Oh no. Is he oka- well, clearly not... 

When the mandatory group session starts, she gets a little bag of trail mix out of her backpack and puts it on his desk, then hesitantly asks him if he wants her to cover his part of the project? 

He glares at her. "No."

That does get him to start paying attention to their project, though. He's still quiet, preferring to work on his own part while she works on hers, but he's contributing. After a few minutes, he even hesitantly takes some trail mix, picking out the bits he likes (raisins, sunflower seeds, some of the nuts) rather than grabbing a handful. 

Ah.

She wilts a bit at his reproach, but once he starts working she works in parallel with him, and is happy to see him eating a bit, at least. 

As days turn into weeks, the Garrison keeps its promise to stay in contact with the relatives of the missing crewmembers. Keskel and Ami get regular updates whenever there's any progress to report, always at least a day or two before the same information hits the public newsfeeds. 

(After those first few days, there seems to be a specific junior comms officer assigned to the task. She introduces herself as Veronica; she sounds Hispanic, not much older than Kes, and genuine in her sympathy.) 

By the end of the first week or so, they can rule out that the damage was something the Kerberos crew could have easily repaired. The probabilities of various scenarios adjust themselves accordingly. The Garrison has analysts going over the last few minutes of data from the Orfeo with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, looking for any irregularities. By week three, they've redirected the orbital telescopes around Jupiter to point at Kerberos and finalised crew selections for the potential rescue mission (which some wit has named Heurodis). 

Week by week, more data trickles in: from the Orfeo's final transmissions, from relay satellites, from cutting-edge image enhancing programs run on the photos from cutting-edge telescopes. None of it is conclusive. None of it, despite Veronica's best efforts, is reassuring. 

Ami stops hiding in her room after the first day, when she gets hungry enough to remember that she needs to feed her family.

She listens anxiously when Keskel is on the calls. After the first one, they have a system - Kes on speakerphone, Ami taking notes on a laptop, a second display plugged into it and facing Kes if she wants to prompt them to ask more or clarify some specifics. It works pretty well - they've done this before, when navigating bureaucracy (But usually - Matty was on the phone -). 

Ami doesn't trust them, is what it comes down to. The more she pokes at it, the more she has this nagging feeling that they aren't telling them everything. 

She has a quiet fight with Kes about it, the night they have to leave to go back to college. They - think Veronica is being honest with them, that it's probably not some conspiracy, that the Garrison is doing its best to communicate with them and to get Matty back. Ami - can't agree. It's too shifty. Something happened, something weird, and they are lying. Maybe Veronica believes what she's saying - that just means they're lying to her, too. And that wouldn't be very surprising, really. Kes says she's thinking like a conspiracy theorist. The discussion mostly ends there. She hugs them goodbye, and gets to thinking.

She wants access to the Garrison's secure data storage. She wants to see what happened in the unedited footage that the people she's found online have proved must exist, the one that they concocted this entire story to conceal. And she's not a genius-level hacker, so her most likely path to achieving this by convincing someone to tell her. 

Except Veronica clearly has never seen the actual footage, and Nuadh's contacts don't know anything either (but some of them agree that it feels - fishy) so if Ami wants that info she is going to have to get close to someone vaguely important at the Garrison itself. And none of them spend much time socializing online, what with their busy and secretive careers, so she needs to be there.

Nuadh (seeming unsure of xirself) suggests that maybe Ami could test in as a communications specialist? Xi offers to help her study, says that the next test is next weekend, and that probably isn't enough time, but that Ami will be able to retake it next semester and doing it now will be good practice anyways. 

Ami starts studying.

And then, in early January, there's a call.

"It's...it's bad," Veronica says, sounding shaky. "You might want to sit down." 

And then she lays it out for them. The analysts have crunched all the numbers, the image enhancement software has eked detail out of every pixel of camera footage and telescope imaging, and...they're pretty sure they've found evidence of a crash. A bad one.

They don't think there were any survivors. 

When she's done, Veronica hesitates. "...I know it's just words, and I know it doesn't help anything, but...I truly am sorry for your loss." 

Ami turns off her video and mutes her microphone as soon as it's clear to her what's going on.

Keskel, calling in from their college room, starts crying at about the same time. Their boyfriend rushes over about a minute later (having gotten a text from Ami) and he comforts them throughout the rest of the call.

When Veronica finishes, Ami unmutes, and in a remarkably clear voice, thanks Veronica for everything she's done for their family, and then indicates via the system that she wants to transfer the call to a private one between herself and Kes.

She tells Kes she loves them and that she's so sorry. She's going to come visit them for a few days, no it's not optional, yes she can take the time off school, her teachers will understand. She'll stay in the near-campus hotel. 

Kes, through their sobs, asks her if she can afford it. Ami - doesn't mention that she's already seen the numbers on Matty's life insurance policy, since she helped him with the paperwork - and just says that she has plenty of savings, and needs to be there for them. She picks out flights (arriving in 2 days, staying for a week) while comforting them both over the phone, tells Kes that she loves them again, thanks their girlfriend for taking care of them, and then apologetically ends the call "I need to pack and clean up here, sorry" before either of them think to ask how she's doing.

