“Do not insult my intelligence.” He steps closer, and I smell the sharp ozone scent that indicates barely controlled rage. “You know what that signature means. The question is whether you’re fool enough to pursue it.”
“Ambassador, I?—”
“Silence.” His voice carries the authority of centuries and the weight of the Consortium behind it. “I will say this once. If you have encountered one of the old artifacts, you will report it immediately. If you have been affected by its influence, you will submit to neural cleansing. And if you allow personal weakness to compromise this mission, I will see you stripped of rank and exiled to the outer colonies.”
“Understood, Ambassador.”
“Good.” He turns back to the tactical display, dismissing me with practiced indifference. “Remember, Zylthar—we are here to secure trade agreements and assess human strategic value. Nothing more. The fate of our people depends on maintaining proper distance from alien contamination.”
I nod and retreat to my quarters, but his words echo in my mind long after the door seals behind me.Alien contamination.As if the captain’s courage and loneliness and unexpected strength are diseases to be purged rather than gifts to be treasured.
The hypocrisy burns. Our entire civilization was built on emotional resonance, on the sacred bonds between minds and hearts. It was only fear that made us lock those connections away—fear of vulnerability, of losing control, of feeling too much.
But I remember what it was like to touch her consciousness, to experience her thoughts as clearly as my own. For three seconds, I wasn’t alone in the universe. For three seconds, I was part of something larger and more complex and more beautiful than any Zephyrian meditation could achieve.
The wall chronometer chimes, indicating two hours until the human celebration begins. I should spend that time preparing diplomatic talking points and reviewing cultural protocols. Instead, I find myself standing at the small viewport in my quarters, staring out at the stars and wondering what it would be like to touch her hand again.
Wondering what it would be like to stop being afraid.
My reflection stares back at me from the transparent surface—pale skin marked with patterns that shift with my emotions, violet eyes that have seen too many diplomatic lies and political maneuverings. I look like what I am: a Zephyrian noble trained from birth to put duty before desire, logic before feeling.
But for the first time in my life, I’m not sure that’s enough.
Something is happening on this station, something that goes beyond trade negotiations and cultural exchange. The quantum resonance spike Jorem detected wasn’t coincidence—it was the beginning of something ancient and powerful and completely beyond our control.
The captain is at the center of it, and whether she knows it or not, so am I.
The chronometer chimes again. Less than one hour until I have to see her again, to maintain diplomatic composure while the memory of her emotions burns through my consciousness like stars.
I close my eyes and try to meditate, but all I can think about is the way she looked at me in that final moment before the lift doors closed. Not with disgust or dismissal, but with curiosity.
As if she felt it, too.
CHAPTER 3
SELENA
The next morning,I wake from dreams of crystal cities and starlit winds.
For a moment, I lie perfectly still in my bunk, trying to hold onto the fading images. Towering spires that sing with harmonic frequencies. Pathways of living light that pulse beneath my feet. Air that tastes of ozone and possibility, carrying the distant sound of voices raised in something that might be prayer or song.
None of it makes sense. I’ve never been to an alien world, never seen architecture that grows instead of being built. But the dream feels real in a way that leaves my skin humming with residual energy and my chest tight with inexplicable homesickness.
I roll out of bed and pad to the small viewport in my quarters. The stars look the same as always—distant points of light against infinite black. But something feels different, as if the universe has shifted slightly while I slept, rearranging itself into new and unfamiliar patterns.
“Computer, time.”
“Current time: 0547 hours.”
Too early for duty shift, too late to go back to sleep. I pull on my exercise clothes and head for the gym, hoping physical exhaustion will burn away whatever strangeness has settled into my bones.
The corridors are quiet at this hour, lit only by emergency strips that cast long shadows between bulkheads. My footsteps echo in the artificial silence, a steady rhythm that should be comforting but isn’t. Everything feels charged, expectant, like the moment before a storm breaks.
The gymnasium is empty except for Lieutenant Torres, who’s running punishment laps around the track for some infraction I don’t want to know about. I wave him off when he starts to salute and head for the weight section, hoping a familiar routine will anchor me back to reality.
But even here, surrounded by the mechanical precision of pulleys and resistance fields, the dreams cling to me like perfume. Crystal towers that bend without breaking. Lavendar eyes that see too much. The memory of cool skin against mine and the electric jolt of?—
“Captain?”
