Side characters are the best, aren’t they? If you’ve read Hayley Reese Chow’s, Into the Churn, then you’ll have met Ezren’s best friend, Micah. She’s our favourite side character in this series (and the whole reason why Ezren even ended up in Belethea’s Race Royale), she’s spunky, fierce, and VERY resourceful, so we hope you really enjoy this small bonus scene from her perspective!

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE AND A HALF

5.03.43B: T-minus 1 day until the BRR

Micah bounded down Tuzuno’s main corridor, her fuzzy purple slippers squeaking against the metal walkway as her goggs fritzed out atop her bright teal hair. Her chest heaved as she rounded the corner, the holopro of a firefly-dotted forest chirping and cooing in the faux-dusk.

“Ezren… the things… I do for you!” she huffed as sweat gathered between her shoulder blades, her favorite silk robe sticking to her in all the wrong places.

There was nothing like a late-night sprint across Tuzuno to make the speck of a research station seem like the largest dome on Belethea. It was almost enough to make her homesick for the compact, low-grav honeycomb of Pyrrhia Station… but not quite. She paused, leaning against the holopro of a sturdy-looking tree to catch her breath as she scrolled through the messages flooding her inbox. One glance was enough to convince her to take off running again.

As much as she prided herself on being the premiere Belroy fangirl holologger, even she could admit this onslaught wasn’t something she could handle alone. Then again, she wasn’t exactly sure who could help her at this hour. With Sylvia tied up in banquet obligations for who knew how long, there was only one place Micah could turn to… And it didn’t exactly fill her with confidence.

She finally skidded to a stop next to a nondescript, blue metal door on the third sub-floor residential hall. Her goggs automatically connected to the door chip, and with a quick thought she sent a visitor notification to the household.

Micah: Sam! Dr. Hart! Wake up!

She doubted Dr. Hart had any do-not-disturb settings, but unable to contain her impatience, she pounded on the door anyway. “It’s an emergency!” she yelled, not caring if she woke the neighbors. “Unlock the door!”

Her obnoxious dramatics were rewarded by an excited chattering from Waffle somewhere inside.

“Yes, Waffle! Have I ever told you you’re my absolute favorite weird dog-thing?”

The door hissed open, and Dr. Hart appeared in the tiny foyer of the dark apartment. Shadowy circles clung to her bloodshot eyes, marking sleep lost over Waffle’s recent brush with death, the impending doom of Tuzuno Research Station, or her daughter risking her life in the BRR tomorrow—it was hard to tell.

“Micah? What’s wrong?” she asked, her tone sharp with worry as she stood with a lab coat thrown over her mismatched pajamas.

A pang of guilt pricked Micah through the buzz of adrenaline threatening to fry her brain. Or maybe it was the constant, maddening chime of her goggs between her messy pigtail buns. Either way, she was totally chaffed.

“Ezren’s fine. Better than fine,” she said quickly, brushing past the diminutive woman she often thought of as the fairy godmother of terraforming. She could definitely use some of that fairy-engineered dust tonight. “But she needs our help.”

“Help with what?” Sam stifled a yawn as he limped out of his room with Waffle at his heels and Giles perched on his shoulder.

Micah looked back and forth between the Harts’ blank faces and suppressed a groan. These two barely knew the rules of the BRR, much less the intricacies of the fanbase or even the basics of VSoc. Was she really this desperate? She thought of her overloaded VSoc accounts freezing from the flood of traffic and took a deep breath. Yes, yes she was.

“An hour ago, your genius daughter gave the pep talk of the millennia at the BRR banquet—where she and that doubles partner of hers looked completely stunning, by the way. Like, I almost couldn’t believe it was Ezren. Her dress was just—”

“Micah!” Sam waved an impatient hand, and Waffle snorted supportively. “Who cares what she wore?”

Micah let out a dry, half-manic laugh. “Oh, you have no idea. Anyway, it was live-streamed to the whole ’verse, and now my VSoc is exploding.” Micah started projecting the feeds from her twenty-three channels into the dim living room.

Sam squinted at the bright holopros and text swirling above their worn couch in a dozen different fonts and colors. “Exploding in a bad way?”

