Chapter Text
There was a bit of a dry spell in bounties around the galaxy. There was the small fry criminal here and there, and of course the occasional missing person. But there was nothing really worth the time of the crew of the Rhapsody.
The crew had been flying around space, from port to port, looking for jobs and bounties, but sadly the criminals seemed to have receded somewhat in the last couple of weeks. So the crew had to entertain themselves for a while.
—
Ziggy could hear the sound of fists hitting a punishing bag and loud music all the way in his room, even with his headphones on. He has been working some new leads for tracking down the Viceroy, but every single lead so far has come to absolutely nothing. As he looked at one of his many screens displaying yet another dead lead, he almost threw his headphones at the screen.
“I don’t get it Silica, how can every clue lead to nothing.” Ziggy sighed as he reclined in his chair. "I've been working on these for ages, everyone is going to be so mad that I still haven't come up with anything.”
Just as he was going to take a bite from the slice of pizza Silica was offering him, there was the familiar voice of Rett over the intercom. “Crew meeting, everyone to the bridge now.” Ziggy took a deep breath and held it just for a bit to work up the nerve to go to the door and walk to the bridge with the news that all their leads were dead ends.
Ziggy exhaled deeply, he stretched in his chair and finally got to his feet. He walked to his door grabbing his gridboy on the way. This time he was not going to be late to the meeting, the last view he had been late. But it wasn’t his fault, the first time he thought he had another lead, but it turned out to be another dead end. The next time he really had to finish the next level in the flight sim to get better at flying his ship, it wasn't his fault the volume in the sim was turned up a bit too high and he hadn't heard Rett over the intercom . And last time he fell asleep on his desk after an all nighter working on decoding a piece of code.
Rett was getting really annoyed about it and Ziggy noticed that the rest of the crew was getting annoyed as well, so he could not be late to this meeting. As he opened the door he was about to step out when he heard the distinct yap of Hank at his feet.
“Hank, what are you doing here? There is a meeting at the bridge. Why are you here and not there?” Hank yaped a sad electronic bark and showed Ziggy his side panel. There were various big warning notifications and error pictograms on the screen. “NOOOOOO! Hank, did you download something without checking it first again? We talked about this, when you want a digibone you don't download it yourself, you come to me first.” Ziggy said already picking up Hank to put him on his desk to get rid of the new malware on the robo-pug.
It took him a good 15 minutes to get rid of all the malware, but as he was working he also updated some of Hank's navigation functions. As he finished running the last of the script, he looked down at Hank and said. “Now, what did we learn?” Hank looked up at him with his big robo eyes and let out a whine. Ziggy sighed “Okey, fine, I wont tell Rett. But next time come to me first.” He gave Hank a few scratches behind his ear.
As he stretches a bit he notices his alarm clock. “Oh Shit! Oh No. I’m late again. Rett’s going to kill me.” He talks to himself as he rushes out the door. Hank is following close behind. As they get to the door of the bridge he can already hear the distinct voice of Pixel coming through the door.
“I can’t believe we have to wait on Ziggy again! I swear if he is on the toilet microwaving a burrito again we need to organize an intervention.” Pixel whined. “I know right, that boy just does not understand the concept that others have more stuff to do than wait on him. Like practising my swings in the gym.” Ko backed Pixel up.
“Now I’m sure he had a good reason to be late, again.” Rett said to the girls. “Come on Rett, even you have to admit that he has been late to a lot of the meetings recently.” Pyke said in response. Ziggy stopped short of the sensor for the automatic door to listen to the conversion happening behind the door.
“Look guys, I know Ziggy is a bit lazy sometimes, and he doesn't really clean up after himself all the time. And he doesn't have a good concept of money, but he is the only one that can work with the hypergrid like he does that we know of. He’s a good kid, he just has a lot to learn about life.” Rett defended him in front of the others. “I know Rett, but when is he going to learn? One day he’ll get himself or one of us hurt. One day he will become a liability if he does not learn.” Pike said in his usual monotone voice.
After that Ziggy stopped listening. A ‘liability’ that was what they thought of him. He backed away from the door and leaned against the wall next to the door. “I’m going to be a liability, a burden.” He could almost hear the voice of his parents, his brother, his sister. “He’s so immature. Ziggy when are you getting a real job and stop with the video games? When are you going to stop being such a burden on this family?” The exact reason he had left home to become a gridrunner. To not be a burden to people, and now his friends, almost family, think the same of him as his parents.
