Once seated on the train, Norman pulled up the anatomy of human lungs on his tablet. Biology had never been his strong suit.

But as the holographic image took shape in front of him, his companion's now-evolved understanding of the human body guided him to what he needed to see. With a few gestures, he zoomed into the inner parts of the right lung, and the tablet's projected model annotated the parts at a more granular level. Soon he saw the red glow again - now a precise and focused outline. Over the next few minutes, as he adjusted the zoom level and panned through the model, the phantom marker shifted and highlighted the precise area where the problem lied.

"Mervin, do you have a few minutes?" Norman burst into the other student's study.

Mervin, visibly annoyed, looked up from the complex three dimensional diagram he was intently focused on, "Norman, can this wait? I mean - I am glad to see you again, but I any really close to solving something."

"No, this is more important. It's about you, actually. I think you should go for a checkup for Pulmonary Fibrosis."

Mervin was dumbfounded by that. After a few seconds, he recovered, "My lungs are fine, Norman."

"No, they aren't." Norman pushed back, "At least there is a chance they aren't." As the confused and frustrated expression on Mervin's face didn't change, Norman realized how abrupt this was and how delusional he sounded. He should have planned a backstory. But he had been too focused on getting to the heart of the matter.

"Look, I have been testing an early prototype of a system that Kiri is working on." Norman did not know why, at that point, he thought of naming Kiri. Of the hundreds of other stories he could have cooked up, in the spur of the moment, he just happened to choose the one that would eventually lead to the tragic death of his friend. "It has identified a potential marker that may indicate presence of abnormally thickened lung issue."

At that point Mervin gathered that maybe this claim could have some substance. "Fair enough, I'll get myself checked up. And if I end up wasting a couple hours, you owe me one."

"Yeah, no worries; I am sure it will be alright. The device could certainly be buggy - it is a prototype, after all."

It was not alright of course.

Next day, Norman was woken up by an exasperated Kiri banging on his door. He had barely had a few hours of sleep.

"Do you want to explain why I received a call from Mervin thanking me for some sort of revolutionary medical device I am supposedly working on?" Kiri demanded.

Norman hastily dressed himself and opened his door, "Kiri, calm down. Yes, I lied but at the moment I couldn't think of anything else. How is your leg by the way?" As if prompted by just that question, Celine let out a loud yowl and rolled over Kiri's foot. She hadn't had her breakfast yet.

Kiri was not amused. "Much better than before. The doctor says I should be able to walk normally without assistance in another couple of weeks. Would have been nice if you actually came to visit once or twice when I was bedridden, you know?"

"It is not safe for people to know we are in touch." Norman argued back.

"Yes, rich, that coming from a person who claimed to the most talkative person of the cohort that I am working on a radical medical device that nobody knows about." Kiri continued to fume. Celine, indignant at not receiving the attention she deserved, stepped on Kiri's foot and stood there defiantly.

"Look, I had to think of something on the spot, ok?" Norman's headache was once again killing him, and it was a struggle to keep his voice polite, "Your name was the first that came to my mind."

"Give me a minute to wash up. The real problem here is something else." He decided to tell her the full extent of how the parasite had evolved.

As Norman went away to clean up, Kiri picked up the cat gently and proceeded to refill her food bowl. Celine purred happily. Suddenly, she glanced at the cluttered bedside table in the room. Norman had gone to sleep, exploring some of the options to further enhance the project he had submitted to Zenith Fidaeus.

The tablet was left unlocked - it was his own room, after all. As Kiri looked at the dim holograph that was still describing the results of his last simulation run, her eyes widened.

"What is this?" She pointed towards the visualization, as Norman emerged, his face dripping.

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"A project I am exploring for Zenith Fidaeus. Given that an opportunity at Protectorate is likely out-of-reach due to my new pet, I thought I would evaluate some other options." Celine briefly looked up from her food bowl, as if annoyed at the prospect of Norman having another pet, but went back to her important business after a short mew.

"And these test results are real?" Kiri was gesture scrolling through the charts depicting the outcome of benchmarks from last night's test run.

"Early simulations, but yes. I think I can actually increase the energy efficiency of these defensive shields by up to 75%." Norman wiped his face and beamed.

"That is fascinating, Norman." Kiri said, her mind somewhere else entirely.

Over the next hour, she and Norman discussed more about the project and about how Norman's companion was showing him indicators of organ failure in individuals. Celine had gobbled up all the food by now and settled in a comfortable position on the window sill, bathing in the early afternoon sunlight.

At last Kiri mused, "You might want to be more cautious about what to believe and what not to, Norman. I think your 'companion' is showing you what you want to see. Not that it is necessarily wrong, but just make sure that you don't start trusting it blindly."

It wasn't as if Norman hadn't worried about this a hundred times already, "I totally hear you, but at the end of the day it hasn't tried to take over. It hasn't ever tried to force me into doing anything. I am in charge."

Kiri still looked worried, but said nothing further. After some more discussion on lighter topics, they eventually decided it was best to put the matter of this medical device to rest. If asked, she would just say that she had to abandon that device because the count of false positives was just too large. That it had worked for Mervin was more of a fluke.

