3 Andrea I woke up the next morning at 6 AM, wondering where I was briefly before seeing the warm brick walls of my room and vines falling from hanging planters. The sun shone from under thick cloth curtains, and I could see that the rest of the city had woken up, trams on the streets below zooming by and people of all species going about their daily business. The futuristic constructs of the Mordanians, oddly elegant in their own way, were scattered across this view like metallic mushrooms. And then the rest of my situation came back to me. Daqtar, the occupation, the hospital. Talrun, the Daqtarian I’d met yesterday. Well, I’d met many aliens yesterday, most Daqtarian, one Mordanian child, and a few others. Some were worse off than others. Talrun, though… he’d only had the equivale

