The human checked his terminal once more.
He had become quite adept at the art of waiting, for in most instances, waiting eventually yielded the result he desired. In his childhood, he had waited for the silver-gray Zerg to return to the nest after every campaign. In his youth, stationed at Camlann, he had waited for their biannual reunions through the eyes of the stars.
Upon reaching adulthood, he had learned to leave enough space for freedom and reflection, waiting for the one he loved to step willingly into his embrace and offer a faint, almost imperceptible kiss.
But now, he was waiting for the fulfillment of a promise whose outcome remained uncertain.
They had agreed on six stardate hours; the timer was now reaching its end. In the execution of missions, the human tended to adhere to strict, cautious principles, eliminating any operation at its root that might become a hidden danger in the future.
If Sakti and Gera failed to return within the allotted time, Arthur would immediately head for the ship to seek reinforcements.
Just as Arthur stood up to gather his gear, a rustling sound echoed from the mouth of the subterranean hollow.
First, a head encased in a protective suit emerged. Immediately following, the black Core Species, having given his companion a boost, beat his wings and leaped out of the passage with graceful agility.
"Sorry, we almost went over time."
The male Zerg’s voice sounded breathless. The isolation suit prevented him from rubbing his wings and restricted the normal function of his auxiliary respiratory slits, making him appear exhausted; he had to pause every few words.
"We’re... we’re back..."
In contrast, the Core Species, walking with a light step, showed no superfluous expression.
Arthur was skilled at reading people—judging a conversation partner's emotions through minute micro-expressions or physical gestures. At this moment, however, the other had sealed off every channel through which his thoughts might leak. He was like a perfectly calibrated AI, showing neither joy nor anger nor loss.
"Shall we go?" the young man asked. He was not one to dwell on things, nor did he intend to pry into his friend's secrets.
"Let’s go. I’ve obtained the information I wanted," Sakti said. His voice was steady as he steadied his mate, who had tripped on a stone, before picking up the spare weapon lying on the ground.
"Let’s head back. The others will worry if we’re gone too long."
Until they boarded the ship and underwent a simple decontamination process, neither the Core Species nor Gera spoke much.
The human showed ample consideration. He remained in his protective suit; the ship's built-in disinfection equipment wasn't reliable enough, and they would need a second round of confirmation and cleaning as soon as they returned to the Allied Forces base.
"Please, get some rest. Your journey wasn't an easy one."
A smile touched Arthur's blue eyes. "I’ve set the autopilot. You can’t sleep in these suits anyway, so I’ll stay on the bridge to handle any emergencies."
"Thank you."
The Core Species did not argue or decline. After thanking him, he reached out a hand to Gera.
Having finished processing the surface contaminants and taking a shower to shed the bulky suit, the male Zerg immediately took his hand. After nodding to their human friend, they walked together toward the lounge.
When they finally sat on the edge of the bed, Gera pulled the other into an embrace.
Due to the time constraints, his information linker had downloaded all the data from the still-functioning systems in the underground area.
Twelve massive culture vats had silently preserved the dead deformities, while the final one had been shattered. Someone—or some Zerg—had dragged the contents out and taken them away.
Sakti had paused for a moment before leaving. The thought of burning it all to the ground, of burying it forever beneath the earth, had spread through his mind like wildfire. His origins were too dangerous; they could be used by any faction to attack him.
If humans saw such a scene, they would realize that their former High Sovereign had quite literally crawled out of a monster's body; the Zerg, meanwhile, would understand that their administrator possessed a monster's soul.
But in the end, he hadn't done it.
He couldn't say what emotional factor was at play—perhaps it was the repeated, mottled Jinwu emblems, or perhaps the image of the young Hard-wing huddling in a strange ruin, clutching its tail. He had allowed these things, which he had churned up from the mire, to surface for a brief moment before letting them sink back into the deep water.
This was their grave. They would sleep forever underground alongside the former Fifth Army.
"I think it might have been a scavenger ship," Gera said, leaning against the Core Species, his tail gently coiling around him as he held his mate in his arms.
"The crashed ship attracted scavengers, leading them to discover this buried facility. Many parts of the ruins were looted and damaged, and the intruders left behind numerous traces of laser weaponry. They found your pupa, thought it was something novel, and smashed the container to take it aboard their ship."
"I should have woken up sooner."
Sakti felt the warmth of the other's body and smelled the sweet scent of pheromones. Gera was trying to comfort him, to stop him from dwelling on that grotesque sight, and so he had started a new topic.
But the initial shock had faded; what he cared about were other details.
"It would have been better if I could have woken up sooner," the Core Species said. "If our deductions are correct, then the original you and I were very close. The planet where I was born shouldn't be too far from where you lived, and I slept for so long in a cargo hold very, very close to you. Had I awakened at an earlier moment, you would have been spared all that suffering."
The male Zerg’s arms tightened instantly.
He hadn't expected the other's point of entry to be here; such irrational logic left him at a loss.
"That isn't your fault!"
The words burst out instinctively. Gera was desperate to stop his mate from taking such inappropriate responsibility upon his shoulders. "You cannot view the fact that you didn't save me as a mistake!"
He touched Sakti’s cheek, leaning in closer to kiss those golden-brown eyes. "Don't think like that. I won't let you think like that."
The Core Species gave a small smile, pulling the male Zerg into his lap and wrapping his wings around him.
"Alright, I won't."
"I once read a story." Having grown accustomed to the Zerg habit of nesting, he maintained his usual way of resting even while lying on a human bed.
