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Sera’n opened a historical-access panel.

Two entries appeared beneath my record.

I straightened.

“What are those?”

He didn’t answer.

“Sera’n.”

“The archived versions.”

Versions.

Plural.

I pushed away from the counter and came closer.

“There should only be one.”

“Yes.”

That one word bothered me more than it should have.

Sera’n was not a dramatic man. He didn’t exaggerate problems, didn’t raise his voice unless someone was about to damage a specimen, and never wasted ten words when three would do.

He had also spent the better part of the last several months teaching me which questions were worth asking and which ones would only make my life harder.

Not because he thought I was too stupid to understand the answers.

Because he understood Zuna better than I did.

There had been times when he quietly warned me not to challenge a department head in public, then helped me document the problem afterward. Times when another technician dismissed something I said because I was human and Sera’n simply waited until I proved myself right before asking the male if he wanted to apologize or repeat the error.

He never told me to make myself smaller; he taught me where to stand when I refused to. So when Sera’n said there should only be one version, I believed him without hesitation.

He opened the first entry, and there it was—my original compatibility result, exactly as I remembered it. For one brief second, relief rushed through me so fast it made me dizzy. I hadn’t imagined it, hadn’t spent months remembering the wrong number, hadn’t somehow turned one of the worst days of my life into something bigger in my head. The first record was right.

Then Sera’n opened the second. Different percentage. Different timestamp. Different authorization code.

I stared at both records side by side.

“Who changed it?”

Sera’n closed the second window.

“Hey.”

He tried to close the first.

I caught his wrist.

That probably would have been a terrible idea with most Zunatorian males. Their wrists were thicker than my forearms, and I had personally seen enough of them lift things no human had any business lifting.

But Sera’n had never frightened me.

Not until today.