Director Werner was the first to break the silence.

“OH THANK FUCK,” he cried out, gripping the sides of the podium as though he’d been hanging onto it for dear life as his knees buckled. “Oh thank fucking God, she’s alive, thank you lord—”

He was soon drowned out by the rest of her colleagues. They all rose from their seats and crowded around Alix and Figaro, filling the air with a cacophony of cries of relief, surprise, and questions.

“We looked everywhere for you—”

“Where have you been?”

“They said your signal went dead, no one could get in touch—”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Someone get the doc over here!

“The comms system’s acting up like everything else, your messages must’ve gotten lost—”

“How’d you survive out there, how are you alive?”

Alix’s head swam at the barrage of words and the sea of faces swarming around her. After a stunned second, she picked out those she knew best from the crowd to respond to.

The first of those was Nick, a fellow field work contractor from Uganda that she had worked with a handful of times before their shared stint here on Deimos X. He clapped her on the shoulder with a wide, surprised grin. “We must have scoured half of Kabir’s Forest looking for you! We couldn’t find a trace! Where the hell did you go?”

“I was underground, lost in the caverns,” she told him.

“Caverns? There’s caverns around here?” Nick’s eyes widened. “Well, what the hell did you go down them alone for, you crazy bastard?”

“I didn’t! I got kidnapped and dragged down there by a bunch of Aexons!” said Alix.

Nick’s face twisted into confusion, and Alix felt a petite hand press against her forehead.

“Weird,” said Dr. Park as she moved her hand away again. Her short black hair was slicked back, and it was jarring for Alix to see her in a black suit instead of her usual med uniform. “She’s clearly delirious, yet she doesn’t have a fever.”

“I’m not delirious! Currently. And I know how it sounds, but it’s true. Figaro here can back me up on all this, right Figaro?”

Figaro folded half his limbs petulantly. “Hmmph. If everyone here’s gonna just ignore me, why shouldn’t I ignore ‘em right back? I didn’t see my picture anywhere up on that stupid slideshow!”

Gerald, a husky, bearded redhead from the botany department leaned closer and gave Figaro a light poke. “Hey, you’ve still got your cute little robot up and running! That’s wild. What’s its battery life?”

Figaro jabbed a limb at him sharply. “Poke me again and I’ll shish-kabob that finger of yours, Gerald.”

Gerald simply laughed. “Ha! Hilarious. How’d you program it to be so funny?”

Nick plucked Figaro off Alix’s shoulder before the robot could launch himself at Gerald’s face. Nick was one of the few in the station who recognized that Figaro was far more than the average, insentient robot, simply because he had known Alix and Figaro longer than the rest. “Cool your jets, Fig. What’s all this Alix is saying about Aexons?”

“Let’s hear you ask me nicely,” Figaro huffed.

Nick rolled his eyes. “Please tell us about the Aexons.”

“They’re sentient!” Figaro said, throwing two limbs up for emphasis. “There’s a whole civilization scurrying around right under our feet!”

Nick still looked skeptical, and didn’t stop Figaro when the robot launched himself back onto Alix’s shoulder. The crowd broke into a racket again, with more questions flying at Alix as others chattered to each other about Alix’s supposed delirium or the apparently dubious worth of her robot’s word. Dr. Park called over a medic underling and began examining Alix, checking her pupils for dilation and her head for swelling. Gerald and Nick debated how it was possible to get kidnapped by knee-high creatures, sentient or not. At one of the tables, Alix spotted another of her close colleagues. Maisie, a freckled microbiologist with chestnut curls, shot Alix an affectionate nod before going to town on the funeral cake.

From his spot behind the podium, Director Werner’s head shot up. “Hands off that cake, Maisie! That’s for emergency funerals only, and it’s going back into the freezer!”

“Aw, c’mon!” Maisie yelled back at him, her mouth full of cake. “Alix came back from the goddamn dead, if that’s not cause for cake, nothing is.”

“Away from the cake, I said!” Director Werner finally stepped out from behind the podium and down from the presentation stage. He waved his arms to part the crowd as he made his way toward Alix and Figaro. “Everyone, out of here, show’s over! You can catch up with Alix later.”