He could feel the tears welling up behind his goggles as he started to slide down the wall. He took a long and shaky breath. “I have to change, I have to become an adult now. I have to stop being a burden to everyone.” Ziggy thought to himself. “I have to prove them wrong.” Ziggy takes another shaky breath and slowly stands up. He notices Hank standing at his feet whining asking if he was okay. He bent down and picked Hank up to hold him up to his face.
“Today I will change. Today I will stop being a burden.” he told Hank and also to himself. He shifted Hank to be under his arm and turned to the door listening for more voices and to see if the conversion was still going. From what he could hear the conversation had shifted to something completely different. He took one last almost shaky breath and stepped towards the door. With a swoosh the door opened automatically and he walked in.
The moment he walked through the door Hank jumped out of his arms and ran straight to Rett. “Ah, Hank there you are. What took you so long?” Rett asked the dog as he bent down to give him some scratches behind the ear. As he looked up he noticed Ziggy standing in the doorframe. “Oh, Ziggy, finally you're here. Take a seat and we’ll start the meeting.” Rett told Ziggy as he turned to the TV standing in front of the couch and table in the rec area.
Ziggy quickly shuffled himself over to the couch and sat himself down quickly. As he took a quick look around the room, all he could see were the annoyed faces of the rest of his crew mates. "Of course they're annoyed, you’re always late.” A voice in the back of Ziggy’s mind told him. He did his best to take as little space as possible on the couch and listen to Rett as he started the meeting.
“Alright I know things have been a little slow recently, but Graff came through on a new job. One that pays real good.” Rett began. “ Now I know I've said this before, but I promise this one is worth our time.” He quickly defended.
“Fucking finally!!! I was really getting bored of training. I need to smash some skulls real soon. Am I right Pyke?” Ko yelled. Pike looked her in the eye and said “I know the feeling Ko, I know the feeling too well.” Taking another drag of his cigarette. “Well, let's hear it.”
—
It turned out the job was a group of criminals shipping Redline to some high society shmucks wanting a good time. It should have been a quick and easy job. But of course, things got a lot more complicated very quickly.
It all started when they got to the small planet in the galar system. It was a small planet known for its big nightlife and parties. It wasn't as big as paradise city, but it was still quite lively and busy.
“So what do we do now?” Pyke asked while he lit his next cigarette. “Well, from the information I got from Graff. It seems that most of the Redline comes from this bar.” Rett answered looking at the display in his arm.
Rett looked up to the front of the dilapidated building. It looked really out of place in the bustling center of the city. “Ziggy, could you see if you can get into the street cameras?” Rett turned to Ziggy looking expectantly. “I,I, I’ll try now.” Ziggy answered.
Ziggy turned to his gridboy and started hacking. It took him a few minutes, but eventually he got some footage back. It was incredibly grainy, but you could vaguely see multiple people coming and leaving through the door and the alleyway next to the building. “As you can see there are multiple people coming and leaving every day.” Ziggy told the rest as he showed them the footage .
“So that means we could just walk in there, bust some heads, crack some skulls and get the bounty.” Ko proclaimed, already making her way towards the doors. Pyke stopped her before she could step further. “Calm down Ko, we need to wait and see if there aren't more people coming. We don’t want this to become too big of a fight too soon.”
"Alright, ok, I’m calm. I'm ok.” Ko took a few deep breaths. “Alright, so what's the plan?” Ko asked after a few more calming breaths. “Well, the plan is to wait for the leaders, then when they are in, we go in and take them out.” Rett stated, looking at the rest of the crew.
“So, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Pixel asked, the hope for permission to shop was clearly in her voice. After quite a bit of grumbling Rett gave in to the puppy eyes he not only got from the former popstar, but also the raizo looming over her. He pulled out his cashclip and took out a few notes to hand out to the group. “Alright, take the afternoon to look around and do what you want. But I want all of you back here at twelve sharp.”
Excitement ran through the group. Everyone took their share of the notes and started to leave. As Ziggy turned to leave he felt a hand on his shoulder. Rett was standing behind him looking at him with what looked like guilt in his eyes. “Ziggy, could you stay here to keep an eye on the cameras and entrees? I know you would love to explore too but I really need you right now.” Rett asked, you could hear the guilt in his voice.
