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ALICE

I couldn't stop thinking about Xyrek. Watching him talk to his minder had been eerie as hell. The alien had materialized from out of nowhere in the middle of Xyrek's quarters. He walked through furniture like a ghost. Their conversation, however, soon distracted me from this incredible alien high-tech.

It took me a moment to digest that Xyrek had been supposed to drop all of us off at that mysterious planet we had landed on, and instead, had freed more slaves and killed the men responsible. A few months ago, the thought of someone killing anybody, let alone a good amount of somebodies, would have freaked me out. But an alien invasion and my consequent kidnapping had turned me into another person—one who no longer flinched at the idea of taking a life.

Suddenly, I saw Xyrek in a new light. Behind his usually assholey demeanor was a person who cared about others. Enough to risk his career and whatever other consequences he might face to do the right thing. This new light I saw him in was dangerous to my well-being. I was already physically attracted to him, something I had been able to keep at bay because… well, because he was a royal ass, mostly. Now though?

Shit.

I thought I might start caring for him.

And then there were the mating marks. And the mystery surrounding him.

A deep sigh escaped me. Mysteries had always held a deep allure to me. I couldn’t stand walking away from something that I hadn't figured out yet. One of the reasons my employers loved me so much and paid me so well. I spent many nights on the couch in my office, only sleeping when I could no longer hold my eyes open or think straight.

Alice, let it go, my boss used to say, but once my curiosity was piqued, I never could. The ECHO-9 project was my obsession. It was a mystery that wouldn’t leave me the hell alone. That damn circuit had nearly driven me insane. I’d spent weeks debugging it, chasing an answer that shouldn’t have even existed. Self-repairing circuits didn’t redesign themselves. They didn’t learn . They didn’t think . But ECHO-9 had. It had started as a tiny inconsistency in our lab tests—harmless, almost fascinating—until the first medical prototype returned with a flagged report.

A pacemaker running ECHO-9 had altered itself.

It should have been impossible. The circuit wasn’t supposed to change its configuration after deployment. But when I looked at the data, I saw it plain as day—the pathways had shifted, optimizing for efficiency in a way that no human had programmed. It had adapted on its own.

The problem? The changes had improved conductivity… but the shift could have just as easily killed the patient.

I only had a short window to figure out why before that possibility became a reality.

Management wanted to recall the devices quietly, slap a fix on them, and move on—but that wasn’t good enough for me. I couldn’t just leave it alone. If I didn’t fully understand what went wrong, how could I be sure it wouldn’t happen again?

So I did what I always did when I couldn’t let something go—I worked for three nights straight, pushing past exhaustion, fueled by caffeine and sheer stubbornness. I isolated the circuit, ran tests, and watched it change in real time. It wasn’t a software bug. It wasn’t faulty wiring.

It was the chip.

Something deep in the architecture of the processing unit—something in the way it handled error correction and power distribution—was subtly corrupting its own logic. The ECHO-9 chip had been designed to reallocate resources dynamically, a way to prevent catastrophic failure in high-risk environments. But no one had accounted for the fact that, under very specific conditions, it could start over-correcting itself.

The pacemaker hadn’t just repaired a failing connection—it had found a better one.

This sounded great in theory, except in the process, it overrode safety limits and bypassed voltage caps, meaning it could have overloaded at any moment and fried the patient’s heart from the inside out. With the help of a computer programmer, we got it fixed—pushing the limits of the deadline, but we did it. We shut down its self-optimization functions before it could make another improvement that might turn deadly. The company signed off on my fix and sent me the next mystery to solve.

Now, whatever was going on with Xyrek was stirring the banked fires of my obsessive curiosity. I could feel the compulsion to figure out the secrets surrounding him creep under my skin. I could no more let this go than I could ECHO-9.

"I need to go to the bridge," Xyrek said, moving toward the door. I waited; every other normal person would have added an Are you gonna be okay , or something along those lines, but not him.

I stopped him. "Why?"

"Why, what?" he turned by the door, looking adorably confused. Adorably ?

"Why do you need to go to the bridge? The ship is flying itself, right?"

"Right," he nodded. "I need to make sure the Ohrurs don't alter our course."

"They can do that?" I was instantly intrigued. I mean, come on, we were talking long, extremely long distances here.

His eyes challenged me to question him further. Instead, I asked, "Can I come?"

It was his turn to ask, "Why?"

"Your tech intrigues me. I want to learn and might even be able to help."

He scoffed but waved me on. As always, the hallway was packed with people. Standing, sitting, lying down. Some were playing with the comms Xyrek had generously given us; others were talking or sleeping, ticking the time away until we finally reached our destination. Nobody said anything or tried to approach us. They even moved out of our way. The door to the bridge opened, and I stepped in and stopped dead in my tracks.

Holy. Shit!

I wasn't sure what I had expected—I mean, I had watched a lot of sci-fi movies, so I had an idea—but it wasn’t the seamless, organic flow, dark metal, and sleek design with soft blue lighting embedded into the walls like glowing veins that greeted me. The control panels were smooth, integrated surfaces, responsive to motion and touch commands, and no doubt they were running a system so advanced I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around it.

But what really caught my attention were the windows . Three massive, triangular frames stretched across the front of the bridge, positioned at precise angles that should have given a panoramic view of space. But instead of the cold abyss of the void, all I saw were glowing displays of raw data.

Real-time schematics of the ship’s inner workings, I assumed. Some areas showed hollow wireframes of the vessel’s exterior, tiny diagnostic markers blinking as they reported on shields, structural integrity, and engine performance.

I had never seen anything like it. My brain was already racing to understand. Why display information here instead of on a console? Why put diagnostic readouts where the stars should be? I took a step closer, aching to reach out and interact with the interface—because it had to be interactive, right?—when a voice rumbled from behind me.

