The hum of the Kaleid-One was different now.
Not the sharp edge of transit launch, not the uneasy silence of Dakun's orbit. This was the steady, low-frequency pulse of a ship coasting through drift space — a sound you only noticed after days of hearing nothing else.
Five days.
That's how long it had been since they left the broken planet behind.
Five days since the orbiting sands fell away into black, leaving only the slow crawl of stars as their companions.
Lu'Ka sat at the main terminal, datapad balanced on one knee, reading through endless student submissions. Reports, theories, mistakes wrapped in good intentions. His mind should have been focused.
It wasn't.
He kept glancing across the command deck.
At her.
At Niri.
She moved through the ship like a ghost learning how to haunt. Careful. Curious. Testing the weight of the world under her feet as if it might collapse without warning.
Sometimes she drifted past the walls like she was counting steps.
Sometimes she stopped to touch the cold surface of a console, running her fingers across the seams, feeling for traps only she could imagine.
Other times she just stared.
At the viewport.
At the slow tumble of stars.
At the nothingness stretching forever ahead.
Lu'Ka didn't interrupt her.
He barely spoke at all unless she invited it — a glance, a tilt of her head, a rare gesture when she needed water or food.
Trust wasn't a conversation.
It was a long, slow bleed.
She hadn't attacked him.
That was progress.
She hadn't demanded anything.
That was a warning.
She was observing.
Learning.
And he… he was trying not to get in her way.
---
At the navigation console, Niri crouched low, peering under the main panel like she expected to find a trapdoor hidden there. She frowned, then tapped her knuckles lightly against the alloy frame.
A dull clank answered her.
She huffed, unimpressed, and sat cross-legged on the deck.
Lu'Ka smiled, just faintly, behind his datapad.
The AI chimed softly.
> "Environmental parameters stable. Translation matrix progress: 42%."
Forty-two percent wasn't much.
Enough to catch basic words.
Enough to pick out context.
No full sentences yet — but the bridge between them was building.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Niri tapped the console again, then glanced back at Lu'Ka.
Her mouth moved — a short string of words, pointed.
The AI parsed only two of them clearly:
> "What... this?"
He closed the datapad and leaned forward.
"It's a navigation hub," he answered, slow and clear, knowing she wouldn't understand most of it. He mimed steering — hands gripping an invisible wheel.
She blinked.
Watched.
Then mimicked the motion.
Badly.
More like strangling a snake than steering a ship.
Lu'Ka bit back a chuckle.
"Close enough," he said under his breath.
Niri snorted — an unmistakably sarcastic little sound — and rolled her eyes.
She didn't need a translator for that.
---
Later, he found her in the secondary bay — crouched over a disassembled maintenance drone like a scavenger child picking apart a broken toy.
Tools scattered everywhere.
Two panels ripped clean off the drone's chassis.
Wires dangling like loose veins.
Lu'Ka approached cautiously.
She looked up as he entered, a streak of grease across her cheek, and shrugged.
As if to say: It was already broken when I got here.
He crossed his arms.
"You know that's not how maintenance works," he said lightly.
She mimed plugging two wires together — then pantomimed the drone exploding.
A tiny smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth.
He couldn't help it.
He laughed.
The sound startled her.
She froze — eyes wide, tense — like laughter was a threat she hadn't catalogued yet.
Slowly, uncertainly, her muscles uncoiled.
Another small step.
Another crack in the walls around her.
---
By the end of the fifth day, Niri had memorized the ship's layout.
Lu'Ka was certain of it.
She moved with purpose now — checking the same corners, tapping the same vents, marking the same escape routes.
She was relaxed on the surface.
But she never forgot to glance at the viewport every time she passed it.
Dakun spun in the distance — just a rust-colored smear now, shrinking every day.
She watched it until it was gone.
And when the planet disappeared completely into the starfield, she didn't say anything.
She just walked away from the glass without a sound.
---
The sixth day started differently.
Lu'Ka was at the auxiliary terminal, reviewing cross-sector reports his students had submitted for his Mythology course.
Dead languages.
Lost ruins.
Fragments no one could piece together.
He barely registered Niri approaching.
Until she stood beside him — close enough that he could feel her body heat.
He looked up, blinking.
She was pointing.
At the screen.
At one of the old glyphs he kept displayed there for reference — the human glyph.
The symbol no one could read.
The symbol that had defied every scholar, every linguist, every AI-driven decryption system for generations.
She tapped it once, then folded her arms across her chest.
She said something.
The AI caught it this time.
Two words.
> "My language."
Lu'Ka froze.
The world tilted sideways for a breath.
He stared at her — at her sharp eyes, her dirty knuckles, the faint scar across her brow.
"My language."
He forced his voice to work.
"You... know this?"
She frowned at him like he was an idiot.
Pointed again.
Tapped the glyph.
Then — slow and casual — she traced a few invisible lines through the air, mimicking the glyph's curves.
Simple.
Precise.
Unmistakable.
Lu'Ka felt the back of his neck prickle.
Niri said something else — voice flat, unimpressed, like she was explaining a child's puzzle.
The AI, slow but certain, translated:
> "It says: We Remain."
Lu'Ka sat back hard in his chair.
The datapad nearly slid from his knee.
We Remain.
The phrase punched the breath out of him.
Every ancient archive.
Every myth.
Every unsolved expedition.
Every lost world marked by that glyph —
We Remain.
Niri tilted her head at him, confused by his reaction.
She shrugged — like it was obvious.
Like he was the fool for not knowing.
She dropped down into a crouch beside his chair, resting her arms loosely across her knees, and said something else — soft, almost a throwaway.
The AI struggled.
Pieced it together slowly.
> "I remember that." "I don't remember everything. But... that, yes."
Lu'Ka stared at her.
Not a survivor.
Not just a scavenger.
Something more.
Something ancient.
Alive in a galaxy that had forgotten her kind even existed.
Niri picked at a loose thread on her shirt, glancing around like the conversation bored her already.
She wasn't shocked by any of this.
She wasn't confused.
She didn't realize the weight of what she had just said.
Or maybe she did — and she didn't care.
Lu'Ka felt the ground under his feet shift again.
The universe had rules.
They were breaking under her casual, sunburnt fingers.