Ziggy wanted to protest, he also wanted to go and explore. There was this new marchel the scattering card he had been wanted to buy. Of course he could order it on the hypergrid, but every opportunity he got to buy in real life he took. But before he even got the words of protest out of his throat, a little voice in the back of his mind started speaking.
"Of course you want to slack off while on a job.” “ You're such a disappointment.” Stop being such a burden.” He could hear the voices, they sounded just like his parents, his siblings, even vaguely like his crew. So as he looked at Rett, he swallowed his words and slowly nodded. “O,o,o,of course Rett, I’ll stay here and keep a lookout.” Ziggy told Rett with as much positivity as he could muster.
“I knew I could count on you Ziggy. Now I’ll be back in a few hours, I’m going to meet up with the contact to see if I can get some more info out of him. I’ll be back soon, good luck.” Rett said as he turned and left the alleyway. Now that Ziggy was alone he breathed a deep sigh and looked down to his gridboy still displaying the camera footage.
Ziggy stood there for almost an hour with absolutely nothing happening on the cameras, and he was bored. “I know I can't disappoint them again but nothing has happened in over an hour. It cant hurt to just quilly go to the activity end, and get that new card. I mean if I hurry I’ll be back before anyone notices I'm gone.” Ziggy muttered to himself, almost to reassure himself to the idea. “Yes, I’m quickly going to get the card and be back in a second. And I have the camera feed on my gridboy. I'll just keep an eye on it like that. No one will know.” He told himself as he started to make his way to the nearest store.
What he didn't notice were the hoverbikes and hovercars stopping at the building and the amount of people going in or the crates being carried in.
—
It turned out that the quick run to the store wasn't as quick as Ziggy would have liked. When he first got to the store there was a big line to get in. Then when he finally got into the store after waiting an hour, he went to the counter to buy the card, they told him it was sold out. Now Ziggy won’t take no for an answer so easily, so he closed out the camera feed gust for a minute and started to hack into the POS system of the store. He found out that there were 10 more cards in stock. He guessed that the shop assistants were going to take them for themselves and sell them for a profit. Now Ziggy, being the smart saurian he is, went to the mentally weakest looking store clerk and after some light threatening to expose the workers for fraud. He walked out of that store almost two hours later card in hand.
He couldn't enjoy the victory for long, because when he finally pulled up the camera feed from the club again he noticed the shadows in the corner of the screen. Shadows that looked really like Rett. Then he noticed the small, what is clearly a cigarette, smoke trail from the same direction.
“Oh no, they're gonna kill me.” Ziggy sight to himself as he started to quickly make his way back from where he came from. By the time he got back and could see the shapes of 4 people in the alleyway they had set out to meet. It turns out that once again he was late, to something he wasn't even supposed to leave.
As he made his way to the rest of the crew he could hear the worried voice of Rett over the others. “What if something happened to him? What if they noticed him and became suspicious? We have to go in there to get him back!” Rett was almost screaming now. Pyke had put out his cigarette on the ground and was clearly ready to help Rett in any way possible.
Before they could step out of the alley Ziggy tripped on a bit of garbage making a bit of noise. Before he could even right himself Ziggy felt a hand on his neck squeezing lightly. As he looked up he saw Pyke standing in front of him holding his neck with his gauntlet at the ready.
The moment Pyke sees who he is holding he lets go. “Fuck Ziggy, he could have shot you! Where were you? You were supposed to be here keeping a lookout. We thought you were captured. For all we knew you could have been dead!” Rett was almost screaming in his face now. “Yeah, where were you?” Pyke asked, putting a hand on Rett’s shoulder.
Ziggy looked down guiltily, he knew by the looks of everyone they had been really worried. He slowly put his hand in his pocket just to feel the card he had worried everyone over. It felt so wrong now in his hands, to have worried them to the point that they thought he was dead. Just for a stupid card. He could hear the voices in the back of mind again saying.”See this is what happens when they ask you to do something, you FUCK IT UP.” “All of this for a dumb card, what a disappointment.” “You can’t do anything right.”
Before he could even explain where he had gone to and had done, Ko interjected the tension. “Look it doesn’t matter where he was or what he did. He’s here now and we're ready for a fight.” She said with a big smile smacking her fist in her open hand.
