She cycled between sobbing and shaking silently, her hands clenched in her lap. The station security who had interviewed her had been so impatient. She’d stumbled over the words, unsure of what she should say. How much of the truth did they need? How much had she said? She remembered rambling, just letting the words spill out in a flood. She couldn’t even remember what she had or hadn’t said. All she could think about was the blood.

The human body only had so much blood in it, about 5 liters give or take. And it had seemed like all of them had spilled out onto the grey composite floor. A growing flood of crimson that she couldn’t take her eyes from.

What was she to do now? She’d lost time in the jump, surely there would be people looking for her. Her sisters would have missed her, and her heart broke even more. She was supposed to have taken Sam to tour Olympia University. They had been looking forward to it ever since Sam graduated her basic education. How many other promises had she broken?

“Hey, doc” someone said, their voice oddly familiar.

Solaris looked up, a blurry shape focusing into something tall and oddly bulky. And bloody. A face she knew. She flashed back to seeing Sirius, on the ground, the blood spreading. A specter of death. She went cold, then felt a rush of energy as the adrenaline kicked in. It approached. She reacted the only way she knew how to.

Solaris sent her fist in the direction of its face, feeling her knuckles contact something solid. She heard someone yelp, but her momentum was taking her further than she anticipated in the lower gravity. She stumbled, but recovered her fall, turning to look at the figure.

The man stumbled back and was rubbing his jaw which had already started to bruise.

“Damn, doc, you got a mean right hook”, Sirius said.

His face was covered in blood from what looked like a freshly broken nose and he was wearing an oversized aviator style jacket that explained the bulky silhouette, but other than that he looked fine. Which made no sense. Sirius was dead. But he was also standing in front of her. Alive. And she’d hit him.

“You’re not real”, she said, “this isn’t happening”, she said trying to reconcile the conflict between her memories and her reality, “I’m obviously losing it, the stress has finally got to me”. I’m turning into my sister, cut through her train of thought like a cold knife.

“Yeah, sure, whatever”, Sirius shrugged, “But is that real enough for you?” He pointed back the way he came.

A pair was leaving the door that led to the morgue. The first of the pair was tall. Even taller than Sirius, Solaris thought. Tall and broad, built powerfully. The pale burn marks on her chin and temple contrasted heavily with her bronze skin. The second figure was considerably shorter and wore the uniform of the local security outfit. They scanned the hall in search of something, then the burned woman pointed. In their direction.

Solaris barely had time to comprehend what was happening before Sirius grabbed her by the arm.

“We gotta go!” He hissed at her, dragging her down the hallway.

She struggled to keep her feet. A glance back told her the two were in pursuit. Solaris had never run from station security before. She had never needed to. She considered breaking Sirius’ grasp, surely there was a way to solve this without all the fuss? But then she remembered. How could she possibly even begin to explain how they got there in the first place? She’d sound insane. She kept running.

They dashed down their chosen corridor, slowing only to change direction at what seemed like random intervals. The maze of tunnels opened up into a large multi-level atrium the ceiling of which terminated in a large clear dome that showed the vast darkness of space dotted by the lights of the stars and ship drives arcing overhead. This was why she hated the moon so much. Space was so close, that deadly vacuum inescapable, she almost felt like she’d float off the ground and fall through the dome into the void. A sharp tug on her arm brought her back to reality.

Weaving through the crowd the two found themselves fast approaching a railing that looked over a plaza a few floors down. She stole another glance back. The tall woman was closing the gap between them scarily fast. Behind her, the station security had acquired a partner, the two trailing behind but still gaining.

She slowed, pulling her arm out of Sirius’ grasp. He came to a slow stop too, turning to face her and spotted their chasers. Oh shit, he mouthed as he saw them close in. There was nowhere else to go.

Solaris backed against the railing, trying to spot an avenue of escape but before she could get a good look around someone lifted her then pushed her roughly over the metal-and-plastic railing. She felt her heart leap as she lost all sense of weight and orientation. She was falling into the void, tumbling into the stars, so why was the floor getting closer?

“Sorry doc!” She heard Sirius shout, and as she tumbled downwards, she spotted him vault over the railing too. Now they were both falling.

It was like they fell in slow motion, the ground rising to meet them far slower than what Solaris was used to on Earth. It felt dizzyingly dreamlike but for the pounding of her heart in her chest and the flash of fear she felt when she saw their followers staring down at them from the balcony.

After what felt simultaneously far too long and far too short, she collided awkwardly with the ground, her legs crumpling and a sudden shock through the hand she threw out to stabilize herself. But she’d survived the fall. And upon standing, she saw Sirius had too. A wave of nausea overtook her, the disorientation of the fall was just too much.

He whirled in place, and then took off. Solaris followed as their route took them back into the tunnels leading to the plaza. Sirius skidded to a halt at a nondescript door and slapped the access panel. It beeped and the door slid open. Sirius darted inside. Solaris followed.

She found herself in what looked like a storage room for old public works furniture. A series of dusty park benches were stacked on one side, flanked by an assortment of trash cans and other objects. She stumbled towards the nearest one and threw up.

Sirius cycled the door closed, stalked the room looking for something. Failing to find it, he stopped his frenetic pacing and stood stock-still by the door.

She shot him a curious glance.

“I’m listening”, he explained with a whisper, “We should have lost them”.

“We should wait”, she whispered back, “Just for a moment”. Just let me recover, please.

Sirius nodded.

