Chapter Text
The light in the recovery room hummed, steady and low — a pale yellow meant to soothe, not interrogate. Mira sat at the edge of the padded table, her fingers lightly knotted in her lap. Still. Waiting. The machines around her blinked softly in the quiet, recording signs of life that didn't quite match this world.
The scans had been run. The doctors nodded. Words like “stable” and “resolving trauma pattern” floated by like empty ships. Nothing explained the ache in her chest when she looked at the stars. Nothing explained the dreams burned into the back of her mind — all too vivid to be false, all too strange to be real.
But in this world, none of that mattered.
To them, Mira Luan was just another recovery case. Unconscious girl found next to a collapsed man on a city street. No known relatives. No clear backstory. Just scars. Just silence. Just survival.
She was a lucky anomaly.
And alone.
A soft knock broke the stillness.
A nurse stepped in — young, wide-eyed, her grip tight on the tablet she carried like a shield. “You’re cleared, Ms. Luan,” she said, a little too brightly. “Vitals are good. All scans are normal. Would you like to return to your room?”
Mira stood slowly, the stiffness in her limbs still catching her by surprise. Her voice, though calm, carried weight. “Actually... could you take me to him?”
The nurse blinked. “To…?”
“The man I came in with,” Mira said gently. “Tall. Dark hair. No registration.”
The nurse hesitated, glancing down at her tablet. “He’s still under review. The scans showed… irregularities. The attending doctor said—”
“I understand,” Mira interrupted with a tired smile. “I’d still like to see him. Please.”
A pause. Then, reluctantly, the nurse nodded. “Just for a few minutes.”
***
The hallway was cool and quiet, the kind of silence only hospitals seem to understand. Hushed voices murmured behind curtains, a distant intercom whispered something about a transport delay. Somewhere, a radio muttered about satellite reclamation and refugee legislation. Mira barely heard it. All her focus was drawn to the gravity she felt tugging at her — not metaphorical, not memory, but real. Familiar.
They stopped outside a private room.
“He’s in here,” the nurse said. “Ten minutes.”
Mira gave a nod. “Thank you.”
***
The door opened with a quiet click.
Caleb sat upright on the hospital bed, arms bound with wires and monitors that pulsed with quiet errors. The machines flashed red with confused diagnostics — readings that didn’t know how to interpret his anatomy. His eyes lifted the moment she stepped in. That gaze — steady, unblinking — collapsed all space between them.
The light through the blinds struck his shoulder where the gown had slipped, revealing the faint gleam of metal beneath synthetic skin. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Not until now.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“So are you,” Mira replied.
She crossed the room, unhurried. Sat beside him. The air around them shifted — not in emotion, but in frequency. The monitors spiked, flickered. Like even the machines weren’t sure how to read them when they were together.
“They’ve been testing you,” she said softly. “I overheard one of the nurses. Your blood, your scans — nothing makes sense to them.”
Caleb didn’t look away. “I’ve been muting the interference. But it’s leaking through.”
She glanced at the cuff around his wrist. It sat too loose, like it didn’t quite know where to grip him. “They don’t know what you are.”
“They know I’m not from here,” he said. “That’s enough to make them afraid.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
A knock.
The attending doctor stood outside the glass pane, tablet in hand, expression neutral — too neutral. Mira stepped outside to meet him in the hallway.
“We’ve run every diagnostic we have,” he said. “His body resists standard scans. There’s structural reinforcement we can’t identify — not surgical, not prosthetic. His cellular makeup doesn’t match anything in the global genome database.”
Mira kept her face unreadable.
“He’s not in any registry,” the doctor said, more cautiously. “That raises certain implications.”
“All it implies is that you don’t know who he is,” Mira replied evenly.
“If he’s part of an unlicensed bioware program or a defense test, we need to know. The protocols require reporting anomalies.”
“He’s not a threat,” she said. “He’s barely even healed.”
“I’m not calling him dangerous,” the doctor said. “But someone will.”
Mira stepped forward slightly. Her voice dropped. “Then you’ll do what professionals do. Mark the scans as corrupted. List the files as inconclusive. File them away as a tech malfunction. He’s not your experiment. He’s a survivor.”
The doctor studied her for a long moment. “Where is he really from?”
Mira didn’t blink. “Somewhere he barely made it out of. Somewhere no one should ever have to go back to.”
The doctor exhaled. Slowly, he nodded.
***
Back in the room, Caleb still hadn’t moved.
“They’ll clear you soon,” she said, sitting back down beside him.
A subtle shift passed through the space — like the memory of gravity pulling back into place.
Caleb tilted his head. “It’s strange,” he murmured. “Being in a world that doesn’t know how to look at you.”
Mira offered a faint smile.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re not here to be understood.”
She leaned her head gently against his shoulder.
“You’re here to be with me.”