Taking the attention away from him momentarily, Ziggy quickly pulled out his gridbody and pulled up the camera feed of the alleyway. “See I've been keeping an eye on the camera, and from what I have seen nobody’s come in or out.” He said, skipping through the hours of footage he may have missed.
“You’re right, we’ll go in now. But the last word has not been said about this!” Rett exclaimed, clearly having calmed down a bit by now. He looked Ziggy one more time, making a silent promise to not let this go. “Alright, we’ll go in through the back and take them by surprise. Try to keep the injuries to a minimum this time alright, it’s costing me an arm and a leg to keep the infirmary stocked.” Rett said, adding the last part almost as an after thought.
They went to the back of the store, Ziggy at the ready with his Griddboy to pick a lock to get everyone inside. But as they got to the door they didn’t find a keypad to hack, what they found was a normal key lock. Everyone looked at it for a second before Ziggy took a sad step back to let Pyke or Rett pick the lock the old fashioned way.
When the door finally opened they looked at each other before Pyke took the first step into the building gauntlet at the ready. He was followed by Ko, Pixel following Ko almost at the heel. Before Ziggy could go into the building Rett stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Ziggy wait, I want to say sorry for the way I reacted back in the alley. I was just worried about you. Next time you want to leave to do something just say so and I’ll stay to keep watch.” As he said the words to Ziggy, the only thing Ziggy could feel was more guilt and anger. Guilt over making Rett worried, guilt over leaving his post over a stupid card, anger at himself for disappointing everyone again. He took a deep breath and looked Rett in the eye and said. “Yea, I’ll do better next time I promise.” Rett smiled and gave the arm he was still holding a soft squeeze and a small nob, before he let his arm go and stepped into the building. Ziggy took one last deep breath and followed the rest inside.
The crew slowly made their way through the hallways of the building, keeping an eye out for movement or foreign sounds. After a few minutes they came to a door with what sounded like voices coming from behind it. Pyke halted the group just short of the door, holding his hand up waiting for a good moment to make a surprise attack. Slowly he moved his hand to the door knob and started to twist it, then with a tiny ,almost audible, click the door opened.
As the door opened what they expected to see was a room with a few goons and their targets. But as it swung open they were met with a room full of goons and what looked like leaders of two gangs shaking hands over crates. Crates that looked like they were filled to the brim with new blaster guns and redline, a lot of redline.
The moment the room noticed the door opening and saw the crew standing there all hell broke loose. Pyke was the first to react, taking multiple shots at goons around the room and taking cover. Ko charged into the room right after Pyke, taking her Kanabō and knocking quite a few goons to the side, going right for the leaders of the group. When the leaders saw Ko charging towards them, they reached down into one of the crates taking out a few laser guns. “Well, let's see how these puppies perform!" One of the leaders shouted lowering the gun aiming right for the incoming Ko. Taking the shot, two bright red lasers shot out of the barrel of the gun. Ko narrowly avoided being shot, diving out of the way just before it hit.
As Ko took a dive out of the way, Pixel came running through the door already singing a new song she had been working on for a while. Rett came into the room grav-kannon already wiring with aether, firing a shot at one of the leaders hitting him right in the stomach, downing him almost instantly. Ziggy was the last one in the room, rapidly typing on his gridboy pulling up a few scripts and starting to run tether-protocol.
The fight was chaotic and cramped, Pyke took down quite a few goons and got some good hits in on the leaders of the group. Ko, after diving out of the way, got back up and took out almost half of the goon by herself. Taking quite a few hits herself, but Pixel backed her up, almost continually healing and helping her crew mates. Rett was engaging the leaders in combat, trying to take them out without killing them thinking about the bounty.
Ziggy was working on three different problems all at once, concentrating to keep running tether-protocol, trying to help the others to take down more goons, and the feeling of immense guilt, guilt over the fact he left his watch for a stupid card that he could have ordered online. Guilt for not looking at the camera footage more.
The battle was getting to its breaking point Ko, Rett and Pike had the last leader cornered, having taken down the rest of the leaders but keeping them alive for the bounty. Pixel was taking care of a few of the last goons still in the room. Ziggy was looking around already recording evidence with his gridboy, assuming the rest of the team had the last people handled. As he was making his way through the room he got a closer look at what was in the crates. They looked like normal laser blasters but there was a weird capsule on the top, it looked almost like a redline injector but modified to inject it into the blaster instead of a body. Ziggy took quite a few pictures of the blaster and the injector, he was taking a few of the last when he felt a presence behind him. Before he even had the chance to turn around a sharp burning pain in his side.
