How James processes

Nearly midnight, and James had been burying his face into random schematics and math. Anything to concentrate on, other than the events that might destroy his family. Aurora hadn't left the tub for nearly six hours.

Maybe telling her hadn't been a good idea...

He leaned back and glanced at the tub. The water still shimmered with a sickly green glow. He searched around for a while, before finding a foster family's rough interpretation of the colors. This one seemed to show up when the Nova they cared for experienced something disturbing, or ate something disgusting.

He also found out the placement program was entirely voluntary on both sides, and had only been made after many of the Nova became restless sitting underground for so long. Apparently there were still plenty that chose to remain there. Maybe if he contacted someone, all that would happen is she'd go back to her own people...

Maybe she'd go back to whatever brought her to his back yard, naked and dying.

He dismissed the thought, turning his attention back to a 3d rendered model of a near-zero friction engine someone in his company had been asking for help with.

It didn't matter. After several moments of chewing into his own, he threw it across the room and stood, pacing around. Sally wouldn't want to talk now. It would be stupid to call. What if their mother found out?

She hadn't. There's no chance she'd have found out and not gone crazy already. He resigned himself to taking several sleeping pills, ignoring the dosage entirely before laying down.