Fry had fallen asleep again. He knew from past experience that his concussion was mostly ebbing away now, but his head still ached intermittently, and he was tired, despite his best efforts to stay awake. He dozed on and off, waking every so often to a dry throat and a green taste in his mouth. Sometimes he thought he saw green light too, flashing through his eyelids the way it had in his dreams. Sometimes the car changed too, as Bender ditched their old vehicles and stole new ones. Maybe it was easier than buying gas, Fry thought. Or maybe he was trying to throw the Brainspawn off their scent.

Captain Glottus had used to do that too, but he had always waited for Fry to wake up and clear out first. Bender never bothered. He just let Fry wake up in a new car, with no idea how much time had passed or where they were. Sometimes the robot smelled of smoke and gasoline. Fry had a feeling he was torching the cars.

Burglarsonarceny, Fry thought.

He fell asleep again, feeling sick in the pit of his stomach, and dreamed he was back at Gas 'N' Go.

In the dream he was fighting Captain Glottus. But this time Glottus had the gun, and he shot Fry right where Fry had shot him, there in the stomach where the sickness spread out cold. Fry tried to tell Glottus he didn't blame him, as he lay dying on the ground, but the captain wasn't there anymore - he was Leela now, leaning over Fry and crying that she'd killed him. No, Fry wanted to tell her, no, it wasn't your fault. But he could smell gas again and hear bullets flying, and before he could tell her that the explosion tore through them both like a howling wind.

"-ise to the day with Yeast-O-Mite, the invigorating breakfast spread! Now with forty per cent more yeast than leading rivals! Yeast-O -"

"- solar flares forecast for -"

"-love's strange, so real in the dark -"

Fry sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, staring at the radio.

" - don't, don't, don't you, forget about me," crackled out of the speakers.

That was in my dream, he wanted to say. The Yancy dream. But the dream with his brother in it had been days ago now, and if Fry tried to explain it, Bender would think he was crazy. Bender didn't know the half of what he dreamed.

The robot was whistling along with the tune, his left hand hovering over the dial.

Changing the station. In Fry's dream, someone had been changing the station on the radio. And it had gone just like that – Yeast-O-Mite, then the weather forecast, then Simple Minds. Those exact same ads. That exact same order.

Deja vu? Maybe. But Fry felt uneasy all the same, for reasons he couldn't explain.

He looked out of the window to take his mind off it, but that didn't help either. They were skimming over the surface of a planet now, over dusty reddish plains like the ones on Mars. As he stared they sped past a ranch, sending a herd of buggalo scattering in agitated flight. The smudge of a distant metropolis was becoming visible on the horizon now. As they drew closer the skyline began to take on an impossibly familiar outline.

They flicked past a 100 ft billboard of an animatronic, smiling Celine Dion, and then they were in the outskirts of the city, and the W-shaped bulk of the Wong family casino was towering over them, and -

This was Mars.

Fry sat up straight. He couldn't be on Mars. It had taken him weeks to drive from Mars to Erosh, and he'd only left Erosh . . . well, sure, he was hazy on how much time had passed exactly since Captain Glottus died and the Brainspawn descended on Erosh, but he knew it hadn't been that long. And it wasn't possible to cover that amount of distance that quickly, no matter how many hovercars you stole.

The engine coughed. Bender's latest hijack had slowed to a crawl, and as Fry watched the blinking red light of the fuel gauge faded out, the engine made a dissatisfied chunk, and they ground to a halt.

There was a moment of silence as Bender stared down at the wheel in his hands, as if somehow disappointed to find himself facing an empty fuel tank. As if he hadn't noticed it blinking at him all this time.

"Oh," he said softly. "End of the line, meatbag."

He stepped out of the car. Fry followed him, wondering where Bender planned on finding gas or another car on this abandoned stretch of road. There was a payphone a couple of yards away. It looked battered and filmed in dust, but it might still be functional. Maybe they could call someone to come pick them up?

Fry crossed to the phone and wiped the screen clear, relieved when it hummed into life at his touch.

"It's working," he said.

Now he knew they weren't stranded, he could turn his attention to his earlier problem.

"Bender," he began -

But Bender was still standing in the middle of the road. He had that distant expression again, as if he was thinking about something so intently he'd forgotten Fry existed.

