[Lev] You’re not home. Now I’m sad. All sweat and no snuggles today. This is how villains are born.
Kara rolled her eyes. Did he forget she had an actual job?
[Kara] You sound like you’re five. Also, you got snuggles this morning. Quit whining. You can sweat while I get actual work done.
The response was instant:
[Lev] Isn’t this a break?
[Kara] For students, maybe. Not me. Go practice.
[Lev] ??????
For a second, she wondered if he was actually okay. Then:
[Lev] Fine. Five minutes of intellectual debate in exchange for snuggles later?
[Kara] What are you so stressed about?
[Lev] The campus bakery doesn't have my favorite kind of brownies anymore.
Dang. That wasn't good. If he was unravelling today...
[Lev] And evil office chairs. Thus, snuggles are required.
She let out a breath. Hiding again. Still, he'd be fine. The dramatics were a good sign.
[Kara] You are such a ridiculous kitten.
[Lev] Meow. ?? Emotional support kitten. Very underloved.
[Kara] If anything, you are overloved.
[Lev] ??Excuse me, I’m a national treasure. Overloved is the bare minimum. Unless you’d prefer me feral: your crazed brother roaming the streets like an orphan.
Kara rolled her eyes. An orphan? That one was new, though the kitten bit had been going ever since he learned that emotional support animals existed at age ten.
[Kara] Luckily, almost no one knows where I live. No one will return you.
[Lev] *Gasp* Cruel. Ten minutes of debate?
She huffed a laugh.
[Kara] Dangerous offer.
[Lev] I live on the edge.
[Kara] The edge of ridiculousness.
[Lev] It’s the best edge, obviously.
[Kara] Go to practice. Let me work.
[Lev] Fine, I’ll just compose an epic tragic poem about loneliness. You brought this on yourself.
[Kara] Lev!!!
[Lev] You could just stop responding…
She put the comm band down and did exactly that, returning to the journal article.
While it is widely accepted that Aralin’s affinities originated through Modulator Symbiont integration following the planet’s terraforming era, the basis for host selectivity remains poorly understood. Electromagnetic pulses from the sun may have accelerated early adaptation, but they cannot explain why certain individuals bonded with distinct symbiont lineages—or why the population has since stabilized into such uneven ratios.
Koarish has argued that symbiont distribution might have been linked to consumption of varying local fauna, but current research shows this to be unlikely2,3,6. Talenir’s integration model5—proposing that separate Modulator strains diverged from a common ancestral clade adapted to different cellular niches—remains the most plausible. Recent studies1,9 support this view, identifying strain-specific organelle analogs within Aralin-born humans.
What drives these strains to favor particular hosts or family lines is still unclear. Pulser, Heatsinger, and Memoran variants may require rare physiological conditions to stabilize, while Luminar symbionts appear almost universally compatible. A genetic cofactor is suspected, but no definitive marker has yet been identified.
We propose that the existence of Memorans with minor photon-manipulation abilities may offer insight into inter-symbiont competition. Because wave-based affinities are otherwise mutually exclusive, such cases could reflect transient coexistence of multiple Modulator clades within the same host. If ancestral Memoran lineages integrated first, they may have developed mechanisms that reduce cross-strain inhibition, permitting limited photonic expression alongside cognitive modulation. This hypothesis remains unproven and requires further investigation.
Interesting. She hadn’t expected that she herself would be used as a justification for the competition hypothesis. Lev and their mother couldn’t manipulate light at all, but Kara and her uncle could make their hands glow, barely. It wasn’t much, but maybe the symbiont competition idea wasn’t entirely far-fetched.
Kara sighed. What was she doing? She was completely off topic. This visit was supposed to be about catching up on recent Novem publications. It had taken some effort, but the university had finally agreed that having her on contract with Novem, for now, benefited both sides. She’d signed the paperwork five days ago.
She gathered her things and shoved them into a satchel, then headed for the library stairs.
