The excruciatingly sharp pain seemed to be ripping apart her limbs. Her body was on fire. She tried to move her legs and felt the dead weight of them lying limp. The attempts to move caused the shooting pain to intensify. She gasped, fluttering her eyelids, trying to force them open through dried tears and sticky medicine glueing together her eyelids. They felt heavy.

She opened them once. It was all darkness. Tears swam in her vision and she quickly blinked them away. But it was painful and she closed them shut again.

"Sleeping beauty awakens," a very familiar voice commented from the other side of the room with a sigh, "We thought we had..."

"Wait, I know the voice," she forced open her dry, chapped lips that had stuck to each other like Velcro. But her mind couldn't grasp any conscious thoughts. It was all getting addled up in a drug-like trance. The voice was so intimate, so distinct and the name came almost on her lips and escaped again.

"Well, that is..."

"Lean," she finally muttered. "You're Lean," she winced again.

"Yeah about that..."

"Oh my God. I'm really dead!" she wailed.

"Yes, and you're suffering for your sins by getting boiled in the cauldron by Hades himself," the voice sounded angry and amused at the same time.

"You're dead. You were dead," she still mumbled, her half-conscious thoughts trying to grasp onto stray pieces of words.

"Alizeh, I'm not dead and neither are you. Though you almost died," the voice sighed finally, coming closer. Alizeh turned her head to the side, forcing her eyes open.

Coppery hair, green eyes and that same queenly grace. It really was Aileana.
Unwarranted tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to find her arms to hug her friend that she had given up for dead. But she couldn't move her arms. She looked down at her body and saw only a white sheet spread on a frame which was covering her from below her neck.

"Yeah, but was I supposed to be dead?" the surprise and the shock was evident in her voice.

"Yes, our apartment burnt down in an ElectroBot attack," Alizeh reminisced.

"And so you thought that dying in a fire would be a befitting punishment for your sin of killing me. Are you crazy?"

"The entire mission was a vengeance..." Alizeh mumbled amd paused for a second.

"The mission?" her voice rose higher.

"You've been successful. The risks you all took for earning back our freedom, paid off. Cloud Nine has been evacuated. There are no barriers now. Laws have been amended to guarantee freedom of speech and the moon travel has been opened again," Aileana ranted in one breath, her eyes shining.

"Oh!" Alizeh looked up at the ceiling again, contemplating the implications of what happened, "So, how did I survive the fire?"

"You forgot that we were monitoring your moves, nitwit. You kept me on watch for any untoward incident. Couldn't you have sent us an SOS?" Aileana scolded, coming closer, and touching her cheek with her hands. She ran her fingers down the sides of her face.

"But how?" Alizeh was still confused.

"We, on earth, had carried out our own researches and we had a crude transporter in hand. When the transmission signals started showing static, I panicked and in a foolhardy attempt, without any training, I tried to teleport myself. I almost got lost in the grid, but when I reached you..." Aileana paused her hand on Alizeh's face. Her fingers were trembling slightly.

Alizeh simply looked down at the white sheets covering her torso.

"Forty per cent burns, you idiot. All because you're so forgetful. We thought, I thought..." Aileana's voice broke into a sob as tears ran down her face, "I couldn't lose you. Seeing you unconscious and on fire, in the midst of that burning inferno, is an image that I won't forget in my entire existence.

"So, that means, I'm fully burned from the neck down," Alizeh's voice broke.

"Not fully, but in patches. We thought you wouldn't make it," another soft voice whispered at the doorway somewhere.

"Maa?" Alizeh couldn't help the tears anymore. Hearing her mother's voice was the last straw.

Nothing seemed to matter anymore, the fear, the pain, the uncertainty and death was all lost on her as her mother moved towards her. The soft sound of her anklets filled the room. Her mother might have travelled to the moon and back, but when it came to dressing up, she would always be seen in her traditional saree and her characteristic silver jewellery.

Her mother kissed her forehead repeatedly as her tears fell on Alizeh's own eyes and flowed in one stream down from the corner of her eyes.

"You people are not allowed to come here. There is a high chance of infection," a shrill voice rang from the door as a doctor in a white coat approached them. He glared at her mom and Aileana who slunk away without another word. Lean had managed to wink at her before leaving.

"Now let's see the damage done, shall we?" the doctor flipped on the bright lights, throwing off the cover. She was naked all right, but her nakedness was the last thing on her mind just then. She closed her eyes in fright.

"Can I look?" her voice shook.

"I wouldn't advise it right now. You can however stay assured that you're in good hands. We were the best plastic surgeons of our day before the Audra government left us behind on the earth."

"I'm on earth?" she asked bewildered.

"You are. Lean didn't know where else to go."

"Oh!" she mumbled, "Could you allow Lean back in? I need some company."

"Please," Aileana's voice pleaded at the doorway.

"It's rude to eavesdrop, miss," the doctor announced glumly, "but this procedure could be painful and I need you to distract her."

Aileana tiptoed in silently.

"Jurian," Alizeh asked a single word.

"He's okay. I had called him to know that you're safe. He had left his friends and gone off on his own. Poor guy. He was hysterical," Aileana reassured, "You gave everyone the scare of their lives."

An all-consuming pain burned through her body at the unknown procedure the doctor was doing. She cried out and bit her lips.

"Hold still for a moment. The debriding needs to be done to help heal your wounds faster," the doctor didn't look up from his work, as he continued slicing into her burnt flesh.

"Cloud One, Cyanide," she asked again, swimming through the blinding pain.

"She had taken on two of them single-handedly. She's back on base as far as I heard," Aileana moved closer again, despite the doctor's sharp warning. "They're all worried about you and can't even come and see you. You know how much chaotic situations are now with the new government forming and people shifting out of the cloud and it's all a mayhem," she added for emphasis.

"Seems like I have lots of stories to hear," Alizeh joked, even as the immeasurable pain was breaking her apart.

"You've been sedated for five days, so yep," Aileana agreed.

"So where do we start?" Alizeh gave a pained smile.

"How about me finding a girlfriend?" Aileana winked at a gaping Alizeh.

Then she went on to tell her how she had met Miyoko and how they escaped together to the earth. She told about how they had developed feelings for each other and now they couldn't ask for anything more than to be with each other.

Alizeh listened to each word, hanging on to details about their first kiss, the first blossoming feelings, marvelling at how finding love was same yet different for the both of them.