Chapter Text
Hummm.
The lights flicker for the seventh time in twenty seconds. It will have driven Hannah mad by the time she arrives at her destination, if the humming doesn't do it first.
The spaceship is both deafeningly quiet and annoyingly noisy. It feels like she's wearing noise cancelling headphones, yet at the same time she hears every little sound. Every groan of the metal ship, every buzz of the engines, the humming of the flickering fluorescent lights, every step someone takes in the floor above, every breath of the people sitting in the same compartment as her.
Another flicker.
She discreetly eyes the other people in the room. Not many, just over ten strangers, all species alien (ha!) to Hannah. Although none look threatening or particularly hostile, so she doesn't pay them any mind. They do look slightly disturbing though—she still hasn't gotten used to their appearances.
Believe it or not, Hannah didn't bother learning much about aliens before leaving Earth. That's not something that will impact her journey much. What she needs to know is how space works.
Another thing she doesn't understand, though, is space travel. This ship is traveling hundreds of light years per hour, how the hell does it feel like they're barely moving?
Hannah bites the inside of her cheek as the light flickers again. When the light returns, it's only the slightest dimmer than before. Thank god, because they were insufferably bright before. Hannah stops frowning, unaware she was making that expression in the first place, and the pressure behind her eyes releases a little. Which is great, because now her head hurts slightly less.
Then, the ship slowly comes to a stop. It's a decrease in movement so gradual that Hannah doesn't notice at first. The engines' humming softly drifts away, and the groaning of metal increases until it also stops. The lights slowly turn brighter as the doors to the outside open with a hiss after some warning beeps.
"You have arrived at Station 889074." A robotic voice announces. "Please scan your comm at the screen to end your journey. Next stop: Station 903051. Expected arrival in ten galactic hours."
Everyone except Hannah rises from their seat and heads out the door, some already getting their comms out to scan the ticket at the exit of the station. Despite the many—many—hours she has spent traveling in this ship, Hannah still isn't used to the stillness. The lack of life.
She doesn't look up from her lap, where her hands play with one of her gold rings, barely reacting to the beeping before the doors close with another hiss. Nothing happens for a moment, two. Then, the hum resumes and the journey continues.
Only then does she allow herself to audibly exhale—just because she can, because she has been holding it in since she hopped on the ship almost three galactic weeks ago now. Hannah feels pretty confident that she's the only person in the whole ship. It's honestly a miracle that so many people were still on, considering next station is the last stop on the Outer Ring.
The light flickers. The buzz comes back. The lights dim.
Right.
Hannah wants to gouge her eyes out. Really, she's grateful that nobody else is here, because she would kill them and then herself. Oh, especially if she had to endure ten galactic hours with someone else. She has never been introverted, but people out here are noisy. Their noises would join the ship's noises and space's not-sound and they would form a horrid orchestra that would drive Hannah mad. She can't afford that.
Now that she's alone, though, she can afford to make sounds.
Sighing again, Hannah reaches down under her—quite uncomfortable—metal seat, where she placed her backpack behind her legs and plops it down on her lap. She begins rummaging through it in hopes of finding that peanut butter sandwich she shoved last minute before leaving her room after the night cycle. It's most likely squashed now, but food is food. She doesn't bother to smother the noise the zipper and her rummaging make.
The light flickers once, twice, thrice. Wow, that's a record.
She squints, grateful that the lights have dimmed once again, but maybe it's getting a little bit out of hand. Does she need to change compartments? Are the lights about to go out? I mean- it's not like it matters when she has the whole ship to herself, but she's comfortable where she is now. She doesn't particularly want to move.
The internal conflict doesn't come in the way of her search. Hannah does, however, huff in irritation. The backpack isn't even that full, so why on Earth can she not find the stupid-
"Is this your first time going into the Outer Ring?"
Hannah freezes in place, her movement stilling. Her eyes flick upwards, scanning the room for whoever spoke up.
It takes her a solid minute with the dim lighting, but she eventually spots them. It makes sense that it takes her time, though.
In one of the corners, under a light that hasn't been on since Hannah stepped foot on the ship and that she assumed was broken, the shadows seem to gather, like all the light has been sucked out of it. It creates a vaguely humanoid shape, the edges curling upwards not dissimilar to really dense smoke. The only noticeable feature, at least from this far away, is two small glowing white eyes. No pupils, no irises, no sclera—just pure, blinding light. Like all the light it takes rests there.
