Palamedes flashes her a pleased look. “Indeed. It would explain why there has never been any sort of disease outbreak. Given we are all drawn from different places and times, the chances are quite high that someone would have brought a virus or bacterial infection with them that could have decimated us. I assumed we had just gotten lucky, but now I wonder if something else in at play.”

Alzheimer's isn’t a diagnosis that Palamedes has heard before, but cancer—well, cancer is something he is intimately familiar with. And he knows a little bit about Ava’s condition, enough to understand what this means for her, too. “If someone were on the brink of death when they came here, they might welcome the Captain’s imprisonment, at least at first. I would like to think that no one would accept a longer life at such a cost, but—” He purses his lips and shakes his head. Even before the Serena Eterna, Cytherea had taught him what choices people would make for survival, and shown him what those choices could do to one’s soul.