The vastness of space loomed before Wilks as he stared from the Bridge windows of the Zeta, taking in the glittering spots of light, denoting the stars he had only ever seen in the night sky. Now, it seemed as though the night sky were all around him, like a sea. If the sea could encompass you so utterly that it eclipsed the heavens themselves.

"It's, like, the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, right?"

Bryan glanced sideways at Sally, who sat huddled up in a rough woven blanket adorned with images of rabbits and foxes locked in an eternal hunt. It was drawn up so tightly around her neck that all he could see was her grinning face peeking out of the pile.

Like a small animal peering over the lip of a burrow, looking at him where he sat with his back against the foot of a freestanding control panel.

Her faintly twitching nose completed the picture and cemented the comparison in his mind. Her expression made it clear that she was eager to know his opinion. A faint dusting of pink highlighted where her face had only a short while before been engulfed in another luminescent blush.

He discovered to his joyful amusement that it was shockingly easy to get her to blush. She was a very active person with healthy blood flow, which meant that against her pale white skin, blushes tended to show up as clearly as a lighthouse bulb.

"Hell, doll," he said with his trademark grin plastered across his face, even as his foot tapped nervously in sympathy with his sense of isolation. With his emotions in disarray, he was falling back on his tendency to flirt as a safety net. "It's seriously gorgeous. Still only comes in a close second, though."

"You're lying. What could you possibly have seen that could be better than this?" Sally asked incredulously, a delicate hand emerging from the blankets to point at the window.

Her query came somewhat defensively. She had been quite excited to show him the view as the Zeta transited the Arcturus Stream and wanted to know what he had seen that beat out her modest contribution. Her competitive nature was charming to him.

"Well," he said with ambiguous shrug of his shoulders and the best smirk he could muster, "I met this girl one time who…"

He chuckled and held his hands outwards as if to demonstrate how unarmed and defenceless he was, "Well, first time I laid eyes on her it was lifechanging. Took my breath away, made my tongue catch in the back of my throat. Or just run away with itself."

Her gaze searched his expression, suspicious of his tone and slightly jealous of his glowing description. She frowned deeply, albeit with a tentative hope still lurking in the back of her pale blue eyes and returned her gaze to the window.

"What, you'd rather look at some girl than this?" She enquired, glancing sideways at him through the blankets.

"Definitely," he confirmed before adding in a soft voice, "I'd abseil down a collapsing building into a Radscorpion nest just to see her blush."

He made the fact that his eyes were locked unflinchingly upon her pale features as obvious as he could, refusing to look sideways through the Bridge window until he was certain she understood his meaning.

Bryan didn't need to wait long. In the pale light of the stars, with the fixtures turned off in the Bridge, Sally's bashful flush bloomed once more across her features. She smiled into her blanket like a puppy hiding its nose beneath its forepaws.

"Now, will you get a load of that? Not a Radscorpians in sight and I still got to see it. You're spoiling me," he teased.

"Shut up. Your horrible," she murmured into the blanket's folds.

"That's okay. You're lovely enough for the both of us."

She whined like a wounded animal who found the unexpected praise and admiration physically painful. He couldn't restrain his laugh at his triumphant attempt at teasing. Knowing from his recent interaction with her that she responded to flirting by hiding her face away from prying eyes, he switched topics to bring her back out of her blankety haven.

"You really like flying this giant tub through the stars, huh?"

Her face peeked out of the blankets, still partially flushed in the starlight. She nodded, her pale blue eyes shining like silver.

"Yeah. It's all I've ever wanted to do since I was a kid. I remember falling asleep watching reruns of Captain Cosmos on my families busted old Radiation King TV set."

She snorted at the memory, staring out the window into the infinite blackness that existed between each tiny dot of starlight. "I think I fell asleep in front of that TV set more times than I fell asleep in my own bed."

"I know the feeling. I fall asleep every night listening to Sticky telling his stories. All about Super Dupe Dave, Joking Joe and Holy Toledo."

"Really?" She asked curiously, "I've never read those comics. What are they about?"

"Not comics. Sticky makes them up. He's got hundreds of stories that he made up to keep us occupied."

"Any good?"

He snickered and shrugged, "Nah, they're hot garbage."

"So, better or worse than Captain Cosmos?"

"Are you kidding me? No comparison. If Sticky's stories are hot garbage then Captain Cosmos is a dumpster fire."

"Hey!" Sally cried out in mock outrage, picking up a small throw pillow and chucking it at him, "That's my childhood you're knocking, buddy!"

They shared a laugh as the course programmed into the autopilot carried the massive bulk of the Mothership Zeta gliding soundlessly through space, like a whale drifting through the deepest depths of the ocean blue. Bryan's foot continued to tap restlessly, unconsciously.

Sally took notice of this, eyeing his restless feet with concern.

"Are you okay, Bryan?"

"It's nothing," he reassured her.

