

It didn’t take long for Dan’s shoulders to slump as he realised the position he was in.

“Fine- I don’t think it was you that did this anyway.” he relented.

“How kind of you”

He threw me a greasy look.

“See I didn’t get to see the damage that Saskia said that I had supposedly caused. And now as I look around” he walked past me, to the monitors “I can see that my hunch was correct.”

“Oh wise one, please enlighten your poor disciple” I deadpanned with a roll of my eyes.

Ignoring me, he continued.

“Whoever did this knew what they were doing- unlike what their actions might suggest. If they had just destroyed some of the monitors, or even all the monitors but not the keyboards and controls, I might’ve been able to recover at least some of the feeds. So this person knew what they were doing, or at least knew the layout of the room and which things to destroy.”

He knelt down on one leg and stretched an arm under one of the desks. A moment later he pulled out a laptop and opened it up on top of the desk. Typing in a password too fast for me to see even though I was looking directly at the keys, the desktop appeared.

“But there is one camera that isn’t linked to the monitors-”

“Your turtle camera!” I finished for him.

He wrinkled his nose in annoyance. Was it the fact that I called it a turtle camera? Or was it because I spoiled his surprise reveal?

“It’s turtle camera because you used it to help you stay in your shell” I explained.

“… Yes, I got that”

“Ah cool.”

Definitely salty about spoiling his surprise reveal.

Focusing down on his laptop, Dan brought up a new program and a few seconds later, and we were looking at the dining room, albeit a grainy, pixelated version of it. With a few keyboard taps, he started the recording from just after his ‘speech’.

“Do you have anything that you're specifically looking for?” I asked him.

“No…” he murmured, concentrating on the screen “just anything, something that might give us a hint…”

I couldn’t think of anything that would’ve been caught by that specific camera the could be helpful in giving us a clue- but he was earnestly trying to solve this whole thing.

I peered over his shoulder. Now the feed was showing Dan cautiously enter the room, before walking confidently over to the meal dispenser. I couldn’t help but let out a sharp exhale of air through my nose, trying to stop my laughter as the feed showed the door bursting open and Dan jumping in fright. This was followed by a wince, as I witnessed Allison unleash a short rabbit-punch to his gut before sweeping his legs. He landed solidly on the floor, his glasses flying off his face, off-screen. With Dan on the floor, she simply flipped him over using her feet and then grabbed his arm, twisting it. At about that time, Saskia entered must’ve entered from the door, because she stepped into the frame with her back facing the camera’s viewpoint.

But this was where Dan stopped the video and rewound it to just before Allison entered through the doors. The entire scene played out again, but this time, after his past self was again mercilessly taken down, he seemed to fall back into his chair.

I was about to comment on his seemingly masochistic tastes- but something about the expression on his face convinced me otherwise. I lent over him and brought the video timestamp back to the position he had returned to.

“Look at her hands…” Dan murmured, his eyes still unfocused and inattentive.

Letting the video run, I waited for a frame that would allow me a clear view of her hands. Just as she was reaching down to twist his arm, I used the controls to freeze the video and looked at her hands.

Even through the graininess of the video, it was clear to see that there was something wrong with one of her hands; there were flecks of something upon it. But I couldn’t see exactly what it was- and didn’t know how Dan could see it either, unless his glasses (now slightly cracked) had some sort of magnifying function.

“So, what, her hands are a little dirty? Am I missing something?”

He doesn’t respond, at least not verbally. Eyes still focusing somewhere up at the ceiling he reached into his pocket to pull out a piece of ripped fabric. Wordlessly, he handed it to me.

It was part of some sort of shirt- evident by the small slits for buttons along one side of it. However, upon flipping it over I realised that the material wasn’t the important thing. Small, dried blood splotches were clear to see against the light bluish colour of the fabric.

Blood that didn’t come from Dan.