She loved these stairs. Ornate enough to grace a First Colony cathedral, they led down into the library’s main floor, a space that looked like it had been lifted straight from a Third Era film. Wooden shelves packed with paper books funneled visitors toward a circular dome overhead, where couches and study desks ringed a towering sculpture of the university’s founder, George Kalin.
Kara smiled. The whole place was a paradox, and as someone who lived in history, she loved it. When Aralin’s colonists arrived, books were already outdated. Upstairs was all terminals and datapads, but downstairs? Paper. The bursts made it impossible to bring sensitive tech outside shielded walls—hence, the analog backup.
She wove between the shelves, running her fingers along the spines in the fiction section. At the exit, she pressed her palm to the scanner and swiped the journal.
A soft buzz. Then the voice of the library AI: “Thank you, Dr. Kara Tanel. Please enjoy your reading materials.”
She passed through the inner door and waited in the short concrete tunnel. A click sounded behind her. The burstdoor ahead slid open, and she stepped outside. Sunlight warmed her face.
Her own office was filled with windows. It meant hauling printed materials around, but to her, the natural light was worth it.
Kara crossed the courtyard to the literature annex. The main building was concrete; the annex, mostly glass. She opened the door and climbed to the fourth floor. As she turned down the hall, she waved to Dr. Carlotta in passing.
Kara turned the corner and paused. Two men stood outside her office door. One faced her, a man with streaks of gray at his temples and peppering his full but well-groomed beard. He looked to be in that long plateau of age after thirty—too old to be a student, too young to have seen a full century. The second man, with his back to her, was harder to make out, but he wore a wing jacket—almost certainly a Pulser.
She didn’t have any appointments today. What were they doing here?
With his dark hair and olive-toned complexion, the older man might be Portilian, but that didn’t offer any clues about why they were standing outside her office.
“Hello. Can I help you?” Kara called down the hall.
The second man turned around. He was younger—early twenties, around her age. Unlike his companion, he was clean-shaven, with short, slightly shaggy brown hair and vivid green eyes, almost startling in their intensity. He was several inches taller than the older man, who was just slightly taller than Kara herself. The overall effect was rugged, but striking.
“We’re looking for Dr. Tanel. Do you know where she is?” the younger man asked.
The older man smiled and said quietly, “This is Dr. Tanel.”
The younger man blushed, and Kara held back her own smile. Most people didn’t think of a college professor as a 23-year-old girl. She looked more like a student than faculty.
“I’m a Memoran,” she explained, then turned back to the older man. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but we’re here on a matter of some urgency,” he replied.
Urgency was new. Normally, people didn’t seek out a professor of alien languages and history for anything urgent, but now, she recognized his voice. The same voice she’d spoken with on the phone two weeks ago: Jeron Blakor, head of Novem’s artifact division. Her new employer since signing the consulting contract last week.
“Fortunately, my schedule is open today with the students on break. Nice to meet you in person. Should I call you Jeron, or Mr. Blakor?”
Jeron chuckled. “Looked me up, did you? Jeron is fine.”
Kara shrugged. “I recognized your voice.” She glanced at the younger man. “But your companion, I don’t recognize.”
“Ah, yes. Forgive me.” Jeron gestured toward him. “This is Teorin Davorn.”
Kara nodded. Davorn wasn’t a Pulser line she recognized. Why send a Pulser to a meeting like this?
“Come right in,” she said, gesturing toward her office.
They sat in two of the chairs in front of her desk, and Kara perched on her own chair, leaning forward.
“What can I do for you?”
Jeron opened the briefcase he had been carrying. “One of our expeditions just sent this over. We need someone to look at it as soon as possible,” he said, passing her the pages.
That fast? They must have suspected they’d need something translated even before she agreed to work with them. Jeron hadn’t mentioned it, but why else seek out a translator? No warning, but it was hard to be upset while holding the thick stack of pages in her hands.
She started scanning through them. The pages were clearly copies of the original, written in ancient Aralian. The text was handwritten, not typed, and while it was difficult to tell what material the originals had been written on, the script was remarkably well-preserved. Only a few sections were faded, and several pages included illustrations. It almost looked like someone’s notes.
