Day 195. 06:00 hours.
The Command Deck. L2.
Jae-min made the decision.
The blood draw was complete — two hundred and twenty vials, and Mei's analysis would take days, but the data Alessia needed for the immediate question was already in.
The anomaly was confirmed.
Elena's blood was fundamental.
The pathway existed.
The question was no longer whether essences could change a signature across groups.
The question was whether Jae-min would authorize the bestowals, and the answer was yes.
The void held fifty-seven essences.
Sixty-seven taken from the raiders, ten bestowed on Alessia in the upgrade that had changed her from Body Enhancement to Fundamental, from five percent to one hundred.
Fifty-seven remaining, waiting in the pocket dimension for five days, spirit forms held in the void that was Jae-min's to command.
Three bestowals.
One to Mei.
Twenty-eight to Gabriel.
Twenty-eight to Jennifer.
The math was the math, and the essences were type-agnostic on entry — anyone could absorb them.
What they did after entering was the question the bestowals would answer.
"Mei first." Jae-min decided, his dark eyes on the console, his voice carrying the weight of a captain who had calculated the risk and accepted it. "One essence. The divine pathway."
Alessia was at the console, the exhaustion from the blood draw still visible in the shadows under her black eyes, but the focus sharper now — the focus of a scientist about to witness an experiment she had theorized for weeks. "One essence — Mei-mei is Baseline, Blank Slate. The essence will not be cross-group. It will be the first essence she has ever carried. The bestowal will make her Third Generation Enhanced."
"Third Generation — not natural Threshold, not forced experiment, but bestowed," Jae-min confirmed, his fingers tracing the edge of the console. "The essence transfer that makes her Enhanced without the near-death."
"Without the near-death." Alessia agreed, pulling up the essence genome display on her tablet. "The power she receives will depend on the essence. The essences are type-agnostic on entry — what they do on arrival, the signature they imprint, is the variable."
"We do not know what signature Mei will receive." Jae-min acknowledged, his gaze moving to the screens where the compound's signatures glowed — Mei in the NPU Core on L3 with Chocho in her lap, Gabriel on the rooftop with the wind circling, Jennifer in her room on the Second Floor with her tea cooling.
"We do not — the data does not exist," Alessia admitted, her voice carrying the honesty of a scientist standing at the edge of the unknown. "No one has ever bestowed an essence on a Baseline. You are the first. This is the first."
Jae-min looked at the console for a long moment, his dark eyes holding the weight of what he was about to do — not the risk, because the risk was calculated and the calculation was done, but the responsibility, because the responsibility was the thing that stayed after the calculation was finished and the staying was what made a captain a captain.
"Bring them — all three. The Engineering Workshop, L5. One hour." Jae-min ordered, and the order was the decision, and the decision was made.
— • • • —
Day 195. 07:00 hours.
The Engineering Workshop. L5.
They gathered in the industrial fabrication lab — Mark Jordan and Aiko's domain, the Hellfire in the corner under its tarp, the tool racks and welding rigs and lathe and milling machine, the Armory integrated into the space.
The tarp was up, and the project behind it stayed hidden because the bestowal was not about the project.
The bestowal was about the essences.
Jae-min stood at the center with his dark eyes on the room, the void humming at the edges of his awareness — fifty-seven essences, spirit forms held in the pocket dimension, waiting.
Alessia was at the medical station she had set up in the corner, the monitoring equipment and blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, and tablet with the essence genome display ready.
She would monitor the bestowals.
She would record the data.
Mei was there in her wheelchair, positioned beside the medical station with Chocho curled in her lap.
The white fox's blue eyes watched the room.
Mei was petite and precise, her compact frame built for focused intelligence, her pigtailed crimson hair bright against the industrial gray of the workshop.
Her hands were steady on the armrests — not because she was bracing against fear but because steadiness was what she offered, and the offering was what she could do.
