Hi everyone! Not much to say other than that this is chapter two, I hope you like it, cuz I certainly do. As always, ENJOY!

-8tickles

P.S. We did not make it to the number of comments I wanted, so no name for you! Try harder next time. Comment, get your friends to comment, you family, you cousin, your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, your dog, your dog's cousin, anyone! XD

(Carter's POV)

I stood at one of the lab tables with Fitch standing nearby, just watching me as I messed with the wiring on one of the translating devices. The circuit board had blown when Olga screamed into it out of excitement of our successful resurrection, so now I was replacing it. A final twist of a red wire and I'd be done. My fingers shook as I started to tighten it, speeding up as I went. I flicked it between my thumb and pointer finger when I screwed the whole thing up. I'd twisted too hard to the right. Sparks flew from the circuitry and a small fire started in it, singeing my fingers.

"Shit!" I pulled my hand back and shook my red, already blistering fingers.

Fitch rushed over. "Great job, you burned yourself."

"Yeah, you think?" I growled through gritted teeth.

He sighed. "Go get some bio cream, boy." He ordered.

He didn't have to tell me twice, so I turned and walked off. I had to walk all the way across to the other side of the ship to get to the intern quarters where all of my medical supplies were. I finally got to the small hold and opened the trapdoor. I slipped agilely inside like always. I turned around, used to the spacing in my small confines, but what I was not expecting was the mop of pink hair laying in my cot. It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dark, but when they did, I had to do a double take. I must be imagining things. I thought. But sure enough, there was Alula, the moon girl, IN MY BED. What the heck?! She rolled a little in her sleep from her side to her back so that her face was showing, but one long pink lock stayed draped over her forehead. Her breaths were uneven, but I knew it was from her lungs adjusting to our high oxygen levels. Her complexion was scary pale, verging on translucent. Particularly in her exposed arm, her veins were prominent through her paper-thin skin. Her parted lips almost matched the color of her cotton candy pink hair to a t, only they were a tad bit darker. There wasn't a single flaw on her skin, from her furrowed brows to her strong jaw line. It struck me for the first time that Alula was beautiful, almost inhumanly so.

"Who am I kidding? She isn't fully human, only third generation human, you dope." I said out loud, but to no one in particular.

"She looks almost my age, maybe a bit younger." I said out loud again.

"Carter, you're crazy. Stop having a conversation with yourself, you nerd." I took a step back, preparing to turn around and go back upstairs when I knocked over a box of tools, flailed to catch it, missed, cringed then stood up straight and banged my head in the process.

"Ow! God you're such a genius, Carter." I muttered while rubbing my bumped head.

Just then, Alula bolted upright in my cot.

"STOP! DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!" She screeched while thrusting out one hand. Ripples emitted from her palm, and suddenly, I was frozen in place, unable to move a single joint or ligament on my own accord. As she turned those startling grey eyes on me, recognition dawned in them.

"Carter!" She wailed. "You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

She withdrew her hand and I could move again.

"Wha...What the hell was that?" I asked.

"I...don't really know. Is that normal?" She asked, clearly perplexed.

"Uhh...no." I stated. "Actually, I've never seen anything like that in my life before, and I work with here Fitch and Olga so I've seen some pretty weird stuff."

I reached out for her hand, and she sat up and crossed her legs in front of her, strange grey eyes alert. She slowly extended her hand to me, so I took it and looked at her fingers, but they seemed completely normal.

I began to pick up some of the tools that had fallen out of the toolbox. When I picked up the spectrometer, I noticed I was getting a reading, and it seemed to be emanating from her wrists.

"Interesting. Your electrical impulses are abnormal." I murmured. I absentmindedly pushed my glasses up higher on my nose as I watched the image on the screen, completely transfixed.

"You really have no idea what that is or where it came from?" I asked again.

She chewed on her lip, thinking deeply. "No. I haven't the slightest idea what it was, or even how I did it, I just sort of...did."

Our eyes locked for a moment, and I suddenly realized how close in proximity I was to her. Being this close made my face burn at the bizarre array of thoughts I'd had about her earlier. I let her hand drop and moved to stand.

"You...were sleeping in my bed. I...I should p-p-probably be going." I stumbled over my own words, and in the hurry to stand up, I hit my head on the ceiling. AGAIN. I looked back over my shoulder once, picked up a tube of bio cream and looked back a second time, but she was just sitting there, looking at me all funny.

"Are all humans this..." She gestured with her hands as if she were trying to think of the word. "...tripadecent? Sorry, I can't think of the word in English." She said.

"The word you're thinking of is awkward, and no, not all humans are like this, it's just me."

I climbed up the ladder and into the fresh air above. Boy was that a weird confrontation. I ran into Olga heading back to the lab.

"Let Fitch and the flyboys know food will be ready in a few minutes," she told me.

I headed towards the cockpit and called down to Fitch in the lab on the way over, then brought Mark and Curtis to the bar style table that was in the living quarters, near the beds. After that I went and got Alula.

