Chapter 3: Togart's hands shake as he peels back Diana's melted glove, revealing how their shared pain has begun rewriting both their DNA in eerie, glowing patterns neither can explain.
The sudden silence was a physical blow. One moment, the world was a roaring, shaking hell of light and noise. The next, it was just the hum of contained power and the ragged sound of her own breathing inside the helmet.
Diana sagged against the now-cooling console, her gloved hands splayed on the metal. “Okay,” she panted. “Okay, that worked.”
Togart didn’t answer immediately. He was just staring at the stabilized core, his pThosture rigid with the aftershock of adrenaline. Through the new, crystalline clarity of their link, she felt the sharp edge of his professional disbelief sanded away by a slow, dawning awe. It was quickly overshadowed by a more urgent, practical fear.
“The suits,” he said, his voice tight in her comm. “The insulation is compromised. We need to get out of the chamber. Now.”
The airlock door slid shut behind them with a final, heavy thud, sealing the core’s energy away. The decontamination cycle hissed, spraying their suits with a fine, cool mist that sizzled on the heated metal. The moment the all-clear light blinked green, Togart’s hands went to his helmet.
His fingers, usually so sure, fumbled with the neck seal. The clasps were warped, partially melted from the intense ambient heat. “It’s fused,” he grunted, a thread of panic lacing his words.
“Hey, easy. Let me,” Diana said, moving closer. Her own hands were trembling, but the instinct to help was automatic. She batted his hands away and examined the seal. The mechanism was complex, alien, but a latch was a latch. She wedged her gloved fingertips into the narrow gap and pushed, putting her weight into it. With a brittle crack, it released.
As his helmet came loose, a wave of sensation hit her so hard she stumbled back a step.
It wasn't a memory this time. It was raw, unfiltered input. The sterile, recycled air of the airlock vanished, replaced by the scent of ionized metal and her own sweat, but amplified, layered with a strange, spicy scent she somehow knew was his. She heard the hum of the station not just with her ears, but as a vibration along her skin. And beneath it all, a low, throbbing ache bloomed deep in her own ribs—a perfect, sympathetic echo of the old plasma burn scar she’d seen in his memories.
She clutched at her own side, gasping. “What the hell was that?”
Togart was breathing hard, his face pale as he stared at her, his amber eyes wide. He dropped his helmet. It clattered on the deck, the sound unnaturally loud. “The energy share… it’s not just thoughts. It’s synesthesia. Sensory crossover.” He began working on the chest plate of his suit, his movements frantic. “We need to get these off. The material is saturated. It’s amplifying the feedback.”
Understanding dawned, cold and sharp. The suits weren't just compromised by radiation; they were acting as conductors for whatever this bond had become. She tore at her own suit, her fingers clumsy and numb. The chest plate refused to budge, the central latch sealed shut.
“I can’t—” she started, her voice rising.
“Let me.” He was there in an instant, his larger hands covering hers, pushing them aside. His focus was absolute, a sharp point in the chaotic stream of shared sensation. He gripped the latch, his knuckles white, and twisted. With a screech of protesting metal, it gave way.
The moment the suit split open and she pulled her arms free, the intensity of the feedback lessened, pulling back from a roaring waterfall to a rushing river. But it didn't stop. She could still feel the ghost of the console’s texture under her bare palms, could still taste the metallic fear in his mouth.
He was staring at her, his expression a shattered mosaic of shock and something else, something like horror. “Diana,” he whispered. “When I took your energy… it wasn’t a loan. It was a graft. A permanent splice.”
The air left her lungs. “Permanent?”
“The Entity didn’t just use you as a battery. It used your life to patch the holes in mine. We’re… woven together.” He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she’d seen in his memories of frustration. “The sensory feedback, the memory bleed… it’s not a side effect. It’s the foundation. This is what’s keeping me alive.”
The truth of it settled in her bones, colder than the Entity’s touch. She wasn’t just connected to him. Parts of her were literally powering him. Her vitality was the fuel for his heart, his breath. The thought was so violating, so immense, it made her dizzy. She leaned back against the cool wall of the airlock, sliding down to sit on the floor, the world tilting around her.
