LOCATION: EDEN’S END

  SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

  DATE: 2399

  “Are you sure you ’t stay?” Yulia asked Alex nervously.

  He kneeled beside her and spoke quietly. “If I stayed, I would just be a distra for you and the other children.”

  She knew he was right, she had seen how the kids ba the station avoided Alex and even the ones here cried and ran off the first time they saw him. But she still fidgeted nervously.

  “What if nobody likes me?” she spoke in barely a whisper.

  “I don’t see how that could possibly happen. Just be yourself, and you’ll make frieually. Now I o go, so head on in.”

  She gave Alex’s arm a hug before relutly walking into the room where they taught kids. She wasn’t sure why they needed a separate room for something like that until she ehe space. There had to be close – well, she didn’t actually know, but there were a lot of kids. More than she had ever seen in one pce before.

  The older ones sat at a table off to one side, watg something on a holo with bored looks. The holo intrigued her, but she doubted they would let her joieenagers could be prickly like that. She gnced over to the opposite end of the room where the younger kids were making a racket as they pyed with whatever toys were avaible. Someone had strung up bs between that se to muffle the noise, but it wasn’t doing much from where she stood.

  The ter of the room hosted the rgest group of kids. Most of them were a few years youhao a few years older. She wasn’t sure how old the oldest kids were in that group, but they looked to be around Markus’ height, so maybe around twelve. That put her right in the middle at nine years old.

  She gnced back toward the hallway, w how mad Alex would get if she ran out of there and back to his new workshop instead of staying. The choice was decided for her as an adult approached.

  “Yulia?” the smiling woman said in a strangely ated voice. It wasn’t at all how Alex talked. His way of talking when she first met him was se and almost hard to uand. He did get better with time though. Feelied, Yulia gave a slight nod.

  “Good, wele. We teach you to uand, yes?”

  She nodded again and accepted the outstretched hand that the woman offered. She seemed niough, even if she seemed to barely speak properly. Yulia hoped she didn’t end up speaking like that when she learhis English, Alex had told her about.

  Her first day of learning was mostly just being introduced to a group of kids around her age. She had no hope of remembering all the hough. The day started with the alphabet. She felt stupid when she was grouped with the younger portion of the children in her group and they were better at saying the letters than her.

  She persevered though, getting through all twenty-six letters before the day .

  The day was basic math. Yulia khe teachers were testing for aptitude. Alex had expihat back wheroduced his puzzles. The math was easy, she pleted all of the questions, even surpassing the ohe older kids in her group were given.

  The teacher smiled at her and gave her a strange gesture with a thumb pointing up. Seeing hoy the woman was, Yulia returhe gesture.

  After that day, Yulia aired with two slightly irls who introduced themselves as Sarah and Cire. They were really nid liked to ugh a lot. Like a whole lot. Yulia didn’t quite get it, but she found herself ughing along with them, despite not uanding a word they spoke.

  The two girls were showing her pictures on a tablet with the word for it listed underh the object. Then they would say the word out loud.

  When Yulia didn’t reply the first time, that’s when the girls started giggling. It was Cire who tapped her on the arm. “I say, you say,” she said in Yulia’s nguage. Her cheeks flushed red in embarrassment and she nodded.

  The girls were really nid patient with her. She thought their ughing and giggling might have been directed at her, but it wasn’t. They just found teag an outsider to be extremely eaining.

  They didn’t tell this to her with words, Yulia had tried talking in her nguage, but the girls just shook their heads. Cire only uood a handful of words to unicate with her. It was more how they acted and enced her that got the point across.

  Yulia really liked the two girls and whe to the word for friend, she said it and poio them. There was another round of giggling that Yulia couldn’t help going along with before the girls both said the same word and poio each other, and then to her.

  A bit of her ay faded away with that decration and the days flew by while she learned more and more. Alex even brought another dy to teach her whe home. She would have preferred to spend more time with Alex, she missed w on the puzzles or just wandering around like she used to do bae. But she knew he was extremely busy. Anytime she went to his workshop, he eaking with someone or w on something.

