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“Stupid, stupid son of a bitch!”

“Hey!”

“Give me a break Brian. I can’t stand the old man anymore”

“Kevin?” I asked laughing although I already knew he wasn’t referring to “older brother”.

“No, stupid, the professor.”

“Hey, who are you calling stupid?” I said throwing him the first thing I found next to me, which turned to be a screwdriver.

He ducked just on time “Be careful you idiot, you could have hit me with this.” he yelled at me, picking up the screwdriver. “Do you want me to lose an eye?”

“Well, you need better reflexes, and don’t call me stupid again or else.” I threat him in my best Kevin’s voice.

Brian hit me on the arm. He was sitting on his bed and had extended his arm to punch me.

“Don’t do something like that again.” He scolded me.

“Ouch” I sat up.

“And Nick” he addressed to the kid.

“Save it Brian, I’m not in the mood okay.” Nick kept talking putting the screwdriver on the desk and taking a seat on my bed on the other side of the room. Big news to you kid, you haven’t been in a mood since ever, considering the recurring nightmares.

“It doesn’t matter Nick, that’s not excuse to come here talking like that.”

“Bite me Brian!” Was Nick’s only answer.

I was laughing so hard.

“Shut up AJ.” Brian ordered punching me again. I felt like returning the punch but I chose to take a seat on the other side of the bed instead. “And Nick I’m really getting tired of your mood changes.” Bri added.

“And I’m tired of everyone here telling me what to do. What do you all think that just because I’m younger I have to be some kind of slave here?”

“Kaos, calm down.” I said “What happened?”

“That stupid old man.”

“Nick!” Brian was losing his patience and that didn’t happen often, but cursing was one of the things that would always try his patience.

Kaos rolled his eyes and mumbled a “fuck”.

“I mean it, Nick.”

He took a deep breath before talking again.

“That old man” he continued really slow “has been yelling at me all day. Kev asked me to help him in the lab and according to the professor I’m doing everything wrong. I ripped my glove trying to help him.” He whined showing us one of his asbestos gloves that he used for handling high temperatures.

“Aren’t those my gloves?”

“I don’t know.” He said looking at them again “Hey, now that you mention it. Great! So mine are still undamaged.” He smiled throwing me the gloves.

“Damn Kaos.” I threw them back to him. “You keep these, I want a new pair.”

“Nick!” Kevin entered the room. “What the hell happened out there?”

“Ugh!” Brian’s hands were covering his face and he looked like he was about to pull off his hair. “Can any of you guys talk more than two words without cursing?”

“Who’s cursing?” Kevin asked.

The look of complicity on Nick’s face was hilarious and I was trying too hard not to laugh.

“Forget it” Brian said shaking his head. “I give up.”

“Whatever” Kevin replied facing Nick again “What happened with the professor Nick?”

“What happened? It happened that I’ve been helping him all morning and he is a big ass.”

“Nick.”

“No Kevin, you know that’s the truth. He doesn’t want my help. He can’t stand me and I can’t stand him either for that matters.”

“Well, you know he needs help.”

“But he doesn’t want MY help”

Kevin turned to me.

“Don’t look at me man. He definitely can’t stand me either.”

“Brian?”

“WHAT?!” That practically made me jump.

“Beg your pardon” Came Kevin’s reply. I didn’t know if he was pissed off by Brian’s answer or about to laugh. At some point Bri had gone back to lie down on his bed and his face was now buried on his pillow. After a minute of silence he finally looked at us. Nobody said a single word and Kevin just gave him “the look”.

“Okay” He sighed and stand up. Normally Brian was the only one among us that seemed to be immune to Kevin’s look, but this time he just gave up. “I will help him. What’s he doing anyway?”

“He’s analyzing some soil from K-Tawoor that he thinks could be used as natural energy in the building of weapons. But he’s testing it with different machines and the man can’t tell the difference between a screw and a screwdriver.” Nick filled us in.

“Great!” Brian left the room with the enthusiasm of a man about to be hang.

“What were you doing?” Kev asked me once Brian close the door behind him.

“Just talking.”

“Nothing to do?”

“Nope.”

He folded his arms and looked at me.

“Okay, I’m going.” I said standing up. “Just give me a minute okay?”

He nodded and left the room too and as soon as the door got closed again I sat back on the bed.

“Hey Kaos.”

Nick was now lying on my bed.

“What?”

I wasn’t sure why I was going to mention this to him but I knew that if I was going to say it to someone it had to be Nick.

“Do you know how Dana and Stuart met?”

“No, and I couldn’t care less.”

“She saved his life.” Well, it wasn’t exactly how they met but that happened at some point.

He looked at me.

“Really?”

I nodded and he looked at the ceiling again.

“And she is alive?” He sighed. “Lucky girl, there are others that can’t say the same.”

“I knew that was the reasons you didn’t like him.”

“And I thought you liked him.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“You are talking to me about this, aren’t you?” He grinned.