“So I’m… what? A life support system?”
“No.” The word was sharp, fierce. He knelt in front of her, his eyes searching hers. “It is a sharing. A balance. But the link is crude. Unrefined. It’s causing this… leakage.” He gestured vaguely between them. “I feel your exhaustion like a weight on my own shoulders. You feel the ache of my old wounds.”
Before she could process that, a shift in the air pressure made the fine hairs on her arms stand up. The Entity coalesced from the shadows near the airlock’s outer door, his form seeming more substantial than before, fed by the station’s restored power.
“The vessel is stable,” the Entity intoned, his voice a neutral observation. “The resonance is significantly improved. The graft holds.”
“At what cost?” Togart demanded, rising to his feet and facing the being. “This isn’t a connection. It’s a hemorrhage.”
The Entity’s head tilted. “Efficiency was the priority. Finesse is a luxury for stable systems. You were dying. She was available. The math is simple.”
Diana felt a hot spike of anger—her own, and a matching, protective fury from Togart. It mixed together into a confusing cocktail that made her head pound.
“There is another factor,” the Entity continued, his gaze, if it could be called that, shifting to Diana. “The energy you transferred did not merely sustain him. Your presence, your pattern, has created an echo in the local spacetime field. A signature.”
“What does that mean?” Diana asked, her voice thin.
“It means,” Togart said, his voice grim, “that anyone looking for a lost human pilot might now be able to find you. And it means that my people, if they ever scan this outpost, will detect a foreign biological signature intertwined with mine. We are no longer just two people in a station. We are an event.”
The implications unfolded in her mind like a nightmare. Rescue teams from Earth, stumbling into this situation. Satarian authorities, arriving to find their lone warden fused with a primitive alien. They would be a curiosity, an anomaly. A problem to be solved. Then she frowned saying No ones looking for me.I just disappeared thousands dissappered from earth a year.
Then Togart said I know 32 circles forgotten
The Entity began to fade, his purpose seemingly concluded. “The system is stable. For now. Tend to the bond. It is your primary system now.”
And then he was gone, leaving them in the humming silence of the airlock, surrounded by their discarded, scorched suits.
The weight of it all was crushing. The permanence. The danger. The sheer, bizarre intimacy of feeling another person’s physical sensations as your own. Diana pulled her knees to her chest, resting her forehead on them. She just breathed, in and out, trying to find the edges of herself in the cacophony.
She felt him sit down beside her, not touching, but close. His presence in the link was a steady, low hum of concern and shared overwhelm.
After a long while, she lifted her head. The massive viewport of the airlock showed the swirling, brilliant vortex of the cosmos outside, a beautiful, indifferent backdrop to their impossible situation.
“So,” she said, her voice raspy. “This is what you meant by ‘static’?”
A faint, weary smile touched his lips. It was the first real smile she’d seen from him. It changed his entire face, softening the sharp, elegant lines. “This is considerably worse than static.”
She found herself smiling back, a fragile, shaky thing. “Yeah. I’m getting that.” She reached up, her fingers unconsciously tracing the new, pointed tip of her ear. The gesture didn’t feel strange anymore. It felt like her.
He followed the movement, his gaze thoughtful. “It does suit you,” he said quietly.
The feedback had settled into a manageable background hum, a constant awareness of him like a second heartbeat. It was terrifying. It was violating. But as they sat there together on the cold floor, watching the universe turn, it was also, undeniably, a connection. She had fixed the machine. Now, they had to learn how to live with what they had become.
Now, they had to learn how to live with what they had become.
The silence stretched, thick with unasked questions. Diana watched the nebula swirl outside the viewport, its colors bleeding into one another like a watercolor left in the rain. She became aware of a dull, persistent throb in her left palm, a sensation she knew wasn't hers. "You're still holding onto that broken latch, aren't you?" she asked, not looking at him.
Togart unclenched his fist, glancing down at the shallow cut across his palm. "And you have a headache starting just behind your right eye." He sighed, a sound of profound exhaustion. "This is going to be… complicated."
