Then he lifts his chin, a small, economical motion, directing it slightly to the left.
I just stare.
He stares back.
For a second, I can't process it.
Is that... a greeting?
Before I can decide, an officer approaches, his attention slices away, clean and decisive. The air around me exhales again. I shift my weight, feeling foolish and unsteady.
Someone brushes past-close, too close-and I edge sideways toward a shadowed section of the deck-less traffic, fewer chances to get in someone's path.
I stop beside a console that hums softly beneath a translucent surface, its language of light cascading upward in patterns I can't read-beautiful, mathematical, alive.
Minutes stretch. The kind that last too long to measure.
My shoulders ache from standing too straight. I clasp my hands behind my back like a cadet awaiting judgment.
An officer glances my way; their expression doesn't change, but judgment lingers in the air like static. I manage a weak smile. It dies unanswered.
Then-
That prickles again. The unmistakable sense of being seen.
I look up-
and find him already watching me.
His gaze pins me where I stand. The distance between us feels insubstantial, as if the deck itself were an illusion. The look isn't hostile; it's worse than that.
It's measured.
Studying. Calculating.
The way a composer might study an instrument before deciding what sound to draw from it.
The weight of that look is its own gravity. His expression doesn't change, but the stillness deepens-less impatience now, more inevitability, the kind of patience that exists only moments before collapse.
Like he's already calculated every outcome, run the probabilities through whatever alien logic governs his mind, and still chooses this. Whatever this is.
Then, deliberately, he raises one hand. A single taloned finger curls inward in a gesture that needs no translation.
Come here.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Every head within ten feet pivots toward me. I feel their eyes like heat lamps, bright and clinical. My legs move anyway.
I weave through the lattice of consoles, trying to walk like someone who belongs in the same air as him. My footsteps sound too loud, too human. Even the floor feels aware of me.
When I stop before him, the world seems to shrink. The stars above, the humming consoles, the silent officers-they all recede until there's only him.
I look up. He's so tall. Or maybe the proximity makes him seem that way.
"Hi," I manage, and it sounds absurdly small, a single fragile syllable hanging between us.
The silence stretches, vast as the void outside. He studies me with that unreadable gaze-neither welcoming nor dismissive, just knowing. Like he's reading a language written on my skin in ink only he can see.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet, textured, carrying the kind of calm that could command fleets.
"Sit."
He gestures toward the rear of the deck, a flick of his fingers so restrained it borders on elegant dismissal.
"Uh... ohh." I nod, unsure whether I've been acknowledged or dismissed, whether this is privilege or punishment.
The ambiguity makes my stomach tight.
I turn—
And nearly collide with a woman in a standard uniform.
She doesn’t so much appear as step out of the flow of the room, like she’s been there all along and I just didn’t notice.
The uniform’s the same as everyone else’s, but on her it actually fits—sharp lines, clean, the fabric sitting right where it’s supposed to. Her posture’s straight without trying.
Her dark hairs pulled up in an intricate twist that looks simple until you really look—practical, but precise enough to have taken effort. There’s an ease about her, The kind of ease that comes from knowing exactly where you fit.
"Oh," she says lightly, not missing a beat. "Didn't see you there."
Her tone drips with polite surprise—the kind that sounds rehearsed, performed just well enough to maintain plausible deniability.
She did see me. She chose not to acknowledge me until the collision was imminent.
She sidesteps me smoothly, like water finding its own level around an obstruction, and moves directly toward Him with the confidence of someone who's made this approach a hundred times before.
"Admiral," she greets, her voice crisp but softened at the edges—a melody tailored for him, finding the frequency that gets through his armor.
She hands him a datapad, her gloved fingers brushing against his as if by accident. Or maybe not. The contact lingers a fraction too long to be coincidental, and she doesn't pull away first. He does.
"Admiral," she continues, voice perfectly measured, finding the sweet spot between professional and personal. "System recalibration for the fold point is complete. We're stable across all vector streams. Gravitational resonance range is projected anywhere between point-zero-zero-6 to point-zero-zero-1 variance—better than projected."
He doesn't immediately reply.
He's looking at me.
The silence stretches—not long enough for anyone else to notice, maybe two seconds at most, but long enough for her to.
Her eyes narrow, then flicker between us with the precision of someone accustomed to reading power dynamics.
The smallest twitch in her jaw—there and gone again—betrays a flicker of something she quickly buries beneath professional composure. Confusion? Calculation? Jealousy?
Then he finally speaks.
"Proceed," he says, low, controlled. His gaze never leaves mine, and I feel trapped in it like amber, preserved and exposed simultaneously.