Finally, Kara looked up at Jeron. “Can you give me some background on where you found this? Context often helps.”
Jeron nodded. “We picked it up in Torolt at an excavation site a few miles inland from the eastern coast.” He pulled out another sheet of paper and laid it on her desk—a map.
Torolt lay in the northeastern latitudes. Its dense rainforests discouraged settlement but preserved untouched sites, ideal for the region’s primary vistors: archaeologists drawn to ruins that predated the Atalanta’s arrival by centuries.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Jeron pointed to a mountainous region on the map. “Our team found the document here. Most of the buildings were overgrown.”
“And were these separate pages, or were they bound together?” Kara asked.
“The first section come from a sort of notebook. The others were found in separate manuscripts from the same location. They should be in order,” Jeron said.
Kara skimmed through the pages again. The content did seem to shift toward the end, fitting Jeron’s description. Images of plants peppered the pages, along with text. Some of the words she recognized, others were entirely new. It was all fascinating, but there had to be something special about these documents. They could have just sent them over the net, but instead, they had brought them in person.
Not only that, Jeron had brought them. Kara had looked him up after their first conversation. He was fairly high-ranking within Novem—and a Temporal, the rarest, and some said the most powerful, affinity type.
“So, what’s so special about these particular pages?” Kara asked. “You obviously went to the trouble of bringing them yourselves, and I’m flattered, but I doubt it was just to brief me in person. Sending a Temporal and a Pulser seems like overkill to deliver something that could’ve been sent over the net.”
Jeron smiled. “You’re quick. I’ve heard you were clever aside from just being a Memoran, and it appears, for once, the hearsay is true.” He paused. “We ran this through a translator before coming here, but the dialect was too different to get anything useful.”
Not surprising. The algorithms for unencountered language translation had been knocked out during the First Burst, a massive EMP blast right after the Atalanta arrived near Aralin. If a language wasn’t already in the Atalanta’s database, the computer had only limited ability to translate it.
Kara was still working with other scientists to reconstruct the algorithm. Frankly, it was a miracle they could study the language found on native documents at all. Fortunately, the early colonists’ language seemed to share a root with Begalun, which was in the database. Even so, translation was still a painstaking process.
Jeron continued, “What we did get caused quite a stir. It was enough to get the two of us shipped to your office on a moment’s notice.”
He passed her another two pages. These were just a series of words, but some had been highlighted: space, escape, moons, trouble, attack, danger. Her fingers tightened on the pages. The implications of those words were huge.
People had been searching for something like this ever since they were stranded on Aralin. The presence of ruins meant someone had lived here before, and that someone hadn’t been human. They hadn’t found any evidence of other humans, but whoever had been here would have needed statherium for their ships. A cache that Temporals like Jeron had seen with their time-seeing ability, hidden somewhere on the planet underground.
“You think these could lead to the statherium cache,” she finally said.
Jeron nodded. “We do.”
That was… If Jeron was right, this could be the most significant discovery in their society’s history. “This is groundbreaking. The discovery of a lifetime.”
Jeron nodded.
“Why bring it to me?”
There was only the sound of air pushing from the vent for a moment. Finally, Jeron said, “That part is classified, but you can already see the importance here. We need this translated as soon as possible. This is Novem’s top priority. We’re going to need—”
Jeron cut off as a warped screech echoed faintly through the closed door—a sharp chirp, a sudden crackle, and then an eerie, stretched-out whine that cut to silence mid-note.
Kara’s breath caught as Jeron turned sharply to his Pulser companion. “Teorin?”
“That was an alarm,” Teorin said quietly. “One that got strangled halfway through.”
Teorin’s gaze shifted to Kara. “Any planned construction around here today? Or anything else that could’ve caused that?”
Kara shook her head. “No crews that I saw. Why?”
Teorin turned toward the door, like he was waiting for it to burst open. “They sometimes use silencing pulses to mask construction, reverse-phase soundwaves. Destructive interference.” He glanced back to Jeron. “I think we’ve been found.”