"Yes, actually," Hannah replies to the question, hesitant and wary. Still, there's no harm in being honest. "Well- hm. I think I have been past the Middle Ring before."
"Ah. 618746?"
"Probably that one, yes." Hannah straightens. "Although I don't think that counts as Outer Ring."
"Technically, it doesn't, but it's past the Middle Ring Stations," they inform.
"Huh." Hannah squints. "You know a lot about the Stations."
The shadow moves, shifting in what seems like a shrug-like motion. "I suppose you could say I'm an expert."
She forces herself not to show her skepticism.
"So, the Outer Rings," they begin. "What's brought you here, business or pleasure?"
"Business," Hannah replies, deadpan. Hopefully this scares them off.
Instead, they get this… expression. The white shine shifts, seeming almost excited. Hannah isn't quite sure how she can sense the change.
"You… business? In the Outer Ring?"
"That's right," she confirms confidently, despite the fact that, actually, she doesn't have a job.
Listen, if the regular job market is screwed (at least it's better than on Earth), you can't imagine how things are out in the Outer Rings.
She wonders where the alien's disbelief comes from. She hopes it's not misogyny, because if it is then they're in for a treat. Hannah feels pretty confident about her abilities. Surely sucker punching a shadow, something that lacks any corporeal matter, can't be that hard. Not with her determination.
Alas, if that is the case, it's a bit disappointing to learn that misogynist idiots aren't confined to Earth and humanity.
"Aren't you a human?"
Hannah pauses. Huh, she didn't expect them to take that route instead. She didn't even know that was an option. She thought that, surely, aliens would be more open minded about species than humans.
"I am." She frowns. "What are you gonna do about it?"
The smoke shifts, some arm-like limbs forming and separating from the main body. They raise them, almost like a human would to show no desire to harm. It feels mocking.
"Nothing," they chuckle. Ah, so it was mocking. "Relax, I was just wondering. You guys barely leave your planet, let alone the Stationaries around it. I never would have imagined that one of you would come all the way out here, specially…"
"Earth has billions of humans," Hannah argues. "You can't possibly generalize like that."
"Sure." The agreement falls flat, possibly to shut Hannah up. She frowns, opening her mouth to protest, unwilling to let them win. "Who are you?"
She blinks, confused by the sudden change of topic. Still, she attempts to take it in stride.
"My name is Hannah. She/her."
"Hannah," the shadow enunciates, sounding the consonants.
"Hannah, yes. Who are you?"
They stare. The light above Hannah flickers.
"MinuteTech." It's an airy, staticky word, probably said in his native tongue. Hannah barely manages to catch the pronunciation. "He/him, I suppose."
"Minute Tech," she tries to mimic the sound.
"Close enough."
The both of them sit in silence, awkwardly staring at each other before Hannah decides to finish looking for her sandwich after her stomach growls in reminder. Maybe she should be a little bit mindful of how much noise she's making, but this MinuteTech guy insulted her to her face. She allows herself to be the tiniest bit petty. He initiated the conversation.
"Freaking finally," she mutters when her fingers grace a familiar plastic bag. She yanks it out, examines the damage the food has (not much, but the sandwich is so squashed it's practically a sheet of paper at this point), and takes it out of it's container.
"Food?" MinuteTech asks her as she bites into the food.
"Yup. Peanut butter sandwich," she says after she finishes chewing. She goes to take another bite, but pauses. "Not that you would know what that is, but y'know."
"It's the thought that counts." Hannah feels his eyes on her as she eats. It's a little creepy. "So, humans eat."
"Your species doesn't?"
"Gases and light are enough to fill us."
"That's… sure, ok." She shakes her head. "We also need liquids. Drinks."
"Huh. Humans are so needy."
"I know, right?" She complains with a groan. She wipes the corner of her mouth with her hand, licking her fingers clean. The shadow shudders, the lights flickering again. "It's such a pain catering to this body's needs."
"I know of species that need solid sustenance," MinuteTech explains, "and other need liquids, or gases like voidlings. But rarely solids and liquids."
"Actually," Hannah hums, "we also need gases. One in particular. Otherwise we die."
At this, the lights completely turn off for nearly a full second, effectively startling Hannah and making her squawk. When they come back on, MinuteTech's glowing eyes are brighter. And almost surprised.
