Before they came, he’d been an apex predator — prime heir of the jungle burrows and in line to one day become patriarch of their wild grown planet. But came they did, the sky people in their noisy vessels and violent arms.

He’d fought them. They all had, years of war forced upon them as they tried to stave off the invasion – tried to keep more of their brethren from getting enslaved.

But even as an apex predator, he was nothing to them. Before their arrival, he’d been a big Xhyzer in a small tree, and the sky people brought fire and death wherever they went. Entire lineages were erased in a single passing of the sun. Legacies destroyed, and deeper into the jungles they were forced to flee until, at last, there was no more jungle to retreat into.

He could still remember the day.

He’d been flying back on tattered wings, carrying the last prey of their burning home in his arms. Even before that looming shadow passed across the skies, bad omens had crept through his scarred carapace, and as he saw it, he could tell the end was near.

Even as his stomach was ravaged with hunger, he’d dropped his prey and flew as fast as his beaten wings allowed. Still, he was too late.

By the time he reached the last of their hives, it was already under attack. The pained cries of his sisters filled the air as they fought to protect the last of their larvae, barely audible over those thundering cracks he’d learned meant death.

But there’d been no fear. Only boiling fury had lived inside him in that moment, and caring little for the spitting flames and wailing explosions that shredded the trees around him, he’d bolted inside.

There, he found the first of the twisted sky people, dressed in ugly carapaces that wasn’t their own. In their hands, they clutched tools of death, spitting light, fire, and metal through the air, robbing the last of his siblings from their right to fight.

With shrieks of rage, he tore into the first of the sky people. His heavy claws punched straight through its chest cavity, ripping the twisted thing apart. By the time he reached the second sky person to decapitate it with a single swipe of his arms, their cries, too, rose into the air.

Blood and gore rained around the Cryaks’ last warrior as he ripped into the invaders, vomiting acid over their heads until their fear was drowned out beneath boiling flesh. Without their tools of death, they were tiny, weak creatures, and before they could react to his presence, he’d impaled another dozen of the sky people, effortlessly tossing the wailing things aside before they could bring more pain to his hive.

Then, the angry swarm of whistling metal and fire finally came his way. Some bounced straight off his carapace, more tore through his body. Even so, he felt nothing but anger as he bolted towards the next invader, crushing its skull with a single powerful clap.

Before he could turn more of them into prey, however, a sizzling web had ripped into his body with terrifying force. It got entangled in his limbs, breaking his arms as he slammed into the floor. Lightning had passed through his body just then, preventing him from even shrieking out his rage as one of the sky people loomed over him.

It only made him angrier. It was no taller than a child, yet it still dared look down upon him, a Cryak warrior.

That web of lightning kept him from even spitting acid on the insolent larvae, leaving the sizzling liquid to drip down his chitinous mouth as the sky person pulled out a shimmering needle.

The last the Cryak warrior recalled before being harvested was his hatred for them. For all those who’d dared bring death to his home.

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

As seemed the norm these days, it was not in my bed that I woke that night, but on the blood-stained plastic of a cold table.

My last memory was of my own hoarse screams filling the room as those vibrating needles sunk deep into my bones. The ache still lingered within me, making my joints feel like brittle glass and muscles like stiff putty.

Just pulling myself upright, the blanket that’d rested over me falling aside, caused the pain to flare up. Organs. Skin. Nails. There was no part of me that wasn’t tender and hurting.

Still, my movement caused the nearby computer screens to come alive and, blinking as their light lit up the dim room, I realized that over a day had passed since the operation. As if my parched throat wasn’t indication enough, and that the rain had turned into a quiet drizzle against the window.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The worst of the storm had passed, and come morning, we’d be leaving this planet.

Sliding off the table with a cough, I nearly lost my balance before reaching the cup of water that’d been left out for me. No matter how many times it’d been purified, it couldn’t escape the muddy taste all water on this planet was haunted by. Still, I drank in greedy gulps.

“Statu…” I began before remembering, shaking my head.

That old habit still lived within me, occasionally surfacing at times like this one. Now, I was forced to manually access the computers before me to view my own genetic data.

There was some comfort in seeing that my race still read: Human. You could never be sure, no matter how you felt. Though, there was a parenthesized Strengthened next to it as well. That was new, but my eyes had already fallen to the mods I’d integrated. Two of them were there, not three, and one merely registered as Dormant.

Slowly, I rubbed my face. My head is not attached well enough for this right now… Questions, always so many damned questions.

At least the Cryak mod looked like I’d expected it to.

