Fry came back to consciousness slowly. He was lying down somewhere warm – a hard bed, maybe, or the floor – and there were blankets on top of him. There was an electric heater angled towards him, bathing him in hot air.

Fry blinked at the warm orange glow of the bars and listened to the crackle of it, the low electric buzz that reminded him of something else. Something he couldn't think of now.

His head felt thick and sluggish, full of half-remembered sounds and images. The crackle of gunfire and the feel of slowly-spreading cold . . . and deep in his gut, the feeling he had failed somehow. That he had been too slow, too stupid, too late, and something awful had happened. Something he should have stopped.

He sat up, the world lurching drunkenly around him. Concussion. It had happened often enough now for Fry to recognize the symptoms.

He recognized the feel of broken ribs too, even though he'd healed them. Twice now. He remembered that much. So why did they hurt again? And what had happened to his head?

He was back in the basement of Vondra's bar, Fry realized. But he was alone, and he couldn't work out why that was so wrong, why that didn't add up.

Back. He was back. Because he'd left.

"Help me up, kid. And hurry."

Fry choked.

Captain Glottus! He'd left, with Fry, and they'd . . . they'd . . .

The alley. The rain. The gunshots.

You lied to me.

The memory crashed in on him, along with Candy's blood-encrusted fingertips, and Mort's hand on his shoulder, and Vondra saying "So. You're with me."

Fry kicked off the blankets in a panic and rolled out of his makeshift bed, panting through the pain.

Captain Glottus was dead.

He knew it, as clearly as if he'd been awake to watch it happen. There was a world with the Captain in it, alive . . . and then there was this one. This blank empty place. It was as if he'd been sucked out of the world, and left a hole somehow – a dark spot of negative energy in Fry's mental map of the universe.

There was something in his own hand, Fry realized, clenched tight in his fist. When he unfurled his fingers, he saw the mark of the chain, livid red against his palm, and a flash of dull gold.

The data nugget. The evidence against the DOOP.

Fry stared at it.

He should be crying, part of him knew. He'd never found it hard to cry before. Bender had used to make fun of him for it, for being such a sap. But now it was as if there was something blocking him; something that made him feel like he was frozen and numb, somewhere even the dry warm glow of the heater couldn't reach.

Leela had never made fun of him. Leela had always understood, even when he was crying over something dumb and irrelevant, like a fossilized dog who had probably never even missed him, or Yancy's clover a thousand years after he'd died. Leela had always been there, offering him space, or her hand, or that look she had - the one that said she understood, even when she wasn't saying anything at all.

His chest ached, in a way Fry knew had nothing to do with his shattered ribs, and he wondered if she would even understand this. This lonely, exhausted nothingness that felt like it might swallow him whole.

He fastened the chain around his neck, and pulled up the collar of his jacket to hide it.

The door swung open at his touch, but the stairs on the other side were in darkness. As Fry climbed past the sound-proofing he made out the distant sound of shouts and gunfire, rising like a roaring wave. It sounded like a battle. Or a Black Friday sale. Maybe this was what the end of the world sounded like, Fry thought muzzily. Maybe the Brainspawn were here already, and they'd started the apocalypse early.

If the world outside had gone crazy, the world inside had stuttered and died. Fry walked through dark, abandoned hallways, staring at the damage. The carpet had been ripped up, and there were muddy bootprints everywhere. No-one had even tried to clean them up. There were holes in the walls, and a spray of bullet wounds in the plasterwork, and there must have been a safe behind that painting of the naked blue lady, because a hole had been torn right through her and the door was hanging open.

There was a bloody handprint on the next door he came to. Fry pulled his sleeve over his hand and turned the handle without touching it.

The smell of kerosene and spilled liquor assaulted his nostrils. It was soaked into the carpet, making his shoes squelch, and when he breathed in deep, he felt the back of his throat burn.

That had been Vondra's plan, he remembered suddenly. To set the bar on fire. As a distraction.

But that had been a lie. Captain Glottus had been distracting her.

Fry wondered how long it had taken her to figure that out.

Vondra was sitting at the bar. She'd lost her shoes, and there was a smear of blood across her forehead, but it didn't look like it belonged to her. She was drinking the last of the bourbon – straight from the bottle, like she just didn't care anymore. When she met Fry's gaze, her eyes were dull.

"You're awake."

Fry nodded. He couldn't think of anything to say.

Vondra took another hard swallow.

"Then you know," she said.

Fry nodded again.

"Were you awake? When it happened?"

Despite the liquor, Vondra's voice was sharp.

