Chapter 2: Gravity-Defying Interrogation
The engines were quieter than Zylar’s thoughts. The ship held its high orbit, a silent satellite, while the interior thrummed with a new kind of energy.
Luna had discovered the artificial gravity settings.
“It’s just a dial?” she’d asked, her finger hovering over a recessed panel in the corridor leading away from the control room.
“It regulates internal mass simulation,” Zylar had said, a note of warning in his voice. “Do not—”
She’d spun it.
The sudden lurch made Willow yelp as her feet left the floor. A data-slate Zylar had been holding pirouetted away from his hand. Luna herself tumbled sideways with a gasp, then a burst of laughter as she righted herself, swimming in the air.
“Zero-G! You have zero-gravity on this thing and you didn’t lead with that?” Willow accused, already pushing off a wall to somersault slowly down the hallway. Her red hair fanned out, a slow-motion flame.
“It is a utility for maintenance and cargo handling,” Zylar said, his own body tensing as he activated the mag-locks in his boots with a subconscious twitch of his toes. He remained planted, an island of order in the sudden, buoyant chaos. “It is not for… recreation.”
“Everything is for recreation,” Luna declared, kicking off the ceiling and soaring past him. Her body was a pale, graceful arc, all flowing lines and unabashed exposure. The sight short-circuited something in his analytical mind. He was used to assessing forms for efficiency, for threat. This was neither. It was just… there. Present. He found his eyes tracking the curve of her spine, the way her blonde hair lifted like sea grass in a tide.
“Come on,” she called, already at the end of the corridor, palming open a hatch he hadn’t intended to show them. “What’s in here?”
It was the primary observation dome.
A hemisphere of flawless, composite crystal offered a panoramic view of the cosmos. Earth dominated, a breathtaking swirl of blue and white in the star-dusted black, the terminator line cleaving the planet into day and deepest night. The room was sparse, just a few floor-mounted control nodes and soft, ambient lighting that glowed from the seams in the walls. The air here was cooler, smelling faintly of ozone and the sterile, sweet tang of the air scrubbers.
Willow floated in, upside down relative to Zylar, so that her face was level with his. Her hair drifted around her head in a fiery nebula. “Okay, this is an acceptable consolation prize,” she admitted, her eyes wide on the view. Then they flicked back to him, sharp and mischievous. “So.Your species. You wear that snazzy onesie all the time? What’s under there? More glowy skin? Scales? Do you even have, like, parts? Or are you just a smooth, androgynous glowstick?”
Zylar felt his skin flush a warm, embarrassed gold. “My attire is a standard environmental suit. It regulates temperature, interfaces with ship systems, and provides protective—”
“It’s clothing,” Willow interrupted, drifting closer. “You judge us for being natural, but you’re all bundled up. Seems hypocritical, Glowboy.”
“I did not judge. I observed a deviation from my own normative experience. Judgment is an emotional overlay.”
“Bullshit,” Willow said cheerfully. “You were freaking out. Your skin went neon blue when Luna touched you.”
Luna, meanwhile, had pressed her entire body against the center of the transparent floor. She lay sprawled, the curve of the planet below making it seem like she was falling slowly onto the clouds. “It feels like flying,” she breathed, her voice full of awe. Then she looked back at Zylar, her cheek against the cool crystal. “Can you make the ship roll? So the view moves?”
“That is an unnecessary maneuver. It expends—”
“Please?” Her smile was a weapon. It bypassed all logic, all protocol.
With a sigh that was more a controlled venting of air, Zylar tapped a command into the nearest node. The ship’s attitude thrusters fired with a soft rumble. The stars began to slide slowly across the dome.
Luna shrieked with pure joy as her perspective shifted. The floor was no longer “down.” As the ship rotated, her body gently lifted off the glass. For a moment, she was suspended, a floating starfish in the vastness. Then the new orientation took hold, and she began to drift, laughing, “upwards” toward what was now the ceiling—which was lined with a delicate, spiderweb-like array of glowing filaments.
Zylar’s calm shattered.
“Do not touch that!” he snapped, his voice losing its synthetic filter. He disengaged his mag-locks and launched himself from the node, pushing off with a precision borne of practice. He crossed the dome in two swift, lunging pushes, his body twisting in the air.
Luna was tumbling, still giggling, directly toward the antimatter containment grid. A brush against its delicate harmonic field could destabilize a micro-containment cell. Not enough to destroy the ship, but enough to cause a power surge that would fry every non-shielded system in the dome—like the life support.