A faint, wry smile touched her lips. "Understatement of the century." She pushed herself up, her muscles protesting. The movement sent a fresh wave of his fatigue washing over her, a heavy blanket of leaden weariness. "Okay, first things first. I need coffee, or whatever passes for it here. And I really need to get this grime off." She gestured at her grubby flight suit.
He led her out of the airlock and into the winding corridors of the living quarters. The station hummed with a steadier, healthier sound now, but the corridors were still stark and impersonal. She felt a flicker of his Impression—not quite a memory, more an emotional bookmark—of long, lonely walks through these same halls. The feeling was a hollow ache in her own chest.
His quarters were sparse, almost monastic. A single bed was bolted to the floor, a small desk terminal glowed softly, and a doorway led to what she assumed was a sanitary facility. "You can use the cleanser," he said, gesturing vaguely. "I will attempt to synthesize a stimulant. It will not be coffee."
"At this point, I'll take hot brown water," she said, offering another tentative smile. It felt strange on her face, like using a muscle she'd forgotten she had.
Inside the small, cubicle-like cleanser, she peeled off the remainder of her suit. The warm spray was a blessing on her skin, washing away the sweat and fear of the last few hours. As she relaxed, a cascade of sensations that weren't her own flooded in. The phantom pressure of a helmet seal on her neck. The ghost of coolant fluid soaking into imagined boots. It was Togart, going through his own routine just outside the door, his experiences echoing into her nervous system.
She leaned against the wall, letting the water flow over her. It was deeply unsettling, this involuntary intimacy. Yet, beneath the violation, there was a bizarre curiosity. She focused, trying to separate the strands of feeling. There—a specific soreness in his right shoulder, an old training injury. And there—a flicker of concentration as he worked the synthesizer, the mental taste of complex chemical formulas.
When she emerged, wearing a clean but oversized grey jumpsuit she’d found, he was waiting with two steaming mugs. The liquid was dark and smelled sharply herbal. "It's called k'reth," he said, handing her one. "It's… bracing."
She took a cautious sip. It tasted like boiled tree bark and electricity. "Wow. You weren't kidding." She winced, but the heat was comforting. "Thanks."
They sat on the edge of his bed, the only perch available, a careful foot of space between them. The silence returned, but it was different now, filled with the low hum of the station and the whispering overlap of their senses. She could feel the warmth of the mug in her hands, and also, faintly, the warmth of his mug in his.
"This memory bleed," she started, her voice soft. "The things I saw… your homeworld. The silver leaves. Was that real?"
He stared into his mug. "The Atherian forests. Yes." A wave of Homesickness, so sharp and sweet it made her breath catch, washed over her from him. "You saw that?"
"Just flashes. Like watching a vid on a broken screen." She paused, gathering courage. "I also felt… the burning. When you were wounded."
His jaw tightened. A door slammed shut in the connection, the memory-wall going up so fast it left a void. "Some things should not be shared."
"I get it," she said quickly, respecting the boundary. She fidgeted with the sleeve of the jumpsuit, then an idea struck her. "Hang on. I think I have something that might help. A little." She reached for the small pouch she'd managed to salvage from her suit, the one that usually held her makeup.
Togart watched, bemused, as she pulled out a slim tube. "Is that a weapon?"
"In a manner of speaking," she said with a weak laugh. "It's lip balm. My own recipe. Peppermint and beeswax." She uncapped it and the clean, familiar scent cut through the sterile air. "Here." She held it out. "For your cut. It's antibacterial. And it might… I don't know, give your senses something else to focus on. Something that's just… me."
He looked at the tube, then at her, his amber eyes full of a complex mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Slowly, he took it. His fingers brushed against hers, and for a split second, the connection flared. Not with pain or memory, but with a simple, startling clarity: the cool smoothness of the plastic tube, the faint stickiness of the balm, and the unique, soothing frequency of her intent to comfort.
He dabbed a small amount on the cut on his palm. A shiver ran through him, and through her. The sharp, pleasant scent of peppermint bloomed strongly in her mind, a clean, unequivocally human signature layered over his alien senses. It was a tiny anchor, a point of calm in the psychic noise.
"See?" she said softly. "A little piece of Earth."