Gabriel was there with her knee-length black hair and her golden eyes, and her bounce — spectacular and tall and curvaceous, the full, generous figure carrying itself with the confidence of a woman who had known exactly what she looked like for thirty-four years.
Day fifteen of the coffee and the salted egg and the cheek-kiss.
The three percent in her chest.
The determination under the bright.
Jennifer was there with her icy-blue hair and her blue eyes, standing at the edge of the group with her hands folded and her softness — the quiet, generous fullness of her body drawing the eye without demanding it, her movements gentle, almost shy.
The devotion that did not need to be spoken.
Her Telepathy was passive, the surface thoughts of the room washing through her. She did not read deeply.
The surface was enough.
Mark Jordan stood with the amber eyes and the Ifrit's Hell Katana at his hip, ready to assist with the engineering of the bestowal.
Aiko was beside him, petite and precise, her loupe down and her black eyes on the equipment, her Metal Manipulation ready in case the bestowal caused metal stress in the workshop.
Ji-yoo was on Jae-min's lap because Jae-min was there, and where Jae-min was, Ji-yoo was.
She did not think about this.
Her hand found the back of his neck.
The threading that was not a decision.
Rico was at the door with Marie beside him, his hand on her knee, her hand on her belly — six months, the belly that moved.
"Mei." Jae-min addressed, his voice carrying across the workshop with the steady authority of a captain beginning something that could not be undone.
Mei looked at him with her violet-blue eyes.
"One essence — the first essence you will ever carry," Jae-min explained, his dark eyes holding hers. "You will become Third Generation Enhanced. The power you receive, the signature — we do not know. The data does not exist. This is the first."
"The first," Mei confirmed, her voice flat and steady, the flat of a woman who processed data and whose processing did not include fear. "I understand. The data does not exist. I will be the data."
Chocho's tail tightened around Mei's waist — the fox's version of a hug.
Mei's hand found the fox's head, the scratch behind the ear that was three years of partnership, the reflex of a woman and a fox who had been together long enough that the hand and the head met without thought.
"Ready." Mei declared, and the word was the consent, and the consent was the data.
Jae-min opened the void.
The room felt it before it saw it — the temperature dropped half a degree, the air pressure shifted, and the essences moved inside the void the way something moves underwater, felt before seen.
Fifty-seven spirit forms, the remnants of raiders, the things that had been people with powers and were now power waiting to be given.
Jae-min selected one.
The selection was not conscious — the void responded to intent, and his intent was one essence for Mei, and the void offered one.
A Body Enhancement spirit form, Signature C, the remnant of a raider whose power had been speed or endurance or some other body enhancement that was now a spirit form waiting to be bestowed.
His hand extended toward Mei.
The void opened at his palm.
The essence moved — from the void, through the air, into Mei.
The spirit form entered her body the way light enters a room: completely, instantly, without resistance.
The essence was type-agnostic on entry.
The essence went where it was put.
Mei inhaled — the inhale that was not pain and not pleasure but the thing that happened when a spirit form entered a body that had never carried one.
The Blank Slate is receiving its first paint.
The canvas is accepting the brush.
"The essence genome is forming — the signature is emerging, and it is not C, it is not B, it is not D, it is A, fundamental, but not universal, not Space or Time or Gravity or Force or Creation, it is the other branch, the branch I theorized but never saw, the divine branch, and the theory is real and the data is here and the data is Mei-mei." Alessia realized, her black eyes widening on the display, the doctor-face gone, replaced by the scientist-face of a woman watching data that shattered her model and rebuilt it simultaneously.
"Divine fundamental." Alessia breathed, the words that were theory made real. "The essence imprinted divine — not universal. Divine."
Mei's eyes were closed, her hands on the armrests, her body still.
The wheelchair held her.
The spinal paralysis that the essence did not heal — the divine branch did not rewrite the body the way the universal branch did.
Her pigtailed crimson hair stayed.
Her violet-blue eyes stayed.
Her legs stayed still.
The wheelchair stayed.
