The stars shimmered in the indifference of cold space, unaffected by our escape. The moon-prison diminished behind us, a jagged gray smear against the vast nothingness. There were no arms trailing us and no enemy ships in sight—just the quiet hum of our stolen shuttle's systems keeping it alive.

  For once, the Symbiote was silent, which worried me more than his usual condescension. I could feel his unease creeping through my mind like a cold fog. Inside the cabin, the flickering lights finally steadied, and I sank into the too-rge pilot seat, aware of the tight ache in my limbs and the pounding of my heart. The shuttle was stable. For now, at least.

  A fit of shivers coursed through me—not from fear or even from cold, but from the body's reaction after surviving something it shouldn't have. I knew he felt it, too, not the chill but the aftermath, that bone-deep weariness that comes after cheating death. We sat there together—me in a skin I barely recognized and him a passenger with too many controls—doing nothing longer than necessary to calm ourselves, our jagged breaths the only sound in the stillness of the cabin.

  We were both prisoners in that moment, though perhaps not as different from each other as we thought. Outside, the quiet was good. No arms. No shouting. Just the ship running smoothly. I noted this absentmindedly—this was a well-maintained vessel, with a clean power feed and a banced output. A Terran ship, clearly taken care of by someone who understood its inner workings.

  "That is optimal," The alien remarked, sarcasm evident beneath his words, though I could also sense relief. A strange sensation washed over me - realizing that while he fed off my emotions, I could sense his too—a barely perceptible flutter, a static buzz at the edge of my thoughts. Our connection ran deeper than I'd initially grasped.

  "This shell," he muttered, his tone dripping with disdain, "requires constant tending. Hunger. Thirst. Emotional instability. Biologically inefficient on every level." His disgust for this physical form was palpable, like an itch I couldn't scratch.

  I would have shrugged if I could, but instead, my stomach growled loudly, a startling noise in the quiet of space. "See? Broken." I was indifferent to that. We were uncertain of our location, but it hardly mattered; we were moving—away from the prison, away from death—and that was enough for me in that moment. Survival trumped all else.

  Yet, in the quiet, realizations began to creep in, like how disgusting I felt. Looking down, I saw my skin smeared with rust and brown gunk—thick in some pces, cracked in others. I wanted to avoid naming it, but deep down, I knew it was blood, fluids, death. The remnants of our harrowing escape clung to me, a visceral reminder.

  My heart fluttered—not in a good way, but as if it were trying to escape the confines of my chest. My brain screamed in a pitch I couldn't contain, and he noticed. Of course, he did. Our bond made it impossible to hide.

  "This shell is... contaminated." The word sliced through the cacophony in my head like a bde. In our brief acquaintance, I'd discovered he had no sense of humor, which oddly calmed me. In any other context, that line would have made me ugh—his delivery was comedy gold, dry, blunt, and utterly serious. That absurdity anchored me, preventing me from spiraling further.

  I was still naked, coated in dried fluids, alien muck, and who knows what else from that pit where they'd kept us. The thought made my skin crawl.

  "To assess this body properly, it must be cleansed." His voice was matter-of-fact, clinical, as if running through a checklist: hygiene failed, sterility failed, trauma ongoing. As harsh as his words were, I knew he was right. I needed to wash away the physical and metaphorical grime clinging to me before I could begin to process what had happened.

  He guided us to the back of the shuttle—a narrow cubicle lined in matte alloy, resembling personal quarters. The bed was not standard; it was far too wide and plush for a Terran shuttle. Beside it was a hygiene unit—not a water shower but a particute dissolver, one of those high-tech spray systems that atomized grime and bacteria into nothing.

  I hated it instantly. I was familiar with these showers—used them countless times in prison. Stripped of dignity, they were routine and functional. I was never alone in them; there were always too many eyes too close, too interested. It wasn't about cleanliness. They were about control. Vulnerability. At least this one was enclosed and empty. Just me. That counted for something, even if the air still tasted like recycled metal and my skin crawled.