“In a glorious, fantastical, blime way.” Micah tried to divide the glowing spheres into three rough groups, but the constant barrage of notifications was making it impossible to see everything at once. “Beletheans are already throwing VSoc cred at us through the fundraisers I set up, but now I’m getting interest from across the whole system. If I expand my net, connect it to Ezren’s message, and laser focus an eleventh-hour blitz campaign, I think we can exponentialize our growth. But we only have sixteen hours to capitalize, consolidate, purchase, and approve.”

Dr. Hart ran a hand through her sleep-mussed bob. “Maybe it’s the lack of caffeine, but none of those words seemed to be connected, Micah. What’s the money for?”

“Suits,” Sam whispered, a holo of Ezren giving her speech projected in front of his pale face. “They need suits.”

“Of course.” Dr. Hart’s gaze sharpened with realization. “We’ll need more help to expand our outreach. I’ll find us some volunteers.”

“Each planet and station has their own preferred VSoc niches.” Sam scratched Waffle’s blocky head absently. “Giles, run an optimization assessment on how many we can expand our message across in the next nine hours. We need predictive stats on which will give us the most influence and revenue. I’ll check out which fundraisers are currently performing the best, and we can copy that message to the others.”

“Best little brother ever!” Micah squealed.

“Assessment in progress,” Giles chirped. “But as this is not an actual emergency, I’m obligated to remind you that you should be getting your rest per your prescribed health-regimen.”

“Suns, Giles, your bad attitude is the real emergency,” Micah grumbled.

He chattered on with VSoc stats, and she tuned him out as she tried to sift through her messages—which was like trying to suck the air out of the room with a straw. There were so many offers to respond to, and she still had to contact Sylvia to confirm the suit model, call the manufacturer to see if they could rush delivery, then get the race officials to perform the pre-race check. Even with the three of them and a buzzkill bot, the task was too enormous. Where did they even begin? She opened her mouth to ask as much when her goggs buzzed with one long sonorous note, and bright red words scrolled across her feeds.

This is an unauthorized test of Tuzuno’s emergency broadcast system. If you’re willing and able to support Ezren Hart and the Belethea Race Royale team, report to residence apartment 3F as soon as possible. All assistance is desperately appreciated. —Dr. Evangeline Hart

The message was followed by the clip of Ezren’s speech from Micah’s hololog.

Micah gaped at the woman with cartoon test tubes printed across her pajama pants as Ezren’s words of dreams and open skies echoed softly through the room. “Dr. Hart, did you just hack Tuzuno’s emergency broadcast system?”

She shrugged, her gaze flicking distractedly across her goggs. “I figure if I’m going to lose my job anyway, I might as well go out with a bang.”

Micah couldn’t help but laugh as she clapped her hands. “Dr. Hart, you’re a station-hacking, planet-molding queen of science and nature.” Micah danced across the room to throw her arms around her. “Can I be you when I grow up? I guess now we all know where Ezren got her rebellious streak.”

Chuckling, Dr. Hart gave her a brief squeeze. “We can pat ourselves on the back later. Right now, I need a list of tasks we can assign to any volunteers who might show up. Choose the most complex one for yourself, and I’ll prioritize the rest.” Dr. Hart turned away and moved to their beverage dispenser. “While you do that, I’ll reach out to our other research station contacts and see if we can raise the alarm elsewhere.”

“Um…” Micah frowned as she started mentally dictating the mile-long list of to-dos.

While she appreciated Dr. Hart’s optimism, and Tuzuno had been very supportive of Ezren’s new role as a royaler, it was late, and the station hadn’t even muttered a peep of protest when the shutdown order had come in months ago. They’d simply kept their heads down and continued their research as if everything they’d worked for their entire lives wasn’t at stake. With that kind of soggy backbone, she seriously doubted any volunteers would be leaving their warm beds to join a frantic last-ditch scramble to give Belethea a fighting chance.

Micah shoved the useless thought aside as Sam sent her Giles’s data on interplanetary VSoc platforms, and she shot him rough holopro montages for him to edit. Still, as the minutes whisked away into the night, Micah couldn’t help but note there was no knock on the door.

Not even one.

“Shaft it, we’re out of coffee again,” Dr. Hart grumbled.

“Add it to the list, Giles.” Sam smirked from the couch.

“At its length, with current personnel, the list will take 193 hours to complete,” Giles replied.

