“Want to guess how many storage containers I have scattered around the galaxy?” Antony asked. His face glowed brightly on the tablet screen, and Seph leaned back against the pillows, considering. He folded his hands under his chin.

“Maybe four?”

“I’m down to three, from seven. Soon as I got to this moon, I put in requests to get the four small ones delivered.”

“Anything good in them?”

“Clothes, some knick-knacks, and electronics. Old hearing aids. And—” Antony held up a bag of something with a bright red logo written in a language Seph didn’t recognize. He popped a chip into his mouth and crunched it. “Snacks. Not even expired.”

“Jackpot.”

“Anyway, I’ll wait to empty the other storage containers until I know where I’m headed next,” Antony said. “Which reminds me, there’s something I wanted to ask you about.” He smiled, betraying a tension in his eyes and jaw. Though their conversation had been casual, something had seemed off with him; his shoulders were too tight, and his foot tapped against the floor, out of view of his camera.

“Of course,” Seph said.

“Do you know New Calathea? It’s on Lythrum-9, so I thought you might have heard of it.”

“I do. I’ve passed through New Calathea on the way to visit family,” he said with a nod. “I’ve heard it’s a cool, artsy city near the mountains. Why do you ask?”

“My doctor linked me a database of health centers known for their work with prosthetics. New Calathea came up,” Antony said, forced casualness in his voice. “I thought the city looked nice.”

Seph’s eyebrows quirked up before he could stop them. “Yeah, I’ve heard it’s a good place to live.”

“Does it snow there?”

“I think so. My hometown is near the same latitude, and we had four seasons. New Calathea might get more snow, since it’s in the mountains, but I doubt it gets ridiculously cold.”

“Oh.” Antony frowned, a furrow appearing between his brows.

“Were you thinking about moving there?” Seph asked, trying his best to contain his surprise. Of all the planets in the universe, Antony was thinking about moving to Seph’s home planet. “Is snow a deal-breaker for you?”

“I don’t know. It seemed nice there, but I don’t know if I can—” He cut himself off. “I don’t know if I can do big, snowy mountains,” he said, voice oddly hoarse.

“I’d say they’re more like green hills,” Seph said. “What did you think of the photos of New Calathea?”

Antony shifted on the display before him. “I thought they looked like big, green hills until I saw this,” he said, sending Seph a photo of jagged, snow-covered mountains.

“There’s nothing like this in New Calathea,” Seph said. “Give me a moment.” He ran a quick search, his tongue between his teeth as he bent over his tablet. “This is the ‘Calathean mountain range,’ but it isn’t on Lythrum-9.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yep. Just a coincidence.”

Antony rubbed his forehead. “Oh my god, I’m so stupid. I should’ve been able to figure that out.”

“No, you aren’t stupid. It’s the same name, and it’s confusing,” Seph said.

Antony looked away.

“Hey,” Seph said, and waited until Antony reluctantly met his gaze through the screen. “You’re good. And I can say with reasonable confidence that there aren’t any huge, snowy mountains anywhere near New Calathea.”

“Okay,” Antony said. “Thanks.”

Seph thought back to that night when he, Kendra, and Antony had talked on the roof of the research station. Before Antony lost his arm. They had spoken of his previous expedition, where he had been out in the mountains, alone. “Is this related to your past expedition?” Seph asked carefully.

Antony was quiet for a long moment, running his fingers through his hair. He nodded.

“I’m here, if you ever want to talk about it. If it would help,” Seph said.

He glanced down and then back at Seph. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Antony sat beside him on the hotel room couch. Seph could almost pretend he was there in person, instead of being made of millions of tiny points of light.

“Did Kendra tell you anything else about my previous expedition, besides what I said that night when we were up on the roof of the research station?” Antony asked.

“Not much, but I remember it sounded terrifying,” Seph said. “You said you were alone in the mountains, and you heard strange sounds. Kendra mentioned you were there for a year and a half. She told me solo expeditions never go on for as long as yours did.”