  The sour stench of dried blood, sweat, decay, began to make me gag. I stepped in, and he moved my arms to trigger the cycle. The mist hit me like static—tiny pulses breaking down everything clinging to my skin. Efficient. Cold. Wrong. A chill ran down my spine as memories of those sterile prison showers flooded back, making the present feel all the more unsettling.

  And that's when it happened. In the quiet of the shower, watching the filth dissolve off me—watching what I'd just survived wash away—I cracked. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have survived. There was a hollow in my chest that hadn't stopped aching since I hit the bottom of that pit. The Symbiote wouldn't let me ignore it. I looked down at my legs and arms, bruises I didn't recognize marking my skin—each one a reminder of suffering I couldn't remember earning. My ribs felt like tight bands around my chest, and just the thought of my back made me clench my jaw.

  I didn't need a mirror to know what was carved there. I wasn't the same—nowhere near it. Perhaps that's what broke me. I sat down right there in the sterile chamber, pulled my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, and cried. It wasn't graceful or poetic. It was ugly, ragged sobbing—a wave of rot, loss, and humiliation crashing down. The tears burned hot trails down my cheeks as I released the anguish I had been bottling up, my body shaking with each ragged breath.

  "You're leaking," Asrell said, not armed but confused. "I just restored your hydration." I couldn't even muster a ugh; his words barely registered. And then something shifted inside me, like pressure escaping through a crack. He sensed it. "Wait... what is this? This is—this is usable." He fed on it—my grief, my rage. He didn't drain it away but took the sharp edge off, allowing me to breathe. It didn't stop the pain, but dulled it into a weight I could carry.

  "Agreement," he stated. "You emote. I consume. You remain functional." There was a pause, then he added, "Continue as you are. I will take it. I will consume what you shed and use it to keep this body alive." It wasn't really a choice, but it felt like one, and in that moment, I clung to it desperately, a lifeline in the depths of my despair.

  Fine, I thought. Take it. Let him have it. I didn't want it anyway. Once the grime was gone and I'd stopped leaking, I could move better, focus on putting one foot in front of the other. His healing had worked; no more open wounds, just bruises and scars. Before that could happen, however, he catalogued everything—coldly, efficiently—like he was scanning salvage. Lacerations along my wrists and ankles—restraints. Bruising on my hips, ribs, and upper arms. A hundred sshes on my back—deep enough to scar and shredded down to raw nerve. He listed them like bullet points: damage, tissue compromise, loss of dermal integrity. Then he found it—a modification, internal, something that made my stomach churn.

  A series of thin, sharp tubes embedded in my vaginal wall—retractable bdes crafted from adaptive alloy, affixed to organic tubing. It had not been natural. That had been the promise from an illegal modifier—one of those bcklisted surgeons the prison hired under the table. He wasn't there for me. He was there to work on someone else. But he saw me and recognized what being a woman meant in a pce like that. He'd offered. Whispered the lie like it was mercy. Desperate, I agreed. It was painful and degrading, but it saved me. Yet I knew it was a lie, and I noticed it every single day. For something I'd been told I'd never feel—never be aware of—it always felt wrong; a constant, foreign presence in my body. And every shift made me remember why I had agreed.

  He catalogued it: invasive tech, illegal, military-grade, designed with disturbing precision but clearly not of his kind. He questioned it briefly, and I burned with glorious fury. He didn't understand it, not really, but he recognized the feeling, and that was enough. He didn't speak more of it. He tucked the memory away to revisit when I wasn't on the brink of colpse. A wise choice, for the rage that bubbled up at his clinical assessment made me want to sh out, to hurt him as I had been hurt. But I restrained myself, knowing that for now, he was all I had.

  Next came the task of fueling the machine. With steadier legs—I wasn't strong yet, but I wasn't shaking—I stepped out of the awful shower. Sterilized skin felt wrong, like I had been scrubbed raw, stripped of any remaining humanity. I needed something—anything—to wear. The thought of walking naked made my skin crawl with vulnerability. That's when I noticed the rest of the quarters. They were standard size, but whoever owned this shuttle had packed a lot into it—tastefully, too.

  The bed looked like a haven with clean sheets and cushions too soft for military spec. I longed to sink into it and disappear, to let oblivion cim me after the torment I had endured.