But the power was there, and Mei could feel it — not in her legs but in her mind, two things that had not been there a minute ago and that were there now.
The first: a presence.
Something that could be called.
Something large, with wings and a weapon and a form she could feel without seeing.
The second: a sensitivity.
The emotions of the room, laid out like a map — Gabriel's determination, Jennifer's devotion, Alessia's astonishment, Ji-yoo's calm, Jae-min's focus, Rico's watchfulness, Marie's warmth, Mark Jordan's stillness, Aiko's precision.
She could feel them, and she could reach them, and she realized with the particular clarity of a mind that had just become more than it was that she could change them.
"Mei-mei — how do you feel?" Alessia asked, her voice careful, her black eyes on the display.
"I feel everything," Mei answered, her eyes opening, the violet-blue the same, the same Mei. "Not thoughts — emotions. Everyone in the room. I can feel what you feel. And I can reach it. I can change it."
"Change it," Jae-min repeated, his dark eyes sharpening.
"If I wanted to make Gabriel less determined, I could. If I wanted to make Alessia less astonished, I could." Mei explained, her voice carrying the flat precision of a woman describing a new variable in a system she was already cataloging. "The emotions are there, like data. I can read them. I can edit them."
"And the second power — the presence. The thing you can call." Alessia pressed, her stylus hovering over the tablet.
Mei closed her eyes and reached for the presence — the seraphim, the thing with twelve wings and the size of a blue whale and the javelin that was its weapon.
The seraphim was not here.
The seraphim was elsewhere, waiting.
The call was the power.
The seraphim would come when she called.
"Castiel." Mei named, the name that came with the presence, the name the seraphim carried. "I can summon Castiel. He is large — twelve wings, a javelin. He is not here. He will come when I call."
"Summoning." Alessia recorded, her stylus moving on the tablet. "Divine fundamental. Two powers: emotion control and summoning. The seraphim Castiel."
"And the wheelchair." Mei added, her hand on the armrest, her voice carrying the flat honesty of a woman who had just gained power and lost nothing and wanted the data to reflect both. "The legs. Still. The divine branch does not rewrite the body. I am still Mei. I am still in the chair. The power is in the mind, not the body."
"Still Mei." Jae-min confirmed with a small nod — the nod that meant the bestowal had worked and the data was the data and Mei was Enhanced, Third Generation, divine fundamental, the first of her kind.
Chocho's tail loosened.
The fox settled back in Mei's lap, the blue eyes half-closed.
Chocho had felt the power enter Mei and accepted it the way Chocho accepted everything about Mei — completely, without question.
"One down." Jae-min announced. "Abby."
— • • • —
Day 195. 07:45 hours.
Gabriel stood with her golden eyes bright and her bounce still and her three percent in her chest and her determination under the bright.
She was spectacular — tall and curvaceous, the full, generous figure that turned heads and broke concentration, and she stood before Jae-min with the particular stillness that Gabriel found when the moment was the moment and the moment required the stillness.
"Twenty-eight essences." Jae-min explained, his dark eyes on hers. "The cross-group bestowal. Your signature is B — elemental, wind. The essences are mixed — Body Enhancement, Elemental, and one Fundamental from the Snake Woman's line. The bestowal will attempt to change your signature from B to A. From elemental to fundamental. The pathway exists — Elena's anomaly proved it. Whether twenty-eight essences are enough to complete the conversion, we do not know."
"Twenty-eight." Gabriel acknowledged, the number that was the bridge between three percent and whatever came after. "Do it."
"Sit — I need to watch your vitals. Twenty-eight essences are not one. The strain will be higher." Alessia directed, gesturing to the stool at the medical station.
Gabriel sat.
Her knee-length black hair fell over her shoulders.
Her golden eyes found Jae-min.
The bounce finally still.
Jae-min opened the void.
The twenty-eight essences rose — not one at a time but as a wave, twenty-eight spirit forms, the remnants of twenty-eight raiders.