He exhales softly, then adds, "Sam—show her to the observation seating."
She hesitates just a breath too long, then lowers her datapad.
"Yes. Admiral."
She turns back toward me with a thin smile that's almost kind. Almost.
But there's assessment beneath it, a recalculation happening behind those sharp eyes as she slots me into some new category.
"Come on," she says, her hand brushing my elbow in a gesture that feels like both guidance and possession.
Like she's escorting me somewhere I belong while simultaneously establishing boundaries.
"You must be Ruby." The name comes out with just slightly too much emphasis, like she's been briefed. Like I'm a known variable now.
"I’m Sam." Her smile brightens—a little too polished to be effortless. "This way."
"Nice to meet you," I manage, though it sounds like a question.
"I’d say the same, but you’ll have to forgive Command for not being very welcoming." Her tone is light, practiced. "We don’t get many guests from... outside the structure."
"Right," I say, unsure if that’s a joke or a warning.
She glances sideways, amusement flickering in her expression. "Don’t take it personally. It’s the architecture—it’s designed to make you feel small. Efficient, but not exactly cozy."
That earns her a soft laugh from me, though I can’t tell if it’s relief or nerves. For a moment, she almost seems generous—human, even. Until she adds, lightly, "You get used to it once you’ve earned your footing. It helps to know where you stand."
There it is. The subtle edge. I actually belong here.
I glance back once.
He is still framed against that impossible sky, a silhouette cut out of gravity and light. His gaze tracks me as if the distance is only a suggestion, something that could collapse if he chose to make it.
I feel it—heat that isn’t heat, a pull that isn’t touch.
She guides me down a small incline toward the back of the chamber, where the curved wall widens into a shallow alcove lined with recessed seats, angled to face the central ring without obstructing the view.
"Here we are," she says. "Best view in the fleet."
"Thanks," I say, my voice steadier now.
She glances toward the command ring, where he stands, the light from the display cutting against his profile. "He gets that look when he’s running projections," she says casually. "You’ll notice he doesn’t talk much once things are in motion."
Her tone is light, almost fond. But there’s something underneath it—a quiet caution wrapped in understanding.
"It’s not distance," she adds after a beat, eyes still on him. "It’s focus."
I nod, unsure why it feels like more than an observation
She hesitates, her expression shifting—softening and sharpening simultaneously, like she's recalibrating her approach.
"Most people only ever get clearance for the secondary decks," she adds after a pause. "The command room’s… different. You don’t just walk in here."
Her eyes stay on me as she says it—searching, measuring, like she’s trying to see how much I understand, or if I even should.
That lands awkwardly.
When she speaks again, her voice carries a weight it didn’t before.
"The Admiral doesn’t extend such access lightly to humans who aren’t…" She trails off, that bright smile returning—polished, deliberate. "Well. Status is complicated up here. You’ve probably noticed." her eyes searching my face for something—reaction, understanding, confirmation.
I don't know what to say to that, don't know what answer she's fishing for, so I just nod and look away. The silence that follows feels dense with unasked questions.
Sam starts to turn back toward the command circle, then pauses, glancing over her shoulder. The movement seems calculated, like she's giving me one more chance to ask something, to engage. "Oh, and if you need anything, just wave. I'm usually near the secondary consoles."
She gestures vaguely toward the inner ring—toward Admiral's orbit.
Of course she is.
"Got it"
When she's gone, I sit-finally. The seat is smooth and oddly adaptive, shaping itself to me just enough to feel unsettling. It's both too firm and too soft, like the ship can't quite decide what I am.
From here, I can see everything-the smooth precision of Zypherian coordination, the faint shimmer of energy building along the dome's curve.
Back on Earth, we built engines to roar and throb; this one breathes.
The faint shimmer of energy building along the dome's edge means only one thing: the fold engines are waking.
The ship hums, low and resonant, a sound that's felt more than heard—vibration in my bones, pressure against my eardrums, something primal that speaks to the meat of me rather than the mind.
Voices drift from the ring of officers closest to navigation-low, efficient, the kind of communication that moves at the speed of shared expertise.
"—calibration set for phase one. Hull integrity will stabilize before the primary fold sequence initiates. Confirm redundancy matrices are locked."
"Confirm power routing to all auxiliary grids. Gravitational balance holding at 0.004 tolerance. Within acceptable variance for transition."
I don't understand half of it, but I feel the significance. These are people commanding forces I couldn't calculate if I spent a lifetime trying.
Humanity once celebrated landing a rover on Mars. We threw parties, made commemorative coins, named it like it was a person.
We sent a robot the size of a car to another planet and called ourselves gods for the afternoon.