  "Not yet," he warned, his voice a low rumble in my mind. "Fuel."

  Fine. But first—clothes. He didn't seem to care about my nudity, but when I told him my species required covering, he paused for efficiency's sake. "Your thermoregution is clearly deficient," he observed, and I found the closet—an advanced storage unit that opened up like it hid a second room, stocked with neatly folded clothing.

  To my surprise, some were Terran: pin fabrics, a touch too big but comfortable and warm. I put them on gratefully, savoring every yer that helped conceal the scars and bruises marring my body like a roadmap of suffering. Then I saw them: the uniforms, pressed and folded with perverse care—bck fabric with matching bck patches, raised bars where an insignia should have been.

  I recognized those hateful garments instantly, the bcksite prison uniforms searing into my mind's eye. A cold chill slithered down my spine as I recoiled from them, the mere sight too raw, too visceral, unwilling to remember what those symbols represented and the depravities they sanctioned. The thought of donning that wretched garb again made my gut clench with nausea.

  Once I was dressed, he pressed again, his voice an insistent murmur. "Nourishment. Now."

  We moved to the surprisingly well-stocked galley, shelves lined with vacuum-sealed packs and strange containers, some beled in Terran script and others bearing jagged alien symbols.

  He didn't recognize most of it; I did, a bitter familiarity. He pointed, and I named them, voice hollow: "Protein bar. Hydration gel. Not food. Not food."

  Then he started having me eat, too much too fast, until my abused body rebelled. I vomited, heaving until there was nothing left but bile and a trembling emptiness, a sobering reminder of how fragile I had become.

  "Unacceptable," he snapped, that single word dripping with disdain. Through trial and error we realized that small, frequent snacks worked best. He begrudgingly adjusted his approach, his goal ruthlessly clear: optimize me. Fuel the machine.

  He was cold, distant, and sharp, but I let his callousness wash over me—I didn't want to feel, not yet. I was always hungry. Not just in that moment—always, a gnawing emptiness that had taken root the day they threw me into that pce.

  I didn't know how long I'd been held captive, and I didn't want to find out. That silence at the back of my mind? It was fear—quiet and coiled, refusing to look too closely at the horrors that lurked behind it. So when he told me to eat, I did.

  The hollow pang in my stomach felt viscerally real, and eating—being able to choose it, to take it for myself—felt like a middle finger to everything that had been taken from me. I barely tasted the food, and that felt shameful somehow, but whatever. It was fuel.

  The Symbiote was pleased, a faint hum of approval inside me. While he fed on my emotions, I was starting—barely—to sense his own. I snacked in careful intervals, small bites and measured sips, getting up every few minutes to wander restlessly.

  My body felt more mine now—less puppet, more me. I didn't feel strong yet, but I felt present, anchored in the moment. The ship was definitely Terran in origin—or at least had started that way. After the Split-Horizon Conflict ended, it wasn't unusual for the mass produced Terran ships to have been sold, repurposed. The one thing Terrans did well was mass produce weapons and vehicles.

  Everything appeared familiar yet refined, upgraded, modified with someone's idea of taste and ruthless efficiency. The generous galley, the excessive storage—this was a long-hauler, clearly designed for someone accustomed to comfort and indulgence. Only one bedroom. One.

  I climbed into the oversized pilot chair, curling into its contours. Yeah, it was too big, but it felt like mine now, a hard-won cim. I stared out the viewer, into the dark space.

  That's when it hit me—a ship like this should have a tracker. No one who owned a long-haul vessel this well-outfitted would risk losing it without a backup pn. Panic surged through me, sharp and sudden, and I sat up as if I'd been shocked. I swiped at the controls, fingers shaky but determined, probing the systems as fast as my half-awake brain would allow.

  The Symbiote jolted at my spike of emotion. "What are you doing?" he snapped. "Looking for a leash," I muttered. "If this belonged to someone important, they'll want it back." The systems blinked to life under my fingers—surprisingly familiar Terran code, a recognizable yout.

  It made me pause. Did the alien pilot understand Terran systems, or were they simple enough to keep the pilot compliant? A chill ran down my spine at the thought of being so easily controlled.