Body Enhancement.
Elemental.
The one fundamental imprint that had been part of the mix.
His hand extended, the void opened at his palm, and the wave moved into Gabriel in a stream that was not gentle the way Mei's single essence had been.
The stream was a flood.
Twenty-eight spirit forms entering her cells at once, the essence genome in her body receiving the new imprints, the signature beginning to shift.
Gabriel's breath caught — the catch that was not pain but the thing that happened when twenty-eight spirit forms entered a body designed for one.
Her golden eyes widened.
The wind responded — Gabriel's wind, the power she had carried since the frozen cockpit, the air in the workshop moving, not gently, the wind that was being rewritten by the essences, the elemental wind becoming something else.
"Wind is changing." Aiko reported from the corner, her loupe down, her black eyes on the air, her Metal Manipulation feeling the workshop's bolts and brackets and tools vibrating in the wind Gabriel was generating without meaning to. "The wind is different. Not elemental. Something else."
"Solar wind." Mark Jordan assessed, his amber eyes on Gabriel, the engineer reading the power shift the way he read schematics. "The essences are upgrading her wind — from standard wind to solar wind. Charged particles. Plasma wind. The cosmic tier."
Gabriel's hair lifted — the knee-length black hair rising in the wind that was not wind anymore, the wind that was becoming solar wind, the elemental becoming fundamental, the signature in her cells shifting from B to A.
Alessia watched the display with her black eyes on the data, the B-markers fading, the A-markers surfacing, the impossible blood shifting sub-types, the elemental blood becoming fundamental blood.
"Three percent — rising." Alessia narrated, watching the compatibility calculation update in real-time. "Ten. Twenty. Forty. Sixty."
Gabriel's breath came faster, the strain visible in the trembling of her spectacular frame, the golden eyes unfocused, the solar wind swirling around her, the workshop air ionizing, the faint ozone smell of charged particles.
Alessia watched the numbers climb, and Gabriel gasped — the gasp that was the flood cresting, the essences settling, the signature locking.
"Eighty. Ninety. Ninety-five." Alessia counted, her voice tightening with each number.
Gabriel gasped again — the conversion completing, the signature locking, the essences settling into their new home.
"One hundred." Alessia declared, and the word sat in the workshop like something physical.
One hundred.
The number Gabriel had been told was impossible — three percent, cross-species, elemental and fundamental.
The number that was now one hundred.
Same species.
Same blood.
The essences had rewritten her.
Gabriel was fundamental now, same-species with Jae-min, one hundred percent compatible.
The wind settled.
The solar wind dying down.
The air in the workshop stilling.
The ozone fading.
Gabriel's hair falling back to her shoulders.
The golden eyes focusing.
The breath slowing.
"One hundred." Gabriel whispered, the word that was the number and the number was the thing she had carried the three percent for, the starting point becoming the ending point, the pathway proven. "One hundred."
"How do you feel?" Alessia asked, her stylus ready.
"I feel the wind — but the wind is bigger." Gabriel described, her golden eyes widening with the wonder of a woman feeling a power she had never felt before. "The wind was air. The wind is everything. Charged. Plasma. The solar wind. I can feel the sun." Her voice caught. "I can feel the sun — the actual sun, behind the clouds. The particles it throws. I can feel them."
"Solar wind — the cosmic tier." Mark Jordan confirmed with a nod. "She can manipulate charged particles. Solar plasma. The wind is not wind anymore. It is stellar wind."
Gabriel stood.
The bounce was back — the bounce that did not stop for one hundred percent because the bounce was not about the number, the bounce was Gabriel.
She bounced on the stool, she bounced standing, she bounced because she was Gabriel and Gabriel bounced.
"One hundred." Gabriel repeated, her golden eyes bright with the bright that was the determination and the joy and the thing that had carried the three percent and was now carrying the one hundred. "Day fifteen. The coffee. The salted egg. The cheek-kiss. And one hundred."