"Bender?" Fry tried again. "This is Mars. This can't be Mars. Look, I don't know much, but I do know there's no way -"

"Yeah, this is Mars," Bender said vaguely. He still didn't look like he was paying attention.

Fry tried anyway.

"But this can't be Mars," he said. "We couldn't get here that fast." And the radio, he thought. The radio kept repeating.

Bender shrugged.

"I took a shortcut while you were sleeping," he said, sounding bored again. "Anyway, we're here now. What are you gonna do about it?"

Fry sighed. Clearly Bender was in no mood to give him answers. He must be telling the truth, Fry decided. There must be a wormhole somewhere, or something. And maybe they'd gone through it, and covered weeks in . . . days . . .

Or something.

He gave up. There was only so much he could keep a hold of, and right now the questions of "how to get to Earth" and "what to do about the brains" were demanding all his focus.

Leela would take a reverse charge call, he decided. She always had before. And the Leela on her voicemail had been waiting for him to call her.

She'd pick up this time, he told himself, as he dialed her number.

She wanted him to call her. She did.

But it didn't ring. Instead he was met by a long flat beeeeeeep, and then a robot voice cut in.

"The number you have dialed is no longer in service."

Fry frowned. Maybe he'd dialed it wrong.

He tried again.

"Beeeeeeep . . . the number you have dialed is no longer in service."

He hung up, at a loss.

Leela never got cut off. She always paid her phone bill. She paid it early. It was one of those boring, responsible-adult things she just did, unfailingly.

Maybe she'd changed her number?

Slowly, Fry picked up the receiver again. There were only two other numbers he could remember. One was his own apartment. The other was Planet Express.

He tried the second.

A weird, blip-blip-blip sound met him this time. Then static, then blip-blip-blip again.

The ship picked up communications like this sometimes, when they came in range of an encrypted channel. You needed a passcode, or a special frequency, in order to break through.

Fry stared, trying to think of a safe, sane reason the Professor would encrypt communications to Planet Express.

Bender was still standing nearby - but he was paying attention to Fry now, watching him dial with a look on his face Fry couldn't read at all. Was he sad? Angry? Fry couldn't tell.

He looked a little like Yancy had, in the dream. Sad, and fond - and scared, as if Fry was someone he missed and couldn't hold onto.

Suddenly Bender seemed to make up his mind. The robot clamped down on Fry, wound his arms around him and winched him in tight, hugging him until he started to splutter and wheeze.

"Bend – hey - can't – breathe -"

Bender released him.

"I love you too, meatbag," he said fiercely.

And then he turned his back and strode away.

"Wait, Bender!" Fry hurried after him. "Wait, you can't – where are you going? Hey! Slow down!"

Bender's stride was unflagging, and Fry was still too tired to keep up. The more he tried to shout after Bender, the more energy it drained. He could feel himself falling behind, and still Bender hadn't looked back.

And suddenly it hit him. Bender didn't want Fry to follow him.

He was leaving him behind.

"Bender!"

His voice cracked in the dry desert air.

And then Bender did stop. He half-turned, and held up something in his hand. It looked like paper. Bedraggled yellow paper, with blue ink scribbled all over it. And a Fishy Joe's logo -

It was his letter, Fry realized suddenly. The letter he'd written for Carlos Glottus. He scrabbled at his pocket, but -

It was gone. And so was the card Mort had given him before he left Erosh. Bender had lifted them both from his pocket, when he'd hugged him. As Fry watched he stowed them both in his chest compartment, and then . . .

Fry could almost swear he winked.

His mouth moved as he said something, indecipherable at this distance, and then - there was a flash, a deep, deep, blue -

And Bender was gone, and Fry was standing alone in the reddish glow of a Martian dawn.

The streets of Mars Vegas were empty in the thin gray light of early morning. Vegas was a nocturnal city – when the sun came up, the party ended. Fry knew it, and he hadn't really expected to meet anyone at this hour. But there was still something creepy about seeing the place so abandoned.

Ghost town, he thought. Ghost planet. Like Trisol. It made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

You should leave, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind. It sounded like Leela. It always had.

This isn't safe, she told him. It's a bad idea.