An hour after departing, Kiri came back again - "Oh, I think I took your tablet accidentally." She handed Norman the device and picked up another one that had accidentally slipped down the edge of the sofa. "Kept trying to unlock it for almost fifteen minutes," she smiled apologetically. "Hope it didn't activate some failsafe." She gently stroked Celine on the head before leaving, and the cat narrowed its eyes happily and let out a soft purr.

"Nah, there is no failsafe", Norman paid no attention to the matter - after all, all the academy-issued tablets were virtually identical in physical appearance. However, it hadn't been an accident. Kiri had intentionally taken away Norman's unlocked device and copied over the entire research on his latest project.

After all, his innovation was useful to another group outside deep space research laboratories. Rebel insurgent groups - who often operated at extremely low budgets out of necessity.

Naasdal, the quaint planet where Kiri had grown up, with its lush, verdant grassy hills and crystal-clear azure lakes, was once a thriving hub of interplanetary trade and commerce. Naasdal's income was primarily driven by commerce through three wormholes easily reachable from their star system.

However, when the galactic empire under the God King began its relentless expansion, Nasdaal's fate was sealed. The empire, a formidable force with unmatched technological prowess, began its relentless conquest, systematically taking over wormholes and trade routes across galaxies. Through relentless internal subsidization and meticulously planned long-term deals, the empire systematically made it uneconomical for their vassals and allies to source their supplies from outside the empire.

So soon, even the traders and industries in nearby worlds suddenly found it much more attractive to procure from guilds funded by the empire, even if the new trade routes needed more wormhole hops.

The loss of trade revenue gradually plunged Naasdal into an abyss of poverty, leaving its once prosperous inhabitants struggling to survive. It all happened within the span of two generations.

By the time Irvania offered to make Nasdaal a vassal state of the empire, the destitution-stricken world had no option other than to accept the God King's terms. The planet was conquered without a single battle, without shedding a single drop of blood.

The Helicons, a faction of Nasdaal desperate to maintain their independence, formed an alliance with a few other alien races that had also been adversely affected by the imperial expansion. They pooled their collective knowledge and resources to develop new technologies, enabling them to evade the Protectorate's detection and maintain clandestine trade routes. Their biggest resource was the Farthaark network - a clandestine galactic communication network that the empire could not spy on.

Kiri had grown up in a rich farming household that primarily cultivated icorice - a grain that was native to the planet and was difficult to produce in other alien geographies. The primary consumers of icorice had been the Mardhats, an ancient sea-dwelling alien race who inhabited another planet in a nearby star system. Though the Mardhats could not grow icorice in their home world, they had found the grain to be enormously beneficial for their unique anatomy.

Thus, cultivators at Nasdaal and Mardhats had long had a healthy and prosperous trade relationship, spanning over thousands of years.

However, over the last few years, Mardhats established numerous treaties with the empire, and month over month, their procurement of icorice from Nasdaal dwindled. So many prosperous cultivation guilds in Nasdaal saw their fortunes plummet in a matter of years, Kiri's family among them.

This created numerous ripple effects in the socio-political landscape. As the competition in the local markets increased, icorice prices fell. When Kiri's family, a huge icorice producer, tried to sell icorice derived products to other customers, the smaller traders saw the writing on the wall.

Trade rivalries got fierce, and competition devolved into anarchy. Riots ensued. Kiri's family house was razed to the ground. It took the militia three entire days to get the situation under control. By this time, the family's multi-hectare icorice fields had been reduced to smoldering wastelands.

Kiri was away studying astrophysics at the academy, when she received the news that her entire family had been butchered. With no income and no degree, it seemed almost inevitable that she would have to settle for some menial job in the underbelly of the declining nation.

But fate, it seems, had other plans for her. Her path-breaking work on applications of Saan mycelia for deep space navigation had been noticed by Helicon rebels, a faction that still believed in an independent future for Nasdaal. A future free of the empire's control.

For multiple years, Kiri worked with them in secrecy, helping them improve their weapons and spacecrafts.

In the years after Nasdaal inevitably became a vassal state of the empire, they approached her with a unique proposition. Kiri didn't believe them when the Illustrious Academy's ten-year-old artificer curriculum was described to her. The description of some of the work done by students, even before they received their degree, seemed like things straight out of science fiction.

But eventually, she did believe. And she did accept. This opportunity was just too other-worldly to say no to. Thanks to the financing offered by the rebel group, Kiri found herself headed towards this strange establishment. The offer came with the obvious caveat: She had to inject herself deep into the Irvanian academic hierarchy and funnel back as much of the advancements as possible back to the Helicon group.

And she had no qualms in doing so. She pushed down her deep resentment for the empire that had ruined her homeworld, put up a smile for her Irvanian peers, studied rigorously to pass the insanely difficult entrance examinations, and stepped into the Illustrious Torus.

She was likely the first rebel in all history to have infiltrated the most prestigious academic establishment in Irvania.