CHAPTER 3:

  Not So Different

  3.1 – Alba

  Four days had passed since Alba left the plains with Zweihander.

  The start of the journey had been brutal.

  The man was relentless.

  They marched from dawn to sunset with barely a pause, stopping for a couple of hours at most — and even that, she was sure, was a courtesy to her. If Zweihander had been alone, he wouldn’t have stopped at all.

  The first two days were the most punishing.

  On the first, after they broke camp, they didn’t stop until they reached the forest — close to dawn, stumbling through the dark. At some point, Zweihander offered to carry her.

  Barely being able to walk after the endless day, Alba accepted. But she promised herself it wouldn’t happen again.

  She was happy Zweihander made the offer, but the shame of it surprised her. Being unable to continue; feeling like a burden — those hurt more than she’d expected.

  The forest’s edge was far more distant than it had seemed.

  The trees were colossal — that’s why she’d thought them closer. The portion of forest north of the plains she had visited was but a park compared to the dark tangle they entered now.

  The trunks loomed so high they reminded Alba of Earth’s extinct sequoias — only taller, older, stranger. Life clung to them wildly: fungi, moss, vein-like vines crawling upward. The dark bark was so covered she could only see its brown when she looked far above.

  After a good sleep, they walked deeper into the forest.

  There, the world finished its change. Whatever familiarity the trees offered from afar vanished.

  The air was thick, causing her to feel constantly short of breath. The canopies fused into a dome overhead; below, in places, the branches wove into living tunnels. Roots twisted together to form paths, bridges, arches — mostly obstacles.

  There was no sky down there to tell her if it was day, only faint rays filtering. Alba kept her night goggles on most of the time.

  It only grew worse in the following days.

  If the northern thicket had felt like walking at the bottom of a pond, now she’d been cast into the ocean.

  —Not a lifeless one.

  There was movement down there. Insects, worms, slithering things — but most of all crabs.

  Hairy with moss, they came in all sizes. Not enough to blanket the ground, but present. Always present. Once, they had sharply veered off at the sight of one as large as a bull.

  There were no visible slopes, yet the deeper they moved into the forest, the more she felt they were descending.

  As if swallowed.

  Soon the thought crept in that they had been consumed by some gigantic alien creature.

  The only situation that came even close — barely — had happened years earlier, before her Eden training began, when she had still been just a rookie technician.

  Back then, she’d been accidentally locked inside the engine room of a Navy cruiser during a power failure.

  Alone in the dark, surrounded by a jungle of thick, writhing cables, heat rising by the minute, air turning stale. She’d been stuck for maybe two hours before they found her.

  But this… this would last days. Weeks, maybe.

  And there was no blast door to open.

  —But Alba wasn’t alone in those green depths.

  Zweihander was not lost.

  With his unique golden eyes, the Alter could see through that darkness as if it were day.

  He was often quiet, but not out of fear.

  Despite the maddening pressure, his mood was unchanged. And though Alba slowed him down — barely useful — he never left her behind.

  Sometimes she felt she clung to him too much.

  She never left his side — only when nature demanded it, making only a few steps to crouch behind some tree. A girl still needed her privacy.

  Her present wasn’t much different from the last days — she had simply grown a little more used to this new abyssal reality.

  They had just finished making camp in the forest.

  Alba crouched low, gathering the driest scraps of bark and foliage she could find to coax a fire to life.

  Their pace had slowed compared to the start, but if their calculations were right, they would reach the landing pod tomorrow. And with it, resupply.

  “Aah… seal-gorilla meat. Again.” She sighed.

  That monster’s flesh had been their main food source for the past few days. At first, Alba had been surprised it was even edible — and maybe, on the first night, she’d convinced herself it wasn’t that bad.

  It was still better than crabs, probably.

  But they had no way to preserve it properly; the meat was wrapped in what remained of the looted cloak that Zweihander had repurposed into his tunic. Each meal tasted more rancid than the last.

  Zweihander hadn’t gone hunting — saying it wasn’t safe to leave her alone yet.

  “We’ll slow down a little more after tomorrow,” he said, seeing her chew begrudgingly. “Once we reach the pod, I’ll start hunting something fresh. Just hold on a little longer, Alba — we’ll get there soon.”

  She still had a couple of Parvus rations stashed in her pockets, but saving them for real emergencies was wiser.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep up, Zwei,” she said, after swallowing.