But he needed to get back to Earth, and he didn't have any better alternatives. Bender had abandoned him. And he'd tried calling Leela. He'd tried calling Planet Express. All he'd got for his trouble was a gnawing, worried feeling in his gut.

Gomez and Xandri were the only people left on Mars he could trust. So he raised his fist, and knocked on the door.

There was a muffled yell from inside, and then silence fell again.

Fry knocked harder.

This did get a response. There was more frustrated yelling, and then there were footsteps, drawing closer as Gomez's voice became clearer.

"- think there's something wrong with his programming –"

He opened the door, sleep-rumpled and irate.

"Look," he said. "I keep telling you, you live next door -"

When he saw Fry he pulled up short and took half a step back, fumbling for the chain on the door.

"I don't want any trouble," he blurted.

Fry blinked.

"I don't want trouble either," he said, bewildered. "I just want a ride."

Gomez's hand dropped from the chain. And then Xandri appeared over his shoulder. She'd put new tattoos on her lips, a pattern of tiny suns and moons. Fry could see them clearly, because her mouth was hanging open.

"No," she breathed. "No way."

Gomez swallowed.

"Yancy? Is that really you?"

Xandri nudged one of his elbows, and he startled.

"Oh. Right. That wasn't your name. Sorry, I just . . ." He waved his right arms ineffectively. Both of the left ones had wrapped around Xandri, clamping her tight to his side. "You look . . ." He blinked rapidly, his glasses sliding down his nose. "Different," he finished limply.

Xandri shook herself.

"He means you look terrible," she corrected. "And you were a trainwreck before. What happened to you?"

Fry didn't know how to answer that.

Gomez pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, blinking nervously.

"Did you find out about Leela?"

"Leela?" Fry's voice cracked on her name. All he could hear now was the dial tone, echoing in his head. The number you have dialed is no longer in service. "What happened to Leela? Where is she? What's wrong with her?"

Xandri's mouth fell open again.

"Oh wow," she said softly. "He doesn't know."

Gomez looked as if he wanted the ground to swallow him up.

"I thought you knew," he said hopelessly. "Isn't that why you're here?"

"Knew what? What am I supposed to know? What?"

Gomez took another half-step back. Xandri sighed, and gently but firmly pried his arms away from her. She reached out to Fry.

"You'd better come in."

The apartment was smaller than Fry had remembered. The walls were a different color, and there was a window now. Or maybe there had always been a window, and he'd just never noticed it. In his memory this apartment was always dark, and fuzzy around the edges, like his childhood bedroom in the dream he'd had of Yancy. When he looked back on his time here, it felt vaguely unreal, as if he'd sleep-walked through it.

Here, now, the apartment looked nice. There were old vinyl records and plastic figurines on the bookshelf, and the walls had been stencil painted with suns and moons and twisting vines. It looked like a tiny, cozy home. Standing on the rug, bloodied and unkempt, Fry felt like he was dirtying it somehow. He shifted uncomfortably.

Gomez was doing something in the kitchen. Xandri was trying to make him sit down.

"Just for a minute," she urged. "You look like you're about to keel over."

Fry shook his head. He needed to get out of here. He didn't belong here, in Gomez and Xandri's happy life.

Gomez returned, holding a steaming cup of coffee and a sandwich.

"Eat something," he said. When Fry started to shake his head, the Neptunian grew insistent. "Please. You look dead on your feet."

Fry took the cup and held it without drinking.

"Leela." He swallowed. "Is she dead?"

Gomez and Xandri exchanged looks of alarm.

"No! Oh my god, no. That's not what I meant -"

Fry sat down hard on the couch, slopping coffee over the floor as his knees buckled under him.

"Oh," he said blankly.

He felt as if the knuckles of some giant fist were grinding into his chest, slowly crushing him. Gomez and Xandri exchanged another one of those looks, the telepathic married ones that made it seem like they were having a whole conversation without speaking. Xandri sat down beside Fry on the couch. Gingerly, she touched his shoulder.

"What happened to you?" she said softly.

Gomez – sitting on the edge of the coffee table – fiddled with his glasses again, like he needed something to do with his hands. Like he wanted to touch Fry too, to comfort him in some way, but he didn't know how.