He didn't smile, but the grim tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. "It is… effective." He handed the tube back, and their fingers brushed again. This time, the feedback was different. The headache behind her eye receded, replaced by a flicker of something else—not a memory, but a raw, unguarded emotion from him. It was gratitude, so profound and lonely it felt like a physical ache.
In that moment, the bond didn't feel like a violation or a burden. It felt like a bridge. The Entity had woven their life forces together with brute force, but this—this small, deliberate act of sharing—was something else. It was a choice.
It was a choice. The silence that followed was different, no longer hollow but filled with the quiet hum of two people recalibrating their entire existence. Diana stared into her mug of k'reth, the sharp herbal taste still lingering on her tongue. "You know," she said, her voice cutting through the static in their shared senses. "For a life-splicing, universe-altering event, this is kinda... boring."
Togart let out a short, sharp breath that was almost a laugh. The sound was so foreign to him it felt like a physical crack in his armor. "What did you expect?"
"I dunno. More screaming? Definitely less of this sitting-around." She nudged his boot with hers, a small, deliberate point of contact. A jolt, not of pain, but of simple, warm presence traveled up her leg. "We should do something. Celebrate you not being dead."
"There is nothing to celebrate." His words were automatic, a soldier's response, but the feeling that leaked through their bond was conflicted. A faint, buried flicker of something that yearned for the very concept.
"Sure there is." She grinned, a spark of her old self igniting. "We can celebrate your unbirthday."
He stared at her, utterly baffled. The confusion was so pure and unguarded she could almost see it, a tangible question mark hanging in the air between them. "My... what?"
"An unbirthday! It's all the other days of the year when it's not your birthday. So, statistically, we have a much better chance of celebrating on the correct day." She was already moving, hopping off the bed and rummaging through her few salvaged possessions. "We need cake. Or a facsimile thereof."
The synthesizer produced a dense, vaguely sweet brick of nutrients. Diana declared it a masterpiece. She found a twisted piece of wiring from a discarded panel and jammed it into the top. "Make a wish," she commanded, holding the sad, grey cake out to him.
He just looked at it, then at her, his tall frame seeming oddly vulnerable in the sterile room. "This is irrational."
"Totally," she agreed cheerfully. "Now wish. And don't tell me, or it won't come true." Through the bond, she felt the rigid walls of his discipline strain. Then, a single, clear thought formed and was hastily shuttered away: I wish for this to be real.
He blew out the imaginary flame.
A shift in the atmosphere prickled the back of Diana's neck. The Entity materialized near the doorway, its form more defined, more present than before. It observed them, its head tilted in that birdlike, analyzing way. "The energy signature has stabilized further. Fluctuations in the cortisol and neuro-adrenaline streams have decreased by eighteen percent."
"Yeah, we're having a party," Diana said, not taking her eyes off Togart. "You're not invited."
The Entity ignored her. Its focus was entirely on Togart. "The graft is integrating at an accelerated rate. Your bio-signatures are synchronizing beyond projected parameters." It paused, a calculated silence. "Your resilience is notably increased. You are tolerating the human's aberrant social behaviors."
Togart stood very still. "She has a name."
"The designation is irrelevant. The effect is not." The Entity's voice was a flat, analytical drone. "This 'unbirthday' ritual introduces illogical variables. Yet your core vitality metrics have improved. You are stronger."
Diana reached out then, not with her mind, but her hand. Her fingers brushed against Togart's arm, a light, grounding touch. She needed to feel the solid reality of him, to reassure herself that this fragile, strange peace they were building wasn't another phantom sensation from the bond. His skin was warm, and she felt the fine tremor that ran through him at the contact.
He didn't pull away.
He looked down at her hand, then back at the Entity, his posture straightening. The weariness that had been a permanent part of his aura since she'd found him seemed to recede, replaced by a low, steady thrum of strength. "The effect," Togart said, his voice firm and clear, "is that we are no longer just surviving."
The Entity watched them for a moment longer, a silent, processing god in their cramped quarters. Then, without another word, it dissolved back into the shadows from which it came, leaving them alone with the faint, sweet smell of synthesized cake and the undeniable, strengthening thread of their connection.