  Line by line, I scoured everything, and there was nothing. No pings, no auto-beacons, no trace alerts. This was a ghost ship. Whoever owned it hadn't wanted it traced, followed, or anyone to know where it had been. A knot formed in my throat as the implications sank in.

  This shuttle wasn't just stolen; it was buried. I leaned back, panic fading but my mind sharp. Mine—and not. He was thinking too, processing alongside me. I could feel the faint hum of his consciousness, cool and analytical where mine was a whirlwind of dread and confusion.

  The system scan revealed where we were—far from anything familiar, lightyears from my childhood moon, off major trade routes, no patrol paths, no jump-nes. No reason for anyone to come here unless they meant not to be found. Isotion stretched out in every direction, suffocating in its vastness.

  I hummed quietly under my breath, chewing on a protein bar as I wandered toward the engine bay, needing to move, to do something with the restless energy building inside me.

  He stirred at the edge of my thoughts, curious. "Why are we leaving the primary compartment?" "Just checking something," I muttered mentally, reminding myself he was in this with me whether I liked it or not.

  The engine bay was compact, tucked behind a narrow panel and accessible only via a low crawlspace. My newly healed body protested the motion—ribs aching, shoulders tight—but I pressed on, gritting my teeth against the pain. What I found made my brows lift: a warp core—fully intact, clean too.

  It wasn't a scrap heap job; it was maintained and functional. I traced the housing unit with my fingers, feeling the faint thrum of power beneath. Relief and a new sense of possibility washed over me as I found the diagnostic panel. It lit up in Terran, just like the bridge. Warp capability was limited—one jump every seventy-two standard hours unless they were willing to risk a meltdown.

  "How do you know what you're looking at?" he asked, intrigued. "This body was nearly dead, useless. Now you comprehend power calibration and thermal thresholds?"

  "I grew up speaking ship," I replied.

  He frowned in my mind. "That does not crify." I smirked despite the pain, memories flickering of dusty shipyards and grease-stained overalls.

  There was only one bedroom. No crew quarters. Just this engine bay, the galley, and the oversized pilot seat—designed for someone alone, someone important. The longer I spent on this ship, the clearer the pattern became: bels, markings, codes etched into panels and supply crates. The ones with names were all the same: SVC.

  Stratos Vale Corporation—those three letters floated in the background of every Terran colony, transport hub, and broadcast, invisible and constant, a shadow government none could escape.

  Normally, I would have dismissed them as more corporate junk spped across the gaxy. But this was different. The frequency. The ck of anything else meant only one thing: Bcksite. This was an SVC ship. Not just built by them—operated, hidden, buried deep in the dark corners they controlled. If that was true, the pce I had cwed my way out of wasn't a rogue prison; it was one of theirs, another tendril of their insidious reach.

  I found other rooms while wandering between snack breaks—a small weapons locker tucked behind a coded panel, not huge but sufficient. The Symbiote hissed at them in my head, and I didn't disagree. Although I hated weapons, their mere presence comforted something mean and tired inside me, a part of me that had seen too much and taken too many risks to ever feel safe again.

  The cargo bay—the same one I had crawled up from—was lined with SVC-beled crates: rations, medical kits, old tools—all untraceable, pristine, like it had been waiting for us. Waiting for someone to finally break free and cim it.

  The Symbiote, however, cared about one thing: "We must go to the Queen." No name, just a shape in his thoughts symbolizing safety, healing, direction. A beacon in the storm.

  I didn't argue out loud, but I wasn't done exploring yet. This ship was a ghost, but someone had built it for a purpose, hidden it for a reason. It was ours to uncover, our first clue to the bigger mystery.

  The more I searched, the more evident it became: the Symbiote understood how to keep a body alive, but he was technologically dense. He had insights about healing, fuel, and damage control, but he kept misunderstanding system diagnostics, squinting at readouts like they were written in an alien tongue.

  After his third misstep, I jabbed him mentally. "Never had to pilot anything before, huh? Alien or otherwise?" He bristled, and I sensed the edge of something—guilt, maybe? Embarrassment at being so clueless?

  Finally, he admitted it. "No. Others have always done that for me."

