“Um…” Nero mutters something I do not quite catch. He looks around, as if he is suddenly a little too nervous, and says, “Is Sire not your name, Sire?”

My head retreats back into my shoulders. I cringe, and blurt, “What? Whatever gave you such a horrendous idea?”

“The people on board, Sire... They kept on calling you, well, Sire…”

“Stop it, please,” I say as I hold up a single palm in the air between us and shake my head. “Seriously, I’m not Sire, and we’re not on the ship!”

“But why did they—”

“Sire is a title, it isn’t a name.”

Nero tilts his head. He blinks twice in what I believe to be confusion. “What is a title?”

I sigh. “Never mind. My name is Aster. Just… stick with that, please, and don’t call me Sire again; it’s disgusting.”

“Oh… okay,” Nero says, seemingly disappointed for reasons I ignore.

“Where did you tell it to go anyway?” I say.

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“The ship.” I motion towards the control panel. “You must have inserted certain coordinates, right? Which ones were they? I’d prefer knowing if we’re on the verge of flying into the sun.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

I cross my arms and scoff. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to impress me with your sense of humor.”

“But I’m not joking,” Nero cries. “I just closed the hatch and then it went poof into the outside world!”

“Poof…” I echo as a nervous laughter takes me by the throat. “Poof, you said… poof…” I pause, my head hangs low as my fists come to rest in my lap. “Nero…”

“Yes, Si—Aster?”

“If you didn’t give it any coordinates…” My attention slowly turns his way. “Then where exactly are we heading?” But I don’t give him the time to answer. My eyes widen, I push up against my knees and dash to the control panel. As my hands brush against boards filled with data and keys, I gasp. “It can’t be…”

Nero joins my side. “What is it?” he asks.

I flinch from finding him suddenly next to me. Nero’s shoulder bumps against mine; I’m surprised to find it does… absolutely nothing to me—in comparison to what father had claimed would have happened should we touch, Nero seems… very harmless so far.

What’s going on?

“Aster?” Nero tilts his head to get a better look at me. He blinks. “You are not glitching, are you?”

I scoff and roll my eyes. “I can’t glitch, you idiot.”

“Why not?”

“Only computers do that?”

“Oh.”

There is a moment of silence, before he asks me, “What’s a computer?”

“It’s… never mind.” I sigh. “I’ll tell you later. Right now, we really must discover a way to hack into this system and change its coordinates.”

Nero’s gaze is empty of any understanding I could have hoped to find in him. “…Hack?” he says.

I groan and press a palm to my forehead. “Right… I guess I’m on my own…” I mutter, finding myself missing the loud hum of the station; for the ominous silence of outer space is far too unnerving.

“Aster, why cannot we continue this journey?” Nero asks me. “What is wrong with where we are going?”

I bite my lip and stare down at the multiple alerts that pop onto the screen above my fingers that frantically type away at three different keyboards—but the result is always the same in the end: They all read Access Denied.

It’s not working…

“It’s…”

I want to puke.

“We're heading for my home planet, Nero…” I force the words out as I turn to face him, my hand still lingering on the controls. “Vlexidia… We're heading for Vlexidia.”