Jay

Away from the air conditioned shade of the bar, the sun terrace felt brutally hot.
Carrying a cold beer in each hand, Cass padded out into the sunset’s gold and red streaked hues. She’d changed out of her hospital gown following the soaking she’d received from the fire systems and was now wearing a pair of shorts and a loose fitting top.
Her sandaled feet flip-flapped across the terracotta tiles.
Jay was exactly where Grovely had said he’d be.
Sat alone, with his back to her, he was watching the holographic gulls, wheel and dive above the burnished, artificial sea.
Approaching, Cass wordlessly handed him one of the beers and coiled down into the chair next to him. She took a long, pensive swig from her bottle “Nice sunset”
“The end of a busy day” Jay murmured
This made Cass snort derisively “That’d be one way of putting it”
“How’s Jade?”
“Sedated” she took another swig of her beer “Grovely’s with her at the moment. She’ll live but I’ll need to find another source of nanites before I can do anything about her arm”
“Bollocks”
“Yeah, you got that right. Tara did a real job on them; disassembled the whole fucking lot. Even I can’t work with what’s left”
“Could you just build her a replacement arm? – You’re a cyberneticist...”
“Sure” Cass waved a dismissive hand “She might not want one, though; some people don’t like them. In any case, she’s going to be in a lot of pain with that cauterised wound, so let’s give her a few weeks, eh?”
Accepting the wisdom of her words, Jay nodded in reflective silence “How’re you?” he asked after a moment.
“Okay...” Cass grimaced “I nearly died today. I reviewed my file after we'd got Jade settled – Two centimetres further down and I wouldn’t be sat here, talking to you now” she paused to deep breath, which she sighed, slowly, out “That’s really fucking scary”
Lapsing back into silence, she took another long swig of her beer, leaving Jay contemplating a life without her.
Shifting in his chair, he cleared his throat. “How is the injury?” he asked
“All fixed” twisting towards him, Cass pulled at the neckline of her shirt, to reveal where she had been stabbed “There’s not even any scarring; these nanites are beyond top grade. They’ve even starting working on that damned telepathic link I’ve got with Jamie; another day or two and I’m hoping I might even be cured”
“Well, at least that’s some good news”
Cass gave a humourless laugh “Tell me about it – I don’t even have the equipment to experience some of the physical sensations I’ve had to deal with. The whole experience has just been a miserable exercise in humiliation”
“I’m sure Jamie would make exactly the same complaints” Jay gave her something approaching one of his smiles “and worse...”
“Urgh” she grimaced and shook her head “There are some things that other people just aren’t meant to know”
Loath to pursue that line of conversation much further, they both lapsed back into silence; each, for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of the massive red giant beyond the diamond glass domes, slowly boiling down behind the sunset ocean.
“Oh, by the way,” Cass turned to glance at Jay “I’m sorry”
“What have you got to be sorry about?” his eyes were unreadable behind his sunglasses.
“I’m apologising for embarrassing you last night”
“You don’t need to apologise; I –”
“Neither do you” Cass said firmly.
Seeing the expression on his face, she nodded “Yeah, I know you well enough”
Scowling, Jay took a long swig of his beer, leaving Cass to place a cool hand on top of his, resting on the chair arm next to her. She gave it a sympathetic squeeze “This isn’t your fault” she said gently.
“Then who’s is it?” he demanded, pulling his hand away.
“Maybe it’s mine” she twisted in her seat to face him.
“No” Jay shook his head “It was me who asked you to reactivate Tara. My responsibility” he looked away, across the terrace, his lips compressing into a thin line “This has been a fucking disaster”
“Yeah, and maybe I should have scheduled some checks with her. Nobody’s entirely at fault, Jay”
“We’ve lost Plisken; Artemis came close to having to bury his whole family; Jade’s lost an arm; Jaxx and Eve seem to be distancing themselves ever further from the rest of us; and you... You nearly died” he paused and slowly shook his head “I can’t even begin to tell you how that made me feel”
“Losing Plisken was a shock” Cass conceded, secretly longing to ask exactly how it had made him feel, but not wanting to make this about her “But, the odds of what happened were infinitesimally small – Not even you could have anticipated a dimensional rift” she gazed levelly at him, over the top of her sunglasses “Could you?”
“That’s not the point”
“No, the point is this: You are not to blame” Cass laid heavy emphasis on each word “Plisken was the only bad thing that happened today. Everything else is fixable.
“I don’t know; maybe there’s a way of getting him back? Dimensional physics isn’t my thing, so I can’t say. Let’s speak to Ransom or White Wolf; maybe they can shed some light on the matter?
“Yeah...” Jay nodded, but he sounded unconvinced.
“In any case, knowing Plisken, this won’t be the first time that this has happened to him; so I’m sure he’ll be quite alright”
Remaining silent, Jay idly toyed with his empty bottle for a moment, lost in thought “I just feel like I’ve betrayed Tara” he said eventually, in a low voice “Phil too – He’s going to be really cut up about this”
“That wasn’t Tara” Cass said gently “It might have looked and sounded like her, but Tara died millions of years ago.
“Now, I never really knew her, but I’m sure the real Tara, your friend, would never have done the things that corrupted facsimile did today – Am I right?”
With Jay nodding in silent agreement, Cass reached across to clasp his hand in hers, her calloused fingers intertwining with his “Phil knows this too” she murmured “He’s your best mate – He’s not going to blame you and you shouldn’t blame yourself either”
Giving his fingers a last, friendly squeeze, she disentangled herself from his grasp and abruptly stood “C’mon” she proffered a hand “Come for a walk with me on the beach. It’s nice down there and you need to relax – We can go for a swim or something. Grovely assures me that it’s perfectly safe”
“Safe!?”
“Well...” Cass grimaced “Apparently ‘Tara’ got to a few of the systems around the resort before she was locked out. I’m told it’s pretty hairy down in the service areas, where we’ll need to go to obtain our supplies; but in the meantime, there are a good few weeks’ worth of food for us all, up in the restaurants in the main resort
“How about we take a couple of weeks off?
“It’s not going to be any more dangerous than the Dwarf; we can relax a bit, take it easy and use the time to see if we can figure out how to get to the supplies” she held her hand out towards him again and wriggled her fingers “C’mon – What do you reckon?”
Their communicators beeped with an incoming call from Holly. Jay answered while Cass rolled her eyes and shook her head in irritation at the interruption.
“Orrite dudes” the AI swam into focus on Jay’s watch “You’ll never guess what’s happened”
“No idea mate. How about you just tell us?”
Holly looked crestfallen for a moment “You sure you don’t want to try and guess?”
“Positive” Cass said in somewhat clipped tones “What is it?”
“Huh. Keep your hair on” Holly bobbed on the screen “We’ve had someone come out of stasis; a guy called Brett Bishop”
“The chef?” Jay asked
“Yeah, that’s the guy”
“Cool” Cass nodded “We could do with someone like him” she met Jay’s eye and raised her eyebrows “Want to go pick him up, or shall I just dispatch a MED to escort him onto a Starbug and then we can ship him over on autopilot?”


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Brett: the cavalry’s on the way in one form or another, so feel free to join us when you like
Everyone else: We’ve had a bit of a rough day, so let’s have some time off before we venture down into the service bays in search of supplies.
The resort is (mostly) safe although Tara might have infected a few of the systems here and there
The cleaning droids attacked – do any of the other resort systems cause any problems?
How does your character cope?
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