"Wow. I never would have thought that."
"Yup." Hannah says sourly. "What do you think this thing's for?" She grabs the mask covering her nose. At least it's rather discreet, only covering her nostrils.
"I didn't think much about it. Thought it was some endoskeleton or something," MinuteTech comments.
"Hah! We don't have that. You really don't know much about humans, do you?"
MinuteTech huffs, a little amused. "Not my fault you guys are hermits. I just know you're noisy."
"Just me or humans?" Hannah inquiries. The light flickers.
"Both, I suppose." Silence swallows them again, the crinkling of the plastic bag being shoved into the backpack joining the spaceship's chorus of noises. Wait.
"Is that why you talked to me?" She suddenly demands.
The light flickers again, and Hannah is beginning to think that it's MinuteTech's fault. Perhaps she should ask him and force- peacefully request that he stops. It's making her headache worse.
"You guys are all about silence out here," she elaborates. "You basically worship it. Yet the moment we're alone, you speak to me. And you don't seem the extroverted type."
"I am not the extroverted type, whatever that means," MinuteTech addresses first. "And… yeah. You could say I was curious. About you."
"About me," Hannah deadpans.
"Is there anyone else in this ship?" MinuteTech laughs. He trails off when Hannah's piercing stare doesn't falter. "But yes. About you. I travel around a lot, and I've never seen anything like you. It… shocked me, I guess."
"You travel around a lot?" Hannah's eyebrow rises judgmentally as the light flickers again, twice in rapid succession. She knows exactly what those words entail.
Clearly, MinuteTech isn't aware that she knows what he is because the smoke stills almost unnaturally.
"Yes," he slowly says.
"For business or pleasure?" Hannah wonders sarcastically.
The smoke almost… seems to condense, before returning to it's normal, smoke-like state.
"Are you making fun of me?" He huffs.
"You tell me."
The stare down is uncomfortable, at least on Hannah's end. Still, she doesn't relent.
"I know what you are," she declares. "That's what I wanna be."
At this, the lights flicker off. Hannah waits one, two, five seconds, yet when the lights remain off, she speaks up.
"So the flickering was you," She scoffs. "Turn them on. I can't see anything besides your freaky eyes."
MinuteTech thankfully obliges. Hannah can't read his expression, if he even has a face at all to express emotions with.
"You. A human."
"You said that already. You don't think I know who and what I am?" Hannah exclaims. "I know what I'm talking about. I know I'm ready, and I know I'm going to be fucking great at it."
The air is tense with- not quite hostility, but anger. At least from Hannah's part.
"I know what I'm getting into," she continues. "I don't have a weak stomach. I've seen more blood than a lot of people have in their lifetime."
Granted it's mostly her own blood, but MinuteTech doesn't need to know that. The light flickers at the revelation.
She lets him study her. After all, she has nothing left to lose. And push comes to shove, she is not above murder.
You could cut the tension with a knife, although that might be because Hannah's mind keeps thinking about killing the man in front of her. It strikes her that MinuteTech very well could be a mind reader. She loudly insults him in her mind to check. He doesn't react, so she takes this as confirmation that her thoughts are safe.
Hannah scowls. The light flickers again.
"…I'm coming back from a job," MinuteTech finally reveals. Hannah pauses her internal plotting, focusing all her attention on him. He must feel it, somehow, because a bigger puff of smoke separates from his body, drifting up until it hits the ceiling, "and I have another one lined up. Shouldn't be too hard, I barely need any help. I could probably do it alone, even." His eyes glow brighter, intense. "I want to take you with me."
What the fuck. Hannah raises her eyebrows.
Being what's essentially a space pirate is no easy feat. It's dangerous, highly illegal in the entire galaxy, possibly quite lonely and competitive—but also very well paid. MinuteTech gains nothing from helping her get started in the industry.
"What would I gain from it?" She asks, lifting her chin higher.
"Well, I would give you a share of the payment," he says with a smile. "Obviously. But if you perform well enough, I can add you to my server."
…Oh. That is new.
"Your… server."
"Yes." MinuteTech shifts, almost like he's getting into a more comfortable position. "It's a bit unusual compared to other players' servers, both the people and the Stationary. We're a relatively big group, and we take on a lot of jobs and different requests, splitting into different teams. The stuff we do is more dangerous, but because we team up and go together, it works. More dangerous means less product, meaning more payment." He shrugs. "It works for us, and it could work for you."