  She glanced at him in the fire’s flickering light. Zweihander already looked like he belonged here.

  He’d gone barefoot the entire trip and didn’t seem to mind. The forest had tried to cut him, stop him — sharp roots, hidden thorns, spiked vines — but the shallow wounds from the first day had closed within seconds. After that, no new ones appeared.

  He had adapted. Not just by moving better. His body had changed — His skin no longer broke.

  “You’re doing a great job at it, actually,” he said, grabbing a piece of meat himself. “Most trained officers would’ve already given up.”

  She gave him a faint smile.

  At least he was aware of it too — that suffocating presence pressing in from all sides.

  This place was the antithesis of deep space.

  The jungle seemed to fear the concept of emptiness itself — refusing to leave even a single inch untouched by moss or branches.

  One night, she’d woken convinced the roots were coiling around her legs, ready to drag her under.

  “I was wondering...” she said, brushing the thought away. “You never seem to feel lost — that can’t be just your dark vision.”

  “But even so, we’ve made so many detours,” she added. “I know we’re not taking the shortest route.”

  “You noticed,” the Alter nodded, seemingly impressed.

  “You underestimate me too much, Zwei,” she smirked.

  He didn’t mind how Alba called him — but had confessed he wasn’t too fond of his name.

  He hadn’t chosen the name Adam himself. He just remembered always having it — and that probably some questionable people gave it to him.

  Code names instead were a more complex subculture that she had imagined.

  He had said that real names were reserved to those Alters considered family or close ones.

  But that was the tip of the iceberg. First, they were earned: half honorifics, half job names among soldiers. Only first-gens and famous second-gens had one.

  Funnily enough, Zweihander had explained that real names were used among Alters when someone wanted to be disrispectful too. Insults were always spoken with a real name, for example.

  Anyway, Alba still didn’t understand how all that worked.

  So, she had decided to address him her own way — called him Zwei.

  She liked to think he didn’t hate it.

  —At least he hadn’t protested so far.

  “About your first question — no, it’s not night vision alone,” he said. “All my senses are pretty good.”

  “You mean like second-gen Alters, class Bloodhound? Do you share some genetics with them?” The old excitement sparked in her eyes as the topic switched to Alter-humans.

  “That’s a fair comparison, but I don’t think I share much with them,” Zweihander replied. “First, my senses are more precise. And a little different — notice how I flick my tongue sometimes? That’s how I perceive distant smells instead of sniffing the air.”

  “And their origin is not Earth Alliance engineering.” He paused. “I guess it’s more like… patchwork.”

  “Patchwork?” Alba tilted her head.

  “You know, this place isn’t half bad. I’ve never seen a forest before,” he said, suddenly changing the topic.

  “Well, me neither — and I wish I could have kept things that way,” Alba said letting out a nervous chuckle.

  “It’s a fascinating feeling,” he added. “It smells like many things, but has its own unique pulse.”

  “Many things like what?” She shivered.

  “Things even I can’t gauge without getting closer.” the Alter replied quietly. “That’s the answer to your second question.”

  “So that’s why we’re changing direction constantly?”

  “It’s just a precaution. I’d probably win, but there’s no need to rush into useless battles.”

  The revelation landed hard.

  The jungle teemed with life. And maybe there were worse things than crabs lurking.

  The fact they never met those things wasn’t luck, she realized.

  It was him. He was steering cleanly between threats as they moved towards their goal.

  Zweihander was more impressive than she had ever imagined.

  Rapid regeneration. Inhuman strength. And now, senses sharper than any Alter engineered for scouting.

  Unheard of, she thought.

  And in addition, that reason-defying speed — the electricity that had danced along his skin when he took down that monster in an instant.

  “What’s your Alloy, Zwei?” Alba asked out of the blue.

  He gave a wry smile. “A question more difficult than you imagine.”

  “What do you mean? Didn’t you say Alters know the name of their Alloy by instinct?” Alba frowned. “And the way you ended that monster — that must be it.”

  “Aah, that’s what you mean — the electricity you saw. That’s the main thing I use,” he explained. “The name’s Ars Arcum.”

  Alba’s eyes gleamed. She had wondered about this for years — and what she’d seen couldn’t have been more than a fraction of it.

  How far could he push that power?

  Then she froze. “Wait — what do you mean the main thing you use? You have multiple?”

