When Zash wakes up, he is not lying on the sand, and he is not dead.

He's handcuffed, though, and while he's on something that could be considered a bed, it's a bit makeshift. And... there are people arguing.

"He's just a kid, Brad!"

"Oh, yeah, because we had a ton of those on the ships. Oh wait! No there weren't. Whatever is going on with this kid is against every single regulation in the book, at least, and all of the ships failing at once? Probably hostile action. So yeah, I want to question him instead of cooing over how he's small and cute and just a kid, he probably knows something about what happened!"

"I'm not against questioning him, but have some damned empathy! How bad are we if we find a kid who's near death and just immediately start shaking him down for everything he knows??"

The boy stirs and pulls his knees in to his chest to hug them.

"Better than being dead because we got blindsided by another hostile --"

"Hush, you, he's awake. Hey! Are you okay, do you need anything? We were going to get an IV in you but our med officer kind of has their hands full and none of the rest of us know how to do it, how are you feeling...?"

He looks up at her, and then away, hugging his knees in even tighter.

"... Okay, well, here's some water if you want any."

She does in fact deposit a water bottle next to him.

"Oh yeah, sure, not like we need that ourselves on this hostile and waterless wasteland world. Let's just hand out water to everyone."

"Brad."

He rolls his eyes, irritated, but does in fact shut up.

"Keep it," he says. "I don't want it."

Brad looks like he absolutely wants to say 'Well, you heard the kid!' and snatch back the water bottle, but: he's still shutting up. Verbally, anyway. His face is nonetheless very expressive.

"Well it'll be here for you anyway, we've got several plants that are already specced towards water generation." And no plant engineer to safely change their output, because their plant engineer's cryopod failed in the crash. He woke up suffocating in his own cryofluid, and drowned. "Which ship were you on?"

The boy flinches at something, then looks away again and says, "Ship Five."

"Five...?" repeats Luida. Five is not one of the ships that got out particularly well in the crash, with 'particularly well' being 'over a quarter of all cryopods failed and killed their occupants.' That there are any survivors at all is... a surprise. "Okay, well, that's really good news! Um, do you know how many escape pods made it out, can you give us an idea of where they landed...?"

He shakes his head. "My m- Rem Saverem. One of the researchers. She... rushed me into a pod. And then I ran."

"Oh. Okay. Um. Well we'll send someone to look, okay? When we get the chance."

"Luida. Don't give the kid false hope. We're over our heads in trying to untangle this mess anyway, we don't have the time or the people to go gravedigging. Kid, Five didn't make it out well."

His face looks anguished for a moment before it returns to just looking sad. "Please? If, if she survived—" Oh and he's crying now, he did not mean to do that. "Please. She, she was the one who warned everyone. About the, the—"

But he can't finish that sentence, because if he does he'll think about Nai, and he can't, he can't think about Nai right now, he can't, he can't...

[why, Nai?] he sends out, desperately, pleadingly. [why?]

(And one of the plants of this ship hears him and replies: [?])

.... If Ship Five was the one that managed to get out the warning in time for everyone else, then it might have been the source of all of this nonsense. Which means there might be other reasons to dig through its wreckage than a doomed attempt to save people that are very definitely dead.

".... Fine," he sighs, "we'll prioritize it."

"Th-thank y-you," he sobs, burying his face in his knees and shutting his eyes tightly.

Rem should be alive. Not him.

"Okay. I'll get you set up in a room somewhere, all right?"

Technically speaking it'll be the brig, because Luida is nice but she isn't stupid, but. It'll have a bed and a bathroom.

He nods but doesn't say anything.