"Huh."
"So, try a mission with me," MinuteTech basically demands. "Then, if I see potential, I introduce you to the server. You go on a couple more missions and decide if it's worth it to stay or go on your own. Working with us should give you some reputation, so getting more jobs later shouldn't be as hard."
"If you see potential," Hannah repeats. "Don't you already?" He doesn't answer. "If you didn't, you wouldn't making me this offer."
"…are you in or not?"
Hannah goes to tease him, but pauses before she can open her mouth.
This…
This is huge.
This is a great opportunity, one that Hannah never expected and that she cannot, under any circumstances, fuck up. When she left Earth, it was with nothing more other than a vision, hopes and dreams and a lot of faith—or confidence. She thought she would get to the Outer Rings, and then stuff would happen, and she would eventually get a mission as a space pirate that would get her career started. As someone who usually likes to plan everything and know things, Hannah was terrified of what this entailed.
MinuteTech just saved her ass. Not that she's going to tell him, though.
"Obviously," she scoffs, making a weak attempt at hiding her trembling voice and shaky hands. She crosses her arms over her chest. "So, what happens after we get off?"
He stretches, the shadows twisting upwards before lowering again slightly. "We get off at Station 903051," he begins leisurely. It reminds Hannah of a cat. "There, we get picked up by one of my friends and go to our Server where I can re-gear." MinuteTech pauses. "I guess we could give you some gear too. Then, we rest a little, and then we're off."
"Sounds good to me." Hannah doesn't think she needs the gear, but hey—don't look a gifted horse in the mouth. Free stuff is free stuff. "When exactly do I get to know what I'm getting into?"
"Once we rest. Which, speaking off-" MinuteTech gets up. It's weird—Hannah has seen smoke move before, and MinuteTech hasn't been standing still the entire interaction, so she knows what that looks like. But seeing him move fills her with a sense of wrongness and dread so intense that she can't help but tense. It's… unnatural in every sense of the word. It resembles slime more than smoke- "I will be going to my room now, if you'll excuse me. I don't mind being around you, but we still have nine galactic hours to go. I'd rather spend my time doing useful stuff instead of getting to know you." He takes a second to process his overly blunt tone and rushes to do damage control. "No offense."
"None taken." Hannah shrugs, unaffected. The feeling is mutual.
"We meet here when we arrive at the station," MinuteTech declares. "Goodbye."
"See you soon," she mumbles halfheartedly. She can't force herself to sound cheery, or even normal, when MinuteTech moves again. God, that's going to take some getting used to. It's not like it's disgusting either, just… odd. Slime-like movement shouldn't be that fast or fluid. Or coming from smoke and shadows.
Since MinuteTech has no body, he doesn't make any footstep sounds that Hannah can use to deduce when he's far enough to take a deep breath, so she counts to five and relaxes. Well, not really—unclenches her everything.
Wow. She's going to need at least thirty galactic minutes to process what has happened.
The panicking starts six minutes after.
The lights flicker mockingly.
After the panicking subdues, Hannah chooses to go to her own room. Although calling it a room is an exaggeration. It's roughly the size of a storage closet, with a small desk and chair, the bed hanging from the ceiling above it, a couch-like seat and some storage with different temperatures.
At the start of the trip, Hannah refused to unpack. Despite traveling light, she still had a ton of stuff in her bags, and she has always been the type of person to think that it's useless to pack if you're going to have to pack it all up again in no time. However, the trip has proven to be way longer than no time.
She caved in the second week.
Feeling too lazy to climb all the way to the bed—which resembles more a nest than an actual bed, actually—, Hannah moves the pile of clothes on the couch to the chair and plops down, practically sinking into it. She covers her face with a pillow she brought from Earth and screams until her voice cracks and her throat hurts.
"Ok," she mumbles to herself, only the slightest bit hysterical. "Ok. This is fine. Perfect, even."
Hannah reaches for the remote to the tube lights that are embedded into the ceiling, flinching when they flicker on to illuminate the room with obnoxiously white lights. This is worse than on the communal room. She fiddles with the controller, hoping to adjust the settings to something that doesn't make her want to sob. She sets them to the lowest setting possible.
Then she lays there, wishing her eyes were droopy to that she could justify taking a nap, or that the conversation had tired her out, or that her migraine was bad enough to use sleep as a remedy.
