— Mom, you tell him! — Jennie whined, dragging struggling Drago around the room in a chokehold.

— Good evening, Mrs. Aife, — the young man managed to wheeze through a strangled throat.

Jennie’s mother came upstairs to call her daughter for dinner, but was greeted with a scene of violence the moment she opened the perfectly soundproof door. Far from surprised, however, she was quite welcoming:

— Hello, Drago. Cool jacket! What did you do this time?

— I hope you are being sarcastic about the jacket, don’t encourage him! — Jennie intervened. — He vomited on the floor! Can you imagine it?!

— So, is it dirty now? — her mother flashed an enigmatic smile.

— What? No, but—

— So now you understand! — she wore the brightest expression.

Both Jennie and Drago paused their struggle, looking at her. After approaching a cream-colored roomba on the floor, Mrs. Aife picked it up. It had slick and minimalistic design, a drastic contrast with the aggressive military theme of the rest of this room. Holding it like a baby, she rubbed her cheek against the plastic lovingly, like a farmer who hugs their prized vegetable for a photo to be presented in a newspaper:

— Buying the DUST DESTROYER-3000 was the right decision after all! It deals perfectly with any kind of dirt and is an inseparable member of any respectable household!

Witnessing a beautiful woman flattering a house appliance, Drago was left speechless. It was like watching a live commercial.

Jennie, on the other hand, wasn't having any of it:

— Bullshit! I would've cleaned up myself if you gave me even a fifth of its price. The annual digital license is so expensive, I should ask it for pocket money instead. And what’s with this pet name? The original “Clean Crusader Model 7” sounds much better…

— Cleaning up by yourself is unladylike, and besides… — she continued to present the arguments about the absolute necessity of this exact cleaner for a while.

Relaxing in distracted Jennie’s softened embrace, Drago wondered how Mrs. Aife could exude such youthful energy of infomercial conman after the full day of work. The way she approached the subject of unnecessary spending was the defense fitting her status as a top lawyer in a best law firm in this Sector.

 

After a few minutes the three of them were dining downstairs. Mr Aife was still busy with work, outside of this space station.

Just like Drago's dad, he worked in construction. No matter how easy it was to navigate within the same star system with FTL, going back home every evening was simply too inconvenient.

You didn't have to have a personal vehicle - the local workers could board almost any service vessel flights without any additional fee. The only constraint was the time.

Schedule wasn't too flexible, as the construction work hadn't stopped for the past sixteen years (some say it even increased in scope), but there was enough leeway. You could head back to the colony to sleep every day if you wanted to, but dragging yourself back and forth was too taxing even for the healthiest body. Purple generally settled for visiting your family once or twice per week, exchanging extra work hours for more frequent days off.

Despite being neighbors, the sites "dads" worked at were very far from each other. Recently, Drago managed to form a connection between the two families in the official setting, but it wasn't a pleasant one.

— I couldn't say it in person, so again - thank you, Mrs. Aife! — Drago bowed his head awkwardly without standing up from the table. The important matter almost slipped from his mind because of the mood. — Without your help, the case with the missing materials would’ve been pinned on my father.

— “I was just doing my job” is what I would’ve liked to say here, but without your plea, this would’ve been surely swept under the rug. Our start system is relatively young and still a bit mismanaged, so many such things slip through the cracks… — she sighed tiredly.

The boy was desperate, so he asked for help without thinking, but her own husband was a reserved person, who hated to appear weak. Because of this she didn’t even know if he’s experiencing any difficulties at work, which made her worry.

— But enough about nasty stuff. Let’s talk about something fun instead! Why did you, an uninvited guest, have to smear my dear daughter’s room with vomit? — she teased Drago.

Jennie was a little bit too eager to answer, joining in on the “fun”:

— It was like this! Drago brought a movie to watch…

“A model answer, the excuse is mostly true, but the key information is concealed”, he immediately started dissecting the words. The Infiltration classes were taking their toll on the mentality, without even the person noticing it himself.

— There was a space pirate, who… — Jennie continued.

— An adventurer, more likely! — Drago corrected her.

— A PIRATE, — she kicked his shin under the table, — who was escaping a chase from the military, had to crash his ship mid-FTL and used a custom mobile armor, with propulsion modules installed on every limb… …there wasn't enough visual data to conclude… …the power cells' location, if I had to speculate—

Drago glanced at Mrs. Aife’s face and chuckled as he met her gaze. Surely, she knew her own daughter as well as he did - they both precisely caught the exact moment when the “story” shifted into an “otaku rant”, but couldn't quite set it back straight.

As the description of a custom mobile armor could go on for the rest of the evening, Drago intervened in a slight timing between his friend’s breaths as naturally as possible:

— So with just a mobile armor, — he shot a glance at Jennie. Fortunately, she was just scooping food from her plate, seemingly unaware. — …he managed to traverse quite a distance, and ended up crawling into the nearest space station through a service shaft. There he was mauled by a worker dog-bot. It was a basic model, equipped with a laser gun for some reason, so with his guts hanging out—

— Oh dear, dismemberment must be hard on the stomach, - Mrs. Aife nodded in understanding.

Drago swallowed his desire to correct her about that. Less than half a day ago he was literally swimming in guts during the practice lesson in group combat, but this was not a detail to be shared at the dining table. But then again, the current topic wasn't any better.