Fry shook his head. His hand had come up automatically to touch the bruise on his temple. Vondra followed the motion.

"He knocked you out," she said.

"How did I get here?" Fry managed at last. "I was . . . I was . . ."

The rain. Sidewalk under his cheek. He swayed, fighting a sudden wave of sickness as the memories washed over him again.

Vondra was briefly silent, and then she held the bottle out to him.

"Drink," she said. "You'll feel better."

"But . . ."

Realizing Fry didn't intend to give up on this line of questioning, Vondra made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat, as if she was being forced to admit something she'd prefer they both just ignored.

"I guessed my brother didn't save you so you could die of hypothermia," she said shortly.

Fry stared.

"You came and got me?"

He didn't know what was worse. That Vondra had cared enough to save him, after he helped Captain Glottus trick her . . . or that he didn't know what had been left for her to see, when she got there.

Some or all of this must have showed on his face, because Vondra grimaced and tipped the bottle in his direction again.

"I knew," she said bitterly. "I knew. But . . . Fifty years, he never lied to me. And you saw the state he was in. Do what he wanted, I thought. Keep him happy. Make him think we had a shot at walking out of here. Fool. I thought I had time, I thought . . ." She shook her head, as if disgusted with herself.

"He was trying to save us," Fry said.

Vondra nodded.

"Fool," she said again, and this time Fry couldn't tell if the fool was her, or Captain Glottus, or him, or all of them. She pulled the bottle back and took another hard gulp.

She was crying, Fry realized, as she reached up angrily and dashed at her cheek.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"It's not your fault."

Fry opened his mouth to insist that yes, it was – that he was too slow, too stupid, too easy to trick – but Vondra waved him off, as if she didn't have the energy.

"I said it's not your fault."

Even Fry couldn't miss her tone. That conversation was over, he decided.

There was a sound like an explosion, far off in the distance, and he twitched.

"What's happening?" he asked nervously. "Is it the brains? Did they attack?"

To his surprise, Vondra snorted.

"Riot," she said, as if that was an explanation.

Fry frowned.

"But . . . the DOOP," he pointed out.

All the men on Erosh were in the DOOP, and the DOOP was the authority here. The authority couldn't riot against the authority. Or at least, Fry didn't think they could. He was nearly sure that wasn't how riots worked. They were supposed to be about raging against the man, and here on Erosh the DOOP was the man. It didn't make any sense.

"Who are they fighting? Why are they fighting?" He rubbed the bruise on his forehead again. "I'm confused."

Vondra made a sound that wasn't much like a laugh, but was maybe supposed to be.

"Three hours into a riot no-one's running on logic anymore," she told him. "But to answer your question – it's DOOP on DOOP out there. Civil war. Though you might call it a mutiny." She weighed the bottle in her hand, trying to gauge how much of the contents remained. "That's what Yearling was screaming, last I heard of him."

Fry jerked up at the sound of the man's name. He could smell blood again, and see Candy's ruined fingertips in his mind's eye.

"They're fighting Captain Yearling?"

Vondra shrugged.

"So they say. Some of them served under my brother. Some of them hate Yearling. And some of them just want to watch the world burn. A riot's an animal," she went on. "It doesn't matter how it starts. They all end the same: a howling fuck-you to the world. They can do it in my name or my brother's or the name of the fucking flying spaghetti monster for all I care. It's not about us. Still," - she smiled grimly - "if it ends with Yearling swinging on his own noose, bring on the revolution."

A tiny red light appeared, glowing, on the other side of the bar.

And then Yearling stepped through the doorway, drawing on his cigarette.

"Now, now," he chided. "I'm sure you don't mean that."

Vondra made a snarling, inhuman sound in the back of her throat.

"Get out of my bar."

Yearling smiled, as if her anger amused him somehow. This was a game to him, Fry realized. And it didn't matter to him if his men were rioting in the streets, because he'd killed Captain Glottus and he'd made Vondra this upset, and to him, that was winning.

Slowly, Fry inched nearer to Vondra. She was shaking with barely suppressed rage. Like she might go off any minute. Like a bomb.

Yearling seemed unconcerned. He exhaled a lazy stream of smoke from his thin roll-up, and cast a disparaging glance around the bar.

"Oh dear," he said. "How the mighty have fallen." His smile widened. "It gives me no pleasure to see you brought so low, Vondra. Truly."

This was a lie so huge Fry felt reality should warp around it somehow. The air should color, or catch fire, or something.

And Yearling was still smiling.

Smiling, smiling, smiling.

Fry wondered if he'd smiled that like when he ripped out Candy's fingernails.