Now I'm sitting inside a vessel that's about to bend space as if it were cloth—fold distance like origami, make the universe temporarily forget its own rules—and the people operating it don't even blink.
The scale of it hollows me out. Every triumph we've ever claimed—Galileo's telescope, Newton's gravity, Einstein's relativity, Armstrong's first step—suddenly feels like a child's drawing held against a master's canvas.
A dust mote clinging to the hull of something so vast it doesn't even register that we exist.
We're barely out of the cradle, and they're already tired of walking.For them, this is infrastructure.
For me, it's the edge of godhood.
The weight of that realization presses down—part awe, part vertigo, part something darker. What does it mean to be human when you've seen what we're chasing is already someone else's yesterday?
A flicker of movement near the command station pulls me back to the room.
Sam is there again, standing close enough that the light from his console outlines her in gold, turning her into something out of a Renaissance painting—all clean lines and purposeful beauty.
She holds that darn datapad, voice low, words lost beneath the layered hum of command.
Whatever she says makes him pause.
He looks at her. Actually looks—not the thousand-yard stare of someone processing tactical data, but focused attention, the kind you give to people rather than problems.
She smiles—quick, confident, entirely at ease. The kind of smile that belongs here, that’s earned its place through competence and time.
Her fingers trail through the projection field as she points something out, dangerously near his hand—not quite touching, but close enough that the space between them feels charged.
He inclines his head, expression unreadable, answering in a tone too soft to catch across the distance.
She laughs—a small sound that doesn’t reach the rest of the deck, but lands in my chest anyway, a single drop in still water sending rings outward.
They look good together. Natural. Two people who speak the same language, literal and metaphorical.
I look away, jaw tight.
It’s nothing.
She’s doing her job.
He’s doing his.
People talk. They laugh.
That’s normal.
That’s professional collaboration between competent adults who share responsibilities and mutual respect.
The fact that my hands are curled into fists in my lap is entirely irrelevant.
The heat crawling up my neck is just the atmosphere control fluctuating.
The tightness in my chest is spatial anxiety. Nothing more.
I fix my eyes on the console in front of me, pretending to study the cascading glyphs that ripple across its surface.
They're hypnotic and meaningless, elegant strings of Zypherian script that reconfigure themselves faster than I can blink. My brain doesn't recognize a single symbol.
I'm still telling myself that none of this matters when a shadow falls across me.
A tall Zypherian stands beside my seat, his presence immediately distinct—lean frame, green undertones to his skin shimmering faintly in the low light, serpentine markings I recognize instantly.
House of Valethis.
Recognition hits. The warrior I was meant to be assigned to before everything shifted-before Admiral intervened.
"Ruby," he says, voice a low rumble that carries warmth despite the alien timbre. Not unkind.
"I am Tharos."
There's something almost gentle in the way he says it, like he's consciously softening his approach for human consumption.
"Hi," I manage, surprised he's using my name.
"The first fold begins soon," he continues, glancing toward the vast dome overhead where the stars hang, bright and oblivious. "You will need to secure yourself. The smaller folds are... manageable, but the forces involved can be disorienting for humans. Have you fastened your restraints?"
I look down. The seat harness is a nest of metallic threads and shifting loops, designed for bodies built differently from mine. "Uh. Working on it."
The corner of his mouth tilts-an almost-smile that softens his severe features. "They are not intuitive," he admits. "May I?"
He gestures, not assuming permission but asking for it. There's an old-world courtesy to him that feels out of place here. When I nod, he reaches to adjust the loops-precise movements, careful not to brush my skin, though the proximity hums like static.
"Like this," he says quietly, fastening one of the threads with a soft click. "And this connects to the gravitational dampeners embedded in the seat. When the fold compresses—"
He's explaining the mechanics, walking me through it like a patient teacher, and I should be watching what he's doing, absorbing the information I'll need if I want to secure myself next time.
But I'm not.
My gaze keeps sliding past him, drawn like a compass needle to magnetic north—to the command ring where she stands beside him.
They're close again, closer than protocol requires, their heads bent together over something on the display.
The light catches on her cheekbone.
He leans slightly toward her—barely perceptible, but I'm looking for it now, cataloguing every micro-expression like evidence at a crime scene.
I lose track of what Tharos is saying, of what his hands are doing. The words blur into background noise. I nod when he glances up, pretending to listen, heat creeping into my chest for no reason I care to name.
"I'll—uh—I'll get it," I murmur, forcing a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. "Thank you for explaining."
Before he can reply, a voice cuts through the layered hum of the room—calm, precise, carrying across every frequency without needing to shout.
"Tharos."