Jeron cursed. “No one should even know we’re here.”
“Maybe they don’t know. Maybe they just heard we have something to translate and put the two together. Could they be here for her?” Teorin asked.
Wait. Her?
“Possibly,” Jeron said grimly, already stacking the pages together and adding a few more from his briefcase. He passed them to Kara. “You understand how important these are?”
Kara had no idea what was going on, but she did know the pages were important. She nodded.
“Good. Then you understand they might be our ticket off this planet. I need you to translate them, but right now, I need you to go with Teorin. If the people downstairs are dangerous, I’m going to have to deal with them. Teorin will explain, but first, you two need to get those pages out of here. Understood?”
All this because of a silencing pulse?
“How do you know that means someone dangerous?” Kara asked.
Teorin and Jeron exchanged a glance.
“We can’t be certain who’s down there,” Jeron said carefully.
“I have a guess,” Teorin muttered.
Jeron shot him a sharp look, and Teorin fell silent.
“We can’t be certain,” Jeron continued, “but we suspect it’s someone we’ve dealt with before. Someone who doesn’t have much respect for the law and is quite dangerous. We could be wrong, but we can’t risk those pages. If you want to work with us, I suggest you go with Teorin.”
Kara’s mind raced. Where exactly were they going to go? And didn’t they have another copy of these pages? Did it really matter if someone else got their hands on them?
One thing was clear, if she wanted access to that document, she had to cooperate, and with what could be in those pages… it was worth staying in the dark for a little while.
“Fine. I’ll go with Teorin,” Kara said.
Jeron nodded and turned to Teorin. “Remember what I told you. We’ll meet up later. Now, get her out.”
With that, Jeron strode out the door, briefcase in hand, and was gone. Teorin turned, eyeing her. What had she gotten herself into?
“Well, Professor,” he said, “it appears you just became a hot commodity. Congratulations.”
“Somehow, I don’t feel very fortunate,” Kara muttered.
“Look, we didn’t intend to bring you into this like this, but we don’t have much of a choice now. I have no idea what whoever’s downstairs wants. It’s possible they just want to talk to you, or they might prefer you dead to make sure you can’t help us. So I’m going to need your help to get us out of here. Where’s the closest exit?”
“Wait… dead?” Kara stiffened. Who did he think was downstairs? And how would killing her help them? She understood why the documents mattered, but her? She wasn’t important, and she felt like the most fragile piece on the board.
Teorin grimaced. “I hope not, but it’s a possibility. There are some pretty dangerous players in this game. Look, I’ll do everything I can to protect you, and I’ll explain later, but we’re losing precious time. Where are the exits from this building?”
“The closest exit is down the stairs, then to the right.”
Teorin nodded. “Gather anything you really need, but pack light. Just know that you might not be coming back for a while.”
Kara grabbed a backpack and carefully arranged the pages Jeron had given her in a folder. Teorin watched for a moment, then slipped out the door and disappeared down the hall. She placed the folder in the backpack and started shoving in other important papers and a few key books. She wished she could take more, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“Is there only one staircase?” Teorin’s voice made her jump. She hadn’t even noticed him come back in.
“Yes. Why?” Kara asked.
The fire alarm blared. Kara flinched as the sprinklers activated in the hall.
Teorin winced. “That’s why. Someone lit the building on fire. There’s already smoke coming up the stairs. They must’ve disabled the fire alarm on the first floor. That’s probably what the silencing pulse was.”
He pulled the door shut and slid the deadbolt into place. “We’re not going that way.”
Teorin grimaced and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling something out. “Put this on,” he said, tossing it to her.
Kara almost dropped it in surprise. Teorin started pushing furniture aside, clearing space.
Kara stared at the item in her hands. It was a flying harness. It took her a second to fully process what that meant. He was a Pulser. He was clearing a runway. That could only mean one thing.
He wanted to jump tandem out the window.