The man's gaze swiveled away from Vondra, and landed on Fry himself.

"And you!" he said, shaking his head. "I should have known better. I let you go! Unfortunate, I thought. You crossed the Captain's path, and he disposed of you with violence. Well, I could sympathize. We all knew what a brute he could be. But no." He made a tut, tut sound with his tongue. "You were the accomplice to his escape! How very disappointing. And a perversion of justice, of course. I shall have to make an example of you. Bring you up before the firing squad, I think. Or perhaps the gallows. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing a traitor swing, don't you agree? It commands attention like nothing else. The theatricality of the thing, I suppose. The men do love a show. And of course you can always leave the body to rot in the noose. I find that tends to leave a lasting impression on any firebrands in the pack."

There was a silence, as Fry's imagination painted a picture of this future.

"Give me my brother." Vondra had found her voice again. She was standing very still, and she sounded like each word was being dragged from her against her will. "Give me his body. You owe me that."

Yearling laughed.

"Owe you? Oh my dear Vondra. I think I may be the only man on this planet not fool enough to owe you anything. Besides" - he waved a dismissive hand - "I couldn't give you the corpse, even if I wanted to. I dissolved it in quicklime, hours ago. It's the traditional burial method for a traitor, and I do respect tradition, you know."

He found a glass behind the bar, and poured himself a drink, raising it to Vondra in a mock toast.

"Salut," he said, the way another man might say "checkmate".

Vondra stared at him. She had gone utterly still, carved out of stone. Her face was a mask.

And then she lashed out, and knocked the glass from his hand.

Yearling laughed – amused to see her fighting back – but then Vondra lashed out with her other hand, the hand holding the bottle. The force of the blow knocked him back, and he let out an animal howl as shards of glass tore through his cheek. He cried out, blood burbling up in his throat.

Vondra didn't give him the chance to recover from the shock. She kicked out at him while he was lying on the floor – but she'd forgotten she wasn't wearing shoes, and Yearling reached out with a wasp's speed, snatching a hold of her ankle. He pulled her down, making another indecipherable sound of rage . . .

But Vondra had nails, and even as Yearling pulled her down, spitting blood at her, Fry saw her gouge them into his left eye.

She was going to kill the man, he realized suddenly.

And there was a part of Fry that wanted to let her.

It was the part that had taken control of him at the Gas'n'Go, when the Brainspawn attacked. The part that didn't think; that screamed instead in every nerve ending. Maybe that was what Vondra had been talking about, when she said a riot was an animal. Maybe a riot was this feeling, set free.

But that feeling scared him, and Fry didn't think he should listen to it.

Yearling was evil. Evil in a way no-one else Fry had ever met had been evil, evil in a way he hadn't known real people could be evil.

But if Vondra killed him, she'd be a murderer. The DOOP would hunt her down and kill her, for murdering one of their officers, and . . .

And Captain Glottus would never have wanted that. He had always tried to protect her. He would never want her to die for him.

Fry thought of Mort, and Tempest, and Candy, who would wake up soon a long way from here. They needed Vondra. They loved her. Fry couldn't let them lose her.

Yearling had landed a blow of his own on Vondra, with the broken leg of a bar stool. But Vondra was faster and more ruthless than him. She had cut the belt from around his waist with a shard of broken glass. And yanked it round his neck.

Her palm was slick with blood, and that had to hurt, but she ignored it – wrenching tighter instead as Yearling choked and flailed in her grasp.

There was smoke rising up from the floor. Yearling's dropped cigarette had fallen in a pool of spilled liquor, and the flames were spreading fast. Fry wanted to try and stamp out the fire, but there wasn't time. Yearling was turning blue, and if he didn't stop her now, Vondra would do something she could never take back.

"Stop!" he yelled out.

Vondra ignored him. Fry wasn't even sure she'd heard him.

So he did the only thing he could think of – threw himself forward and pushed Yearling to the ground, out of Vondra's grasp.

"Get out of my way," Vondra said savagely.

Fry cringed. But he held his ground, throwing up his empty hands.

"You can't do it! They'll kill you!"

"Move. Now."

Fry shook his head.

"I can't." He coughed. With no-where to go, the smoke was starting to build. It was getting hard to breathe. "I can't let you. Captain Glottus wouldn't want you to." His voice cracked. "He wanted to save you!"

Vondra stared at him. She was crying now – or maybe the heat of the fire was making her eyes water. Fry couldn't tell what she was thinking. But he thought she softened . . . right before something hooked around his neck and dragged him to the floor.

