Lu'Ka hadn't moved in over an hour.
He stood at the observation deck, arms folded, eyes locked on the medbay beyond the reinforced glass. A faint reflection of his pale blue face shimmered against the surface, but he didn't see it. His focus was elsewhere—on the figure lying still beneath the soft glow of diagnostic lighting.
The girl.
Thin. Bruised. Draped in a sterile sheet. Her skin, sunburnt and scratched raw. She looked barely old enough to walk across a city square, yet somehow she had survived the deserts of Dakun. She had escaped predators that swallowed armored vehicles whole. She had outrun a planet that devoured the unprepared.
And now she was on his ship.
Silent.
Unmoving.
Alive.
Lu'Ka was no medic. No biologist. His field was language, culture, history—particularly the forgotten myths that once circled the stars like ghosts. His place was in archives and lecture halls, not surgical bays.
But this wasn't something he could turn away from.
> "Begin full diagnostic scan," he said quietly.
The AI's voice, always too calm, responded in kind.
>
Blue light swept across her small body. From toe to crown, a pulse of precision mapped her existence.
Lu'Ka's hands twitched at his sides. His posture betrayed tension. This girl didn't make sense. She wasn't a survivor in the traditional sense. Survivors left trails. Records. Signs of where they'd come from, what had shaped them. But she appeared like a fragment from a different time. No markings. No tattoos. No tags. No implants. No clothes beyond shredded desert rags. And yet… she endured.
>
Lu'Ka leaned closer to the console. Lines of data filled the screen—strings of letters, graphs of hormonal output, breakdowns of molecular structures he barely recognized.
He wasn't trained to interpret this.
But he'd studied the Council's myth-classified archives long enough to know when something didn't belong in the catalog of known life.
And this girl… didn't belong to any part of it.
She wasn't cataloged.
She wasn't listed.
She wasn't even suspected.
Scan 54% complete. Unusual endocrine signature detected.>
Lu'Ka tilted his head. "Define unusual."
>
He blinked. Once. Then again.
"…pure adrenaline?"
>
He straightened slowly. His hands were suddenly very still.
That wasn't just rare. That was impossible.
Across the Virellian Reach, adrenaline was the holy grail of synthetic augmentation. Combat strains had been trying to replicate clean, stable versions for centuries. But even with cutting-edge biotech, the result was always unstable—useful in a fight, sure, but often fatal after. The body couldn't handle it. The mind couldn't recover from it.
But her?
She had flooded her body with it and survived. No damage. No burnout.
Lu'Ka stepped back, hands on his hips. He didn't speak for a few seconds.
This wasn't just a survivor.
This was an outlier. Something born in defiance of the galaxy's rules.
>
His chest tightened.
"She can trigger it at will…?"
>
"But she's not enhanced."\n\n>
That meant one thing:
She was born with it.
Lu'Ka's mind raced. There were species in the Reach bred for battle—engineered soldier-clones and corporate enforcers, yes. But every one of them had telltale signs. The Council regulated every genome capable of such enhancements.
No such signs here.
Just a thin girl from a dead world… with the chemistry of a war machine.
He rubbed his temples.
"She shouldn't exist," he whispered.
>
No...this is impossible.....
Lu'Ka backed away from the console like it had caught fire.
She wasn't a soldier.
She wasn't tagged.
She wasn't even supposed to be alive.
And yet, her biology screamed combat readiness. Precision without artificial control. Strength without enhancement. Survival without training.
That wasn't just rare.
It was impossible.
>
He ran a hand down his face. The numbers didn't make sense.
No species healed like that—not under desert trauma, not without treatment. Not after collapsing under a sandworm strike and half a tower.
He turned toward the observation glass again.
She hadn't moved.
Still breathing. Still unconscious. But somehow, even in her silence, she looked… aware.
Lu'Ka exhaled slowly. The realization hit harder the longer he stared:
> If she walks out of that medbay… the entire Council will come looking.
And not for her safety.
He looked back to the data. The untagged genome. The adrenaline. The recovery profile. The complete absence of anything that made her trackable.
He'd seen forgotten species. He'd cataloged rogue colonies. He'd lectured on the myths of humans, Gateborn, and creatures the Reach never confirmed.
But none of them ever left footprints this real.
>
"Encryption?" he asked.
>
Black-tier.
The AI wasn't even trying to hide it. That classification was reserved for discoveries that could cause galactic-level upheaval.
Lu'Ka turned from the screen.
He wasn't a Council agent. He wasn't even cleared for field recovery.
He was a professor.
But somehow, he had just unearthed something the Reach had either lost… or buried on purpose.
And she was lying twenty feet away.
Lu'Ka didn't hesitate.
He turned back to the console, hands flying over the surface. No authorization requests. No notification triggers. This wasn't standard protocol—this was personal action. Immediate. Unlogged.
>
"Transfer all diagnostic and scan data to my encrypted datapad. Every file, every reading."
>
A progress bar lit up—fast. Clean. Silent.
