Holly and I stand at the front sewer entrance, staring at the sunrise peeking behind the tall buildings. Very little of it makes it through the gates that keep the sewer secure, but it's still pleasant to see compared to our sunless week on Alpha Centauri.

"How long does it take this guy to get around?" Holly asks, kicking a rock back and forth between her feet. "I'm so sorely exhausted."

I don't respond, instead focusing on the city skyline. It's very futuristic and Jetsons-esque, minus the whole flying cars and floating city thing. Guess that was a prediction that doesn't pan out.

At last, Dwight Wings arrives, carrying three cups and three donuts. "Hope you're ready for a healthy, balanced breakfast."

"Something tells me you're being sarcastic."

"I like you, Holly. You're very observant. We have a few things to get through today. Most notably, we've set up one of the Halo Chairs to get that going, and then you'll be assigned to go out with a scout leader to—"

"Hold on, what's a Halo Chair?"

"Oh, yeah, forgot you don't know anything. Uh, it's essentially you sit in the chair, and it downloads the language into your brain. Like a video game."

"Video game?"

"Never mind. You sit in the chair for an hour and learn sign language."

"Oh, nice. And these are completely safe?"

"Yeah, they've been around for a few years now. Taught myself French that way. What an interesting dead language."

"But for some reason, English is still around?"

"Yeah, I don't quite understand it, but it makes for one less thing to worry about from an outsider's perspective, I suppose."

Dwight stared off, as if looking at a camera for a moment, before returning to reality. "So, who wants to go first?"

Holly did. True to his word, the process takes an hour, and when she comes out of the room, she looks unsure.

"Did it work?" she asks, looking at her hands as if they'll just start signing.

"Only one way to find out," the chief says, gesturing over to Sapphire. She signs something, and Holly's eyes grow two times their normal size.

"No way," she says. Then she signs something back, and Sapphire smiles.

"Oh, you've gotta do this for sure," Holly says to me. "This is unbelievable."

I stand up from my spot on the floor and join Dwight in the Halo Chair room. It quite literally is a chair with a hall where the head goes. Multiple golden lights emit from the center. Some sort of screen is on the arm of the chair, where he goes to press some buttons.

"It's going to be a strange sensation at first," he says, finalizing whatever settings he's changing, "but it'll put you to sleep, and when you wake, you'll have CSL burned into your brain."

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He offers the seat, which I hop into, placing my head inside the ring. Then, he presses one more button, gives me a thumbs up, and before long, that sleepiness he mentioned begins to set in.

When I wake, the Halo Chair bells softly ring, and Dwight looks up from his watch. My brain feels groggy, but the rest of my body feels almost rested.

"Well?" he says expectantly.

"Well, I—"

We both freeze at the new development, but one of us has a bigger smile.

"I'm sorry, I had a theory to test," he says, rushing to the machine. "I put both CSL and English in there to see if that would somehow reboot your brain into talking. I figured it was somewhere in there, and the only thing stopping you was your brain."

"My head hurts."

"Yeah, that can happen. Should calm down soon. Why don't we go test out that CSL with Sapphire?"

My head is pounding, and my vision is a little blurry, but I stand from the chair. "Okay, yeah. Can I just..."

A moment later, the next thing I see is the floor plummeting closer to me.

It's probably telling that the first thing I think of when I wake up is "actually, I'm plummeting to the floor," rather than the usual "where am I?" When I do get to that, I'm answered almost immediately by three people appearing before me. Two I recognize as Luna and Holly, but the last is unfamiliar.

"Hey, Tes," Holly says, looking down at me with a smile that looks like she'd been terrified I wouldn't wake up. "How are you feeling?"

I try to speak again, but nothing comes. Whatever happened must have reset my brain.

"Ike said he tried to get you to speak, and that you just fell over and started bleeding," Luna says, moving to see either side of my head. "Rushed you to the best doctor we have."

"That's me," the third person says. "Very strange brain bleed, but I was able to take care of it quickly."

Brain bleed. Of all the things that came close to killing me the past week-ish, I can't believe it was something that random.

"You've been out for almost thirty hours, and your friend hasn't left your side the whole time," Luna says. "Take it easy today. You can do some light work tomorrow. Nothing that might cause any more bleeding."

"Which shouldn't happen again," the doctor says. "There was some serious bruising in your Broca's area, and primarily the arcuate fasciculus, which seems to have been many years old, and the source for that bleeding. Most likely, there was some untreated damage there that prevented you from converting your thoughts into actual speech. It's not perfect, seeing as that was years ago, but it's a little better."

"All of that to say you're better off than you were before you sat in that chair. I have meetings to go to now. Thanks for the update, doc."

"Of course." The doctor turns to Holly. "If you'd like, I can give you some alone time."

"Yeah, that'd be great."

He disappears through the same door Luna exited, leaving me and Holly in the semi-sterile sewer room.

"I'll be honest, Tes. They weren't sure you were gonna wake up. When Dwight had come running out of the room with you bleeding in his arms, yelling for a doctor, I was so scared. For a moment, I thought I was going to be alone in a random universe without you."

Tears start to well up in her eyes, which she tries to dab away. "And I... I cried. I didn't know if I could go on. Not after all of this. All that we'd been through. I don't... I don't know... I'm so sorry..."

She lets it get out of her system for a bit. It almost makes me cry, which I probably would have, if I weren't more concerned about reopening any wounds in my brain.

"I don't think I could do this without you," she eventually continues. "I don't want to do this without you. And so I demanded to be here by your side the whole time, even when the doctor was working whatever magic inside your head to fix it. And it was magic, by the way. A bunch of golden tentacles left his hand and rooted in your head. And to think, the whole time, you didn't see or feel or hear anything. It would've been so peaceful. And you would have never known. And I would've completely broken."

She laughs nervously. "Anyway, all this to say, thanks for staying alive, Tes. I'm sorry for this breakdown. And crying so much. All the time. Maybe someday I'll stop being so emotional and—"

I slowly reach my hand out and hold hers. She stops talking, and for a while, we bask in the quiet. The peace.

If I didn't see what everyone else saw before, I do now.