Fry went down hard. Stars popped in his field of vision, and the pressure around his neck tightened, cutting off his oxygen.

Captain Yearling was choking him, he realized. He scrabbled desperately at his neck, trying to free himself.

Black spots filled his vision. Vondra was yelling. He thought she might be fighting Yearling again, but it was hard to tell.

And then suddenly the pressure was lifted, and they were flung apart again.

Vondra was on her feet, breathing hard, the belt hanging from her bloody hand. Fry was on the ground, gasping for breath, and Yearling had been knocked down next to him. He looked winded, but not fatally hurt. Even as Fry climbed shakily to his knees, the Captain began to move again. Any minute now, Yearling would grab hold of him and finish what he'd started.

A strange noise broke through, and pulled all their attention upward. A low, singing moan of old wood under pressure.

The fire, Fry realized. The beam above his head was timber, and it was starting to split as the heat rose towards it.

He watched, in slow motion, as it gave another immense yawn. He had maybe three seconds to get out of there. But the room was still spinning around his head, and he couldn't tell if he should go left or right. He couldn't make his body move.

He had a stark glimpse of Vondra's face, as she took in the scene. Him, swaying. And Yearling, weakened, still on his knees. It was the best chance to kill the man Vondra would ever get.

She couldn't reach both of them in time, Fry realized. He was going to die.

Leela, he thought.

There was a boom of splintered wood . . .

And then Vondra seized him by the shoulder and hauled him back, through smoke and heat and away from the force of the falling timber.

"Go!" she yelled. "Move!"

Fry gasped as the rain hit his face. He didn't even care that it was cold. He thought it might be the most beautiful thing he'd ever felt.

Beside him Vondra was gasping too, coughing out air as fast as she could gulp it in. Smoke damage, Fry guessed, from the fire. There was a hooty sound to his own coughing too, and his chest felt tight at the top, like he couldn't pull in enough air.

They were both streaked in gritty black dust. But they were alive.

Fry stared at Vondra.

You chose me, he wanted to say. You saved me.

But he didn't have the breath for the words, and the flames inside the bar were already licking higher, the heat beginning to touch them even out here.

"Move," Vondra managed.

Fry let her push him on, up the street and into the chaos of the riot. They had no choice. There was no going back. They could only go forward, and hope Vondra's ride was still waiting somewhere, to take them off-world. Don't stay more than a day here, Mort had said. Something's coming. Had they missed his deadline? Was this what he'd meant? The riot? The bar burning down? Fry didn't know. He didn't have the energy to wonder. All he could do was let Vondra drag him on, through the murky, undersea world of his concussion, through shouts and fire and the distant tick tick boom of gunshots.

The world had gone crazy, Fry thought. And so it almost didn't surprise him when he stumbled headlong into someone and a familiar metal clang reverberated into his chest.

"Struck out again, sausage link," said a voice he knew.

There were arms holding him up. Flexy metal arms. One of them was holding a cigar.

Fry stared.

"Bender?" he burbled.

"Oh, now you remember me."

"Bender?"

"The one and only. I'm back, baby. Thank your puny human gods, it's a miracle, yadda yadda yadda."

He must be hallucinating, Fry decided. Bender couldn't be here. He was exhausted, that was all, and his brain had conjured up this imaginary Bender, to make him feel better.

"Holy shit, what happened?" a second voice said.

Fry frowned. He wasn't sure why his brain had created a hallucination of three Tempests, each standing in the street wearing leather pants and a torn jean jacket.

He blinked, and the overlapping images resolved themselves into just one Tempest, which made a little more sense.

"Mort sent me back," she was saying. "I don't know what he saw, but it was like he had some kind of attack. He froze up like a rock and I swear to god every star on his head glowed white. He wanted to go back for you, but he could barely even stand up. And I can handle myself, so I said -"

"Bender," Fry said again, stupidly. Could other people see him too? Was he going crazy?

Tempest cast him a look. Apparently she could see Bender too. She didn't seem to think it was important that he was here.

"Mort said the robot would find you," she said. "He said he'd be here."

Vondra tried to say something, but fell into coughing instead.

Tempest waited, then plunged on when Vondra couldn't form an argument.

"We need to go," she insisted. "Look, I think it's shady too. But Mort said to trust the robot, and I trusted the robot, and he led me to you. That's good enough for me. We need to move, Von. We need to get off this planet, now! Trust the robot and let him take him, c'mon."

Vondra's grip tightened on Fry's arm.

"Like . .. hell."

"Von! Mort said -"

Vondra shook her head.

