He still leaned against the engine block – weak, spent – wanting to be left alone in his grief. Still, the woman wasn’t going away. What more did she want?

“I left her there,” he confessed. “What does that make me?”

“A survivor,” she said, refusing to condemn him, as though surviving alone was an accomplishment.

It didn’t seem to be such a wonderful thing to be. He survived all his family, the whole world he lived in, everything he’d had in this life. What had survival gotten him?

“I abandoned her,” he insisted. Why didn’t this woman hate that?

She shook her head, her dark hair swirling around her head. Like Kaelin’s had, when…

“You said so yourself Traejan,” Althea told him coldly. “She was dead. You tried to hold onto her. She was taken away.”

He lowered his gaze again.

“I did,” he said quietly. Why then didn’t the knowledge ease his pain?

“We are not in a fight where everyone can be saved,” Althea told him. “We’re not in a fight where we can carry our past around with us.”

She lowered her gaze, then lifted it back up, a haunted look on her face, in her eyes.

“It’s too heavy,” she finished.

He’d been thinking only about himself. What about her?

“Who have you lost to the Macros?”

“A lot,” she told him, voice cracking. “The closest.”

He saw, for the first time, a vulnerability that she hadn’t expressed before - even when she’d been unconscious – near death.

“Answer me one thing then,” he asked her.

She brightened a touch.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why you choose to come now?” His demands poured out in a flood. “You said you’d only learned how to destroy the Macros recently, but was our world so unimportant to you? Are there so many in a worse state than we are?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She turned away, took a few step from him. He pushed himself from the block, waited.

Althea turned back.

“It’s not easy to move between the worlds now Traejan,” though she told him evenly, she still had a haunted look in her eyes. “Picture it: the galaxy is made up of millions of stars; each moving in its own direction, at its own speed; their planets, moons, everything all traveling through space in unique orbits.

“The Mirror Maze network has to keep track of all of that. When the Macro’s struck, a lot of that capability was lost. Even the most precise transit formulas today can’t compensate everywhere for that loss. It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was a matter of scale, of… probabilities.”

She gave him a sad, wistful smile.

“I wish things were different,” she told him, sounding genuinely regretful. “I do wish I could have come here years ago. Look, you have to decide what is more important to you. Are you going to hang on to what happened three years ago? To something you cannot undo – or get back your world. Help me put an end to those things that killed all your friends… that killed your wife. There’s nothing I can now, but help the best I can. It’s all any of us can do. So… what you want to do? What would she have wanted you to do?”

Her gaze, words, demanded a response.

“She would have wanted me help,” he told her. “I want to. I have to.”

“I’m glad,” she told him, held his gaze. He could feel her gently pat his arm. “I didn’t want to have to leave you behind.”

Traejan shook his head at her statement.

“Do you actually still think I like this world,” he struggled to continue. “That I wouldn’t do anything to change it?”

She shrugged.

“I didn’t know,” she admitted, narrowed her eyes, looked him over. “I needed to be certain.”

He shook his head. Looking over at the lifter chassis, remembering he still had plenty work ahead of him. He glanced back at Althea.

“Is that it?” Traejan hoped it was.

She gave him a sympathetic look.

“I didn’t intend it to be so hard on you,” she told him.

She looked away from him. He followed her gaze. She was looking at the thruster unit, battered on the chassis where he’d left it, turned back to him.

“I could help you with that,” she offered.

“Let me give it another try,” he said, rejecting her offer, then softened. “If I can’t get it in, I’ll ask.”

“Let me know then,” she nodded, backed away a couple steps, started to turn. “I’ll let you do your work.”

“Thank you,” he offered tiredly. She didn’t leave though, just lingered there. He needed to get back to work, turned away, picked up a tool, examined it, not remembering what it was, or what it was for – didn’t look up until the sounds of her retreating footsteps disappeared. Traejan dropped the tool, rubbed his face, tried to think about the task at hand, heard Thule’s screams again, echoing in his mind.

He looked up, the thruster unit was still waiting for him. He still couldn’t figure out how to fit it in without compromising the strength of the chassis’ retaining brackets. And… there was the problem of equalizing the power feed, another headache in the making. Maybe he should ask for her help. Maybe tomorrow…

His hand went again, up over the gold rope around his neck, pressed against it – felt again – cold metal against his skin.

“I’ll do it for you,” he whispered, closing his eyes, picturing Kaelin – smiling. “I won’t forget you. I’ll do whatever I have to.”