To ride tandem with a Pulser, she’d have to strap onto his back in a piggyback position—a tricky maneuver that required both the Pulser and the rider to balance perfectly. Even with a proper takeoff, it was difficult. Doing it out a fourth-floor window with this short a runway?
Insane.
“Dr. Tanel, you need to put that on. Right now,” Teorin said, still rearranging her furniture.
“You want to jump tandem out my window? Isn’t that incredibly difficult and dangerous?” Kara asked, trying to keep her voice level. She only partially succeeded.
“Yes,” Teorin said without even looking at her. “It’ll be fine.”
“You’re serious?”
He paused, locking eyes with her. “Do you have another way out?”
“I have a ladder. In case of a fire.”
Teorin shook his head. “They’ll be expecting that. They probably have someone waiting at the bottom, but I am glad to know everyone else can get out if the sprinklers don’t extinguish the fire.”
She blinked. He’d left, and then the alarm had gone off. Could he have set the fire himself to force her out? The timing fit. But that was insane. Even if everything else felt insane too.
And if he was telling the truth… someone else had set it. Which meant they really could want her dead.
She was overthinking it.
She’d already agreed to translate their document. Kidnapping her made no sense. If there was a fire and someone downstairs wanted that document, they couldn’t stay here. They needed a way out.
And Teorin’s insane plan was starting to look like the most viable one. She sighed and turned to him. “I don’t have any other ideas.”
Teorin nodded. “Then I suggest putting on the harness.”
Kara grimaced but started pulling it on. At least I wore pants today. Small victories.
Teorin walked to the glass wall, the one thing she really liked about her office. He placed a hand against the first pane, his expression shifting into something distant and calculating.
He didn’t hit it. He didn’t blast it. Instead, he stood still, fingers splayed across the surface as if listening for something. The glass trembled, and a faint hum filled the air, almost too subtle to notice. Delicate cracks spiderwebbed outward from his fingertips. Then just as suddenly, they stopped.
Teorin clicked his tongue in irritation. “It’s reinforced, huh?” He exhaled sharply. “Guess we have to do it the loud way then.”
This time, he didn’t bother with finesse. He adjusted his stance, flexed his fingers, and released a sharp, focused pulse.
The glass exploded outward with a deafening crack, shards raining down into the landscaping below. Wind rushed in, carrying the acrid bite of smoke.
Kara swallowed. That was the loud way?
Teorin barely hesitated before moving to the next pane, shattering it with the same precise efficiency. Most of the wall was missing now, and he wasn’t even out of breath.
Above her, smoke started leaking from the vent. The fire was getting closer. Kara didn’t know how much time they had.
Teorin turned back to face her. She eyed his makeshift runway. It was only about fifteen feet from the door to the edge. That didn’t seem like enough for jumping out, but Teorin didn’t seem worried. He grabbed her discarded backpack and a sack she kept in the corner for carrying books, then began shoving the heaviest ones into the sack.
“What are you doing?” Kara asked.
“This is too heavy. If we’re jumping out the window, you can take the papers and maybe two books. Anything more will throw you off balance.”
He tied the sack shut, then threw it out the window.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
Teorin glanced back at her and frowned. “Sorry. I assumed you wouldn’t want them to burn. At least this way, if the fire reaches up here, they’ll survive.”
That was... a very reasonable answer. But couldn’t he have explained that before throwing her books out the window?
Teorin gestured to her harness. Kara unfroze and hurried to finish tightening the straps. He checked and adjusted the ones she had already secured with brisk efficiency He only paused once, muttering a soft curse under his breath as the clasp snagged.
Once he was satisfied, he zipped up his jacket. He was wearing a harness too, not the specialized pants some Pulsers used, but a harness designed to keep his wing jacket in place.
“Have you ever ridden tandem with a Pulser before?” Teorin asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, lucky you. You’re going to clip in here,” he said, indicating the rungs on the back of his jacket. “Obviously, we don’t have the full gear set, but we’re not going far. The suction won’t work well with those pants, so you’ll have to clip the thigh straps too. I’ll handle the calf clips.”
Kara looked out the window.