He caught her ankle just as her fingertips were about to graze the lowest filament. The contact was electric. Her skin was warm, surprisingly strong. He pulled her back, hard, into the open space of the dome, his other arm looping around her waist to arrest their collective spin. They drifted together, a tangled, slow-motion knot.
She was breathless, her laughter subsiding into hiccups. His arm was around her bare midsection. Her back was against his chest. He could feel the rapid flutter of her heartbeat, the expansion of her ribs as she breathed. The scent of her—sunlight and grass and something uniquely her—flooded his senses, overwhelming the sterile ship air. His own skin blazed a brilliant, chaotic mosaic of cyan and silver, betraying his internal state.
For a moment, there was only the hum of the ship and the shared rhythm of their breathing in the quiet.
“You okay?” Willow asked, her voice closer now. She had pulled herself along a guide rail, her playful sarcasm replaced by genuine concern.
“Yeah,” Luna whispered, not moving from Zylar’s grasp. She looked over her shoulder, her face inches from his. Her eyes searched his, seeing the large, dark pools reflecting the starlight and the panic. “You saved me from your sparkly ceiling.”
“It is not ‘sparkly.’ It is a containment field for unstable exotic matter,” he said, his voice tight. He realized he was still holding her. He let go, as if scalded, pushing gently to put space between them. His skin was still pulsing with light.
“You’re all glitchy,” Luna observed softly.
“My dermal chromatophores are linked to my autonomic nervous system. Your… unpredictability is stressful.”
Willow snagged a handhold, anchoring herself. “So, what you’re saying is, we literally make you glow.” She grinned. “I’ll take it.”
Zylar righted himself, willing his skin back to a steady, neutral indigo. It took effort. “The orbit is complete. I am initiating the return sequence.”
A shared look passed between the women. Luna’s playful excitement dimmed, just a fraction. Willow’s smirk faded into something more thoughtful.
“Already?” Luna asked, her voice smaller.
“The agreement was one orbit. The parameters have been fulfilled.” He moved back toward the control node, his movements stiff. “Please proceed to the transport chamber. Magnetic boots are activated in the corridor; you will find walking easier.”
They followed him, not floating now, but using the handholds, a sudden quiet between them. The giddy novelty had cooled, replaced by the impending finality of the good-bye. Back to the meadow. Back to a world without domes that held the whole of space.
In the transporter bay, a circular platform glowing with faint concentric rings, they stood side-by-side. Zylar worked at the console, inputting the exact coordinates, checking bio-signature alignment.
“Will we remember this?” Willow asked suddenly. “Or do you have some flashy thing that makes us forget?”
Zylar paused. “Memory alteration is… invasive. And often flawed. You will remember.”
“Good,” Luna said. She stepped off the platform, ignoring the warning hum. She walked up to his console, standing so close he could feel her body heat again. “Then we’ll remember you. Zylar.”
She leaned in, and before he could process the intention, she pressed her lips to his cheek. It was a soft, dry, unmistakably human gesture. A wave of warmth spread from the point of contact, and his cheek shimmered with a burst of gold light beneath her kiss.
She pulled back, smiling at the reaction, then returned to the platform.
Willow gave him a slow nod. “Thanks for the trip, Glowboy. Try not to abduct anyone else without asking first.Consent. It’s a thing.”
Zylar could only nod, the sensation on his cheek a burning, inexplicable datum his brain couldn’t file.
He activated the sequence.
The same brilliant, silent flash. The scent of crushed grass and sunshine. Then empty air.
The transporter bay was silent. The control room, when he returned to it, felt cavernous and hollow. The holographic star charts were just data again. His skin had returned to its steady, dull indigo.
He sat in his command chair. The ship’s intelligence pinged a routine query about resuming the survey pattern.
He ignored it.
On the main viewer, the curve of Earth hung, innocent and blue. He magnified the view, scrolling the coordinates to a specific latitude and longitude. He found the meadow. A green smudge.
He could just resolve two tiny, pale dots on a scrap of darker fabric, side by side.
One of them, the blonde one, seemed to be waving at the sky.
Zylar’s hand rose, almost of its own accord. His slender, iridescent finger touched the cool screen, right over the speck of light that was Luna.
A low, system-alert chime sounded. Anomaly detected. It wasn't from the planet.
It was an internal scan. His vitals were elevated. His neuro-chemical balance showed irregular spikes associated with, according to the database, emotional arousal and cognitive fixation in several observed mammalian species.
He dismissed the alert.
He kept watching the dots.