She kissed Ji-yoo's cheek — quick, bright, gone.
Ji-yoo's hand went to her cheek in the reflex that had become part of the morning.
The hand dropped.
The warm stayed.
Gabriel bounced to the door and stopped and turned, her golden eyes finding Jae-min.
"Thank you." Gabriel offered, and the gratitude was under the flirty the way the determination was under the bright, and the under-the-flirty was the real Gabriel — the one who had flown at Mach 1.5 through minus-seventy and had carried three percent for fifteen days and had not stopped bouncing because bouncing was how Gabriel refused to break.
Jae-min nodded.
The small nod that meant the data was the data and the bestowal had worked.
Gabriel left.
The bounce in her step.
The knee-length black hair swinging.
The solar wind humming inside her like a second heartbeat.
"Two down." Jae-min announced. "Jennifer."
— • • • —
Day 195. 08:30 hours.
Jennifer stood with her icy-blue hair and her blue eyes and the softness that was also steadiness — the steadiness of a woman who had been devoted for five months and whose devotion was not weakness but the container for something she had not yet shown the household.
She was not tall, but her body carried a quiet, generous fullness that drew the eye without demanding it, her movements gentle, her posture the particular fold of a woman who did not announce herself and did not need to.
She had been watching through the Telepathy passive — she had felt Gabriel's emotions during the bestowal, the determination cresting, the joy breaking.
She had felt Mei's calm.
Jennifer felt everything on the surface, and the surface was enough.
"Twenty-eight essences — the same protocol." Jae-min explained, his dark eyes on hers. "Your signature is C — Body Enhancement, Telepathy. The essences will attempt to upgrade you to fundamental. The cross-group conversion. Twenty-eight essences."
"Twenty-eight." Jennifer acknowledged, her voice soft, the softness that was Jennifer. "I understand."
"Sit." Alessia directed, and Jennifer sat on the stool with the quiet grace of a woman who did everything quietly, the monitors attaching to her arm, the pulse oximeter on her finger.
Jae-min opened the void.
The twenty-eight essences rose as a wave — the same flood that had entered Gabriel, twenty-eight spirit forms entering Jennifer's cells the way Jennifer absorbed everything: quietly, completely, without fanfare.
The essence genome in her body received the new imprints, and the signature began to shift, and the Telepathy responded — the power she had carried since her Threshold deepened, her passive range expanding, the one-kilometer range becoming more, the surface thoughts becoming depth, the reading becoming knowing.
"The Telepathy is changing — not just reading, not just surface, she is becoming omni-mind, total consciousness, mental omnipresence, and the signature is shifting, C to A, Body Enhancement to fundamental, and the conversion is happening the same way it happened with Gabriel, the same pathway, the same flood, the same rewriting." Alessia analyzed, her black eyes on the display, her stylus moving across the tablet, recording the data as it flowed.
Jennifer's breath hitched — the hitch that was the flood cresting, the essences settling, the signature locking.
And then the second power emerged — the power that was not Telepathy, the power that was new.
The wrench on the workbench trembled, lifted one centimeter off the surface, hovered.
Jennifer's mind holding it.
Telekinesis.
The ability to move objects with thought.
She could feel the tools, the weapons, anything she could see, and she could move them.
"One hundred." Alessia announced, the compatibility calculation confirming what the display showed.
Jennifer × Jae-min.
One hundred percent.
Same species.
Same blood.
Fundamental.
Jennifer opened her eyes — the blue eyes, the same eyes, the softness that was Jennifer.
But the softness was deeper now, the softness that was also power, the Omni-Mind that could feel every mind in the compound alongside the Telekinesis that could move anything she could see.
"Jennifer." Jae-min addressed.
"I can feel everyone — everyone in the compound, every mind, not surface, all of it." Jennifer described, her voice soft but carrying something it had not carried before, a depth beneath the gentleness that was the weight of total consciousness. "The Omni-Mind. And I can reach — the tools, the weapons, anything I can see. I can move it."