  “Well, yes — the regeneration is one, then Ars Arcum. Maybe the enhanced senses could be considered an Alloy too if you put them all together.”

  She stared at him, eyes wide. “Is that common among Klasmas?”

  “I’m the only one,” he shot back without an inch of pride. “To my knowledge at least.”

  “You really are special, then,” she said, offering a small smile.

  “Yeah, more than I want to be.”

  When the fire went out, they lay down to sleep. Dry leaves for a bed, the underside of a large tree for a room; thick, knotted roots forming its walls and ceiling.

  They slept as always — back-to-back.

  “Zwei? What are we going to do if... I mean, this forest might be endless,” Alba whispered with closed eyes.

  The Alter took a moment to reply — long enough that Alba almost thought he’d fallen asleep. But she knew he barely did.

  “You said this planet was mostly water — they couldn’t have gotten things that wrong. At some point we’ll reach the sea,” he whispered back.

  “I never saw the ocean, but I’ve seen lakes on Mars. They were nice places. If the ocean is similar, we might go there.”

  The thought of living on a desert alien beach with him made Alba blush.

  With that feeling in her chest, she drifted into sleep.

  —

  She was woken by a hand shaking her shoulder.

  It was pitch black around her.

  Alba reached for her forehead instinctively and pulled her night goggles over her eyes.

  Zweihander stood in front of her, sword in hand. He raised a finger to his face — a silent gesture: keep quiet.

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  Something was wrong.

  “Stay here,” he whispered.

  He gave the greatsword a casual swing — then vanished into the dark.

  Gone.

  Alba, still half-asleep, stumbled to her feet and scanned the surroundings.

  Nothing.

  No sign of him. No sound.

  She was alone — in the middle of a motionless forest.

  “No panic. No panic, Alba. He’ll be back — sooner than you think,” she whispered to herself, reciting the words like a prayer.

  Her hand went to her gun. She knew it was empty, but the gesture brought a flicker of calm.

  She kept turning around — at some point caught something.

  A faint glow.

  Acid-green static pulsing softly through the goggles.

  It drifted in the air, swaying gently, like a single bulb dangling from a wire.

  It reminded her of Earth’s fireflies. A brief warm oasis in that abyssal forest.

  “Is that… a bug?”

  For me to find comfort in a bug, the world really is upside down, she thought.

  Drawn by the light, Alba stepped closer, lifting her goggles to see better.

  It wasn’t a bug — but something twice the size of a finger. Bulbous, fleshy.

  A fruit, maybe. Elongated like a banana, faintly glowing in pale, almost white-green.

  Did it grow overnight? she thought. She was sure enough it hadn’t been there before.

  As she stepped closer still, she noticed it hung from a branch.

  Something like a branch. There was no breeze — but it oscillated.

  Slowly. Deliberately.

  Like a tail.

  “Shit.” The word escaped as the realization hit.

  It was bait.

  Her instinct screamed at her to drop to the ground immediately.

  She obeyed just in time — dodging something sharp that lunged from the darkness.

  She slapped her goggles back on — then cursed them.

  Because now she could see what attacked her.

  It was meters long, coiled. A reptilian creature — dark green and black, wet scales blending almost perfectly with the trees. A long body, sinuous as a serpent, wrapped around a thick branch above her.

  But it had limbs — four sets of slender arms ending in hooked claws, folded like an insect’s legs. Four gleaming eyes — two on the sides of its narrow head, another pair on the front — all glowed through the goggles, staring at her hungrily.

  She had to escape. Somewhere. Somehow.

  Alba spun and ran — or tried to.

  A second later, descending from above, the creature appeared again, coiled like a spring. It had already moved, blocking her path like it was toying with her.

  It opened it’s narrow mouth — large as half her body.

  The upper jaw was filled with sharp teeth, the lower jaw split and unfolded into two additional retractable limbs. A tongue hissed with anticipation between them.

  All eight clawed arms retracted, gathering for another strike.

  Alba’s brain thundered, hammering against her skull like it wanted to flee on his own.

  She was about to turn, to try another direction — but she knew it was useless.

  “AAH!”

  She shouted — and did something illogical.

  She didn’t know why she did it. But she did.

  She lunged forward — straight at the monster — and drove her reinforced boot into the center of its long snout.

  The impact landed solidly, right between its central eyes.

  The creature reeled back, stunned — probably more surprised than hurt. Two of its arms rose to clutch at the spot she’d struck.