The table wasn't actually as dull and metallic as the rest of the ship, it was one of the few things to have a polished wooden finish. Actually, it was the only thing on the ship I could think of, aside from where the beds of the people who weren't interns were, that was made of wood.

Generally we didn't all eat at the same time, we'd work until we needed something to eat or needed to rest, very rarely were these times lined up in any way. Today was different though, we'd pulled off something of a miracle waking up Alula and it was time to celebrate.

After Olga had set everything out on the table, she began talking. "I published the results, and it's official! We're the first people in history to successfully bring someone who's been in suspended animation for almost 38 years out! Well done, all around."

I recognized the expression on Fitch's face, or rather the lack of one. I'd been around him long enough to know what he was probably thinking: We shouldn't get too excited yet, she's hardly been awake a day and we haven't done any scans yet.

"And I can't stress enough," she continued, "how grateful all of us are that you would volunteer for something like this, Alula and so eagerly..."

"I did?" She asked.

Olga laughed and kept going. "I know you've been out of the loop for a while, so if there's any questions you have, feel free to ask anyone."

"A few, actually," she said. "What are we doing out here in the middle of space? Why aren't we in orbit or anything?"

Curtis sighed. "Orbit regulations have gotten a lot tighter in the past 20, 30 years… Surface property is pretty expensive too. If you can afford a ship, it's probably the best way to live, all things considered."

"Carter used a word earlier...what does 'awkward' mean?"

I laughed and flushed red with embarrassment.

"He did now, did he?" Olga asked. All eyes were on me, but everyone was smiling.

"I hit my head on the ceiling and Alula called me awkward in martian, so I corrected her." I elbowed her and she smiled back at me.

Curtis gave a nasal laugh, and in his trademarked, annoying, low and joking voice muttered, "Ah, young love."

Everyone at the table cracked up, except me and Alula. Even Fitch chuckled some. But I knew Fitch wasn't that kind of person, and thankfully, he saved me by changing the subject.

"So, Curtis, any news from the front?" he asked.

"Nothing really," responded Curtis, "those eggheads over at Vandelle are still banging rocks together. They're still tossing around ideas and..."

I noticed that Alula was froze stiff as a board. Her eyes lost focus, and she started to whisper.

"no. No. No. NO. NO! NO! NO! NO!" With each repetition of the word, it got louder and louder until she was screaming at the top of her lungs. Only moments later, she twitched uncontrollably for a good 15 seconds, then she fell forward, her head smacking the table with a resounding wooden thump. Everyone was shocked into silence. I slowly reached out and touched her shoulder. At my touch, she bolted upright, breathing in a panicked manner, similar to that of a fish out of water. In between gasps, she excused herself from the table and dashed off towards the back of the ship.

Once again, the table was eerily silent, only broken by the gruff voice of Curtis.

"She seemed kind of… Upset... What'd you say to her?"

"I didn't say anything," I said.

"What were you doing to her over…"

"I didn't do anything, I swear!"

He gave a sigh that said I wasn't being any fun, and told me, "You should probably go and get her."

"Wait, why me?" I asked, confused. "Why not Olga? It's probably a girl thing."

He laughed. "Now lets be honest, you would probably do a better job handling whatever girl problems she has than Olga."

I looked over at Olga to see if she was going to get up, but she was staring down at her food, smiling to herself about what Curtis had just said.

"What happened to 'Don't send an intern to do a professional's job?'" I asked.

"Yeah, what happened to that?" asked Mark.

Curtis laughed. "First off, stop trying to quote stuff back to me, cause you suck at it, both of you. And bringing things to the professionals is a common thing for interns to do. Now go be a good intern."

I rolled my eyes, excused myself from the table, and went after Alula. After opening the hatch and climbing down the ladder to the cargo area where we slept, I found her curled up in a ball in my bed, again. Her face was pressed into the satin edge of my blanket from home, and she was almost asleep, but not quite. Her whole body was still tense and her fingers massaged her temples.

"Whatever I did, I'm sorry," I said "I didn't mean to set you off."

She sat silently for so long I thought she hadn't heard me, when she whispered so quickly and so quietly that I barely heard her, "You did nothing." She looked at me and opened her mouth like she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. She tried again. "Needles," she managed, and then she broke down again.

"Wha?" I was absolutely lost, and then what she said hit me. "Oh. This has nothing to do with the space food being bad, does it?"

She managed to shake her head no.

"Alright, do you want to talk about it?" I asked.

She hesitated a second, but shook her head.

I figured she needed a little bit of time alone. "I'll let you rest then," I decided. I got up, but thought about it again. "Do you want me to stay?" I asked, softer than I'd meant to. But when I turned to her for a response, I only saw her back, she had rolled over and was now facing the wall. She probably hadn't heard me. Maybe that's for the best, I thought, and headed for the ladder.

Carter is literally bæ.