  A privileged life, then, before all this. I needed his strength, even if it came packaged with arrogance.

  For all his superiority, he hadn't known where the food was or how to open a storage panel. He was smart but had never applied himself in ways that mattered out here, in the unforgiving reality we now inhabited. We would have to learn quickly, both of us, if we hoped to survive whatever came next.

  So when I finally asked, "Where exactly is this Queen of yours?" he didn't hesitate. He rattled off a system name—one I barely recognized, but the charts in the nav system had it noted, so it was possible for me to find. I began plotting a course, my fingers dancing across the controls with a newfound sense of purpose.

  "She'll know how to remove me. Safely. You'll be returned to full autonomy." At that moment, it occurred to me that I didn't even know where he was nestled within my body. A shiver ran down my spine as I pondered the implications of his presence.

  He pinly described his position—along my spine, tucked beneath the skin, eight inches long. What he described made me think of a slug-like creature, but that didn't truly convey the strangeness of it all. I wondered what he looked like in his real form, this alien creature that had taken up residence within me. He hesitated, brushing off my question, avoiding it as if the mere thought of revealing his true nature was too much. "I have worn many forms," he eventually said, his voice tinged with a hint of mencholy. "This one... was not designed."

  He went on to expin the details of his physiology – feelers, soft and long for sensory mapping; a grey, smooth body that changed color like an octopus, shifting shades based on the environment. But the giveaway, the true mark of his otherworldliness, was the bioluminescence. A soft blue glow pulsed faintly from beneath my skin, dimming when I was calm, fring bright and sharp when I was angry, panicked, or grieving. It was as if my very emotions were being broadcast to the world, a neon sign of my inner turmoil. The glow would be mostly contained to my back, right between my shoulder bdes.

  He expined it all clinically, without emotion, as if reciting a textbook description. The honesty of his words gave me pause, even if the thought of his presence made my skin crawl. He had slipped in through my wounds, between broken flesh and torn muscle, pretending to be dead until using my body as a shelter. A shudder ran through me as I imagined the moment he had invaded my form, taking up residence like an unwanted guest.

  I reflected on that – the shape, the light, the slither of biology not mine curling along my spine. "Gross," I muttered, half in awe at the sheer audacity of his existence within me. And yet, it didn't make me recoil like it should have. There was a part of me that appreciated his will to live, even while he was using me as a mere vessel. But I wondered if, upon his removal, I would survive the separation. My next nav command tapped into that gnawing curiosity.

  "Will removing you hurt me?" I asked without concern, knowing full well that I was a dead girl walking. He was an unwanted presence that merely happened to save me, nothing more. But there was silence, not even a flicker of thought from the creature within. That twisting feeling in my stomach was unsettling, a premonition of the uncertainty that y ahead.

  "I want the truth. Always." I made it as clear as I could to this alien residing in me.

  After a beat, he answered, his voice heavy with resignation. "I do not know. That is... not my area of expertise. My instincts guided our bond. But beyond that—" he paused again, as if searching for the right words. "It is unknown."

  Of course it wasn't his area; he'd been a prince of comfort and strategy in elite circles. But did it even matter? I was a convict, escaped and forgotten. No future awaited me. A hollow feeling settled in my chest as I contempted my uncertain path ahead.

  If he considered this body home now, so be it. Better a home than a corpse at least—for now. "So, Symbiote prince," I leaned back in the pilot's seat, trying to mask my inner turmoil with nonchance, "how did you end up in a bcksite prison? For someone as important as you cim to be, there should have been an army gunning for you."

  There was a pulse—something not guilt, not fear, but injustice. It echoed through our shared space, tightening my chest as I recognized that feeling all too well from my own experiences. He didn't answer immediately, then said, "I was betrayed." A pause followed, heavy with unspoken pain. "My brother caught me at a vulnerable moment. He restrained me, and I couldn't speak or fight back. But I heard him. I heard him sell me—to a Terran—for an obscene sum." Sold, like livestock.