None of these statements are true, though, so Hannah is left staring at the ceiling, one arm thrown over her eyes like a medieval maiden, lamenting the fact that they don't have Wifi anywhere outside of Earth.
After a while, she falls into some sort of half-conscious state. It's good enough for Hannah's mind to forget the whole conversation, but when she realizes this her whole body jolts.
"Oh fuck," her mouth says without her brain's permission.
She sits up, reaching to the floor by kind of flopping down and roughly grabbing her messenger bag. There, an array of different coloured notebooks, pens, erasers and pencils greets her. It's like a unicorn puked on her bag. Hey, at least it's organized.
Hannah finds her current notebook—and the first one to contain any writing—easily. It's one of the more extravagant ones, with its glittery pink background and an emoji pattern of different silly yellow faces, some red hearts and a couple of poops, for some reason. It's hideous. She loves it. She's filled nearly half the pages already.
Moving her position so that she can steady her notebook on her bent legs, feet planted on the cushion, she uncaps one of the many black pens.
Entry n. 39
Dear diary.
She pauses, frowning.
I don't know why I keep calling you that, you're not a diary. You're just a bunch of journal entries that I keep to stop myself from losing my mind out here. Calling you a diary feels a little too childish.
We are on route to the last Station, finally. Everyone stepped off in the one we just left, all except one.
A shade of some sort. A shadow. I'm not sure he has any solid parts, but when he moves it's freaky. He was hiding in the corner of the communal sitting area like a creep. His name is MinuteTech (I don't know how to spell it, I'm just writing it down as it's pronounced), and he is apparently a space pirate. I love how I say that as if he would be anything else, considering he's also going to the very edge of the Outer Ring.
For some reason, he wants me to join him on a mission. He very well could want to take me somewhere secluded, kill me and chop me up so he can sell my parts. I'm not sure how many people want human body parts, but considering how little they know about us as a species, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell at a high price.
Anyways. He hasn't told me anything about the job yet. Maybe he's going to take me assassinate some alien politician as far as I know.
He was very disrespectful about my humanity. I don't know what to make of that. He was also curious. I don't blame him for that. Not the ignorant comments tho. He can do better.
So, he's going to introduce me to his little space pirate crew. I forgot that pirates had a crew tbh, for some reason I just expected the space variant to work alone. Maybe because I imagined them more as mercenaries or something, selling their services in the black market.
I still don't quite know how this world works. Sure, I knew some stuff, but I'm so far away now. I'm basically nowhere. There's no one here except criminals. I guess I'm going to be one now too.
A pang of loneliness hits her, suddenly and completely out of nowhere. She frowns, no longer in the mood to be confined in this room that feels too much like ones you would find in a prison back on Earth.
I'm not sure when I'll write next. We arrive at the last Station in like 9 hours, then we have to get to their Stationary, rest, get ready and leave. Then of course do the job, go back to their Stationary and rest. Just writing it is making me tired.
She drops the notebook and pen with their fellow back-to-school supplies and stares at nothing.
The kitchen-not-kitchen from this Travel Spaceship is shit. Probably because, as the name Hannah gave it states, it's not actually a kitchen. It's just somewhere people can get their food ready. Or drink. Or- you know what? Whatever, you get it.
She guesses that MinuteTech won't leave his room—given the fact that he seemed to feed on light if Hannah's deduction is correct—so she hopefully has the whole ship to herself.
As soon as she crosses the threshold, her eyes find a corner darker than the rest of the room. Cool.
Hannah doesn't say anything, way too tired, mostly emotionally more than anything, to deal with anyone. She plops down her flimsy plastic bag on the counter, getting her ingredients out so she can cook the steaks she has left. She had to inject them with some weird liquid so they didn't go bad immediately, so they'll taste a bit weird, but it shouldn't be too bad. At least she still has human food. She won't be finding anything like it out here.
"Food?" MinuteTech says in lieu of a greeting. Hannah hums noncommittally, hoping that her glaring disinterest makes him leave her alone, before she realizes that the shadow can't understand human social queues.
"Aha." She places the pan on the alien equivalent of a stove. "I ran out, so I gotta cook some."
"You have human food? It hasn't ran out yet?"
"Not yet, thank god," she sighs. "No offense, but space food is…very different, to put it simply."
