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“Carson Blake?” Alicia questioned. “The Carson
Blake?”

“Yes,”
Nida managed quietly.

“Oh my
god, Bridgett is going to kill you,” Alicia chuckled as she bit her
lip.

She
didn't sound malicious, and Nida scrunched her lips together. “It
doesn't mean anything. I think he
just . . . wanted to see if I was
okay.”

“Yeah,
so he spent the whole night sitting next to you, when he could have
easily gone home to sleep, and check in on you later,” Alicia
laughed harshly. “Because that makes so much sense.”

“Ah . . . I don't know if he stayed there
the whole night,” Nida said, getting defensive. “Maybe he just
popped in to see me. I don't know.”

“This
is incredible,” Alicia continued, clearly ignoring Nida.

“It
doesn't mean anything,” Nida tried again, her frustration
building.

“What?
Are you getting angry because the most eligible bachelor and
popular guy in the Academy heroically saved you and spent the whole
night at your bedside?” Alicia ticked her head from side to
side.

“It
doesn't mean anything,” Nida snapped again, “and why should I care
if he's popular?”

“You are so
weird,” Alicia rolled her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “It's
Carson Freaking Blake, man. It's Carson Blake,” she repeated
slower.

“And
he's just a guy,” Nida sat back, crossing her arms, knowing she was
right. “I'm not interested in him,” she added.

Alicia
guffawed. “What do you mean you're not interested? Are you blind?
Have you ever seen him?”

“Yes,”
Nida said, wanting to add she'd seen him up close several times as
he'd saved her life.

“And
you don't like what you see?” Alicia rallied.

“He's
not an object,” Nida noted with a harrumph.

“Yeah,
okay, he's not an object. But you're nuts. You can't seriously
pretend you’re not even a little bit interested,” Alicia
laughed.

“It
doesn't matter,” Nida tried, “he's not interested in me. I'm not
his type. Bridgett is,” she pointed out evenly.

“Ah
ha, you are interested,” Alicia confirmed triumphantly, “and you're
right. Bridgett is so his type—that's why I set them up on a
date.”

Nida
huffed. “He's just a guy,” she tried one last time.

“Yeah,
yeah, I heard you the first time,” Alicia turned and fobbed a hand
her way. “Now how much cheese do you want on your pasta exactly?”
She walked over to the food oven. It was a small, oblong box
nestled into the wall. In one of the cupboards underneath it were
stacks of silver foil nutrition packs. If you upended one of the
packs into a bowl and loaded it into the oven, you could program
the oven to make any of thousands of dishes.

“Lots,” Nida answered resolutely.

“Lots
it is,” Alicia programmed the food oven, then stood back and waited
for it to turn the simple contents of the foil bag into a steaming,
hot bowl of pasta.

“Is
Bridgett . . . really mad at me?” Nida asked,
hating how pathetic she sounded.

“Who
cares,” Alicia answered flatly. “You’re injured, so you get to do
whatever you want,” Alicia stated as the food oven finally pinged.
She opened it, pulled out the bowl, set it down on the bench as she
realised how hot it was, then grabbed a spoon from a
drawer.

Soon
she delivered the hot bowl to Nida, and nodded firmly as she took
it. “Good, now you've got your food, you can put your feet
up.”

Nida
laughed.

Alicia
was rude, belligerent, and pretty darn arrogant, but sometimes she
was nice too.

“Hey,
don't laugh at me,” Alicia whirled on her foot and returned to the
food oven, selecting her own pack, “I'm allowed to be nice to you
once in a while.”

“Why
only once in a while?” Nida asked around a steaming mouthful of
pasta.

“Don't
speak with your mouth open; it's unattractive,” Alicia pointed out
properly. “And yeah, okay, so I should probably be nicer to you,”
she admitted.

Nida
actually set her bowl aside as she stared at Alicia warily. “Are
you sick?”

“No,”
Alicia snapped indignantly, “I just got the fright of my life
yesterday when I saw that training cube try to slice you in half,”
her tone pitched up and down.

Nida
stopped teasing. “I'm sorry,” she managed quietly.

“Ha,
god, you're so nice,” Alicia walked over to the oven and grabbed
her food out, “you're not the one who's meant to be sorry, kid. I
am. For being a monumental bitch all the time. So take the damn
apology, and shift over,” Alicia announced as she reached the
couch.

Nida
moved to the side.

Even
though Alicia was all of several months older than Nida, Alicia
always referred to her as kid.

Nida
would just let it slide; she let everything slide.

She
did not stand up for herself, because it was easier to ignore
everyone instead.

But
now she didn't have to ignore Alicia; in her own brusque way, she
was being nice.

“What
do you want to watch? Oh, oh, I know! There's a new Arcacian Slave
movie out. How about that?” Alicia practically jumped up and
down.

Nida
laughed. “Sure.”

“Now,
are you warm enough?” Alicia cast an appraising glance her
way.

“I
guess I could do with a blanket,” Nida tried, not really expecting
Alicia to get her one.

“Right,” Alicia marched up, pulled one from a storage
cupboard, and threw it at Nida. “Blanket. Food. Movie,” she pointed
at the holo TV.

Nida
smiled.

She
couldn't help herself.

People
were being nice to her. Sharpe, Alicia, even Carson.

Then
again, now she paused to realise it, Carson had never been mean to
her.

She
still didn't understand why he was hanging around though. Okay,
maybe he felt it was his duty, but next time she saw him, she would
assure him it wasn't. He'd done what he had to, and he could get
back to his normal life.

