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People came to me because I knew how to track a sample from collection to storage without losing half the information along the way.

That shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

But when almost every major decision in your life had been made by someone else, being useful in a way you actually understood felt dangerously close to freedom.

Somewhere along the way, other things had happened too.

Small things.

I knew which transport car was usually the least crowded after evening shift. I knew the woman at the market stall three corridors from my residential block would set aside the sweeter red fruit for me because I always bought two. I knew the little food counter near the medical district served something close enough to fried potatoes that I had stopped asking what plant it actually came from.

There was even a vendor near my quarters who had learned exactly how much sweetener I needed in the bitter black drink Zunatorians insisted was comparable to coffee.

It wasn’t.

But after enough months, apparently desperation lowered standards.

I had routines now.

People who recognized me.

Routes I could walk without staring at signs.

I still hadn’t chosen Zuna. I wasn’t going to rewrite my own history and pretend I had.

But somewhere between surviving here and working here, I had stopped waking every morning feeling like I was trapped on an alien planet.

Zuna had become familiar.

I wasn’t sure when that happened.

I enlarged the file.

The warrior’s name was Khar’en.

Deceased.

No accepted bond.

No offspring.

No active pairing.

I glanced at the secondary number again.

“That's strange.”

Sera’n finally set down his tray. “You have now said that three times.”

“I said ‘no’ first.”

“You are avoiding my point.”

“I’m improving it.”

He rounded the table and leaned over my shoulder.

Sera’n was tall even by human standards, but on Zuna that meant nothing. Nearly every male here towered over me. I shifted aside so he could see the screen.