"Your foot hasn't stopped tapping since you got here. Are you nervous around me?" She asked the last with her own attempt at a teasing grin. She lacked the confidence in herself to make the innocent query sound not so innocent, so his wit carried him through with another suggestive smirk.

"Of course. You get my heart going like I've just sprinted the quarter-mile."

He grinned as she hide her vibrant blush in the blankets once more, using the moment to kneed at his temples in order to relieve the faint headache building up behind his eyes.

"Tunnel Snakes don't like being away from one-another. We get a little antsy, you know?"

"Antsy? Like, how?"

Bryan licked his lips and considered, not for the first time, how best to approach this conversation. Telling a girl you liked that, technically, you weren't entirely human was a difficult line to tread. But lying or bending the truth wasn't the best note to try and start a nascent relationship off on. He would rather she knew and broke it off now, than deal with the heartache later.

"When we earn our Patches at Old Olney," Bryan began in a level voice, concealing his trepidation over how she might react, "Tunnel Snakes also get some shots. Doctor Lesko makes them. They kind of, alter our genes? Tweak them a little bit to give us an edge. You get stronger, faster, better hearing and eyesight."

Sally's eyes had widened to the size of small dinner plates as he outlined the situation, until it seemed as though she could no longer maintain her composure and burst out, "You're a fucking superhero?"

Bryan blinked and snorted in involuntary amusement, "What? No, I'm just a Tunnel Snake."

"You're a fucking superhero," Sally repeated, ignoring his protest entirely, "You have superpowers, and you help people. Ergo, you are a superhero."

"I am not."

"Are too. I've read enough to know what a superhero is," she insisted.

"Comic books aren't actually books you know," he teased her, prompting a shocked gasp from her mouth.

"Of course they are. It's in the name."

Bryan shook his head and snickered silently. Okay, maybe Sally didn't care after all.

"But why are you antsy, though?"

This time there was no trepidation, he just went ahead and related what he knew.

"The shots also give you a kind of… mental connection, I guess," he explained to Sally's attentive, pale face. She seemed to hang on every word, staring at him as if he were the most amazing thing she had ever seen. It was kind of gratifying.

"What, you're like, telepathic? Can you read my thoughts!?"

She suddenly went stock still and another bright flush rushed upwards from the region of her neck, making her look like a miniaturised Mount Vesuvius about to blow its top.

"No," he exclaimed forcefully, holding up his hands in denial, "Only other people who've had the same shots. Other Tunnel Snakes. And it's not so much telepathy, more like pheromones. We feel each other's emotions, and from that we can get a rough idea of what a person is thinking."

Her blush still painted her face tomato red, but she seemed to believe him. She let out a sigh of relief, "Good. You scared me for a moment there."

"Trust me, I don't need telepathy to know what you're thinking. Your blushes could double as fireworks."

She threw another pillow at him, which he blocked with his forearm. She continued throwing them until she suddenly found herself bereft of pillows, and he found himself marginally more comfortable than before. At which point she shot him a betrayed look. He smirked, as if to say, 'What? This whole operation was your idea.'

Sally sulked, while he puffed-up in self-satisfaction. After a while, she piped up once more.

"But how does that make you antsy, though? Even if you can't feel your friends around you, doesn't that mean you just feel normal?"

Bryan smiled faintly, considering the question before he answered. If he were honest with himself, he didn't really know why it was the way it was either. They'd just woken up one day and found that it was the case.

"Normal changes from day to day. Month to month. You get used to things really quick. I suppose it might be like growing a third arm, right?"

Sally looked at him oddly, while he tried to expand upon the analogy.

"Say you grow a third arm, right? It feels just like your other arms. It takes a while to get used to, but eventually you just think about it the same way you think about the rest. It's yours, its there. You can feel it. But if it gets blown off, the fact that it wasn't 'normal'," he held up finger quotes to emphasise his point, "Doesn't mean you don't feel pain when its gone. It's like waking up one morning and not being able to feel…"

He paused and waved his arms vaguely, trying to think of a better analogy, but failing.

"…Something that you know should be there," he finished, lamely. Then he gathered himself up and continued as best he could.

"It's like waking up, expecting yourself to be safe at home. But instead your lost in the middle of the wastelands. If all else fails, if everything goes horribly wrong, as a Tunnel Snake you always know anyone wearing the same Patch as you will be willing to help pull everything back together. But when none of them are around?"

Sally gazed at him, surprised at the sudden display of emotion. Not that Bryan wasn't emotional. This wasn't the charming adoration she had seen most frequently. This was a bone-deep scar that hadn't quite healed over. She wondered what had caused it.

"So you always stick together?"

"Always, We stay in groups of two at the least. When we can help it, that is. For instance," he said, pointing to himself, "I'm the squad sniper. I usually stay up high, where I can get good sight lines. That usually leaves me alone. Well, that or with Rook, but that's kind of the same thing."

