Page 3

MAYA’S brEATH hitched. She stared at him, and for a second, everything else fellaway.

Anya .

The name struck with the force of a blow. It had been weeks since Maya had last seen her sister, since the morning she vanished without explanation, leaving nothing behind but a silenced phone and a hollow apartment.

Sometimes, even now, Maya heard the echo of Anya’s laugh, bright, musical, asound that used to fill the space between them like light through a window.

The last voicemail Anya left played in her memory without mercy: Hey, dork.

Forgot to tell you I stole your hoodie. Again.

Love you. That was it. No hint of finality.

No goodbye. Just an ordinary message, threaded with love, and then nothing.

The silence that followed had been louder than any scream.

After Anya had stopped communicating, Maya had searched. Filed reports. Called hospitals. Checked her home night after night until exhaustion claimed her. There were no clues. No goodbyes. Just a gaping hole where Anya had once been. Asilence that never answered.

And now this stranger—this alien —spoke her sister’s name like it meant nothing.

“What did you just say?” she whispered.

“Your sister provided the information. Anya Anderson. Twin.”

He spoke with eerie stillness, hands at his sides, spine perfectly aligned, as if he’d delivered the sentence a hundred times before and never once questioned it. No flicker of emotion. No visible reaction.

“She described your location, your routine, your vulnerabilities,” he continued. “Class schedules. Preferred coffee shop. Walking paths. Time of day you’d be alone.”

His gaze remained locked on hers, unwavering, not cruel, just inflexible. “Her voice pattern passed all lie detection protocols. She gave us what we needed to complete the retrieval.”

Maya jolted against the restraints. “No. No. She’s missing. She vanished. She—”

Riv’En cut her off. “She is with Third. Voluntarily.”

The words didn’t make sense. Maya blinked, but the meaning didn’t change. Instead, it hit like a slap across her face, wrong, distorted, impossible. Her breath came too fast, too shallow, and the world tilted slightly, just enough to make her stomach twist.

Anya wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t betray her.

Not for anything. Not willingly. Maya tried to picture it.

Anya walking into a ship like this, giving up names, coordinates, pieces of Maya’s life.

And it cracked something open in her chest. Acold, echoing space where certainty used to live.

No. It wasn’t real. Whatever this creature believed, whatever he’d been told, it wasn’t Anya. It couldn’tbe.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, fury rising to boil just beneath her skin. “You’re lying.”

“I do not lie.”

“You’re wrong. She would never help you. She wouldn’t tell you a damn thing.”

“She gave detailed information.” His tone stayed flat, but a hint of tension edged each word now, as though saying it aloud required more effort than it should have. “Confirmed your habits. Your location. Your name.”

His shoulders squared, and he shifted slightly, as if grounding himself in doctrine.

Still formal. Still rigid. But there was something in his stance now, afaint change that hadn’t been there before.

“Her cooperation expedited the extraction,” he added.

No hesitation. No apology. But his gaze narrowed, just slightly, like he was bracing for impact.

Maya’s voice cracked. “That’s not possible.”

“It was relayed in her words. Directly.” His gaze never shifted. “Computer, play Anya, voice recording two.”

Her sister’s voice bled through the speakers.

Maya froze.

A cold jolt shot through her chest, locking her breath mid-inhale.

Her pulse stuttered, then surged, her limbs gone buoyant, like she’d been dropped from a great height.

The voice wrapped around her ribs, familiar and brutal, and for a split second, she couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe —because it wasAnya.

Alive. Speaking.

And giving her away.

“Berkeley, California. United States of America. She lives off-campus with three roommates. She usually walks to class—rain sends her to the bus stop on the corner near the café. She studies computer science and always has her headphones in, half-lost in whatever coding world she’s building.

If anyone tries to stop her on the street, she probably wouldn’t even hear them.

And... And she’s my twin, so she’ll look exactly like me. ”

“Is that your sister?”

Maya shook her head, violently now, wild. “No. You took her. You twisted her. You tricked her into giving you the information—”

“Genetic scan confirmed the match. She is your twin. An intergalactic anomaly. And she voluntarily gave you to us. You are mine now.”