The chatter continued as Director Werner ushered everyone out of the assembly room. Dr. Park made Alix promise to come straight away to the medical bay before exiting, and Nick told her he’d come by her quarters later. Maise’s mouth was too stuffed with cake for her to say anything, so she simply waved to Alix as she walked out the door. Several others slowed to pat Alix on the back or give her a quick hug on their way out. After a few minutes of this, only Director Werner seemed to remain, standing in front of her.

The gruff exterior Director Werner had used to clear the room crumbled instantly, and his voice rose by a few octaves as he addressed Alix. “God almighty where in the name of all that is holy have you been? Do you have any idea the hell you put me in when you disappeared? I was going to send out an official report of your death in just three hours! I thought you got eaten! I thought your relatives were going to try and sue me or the company or both straight into the goddamn stone age! Do you know what it’s like to have the entire research station start falling apart at the same time as one of your employees vanishes in thin air? I’ve developed a twitch from the stress!”

Director Werner pointed to his twitching eyelid as proof.

“I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my fault, Director!” said Alix.

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“Did you stay within mapped territory when you went out on the field mission?” he asked.

“Alright, well, maybe it was a little bit my fault.” Alix said. “But it was worth it. The things I found out while I was gone are important enough to change the entire trajectory of Asteria’s plan for the planet!”

“Oh, God.” Director Werner ran his hands over his face. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I don’t even know where to begin, there’s so much to tell you.”

“Well, I need to hear all of it. I want you to meet me in my office and give me a full report on what happened,” said Director Werner. He paused and sniffed the air. “Er, once you’ve had a shower and all that.”

“Yes sir,” said Alix. She gave him a lighthearted salute, which Figaro mimicked. Director Werner nodded. He pulled a remote from his pocket and hit the central button, cutting off the Alix Daring slideshow.

For a moment everything was quiet. Alix took a breath, odd exhaustion sweeping over her. It had been both thrilling and taxing to finally be with other humans again after so long, and after the roller coaster that had been, well, everything up until now, all Alix really wanted was to lie down for a bit.

She would have left to do just that, but as she turned toward the door, she realized that one person from the crowd had hung back despite Director Werner’s orders, quietly waiting.

“Lyle?” she said, her breath hitching at the sight of him.

Lyle Rathan was, no two ways about it, the most beautiful young man this side of the galaxy. He looked dashing in black, his suit showing off his lean frame. With a sculpted jaw, brown locks that tumbled down to his broad shoulders, and soft hazel eyes, Lyle had the sort of face one would find on an ancient Greek statue. He was a space-age Apollo, and Alix could stare at him forever.

At the moment, though, his handsome eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying all day. He stepped closer to Alix. She blushed and fumbled for the Polyminia flower that she’d tucked in her utility belt.

“Uh, here!” she said, holding the flower out to him. “I know I’ve been gone for a minute . . . probably gave you a scare . . . but this might make up for it. I know you’ve been dying to get your hands on another one of these.”

Lyle’s eyes widened slightly as he took the flower from her. He looked between her and the flower, mouth opening then closing as though he couldn’t quite find the words. He then slid the flower into his pocket, leaned in, and swept Alix into his arms.

Alix was surprised at first, but soon relaxed into Lyle’s embrace. Her face was pressed against his chest. With his arms holding her tight, Alix felt safer and warmer than she ever had before, as if all her worries melted away with each second he held her.

“Alix,” he said into her ear, his voice soft and smooth as honey. “I’m so happy you’re back safe.”

Alix smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist. Lyle then pulled away from her abruptly, his eyes still watery.

“But I can’t see you anymore.”

With that, he turned from her and walked out of the assembly room, leaving her alone save for Figaro.

Alix stood at the doorway, stunned. A crushing silence fell over the room until Figaro finally spoke and broke.

“Well, I’ll just say it,” said Figaro. “That sonuvabitch did not deserve our flower.”

***

Alix lay on her bed for the first time in days, after her first shower in days. She wore sweats and a t-shirt. She had thought that once she’d finally felt clean and had been able to lay her head on something soft in the comfort of her small quarters, she’d feel better. Instead, she felt riddled with aches in her muscles, her heart, even her brain.

