0032 hours

The meeting adjourned with no further fanfare. Rowan squeezed himself close against the wall, watching as the crew of tired employees filtered slowly out into the hallway—except their tiredness was no shield for their obvious distrust. Rowan saw it, felt it, really, radiating off of them as they all gave him a wide berth.

The captain—Doubleday, if Rowan remembered correctly, but that sounded more like the name of a comic book character to him than that of a real person—acknowledged Rowan with a brief nod on his way out. "I'm sorry you've ended up this way, kid," he said, the side of his mouth tugging upwards just enough to make Rowan think he was attempting a comforting smile. It didn't quite make the cut. "But I want to thank you for offering your help in spite of that."

Kid. The word fanned the beginnings of a subtle frustration somewhere deep inside of his chest. He was not a kid. He hadn't been one before the wormhole, and he certainly wasn't one now. To Doubleday's credit, he supposed it was all the same when you stood so close to the edge of senility. So Rowan just nodded back. "Of course, sir."

Doubleday tucked his clipboard beneath his arm, then left the room after the others.

Four people remained in the conference room including Rowan then, and all of them had witnessed his violent episode earlier. He fought off the tidal wave of embarrassment, running his tongue along his newly sharpened teeth.

"Dr. Nystrom," Rowan started. "I—"

"I need a smoke," the doctor announced.

"Sol," said the woman beside him, obviously displeased.

"It's been quite the day, Nona," Dr. Nystrom said, already walking out before she could stop him. "I deserve this."

He didn't even look at Rowan as he passed. The door slammed shut.

Rowan let the silence swell for a moment before he asked no one in particular, "Is he normally like this?"

Cherry and Nona shared a look. Cherry answered, "Pretty much, yeah."

Nona sunk deep into her chair, "He doesn't need a smoke. What he needs is to go to sleep."

"Dr. Nystrom doesn't like sleep, as far as I've noticed," Cherry mused. "Or at least he doesn't like it nearly as much as he likes knowing all the answers to things."

"Where does he go?" Rowan asked.

Cherry's brows twitched, Nona pausing to look at Rowan through her fingers.

"To smoke," Rowan clarified, nervously shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans—the same jeans he'd been wearing for thirty years, which was weird to think about. "I'm gonna go talk to him."

"You're not going anywhere," Nona said, the look on her face insinuating that he was crazy for even suggesting it. "We don't know enough about your...condition. Who's to say you won't go crazy again?"

"I won't," Rowan said, but a voice in the back of his mind whispered at him that he didn't really know that. If he couldn't even remember anything from when he'd been in that ravenous state, how could he be sure of how he'd ended up there in the first place? Suddenly he was a stranger in his own body, and it sickened him. "I don't know how it happened, but I feel the best I've felt all day. Like I'm...like I'm finally myself again."

Nona's eyes narrowed. "And I'm just supposed to trust you."

"I do," Cherry said.

Again, the two exchanged a look—though Nona's was truly more of a glare. When Cherry shrugged at her, she just sighed and got to her feet, passing a hand over her emerald-hued twists. As she walked towards him, platform heels clicking against the floor, Rowan had the passing thought that she was quite beautiful, though that wasn't precisely the right word for it. There was more to her than just beauty, but something else more intrinsic: an indescribable magnetism.

She studied him, her eyes the same inky color of a night sky. He settled on it. Intriguing. That was what she was.

"The last door on the left," she said at last. "It's supposed to be an emergency exit, but the alarm's never actually worked, so that's where he runs off to. Good luck."

Rowan read her face, trying to decipher the strange look she gave him, to capture whatever Rowan-centered conclusion was weaving itself together inside of her head. But he couldn't figure it out.

He told her, "Thank you," and stepped out into the hall.

The outside air was chillier than Rowan had been anticipating, and the moment he joined Dr. Nystrom at the top of the emergency staircase, his incessant shivering prefaced any proper greeting.

The doctor leaned forward over the railing, the line of his back lean and straight, shoulders faintly rising and falling with the rhythm of each inhale, pause, and long exhale. The smoldering cigarette between his slender fingers glowed a vibrant orange in the gloom.

"Chronos I-97's home star is a lot smaller than the Earth's sun," Dr. Nystrom said, without turning around. "Hence the weather around here tends to be a lot chillier."