“Giles, what did I say about the attitude? Sam, I swear, if you can’t change his personality settings, I may have to squish him.” Micah flopped violently onto the couch, startling Waffle from her saggy corner. “Ugh! Why did this have to happen at the last minute? Couldn’t your daughter have been early just this once?” Her goggs dinged again, and she gave another petulant flop for good measure. “Why does it seem like every time I cross something off, ten more things pop up?”

“Because they do,” Giles said.

Micah opened her mouth to threaten him again when Sam leaned over her, his blue eyes round with concern and something harder, like determination. “Micah, if Ezren might have a chance of winning the BRR, then we have to believe we have a chance of doing this. One step at a time.”

Micah met his earnest stare with a weak smile, trying not to think about all the things he’d been through––all of the things Ezren was going through. Yes, if there were greater miracles in the ’verse, surely she could believe in this one.

“You’re a good brother, Sam.” She squeezed his hand. “Can I adopt you?”

“Nope.” He flicked her hands off of his as if disposing of them. “One sister’s enough, thanks.”

“But—”

A loud knocking interrupted her train of thought, and Micah rushed to the door, her slippers squealing as she slid it open with a command—only to reveal Davis Banda on the other side. Her shoulders slumped with a sigh. Of course, it would be old potatoes. But she couldn’t be picky. It wasn’t like there was a line of people jostling to help. Even if he did break her best friend’s heart, she could be gracious, right? It wouldn’t kill her. Probably.

“Thanks for coming, Davis.” She flashed a smile, her teeth gritting together. “We’ve got a lot to—”

“No way, this place is way too small.”

Micah crossed her arms. “Um. Chaffing rude.”

Davis laughed and premature lines creased around his eyes. Good. At least the ’verse had seen fit to curse him with early wrinkles.

“No, not like that. We’re in the atrium.” He leaned around her to call into the apartment. “Ms. Evangeline, Sam, are you in there? C’mon, we’re all set up.”

“Davis!” the Harts chorused, already starting for the door.

Micah tried not to notice that they seemed a lot happier to see him than her. Not that it was a competition. But seriously, why? Davis was obviously still in love with Ezren. Which meant that he was still a real threat to the Sterling-Hart OTP. Honestly, did no one else see this?

“I don’t know what’s going on, but can’t you see we’re a little busy here?” Micah jammed her fists on her hips as Sammy and Dr. Hart edged past her into the hall. Even Waffle’s nubby tail wagged as Davis reached down to scratch behind her ears.

“Can’t you trust me for once, Micah?” Davis flashed a grin as he walked away with the Harts chattering on either side of him.

With a growl of frustration, Micah followed after them, vowing to stuff him full of the toxic Waffle-grass for this ridiculous field trip during one of the most pivotal moments of BRR history. That was, if she ever had time… She scrolled ever-more-frantically through her messages.

As they neared the atrium, a buzz of noise made her look out from her goggs. “What is that?”

“It’s Tuzuno.” Davis glanced over his shoulder. “You needed help, right?”

Micah stepped into the garden-swathed dome of Tuzuno, and her jaw dropped. The open space was completely packed full of bodies in varying states of sleepwear. Ezren’s face plastered every holopro from every set of goggs, lighting up every wall as her message went out into the ’verse.

Micah covered her open mouth with a hand as she spotted Dr. Lutz in a long sleep cap, and—chaff, was that Prof Holland in a nightgown? “I didn’t even know this many people lived in Tuzuno.”

“I’ve never seen it like this either.” Davis shared a smile with Sam and Dr. Hart. “They came for Ezren.”

Sam nodded, his eyes shining. “Because they believe in her too.”

For a moment, the four of them stood there, breathing in the rich aroma of fresh-roasted coffee as a wild hope curled around them—a hope that just maybe they could make a difference. For a moment, Micah was almost too scared to breathe, to move, to speak; as if she were balancing on the edge of a fragile dream at last crystallizing into reality.

Davis turned to Micah again, concern edging his smile. “So do you think this will be enough?”

“Completion time with current personnel: 6 hours and 52 minutes,” Giles chirped.

“Finally, Giles, something helpful out of you.” A grin split Micah’s face, a giddy excitement threatening to bubble out of her. “One step at a time.” She squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Belroy boys and babes, let’s get to work.”