They stood there, listening as footsteps came and went. None approached their door. After what felt like a lifetime, Sirius shook himself, stretched, then nodded at her.

“We should probably go now”, he said cautiously.

He motioned for her to come to the door but stopped her just before she reached the threshold. He leaned against the wall next to the door and nodded for her to do the same. Sirius cycled the door open and craned his neck to see out.

“Looks safe”, he pronounced, then exited into the hallway. Solaris followed. The two walked until they found a small alcove with benches hidden by some greenery. Some sort of ferns judging by the tightly coiled fronds at their tips.

Sirius sat and shot another glance down the hallway.

“We should probably get off the street for a bit, lose the heat”. He kept his focus on their surroundings, it was like she might as well be invisible.

“Lose the heat?” She asked incredulously as her nausea swelled again. She willed herself not to throw up again, but instead her throat constricted, and the familiar sting of angry frustrated tears came with it, “I’m sorry, but whatever trouble you’ve caused, I want nothing to do with it!” she managed to squeak out, “I just want to go back, I want to go home!” She hated how pathetic her voice sounded.

Sirius turned his head to look at her, finally properly looking at her for the first time since they’d gotten here. He narrowed his eyes.

“Fine. Go home. Leave”, he said, his voice tight, “Don’t need you around anymore anyways. Go back to your Mars Olympia and your bitch mom and leave me alone. Just like a fucking duster should”.

Solaris’s vision swam with angry tears, she could feel her face growing unbelievably hot from the indignant rage she couldn’t suppress. It was like a blockage in a high-pressure pipe, once it gave way, there was no stopping it.

“That’s bloody rich from the guy who held a gun to me saying he’d shoot me if I ran off”, her hands were shaking so she clenched her fists, “That’s damned rich from the guy who shot my coworkers, who teleported me to the moon, and got me involved in whatever the hell this is!”

Sirius’s expression was guarded, but she could tell he was holding back something from the tightness in his jaw and the uncanny stillness of his posture. Did he even care how much he’d hurt her? Or was she merely just a convenient prop for him, useful as a human shield but now her utility had run out and she was just a burden?

Never before had Solaris wanted to hit someone out of anger, but oh, she was just so close. She shook her fists in frustration as the tears overtook her, “Th-That’s fu-”, she stopped herself, “it’s bloody rich from the man who got me involved with all of this…” she struggled to find the right word, “this insanity in the first place”, she spat out.

“You think I had a fucking choice?” Sirius challenged, “What, you think I woke up one day and decided ‘Yes, I want to be pumped full of this fucking shit that makes me have an alien in my head and now I can’t even die when I want to?’”

There’s always a choice, she wanted to say, but the lump in her throat made it impossible to speak. Hot tears streamed down her face in an oddly slow fashion, another reminder of how far she was from home.

Sirius was barely concealing his anger now, “You’re a scientist, so here’s a fucking fun fact: Yes, I remember all of it. All of the dying. My head getting fucking exploded. All of the coming back. You wanna know what it feels like to have your fucking head rearranged by whatever they put in me? Guess what? I wanna go home too, but that ship has fucking sailed!” He pounded the air for emphasis but sank back into his chair his face in his hands, and his shoulders sloped with exhaustion.

“And now you’re mad at me, for doing what I had to do to survive”, he summed up tiredly, “Apparently, the only thing I could do right was die, and now I can’t even do that anymore”.

Solaris didn’t know what to say, all that she knew was that she too was running out of the strength to argue anymore. She was crashing from the adrenaline rush of a day she’d had. She resented the way he’d turned it around into a guilt trip, but she couldn’t deny that whatever had brought him to this point had to have been deeply traumatizing. They were both traumatized and lashing out for some sort of control. She knew the pattern well.

She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to bring her emotions under control. As angry and disturbed and tired as she felt, a strong thread of curiosity tugged at her. Sirius had died and recovered, and only in a matter of hours. That wasn’t something people just did.

There just had to be a scientific explanation. Just how did it all work? How did a dead man come back to life? And could it be repeated? Observed? Replicated? And imagine, her name, Dr. Solaris Khorana, above the answers…above the keys to life without death. She’d be more than merely famous. She’d be the salvation of humankind. All she had to do was to stick around long enough to get those answers.

This was greater than her. Greater than her fear and her anger. This was an obligation. If she left now, she would never get an answer, she would never know the Why to the greatest mystery in the universe. The only problem was, would Sirius even want to give her these answers? What could she offer to convince him?

She stood and even though her feet felt leaden as if she physically could not stand to get any closer to Sirius than she already was, she took the seat next to him, and rested her hand on his arm in a way she hoped was reassuring. He looked at her guardedly, and she gave him an uncertain smile.

“The ones that did this to you”, she started, “They’re the ones we need to be mad at, they’re the ones that ruined both our lives”, she felt her voice falter as she started on her next point, it just didn’t feel like her, but the idea of having some answers kept her going, “What do you think about us getting revenge?”

Sirius stayed silent, studying her face. When he spoke, his voice had become softer, “You want…revenge? Against Them?”

Solaris nodded, “I just don’t think we should let them slip into the shadows after everything they did to you. To us. We can make them pay”.

“But, how?”

“I’m- We’re going to find that out. But I’m going to need your help”, she squeezed his arm gently, trying to impress on him the importance of the task, “Can you help me?”

After a too-long silence, he nodded.

“Yes. Let’s get those fuckers”.