  It only lasted a second. Not long enough for her to even start fleeing.

  The serpent hissed — furious.

  Then, with gaping jaws, it launched all its limbs at her in a single strike.

  But the claws never reached her.

  Something slammed into the serpent from the side, knocking it violently off course.

  Zweihander.

  He crashed into the creature like a cannon shot, his foot slamming into its flank.

  The serpent was hurled against the tree it had been coiled around, its body shuddering on impact.

  A fight erupted in an instant.

  The creature thrashed, hissing violently, lashing out with every clawed limb.

  Two arms clamped down on Zweihander’s sword, trying to bind it. The others raked across his skin, drawing deep, bloody lines.

  With a twist of his body, Zweihander freed the sword, cutting through the monster’s fingers, then drew the blade upward — through the creature’s lower jaw.

  It withered and twisted in pain, lashing its long tongue around his arm.

  Then something else moved. Another shadow — another serpent — flying through the air.

  “Zw—”

  The second one reached him before she could finish the word.

  But the Alter had stopped the bite.

  Sliding sideways, he now held one monster impaled by the jaw; the other was kept at bay with his bare hand clamped over its snout — crushing it.

  Alba noticed he looked calm — even as the new serpent began to coil its massive body around him, making him vanish from her sight.

  —The forest lit up.

  Not sparks or fire — but lightning.

  Electric arcs burst violently across the clearing, forcing her eyes shut. The flash she’d seen before, the one that had danced on his leg — now filled the air, heating it.

  Engulfed by a lightning storm, the creatures attacking him spasmed and convulsed uncontrollably.

  Then they burned.

  When the energy died the creatures were steaming.

  With a single swing, Zweihander ended both.

  The darkness didn’t return immediately — leaves, bark and part of the carcasses still burned around him.

  Alba removed her goggles, watching him casually brush small flames from his fur clothing — the claw wounds were closing already.

  He turned to Alba, his golden eyes still shining abnormally bright.

  “Saw that? That was Ars Arcum.”

  —

  In the end, they waited for dawn to break and had breakfast with the fresh meat of the creatures that had nearly killed her.

  It’s nature, baby, Alba thought, biting down on the meal. One moment you’re predator, the next prey.

  Alter-nature — considering what she’d witnessed.

  The meat was surprisingly good — far better than the rancid scraps they still had stored. The texture was soft, like what they said fish was, the taste rich and full. She barely had to cook it; it was already half-baked by lightning.

  “This Ars Arcum Alloy is surprisingly useful, Zwei!” Alba exclaimed between bites.

  The Alter replied with a soft chuckle while eating in turn.

  He hadn’t killed just two.

  Zweihander had left her because the creature hadn’t been alone. Two more had been hunting them — he had taken care of them before circling back to finish the ones that slipped past his guard.

  They resumed their journey after only the few hours of sleep she’d managed before the attack.

  That day, heavy rain began to fall from the sky — or so she guessed. The forest’s dense canopy swallowed nearly everything; only echoes and a few drops ever reached them. But the air grew denser still — Alba had the feeling she could swim through it.

  Hours later, it stopped pouring — and in the humid crush of the afternoon, they finally found something.

  A path.

  Trees had collapsed to both sides, uprooted.

  The undergrowth lay scorched to ash — the rain turning it to black mud.

  Something massive had plowed through the terrain, tearing open a window to the sky — a scar leading out of the forest’s gut.

  Alba found relief in the ruin.

  Tilting her head back, she breathed in with eyes wide open. The fresh air. The azure sky. The pressure, gone.

  It felt like emerging.

  But the forest was already healing.

  Like slow, slithering tentacles, vines and branches had begun creeping back over the wound. The undergrowth reclaimed its territory, reaching across the blackened ground.

  New roots had already sprouted, greedily wrapping everything within reach — even the broken carcasses of creatures left in the wake of impact.

  “This must be it,” Zweihander said, his voice calm but sure. “Nothing other than a military pod entering the atmosphere could have caused this mess. The parachute must have malfunctioned.”

  “Finally!” Alba laughed, almost giddy. “It’s a walk in the park now! A nice, comfy road straight to the pod!”

  “Yes,” Zweihander echoed. “We could relax a little. Soon.”

  “Let’s go then!” Alba said, pumping a fist into the air — the sunlight and fresh breeze had filled her with euphoria.