"Telekinesis — the second power." Mark Jordan confirmed. "The essences gave her two. Omni-Mind and Telekinesis."
"One hundred." Jennifer murmured, the word that was the same as Gabriel's word, the pathway proven twice. "I am same-species. With you."
"You are." Jae-min confirmed.
Jennifer stood.
The steadiness.
The softness.
The devotion that was now also power.
She did not bounce — Jennifer did not bounce.
Jennifer stood, and the standing was enough, and the enough was Jennifer.
She looked at Jae-min with her blue eyes — the look that was the devotion and the gratitude and the thing Jennifer did not say because Jennifer did not need to say.
The being was the saying.
"Thank you." Jennifer offered softly.
Jae-min nodded.
The small nod.
Jennifer left.
The icy-blue hair.
The softness.
The new power that was also the old Jennifer — quiet, devoted, gentle, and now also omni-present and able to move the world with her mind.
"Three down." Jae-min declared, his voice carrying the particular weight of a man who had given everything the void held. "Fifty-seven essences. One to Mei. Twenty-eight to Gabriel. Twenty-eight to Jennifer. The void is empty."
"The void is empty." Alessia confirmed, her stylus moving across the tablet, logging the three bestowals, the three conversions — Mei, divine fundamental.
Gabriel, solar wind.
Jennifer, Omni-Mind and Telekinesis.
Three success stories.
Three pathways proven.
Ji-yoo's fingers threaded through Jae-min's hair — the threading that was not a decision, that was simply Ji-yoo.
She kissed his temple, quick and absent.
"The void is empty — the captain gave everything," Ji-yoo murmured into his shoulder, her voice carrying the observation of a twin who tracked everything and whose tracking included the void and the empty and the giving.
"The captain gave what was needed," Jae-min answered, and the answer was the captain's answer, and the captain's answer was the thing that ended the conversation because the conversation was done and the bestowals were done and the void was empty.
Ji-yoo settled deeper into his shoulder — the settling that meant she was there and would be there and the lap was her chair, and the chair was where she watched him hold the compound.
The workshop emptied.
Mark Jordan and Aiko stayed to power down the equipment and archive the data.
Alessia left with her tablet and the hours of analysis ahead.
Rico and Marie left together, his hand on her knee.
Mei's wheelchair hummed as she left with Chocho in her lap and the divine fundamental in her mind and the emotion control she could feel but would not use — Mei did not edit data she had not been asked to edit, and emotions were data now.
The summoning waited.
Castiel.
The seraphim would come when she called.
— • • • —
Day 195. 10:00 hours.
The Second Floor corridor.
The bestowals were done.
The household had processed it the way all news traveled — Sarah to the watch rotation, the watch rotation to the kitchen, the kitchen to the dining hall.
Mei was Enhanced.
Gabriel was one hundred.
Jennifer was one hundred.
The three numbers that were the data.
Jae-min walked the Second Floor for the perimeter check of the residential wing, his spatial awareness mapping the compound, his mind turning the bestowals and the data and the empty void and the things that were next.
He passed the rooms — Room 1 with its closed door and the guitars behind it, Room 2 where Rico and Marie were, Room 3 where Mei and Aiko and Elena Cortez lived.
He stopped at Room 3.
The door was ajar — not open, ajar.
The crack that was an invitation and not a summons.
"The door is ajar — the crack that means she is there and the there is the thing I do not think about because thinking about it would be acknowledging and acknowledging is the thing I do not do with the door and the crack and the room and Elena," Jae-min noted, his dark eyes on the crack, his body already turning toward the door before his mind caught up, the way his body had been turning toward this door for eighty-six days.
He went in.
Elena was sitting on her bed with her waist-length black hair loose and her dark eyes on him.
She was slender and sharp-featured, her build compact and efficient — the kind of body built for endurance rather than display, the beauty that lived in the intelligence of her face and the steadiness of her gaze.