"The Monkey's Paw."
This was something Gera hadn't encountered. He had read many human novels, operas, poems, and non-fiction works, but he had never heard of such a strange name.
And so, he held Sakti’s hand, fingers interlaced, and asked very softly, "What does it say?"
"It’s... a horror story," the Core Species replied, slowly explaining the trivial details to his mate. "The person who obtains the monkey's paw can make three wishes, but those wishes will inevitably be fulfilled in an unbearable way. A couple who wishes for wealth loses their only son and receives a large sum of compensation. They then wish for their son to return, only to wish for him to vanish again when an unidentified monster knocks on their door at night."
"This is different."
The male Zerg understood almost immediately what the other was thinking, and a rare streak of assertiveness appeared on his face.
"You are not a monster, Sakti."
His voice was solemn. "You are not a monster. You are my mate."
"And the companions you left behind are not fools who made a stupid wish—they know exactly what kind of person, or what kind of Zerg, you are. They wouldn't pray for you to disappear, nor would they regret their choice."
The Core Species chuckled. At this overly intense reaction, he reached out to scratch the other's bristling little wings.
"That’s not what I meant. You don’t need to be an—"
"No, you’re not allowed to speak. Listen to me first."
The male Zerg, in full output mode, showed an unyielding side. He sat astride the other, straightening his torso and looking down at the black Core Species.
In truth, they had spent a great deal of energy underground trying to retrieve data from the hibernation system; it had taken longer than the exploration itself. Gera had been a bit lost with the human system at first, but he had quickly found his rhythm and set about parsing that complete data record.
As he rapidly read the downloading information, the missing pieces of the puzzle seemed to fall into place one by one.
There were no mad scientists or conspiracies. The base's control center, under instructions from a higher level, had autonomously initiated the cultivation program.
It had drawn the remaining materials from the gene bank, attempting to cultivate an entire body from scratch for a shattered consciousness.
But every attempt had ended in failure.
The cultivation room, its valves broken, had also fallen into the Tide. Every sample showed varying degrees of contamination.
Humans had created long-lived intelligent species; the models of the Data Firmament and Camlann had not yet achieved self-awareness, but they had already acted like gods, holding a soul and attempting to mold a brand-new physical body.
Twelve deformities silently proclaimed twelve undisputed failures.
From the death of the previous Emperor to the moment the newborn Core Species truly awakened, not a single attempt had succeeded in four years. The vast amount of time consumed by this process left a near-blank gap.
All cultivations using purely human genes as material yielded unsatisfactory results. They were too fragile. Compared to embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells had certain limitations and were unable to cope with the sudden mutations caused by contamination. Primate cells could not carry the weight of crossing the river of life and death.
A shattered consciousness that refused to dissipate could never be loaded into an incompatible vessel.
Until the last vial of genetic samples was pulled.
It was the only material left in the cold storage, and it was the dividing line of fate.
"The crashed transport ship triggered the dormant system. The Hard-wing whose blood burned through the entire core area set off the alarm."
Gera accessed his information linker, sharing everything with Sakti. Before this, they had only caught fleeting glimpses and hadn't had time to exchange opinions or discuss what they had read in detail.
"Its active samples were autonomously collected by the base."
"After twelve failures, the central control retrieved the last sample stored in the form of human blood and bone marrow from the cold storage, adding a more powerful catalyst to ensure this final attempt would not fail."
—The sequence samples of the Hard-wing were added as well.
The Zerg were different from humans; they were evolving every moment, possessing high activity and showing excellent receptivity toward all species. They could perfectly adapt to this operation and compensate for those fragile deficiencies.
The male Zerg gently stroked his mate's eyes. "How could I have forgotten? This is the site of the Jinwu... and you have such beautiful eyes."
"Eyes like a solar eclipse."
Even after gaining a new life and a biological form entirely different from the human race, those golden-brown pupils were so similar to the human Sakti Shalileban—like molten gold, shining brilliantly.
Bloodline provided the answer in a strange way.
It came from the blood and bone of the former fleet commander.
Across two hundred years of time, a residual blood sample became the foundation for constructing Sakti’s brand-new body.
This place had originally stored the genetic samples of all high-ranking officers so that, in the event of a major accident, spare cloned organs could be cultivated and provided in time.
It was like a gift across the river of time, coming from a blood relative the other had once been unwilling to acknowledge. Fate, after shattering an entire personality, had somehow preserved the most distinct features of his original body through an unexpected method.
It preserved a trace of his old appearance as a human.
A pair of similar eyes.
"That is why it can coexist with the contamination."
That was why no Tide would ever harm the one who carried this blood. That was why, in the depths of the entire Angon that had fallen into the rift, the awakened first-generation starship had cast a distant glance.
"You are not a monster, Sakti."
Gera cupped the other's face, leaning down to give him a gentle, tender kiss.
"The old Jinwu site preserved the cultivation lab and thirteen vials of blood; the crashed transport ship fell to the earth, leaving behind that Zerg molt; your friends wanted to keep you, uploading your consciousness fragments to the Data Firmament... eventually, they drifted here, taking root and sprouting in a new body."
"Those vessels that failed to hatch were not monsters either; they were simply unfulfilled dreams."
"You are not a monster."
Gera held the other close, his wings closing to hide his mate within his arms.
"You are favored by this universe, by fate."
"And you are deeply loved by me, by all your kin, friends, and companions—"
"A unique miracle."
***