Strength Augmentation: C

Integration rate: 3%

It would take some time for the mod to fully spread from my stem cells to the rest of my body, and most changes would occur over the coming month or so. Some abilities or complications might still arise years later, but those were rare.

Before we arrived at the New Hub, I would see the full effects of my new mod. Here’s to hoping Celian’s torture was worth it…

To the grumble of my own stomach, whimpering and wincing with every step, I began making my way over to the kitchen.

Minus some enigmatic footnotes, the integration had been successful. Now, I needed to prepare to leave this planet.

There was no time sitting around.

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

I’d barely made myself some breakfast of grainy cereal in mud water and a calorie bar as Myla came tip-toeing down the stairs. From the way she froze there in the doorway, I could tell she hadn’t expected to see me awake.

“Shouldn’t you still be in bed?” I asked, having sent her a short glance.

Even if she looked a bit tired, it seemed she’d handled the operation better than me. By all means, she seemed healthier compared to before it.

As she didn’t respond, I held up one of the calorie bars. “Want some breakfast?”

“How…are you feeling?” she finally asked, as if having only just now found her voice. Right. I was out for over a day. She was probably worried.

“Good enough to make it off the planet,” I said with a valiant shrug that only hurt a lot.

“That’s good.” Myla slowly nodded. “You have until tomorrow to rest anyway.”

The innocent words caused me to wince. Right, I haven’t told her that I won’t be going with them yet…

The opportunity just hadn’t come up.

“I…erm,” Myla continued, her hands twisting as she spoke, “I hope our journey goes better this time? I, I mean…Ships don’t usually c-crash, do they?”

I could tell it was something she must’ve worried about. Then again, who wouldn’t have? A first star voyage was nerve wracking for anyone, and to have it end up as ours had?

I shook my head, wondering how many more traumas the girl had that she wasn’t showing.

“They don’t,” I said. “You’ll make it to Wochir-11 just fine. I promise.”

“That’s…” her first word fell short, and her brow furrowed. “I will? What about you?”

“I’m not going,” I said bluntly.

Good job, Yamien. All this time to figure out how to tell her, and this is how you do it.

“B-but I thought we were going to the Academy together? What about—”

Her words were interrupted as she snapped around toward Celian who’d just appeared behind her. As usual, his movements were eerily quiet, and I wasn’t even sure how she’d detected his presence.

All I knew was that her expression was devastated, but whatever she wanted to say seemed to have caught on her tongue. She glanced once towards me, then Celian, only to bolt upstairs with a trembling lip.

Before I could decide whether to set after her or not, Celian calmly spoke up, “I had hoped to catch you before you left.”

“Likewise,” I muttered.

I was already sort of angry at the Luminesari, and the guilt from seeing Myla’s tear-streaked eyes hadn’t made things better. “This,” I said, tapping my wrist mounted UI, “this is what we humans use to integrate with our mods.”

“If a bit unpleasant, it was a necessary evil,” Celian said as he, without any further explanation, held out a thick book towards me. “Just like I believe that this will be necessity to you in the near future.”

A bit unpleasant? I could’ve told him exactly what a bit meant, but I doubted the Luminesari would’ve understood. Instead, I cautiously took the book from him, and flipping through its pages, I found that it was written in Terra-Ibdis – the creole of Ferada-1109.

He wrote it just for me?

“I can tell that you have many questions about the mod I gave you. Hopefully, this will help answer some of them as the time comes.”

“Luminesari mind techniques?” I asked, having just glanced over a few of the titles within. I looked up at Celian with confusion. “But I don’t have any Psi-talents.”

That was one of the few things in life you couldn’t get through mods, money, or grafts. Talents like Celian’s you were either born with, or you were not.

“Then you better start practicing,” the Luminesari man said, matter-of-factly. “She won’t allow you to integrate with any further mental mods, either to fix your eyes or shield your mind.”

He held out a pair of glasses to me, identical to the ones I’d worn before. “This book will be your way to compensate for that, and perhaps even give you something more along the way. It’ll teach you how to train your mind until it’s just another muscle that works under your control.

He turned to leave, still speaking. “I’d also advise you to be careful if you ever decide to travel to the Mother Worlds. Don’t let them know you have either this book, or that mod. At least until you’re ready to fight them for it.

“There’s a reason she was listed the way she was. Some did not wish to see her bought.” He gave me a faint smile as he paused in the doorway, the human expression still so out of place on the face of a Luminesari. “And go see the girl before you leave. It’s a cruel fate you’ve pushed upon her. It’s the least you can do.”