The words landed like a physical blow. Maya’s stomach twisted, bile rising as her body reacted before her mind caught up. Achill crept across her skin, crawling up her spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Mine .

The way he said it—calm, clinical, as though claiming ownership of her were as routine as checking a diagnostic—made her insides recoil.

She was not his. She would never be his.

But some primitive part of her heard the claim and shuddered all the same, her pulse stuttering beneath the surface as if her body didn’t know the difference between possession and danger.

Her breath caught in her throat. Asingle heartbeat missed. But she lifted her chin, forcing steel into her spine.

She drew a breath, sharp and uneven. “You want answers? You want data? Fine. Test me. Run your scans. Ask your questions. But don’t expect me to cower while you pretend you’re the one in charge here.”

He stepped closer.

She refused to flinch. Would not give him the satisfaction.

“I am in charge,” he said with finality, his voice low and unyielding, like the command of someone who had never been questioned and did not intend to startnow.

Maya scoffed, sharp and bitter. “Sure. You’re doing a stellar job of proving it.”

“You mistake stillness for indecision. Iam analyzing every possible outcome.”

“Right. And losing it is just a strategic option now?” She threw the words like a blade. Not just to wound, but to provoke. To strike something soft beneath all that armor and see if itbled.

The thought had her gaze flickering to his collarbone, to the blood she’d drawn and could still taste. Alien blood. Riv’En’s blood. She shuddered.

She should be horrified. Instead, her pulse kicked.

Her skin buzzed. The taste lingered like lightning—wrong and electric and dangerously intoxicating.

She didn’t want more of it, but she couldn’t forget it either.

It was burned into her memory, down the back of her throat, crawling through her nerves.

And the worst part?

It wasn’t fear curling through her stomach.

It was want—sharp, visceral, and terrifying in its clarity.

Awant that refused to fade, even as logic screamed that it should.

Her breath hitched. She swallowed hard, forcing the sensation down, locking it away where it could not deceive her.

But her body betrayed her anyway, mouth tight, fists tight, eyes locked on the place she’d bitten him, heart pounding like she was still in motion.

He hadn’t retaliated.

He hadn’t raged ather.

And that restraint unsettled her more than anger ever could.

“You are pushing boundaries you do not understand,” he finallysaid.

“And you’re clinging to rules you stopped following the moment you stepped into this room.”

Their words snapped back and forth like sparks, bright, volatile, each one striking too close to something vital. It wasn’t just banter anymore. It was a clash of identity, and something else neither of them wanted toname.

Then silence. Thick. Heavy.

Was it just defiance? Not entirely. Part of her needed to see what lay beneath all that composure, if there was anything beneath it.

Was he just programming and pride? She needed to know if there was a crack in the armor.

If anything in him could break. Because if it could, then maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t entirely powerless in thisroom.

The tension bristled between them, pressing against her skin like static, laced with every unspoken word, every unanswered question. The balance of power shifted breath by breath, sharp and precarious. Command. That was what he worshipped. What held him upright.

But mastery wasn’t what she sawnow.

“Why,” she whispered, “do you look like your curiosity is about to override your orders?”

He froze.

Just for a second. But it was enough.

Maya leaned in as far as her restraints allowed, voice low, steady now.

“You’re not supposed to experience anything, are you?

That’s what they made you for. Cold. Efficient.

No second guesses.” A sudden thought slammed into her, sharp and impossible to ignore.

“Are you a machine? Is that what this is?”

She didn’t mean it as an insult. It came out as something closer to awe. Because if he was, then he was broken. And if he wasn’t… that was even harder to explain.

His expression didn’t change right away, but something flickered in the darkness of his eyes. Apause. Ahesitation. Then, finally, he answered.

“I am not machine. Iwas born, flesh, bone, memory. Amother. Abeginning. But I was altered. Genetically shaped to serve the Intergalactic Warrior caste. Trained to follow its codes. Conditioned to obey its rules. That is what they made of me. But I am not a construct. Nor am I artificial.”

He said it like someone repeating a forgotten truth, one rarely visited, half-remembered. There was no offense in his voice. No pride either. Just fact, unflinching, emotionlessfact.

Maya studied him, something twisting deep in her gut. “You’re not just following orders anymore, are you?”