“It’s not that I don’t trust him, okay, I don’t think he is a bad guy or anything like that, is just that…”

“It’s just that you wish you knew the whole story.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s the way I feel too, you know. I find myself paying attention to everything he does and I know he is a good guy. I mean, if he wasn’t a good guy Kevin wouldn’t be his friend anymore, right? Kevin loved her. But I want to know what really happened then. What happened that day.”

“I really would like to talk to Jimmy. I can’t wait for the moment we arrive to Trinsuet.” I knew that Jimmy had been there when Kaydee died. I never talked to him though. I was just a kid then but there were so many things I wanted to ask him.

“But Jimmy is not there. Stuart told us he was in Ferliksand.”

“I know but maybe we can talk to him once we are in Trinsuet. They have to have some kind of communication line with all the rebels in different planets, or maybe we can go there one we leave.”

“Are we leaving?” he asked in a very soft voice.

“Of course we are leaving. What you think we are going to stay there forever?”

“Not forever but we will be part of the rebel force now. When do you think we will be leaving?”

“I have no idea but we will doing it, eventually. I need to.”

He finally looked at me “You want to see your father again?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“You should know.”

He sighed again. “You want to know who that girl in my dreams is, right?”

“I thought they weren’t dreams.”

“They aren’t.” He said closing his eyes.

“And you keep telling she is calling for me. Nick…”

“I don’t wanna talk about that AJ.”

“Are you hiding something?”

“No!”

There was a long pause and I decided not to insist on the subject anymore.

“I better go back to work before Kevin comes back to yell at me.” I said finally standing up.

I gave him a sidelong glance in my way to the door and noticed his eyes were fixed on me.

“AJ”

I stopped.

“I’ve been hiding something from you.”

My heart skipped a beat but I didn’t turn around and just wait for him to talk looking at the retractable door’s lever. “What is it?”

“She is calling for someone else too.”

Different names crossed my mind, including my father’s, but the one he mentioned was the only one I would have never considered.

“She is calling for Jeff too.”

Jeff? She is calling for Jeff? The face of the man who had saved my life no more than three months ago came to my mind. The guy who I considered a friend until I discovered he was a Tracon like my father. The same guy who had made me feel so strange when I saw him at the bar that last time.

I turned around.

“Nick you got to tell me what else you’re seeing” I approached to him and took a seat on my bed, Nicky sat up and hugged his knees to his chest.

“I really can’t tell you too much Jay.”

“You have said that before and look what you were hiding.”

“I didn’t hear his name until a couple of nights ago.” His last nightmare.

“Please Nick tell me.”

He closed his eyes and started to talk “It’s a dark place. I have no idea where it is but I think there’s a way to find it out.”

“What you mean?”

“The stars. I know that if I look at the stars I’m going to find out where it is.”

“That’s why you are going back?”

“Maybe.” He looked at me again. “Is not like I can control it. I really have no idea why I keep going there. I don’t want to be there.” I saw the fear in his big blue eyes. “It scares me AJ, but I find myself going back once and again.”

“What do you see?” I patted his leg.

“It looks like a space station, is too big to be a ship, maybe some kind of aircraft carrier. I’m in a hangar. I always enter through the same place, it’s a platform and there are ships there, but they aren’t from the Empire, I’m sure about that. That’s when I hear she calling me. She doesn’t know my name but she is calling me.”

“So, she doesn’t say your name?”

“No.”

“What does she say?”

“She calls me “boy” and asks for help, something like “Please help me. Boy can you help me? I’m seeing you, please come to me.” She keeps saying that she is seeing me.”

I found myself biting my lips hearing Nick’s story.

“I walk down the corridor. There’s a strong damp smell there, like the smell on that bar in K-Tawoor. And it’s really cold. I reach a door, I’m sure she is inside and she starts to talk to me again. She tells me to please help her and then she…”

“What?”

“That’s when she says your name. Always the same phrase, always the same words: I need your brothers’ help. Call your brothers, please, call Alexander.”

I felt something like a strong gust of wind hitting me on the back and suddenly I was freezing.

“And then she starts to cry AJ, and keeps saying your name.”

“What about Jeff’s name?” I wasn’t sure how I had managed to make that question. My throat was dry and my heart was beating too fast.

“She hadn’t say his name before but last time I heard it. She was asking for his help too, or at least that’s what I think she was doing.” Nick said running his finger through his hair, reclining his head against the wall and looking at the ceiling. “I’m really not sure since she was crying, but she said his name after saying yours.” He suddenly looked at me again. “Maybe it’s another Jeff. It doesn’t has to be the Jeff we met, right?”

Watching the look of hope on his face made it tough for me to reply what I was thinking. I was completely sure she was calling that Jeff.

“I don’t know Nick. All this is too strange and I don’t know what to think. So, you have never seen her?”

“No, the door is closed and when I try to get inside, I hear this horrible laugh and someone coming. I don’t know who he is but I have to go away from him, he scares me.” He made a pause before continuing, what he was telling me was scaring me too “It’s making me feel sick AJ.”

I patted his leg again but didn’t know what to say.

He stood up and walked to his bed, I didn’t take my eyes away from him the whole time and after just a couple of minutes he was sound asleep.

“Don’t worry Nick. Nothing is going to happen to you, I promise.” I whispered before leaving the room.



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