It was far enough down to die if she fell, but not far enough to have time to correct a mistake. Are we really doing this?
There was a loud boom somewhere in the building. Her adrenaline spiked.
At least I’ll go out in style. Some people paid exorbitant amounts of money to fly with Pulsers. While about five percent of the population were Pulsers, flying tandem was so difficult that most refused to do it.
Teorin crouched. Kara leaned against him and connected the harness where he had indicated.
She felt like she was going to pull him over, but the jacket was designed to distribute her weight—somehow.
“Alright,” Teorin said. “There’s no space in here, so I’ll activate the wings mid-air. Hold my shoulders for balance while I run. When I yell, push back so they can deploy. Once we’re stable, there are handholds on the wings. Just—” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Don’t flail.”
“You want me to do what?” she said, trying to shove down the panic.
The wings were folded like origami in the pack on his back. She’d have to push far enough back to avoid getting clipped when they shot out.
“It’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.”
“Really?”
He chuckled. “Okay, maybe not exactly this, but close.”
Teorin activated the suction grips, pressing her thighs flush to his back. Kara stiffened. If she weren’t already physically attached to him, she’d refuse to go, but Teorin seemed crazy enough to jump with or without her cooperation. If he was fine, she’d be fine too. Right?
Teorin stood, and Kara almost fell backward. She grasped desperately at his torso until she was practically hugging him. He didn’t seem to care.
A heavy thud sounded from the door. Someone was trying to get in. The doorknob turned red, and the air started to hiss. Teorin took a deep breath. Kara felt it with how tightly she was clinging to him.
“All right,” he murmured. “Just remember, when I yell, push back for the wings to release.”
Kara closed her eyes, trying not to think about what they were about to do. Teorin started to sprint. Kara’s eyes flew open. She loosened her grip, bracing herself to push back.
The door exploded open just as Teorin reached the edge.
They jumped.
“Now!” Teorin yelled.
Kara shoved herself back as hard as she could. For a split second, she thought they were toppling backward—
Then the wings sprung out, catching the air. The sudden drag yanked them into a level position, but the force slammed her forward. She barely avoided smashing her nose into Teorin’s back. Desperate for stability, she grabbed the set of handles protruding from the jacket.
Just in time. Teorin threw his palms downward, sending out a pulse that kicked them higher. The pressure rocked them upward, their bodies pressing together under the force. They leveled out, and Kara craned her neck to catch a glimpse of their pursuers, but the wind whipped her hair, making it hard to see. She could only make out a man in a blue wingsuit and a redheaded woman.
The woman sneered and pressed her hand against a bookshelf. Flames exploded across the wood.
Kara wanted to cry. All those books. All her notes. Gone. She had spent years building that collection, annotating every margin, cross-referencing every text. Now it was nothing but fuel for someone else’s war. She buried her face between her arms, glad that Teorin couldn’t see her expression.
He banked sharply, and Kara tightened her grip on the handholds. Her things were gone, but she was alive. All things considered, that might be a miracle.
For now, she would try to be grateful.
the tabloid article that serves as his introduction to this archive (and why he hacked my account, for which he will receive consequences; see below). You see him first as the world does, but he hides as much as he tells. I like to think I am doing him a favor by presenting his history this way, though that remains to be seen.
[Lev] I hide nothing. Do you not see how straight forward I am?
[Archivist] Ignore him. Lev has claimed he doesn’t like being “collected.” So, I’ve agreed to give him some input on future entries and continued access to this comment section only if he fulfills his obligation: one reminder per week that you may follow this archive.
[Lev] It’s rent. I’m literally paying rent with follows. Please don’t let me get evicted. (Also, don’t hack Lianne’s account. It’s not worth it.)
Archival References:
- Lev protests against preserved accounts tied to his own history and retaliates with PR violations and account hijacking. [See comments]
- Lev is also inexplicably terrified of being “collected.” Why, I cannot say. It is in fact a privilege to be collected by the Archive [See comments].
[Lev] That’s cruel. I had every right to be dramatic.
[Archivist] But not to hack my account.