  They walked leisurely for a dozen kilometers, following the path the landing pod had carved.

  As they progressed, the scar began to shrink — narrower, less regular. The pod had slowed. From the way the skyline shifted, Alba assumed they were heading downhill, but the path remained completely flat.

  It was the trees.

  Here they grew even taller, swallowing more of the sky along the path. The large pod had passed beneath some of them — sections of the tangled canopy still intact. She couldn’t know from where they walked, but she guessed this was the forest’s heart.

  “It’s close,” Zweihander said, almost to himself — his tongue flicking out imperceptibly to taste the air.

  The path bent left, where a giant burned tree lay uprooted, and opened into a clearing.

  The remnants of fire had eaten through most of the undergrowth, a deep trench gouged into the soil. And following that trench with her eyes — there it was.

  The landing pod.

  It was easy to see why they’d never sent an SOS. The descent had gone badly.

  The pod’s frame was crushed and dented — clearly pummeled by trees on the way down. The massive trunk lying at the entrance must have been the final obstacle it tore through, slamming the vessel off-course and sending it tumbling toward—

  She froze in awe.

  Something massive had ended the pod’s ruinous descent.

  At first glance, she thought it was a red structure — a wall, like the curved stone edge of a colosseum. But it wasn’t built. It had grown.

  A tree.

  Both its trunk and branches were covered in the same thick, bright red foliage — a tree so vast that barely fit in her vison.

  Not much taller than the others, but its trunk, wide as a fortress, stood solitary amid the clearing. It dwarfed the lifeboat entirely; the craft that could house thirty people looked like a discarded toy beside it.

  The impact must have been catastrophic. And yet the tree stood unscathed, its branches thrust to the sky like declaring victory.

  The sight of the pod, however, offered no such reassurance.

  “Let’s go,” said Zweihander.

  As they neared the tree, Alba noticed it had no visible roots — and that the red foliage covering it wasn’t foliage at all, but countless oval, fleshy objects, oscillating slowly as if lulled by a current.

  “Zwei, you think it’s safe to—”

  A step closer — and the red surface dissolved.

  Red gleaming dots separated, slithered and retracted.

  All of them, in an instant.

  The tree lay bare now, pure white like bone, filled with tiny holes where the red creatures had withdrawn.

  Alba stared in confusion.

  It was more like Earth’s coral than any plant — a living structure, home to the small red organisms she’d mistaken for leaves.

  “It’s safe — I sense no aggression from these creatures. They are only wary of us, maybe curious,” the Alter declared confidently.

  She scanned the large white mass — not unscathed after all.

  The pod had cracked it in several places, but its inhabitants were already repairing it. Wet, lime-colored material oozed into the fractures, sealing them shut.

  While she and Zweihander examined the drop pod, the strange creatures began to hesitantly pop out of their holes and assembling into oval clusters again.

  Parvus escape pods were cylindrical, with exits on both sides. Two wide doors that nearly spanned their full length.

  But this landing had been truly unfortunate.

  The parachute haf failed and the pod had come down hard, one side buried in the ground, sealing one hatch shut. The other door had taken a direct hit — its frame warped.

  The scent poured from the cracks where the pod had lost airtightness.

  —Charred flesh.

  “No one made it out of here, it seems,” murmured Zweihander as he examined the wreckage.

  “And we’re not going to have an easy way in, either,” Alba grunted, pulling at the twisted hatch.

  “Nothing’s easy until you succeed, Alba.” The Alter-human smirked, then walked toward the edge of the crash zone.

  He returned a minute later, carrying a branch taller than him over the shoulder not busy with the sword.

  “Some wood here’s sturdier than it looks. Almost like iron. And this thing’s already halfway broken,” he explained. “I just need to find the right place to stick this in and use it as leverage.”

  “Will it work?”

  “It will work.”

  It did.

  The final resistance of the pod’s warped door gave way — not just to the Alter’s raw strength, but to Alba’s precise welding too. There was no space large enough to wedge the branch in, so she carved one.

  —The smell hit her like a punch to the chest.

  What had been faint before now filled her lungs — thick, clinging, unmistakable. She covered her mouth.

  Burnt, decomposing meat. Human meat.

  Twenty-five UN.SY. officers lay on the pod floor, most unrecognizable. The few whose faces weren’t too burned were still twisted in agony.