Taking
another bite of her pasta, Nida laughed as Alicia stole a corner of
the blanket.

Then
they both settled down to watch TV.

Carson
Blake

He
walked up to her apartment feeling like he was going on a first
date.

Which
was dumb, because he wasn't.

He was
here to check she was fine.

She'd
almost died yesterday, twice.

He
owed it to her to confirm she was okay. He also needed to put her
mind at ease about her implant. He'd spoken to the technicians that
afternoon, and they'd assured him they'd recalibrated the
implant.

It
wouldn't malfunction again.

Which
just left the truly unsettling question of how it had become
scrambled in the first place.

The
technicians had taken scans though, and were trawling through the
data. The prevailing theory was that at some point, her implant had
received a damaging blow that had not been noticed by anyone,
including Harper herself.

That
wasn't such a stretch of the imagination when you considered who
Cadet Harper was. He'd already confirmed for himself that she was
extremely clumsy.

Still,
it was unsettling that no one had ever detected the damage to her
implant; all TIs had internal diagnostic tools that were meant to
alert their user of any problems immediately.

Well,
according to the technicians, for some reason the internal sensors
of her implant had screwed up too.

It was
extremely unlucky, as they'd put it, but not completely
impossible.

Though
Carson had accepted their explanation, it sat heavily with
him.

Nothing about this whole damn scenario felt right.

Still,
he forced himself to walk along the long corridor that led to her
apartment.

Then
he paused in front of the door.

And he
waited.

He
waited a damn long time until he built up the courage to press the
intercom and ask to be let in.

Nerves
were kicking through his stomach, and he quickly flattened a sweaty
palm over his mouth, trying to unstick the stupid smile that had
frozen there.

Then,
all too quickly, the door opened.

He
looked across to see Alicia.

For a
woman who barely knew him, she gave him a knowing wink. “Are you
here to see our patient?”

Carson
cleared his throat properly. “I just wanted to check on
Harper . . . is she in?” he asked, trying to
lean past Alicia to get a look at the apartment behind
her.

He
hadn’t liked the way Alicia had winked at him.

Bridgett wasn’t here, was she?

“Come
on in,” Alicia stepped to the side, gesturing to the large room
behind her with a grand sweep of her arm. “You’ve mortified my flat
mate by showing up uninvited, but she’s just in her room. She’ll be
out in a second.”

Carson
coughed again.

Alicia
was blunt.

Which
wasn’t a problem; he was used to blunt women. But at her quip about
mortifying Harper, he knew his cheeks reddened. “I just wanted to
check on her,” he clarified, “put her mind at ease about the
implant,” he added.

“And
what exactly was wrong with her implant? Have you heard the gossip
doing the rounds?”

He
looked at her sternly. “It was an isolated malfunction, nothing
more.”

“Oh,
right, of course it was. People were taking bets, and my favourite
was that Harper somehow ran into some crazy alien technology that
altered her implant and made her even more accident prone than
usual.”

Maybe
Alicia was expecting a laugh, but she didn’t get one. Instead,
Carson considered her stonily. “Your flat mate almost died
yesterday,” he said, his tone severe, “I think maybe you should be
a little more respectful of that fact.”

“It’s
okay,” Harper said, appearing at her bedroom door and calling out
to them.

It was
so strange to see her standing there. It was also damn strange to
see her door fixed. The last time he’d laid eyes on it, it had been
a warped mess.

“Nida,
I mean Cadet Harper,” he coughed, realising he was hardly on
first-name terms with her.

Alicia
appeared to swallow a smile, then walked off to the kitchen, no
doubt to lean against the bench as she watched the show.

Nida
kept standing in her doorway, apparently unwilling to walk further
into the room. “I’m okay,” she said firmly.

“Ah . . . yeah. Look, I just thought you
ought to know that your implant is fixed. It was just an isolated
fault,” he stumbled over his words.

Christ, he really did feel like he was on a first date. Except
he really, really wasn’t.

So,
with a comforting breath, he nodded firmly. “You should be okay
now. It’ll never happen again,” he managed, but towards the end, he
choked on his words.

Because he remembered something.

When
he’d promised Harper everything would be fine just after he’d
turned off her implant and saved her, she’d told him in a haunting
tone that it wouldn’t be.

Hot on
the heels of that unpleasant memory, he recalled the two little
words she’d whispered that morning as he’d watched her
sleeping.

Help
me.

God,
his skin still crawled at how harrowing it had been.

He’d
faced mercenaries, violent alien races, terrorist factions, and the
worst scum of the galaxy, but those two little words and the
tortured way she’d whispered them had terrified him.

He
tried to reason that it had just been a dream, and that she hadn’t
really been asking for his help.

She
didn’t say anything, and with a glance over her shoulder, appeared
ready to retreat into her bedroom again.

He
didn’t want to let her go. He wanted to stand there and stare at
her until he confirmed that there really wasn’t anything wrong with
her any more.

“Ah,
you should be able to go back to classes soon,” he tried, stalling
for time as he thought of something smart, if not actually useful
to tell her.

“I
went today,” she admitted.

“Sorry? Really? I thought the doctors told you to go home,” he
pointed out quickly. Possibly a little too quickly, as she recoiled
at his tone.

“They
said it was my decision. Plus, I can’t afford to miss any more
classes. I’m woefully behind as it is.”

He
pressed his lips together and nodded. Then he looked up.

The
words were on his tongue before he could think them through, “I
could help you, you know. Help you catch up,” he clarified with a
truly awkward cough.