"It's a checkmate!"

"It is not!"

"It is too!"

"My bishop could take your king and so could my rook." Rey pointed to the pieces as she referred to them with exaggerated flair, as if explaining the game to a toddler. "No matter how you move, I win. That's called a checkmate."

"Not if I move up." Ten reached over and picked up his king, holding it a few inches above the board.

"You can't move up in chess! That's against the rules!" Rey pouted in dismay.

"Planet rules, maybe," Ten grinned. "But this is space. There's no gravity out here, so you can move in whatever direction you want."

"Actually, this is an Argonian ship set to Argonian gravity - 0.8 G's - and I'm the princess of Argon and I hereby declare that I'm right and you're wrong." Rey stood up from her polished white stool and placed her hands on her hips, adopting her idea of an authoritative pose.

"You only use your princess voice when you know I'm right." Ten flashed a self-satisfied grin as he placed his king back down on the chessboard.

"I also use it when you're being annoying." Rey cut her comeback short at the sound of a commotion beneath her feet. She heard several loud, overlapping voices, though the spaceship's thick walls muffled their words.

"I wonder what our parents are doing down there."

"I dunno. Boring king and queen stuff." Ten swung from side to side in his rolling chair. "You and Aranzar will find out when you're older. And meanwhile, I get all the time in the world to travel the galaxy and cheat at chess. I almost feel sorry for you guys."

"So you admit it!" Rey whipped around, pointing at Ten victoriously. "Moving 'up' is cheating!"

"I never said that," Ten smiled slyly. "But while you were busy complaining about my floating king, I did take the liberty of shuffling a few pieces around."

"You're the worst! I'm never playing chess with you again!" Rey fumed.

Almost as if responding to her declaration, the cylindrical door to the ship's living quarters swung open to reveal two Argon space troopers in crisp blue uniforms.

"Your Highness," one of them nodded his head at Rey in acknowledgment. "Please step away from the Xenonese citizen."

Rey watched in bewilderment as they brushed past her and took hold of both of Ten's arms, yanking him out of his chair. The sight of two armed soldiers manhandling a skinny Xenonese boy who liked coloring books and looking at pond water under a microscope like he was a hardened criminal was almost comical, though Rey immediately hated herself for thinking so.

"What is the meaning of this?" Rey finally found her voice as they dragged Ten to the door.

"Our Earthen delegation was just bombed by the Xenonese," the soldier explained. "His Majesty has suspended diplomatic relations between our two colonies, effective immediately."

He spoke quickly, but Rey understood what he was saying. At least, most of it. Xenon had long been eyeing Argon's place of favor with the homeworld, but that they would go so far as to commit an act of war...

"I don't know what the Xenonese government is up to, but Tenzar had nothing to do with it!" Rey protested as Ten squirmed anxiously in the soldiers' grasp. "This idiot wouldn't know a bomb from a football!"

"Hey!" Ten stuck out his tongue at Rey, his indignation momentarily cutting through his fear.

"His involvement with the incident notwithstanding, he is a citizen of a hostile nation. We must follow the appropriate protocols."

Appropriate protocols. That did not sound good. "You can't take him away! He's my friend, and I'm your princess, and I won't let you!" Rey straightened her back and used her best princess voice, but the soldiers handcuffed Ten anyway.

"You can't keep me here! I want to go home! Rey, tell them I want to go home!" Ten's lip trembled as the metal clicked into place.

"Hey, there's someone-"

Before the soldier could finish his sentence, he fell forward, revealing a smoking hole in the back of his head. With the handcuff chain still in his hand, he almost took Ten down with him, but Rey jumped forward to pull him out of the way. The other soldier drew his rapier, but the tall, muscular boy behind him knocked it forcefully out of his hand with the butt of his blaster.

"Prince Aranzar!" he exclaimed in surprise as Ten's cousin ducked under his fist and kicked him in the stomach, sending him stumbling backward into the wall. Before he could recover, Aranzar put three successive blaster bolts in his head.

The Xenonese were as showy as the Argonese were minimalistic. Aranzar wore a bright red coat trimmed with gold fringe and he'd just killed two men without putting so much as a wrinkle in it.

"Stop gaping like a little girl and come with me." Aranzar held out a gloved hand to Ten who gripped Rey's hand, both of them trembling.

"You... you killed them," Ten finally managed to sputter. "I'm not going anywhere with you! Murderer!"

"There's more soldiers coming." Aranzar fell silent, drawing attention to the sound of boots on the ground outside. "Would you prefer to spend the next few years in an Argonese prison? Come!" He took hold of Ten's arm, but Rey held on tighter.

"You can't take him away! You can't take him away from me!"

"Rey. Rey, wake up. I'm right here."

Rey opened her eyes to the sensation of someone gently shaking her awake. Ten. She awkwardly removed her head from his shoulder, wondering how she had managed to get in that position. It was only then that she became aware of her death grip on his arm. She let go of him to see that her nails had left fine, red imprints in his skin.

