He found the last crystal at the bottom of the storage unit. This one was labeled differently—not a date, but a single word: FATHER.
He hesitated. This felt more private somehow. The nursemaid’s recordings had been clinical, instructional—information she’d meant for whoever came after. But this...
He inserted the crystal anyway.
The male who appeared on screen was younger than Baylin had expected. Tired, grief-worn, but no more than thirty-five. His eyes were a similar blue to Liora’s, though without the warm gold flecks that made hers so striking.
“If you’re watching this,” the male said, “then Susan is dead and someone has found my daughter.”
His voice was flat. Controlled. The voice of someone who had already done all his grieving and found only empty resolve on the other side.
“I won’t explain everything. The details don’t matter. What matters is this: Liora cannot leave this tower. Ever. Not because the world outside is inherently dangerous—although it is—but because she is dangerous. Or rather, what’s in her blood.”
The male’s jaw tightened.
“Her mother had the same trait. A genetic mutation, incredibly rare, passed down through her maternal line for at least six generations. When we discovered it, we thought... we thought we could use it. Help people. Cure diseases. End suffering.”
A bitter laugh.
“We were naive. The moment word got out, the vultures descended. Corporations. Governments. Criminal syndicates. They didn’t want a cure. They wanted a commodity. They wanted to own it. To own her.”
He looked away from the recording device, and for a moment his composure cracked. Pain flickered across his features—raw, devastating, quickly suppressed.
“They killed her. My wife. My beautiful, brilliant Andrea. They killed her trying to take her, and the only reason they didn’t get Liora too is because no one knows she exists. I’d already hidden her here, in a tower no one can find, protected by a system that will never let her fall into their hands.”
He turned back to the screen.
“Judge me if you want. Call me a monster for imprisoning my own daughter. I won’t argue. But understand this, the alternative is a life of chains and needles and screaming. The alternative is her blood being sold to the highest bidder while she’s kept barely alive to produce more.”
His voice hardened.
“I chose isolation over torture. I chose loneliness over suffering. And if that makes me a villain in her story, so be it. At least she’ll have a story. At least she’ll survive.”
The recording ended.
He sat on the cold floor of the medical bay, the data crystals scattered around him like evidence of a crime.
Liora’s father. The nursemaid. ARIS. They had all made the same choice. Lock her away. Keep her ignorant. Sacrifice her freedom for her safety.
They had meant well. He could see that now. They had faced an impossible situation and chosen the path that seemed least terrible, even knowing it would damage her.
But they had been wrong.
Not about the danger—that was real. Not about the predators who would hunt her—they were out there, waiting. But about the fundamental premise that had shaped every decision they’d made.
They had assumed she couldn’t protect herself. Couldn’t make her own choices. Couldn’t handle the truth.
He thought about the woman he’d watched tend his wounds with careful hands. The woman who’d kissed him out of pure curiosity and laughed when his beast emerged. The woman who’d stood in that corridor and screamed at an AI that controlled every aspect of her existence, demanding answers she’d been denied her entire life.
She wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t helpless. She was the strongest person he’d ever met—not despite her isolation, but because of it. She had survived twenty-one years of solitude without breaking. She had maintained her curiosity, her hope, and her capacity for trust. She had built a life from books and plants and conversations with an AI that could never truly understand her.
She deserved the truth. All of it.
But she also deserved a choice. A real choice, not a prison sentence dressed up as protection.
He gathered the crystals and put them back in the storage unit. Then he climbed back up the maintenance shaft, emerging into the quiet corridor outside their quarters.
Dawn was approaching. Through the windows, he could see the first pale light touching the jungle canopy.
