'Huh.'

'What is it?'

'Still having the tattoo, I see. What does it mean?'

Jon smiled, resting his hand atop his forearm, covering the ink. 'Remind me to tell you sometime.'

'No time like the present. You still owe me plenty, by the way, and I'm collecting.'

The mess hall was nearly empty despite the lunch hour – it was only them and a handful of other off duty personnel, most of them concentrating on their food rather than talking. Weeks back, the scene was very different, with plenty of coworkers and family members thronging the place, enjoying their meals together in a new galaxy, boisterous conversations overlapping one another, a sea of noise and bodies.

Given recent events, Jon wasn't surprised by the change, a far cry from the earlier days of the Initiative. The collisions were getting more and more frequent, causing so much widespread damage throughout the Nexus that around-the-clock repairs weren't enough to keep up, and that was with auxiliary engineering personnel activated, him included. The scientists were still trying to figure out what they were hitting, and if that wasn't a cause for concern, Jon wasn't sure what was.

Maybe the collisions were alien attacks? That was one theory he'd heard being floated amongst the engineering personnel on their breaks, but wouldn't the alien spacecraft be picked up by the sensors and scanners? As it were, the not-knowing that had lasted for several weeks now was raising anxiety amongst the repair crews. Jon himself had been out on the outer hull, helping to patch up damage to the hardened material, and what he'd seen didn't seem to tally with any kind of damage caused by natural phenomena he'd seen before…

Whatever it was they were colliding with, it wreaked havoc all over the space station. A whole section of the Hydroponics Farms were taken offline after an oxygen leak ignited, costing the Initiative six months' worth of crops which were supposed to feed the current roster of personnel. Several compartments were vented to space and needed extensive repairs; there was also that incident last week where a whole shuttle of techies just up and vanished, with no one knowing just what happened to them…

And then, there were the accidentals. Jon could only imagine the headaches that Operations was having right now, having to deal with the sudden influx of prematurely-awakened colonists after collision damage caused cryo system malfunctions. Last he heard, the accidentals were breaching the four-digit mark.

She was one of them, sitting across the table from him, her gaze intent as always. And yes, he did owe her more than one explanation, and much more besides.

'How's Sid? She still in cryo?'

'Nah, woke up next to me, thank the spirits. Still trying to wrap her head around the idea that she's no longer in the Milky Way. The Blast-Ohs help.'

'Reminds me of a certain someone,' smirked Jon.

He barely dodged the light punch to his shoulder. 'Oh, shut up, Jonathan Chang. You don't get to crack jokes. Explanations, now. And no more excuses, you've had six hundred years to figure things out.'

'Ow.' Jon rubbed his shoulder, his smile turning rueful. 'Fine.'

She leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. She'd gotten a new scar, he noted, a healed furrow, barely noticeable, that traced a path from the corner of her mouth to mid-cheek. But there was no animosity in her green eyes, no anger at leaving her in the lurch; on the contrary, there was a familiar curl to her lips, one he knew that meant she was amused.

'Okay then,' drawled Vetra Nyx. 'Firstly…'