  The door had malfunctioned. Something inside had caught fire — the supposedly white walls now blackened.

  With the hatch blocked, they’d had no chance — smothered or burned alive. They never even saw the planet they were promised.

  “Don’t pity them,” Zweihander’s voice cut in — sharp and quiet. “They wouldn’t have pitied you — Alter-human.”

  “I — I know,” she whispered. “It’s just... sad.”

  There was a pause. Then his voice again, flat.

  “What do you think would’ve happened if we found them alive?”

  The question wasn’t cruel in itself. Reality was. Those had been her comrades. But she was a deserter now.

  UN.SY. was her enemy — Zweihander’s enemy.

  Alba had done more than just free him — she had picked a side.

  The realization hadn’t hit her until that moment.

  She shoved the thought away.

  They’d been spared a death by sword and lightning, at least. And their tragedy was Alba and Zweihander’s lifeline.

  She was reminded of an Earth Alliance motto popular during the War: Mors tua, vita mea.

  That was exactly the case.

  Just like that, the looting began.

  They salvaged whatever had survived in the pod’s storage lockers — mostly preserved rations, clean water, and clothing untouched by the flames.

  Two backpacks, two bulletproof vests, a pair of adjustable-size boots that Zweihander put on immediately, and a functioning omni-com.

  Enough to feel civilized again.

  And, of course, the reason they’d sought a Parvus military-issue pod in the first place — weapons.

  Alba chose a Gladius-60 — an assault rifle with high-caliber, self-propelled ammunition and a modular 30 mm grenade launcher under the barrel.

  Not a model she was used to, but after watching her pistol barely scratch the monsters’ hide, more firepower sounded like a good idea.

  Zweihander took a magnetic-propulsion SMG and the same service pistol Alba carried.

  He detached the grenade launcher from another rifle like hers and unfolded it into a sidearm. The model could fire signal flares as well.

  They packed the rest methodically: six assault-rifle magazines, eight for the pistols, a handful of SMG clips and two heavy drums, two plasma grenades that still looked stable enough not to explode on their own, and a single signaling flare that Alba slid into her launcher.

  Zweihander also found what she suspected he’d been looking for: three vials of Epinedral with a quick-injection system.

  He examined each metal cylinder carefully, checked the labels, then, without a word, packed them into his new backpack.

  He didn’t inject himself — whatever emergency he’d mentioned wasn’t happening now.

  —

  The sun began to set over Agua. The planet’s thirty-hour day — by her rough estimate — was coming to a close.

  “I guess we can call it a day and make camp…” he said, turning east. “…There. I smell and hear water. It should be a good place.”

  They gathered their supplies and followed the sound. The spot was only a few hundred meters beyond the crash site near the edge of the clearing.

  And he’d been right.

  A stream ran through the jungle, slicing east to west along a gentle slope. At one bend it widened into a small lake — an azure window set high in the green dome of leaves that divided forest from sky.

  The water moved softly, peacefully. Under the orange glow of the setting sun, the alien jungle now looked beautiful.

  “Can we stop here, Zwei? I like this place.” Her voice came out soft, almost childish.

  “Why not?” he said. “Let’s just pick a spot dry enough to light a fire.”

  They lay a few meters from the stream — on looted bedrolls this time — and lit a small campfire.

  As the light dimmed, the huge coral tree still visible in the distance began to emit a faint glow, its tiny inhabitants swaying in the breeze again.

  “I’ll actually go hunt something decent,” Zweihander said while Alba unpacked the reptile meat.

  “It won’t take long. We should celebrate — we reached our first checkpoint, didn’t we?”

  He scratched his head, dirt streaking through his hair after almost a week in the jungle.

  “Sound good!” she said, perking up. She was starving, and the idea of new food sounded divine.

  “But as usual, the cooking’s on me, Zwei.”

  “Just light the fire,” he winked, then dropped his pack, checked his sword, and disappeared into the trees with a couple nimble leaps.

  Alba fed the fire more wood — enough to last a dozen minutes without her.

  She had a plan. Something she wanted to do before he came back.

  She wanted to take a bath. Hell, she needed one.

  Who knows when another chance like this will come? she thought, glancing at the fire.

  When the flames looked steady, she stripped off her uniform — once dark red, now a patchwork of green and brown stains resembling camouflage.

  After peeling away the rest of her clothes, she stepped into the cold water, almost slipping on the slick stones of the lakebed, then sat to let herself sink.

