“Hey, I’m Tiphanie Labauve,” the electrician offers her newest friend. She extends a hand for him to shake. Adah and Tsim have abandoned the edge of the hole and are working their way down to meet her via the correct entrance.

The man grasps her forearm and offers a wary smile. He spits out the straw, and its arcing trajectory lands it directly into a waste bin by the desk.

“You’re here to get rid of me, huh?” He gives her a sideways glance.

“Technically, no,” Tiphanie answers, with the most honesty she can muster. “We didn’t know you were here at all. We’re just here to make repairs.”

The squatter points at the gaping hole with its steaming edges touched by the fire. He raises an eloquently bushy eyebrow.

“Actual repairs too, not just adding skylights to office ceilings.” She shrugs. “Sorry to just drop in without knocking.”

“With a bit of warning, I’d have tidied the place up some,” he says, warming up to the electrician a little bit. “The name’s Vasko Šiljan, just Vasko’s fine.”

Ignoring the debris field, the room is actually quite tidy. Tiphanie notes that it is still arranged in an appropriately waiting room sort of configuration, but the couch she landed on has a pillow and a thick patchwork quilt. She quickly thinks back to the schematics maps she studied in advance.

“So Vasko, why here? Why not the residential level?” It might be a personal question, but she’s curious to a fault.

“It’s more homey here. Spent so much time in waiting rooms that I ended up living in one.” The offhanded joke reeks of bitterness. Tiphanie imagines there must be a story there. But she isn’t going to get the chance to ask about it yet.

“Casualties on floor one-down,” Tsim reports over the communications wire. “We have need of medical assistance.”

“Bug in your ear?” Vasko asks, gesturing to his own. While the wire isn’t intended to be hidden, it is small and unobtrusive enough to be missed.

“Someone’s hurt,” Tiphanie answers, “Care to show a girl around? They’ll be somewhere in the direction of the elevator.” She doesn’t confess to being a bit disoriented by the fall, but she is most definitely disoriented by the fall.

The electrician brushes off her uniform coveralls fastidiously, feeling extremely self-aware in his presence. The homeless squatter living in a psychiatric clinic’s waiting room is currently cleaner and better dressed than she is. There’s not really any getting around it right now. It’s embarrassing, even though it really shouldn’t be.

Vasko leads the way down the hallway. Like the tram station above, one wall of massive donut-shaped space station has a large, reinforced window. The hallway across the sector runs along that window and is on the opposite side as the one inward and above of it.

Unlike the tram station above and inward, here the floor holds the remnants of carpet. The aged plastic fibers have crumbled where traffic has trampled them down. A footstep outside that well-worn path crunches the brittle plastic instead of softening the sound. It fails to spring back as it should.

Tiphanie can see a massive cargo ship waiting outside. The vessel patiently and painstakingly matches the ring’s rotation in space to be able to dock. As much as she enjoys watching the skilled space pilots at their work, she really doesn’t have time to gawk right now. She follows Vasko down the corridor at a brisk pace.

Their destination becomes apparent just before they reach it. Several doors down, Tsim stands in a doorway where the sliding door pane has come off of its tracks and leans abandoned against the wall. The plumber waves them in, not bothering to question Vasko’s presence as the local guide.

This particular suite was at one point in the past, an open concept office space. Desks sit in little islands around the room, several with treadmills instead of chairs. No computer terminals have been left behind, but empty holes where power cables once ran prove that they were there in the past.

“When the programming company left, a digital learning school took the place over,” Vasko offers helpfully to fill the uncomfortable silence while Tiphanie follows Tsim and the squatter just tags along. “When they cleared out they sold everything. Even tried to find buyers for the furniture.”

“You were there for that?” Tiphanie asks, conversationally.

“They tried to keep that place going for a lot longer than you’d think. It was one of the last to go.”

Tsim makes a noncommittal grunting noise and then pushes aside a door still in its tracks.

Adah is on her knees, helping pick crumbled bits of decorative glass out of the scalp of another squatter. The woman grips a towel with both hands, her clenched fists so tightly holding the fabric that their knuckles are pure white, but she does not flinch. A third unofficial resident of the Moldy Donut’s sector 32 lies on the floor nearby, with his arm held tight to his chest.

Tiphanie hurries to the project manager’s side. Adah waves her toward the man instead with a brief, “I’ve got this.” Tiphanie rotates to perform her additional duties as required by management.

