Nana's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She sat on the edge of Zayne's bed—his apartment, his space, the place that felt safest—and stared at her fingers like they belonged to someone else. The trembling was subtle. Barely visible. But Zayne noticed it immediately, the way he noticed everything about her.
"You don't have to do this," he said quietly, crouching in front of her. "If you're not ready—"
"I want to know," Nana interrupted. Her voice was steady even if her hands weren't. "I've been asking myself for over a year why I'm different. Why I can do things no other hunter can. You want to study my aether core and I want answers too."
"It might not be pleasant."
"I've survived worse."
"Nana—"
"Zayne." She looked at him, and behind the fear in her dark eyes was something firmer. Determination. The same determination that had carried her through nine months of hell and back again. "Do it. Please. I need to know what I am."
Zayne held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded and stood, moving to the medical kit he'd brought home from the hospital. Not the standard first aid kit he kept in his bathroom—the comprehensive examination equipment he'd quietly requisitioned over the past week. Blood pressure cuff. Pulse oximeter. Portable ECG monitor. Stethoscope. A small handheld device for measuring bioelectric signatures that was technically meant for research purposes only.
He laid everything out on his bedside table with the methodical precision of someone preparing for surgery. Each instrument in order. Each step planned.
"I'm going to give you a mild sedative first," he said, holding up a small syringe. "Medical-grade. It will make you drowsy and reduce your awareness so I can get accurate readings without your responses interfering."
"Like anesthesia?"
"Similar principle. Lighter dose. You'll be mostly unconscious but not completely under. Think of it as... deep sleep."
Nana looked at the syringe for a long moment. Then she held out her arm.
"Whatever you find," she said, watching as Zayne swabbed the injection site with practiced care, "you promised. You promised it wouldn't change anything."
Zayne paused, the needle hovering just above her skin. He looked up at her—at the woman who had survived impossible things, who had loved him across timelines and deaths, who was now offering herself up for examination because she deserved to know the truth about her own body.
"I promised," he confirmed. "And I meant it. Whatever you are—whatever we find—I will still love you. That's not conditional on anything."
He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. Soft. Reassuring. A seal on his promise.
"Close your eyes," he whispered.
Nana obeyed, her lashes fanning against her cheeks. Zayne inserted the needle, watched the sedative flow, and felt her body begin to relax almost immediately.
Within thirty seconds, her breathing had deepened. Her shoulders, which had been tense with anxiety, gradually released. The trembling in her hands slowed and then stopped entirely.
She looked peaceful. Vulnerable in a way that Nana almost never allowed herself to be when conscious.
Zayne set the empty syringe aside and began his examination.
Vitals first. Always vitals first.
Blood pressure: 118/76. Normal range. Completely unremarkable.
Heart rate: 68 BPM. Resting. Normal for someone of her fitness level.
Temperature: 36.8°C. Textbook normal.
Oxygen saturation: 99%. Perfect.
Zayne recorded each number on his tablet, his expression carefully neutral. On paper, Nana was the picture of a healthy young woman in excellent physical condition. Nothing here would raise any flags. Nothing here would suggest anything other than a well-maintained human body.
Blood type next.
He drew a small sample from her arm—she didn't flinch, the sedative holding firm—and ran it through the portable analyzer he'd brought from the hospital's research lab.
AB+. Universal recipient. Relatively rare, but not unusual.
The blood itself, under the portable microscope, looked completely normal. Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, plasma. Standard human composition. No anomalies in cell structure or count.
Zayne frowned slightly but continued. Sometimes the abnormalities were deeper than what surface-level tests could reveal.
Genetic markers.
This required more sophisticated equipment than he had at home, but he'd collected a tissue sample during the blood draw—skin cells from the injection site—and could analyze basic genetic indicators with his handheld device.
He pressed the device against the sample and waited for results.
The screen populated with data. Zayne scanned through it, his brow furrowing with increasing concern.
Human genetic markers: present. Overwhelmingly so. Nana's DNA was human in every measurable way—chromosomes, gene sequences, cellular structure. She was, genetically speaking, a normal human being.
Except.
Zayne zoomed in on a specific cluster of readings that the device had flagged with a small amber warning icon. Genetic sequences that didn't match any known human variation in the database. Not mutations exactly—too consistent, too precise for random mutation. More like... additions. Carefully integrated additions that had been woven into the existing genetic structure with extraordinary sophistication.
Someone had modified her DNA.
Not crudely. Not in the way that early genetic experiments had tried—splicing foreign material and hoping for the best. This was elegant work. Masterful, even. The modifications were so seamlessly integrated that without specifically looking for them, most tests would miss them entirely.
Zayne stared at the screen for a long time.
Then he set the device down, very carefully, and moved to the next phase of his examination.
The aether core.
He placed the stethoscope against Nana's chest, just below her collarbone, where the aether core would be located if she had a standard hunter evol.
He listened.
And heard something that made his blood run cold.
It wasn't a heartbeat. Not just a heartbeat. Beneath the steady, normal rhythm of Nana's heart, there was something else. A low, continuous sound—barely perceptible, almost subliminal. A hum.
Not the kind of hum a human body produced. Not the subtle vibrations of muscles or nerves or blood flow that any medical professional might detect with sensitive enough equipment.
This was different. Rhythmic but not biological. A steady pulse of energy that resonated at a frequency Zayne had never encountered in any patient, in any medical textbook, in any research paper he'd ever read.
It sounded like a machine. Like a battery. Like something that was generating power and distributing it through a living system.
Zayne moved the stethoscope slightly, adjusting his position. The hum intensified.
And then he saw it.
A soft blue glow, emanating from just below Nana's sternum. Visible through the thin fabric of her shirt—a light that pulsed gently in time with the humming sound. Not bright enough to illuminate the room. Just enough to be unmistakable.