"Why is being with Rook the same thing as being alone? Do you not like her?" Sally enquired. She had met the Tunnel Snake's radio operator. She seemed fun and bubbly. Almost cuddly. Sally liked her.

"No, no," Bryan quickly amended his statement and rushed to clarify, "Rook is fine. It's just that her shots didn't take. She earned her Patch and got assigned to a squad with us, but she can feel us the same way we feel each other. That, and she only came in after Carlos bought it during the Metro Campaign. He was our radio operator before her. It's not the same thing, but it kind of is."

He bit his lip and smiled wryly, "I'm not doing a good job explaining this."

"It's cool," Sally reassured him with a smile of her own, though this one was more enthusiastic, "It's like an origin story."

Bryan snorted and reiterated, "I don't feel like a superhero."

"Yeah, that's a pretty common feeling among superheroes, I hear," Sally commented.

"Well," he said with a great deal of levity as he took the joke and ran with it, "I would dress up as an Ant and fight crime in D.C., but Sticky would never let me live it down. That, and I think Tanya over in the Science Wing already tried that."

"An Ant? Why an ant?"

"Because that's what my genes were spliced with to give me my superpowers," he explained with a grin, "You have to respect the theme, right? Plus, my dad was killed by Fire Ants, so it ties in perfectly with my tragic backstory."

Sally considered this, nodding along with a sage look on her faintly smiling face.

"My family was killed by aliens. Does that mean I get to be a superhero, too?"

"Bitch, please. You got a spaceship. That makes you the closest thing to Captain Cosmos we have."

"True," Sally said as she preened. "It has a big death ray, too. Don't forget the big death ray."

Gripped with a sense of perverse curiosity, Bryan tendered a question.

"Did you ever kill anyone with it?"

Sally paused to consider the question. "Maybe. Most of the times we fired it, it was Chauncy who pressed the button."

He considered this. He didn't rightly know why he asked. Maybe he was concerned that she wouldn't be able to understand him unless they shared certain life experiences? Maybe he felt she was too innocent to understand such things?

It was difficult to tell.

"I have though."

"Have what?"

"Killed, before."

Her voice was hesitant, unsure how he would react. Bryan was surprised, but not in any way judgemental. Killing was simply a part of life for him. But he imagined that it meant something more to Sally, so he kept his expression neutral.

"Want to talk about it?"

She fidgeted under his gaze, glancing up to meet his eyes then down again when it got too difficult to hold his gaze.

"It was when we broke out of our cells. When we hijacked the Zeta," she explained to him. Sally paused and seemed to reconsider. She looked at him.

"I've never talked about this before. With anyone."

"Not even with Dr. Tercorien? Or Somah? Aren't they like your new step-parents?"

Sally shrugged and grimaced, "I thought about telling them. I know I didn't do anything wrong… not that killing isn't wrong, you know? But they didn't give us much of a choice and if I hadn't have done it then the Wanderer would have killed them anyway. But I just…."

"Never wanted to have to explain it to them."

"Yeah…"

They fell into a long silence, during which Bryan became increasingly sure that she had shut down entirely and was done speaking with him. But then she continued. And it was like she had been wanting to talk about this for years.

"It was a grenade. I did it with a grenade. One of the glowing green ones."

"A plasma grenade," he stated.

"Yeah, one of those. We were in this hallway near the Holding Cells on the lower levels, and there was this patrol of aliens waiting around the corner. I was just a kid back then, which meant I was small enough to crawl through the vents to get past them. I…"

She gulped and cleared her throat.

"I offered to take one of Chauncy's grenades and drop it on them from inside the vent. Surprise them, you know?"

Bryan nodded. It was a slick play. A good move. Strike first with overwhelming firepower and do it in a way where the aliens couldn't fight back. It was the ideal opening gambit.

"I was the one who offered to do it. I didn't even feel bad afterwards. I even kind of enjoyed it, you know? Like extreme hide-and-seek."

Judging from her voice, which trembled ever so slightly, she hadn't enjoyed having to remember it as she got older. As she slowly grew into the understanding of what she had done. Of what it meant. For her. For them.

"I didn't want to tell anyone. I didn't want them to get the wrong idea, you know? I was just a kid. Kids don't know any better, you know? I'm not a bad person."

She met his eyes, showing him the tears that spilled down her pale cheeks.

"…am I?"

'If that's all it takes to be a bad person, then I'm not exactly a saint myself.'

He didn't answer immediately. He got up, crossed over to her, and opened the nest of blankets enough to slide into the packed fabric alongside her. Her small body fitted perfectly into his side, as if she had been made to lean up against him. He wrapped an arm around her and found that she almost immediately relaxed into him like a plant growing towards the light.

"No," he reassured her with absolute confidence, "You're not."

They sat there, gazing out into Arcturus, the blazing circle that was the Red Giant drifting lazily across the bridge window as the Zeta made its way through space. They feel asleep together, slipping silently into repose.

And Bryan never noticed that his foot had stopped tapping.