"Don’t touch anything."

Xyrek was busy browsing through cubes he had called up on his comm, not even looking at me. I scowled. "You think I’m going to break your fancy alien ship?"

"I think you have a dangerous habit of sticking your hands where they don’t belong." His fingers danced over one of the cube screens.

I turned my attention away from the rows of blinking consoles and frowned at a set of glowing glyphs etched into one of the overhead panels. They pulsed slowly, in a pattern I couldn't quite track—almost like a heartbeat.

"What do those mean?" I asked, nodding at the symbols.

Xyrek didn’t stop whatever he was doing, fingers gliding over a cluster of translucent cubes. For a second, I thought he was ignoring me—or hadn’t heard—and I was just about to repeat the question when he said, “Environmental integrity readings. Oxygen saturation, hull pressure, shield strength. That panel alerts me before anything else does.”

“Oka—y?” I dragged out the word, hoping he’d take the hint and explain further.

He sighed and glanced over. “It glows red if we’re about to die. Otherwise, it stays calm.”

“Charming,” I muttered.

He returned to his cubes.

I tore my gaze away from the hyperspace madness and refocused on something safer—the two captain’s chairs at the center of the bridge. They didn't look like just seats. They were command thrones. Raised slightly above the rest of the bridge, positioned perfectly for control, they looked like they had every function at their fingertips—from navigation to combat systems.

I lifted an eyebrow. "Let me guess. One for you, one for your second-in-command?"

Xyrek snorted. "No second-in-command. Both chairs are mine."

I turned to him, unimpressed. "Oh, of course. Because why wouldn’t you need two seats for your giant ego?"

His smirk widened. "They serve different functions. One is for standard operation. The other is for—" he paused, and his expression shifted ever so slightly, "—when things get serious."

I narrowed my eyes. The way he said that… Something about it sent a thrill through me. He winked, and I realized he was pulling my strings. Wow, the alien made a joke. I mentally clapped for him, seeing a side I had missed so far.

Xyrek redirected his attention to his screens. He worked fast now, faster than before, as his fingers flew over the cubes. The screens flickered, and I wondered if it was in warning. The alien script glowed in an ominous red.

"They’re rerouting commands through my navigation relays," Xyrek growled, his voice taut with frustration. "They’re using my ship’s systems against me."

I watched over his shoulder, absorbing everything—the flickering lights, the shifting energy readouts, the error spikes. Then I saw it.

"Are these the power levels?" I asked, pointing at a readout.

Xyrek barely looked up, only grunted in response. I took that as a yes and scrutinized the readouts. If I wasn't wrong, it looked like the power levels to the ship’s primary control relays were fluctuating. Something was happening.

"I think the Ohrurs are trying to overload your circuits. My bet would be that if they succeed, we'll lose manual control of your ship."

Xyrek ignored me. I was convinced I was right and whipped around, scanning the bridge. "Where’s your main power junction for the bridge relays?"

Xyrek barely spared me a glance, too busy fighting a war on his cubes. "Why?"

"Because I think they’re overloading your primary circuits. You're about to lose everything if I don’t cut the right connection."

That got his attention. He snapped his head toward me, his black eyes narrowed. Then, with a sharp jerk of his chin, he pointed toward a recessed panel near the base of the captain’s chairs. I didn’t wait for permission. I dropped to my knees, pried open the panel, and nearly swore out loud at what I saw.

Behind the panel was a complex energy distribution board, sleek and far beyond anything I’d ever worked on before—but at least the design principle was somewhat familiar. The Ohrurs’ hack was pulling power directly from the ship’s core, funneling it through these relays in a way that would eventually fry them.

"Tools, I need tools," I pressed out.

Xyrek cursed under his breath, then reached under the captain's chair and pulled a black case out, pushing it toward me. I had no idea what those tools were, but one looked like a knife, and it would have to do. I started pulling open the power nodes.

Xyrek noticed. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Saving your damn ship!" I snapped, working fast. "You have an emergency bypass for this, right? A hardline switch that lets you manually cut bridge power from everything except primary control?"

His jaw tightened, but I could tell he was impressed I even knew to ask that.

"Right side, second module." He pressed out.

I reached for it—and jerked my hand back as a sharp arc of energy snapped toward my fingers.

"Shit!" My heart slammed against my ribs.

The overload was getting worse. If I cut power too soon, I could short the whole bridge—but if I waited too long, the Ohrurs would take full control.

No time for finesse.

I gritted my teeth, yanked my jacket sleeve over my hand, and grabbed the module. A sharp jolt of alien energy surged through my arm, making my fingers tingle—but I held on and ripped the relay free. The result was instantaneous.

The bridge shuddered, and lights flickered as the ship’s power grid rerouted itself, forcing manual control back to Xyrek’s command chair.

The screens flashed—and suddenly, all the Ohrur overrides vanished. I sagged against the panel, chest heaving, fingers numb from the residual shock. Xyrek exhaled hard, running a quick systems check. Then he turned toward me, his eyes gleamed with something that might have resembled reluctant appreciation.

"You could have killed yourself."

I smirked, still catching my breath. "Yeah? Well, you could’ve lost your damn ship."

Silence stretched between us for a few moments. Then, to my shock, Xyrek huffed a low, dry laugh. "Maybe you’re not completely useless after all, engineer."

I shot him a mock glare as I pulled myself back to my feet. "High praise, Captain Asshole. Truly."

His smirk lingered for half a second longer than usual before he turned back to the controls. I rolled my aching shoulder and glanced at the still-smoking power junction. Yeah. I wasn’t useless. And something told me Xyrek wouldn’t forget that anytime soon.