Fry shook his head.

He wanted to tell them. He wanted their help. But he didn't know how to accept it, not anymore. Even Xandri's hand on his shoulder made him feel skittish, like he should shrug it off and run.

"She was here," Gomez said suddenly. "Leela. She was here."

Fry's head snapped up.

"Here?"

Gomez nodded.

"After you left. She came looking for you, she tracked you down. She wanted -"

He stopped. Xandri was looking at him intently, her expression spelling out a determined "no".

Fry watched them, desperate.

"What? What did she want?"

Gomez sighed. He gave Xandri a tiny nod, then turned back to Fry.

"Look," he said carefully. "That's between you and her. You should talk to her. But . . ." He hesitated. "If you ask me . . . she wanted you."

Fry swallowed, empty.

"She has a husband."

Gomez winced.

"Yeah . . . I don't think so. Not anymore."

Suddenly Fry's heart was beating hard inside his chest. He tried to quiet it.

"I tried to call her," he said. "She didn't answer. Nobody answered."

"He really doesn't know," Xandri murmured. She sighed. "Okay, listen. You couldn't contact her because she's not there anymore. Wherever she lives, wherever you guys . . ." She waved a hand. "I don't know, it doesn't matter. She's not there anyway."

"She hasn't been there for months," Gomez said gently. "She's been in the sewer."

"The sewer?" What? "They . . . they found out she's a mutant? They deported her?"

It had been one of the only things Fry had ever known Leela to be afraid of - that people would find out what she really was and take her away to the sewer. And it had happened to her. Months ago, when he wasn't around to help. He could have spoken up for her, he could've hidden her, he could've done something . . .

"Who told them?"

It was the only thing he couldn't understand. None of the Planet Express crew would ever betray her like that. Not even Bender, no matter how mad he was. Not even whiny Cubert, not even -

"She did."

"What?" Fry heard himself make a strange, half-choking sound. He thought maybe he'd meant to make it a laugh. "No, no way. That's crazy. Leela wouldn't do that. She wouldn't tell people she's a mutant. That's crazy -"

He stopped. Bender's voice was echoing in his ears again. She's crazy, Bender had said. And Fry had thought he was just being Bender, that he meant it in the overload-of-human-emotions way he'd always meant it before. But what if he hadn't? What if he'd meant this, this crazy thing she'd done for no -

"Why would she do that?" he blurted out. "Who did she tell? Why would -"

"She told everyone," Xandri said. "She made a video about it, it's famous. It went viral, it has, like, thirty billion views in the Sol 3 system alone. The DOOP lost their minds over it, Earth is in serious hot water. I can't believe you haven't heard about this. The mutant war is all anyone's been talking about here, for months. Well, that, and that DOOP captain on the run. It's been all over the news, everyone has an opinion about it. I mean, mutants are basically Earth citizens. Nixon is basically waging war on his own citizens." She shook her head, incredulous. "It's been wild. Neptune and Jupiter are calling for the DOOP to kick him out of the alliance, they say he's making a mockery of the whole idea of democracy. The Amphibios cluster won't even trade with you guys any more, they're setting up an embargo. There was this march, in New New York, a million people joined it. Me and Gomie went. Half the alien population of the city is on strike. They say if Nixon wants to define Earth citizens by how they look, they won't contribute as Earth citizens. The NNYPD attacked the mutants, and there were riots in the streets, and . . . and all that was before the kill-bots killed that girl. It got ugly after that."

"War?" Fry echoed.

There were so many words that had grabbed at him, that needed to be explained, but that was the one that kept coming up, over and over again. Leela wasn't just living in the sewer. She was fighting there.

"War," he repeated dumbly. As if saying it again would make more sense of it.

"They put the sewer on lockdown," Gomez explained. "Like a siege. Well. I mean." His ears turned pink. "It was a siege. They were trying to starve her out, I think, but she's tough, and the mutants are all behind her. I don't know what they're eating but they're still hanging on down there, after all these months, and every time the surface attacks, they fight back. She's . . ." He blinked rapidly, searching for the words. "She's terrifying. She never gives up. The surface have hundreds of kill-bots and all these soldiers, but I don't know . . . if it was me . . . if I had to bet on it . . . I'd bet on her. All the way."