Her thermal aura hummed at its constant low frequency, the warmth preceding her everywhere.
The door closed behind Jae-min.
The click that was the lock.
The lock that separated the corridor from the room.
The privacy that the affair required.
Eighty-six days.
Since Day 109.
The thing the household did not know and that Jae-min did not acknowledge and that Elena did not announce.
The thing that happened in Room 3 when the door was locked and the corridor was empty.
Elena stood, her dark eyes finding his, her thermal aura warming the air between them.
She did not speak because the affair did not include speaking.
The affair was the body and the breath and the warmth and the door locked.
His hand found her waist.
His other hand found the back of her neck, the black hair between his fingers.
She kissed him — the kiss that was not the first and not the last and was the affair, the eighty-six days compressed into the mouth-on-mouth that did not need words because words were for after and after was for the debrief and the debrief was not the affair.
His hands moved with the biology he controlled in public and did not control here — the high libido managed by military discipline everywhere except this room, the handsy and possessive that was tucked behind the captain and the void and the compound, the biology that answered here because here was where the biology went.
Her hands moved with the thermal warmth that was her power and her touch, the heat warming his skin through his shirt, the dark eyes closing, the black hair falling across his arm.
The bed.
The afternoon.
The affair that did not include speaking because speaking would be naming, and naming would be acknowledging, and acknowledging was the thing they did not do.
"Eighty-six days — eighty-six days of this room and this door and this lock and this warmth, and the warmth is Elena and Elena is the affair and the affair is the thing I do not think about and do not name and do not acknowledge, and the not-acknowledging is the thing that lets the affair continue and the continuing is the thing the biology needs and the needing is the thing the captain allows and the allowing is the thing I do not examine." Jae-min reflected, his dark eyes closed, his body in the warmth, his mind in the not-examining.
The afternoon passed.
Afterward, Elena lay beside him with her black hair on the pillow and her dark eyes on the ceiling, her thermal aura settling into the low hum that was her resting state.
"You gave the essences today." Elena observed, the words that were not about the affair and were about the day, because the affair did not include talking about the affair.
"Three bestowals — Mei, Gabriel, Jennifer." Jae-min confirmed, the debrief voice, the captain's voice, the voice that was not the affair's voice.
"Gabriel is one hundred." Elena stated, the data that she tracked because tracking was the help.
"Gabriel is one hundred. Jennifer is one hundred. Mei is divine fundamental." Jae-min relayed, and the relaying was the debrief, and the debrief was the thing that happened after the affair, the conversation that was not about the affair but about the day, because the day was the thing they could talk about and the affair was the thing they could not.
"Divine fundamental." Elena repeated, filing the data, the filing that was the help, the help that was the cover, the cover that held.
"Eleven weeks — eleven weeks of the thing growing inside me that he does not know about." Elena reflected, her dark eyes on the ceiling, her hand on her stomach where the flatness held the secret that the affair did not include and the debrief did not include and the cover held.
Elena did not ask about her own bestowal.
Elena did not ask for essences.
Elena did not ask for anything.
Elena lay beside him, and the laying was the thing, and the thing was enough.
Jae-min stood.
The shirt.
The pants.
The captain returning.
The biology tucked back behind the discipline.
The door.
The corridor.
"Tonight." Elena murmured, the word that was the next time.
"Tonight." Jae-min confirmed, and the confirmation was the affair's continuation and the continuation was the thing that did not need examining because examining was not what the affair included.
He opened the door.
The corridor was empty.
He walked out.
The door closed behind him.
The click that was the lock, the lock that held the affair in the room and kept the corridor clean.
Jae-min walked toward the Command Deck, toward the console, toward the captain's work.
Room 3 was behind him.
The door closed.
The affair inside.
The affair that the household did not know.
The affair that no one knew.
The affair that was the thing he did not acknowledge and that Elena did not announce and that the corridor did not see.
The compound held.
The bestowals were done.
The void was empty.
And the affair continued.