“Do you think it’sstima?”
“No! It can’t be. Miran couldn’t have fallen into a depression coma.”
“But he’s not waking up, what else could it be?”
“If the Kaklans showed up to steal the human, then they might have a weapon we haven’t seen yet.”
The loud and familiar voices made Miran fight out of his unnatural sleep.
“He’s opening his eyes!” Lazil said.
“Miran? Was it Kaklans?”
“I…I don’t know,” he croaked. Both men helped him sit up. He was on the floor next to the table. “What happened?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Lazil said. “We got here, but you wouldn’t answer our pings to your data bracelet or when we started chiming the door. We had to have one of the staff open the door for us, and we found you passed out.”
Miran looked around the room. His gear was still there, but the last of Nova’s clothes were gone. His brain felt foggy. It reminded him of the time he had to visit the mender to have a procedure done. Waking up from that was like this, fuzzy brain and unable to remember anything that happened right before going to sleep.
“Help me up,” he demanded.
Nerin was quick to grab his arm to pull him to his feet. Once standing, he staggered into the bathing room. Grabbing the rain head, he leaned his upper body over the bathtub and soaked his head in freezing water. The shock to his system helped clear his head.
Shutting off the water, he stood up and violently shook off the water.
“Better?” Nerin asked. “They have medical personnel here. Do you want to see one?”
“No,” he said. A bad feeling was building in his chest. He was sure of one thing. “I wasn’t attacked.”
“Mystery solved,” Lazil called from the main room. He and Nerin walked back in to find Lazil holding an open bottle. “Did you drink this?”
The bottle looked vaguely familiar. “Maybe?”
There were empty containers of food on the table and another open bottle. It looked like he and Nova had shared a meal.
“This is a sleep aid,” Lazil explained. The label wasn’t in Space Standard so Miran couldn’t read it, but Lazil pointed to the tiny universal symbols at the very bottom of the label that indicated it was a medicated drink.
“She drugged me,” Miran whispered. Their conversation over dinner came back to him in bits and pieces.
She’d wanted to run away and wanted him to come with her.
He’d said no so she’d run without him.
“She drugged me,” he repeated, hurt and understanding filling his chest
“You drugged yourself,” Lazil said with a laugh.
Nerin wasn’t amused. “Any of us could’ve accidentally drank that. What kind of species put medicated drinks in with regular beverages?”
“Nova,” Miran said, rubbing his hands over his face. “She was the one who brought the drinks to the table.”
Nerin frowned. “No, that can’t be right. It must’ve been an accident.”
Miran let out a laugh with no humor in it. “She’s very knowledgeable about many species. She must’ve known what it was. The last thing I remember was that she was trying to talk me into forming a two-person act and traveling around to perform.”
“Whether she did it on purpose or by accident, the result is the same,” Lazil said.
“We need to find her. At least we know she’s still on the planet. There’s no traffic going out yet. The shuttles and ships are all buried in sand. When we landed, they were still digging them out.”
