“I am relieved you are all right, Apollonia,” Cathal Sair said.

Even though he had to sit on the other side of a clear titanium wall, Apollonia did not feel the distance between them.

She smiled, reaching up to put a hand on the titanium. An alert tone reminded her that she was not supposed to touch the walls, and she reluctantly took her hand back down.

But Father Sair only looked happy at the gesture, the emotion seeming very genuine.

“It was really weird,” she said, feeling that the words were lame but for once not feeling annoyed at herself. Really, how else could she describe it? There weren’t really words for it. ‘Weird’ would have to be enough.

Cathal seemed to take her words with great gravity, nodding thoughtfully, his eyes wandering down and out.

“What I said isn’t that insightful,” she noted, with a playful sarcasm.

“It’s not that,” he said, his smile turning easily into amusement. “I just regret that you had to face something so . . . by all rumors, awful.”

“What are the rumors saying?” Apollonia asked.

“Rumors are just not worth focusing on,” Cathal said, waving away the thought. “You should focus on recovering.”

“I don’t actually feel that bad, to be honest,” she said. “I mean, it’s kind of odd, but I feel almost better than usual. And get this – when they put the scanner disks on me after I came back, they worked! Normally that stuff doesn’t get much of a signal once they put them on me. So maybe this . . . helped me, in a way?”

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Cathal did not seem to share her joy at that, only nodding and looking pensive again.

Apollonia felt it an odd response, and changed the subject. “So, uh, does your religion talk about things like . . . well, weird things like you hear in the rumors-we-must-not-discuss?”

He snapped out of his thoughtful reverie. “At times, yes. There are strange things, strange events, strange eons. Yet . . . much of it is allegory. Or so I long believed.”

“Allegory sucks, then,” Apollonia joked.

The man’s smile did not seem as amused, and she wondered if what she’d said had been offensive.

“At the end of the day, I’m still here,” she said. “I guess that’s a win. And I guess this is just what a CR does, you know?”

Her words were bold, but they were as much to encourage herself as to put on an air.

Dark, she didn’t want to encounter anything like that again.

“Is it true that Ambassador Kell appeared?” Cathal asked quietly.

Apollonia’s eyes darted upwards. The Craton was not so crude in technology as to have literal cameras like she’d often seen on New Vitriol. But she knew that she was being monitored.

“I think I can’t really talk about details,” she said. “Captain Brooks probably wouldn’t like that.”

“Of course, of course. I apologize,” Sair said. His face turned a little dark. “I regret that he chose to send you.”

“Someone had to go,” she said. “It might have been worse if I hadn’t been there.”

Which sounded like bragging, but she did feel it was true. If she had not been there, she had a feeling that Response Team One would not be alive now.

She had taken its attention. It had toyed with her – and that had bought time.

I guess I make good chum for weirdness, she thought.

Cathal leaned closer. “Once you are out, Apollonia, I would . . . enjoy if we could pray together again.”

She blinked away her other thoughts, and found her cheeks feeling warm. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be nice.”

She said nothing else, but raised her hand – she did not touch the glass, but put it near.

On the other side, Cathal raised his hand and did the same thing from his side.

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FINIS