Dr. H. M. Zaraki:

October 19, 2025

05:12 MHT

S.A.F. Autumn

Fleet Base East

Sydney Australia

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I stared at the endless scroll of code on my screen, nursing a cup of cold sludge that had once been coffee. It wasn’t helping. After thirty-six hours with no sleep and three failed attempts to resurrect the damn thing in the microwave, it was more a reminder of my own stupidity than an actual stimulant.

The Autumn still sat docked at Sydney after the roughest landing I’d experienced in years. My office was in complete disarray, papers and tools scattered everywhere, a reflection of the mess inside my own head. I hadn’t found the time to put it all back together—between the Australian engineers and Andrew’s constant demands for modifications, I was running on fumes.

But none of that compared to the real question gnawing at me for weeks now.

Cayro.

His aggression wasn’t just PTSD or stress from everything that went down at SkyTeam HQ. No, there was something else lurking under the surface—something I hadn’t put into his augmentation. Something Bracton had slipped in without anyone’s knowledge.

I leaned back, scrolling through the C. Drive’s labyrinthine programming for the hundredth time, feeling the growing itch at the back of my mind. I was getting closer, but the damn code was buried deep—Bracton had hidden it well.

The memories of Cayro’s unnerving behavior in the lab, and that long, tense phone call with Stephan, wouldn’t leave me alone. Bracton had been involved in something far more dangerous than I’d ever anticipated.

Yawning, I tossed the bitter sludge in my cup aside. Enough. This coffee was worse than the stuff in the Corps. I might not need caffeine to think, but the ritual helped me focus—well, unless the coffee was actively trying to kill me, which this certainly was.

I stood up and stretched, glancing around at the office disaster I’d created, remnants of the Autumn's hard landing still scattered everywhere. My coffee maker had gone down in that crash, disassembled across the floor, another thing I hadn’t had time to deal with. Heading for the galley, I figured I could grab a fresh cup before diving back into the mess that was Bracton’s programming. Andrew and Nathen could afford to sleep; I couldn’t. Not with this lingering sense that something worse was coming.

Entering the galley, I found the ship’s ancient coffee maker sitting untouched. The damn thing had somehow survived the landing intact—untouched and still as infuriating as the day I’d first laid eyes on it. I flipped it on and stared at the flickering LCD screen as it cycled through its options with all the speed of a dial-up modem. Christ, had this relic even been upgraded since we first got it?

I was about to curse out the machine when I heard footsteps behind me.

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“Hey, Doctor. What’s wrong?” came Desiree's voice, as casual as ever.

I glared at the machine before turning. “This infernal contraption hasn’t been repaired or replaced, that’s what’s wrong.”

She laughed, shrugging like it wasn’t a big deal. “Captain didn’t think it was worth the cost. Most of the crew has their own coffee makers, anyway.”

“Well, isn’t that just fantastic for them?” I grumbled. “But I don’t have one at the moment, thanks to our last hard landing.”

Desiree gave me one of her sly grins. “You know, Star has a coffee maker in her toolbox down in the hangar. I doubt she’d mind if you borrowed it.”

I gave her a flat look. She knew damn well Star would mind. And no way in hell was I getting into it with my daughter over a cup of coffee. “Oh no,” I replied. “I’ll handle this myself. This machine and I are about to have a serious conversation. I am not using Star’s coffee maker. We all know how that ends.”

Desiree’s grin widened, but she didn’t press further. She knew better. Instead, she wandered over to the kitchen, leaving me alone with my nemesis.

I stormed back to my office, grabbing my toolkit and tablet with a vengeance. Two hours later, the coffee machine lay in pieces across my desk. Neatly disassembled, every component was laid out like a surgical operation, and after painstakingly tracing the issue, I finally narrowed it down to a programming error. Typical.

I linked the machine to my computer, accessing its code through the command interface I normally used for the Autumn. I sifted through the lines of code, bit by bit, ready to curse the day Bracton had ever touched a keyboard. Halfway through the code, something odd caught my eye. A chunk of it didn’t belong. Hell, it didn’t even have anything to do with brewing coffee. What the hell?

I paused, recognizing the structure. Familiar, but impossible—it wasn’t just a glitch. This was something deliberate. I made a copy of the code, saving it to my computer before continuing to sift through the remaining lines. Bit by bit, I scrubbed out all the irrelevant pieces until I had the machine reprogrammed, stripped of whatever Bracton had hidden inside it.

Within the hour, the machine was reassembled and fully operational. I hauled it back to the galley, reinstalling it with a kind of stubborn satisfaction. Fresh coffee grounds from my own stash in hand, I loaded it up and watched as it brewed a perfect pot of southern pecan roast. As soon as the aroma hit me, I knew I’d finally won this battle.

I poured myself a steaming mug and took a long, satisfying sip. Pure heaven.

But the coffee wasn’t the real victory.

I spun on my heel, mug and coffee pot in hand, and stalked back to my office. That damn code was burned into my mind, nagging at me. There was something about it, something bigger. I sat down at my desk, placed my mug next to the monitor, and opened the file I’d copied earlier.

I started pulling the irrelevant chunks of code from the coffee machine into a new document, piecing them together one by one. With each line, my chest tightened. This wasn’t random. My fingers moved faster as I began to realize what I was seeing. My heart pounded as the last few pieces snapped into place.

That sly bastard had hidden the data I’d been searching for in the program of his coffee maker. He’d buried it right here under my nose, probably with some secret combination of commands to make the machine brew coffee only for him while keeping his secret intact. Damn him.

The code I pulled together was exactly what I’d been missing. I integrated it into the C. Drive’s data and activated the full augmentation program in my emulator. I watched, wide-eyed, as the simulation loaded.

A three-dimensional double helix DNA strand appeared on my screen, slowly rotating. In the upper left-hand corner, Cayro’s full name flashed: his blood type, service number, sex, and age. Then, two other strands materialized, floating on either side of the main DNA.

The first was labeled Lycan, just as I’d expected. Donor: Stephan Staroko. Trait: Alpha. Lineage: Lycotonu. That much I already knew.

But the second strand? That one nearly stopped my heart.

Draconian. Donor: H. M. Zaraki. Trait: Dominant. Lineage: Zaraki.

I stared at the screen, my stomach churning. Draconian DNA—my own DNA—was fused with Cayro’s. My DNA.

The strands began to merge, twisting and splicing together into one cohesive structure. I watched, horrified, as the simulation completed.

A message blinked across the screen.

GENETIC SPLICING: SUCCESSFUL.