“Anything you need, Ms. Labauve?” Vasko asks from the doorway, leaning beside the plumber casually. Despite his posture, his tone is all seriousness.

Tiphanie assesses her patient with all the competence of someone who has completed the mandatory emergency aide training, and kept up with her continuing education credits, but has never actually used the skills in the field. Which is to say, her ability to assess any patient is a bit theoretical, and this one is a bit outside her typical range in either case.

“Can you bring some water and another towel?” she asks, thinking it best to put him to something that wouldn’t be entirely a waste, and also get him out of the way. Vasko nods and heads immediately away to fulfill her request. He does not even hesitate.

Tsim hesitates at the doorway, suspecting that the request was make-work. Tiphanie gestures for him to hurry over to help instead.

“So what happened here?” the electrician asks, addressing the older gentleman holding his arm awkwardly.

He says nothing, and just shakes his head. He is clearly in pain.

“He wouldn’t talk to me either,” Adah answers her coworker’s questioning glance.

“He won’t.” The woman with the scalp full of glass speaks through gritted teeth. “Can’t. Talk to. Women.”

“Vow?” Tsim asks, quitting his lurking to enter the room properly.

The man with the injured arm indicates the affirmative.

“Inconvenient,” the plumber says to him quietly. “My first aid training is out of date. The lawyers who do liability won’t let me be the one to help you. But I can translate. Talk to me. What’s your name?”

The older man lets out a deep sigh of relief.

“Sir Jymvo Willivob,” is the thickly accented answer.

Tsim takes whispered directions from Tiphanie in his ear wire, and helps the man gingerly remove his shirt for better examination. The stretchy fabric is pulled to its limit to guide it over his injured arm without jostling it too much.

“That has to have a story. Not just anyone gets knighted.” Tsim keeps up the conversation while Tiphanie inspects the swiftly darkening bruise that spreads over Sir Jymvo’s shoulder.

The knight nods, wincing as Tiphanie gingerly moves his hand to check the range of motion.

“I was the Queen of Phae’s brother before the Lords of Phae had her majesty executed several revolutions ago. I would be regent to the Crown Princess,” he pauses to indicate the younger woman undergoing the glass shard removal process before continuing, “but alas the Lords of Phae have declared their liberation from the rule of divine right monarchy in favor of oligarchy.”

“A Phae princess, hiding out on our Moldy Donut!” Tsim doesn’t have to feign interest. “You must have crossed through the Bagel to get here. Would they not grant political asylum?”

The plumber refers to the Anzion-Phae Gate, locked in a stable orbit directly across from their very own Venkyke-Anzion Gate. While their ring-shaped gates are near-twins, the Anzion-Phae gate has seen much more consistent traffic in the past decades. It has not fallen under quite as much disrepair. It’s still a loop of breakfast carbohydrates, and it is a lot less moldy, but it’s still hard to eat.

“The Phae Lords count juris-” he pauses to wince and make an undignified squeak of pain, “-diction over their Gates.” He carefully does not look at Tiphanie as she rifles through her first aid kit. “Anzion counts it too, but that’s no protection when you’re technically living in two places at once in space.”

Tsim nods understandingly. The Moldy Donut follows a mess of laws due to its belonging to both the Anzion system-wide semi-direct democracy and counting itself as one of the member states of Venkyke’s own multi-planetary confederacy. Compulsory voting in Anzion’s elections has been something of a thorn in his side ever since he accepted citizenship.

Tiphanie hides a pair of auto-injectors behind her back, but Tsim catches on to her deception quickly. With somewhat less skill, he does his best to keep the elderly knight distracted by asking more questions. While Sir Jymvo is explaining in greater detail the princess’s predicament, Tiphanie jabs his shoulder with the first shot.

Burning pain radiates from the spot that received the jab on Sir Jimvo’s arm. He looks to the electrician and erstwhile nurse in dismay. The sensation of complete numbness that follows the fire of pain in waves removes the concern from his frown. Tiphanie administers the second shot once she is reasonably sure that the first has taken effect. She whispers for Tsim to translate.

“The first is pain relief, and the second is to reduce the swelling,” the plumber explains, “You won’t be able to use it until it’s healed, but that doesn’t mean you have to be in pain the whole time.” When Sir Jymvo expresses thanks Tsim continues to encourage him to get it checked out at a clinic once the isolation seals release.

“Isolation seals?” the princess’s head snaps up to look directly at Tsim. Blood cakes her hair like a veil.

“Nothing to worry about,” Adah responds, “we’ll have it fixed in no time.”