The pain was almost blinding, but he kept the scream that wanted to come out. Turning around seeing a goon barely hanging on to life with a bloody knife in his hand. He almost collapsed from the pain keeping himself up on the edge of the crate. Ziggy quickly pushed a button on his gridboy firing one of his last copied laser blasts right in the goons face. The goon dropped instantly, the knife disappearing in the chaos of the room.
Ziggy leaned against the crate, slowly sliding down it to the floor. As he sat on the floor he put a hand on the wound zipping his hoody open to look at the wound. It didn't seem to be bleeding as much as he thought, a slow but steady stream of blood coming from his side. Ziggy looked around for something to stop the bleeding, he found a red sash on the ground quickly putting it to the wound. He took a deep breath and started typing on his gridboy before seeing it almost out of battery, he pulled up the script for his snacks and ran it until the last of the snacks fell from the Hypergrid just as the battery completely died. He opened the first bag of chips and ate it as quickly as possible, slowing down with the next. When he finished the fifth one he slowly took the red sash from the wound, it looked like the blood had almost stopped flowing.
Slowly he started to get up, steadying his feet he started to make his way to the rest of the crew. They had taken down the last of the leaders and were putting them all in cuffs. As Ziggy walked up to them he zipped up his hoody, just to conceal the injury, not wanting to worry the rest of the crew for now. They already had a lot to deal with with the gang leaders and the recovery from the battle that was partially his fault. If he had looked more closely at the cameras or had never left his post to get the stupid card none of this would have happened.
As ZIggy got to the rest of the crew, Rett was putting the cuffs on the last leader of the gangs and turned to Ziggy. “Ziggy, I thought you said the building was clear! Did you even pay attention to the cameras? Because I am highly doubting it now!” Rett almost screams at Ziggy, dragging the barely conscious leader behind him. Before Ziggy could even utter an answer Rett was already making his way out of the building with one of the marks. The rest of the crew take the other two and walk past Ziggy completely ignoring him.
If Ziggy wasn't already feeling guilty, he would have been now. It wasn’t like he did it on purpose, sure he made a mistake, or two. Ziggy took a deep breath and immediately felt a stabbing pain in his side that made him cringe and almost lose his breath. He put his hand on his side carefully and started to make his way out of the building following the rest of the gang. As he got to the back door he could see the rest of the crew loading the leaders in the back of their rented van. Ziggy carefully put his hand in his jacket pocket trying to keep pressure on the wound inconspicuously.
As Ziggy got to the van he made his way to the next available seat, but as he was about to take the step up into the vehicle he felt a sudden dizzy spell. He had to stabilize himself with a hand on the roof of the van taking a few pained breaths. As the dizziness faded he looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but nobody seemed to have. Ziggy sighed a sigh of relief and got in the van.
—
The ride to the rhapsody was quick and quiet. The tension in the van was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife. Rett had turned on the radio to try and relieve some but halfway through the ride it gave out, and Ziggy’s gridboy was all out of juice so he couldn’t play any music as well. Not that he would have had the concentration to even operate his gridbody, because at every turn and every bump in the road he could feel a sharp pain shooting through his stomach. Ziggy put his hood over his head and kept his head pressed to the window trying to keep the pain and dizziness at bay.
As soon as they got to the rhapsody Pyke was the first to get out of the van. Followed closely by Ko and Pixel taking the gang leaders with them to the brig, ignoring Ziggy and knowing that Rett would return the van to the rental place. Ziggy had to get out very carefully keeping a subtle hand on his wound and keeping the dizziness at bay. As he got out of the van he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning almost too quickly to the owner of the hand, seeing that it belonged to Rett.
“Look Ziggy, tensions are high right now but we all need to take a breather. I’m taking the van back to the rental place. Meanwhile I want you to think about what happened and what you could have done differently. When I get back and we have all calmed down a bit we can talk about it like a team.” Rett said, looking Ziggy in the eye. Squeezing his shoulder one last time before letting go and closing the door and driving off. Ziggy looked at the back of the van driving away. Thinking about a lot of things at once, did I have to screw up everything? Can I do anything right? Why am I such a burden? Why would they even bother with me?