“I think the bed might be too soft,” she said blankly, staring up at the ceiling. The ceiling lights flickered above her.

“Everything else is in shambles in the station,” scoffed Figaro from his charging port on Alix’s nightstand. “Why not your bed, too? Maybe even mine. I swear it’s taking me twice the time to charge.”

Figaro had a point about everything being in shambles. Once she’d gotten a new smart tablet from the supply room and reconnected to her account on the station’s intranet, Alix was immediately bombarded with messages and bulletins about all the mounting malfunctions in the station’s systems since she’d left. The lights flickered and went out randomly, doors locked or unlocked of their own accord, the elevator had become a death trap due to extreme fluctuations in speed, the comms frequently swallowed messages or simply spat out the word “RETURN”, and all the screens in the rec lounges tended to flash that same word no matter what channel was accessed. Even the environmental controls weren’t safe, at times cranking the heat up to sauna levels or plummeting the station into a miniature ice age. If you could name the system, it was on the fritz.

Alix picked up her tablet and scrolled through her messages from the station again. “I can’t believe they haven’t been able to figure out what’s causing all these problems. Just looking at the logs, they’ve run every diagnostic possible on every system, and they found nothing. It makes no sense.”

“We can’t even watch TV!” Figaro wailed. “We might as well still be stranded in the wild!”

Alix ignored him, switching from her professional, intranet account to her accounts linked on the wider galactic web. Because they were relatively far from most colonized planets, the station’s tenuous connection to the web was shaky at the best of times. Now Alix couldn’t even load a copy of her Compendium to work on. When she opened up her personal inbox, it took the messages a good ten minutes just to load. Scrolling through, it didn’t seem like she’d missed much from the galaxy beyond Deimos X, as her messages were mostly spam. There was one sent in today that stood out, however.

FROM: Mason Arlway <[email protected]>

TO: Alix Daring <[email protected] >

SUBJECT: Rumor

Al,

Crazy thing haha, but I heard through the grapevine that you disappeared on some jungle planet. That’s not true, right? You’re okay?

Please tell me you’re okay.

Alix stared blankly at the message. A strange blend of excitement and sadness and anger all welled up in her at once. The name on her screen summoned up memories both sweet and painful. She thought of Mason’s bionic fingers punching in the coordinates in a skipship that would carry him to Mars alone, and anger won out. She typed out three words.

I’m fine. Goodbye.

She hit reply, then blocked the webmail address.

“I hate love,” Alix said as she switched off the tablet and slid it onto her nightstand beside Figaro.

“Lyle’s a punk,” Figaro said in agreement.

“Worse than that. Even a punk wouldn’t dump a girl at her own funeral.” Alix said softly. She laid back down on her bed and returned to staring at the ceiling. If she closed her eyes and stayed very still, she thought she could still feel Lyle’s arms around her. He was worse than a punk. He was perfect. “This hurts, Fig.”

“I know, Boss. I’m sorry,” said Figaro. He drummed a limb on the nightstand impatiently, the rest of him still locked into the circular charge port. “Ugh, I’d come over and comfort you but I’m stuck in this thing! It’s charging me so slow!”

“You’ll charge faster if you put yourself in sleep mode on a timer. That’s what I’m going to do, personally.” Alix grabbed the alarm clock from her nightstand and set a timer for an hour from then. She didn’t have to report to Director Werner’s office for another hour and a half. She then closed her eyes and tried to forget everything.

“Yeah, alright. Activating sleep mode,” Figaro said. His voice sounded distant as Alix quickly drifted into darkness.

***

An hour later, when the looping screech of the alarm jerked Alix out of sleep, she awoke to find that the lights had gone out. It was sweltering in her room, and the automated windows had darkened their tint to total blackness. The light from outside was choked out to nothing. The only light in the room at all came from the red, twin dots of Figaro’s eyes.

Alix sat up, dazed, and turned toward him. “Figaro? You done charging?”

Figaro said nothing. Outside, Alix heard faint yells and running footsteps.

“Figaro?” she asked again. Figaro’s eyes flickered.

“RETURN,” he said. “RETURN.”