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Maxwell sighed and nudged one of Sebastian’s feet into a shoe and then the other. “How about one question at a time?”
Sebastian scrubbed his face. He wanted to know everything, and he wanted to know everything now. “How did I get here? The last thing I remember is trying to get off the Barzen.”
“You did get off the Barzen.” Maxwell pulled his hand gently away from his face and then held his chin still as he shined a penlight in his right eye. “But your pod was still too close when the Barzen’s fuel line blew. Your body suffered immense trauma, and most of your hooks got ripped from your brain stem.”
Sebastian twitched and tightened his barbs and claws into place, fear shivering through him. “Wouldn’t that have killed me?”
Maxwell shook his head and moved the penlight to Sebastian’s other eye. “I said most of your hooks, not all of them. And your body wasn’t dead. You went into a sort of stasis to conserve energy. I’ve heard of other worm-like species that display that behavior, but I didn’t know torvar did it.”
Sebastian bit his lip and let Maxwell pull him to his feet. The idea that he had been floating helpless, deaf, and blind did not comfort him, nor did the idea of time disappearing from him in the blink of an eye. “How long was I in stasis?”
“Counting from when the Barzen crashed to just now?” Maxwell passed him a new shirt. “About five days.”
“Five days?” Sebastian dropped the shirt back to the ground in shock. “I lost five days, Maxwell?”
Maxwell grimaced and picked the shirt back up off the floor. He pushed it into Sebastian’s limp hand. “Yes.”
Sebastian finally pulled the shirt on in a daze. Five days. Five days he’d been gone. Five days since innumerable tons of gas had crashed with a fiery explosion onto his home, and he’d been nowhere to help. He swallowed down all the guilt and fear and swirl of emotions that choked up his throat.
“Come on.” Maxwell put a gentle hand on his shoulder and nudged him back into the sunlight. “Let’s find Hess.”
Another irrational spike of fear stabbed Sebastian’s heart, and he grabbed at Maxwell’s hand. “You said he’s fine. He’s fine, right?”
“Yes, Sebastian, he’s fine.” Maxwell squeezed his shoulder. “Normally, he’d have been in that tent with you, but he lets himself get dragged away to important meetings now and again.”
“He’s been staying with me?” Sebastian felt a stupid smile start to pull at his lips, and he looked down the canal to hide it. His emotions seesawed wildly—joy and pleasure at the thought of Leon, fear and confusion at what he remembered, and incongruous peace from the lovely weather and bustling refugee settlement.
“Of course he’s been staying with you.” Maxwell sighed and took Sebastian’s wrist to pull him in the opposite direction along one of the muddy roads on the banks. “And you don’t have to hide how happy that makes you.”
Sebastian blushed hard but still let himself grin at Maxwell, too happy to care. He licked his lips in preparation to savor the words. “I love him, Maxwell.”
But Maxwell didn’t mirror his happiness back at him. Instead, he frowned a little, and a shadow came into his eyes. “I hope that works out for you.”
Sebastian looked away and let all the many strange sights of a long-term Carta refugee camp draw his gaze. “I think it will.”
Maxwell’s misgivings didn’t have anything to do with Leon. Sebastian knew that. He wished he knew what they did have to do with, or better yet, that Maxwell could put whatever it was behind him. But in the years that Sebastian had known him, it had never seemed likely.
They took a turn away from the canal, and the ground firmed up under their feet as they climbed a small incline.
“You didn’t tell me how I got here,” Sebastian suddenly remembered, pulling his attention away from the beauty of a purple tent against the blue sky. “Just why I’m not dead.”
Maxwell blinked a few times, as though Sebastian had pulled him out of a reverie, but then he smiled at him with his normal sweetness. “Right.” They stepped out of a narrow alley and into a more open street, and Maxwell pointed down to the other side of it. “You have someone over there to thank for it, actually.”
Sebastian followed his finger to see a group of about five people constructing another tent-like dwelling on the far end of the road. A human woman stood back, pointing and giving orders. A large human man and a klah’eel man strained under a metal beam, lifting it into a notch at the top of a vertical pole. As soon as it settled into place, another human man began securing it with a drill while another woman pulled a bright yellow tarp over the whole thing.
Sebastian immediately recognized the two men that stepped out from under the beam: Garrett Twal and Captain Mal’ik. One of the women was a Resistance soldier, and the other Sebastian knew he didn’t recognize. The man drilling the beam into place looked oddly familiar, but Sebastian couldn’t place him.
Garrett saw them and started coming over, and Sebastian’s spine went up. He readied himself for some verbal sparring, but Garrett only glanced at him with a tight expression before focusing on Maxwell. “I was just going to come look for you.”
“Do you need something?” Maxwell stepped out in front of Sebastian—probably to cut him off from saying something nasty.
“Little Becca keeps trying to take off her splint.” Garrett crossed his muscular arms over his broad chest. “I told her she had to ask you first.”
“She does.” Maxwell chuckled, and Garrett smiled, and Sebastian wrinkled his nose and raised an eyebrow at the whole exchange.
“Will you come now?” Garrett cocked his head to point down an alleyway. “I’m afraid she’ll start trying to take it off while her mom’s gone.”
“Of course.” Maxwell started to follow Garrett toward the alley.