"He was here," she wheezed. "Waiting. All this time."

Bender rolled his optics.

"Lady, it's not a crime to drink in your bum bar."

"You can trust Bender," Fry wheezed. "He's my friend."

"He's up to something."

"No." Fry shook his head, trying to explain. The world whirled violently. "You just think that 'cause he's a felon. But he's not a bad person. He's my friend. My best friend."

Bender shrugged, as if this conversation had taken an embarrassing turn. Strangely, it was the look he shared with Vondra – that "what are you gonna do?" half shrug Fry suspected was some kind of commentary on him – that seemed to give her pause.

The sound of bells broke out, a full-bellied bong bong bong see-sawing wildly as they struck the hour and carried on past it. Emergency, Fry thought. Bells that wouldn't stop like that meant an emergency.

"Oh, shit," Tempest hissed through her teeth. "The bells. The bar. The -"

She sounded like was reciting something from memory, but whatever came next was obscured by the sound of an explosion. The bar, Fry realized. The fire must have spread to the rest of the building, roaring through the corridors until it blew out the windows in one howling blast.

It left Fry's ears ringing, even at this distance.

Bender stepped forward, shielding him from the wave of steam that came surging down the street. Vondra grabbed Tempest and threw them both behind the body of a smashed-up hovercar. The wave bowled over them, stealing the air from Fry's lungs and leaving his skin scalded and pink.

Bender swore in his ear and Tempest screamed something, her mouth moving inaudibly as she fought to be heard.

Something else exploded, in the far distance.

Bender was still holding him down, one exomatic arm pinning Fry's chest to the ground. The scrape of a rusty beard was chafing Fry's cheek, and above the smoke that still filled his nostrils he could smell Bender; fear and vodka and motor oil burning into the back of his throat.

This awareness flickered in and out uncertainly.

He was blacking out, Fry realized. In stages, like a shutter flicking open and shut.

The next time he opened his eyes Bender had pulled him semi-upright. Vondra was on her feet, staring up at the sky.

Tempest was screaming, but this time Fry could make out what she was saying.

"We need to go! Now! Right now!"

The rain was still pouring out of an iron-gray sky, and at first that was what Fry thought he was looking at. What he thought Vondra was looking at. And then he realized it was the darkness confusing him, making him doubt what he was seeing. He wasn't looking at massed banks of cloud. Those tiny dark dots, getting closer all the time . . . they weren't hail. Or birds. Or even distant DOOP ships.

They broke formation, spilled apart . . .

And a hundred - a thousand - Brainspawn came boiling down out of the sky.

Vondra wheeled round.

Bender was standing half a step in front of Fry, a possessive grip on his shoulder. No. Protective, Fry thought. Bender was protecting him. Though with Bender, it was sometimes hard to tell.

Maybe not so hard for Vondra though, because Fry's hold on consciousness shuttered again, and when it returned Vondra was yelling "Go! Go!". Fry felt a sudden swing of nausea and knew Bender had picked him up and thrown him over one metal shoulder.

No, he tried to argue. Go back, we can't leave them! But his concussion must have been worse than he thought. He couldn't seem to form sentences any more, just disjointed words like "Bender" and "no!".

But on some level Bender must have understood.

"They'll be fine, meatsack," he snapped. "They get outta here. Now shut your pie hole and let me remember how this goes!"

He stopped in the street, as if looking at something invisible.

In the distance, people were starting to scream. Fry could feel that sensation again. Faint, this time, and intermittent, but it was still there – that gross, gag-reflex feeling, like someone had unscrewed the top of his head and dragged their tongue across his exposed brain.

Bender must have felt something too, because when the brains moved out of range and the feeling faded, he seemed to make up his mind.

"Screw it," he muttered.

He reached out with one arm, knocking a fleeing soldier into the water, and grabbed a set of keys as they fell from the man's hand. The doors to the nearby hovercar sprang open, and he dumped Fry unceremoniously inside. Then he climbed into the driver's seat, sealed the doors, and turned the key in the ignition.

The vehicle juddered under them, as Bender cranked the thrusters into interplanetary drive mode. Metal screeched as he cranked through all five gears in one crunching movement, and then the engine growled and -

"Whooooo-oooooh, meatbag!"

The ship punched up through the atmosphere. The vibration shook Fry's bones. He didn't have the breath to scream but he made a keening sound of pain as it rattled his newly rebroken ribs.

Bender ruffled his hair, happy and indifferent, as Erosh fell away beneath them.

Fry felt his ears pop. And then he did manage to find some oxygen, and expended it in a drawn-out, terrified scream.