“No, they don’t,” Antony said. He settled back against his couch’s arm, a faraway look on his face. “I was at a research station high in the mountains. Years ago, there had been a path to the villages at lower altitudes, but those places were long abandoned when I arrived.”

“With the avalanches over the previous decade, there was no way off the mountain. The base was only accessible by plane, and the isolation was intense,” he said. “The funding company had faster-than-light communication, but the tech was old. It could still take days for them to even get my messages, or so they said.”

He blew a puff of air out of his mouth. “My job was mostly confined to the base. I took readings and did data analysis and whatnot. Every two weeks, I went outside to download data from other probes that weren’t at the research station. I didn’t want to be caught outside at night, so I had to leave the station early on days I visited those probes.”

“There was so much snow that it never really got dark,” Antony said. “But everything turned an eerie shade of green, and the temperature plummeted. The research station had other probes on top of the building that I checked daily. Every night, I checked that all the doors in the research station were locked tight.”

Antony’s eyes glinted, and he let out a long, controlled breath. “After a few months, I started hearing noises at night. Sometimes it was tapping. Sometimes knocking. It never sounded like wind or like hail, and there was nothing out there to scrape against the building outside. Sometimes the sounds started at the front door and traveled clockwise around the building.”

Seph’s eyes widened. “Did you tell the company about it?”

Antony scowled. “Yeah, I did. They had wanted me to get a physical before hiring me, so they knew about my tinnitus. That was the first thing they said. ‘Have you checked your hearing aids?’”

“Seriously?”

“I sent them recordings of the noises, asking what could be making them. There were no people in the area and barely any animals, from what I read. The company just told me to lock the doors at night,” Antony said.

He clenched his fist against his knee. “One week, they had been hassling me about wanting data from a specific probe outside the station. I hiked out to find it, and so by the time I was done, the sun was setting. I ran back to the research station and locked the front door. Then I realized I’d never locked the upstairs door.”

“I bolted upstairs and locked all the deadbolts,” Antony said. “As soon as I did, there was pounding from the other side of the door, like someone slammed their fist against it. There was nothing on the cameras, and I was terrified. I locked myself in the bathroom that night.”

“What happened?” Seph asked.

“Nothing. Time passed. I arrived there in the fall, and by the next summer, the noises had tapered off. I was making a lot of money there, and once it stopped snowing, I could talk with my mom and her husband. We got into a routine, and it was nice to have time to speak with them. I was thinking I’d be leaving the research station by the end of summer. But no.”

Antony pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arm around them. “The company sent me a message and said if I didn’t respond, they would be extending my expedition until the end of fall. Of course I said no. I contacted multiple people in charge, saying no, I want out before fall. I was done.”

“But here’s the thing,” he said, scowling. “The company owned the satellite, and any information I sent went through them. Eventually I got a message back ‘confirming’ that they would extract me at the end of fall.” Antony fell quiet for a moment, picking at a pillow nearby.

“Did you tell your family what was going on?” Seph asked.

“Oh yeah. My mom was enraged, and she called the company, demanding to know why they weren’t extracting me earlier,” he said. “Naturally, they said they never heard from me that I wanted to be extracted. And by now it was fall.”

Antony ran his hand over the fabric of his pants, smoothing it out. “So communication with the people in charge of extraction went dead after that. The other departments were still hassling me, wanting me to find a probe that had gotten lost some two miles away. I was irritated, but I figured I could use some air. So I went to find it.”

“I got lost, and the sun went down.” He looked at Seph, his eyes wide. “I walked through a ravine with walls of snow and rock around me, and I heard noises. Shifting, and creaking, and scratching. I couldn’t see anything, but something told me not to run. I found a boulder to hide behind and I waited until the creaking and scratching stopped. Then I walked back as quietly as I could.”