The thing is - she already knew, in her heart of hearts, that Matty was gone (and Shiro, too, even though - he promised - )

Space exploration history is mandatory core curriculum, and it was one of the classes she was most invested in, so she knows. Non-trivial accidents in spacecraft are almost never survivable. Sure, she hoped - who wouldn't? - but this isn't surprising. The fact that there's footage that the Garrison is hiding just means that the failure was probably something very embarrassing to them. Maybe an obvious equipment failure that would have made them look culpable. Maybe something weirder. 

So. Matty is gone. She can live with that. She has to be able to live with that. Kes needs her. 

But - she can't live with not knowing what happened. She's had enough that for one lifetime. And those bastards at the Garrison do, and if they won't tell her - 

She picked an evening flight so she'd still be able to take the aptitude test to transfer in as a comms student. She spends the next day studying with Nuadh, but when she goes in for the test, she fails, badly enough that she isn't sure if she'll make it next time even if she studies full time. 

She asks Nuadh if there's another way. Xi sees the look in her eyes, and - says xi might know somebody who could help, actually, though it might be expensive...

She leaves for the airport. Hires someone to come by the house and leave food outside her dad's door while she's gone. Wonders, absentmindedly, if he'll notice that anything's changed. 

(She didn't bother telling him. What would be the point?)

Somewhere between Ami leaving for the airport and meeting Keskel at the other side, the news hits the global media. It's even sparser than what the families were told: the mission to Kerberos has been officially declared lost, all crew presumed dead, and the planned rescue mission has been cancelled.

The true cause of the mission failure is unknown, but they've all but ruled out a mechanical fault, so it's been officially recorded as pilot error. 

The news spread like wildfire around the Garrison, of course, and even the cadets knew the Heurodis mission was being cancelled at least a week ago. 

So it can't be that part that has Cadet Keith Kogane getting into a fight with Commander Iverson the day the final announcement, with its finding of 'pilot error', goes public. Their shouting match, which seems to be about the pilot in question—the name 'Shiro' comes up a lot—is very loud, very public, and leaves Iverson nursing a bandaged eye.

Keith is escorted off campus by security guards, not even given time to pack. 

Magini doesn't see him get dragged off (she's been talking a lot to Kani, lately, and trying to stay on top of schoolwork) but when the video starts going around someone sends it to her with a "hey, isn't that your ICS partner?"

Oh no. Poor Keith...

Keith gets a series of messages from her.

Are you okay?

...sorry. dumb question.

let me know if you need anything?

✔ Read 3:27am

...yeah. That makes sense.

She finishes their project on her own, but leaves his name on it. 

Ami extends her hotel stay for another 2 weeks - Keskel is distraught, and she falls back into the old habits of doing everything she can to keep their life running. Their boyfriend is taking it hard, too, so she does what she can to keep them both afloat, emailing teachers, cooking, cleaning, and holding Kes while they cry.

(She remembers to call the man she hired to feed her dad and send him enough money for the extra time, along with a tip for being up for extending the contract on short notice).

 After the the chaos of the first week dies down, she starts working on helping them find a therapist. Lies, when Kes asks if she's getting therapy, which she doesn't like doing, but - they need it, and she doesn't, and there's no way she'll be able to convince them of that.

She doesn't need therapy. She needs answers.

Nuadh sends her the contact info of someone who goes by the alias polar-sky-snakes and won't otherwise identify themselves. They claim to have a way of bypassing the system that gets used to wipe the storage of omnicalcs that applicants bring in before they take tests, at the facility where she's taking the test. They want - what she's used to thinking of as a lot money for it, but it's nothing she can't afford, now. 

Ami tells PSS she'll pay 10% upfront and the rest after the test, and ends up gets haggled down to 25/75. She leaves the money in an unmarked envelope and hides it at the drop point - they send her a simple checkmark a few hours later to confirm that they've received it. 

She starts studying again, this time for an open-book test. It's still way over her head, for now, but she has until the end of summer, now, so she can tell it'll be possible, as long as PSS isn't scamming her. ("No use worrying about it now", she hears Matty saying in her head. "Either it will happen or it won't, and all you need to do is have a plan for both.")

Months pass. 

Magini is sleeping in (she pulled another all-nighter to finish her homework) when she's jolted awake by her phone ringing. She fumbles with her phone (why is Kani calling her?) and then -

The voice on the other end is clearly hyperventilating.

 "Magini - I'm so so sorry - I shouldn't have left her alone - I didn't know -"

Several miserable hours later, her teachers all get the same email: 

A close friend of mine committed suicide last night.  I am going to be out of school for a week to go to the cremation and be with a mutual friend. I would like to get an extension on homework due over that period, if possible. 

Sorry for the trouble.

- Magini Zils

Her teachers respond with varying degrees of sympathy but, more importantly, most of them do give her the extensions. 

One of the TAs sends:

You may have already filled it out, but in case you hadn't, here's a link to the form you need to submit for an excused absence from this week's classes. (You want section 4b. Fair warning, it's invasively detailed.) My condolences for your loss, and please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. 

Adam Wheeler

:( thanks

and then 15 minutes later

stars you were not kidding about the invasiveness!! appreciate the warning

The 71 minutes between when Kani finds the body and when she can stop taking actions are burned into her brain, but once her dads bring her home from Thrana's small apartment (she told them very clinically over the phone that she didn't think she could take the bus - she was having trouble breathing right, and that it was kinda scary and really distracting), she curls up into a ball, sobbing, and loses track of time completely. (why... why...)