Wish

"Niah! Niah!" I cry, trying to wake her. She feels heavy, like a corpse in my arms, but I pull her back out of the room. "Elixr! Dammit, answer me!"

"How can I assist you Whiskey-One-Sierra-Four?"

"Niah's sick!"

"Records indicate that Ship Doctor Eric Samson has been deceased for approximately seventeen narcycles. There is no doctor in our current manifest."

"There's no doctor, Elixr. It's just us. Tell me how to fix her."

There's a pause as the ship seems to consider its options. "I am not fitted with telemetry tech capable of performing diagnostic scans or surgeries from this floor. Please deliver patient to the medical lab."

"Where in the nine-voids is the medical lab?" I remember seeing it but feel completely turned around trying to remember the way. A part of me is terrified that she's got the same sickness that caused Captain Bellamy to jettison his crew. If she did, it might be too late for Nar now. And too late for Niah, too.

I push the defeating thought to the fringes of my mind as lights blink up along a wall. I breathe a sigh of relief and haul Niah down the corridor. She's heavy but I feel amazing and strong and fast. My heart's pumping and I've never felt more alive, although, given that I've only been awake for a couple of circuits, I guess I don't have much to compare the feeling with. Maybe it's from the atmosphere of the planet strengthening my lungs or something in the blue haze of the engine room but I'm stronger and more capable than I've ever been. I haul Niah through the ship, following the directions on the wall, up two decks, and eventually find the medical lab.

I lift Niah up to the diagnostics pod. She looks so fresh and healthy and yet she was really, really sick before she passed out. I bite my lip and tuck her arms beside her then glance around for some sort of interface. "Elixr, how do I work this thing? Eagrim's beak, Niah would know what to do."

The holo lights up around her and I step back, startled. "Scanning, please wait." Elixr's voice is reassuring. I feel a bit silly letting it calm me because the ship's verbal response never shows emotion, so it's not like she would sound worried even if she could be, but it's good to know she knows what to do.

The lights of the holo move up and down Niah's body and seem to take measures and graphs and blipping lines of diagnostics. A quarter factor passes as the program runs but Elixr remains silent. I step forward impatiently and rest my hands on the side of the bed, wishing I could reach in to hold Niah's hand. "Well?"

A series of charts blink into a column of text and images down one side of the holo. I see the bouncing line and beeping strokes of her heart rate ticks before the real thing starts pulsing into the room through the audio. I sigh with relief because, while I didn't think she was dead, it is really, really good to know she is alive.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Diagnostics indicate coma caused by hypertensive encephalopathy."

"What does that mean? How do we fix it?"

"Treatment, phlebotomy, haemoglobin reduction of two units recommended."

"Will that fix her?"

"Immediate response should restore consciousness and reduce symptoms."

"Then do it, do the haemoglobin thing. Save her!"

"Unable to facilitate extraction. Experienced medical staff unavailable."

"Of course there's no staff! All you've got is me! All she's got is me." I'm frantic, gripping her hand and wishing I knew more about anything at all that would help her. "Please, Elixr, tell me what to do!"

I sigh in relief as she starts listing what I need to set up. I rummage through the drawers, hunting for needles and tube and bags and everything. Thank goodness the medical unit is well organised. Everything's sterile and I realise I'm probably not, so I swab my hands with several of the alcohol wipes and then feel guilty because they're probably a limited resource on this tub. I shrug it off because all that matters right now is Niah and getting her to wake up again.

I fit together the pieces exactly as Elixr describes. She walks me through each step and I give thanks again that her voice is calm, methodical, and completely in control. I practically collapse on top of Niah when I finally see the draw of red blood travelling through the tube. I pull a stool up beside the diagnostic pod and watch as the bag slowly begins to fill.

Hart finds me like that. Eyes fixed on Niah, waiting for her to wake up. Willing her to.

"You must complete her mission," Hart says as he comes into the room.

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I glance up at him and I know my mouth is fixed in a stubborn line because I'm still angry at the way he's making all this Niah's fault. "Go away!"

He hums, then glides forward. "This was always a potential outcome. You must complete her mission."

"Don't you see, she's sick! She might be dying."

"She has always been dying. That is why you exist."

I blink at him not sure I heard him correctly and not sure I really want to know what he's talking about. But I can't not ask. I can't not know. "What do you mean?"

Hart looks down on Niah. His blue orb eyes seem almost gentle as they gaze on her and I can't help but feel maybe he does care about her a little. I guess he's watched over us both for narcycles, our whole lives, in his own way.

"Before your creation, we detected a genetic defect in her DNA. Her condition is degenerative and terminal. Sensing that she might not live to complete Captain Bellamy's final instructions, we created a second clone from an alternative source."

"Terminal?" The word seems to buzz in my ears. "You mean she'll die?"

Hart's chassis lifts in a shrug. "There are treatments that will prolong her but in her first narcycles we monitored her vital statistics carefully. It is clear that her particular case of Polycythemia vera is acute and degenerative. We have attempted to carefully control her environment on the ship to minimise overstimulation of her red blood cell production and administered Pegylated interferon to limit further damage, but even in optimal conditions there is strain on her body. Exposure to the airborne xenon in the engine room hyper-stimulated her condition. It is only a matter of time before her organs are irreparably damaged and begin to systematically fail."