Xandri nodded.

"Same," she said fervently.

A siege. Fry swallowed, horrorstruck. He'd thought he had it bad, the weeks he'd spent in the basement on Erosh. What would he have done if he'd been there for months? If he'd been starving, and under attack, and he couldn't get out or see the sun for months . . .

I should have been there, he thought.

"Lars!" He jumped up, slopping the last remnants of his untouched coffee on the floor. "Lars was there, right? Wasn't he?"

"I . . . yeah." Gomez looked confused, as if he wasn't sure what his reaction was supposed to be. Or as if Fry was having the wrong reaction. "Yeah, he went with her. But I don't think there's anything going on between them anymore," he added hurriedly. "The news says they're divorced."

"But he's there?" Fry insisted.

Lars was still him, wasn't he? Some part of him still had to be Fry, and think like he would think. No matter what had happened between Leela and Fry, he wouldn't just leave Leela to fight killer robots and cops and . . . and everyone. Alone. Not if he could protect her, not if he could help her somehow, do something . . .

"He was there," Xandri confirmed, and Fry felt his breath whoosh out of him in relief.

"What about the Professor? And Amy?" He stiffened, fear seizing him once more. "You said a girl died."

Xandri shook her head.

"She did," she said sadly. "But it wasn't her. It was a mutant." Her expression creased, visibly upset. "When I said 'a girl' . . . I meant a girl, Philip. She was just a kid."

Gomez stroked her arm, shaking his head too.

"She didn't deserve that."

Fry stared at the coffee stain on the carpet. It was seeping out from under his feet, soaking into the pure white fiber like some slow-spreading poison.

"No-one deserves that," he said thickly.

He was thinking of Candy again, how the blood on her hands had turned dark as it started to dry.

He wondered if Leela felt this way too. If she had her own horrible images that followed her around every minute she stayed awake, and lurked behind her eye waiting for her when she tried to fall asleep.

"No." Xandri pried the cup out of his hand then. She tried to smile at him. "But your friend," she said encouragingly. "Amy? Leela gave her up, with Lars. No, no, don't look like that! It's a good thing, I swear! It was, like, a gesture of good faith. She said they're not her hostages and she has nothing to hide -"

Gomez – who was kneeling down mopping at the coffee - coughed suddenly. Xandri stepped on the fingers of his nearest hand.

"- nothing that makes it right for them to treat the mutants the way they do," she continued, as if nothing had happened. "She said she wants it to end, she wants her people to be free. She said this is their last chance. That this was the last mutant child the surface will ever hurt." She paused. "It sounded like a promise."

"It sounded like a threat," Gomez said quietly. He stood up, wringing out the rag in his hands. "She's never attacked the surface before. All this time. She fights back, but she doesn't attack. They're scared she will. This new DOOP captain – Captain Kroker? They say he wants peace. He locked up this Lars guy, and Amy Wong too. He said he won't hurt them and he'll let them go when the conflict is resolved, but -"

"But everyone knows that means when Leela gets what she wants," Xandri put in. "And Leo Wong is going bananas – B-A-N-A-N-A-S, bananas – saying his daughter is a hostage of the surface and he'll sue the whole of Earth if they don't let her go, but -"

"- but she's guilty of fraternizing," Gomez concluded. "So they can't let her go. Unless President Nixon declares it's not a crime not anymore." He frowned, trying to wipe the coffee stains out of his hands. "It's actually a really smart play."

Xandri smiled.

"Everyone thinks Nixon will cave. He can't afford not to. Leo Wong basically bankrolls all his campaigns, and money talks -"

Fry stood up abruptly. His head was spinning. If he got one more new piece of information, he thought his brain might start leaking out of his ears.

And all the time he stayed here listening Amy stayed in jail, and Leela stayed in the sewer, and . . . the Professor was probably in jail too, he realized.

All his friends were in trouble, probably even Zoidberg, and he'd been too far away to help.

(Not all your friends, a little voice whispered in his head. Not Bender. And then he remembered Bender, how his friend had looked before he disappeared, and another little voice whispered, maybe Bender is in worse trouble.)

"I need to go. I need to get back to Earth. Right now."