He attempted to take a deep sigh, but as he took the breath he was painfully reminded of the open wound in his side. He took a quick look around to check for eaves droppers, seeing none of them. He opened his hoody to look at the wound, and it didn’t look good. There were small black tendrils coming from the wound slowly traveling up to his chest. The wound itself was still slowly bleeding now mixed with a black putrid smelling ichor. As soon as he saw the wound and how bad it looked, Ziggy covered it up and closed his hoody.
Ziggy maybe wasn’t as smart as everyone would have liked, but he knew this was out of his wheelhouse. He couldn’t take care of this himself, it was almost definitely either infected or maybe even poisoned. As he came to this conclusion he felt another dizzy spell come over him, this one way worse then the ones he has had before. He stumbled to the wall closest to him in order to keep himself up right. It took several minutes for the world to stop spinning, taking as many breaths he could without shooting a stabbing pain though his stomach and lungs. After the final deep breath Ziggy felt a weird thing in the back of his thought, as he almost choked he coughed in his hand. Feeling something whet on his hand, he pulled it back to see what it was. As he opened his hand it stood out, even on his almost red scales. There was blood on his hand, dark red blood.
“Oooooh no, this is not good. not good at all.” Ziggy mutters to himself. He wipes his hand on his already ruined hoody and pushes off the wall, the motion off which made him feel incredibly sick. He knew rationally that he had to either get to Pyke and the others or to the infirmary. But the irrational part of his brain told him that he shouldn’t bother Pyke or Ko or Pixel with his problems, he had already done enough of that today. So the only option he could think of was to get to the infirmary and see if he could take care of it himself.
The walk to the infirmary was long and hard, Ziggy had to take several brakes to catch his breath or to cough, the amount of blood coming up with each coughing fit was concerning. He was about halfway to the infirmary, in the hallway where the personal quarters are, when he heard voices coming from behind him down the way he came. “Kooooooooo, why didn’t you tell me you twisted your ankle. You know you can't keep walking on it like you have.” The unmistakable voice of Pixel ran out behind him. It sounded like Ko was about to reply but she was cut off by Pyke saying. “You know she’s right Ko, we both know what can happen if you leave an injury untreated. So shut up and let us help you.”
Now Ziggy had a choice to make, he could either try to make it to the infirmary before the others and try to treat the wound as silently as possible hoping they wouldn't notice. Or he can quickly go to his room and wait for them to return from the infirmary and go then without anyone being the wiser. Making a split second decision he looked for his room, it was just across the hall. He made a very dizzying dash to his room, pushed in the code on the pad and slipped in. Just in time it would seem, he could hear the footsteps and voices of his friends walking past his door and moving through to the infirmary.
Ziggy sighed in relief, leaning against his door keeping a hand to his wound feeling the amount of liquid coming from it increase slightly. Ziggy knew that it wasn't a good sign but he was getting really tired and dizzy. Surly sitting down for just a minute and closing his eyes for a short nap wouldn’t hurt. To be honest the wound wasn't even hurting as much anymore, that had to be a good sign right. With another coughing fit coming up he pushed himself off the door and made his way to his desk. He could still see the ongoing search for anything to do with Redline and the viceroy going on his computer. After a few stumbles and near misses with piles of clothes on his floor he made it to his deskchair. He finally sat down and turned to his computer, taking his gridboy out of his pocket and slotting it into its charging station.
Ziggy leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes trying to stop the room from spinning. But the room still spun even with his eyes closed, he tried to take a few deep breaths but it was like the oxygen wasn’t reaching his lungs. Breathing became more difficult by the second and the room started spinning more and more. He startled a bit from a noise coming from the other side of the door, it almost sounded like a bark followed by the sound of scratching at said door. Weird, Ziggy thought since when was Dash back and what was he doing on the Rhapsody. He tried to get up but couldn't even find the energy to lift his head, he tried to blink away the black spots invading his vision. Suddenly there was a knock on his door and a voice coming from behind it. “Ziggy, are you in there?” It sounded like Rett. Ziggy tried to reply but his voice wasn’t responding. The black dots started invading his vision even more and he could feel his breathing becoming labored. He could still hear the voice but it was becoming more distant. He thought of his friends, he hoped they wouldn't mind if he took just a short nap. Ziggy closed his eyes and let the darkness take over, not hearing the second knock from Rett and the question if he could come in.