Her aether core. Visible. Active. Generating energy even while she was sedated and unconscious.
Normal hunter evols didn't do this. Zayne had treated hundreds of hunters in his career—had examined dozens of evol manifestations, from ice generation to enhanced strength to sensory amplification. Not one of them had exhibited this kind of continuous, visible energy output while the user was at rest.
Evols were passive abilities that activated in response to the user's will or emotional state. They didn't run on standby. They didn't glow like nightlights while their owner slept.
Unless they weren't a standard evol at all.
Zayne reached out with trembling hands and placed his palm flat against Nana's chest, directly over the glow.
The energy was warm. Not hot—warm, like sunlight on skin. It pulsed against his palm in steady waves, and as he held his hand there, he felt something remarkable happen.
The pulse quickened.
Just slightly. Just enough to notice. The energy output increased—the glow brightened by a fraction, the humming intensified by a degree.
It was responding to his touch. To his presence.
Zayne's breath caught. He was a cardiologist. He understood cardiac rhythm, bioelectric signals, the complex dance of electricity that kept the human heart beating. And what he was feeling under his hand right now was not a heart.
It was something that had been placed inside a heart. Something that had been integrated so seamlessly into Nana's biology that it functioned alongside her natural cardiovascular system without disrupting it.
An artificial organ. An energy source. A power generator housed inside a human body.
Zayne's medical training warred with his emotional response. The doctor in him was cataloguing, analyzing, forming hypotheses. The boyfriend in him wanted to wake her up and hold her and promise that nothing would change.
He forced himself to continue the examination. Forced himself to be thorough. Because Nana deserved the truth—all of it—and he owed her his best work.
Motor response under sedation.
Standard medical protocol called for checking unconscious patients' reflexes and motor responses. A normal sedated patient would show minimal movement—maybe a twitch in response to stimuli, but nothing coordinated or purposeful.
Zayne lifted Nana's hand to check her grip reflex, and her fingers closed around his immediately.
Not loosely. Not reflexively. With gentle, deliberate pressure.
He froze.
He moved his hand slightly, testing. Her grip adjusted, following his movement with a precision that was distinctly not unconscious behavior.
"Nana?" he whispered. "Can you hear me?"
No verbal response. Her breathing remained deep and steady, her face peaceful in sleep. But her hand was still holding his—still responding to his movements with subtle, coordinated adjustments.
Zayne set her hand down carefully and watched her eyelids. Under standard sedation, REM activity would be minimal at best. The brain would be suppressed enough to prevent dreaming.
Nana's eyelids moved. Rapid, flickering movement beneath closed lids—the unmistakable pattern of active dreaming. Her brain was dreaming while sedated in a way that should have been neurologically impossible at this dosage.
The sedative wasn't fully suppressing her consciousness. Her body was metabolizing it faster than any normal human physiology should allow, and even under its influence, her nervous system remained partially active. Responsive. Aware.
Zayne recorded everything. Every anomalous reading, every impossible response, every detail that painted a picture no medical textbook had ever described.
When he was finally done—when he'd exhausted every test his equipment could perform and documented every finding his tablet could hold—he sat on the edge of the bed beside Nana and looked at her.
She was still sleeping. Still peaceful. Still holding his hand with that gentle, unconscious grip that shouldn't have been possible.
The blue glow of her aether core pulsed softly beneath her shirt like a heartbeat made visible. Like a star trapped inside a human body.
Zayne closed his eyes.
The data was clear. Inescapable. What Nana possessed wasn't a natural evol. It was technology—advanced, sophisticated, seamlessly integrated technology that had been engineered into her biology at a fundamental level. Her genetic modifications, her enhanced physiology, her impossible combat capabilities, the aether core that hummed like a power source—all of it pointed to the same conclusion.
Someone had built Nana.
Not created from scratch—she was genetically human, born human, raised human. But someone had taken a human being and enhanced her. Modified her. Upgraded her in ways that went far beyond anything the Hunter Association's public research programs acknowledged.
And whoever had done it had done it well enough that the modifications had become indistinguishable from natural ability. Well enough that even Nana herself didn't know.
Zayne opened his eyes and looked at the woman he loved.
She was still Nana. Still the girl who kicked Wanderers with her bare legs and stole strawberry candies and climbed trees during medical conferences. Still the woman who had searched for him across timelines and loved him through death and rebirth and impossible circumstances.
The modifications didn't change that. Didn't change who she was or what she meant to him.
But they changed everything about the situation.
Because if someone had engineered Nana's aether core—had deliberately created a supersoldier with capabilities beyond normal human limits—then the surveillance cameras in the forest made perfect sense.
They weren't watching for Wanderers.
They were watching her.
Monitoring their creation. Studying its performance. Collecting data on how their specimen performed in real-world combat conditions.
Zayne's hands shook as he set his tablet aside. His jaw tightened with an anger he rarely felt—quiet and cold and dangerous, like frost spreading across glass.
Someone was using Nana as a laboratory rat.
And she had no idea.
He looked down at her sleeping face. At the woman who had carried the weight of impossible memories alone for over a year, who had been dismissed and doubted and made to feel crazy by everyone around her, who had offered herself up for examination tonight because she deserved to know the truth.
She deserved so much more than what the world had given her.
Zayne leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. Gentle. Reverent. A kiss that carried everything he couldn't say out loud yet—every promise, every fierce determination to protect her, every quiet fury at whoever had done this to her.
"Whatever you are," he whispered against her skin, his voice barely audible even in the silence of his apartment. "I will still love you."
The blue glow pulsed once—bright and warm—in response to his words.
And Zayne held her hand through the night, watching over her while she slept, already planning how to find the people responsible.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.