"Sorry," she muttered in embarrassment, shifting her weight in her chair.

"It's okay." Ten smiled that smile of his that was like warm honey, coating every scar and dulling every ache. "You were just dreaming."

She must have dozed off. As meditation had taught her, she tended to do that when she was bored. The two of them had set up a couple of chairs and a monitor outside Ten's lab and were watching it nonstop. Ten had wired it to a set of hidden cameras in the kitchen after Rey's discovery, theorizing that the food thief, whatever it was, was most likely to make an appearance if they steered clear of its domain. To that end, they'd stashed a few days' rations in Rey's room and began their torturously long wait.

"Not a dream. A memory." Rey shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. She told herself she wasn't any closer to trusting Ten, but the confused agony of the beginning of the war - an experience they had shared - was still fresh in her mind. She felt like she was living her whole life out of order, her emotions garbled and combined in ways they were never meant to be, and Ten was the only constant in it all. For better or worse, she was stuck with him. At least he seemed more trustworthy than the Module's third occupant. "I can't believe we were playing chess when it started. Chess, of all things."

"You don't start the worst day of your life knowing it's going to be the worst day of your life," Ten replied somberly.

"The soldier was dead, but Aranzar kept shooting him and there was nothing behind his eyes. Nothing." Rey couldn't shake the image of the fourteen-year-old Prince of Xenon standing calmly over his victims with the steely composure of a killer twice his age. He wasn't looking at them out of any semblance of fear or remorse. He was just making sure they were dead so that he could move on with his life.

"That's Aranzar for you," Ten shrugged. Rey was at a loss. She remembered how horrified he'd been while witnessing the deed, but now, he almost took it for granted.

"That man is a king now. You aren't concerned by that at all?"

"Aranzar is a bit of a psychopath," Ten admitted. "He'd do anything for Xenon. Cross any line, even at great personal risk. And as much as I hate to admit it, that's exactly what makes him an effective king."

Maybe it wasn't Rey's emotions that were confusing her. Maybe it was Ten. At one moment, he seemed like he wouldn't hurt a fly, and the very next, he was justifying Aranzar's brutal tactics? Maybe that's what happens when you're raised in a time like this. Maybe it isn't always clear which parts are you and which ones are the war. Maybe Rey was the same way...

"What about me? Do you think I'd make an effective queen?"

This question seemed to catch Ten off-guard. "Um... of course you would. I wouldn't be here if I thought you wouldn't."

"Why?"

"I don't understand why you're asking me-"

"Just answer the question, please."

"Let's see..." Ten trailed off, gathering his thoughts. "You're way too curious. You have to know how everything works and what everyone's doing. The kind of corruption that started this stupid war would never fly under the radar with you on the throne. And you actually care. I was happy to hole up in my lab when the war started, but not you. You were on the front lines as soon as you were old enough to volunteer, and raising money long before that. Something about not subjecting the people of Argon to any risk you wouldn't take yourself. It was pretty inspiring, actually."

"I fought in the war." Something about that thought didn't sit right with Rey. She knew she was good with a sword, but she'd assumed that was something she learned to pass the time and connect with her First Explorer heritage. Not a skill that had ever been put to practical use. "Was I... was I like Aranzar?"

"That's what you're worried about?" Ten's brow furrowed with concern as he thought through his past few statements, realizing how they could be interpreted that way. "Rey, you two are both good at what you do. I won't lie about that. But Aranzar fights against people. You fight for them. There's a difference... it's subtle, but it matters."

"Does it?" Rey was not convinced.

"It matters to me," Ten said in a small voice, sounding almost guilty. God, she wanted to trust him. If only she could get him to explain himself!

"I'm sorry, but I have to ask. How did you end up down here with - "

Before she could finish her sentence, Ten's motion sensor let out a warning beep. He instantly snapped to attention, opening his surveillance program and saving the ten seconds of video on either side of the warning as a separate file.

"Alright. Here goes..." He played the feed from the individual cameras one at a time, and they all showed the same impossible thing. One second, the kitchen was perfectly clean and the ration counter read 196. The next, everything that had been on the countertops was on the floor and the Module only had 133 days of food left.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

Rey nodded silently as Ten worked through the section of video in question frame by frame, but that approach provided no more detail. One frame showed a pristine kitchen that had been ransacked in the next. The images looked like they had been taken minutes apart, though they were really separated by a fraction of a second. It didn't make the slightest bit of sense.

"The cameras capture 30 frames per second and the kitchen is about two meters across. Whatever's eating our food got in and out of the kitchen between frames, which means it moved four meters in 33 milliseconds. Nothing that's alive goes that fast."

"Well, clearly, something does." Rey looked at Ten expectantly. "Aren't we lucky there's a biologist down here to figure out what?"