  My fingers stilled on the controls as his words sank in. "We don't use currency like you do," he eborated, his tone carrying a bitter edge. "So it wasn't about profit. He knew what would happen to me. He knew... and he chose it anyway." He didn't express it with emotion, but the anger rippled underneath, sharp and ancient, echoing in my heart with a familiarity that cut deep.

  "And your mother doesn't know?" I asked, my voice softer than intended.

  "Not yet. But she must. That is why I need to reach her. She will fix this. Fix me. Fix everything." The Queen wasn't just about extraction or repair; he needed justice, or perhaps to be believed. A glimmer of hope flickered within me at the thought of having someone in a position of power who could make things right.

  I didn't press further—not then—but something ached in my chest at the familiarity of it all. He revered her, longed for her. "She is not just my Queen," he once remarked reverently. "She is everything."

  I said nothing then, but I remembered my own mother and the depth of love I had for her. "Alright, Symbiote," I concluded as I finished entering the course, pushing those bittersweet memories aside, "let's do this. My name is Mia. Mia Virelli." It felt strange to say it aloud—for the name to become real again after being stripped away and buried under numbers, silence, and cruelty for so long.

  A long moment of silence followed. I didn't mind—I was still working, running numbers in my head as I plotted our escape. The warp drive would take three jumps to get us there, seventy-two hours between each spin. It would be a long journey, but the prospect of reaching his mother filled me with a tentative hope.

  Just when I thought he wouldn't respond, I felt the ripple of thought. "Asrell Vel'Haren." No title, no fanfare. The absence of ceremony was notable, and I filed it away, realizing it might mean something deeper about his current circumstances.

  I tried to pulse warmth back to him, gratitude for sharing something so personal and real, but he didn't acknowledge it. Not because he ignored me, as I initially suspected, but because he didn't understand how to respond to the feeling—it was too near something else that distracted him from recognizing the gesture. I didn't push; I sat in the oversized chair, watching the course finish compiling, and for once, feeling like a person again instead of a number or a prisoner.

  Eventually, exhaustion overtook me and I let myself colpse into the bed—plush, warm, inviting. I wiggled down into the bnkets without hesitation, relishing the simple comfort after so long.

  "What are you doing?" the Symbiote questioned, armed by my actions. "Your body needs rest."

  "Exactly," I mumbled, but even as the words left my lips, I knew rest didn't necessarily mean peace would follow.

  The nightmares arrived quickly—hard hands, searing pain, cruel ughter, voices like drills in my ears—guilty, guilty, guilty—the screams, the slicing, the sick heat of humiliation. It was all there, crawling through me, burning me from the inside out as memories of my captivity assaulted my mind.

  He felt it—the spike in emotions smming into him, too, his arm rippling like static down my spine. He didn't understand the flood of images, the pain, the memories, but he recognized the danger that this Terran vessel—me—was hurting in some way.

  I woke gasping, drenched in sweat, sliding off the bed before I realized it and curling into the far corner of the room. Knees to chest, hands clenched, breath coming in short, sharp gulps as I tried to ground myself in reality. He didn't get it—not at first.

  His voice was sharp and clipped, echoing my inner panic. "What is this? This pattern. This... data spike. Expin."

  "A dream," I managed to gasp between ragged breaths. "Just a dream." Confusion followed as the concept seemed foreign to him.

  His kind didn't dream. Sleep was functional for them, merely a cooldown, not hallucinations wrapped in pain. He probed for crification, urgency in his tone, but I couldn't expin—not then, not while the sensations were still crawling over my skin and whispering through my pulse like living things.

  It took time, but the ship's silence eventually helped—the hum of systems, the cold press of the floor against my back. I focused on those tangible sensations until, gradually, I composed myself enough to remember I was safe. Alone with the Symbiote. Just me and my fragmented mind.

  "I can stop it," he finally proposed once I had stilled. "If dreams are dangerous, I can filter them. Block the frequency. Your mind may rest cleanly."

  I looked up, still trembling slightly from the nightmare's aftershocks. "You can do that?" The idea of a reprieve from the torment was almost too good to be true.

  "Yes. But you must sleep. Your species seems to require it as much as nourishment." He didn't understand the depth of my trauma, but he could offer a way to help, and that simple fact meant more to me in that moment than I could express.