Rowan hesitated a moment, before he let the door hiss shut and met Dr. Nystrom at the railing. "A red dwarf, isn't it? Saelia."

Dr. Nystrom looked at him, not exactly with surprise, but something close enough. "Yes, actually. How'd you know that?"

Rowan smirked. "It's almost like it was my job to research this place once."

Chronos I-97. He remembered well the excitement that had first come along with the assignment—that as well as the overwhelming nervousness that inevitably came with the realization he was leaving his home planet for the first time. It didn't matter how many scientific journals touted Chronos I-97 as the next "pseudo-Earth," perhaps the best place humanity could potentially call home once they'd finally ransacked Earth for all it was worth.

A part of that excitement still lived in him as he took in the landscape before him now: a vast plain of rocky terrain interspersed by little entrapments of life: squat buildings dotted with light, or the high-rise apartments that made of the bulk of the Settlement. In the back of it all was a tall ring of mountains, a natural boundary between the Settlement and the Chinzi natives beyond it. Though Rowan vaguely remembered reading about a peace agreement between the two, he didn't think it had been around quite long enough to quell all concern.

Looming in the corner of Rowan's vision like a nightmare creature was the passenger ship, its nose buried into the ground, the area marked off by bright warning tape. Rowan's stomach twisted, just slightly, at the sight of it.

He sighed, turning his back to the railing. "Cherry tells me I tried to eat you. I'm sorry about that."

Dr. Nystrom didn't respond immediately, but Rowan noticed him tense up a bit. "I don't think you were aware of what you were doing. No need to be sorry."

"And also...thank you."

A glance. "What for?"

"You saved my life," Rowan told him. "If you hadn't vouched for me, that Doubleday guy probably would have had me and all the other passengers killed. You could've let him do it, but you didn't."

Dr. Nystrom was still for a moment, before the edge of a smile formed at his mouth, an uncomfortable laugh escaping him. "You misunderstand me."

"I do?"

"It wasn't a personal favor. You're not indebted to me, or anything," Dr. Nystrom replied, taking another drag from his cigarette and watching the smoke twirl away into the air. "I was protecting myself, really."

Before Rowan could ask, the doctor turned, raising his arm high enough to let the sleeve of his coat sink to his elbow. Even in the dimness, Rowan could see it: the bite mark, still red and irritated and stained with blood.

Rowan's fangs prodded at the inside of his lips. He covered his mouth with his hand, taking a step back, fighting back a wave of—was that—desire?

"Until I know that this bite isn't going to make me into...whatever you are," said Dr. Nystrom, rolling up his sleeve again, "I'm not going to stand behind any ideas that suggest killing you."

"Dr. Nystrom, I—"

"Once again, I don't need you to apologize, Rowan. You've proved well enough that you weren't doing it on purpose," he interrupted, then frowned. "Which makes this affliction all the more concerning, if I'm honest. It leaves too many questions to be answered."

He should've been more panicked, Rowan thought, but Dr. Nystrom wasn't. His face was utterly placid as he dropped his cigarette to the ground, smashing it into the concrete beneath his leather dress shoes. He reached up to tie his hair back, gathering the top half of his locs into a messy but somehow ornate bun at the center of his head. Rowan found himself watching how his hands, how his fingers moved. So deft, but so delicate.

"Dr. Nystrom," Rowan started again. He wasn't even thinking about what he was saying. He was thinking of home, of the way his mother's kitchen smelled, of his siblings' voices reverberating from every corner of the house. The reason for the ache inside of him. The reason he needed answers as soon as they could find them. "Where were you before you were here? Don't you have a family, or something? Someone who's waiting for you?"

He'd asked the wrong question. The doctor's placid expression went cold instead, and Rowan suddenly sensed the distance open up between them, like the ground itself was splitting in two.

"Nona is my family now. I have her; I don't need anyone else," he said, then turned, fingers latching around the doorknob. Rowan was sure he was going to leave him, before he stopped. "And if we're going to be working together from here on out, I'd prefer we do so as equals. You can stop calling me Dr. Nystrom."

Rowan blinked. "I—oh. What should I call you instead, exactly?"

"My name," he said. "It's Solomon."

The door shut, leaving Rowan alone to shiver there in the cold.