— An, no, this part was actually censored, — a little lie was appropriate to keep the flow of conversation going. — This adv… pirate barely held on to get to the maintenance floors with breathable air and, naturally, blacked out. It didn't look like he had a supernatural ability connected to vitality, so the chances of ever waking up again relied only on the slim possibility of him having expensive implants… — Drago's voice was gradually becoming weaker and finally came to a halt.

Jennie, who just silently played with her phone a while, smiled wryly and picked up the story with a tiny bit of venom in her voice:

— A teenager came running, and saved the pirate. But before using an Elixir-type medkit, he took out his scalpel and violently opened up the poor guy’s skull…

It was obvious to Drago that Jennie was upset for interrupting her. She tried her best to act evil, accenting the things that he found uncomfortable.

The vile scheme, however, had the exact opposite effect as its target was too busy thinking how unbearably cute that attempt was; all feelings of repulsion were pushed out by the much stronger ones.

— …and implanted something. — Not seeing the desired reaction from Drago, Jennie pouted, returned her eyes to the phone’s screen and continued in a bored voice. —  It was probably some kind of a mental module, in case the suspicious person turns out to be a dangerous criminal. Isn't it a reasonable precaution? I don't understand why it brought you so much discomfort.

With the brief reverie disappearing quickly, Drago frowned again:

— It’s just a concept itself that disgusts me. Any kind of non-consensual bodymods make my skin crawl. Waking up with an unknown chip in your brain… UGHH! — he visibly shuddered.

Jennie finally got some material to work with and unleashed her attack again. Drago met it with a fake bravado, trying to argue for reasonable explanations of his fear.

Fully immersed in their conversation, they didn't notice how Mrs. Aife's relaxed expression gradually shifted to more and more rigid.

Why didn't she notice it sooner?

Dog-bots never were something widely used in the Empire, The publicly available technology was too poor to use one as a worker and equipping it with a laser is straight up illegal.

But this could be written off as a lucky prediction of the movie’s production team.

Not the Elixir.

It wasn’t just “an Elixir”, as it is “a word”, after all.

The “Elixir-type medkit”.

For the kids it could seem like common knowledge, but only for them.

This article was so confidential, even a mention of the name outside of this star system’s premises could lead to a major purge.

The only reason Mrs. Aife even came to know about it was her job and once-in-a-lifetime string of lucky connections.

An almost flat white box with a green boxy-looking cross on one side.

One of the higher-ups from the Sector had to bury themself in a pile of paperwork just to register as a temporary holder of one.

 

— I think the student did the right thing. Wasting such a precious resource as the Elixir on a possibly dangerous element with no strings attached is unthinkable. The non-consensual implant is surely immoral, but in this story his life was ready to be extinguished at any given moment. Receiving such grace should override any qualms about the matter.

Confronted with a very serious answer, Drago and Jennie paused their bickering and after a short pause had no choice but to voice their agreement. It was reasonable, after all.

An awkward silence settled in the air.

— Oops! — Mrs. Aife covered her mouth with her hand, speaking in a deliberately lighthearted tone. — Forgive this lady for spoiling the mood. I feel tired all of the sudden, let’s clean after ourselves and be on “our” way, — she smiled with her eyes at Drago.

 

Few minutes later, at the front door, Jennie was still pouting a bit:

— You owe me one.

— Tch…You and your perfect memory. And here I thought you wouldn’t have the leisure to dwell on it… — Drago tried to make a joke with a silly expression.

— Let me guess, because I am too distracted by the severe ugliness of your jacket? — Jennie played along, revealing that her mood isn’t actually that bad.

— Naturally, because of the assignment you were working on when I came! — it was not a good joke.

Jennie’s face fell.

— It isn’t due tomorrow… right? — it was, in fact, not a joke at all.

The door closed in front of his face loudly.

With his head up in the clouds, Drago was going home with a bouncing step, reminiscing about the pleasant time spent with Jennie.

Suddenly, Drago felt a slight buzz in the inner pocket of his school uniform.

— Huh? — he took his phone out. — So I didn’t forget it at home? What a twist, I totally thought I did. It is waterproof, right? — he remembered the journey his uniform went through today.

It was a message from Jennie:

“in case you’re worried (AS IF) i was already almost done with it :P i won’t watch the 'movie' without you so don’t fret xD”

Drago smiled and typed just two letters:

“LM”
“whats this? :o ”, — the answer came immediately.

“Lowercased Monkey”, — Drago felt an indescribable joy about making this dumbestest joke and hurried to close the messenger app and disable the notifications.

While the storm was certainly brewing somewhere, the glimpse of a lonely “ >:< “ pop-up of an angry horizontal emoticon will be the last thing Drago would see from this chat until tomorrow.

Reaching in his pocket for a key, he opened the door of his house and entered while still wearing the jacket. After walking into the living room, the young man froze like a statue.

 

A tall man in a trenchcoat was sitting on the sofa, sipping tea gracefully, while Drago’s mother was running around, bringing him sweets. She was talking like a machine gun, flattering the guest and recounting all the nasty things she could remember about her son (it was not a finite list).

Her zealous ramblings only stopped when the person from the police spoke calmly and quietly:

— Hello, Drago. Nice jacket you’re wearing here.

 

There was a hovercar parked outside.