  He would hang out with her if she asked, but she could see how important the work he was doing was and didn’t want to distract him.

  After the tut sessions, Alex would e home, they would eat together, and she would tell him about her day before falling asleep. It was the weekends she looked most forward t those weeks.

  She didn’t mind the school, but the only thing she was learning was the loguage, which was not called English, they called it Sorian. Alex was surprised to hear that wheold him. He had muttered something about hundreds of years of drift that she didn’t quite uand before letting her explore with her new friends.

  The station, no that wasn’t right, stations were in spad they were on a phat meant this was a building. She still found that hard to uand. How could you build something that wasn’t in space? She shook her head at the thought, people did silly things.

  The building was huge. They weren’t allowed to go everywhere, but the pces that Sarah and Cire showed her were way more than she had ever got to see on the sed ring.

  In their wandering, and the two girls' incessant talking, they did find one spot that none of the scary meraries were guarding. Yes, she knew how stra was to accuse someone else of talking incessantly, and she now knew how the kids at the orphanage felt.

  Seeing an opportunity to explore this new area, she tried to get Cire and Sarah to show her what was beyond that point, but they were hesitant. They were trying to tell her something but she couldn’t uand what they were saying.

  Some gestures and Sorian words of encement she had learned over the st few weeks finally vihe pair to follow her down this new path.

  They didn’t get very far before a dy merary popped out from behind a er and gred at the trio. “You three wouldn’t be up to trouble, would you?”

  Yulia stiffened when she realized the oke in her native nguage and not the other two’s.

  “No,” she responded meekly, not meeting the woman’s pierg gaze.

  She said something to the other two girls and they shook their heads.

  “Run along then, and stay out of the restricted areas.” She repeated more words in Sorian, likely giving the other two girls the same warning.

  A few more weeks went by and the trio explored more of the areas avaible to them. When they came across another area clearly marked as ‘Restricted Entry’ – she had learhose words after her st enter with the scary dy – she hesitated a moment, along with her friends. There was no er for the woman to hide around, she looked. Seeing the coast was clear, she gave a spiratorial nod to her friends who looked at each other before sighing and followihrough the tunnel.

  They didn’t make it far before a harsh shout from behind them stopped them iracks. The three girls turned around to see the same woman striding purposely down the hallway toward them, looking ahe woman, who Yulia had learned was called Zorina, seemed to have a sixth sense when someone was about to do something they shouldn’t be doing. Yulia had no other expnation for how the woma popping up at the most inopportuimes.

  She tried to expin to Zorina that she didn’t mean to ighe rules, she was just curious. She wao see what made this pce work, like how she had ehe tour ba Petrov Station. That didn’t sway the woma. She reminded her a bit of Headmaster Wong in that respect.

  She looked up as Zorina escorted her and the other two girls back to their camp. “I said I was sorry,” she pleaded with the woman.

  “Sorry is for the first time, not repeated times,” the woman stated. “Now you get to see the sequences of your as.”

  She hung her head, while the other two girls looked terrified of what might happen.

  The three were led to the Hawks’ camp and stu a room to wait. A short time ter, a man and woman arrived, looking peeved. Sarah started g and rao her parents, who quickly escorted the girl out of the camp.

  Not too long after, Cire’s mom stopped by, giving Yulia a disapproving look. Yulia looked away but waved back to Cire as she left with her mom.

  Shortly after that, Alex stepped into the room.

  “This is not something I expected to be doing today,” he stated in his normal voice. She found it hard to tell if he was angry, upset, or annoyed. His avatar face was not showing what he was feeling.

  Yulia was worried he was so upset that he had fotten to use his face to show how he felt and tears threatened her eyes. She forced herself to keep fr. If she had just listehis wouldn’t be happening.

  She heard Alexander let out a soft sigh, a on the floor o the chair she was in. “I apologized to your friends’ parents and assured them this would not happen again…”

  “It won’t,” she mao choke out, utterly failing at her attempts to keep herself fr or sobbing. She felt his warm arm her into a hug and she knew he wasn’t angry with her.