"Oh, I understand," MinuteTech hums.
Hannah eyes her ingredients—the meat, the salt, the olive oil, the already sliced mushrooms, the onion. Should be everything she needs. "Do you always lurk around in the corners sucking the light out of them?" She turns to look at his little void corner. "Because this is the second time I've seen you like that."
"It's not a regular occurrence, no," MinuteTech replies, the answer shocking Hannah slightly. "I'm just not very fond of this Travel Station's lights."
"That makes two of us," she whispers to herself, then gets to work.
It's not something she's had the pleasure of getting used to, nor does Hannah particularly enjoy cooking, but going through the motions ends up being soothing nonetheless. Cut the slab of meat into steaks, get rid of the fat, cut the onion—and barely tear up this time—, pour some oil on the pan, throw in some mushrooms and onion, wait for the oil to heat up some more, place some of the steaks.
Over the sizzling, Hannah hears a faint swooshing sound. When she glances back, Minute has approached her little setup, clearly curious as to how she prepares her food before consuming it.
"You're heating it up?" MinuteTech assumes out loud.
"Yeah." She pokes one of the two steaks currently cooking. "The heat kills bacteria, or something. It would make me sick if I ate it raw."
"Huh." He tilts his head, and for an instant Hannah is struck by the image of a back cat. She misses domestic animals. She hasn't seen many pets since leaving Earth. "I'm… not entirely sure what that entails, but sure."
"Don't worry about it," she says dismissively. She flips the steaks after a while. "I'm just going to cook all of these steaks and store them. Then I should be good to go."
"That's a lot of food," MinuteTech distantly points out.
Hannah frowns in confusion. She glances at the steak in the pan, then to the ones on the plate she brought. "Um, is it? I'd say it's not that bad. I actually don't eat a lot—specially now that I'm not exercising as much. Can't really do that here."
"Really? You don't eat a lot?" MinuteTech huffs, half amused half shocked.
"Yeah? I mean," she scoffs out a laugh, "it's not like I'm going to eat all of it in one go. This should last me around five days, considering I have other stuff to eat."
MinuteTech still glances at the portion of food with some strange glint in his eyes. Almost like he can't believe what he's hearing. Hannah doesn't pay him a lot of attention, choosing to flip the steaks again.
"I know some people back on Earth that would have eaten half of these in one sitting," Hannah points out in a joking tone.
"Um," MinuteTech chuckles, uncomfortable and unsure of what to say. "I'll admit that I'm not an expert on food portions. Considering, you know, that I don't consume any."
"Yeah, stay in your lane," she teases. Then, to make sure that MinuteTech knows that she isn't really being mean, she smiles his way. Apparently, this prompts MinuteTech to have a full body shudder, almost like a ripple in water. Hannah shrugs it off, unaware of what that could possibly mean.
After that, they let silence consume them, only the sizzling of the pan and the occasional meat slap to disrupt the quiet. The cooking is as repetitive as the preparation, if only more boring. Just plop a couple of steaks in the pan, flip them once, twice, thrice, check if one needs to stay a little bit longer, then take them out into the old lunchbox where Hannah is storing the steadily growing mountain of food. And then repeat.
Hannah has nothing to distract herself with—no book, no MP3 player, no nothing. It's a shame, really. The sizzling is turning into a lullaby, at this rate she's going to fall asleep standing. The only reason she doesn't, besides the obvious, it's MinuteTech's looming presence still behind her, standing ominously.
At one point, she's tempted to shoo him away. She doesn't though, because she's nice. It's totally not because of the job offer. Wait, does that mean that he's technically Hannah's boss?
The whole ordeal takes roughly half an hour. Hannah is itching to get away and hide in her room.
"Finally." She wipes her hands on her legs, uncaring if she stains the old sweatpants she's wearing at the moment. "I'm heading to my room now. I still need to pack my stuff."
"That's fair." MinuteTech nods. "Where is it, by the way?"
"Um." Hannah makes a valiant attempt at remembering the ship's layout. "Just around the corner, really. Room XX-86."
"We're on opposite ends, then." What a relief, she doesn't say. That would be rude. "I'll be around. See you when get to the Station."
"Of course."
If anyone were to ask Hannah, she would deny bolting out of the kitchen-not-kitchen like the room was on fire.
(She would ignore the fact that she doesn't exactly know the reason.)