I suddenly wish Hart's voice was as emotionless as Elixr's because the solemnity of his voice drives home the truth of every word. I shake my head, not wanting to believe it. "Why didn't you tell us? We would have been more careful. We could have kept her sleeping!"

"A fault in my system memories prevented me from accessing vital parts of my archives until my recent reboot. Now I remember."

I swipe at the tears streaming down my cheeks. I suck a breath through my nose, drawing back the snot, then swipe at that too with the sleeve of my suit.

"We must acquire the necessary components to complete the mission," Hart says. I bite my lip and rest my head against the soft material of Niah's coat.

"I don't want to hear it. Just go away."

"You must fulfil your purpose. It is your reason for being."

I lift my head, turning my gaze on him, angry as the nine-voids. "Don't tell me what my life is worth! Chortessa's guts, I'll rip your circuits out of your arse and feed your parts to the fabricator."

Hart's small blue eyes blink and he tilts his head. "Your emotional response is not computable."

"Don't you get it? My sister is dying! Just leave me alone. I need to be with her."

"But the mission–"

"To all the nine-voids! The baull-scat mission can wait! I won't leave her until she wakes up. I won't leave her alone when she's sleeping. She needs me to be here."

Hart gazes at me for a long moment but I ignore him. Eventually, he lets out a weak hiss, like a sigh, and glides to the door. "We will wait until November-One-Alpha-Four wakes. The ore extraction may require more effort than just your own. But our mission cannot wait forever. It has waited long enough."

He sighs again when I refuse to look at him or answer. Right now, I just don't give an eagrim's beak about his mission or about Nar. Right now, all that matters is Niah.

***

Niah

My heart races as I feel the darkness around me but begins to slow when I open my eyes. I am awake. Everything will be fine. I lift a hand to my head. My temples still throb. Nausea swirls in my stomach. I groan. "What happened?"

Beside me, Wish lets out a shuddering breath and clutches my fingers. "Niah," she whispers. Tears stream down her face. I try to push myself up, to find out what's wrong, but she puts a hand on my shoulder to hold me in place. It feels easier not to move anyway so I lay there and just gaze at her.

"What's going on, Wish?"

She swallows. "You got sick. But you're okay now." Her voice hitches at the end so I know she's lying but I don't want to dig any deeper right now.

"If I'm fine, then I can sit up, right?"

Wish glances at the door and I realise Hart is pacing there.

"She's still too weak, Hart. We need more time."

"Every moment we waste our planet is dying."

"Niah's–" Wish's voice fades away and I wonder what she didn't want to say.

"What, Wish?"

She shakes her head. Hart's hover engine hums as he spins in place and then travels toward the medical pod. "We must complete the mission. While there is still time."

"What are you saying?"

"Don't tell her, Hart."

"Tell me, Hart." The droid makes a grinding noise and I'm not sure if it's supposed to represent frustration, like someone grinding their teeth, or confusion, like the grinding cogs of a brain that can't decide the best course of action. Growing more and more frustrated at their secrets I say again, my voice quiet but firm, commanding, Bellamy. "Tell me, Hart."

His blue orbs blink and he dips his head. "You have a mutation of the Janus kinase-2 gene which, in your case, led to a fatal flaw in your genetic construction. Your condition is degenerative, meaning your symptoms will worsen over time. We must complete the mission before it is too late."

I pause, wondering if the words are making any sense. "I'm dying?" I whisper. Inside, a part of me already dreads that endless sleep, another part seems to have always anticipated it, always known. And yet in the moment of silence between all of us I still hope they'll tell me I misunderstood, that I'm fine, that everything is going to be okay.

"Your condition is terminal." Hart's voice is blunt but not emotionless and, in a way, that's harder because he seems to care. "It's factor seven, and you are recovered enough that we should begin orkrane extraction immediately."

"She's not ready!" Wish shouts at the droid. I close my eyes both against the pain of the truth sinking into my heart and the volume of her voice, the violence of her anger.

I take a breath, open my eyes again, then reach out a hand to Wish. "It's okay. We need to do this. We were meant to do this, Wish. It's our reason for being."

"Who gives an eagrim's beak what they want from us, Niah? What right do they have to dictate the fate of our lives? I don't care that we were made from someone else's genetic material, or even that we're supposed to be some second coming created to save an entire world. This is your life–my life–they can't just decide the value of it. It doesn't work that way. YOU get to choose. You, Niah."

I bite my lip and turn to really look at her. I wait for her to meet my gaze. Her cool blue eyes are washed with tears. They soften as if deep inside, her heart is already broken, already mourning me. And maybe that hurts the most but I can't let it, so I tell her what I'm supposed to tell her. "I get this circuit. We get this circuit, Wish. Because we were meant for this. And we get to do something big, something no one else can do, something Bellamy, the crew, all gave their lives for. We get to save everyone else."

Wish stares at me a long moment and I force myself not to fall apart in front of her. I force myself to believe every word of what I've said even though inside I'm furious and just want to curl up and forget the world, forget that any of it exists at all. Her head tips and her whole body shudders as she leans against me. I stroke a hand through her hair and wait the long deccas until her breathing becomes more even.

She finally looks back up at me and nods. "Yeah," she says, then sighs as if she's letting grace and faith take us. "Okay then. Let's do this."