>
"Now delete everything," Lu'Ka said. His voice was lower now. Flat. Tired. "Purge all medbay records from the Syrex's datacore. Every scan. Every record. I want no trace that she was ever analyzed here."
>
"I said delete it."
>
Lines of data vanished from the screen. Graphs collapsed. Reports blinked out one by one.
In seconds, the girl's entire presence became a ghost—known only to Lu'Ka and his datapad.
He exhaled shakily.
He hadn't even realized he was holding his breath.
He looked through the glass again. She still hadn't moved. But his gut told him she wasn't as unconscious as she appeared.
The orb sat across from her, pulsing faintly in containment.
He watched it glow, slow and steady.
Another mystery.
Another signal the Council might trace if they knew where to look.
He tapped the console again and cut power to the medbay network entirely. Internal AI control went offline. Systems flickered to minimal life support.
No cameras.
No scans.
Just isolation.
---
He stood there a moment longer, watching her breathe.
Not out of scientific curiosity anymore.
Out of something deeper.
Responsibility. Instinct.
Fear.
> She shouldn't exist.
But she does.
And now she's under my protection.
Whether he liked it or not.
The medbay lights were low now—dimmed to reduce sensory overload. All internal systems were cut off from the ship's network. Nothing but isolated life support and minimal surveillance fed directly into Lu'Ka's datapad.
He sat in silence on the bench just outside the bay, datapad in hand, though he hadn't looked at it in minutes.
Because she was waking up.
Her breath had changed first—faster, shallow. Then her body tensed, hands twitching, legs curling slightly under the sheet. Her eyes had snapped open a minute ago, wide and alert, darting across the ceiling.
Not scanning like a patient.
Scanning like an animal in a trap.
> She's afraid, Lu'Ka thought. She doesn't recognize anything.
And why would she?
The walls were smooth. The lights cold. The air filtered. The bed too clean. Nothing in this environment resembled Dakun—no wind, no sun, no sound.
Just silence and light.
She sat up too fast, and pain gripped her. He saw it in her face—tightened jaw, sharp breath, the stiff way she cradled her ribs.
But her eyes never stopped moving.
She saw the orb.
She reached.
Then stopped.
She spoke—soft, uncertain words. Her mouth moved with unfamiliar rhythm. He didn't understand a syllable.
The translator AI hadn't mapped her language yet.
>
She wasn't speaking anything known.
No dialects. No offshoots. Not even degraded root phrases.
> She doesn't belong to any civilization in the Reach, Lu'Ka realized.
Her voice rose—more desperate now. She was asking something. Or warning. Or demanding. Her expression shifted between fear and challenge. Her posture—upright, guarded—spoke of a person used to danger.
Used to being alone.
Lu'Ka glanced at the vitals one last time.
Still spiking.
Cortisol up.
Heart rate approaching panic.
He had to act.
---
He rose and keyed the emergency override.
The medbay door slid open with a soft hiss.
Her head snapped toward the sound, shoulders tight, eyes locked on him like a wild creature watching something step too close.
He stepped in slowly. Hands visible. Posture neutral.
"Easy," he said, gently. "You're safe."
She didn't understand the words.
But maybe she'd understand the tone.
She didn't move—only watched him. Tension wired into her frame. Her fingers inched toward the edge of the bed, ready to push or run despite the pain.
> She'll bolt the second I misstep.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He knelt slowly, arms spread. "I just want to talk. Understand. Help."
Still no reaction.
Only her eyes—wide, sharp, unblinking—told him one thing:
> She didn't trust him. And she had no reason to.
But she didn't run either.
And that was something.
She didn't run.
But she didn't relax either.
Lu'Ka stayed crouched, unmoving, just meters from her bed. The silence between them felt louder than the ship's engines. The soft hum of environmental systems pressed against his ears like static.
Her eyes bore into him.
Not afraid, not quite.
Evaluating.
Testing every breath he took.
She tried to speak again. Her words came fast this time—more firm, shaped by the edge of instinct and authority. Like she expected a reaction. Like she was used to being heard.
Lu'Ka didn't understand a syllable.
But her tone said enough: "Stay back. I will fight if I must."
He didn't answer. Couldn't.
So he just nodded. Slow. Deliberate.
A gesture of peace, if nothing else.
She blinked. Once. Then again. But her arms stayed close to her ribs, her fingers inches from grabbing something—a utensil, the railing, a shard of glass if it meant survival.
> She doesn't know me, Lu'Ka thought. She doesn't know anything here. But she's still thinking like a survivor. Planning her next move.
It was admirable.
And terrifying.
He stood carefully, never turning his back to her.
> "I'll give you space," he said. His voice soft, low, steady.
She didn't respond. But he swore her shoulders eased—just a fraction.
He walked to the door and paused, glancing back once before stepping through. The medbay sealed behind him with a quiet hiss.
---
He leaned against the wall, exhaling for the first time in minutes.
The datapad vibrated gently in his coat pocket.
>
It would take time. Too much time.
> You should have reported this, he told himself.
But he hadn't..
And now, it was too late.
He had already chosen.
To protect her.
Even if it meant protecting the greatest unknown he had ever seen.