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“Am I dead?” she asked. Her voice was weak and craggy.
“You are not,” a voice said, in her language. Her heart squeezed and began to race, while her slow thoughts lumbered to an explanation: she recognized the voice. It was familiar, it made her warm inside.
“What is your name?”
“Quaia Sangsen.”
“Very good. Do you know the date in your system, Quaia Sangsen?”
“It’s… uh…”
“The sub-cycle will do fine.”
“2475-12… what are…? What is happening?”
Her interlocutor, strangely familiar, continued asking her questions, undeterred. “And do you know where you are?”
She tried to claw back the memories that she knew she should have: it was strange, knowing a chunk of time was missing, but not knowing what happened in it.
“I don’t…” she began. But then the memories of Torian came flooding back, unbidden. And with them, the final thoughts she had before she had fallen asleep—
“Oh. Suns! I’m on an asteroid, I crashed… I’m running out of heat…” she babbled.
That obviously wasn’t right.
“There you go. It’s all coming back to you.”
It was Torian.
Or it sounded like Torian. Of course it sounded like Torian and wasn’t him.
She blinked and raised a hand to block the bright light above her. “Who is that?” she asked, not able to believe it was him. She had hit her head, or been out too long.
“I crashed into an asteroid and sent a distress signal,” she murmured. “Ugh, my head hurts.”
“It’s the reheating process,” the voice said gently. Her eyes watered with frustration. Torian wasn’t here, she told herself. And how did she like that? Even after a near-death experience, she just kept thinking about him, right out of the gates.
“Where am I now?” she asked. She tried to sit up, looking down the length of her torso to see if there was anything she needed to unhook from herself.
A firm hand gently pushed against her shoulder. The light swung out of view. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Quaia Sangsen,” the voice said. Her insides boiled and froze, all at the same time, her mind playing tricks on her.
The light faded and the person above her came into view.
“You’re still a little sedated,” he said.
She blinked up at the intense blue eyes, the beautiful features of a Voklish male. “You look just like someone I know,” she told him, reaching for his face. Of course she was drugged, and of course she was hallucinating.
He took her hand in his. It was warm, and bristly hairs tickled her wrists. He brought it to his lips and kissed it. “Do I?” he asked casually, smiling.
“You look just like the love of my life,” she said. Hearing her own voice made her realize how drugged she actually was.
But the drugs were fading. She closed her eyes. The man still had her hand in his, and she knew she should remove it, but it felt so much like a dream to her that she wanted him to keep holding it.
“This is like a dream,” she said. “I hope I never sober up… to be honest… or maybe I am dead… and this is heaven…”
The Voklish male who looked so much like Torian leaned over her and pressed his warm, dry lips to her forehead. “I’ve given you more sedative, my love. Sleep now, we’ll be back at your station in no time at all.”
“You know…” she murmured. “You can just… take me to… anywhere… nothing there… for me…” But then a terrifying thought entered her mind: if she was still alive, she needed to go back to her station.