“The knocking started up again after that. I recorded it, sent it to the company. I told them I wasn’t checking any probes outside the research station. No one complained,” he said. “I came up with a system. At midday, I went outside to check the probes on the roof. I checked all the locks three times a day: once after I got back inside, once two hours before sundown, and once an hour before sundown. Some days I found doors unlocked that I swore I had locked.”

“Did they not extract you at the end of fall?” Seph asked.

“No. They said it was the weather, that they couldn’t land a ship there. I tried to call for a medical evacuation, but the person I spoke with refused. So I told the company I was done, and I wasn’t doing any other work until they gave me an actual date for extraction.”

Antony laughed a low, bitter laugh and continued. “You know what happened? I actually spoke with someone from the company over video. He apologized and said there was no way they could get me out before early spring. Offered to pay me double to work until then.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “They did.”

“The noises, the pounding and knocking and scratching outside kept going through the winter,” Antony said. “After I checked the locks, I took out my hearing aids. I could still hear the sounds outside, but I focused on the roaring from my tinnitus instead. It was the only way I could sleep.”

“When did you get out of there?” Seph asked.

“It was early spring, like they said. Someone showed up in a shuttle, picked me up and dropped me off at a nearby space station. I got my last paycheck, and that was it,” he said. “A few months later, the company disappeared.”

“Wait, what? Disappeared?”

“Yeah. Everything officially related to them was just gone or disconnected. I found a few unofficial discussions saying one of their offices had a bad work environment, but that was all.” Antony shrugged. “So that was it. A year and a half of my life spent in an icy wasteland. What was out there, I’ll never know,” he said and then paused. “Do you believe me?”

“Of course I do,” Seph said. “I’m so sorry, but I’m glad you told me what happened. Do you feel okay after talking about it?”

“Yeah, I’m glad I told you, too.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Though now I’m feeling activated.” Then Antony’s expression brightened. “While I’ve got you here, I want to show you something.” He grabbed his tablet, resting it against his knee as he typed on it. After a moment, a prosthetic arm popped into existence. He held it out for Seph to see, its appearance changing as he swiped through multiple different models.

“Oh wow, that’s neat!” Seph said.

“Right? I decided I’m gonna get a removable prosthetic. There’s an initial surgery to get this base plate installed, and then I can take my pick of prosthetic arms. Best part is, I can try them on and see how the movement and sensation feel.”

“Antony, that’s awesome.”

“I finally feel better about getting a prosthetic. It’s easier to imagine what it’ll be like when I can see it here. I can even move it.“ He drew with his finger on the tablet and the holographic arm moved, moving slowly towards Seph’s face and tapping him on the nose.

Seph snorted, waving the hologram out of his face. It dispersed into tiny dots of light, swirling and reforming as Antony drew back. “Which arm is your favorite?”

“I like this one. There’s another one I liked too,” he said, flipping through something on his tablet. The prosthetic shifted, moving through a series of different models before settling on a sleek black and gray arm.

“That’s a gorgeous arm,” Seph said.

“It’s on me, so it ought to be,” Antony said with an exaggerated quirk of his eyebrows.

“Well, that’s true.” Seph smiled back at him. “Can I see?”

Antony held out his arm, palm up. Even with the slight fuzziness of the hologram, it was beautiful, smooth contours outlining defined muscles. “I’ve heard some prosthetics let you feel things remotely,” Antony said, looking at him intently. “Even through a hologram.”

“Is that right? So I could do this, and you’d feel it?” he asked, gripping the air where Antony’s forearm would have been.

“Guess so.”

“To be honest, I’d rather do that in person.”

“Really?” Antony grinned at him. “I mean, I’d be happy to oblige, but it’ll be some time before I get the prosthetic. You’ll have to make do with my other arm,” he said, and waved his fingers in Seph’s face.

Blood rushed to Seph’s cheeks and ears, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “All I mean is that I’d like to come see you sometime.”

Antony laughed. “I’d like that, too,” he said.