  It felt infinitely better than the rinse in the stream of her first days.

  That let her think of how much things had moved forward in such a short time — how the despair had faded away.

  She surrendered to the water, eyes closed, body submerged in clean, flowing silence. From time to time, she peeked over her shoulder to be sure the fire still flickered behind her.

  When she finally felt clean, she sighed and rose — the water brushing the lower curve of her glutes. Eyes closed, she lifted her arms to stretch, muscles loosening after the cold bath.

  “I really needed this,” she murmured with a pleased breath. “But I’d better get out. The sun will—”

  “Ah. Sorry—”

  A voice. His voice. Right in front of her.

  Alba’s eyes flew open — and froze.

  Zweihander stood by the fire, two large crab pincers slung over his shoulder — wearing an expression she’d never seen on him before.

  She was still in the water.

  Arms raised.

  Chest bare.

  “Gyaa!”

  Bright red, she dove under, leaving only her eyes above the surface. Zweihander had already turned away, staring very hard at the trees.

  An idea brushed her mind — just as she’d felt his gaze brush her moments ago.

  Was that… embarrassment?

  “Impossible,” she muttered underwater, bubbles rising instead of words.

  He was a genetically engineered legend, a soldier who’d lived for more than three centuries. He wouldn’t be flustered by something like this.

  He’d seen plenty of women — probably plenty who looked better than her.

  Still… forty years in cold ice without a feminine touch might have been taking its toll on him.

  She’d seen that look before — back at the training facilities on the Moon. The flicker of embarrassment of being caught staring.

  She’d thought him too far out of her league the days before.

  But maybe her original masterplan was still viable.

  Her lips curved beneath the surface.

  Tugging at her cheeks, she forced the grin away and raised her head until her mouth cleared the water.

  “Okay, Zwei — I’m coming out to grab some clothes,” she called, her voice coming out more defiant than she meant.

  “I won’t look, Alba.” His tone was calm, the same as ever.

  “Thank you for being so considerate,” she said, walking ashore.

  She wrung out her hair — slowly — then began rummaging through the pack with deliberate laziness.

  “You know, Zwei, the trousers we found are a little too big for me — maybe I’ll just wear a long shirt.”

  Silence.

  “Unadvisable. Something might bite you,” he said, perfectly deadpan.

  He wasn’t wrong — but the man had walked out of a cryo-capsule in nothing but those too-tight white briefs, so he’d have to cope with a pair of bare legs.

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s just until my underwear dries.”

  “You washed it?”

  “I was just planning to.”

  A pause.

  “Do as you like.”

  Without stealing a glance, Zweihander withdrew from the battlefield before Alba finished dressing. He began preparing the crab claws for cooking. From the size of the pincers, it must have been a big one.

  As promised, Alba wore a newly looted oversized black shirt only — the UN.SY. sun printed on the chest.

  The standard clothing in Navy pods had been designed for Eden: mostly green camouflage, with a few T-shirts in black, gray, or olive drab.

  Night soon fell.

  They lay by the fire, eating their best meal so far — and the most awkwardly silent.

  Zweihander had washed and changed as well after finishing with the animal. The fur tunic had been discarded, replaced by camouflage trousers and a bulletproof vest.

  The silence wasn’t his fault.

  Zweihander always answered her questions — to some extent — and he did have a sense of humor. But he had never been the most talkative of people.

  If she had to describe him in one word, it would be focused.

  It was Alba’s silence that was unusual. She was the one who often started conversations.

  Yet now, for some reason, she demanded him to speak first.

  I have to say something, she thought, chewing on some crab meat. She just had to keep things natural.

  One of her usual questions about Alters or Alloys or whatever would do.

  She swallowed. Cleared her throat.

  “So, Zwei… I was wondering…”

  Alba said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Do… do you like me?”

  The hell did I just say!?

  Zweihander’s eyes flicked to the ground before returning to the leg he was eating. Alba cursed herself silently — then his eyes lifted to hers.

  “I’ll just say this,” he said, “I’m glad you’re here with me, Alba.”

  Words she didn’t expect.

  “T-thank you.”

  She hadn’t known it until she heard him say it — but she’d been waiting to hear them.

  “Thank you… for saying that.”

  Something warm blurred her eyes.

  “I was afraid you’d leave me in that forest. I’m useless. Aren’t I?”

  He leaned closer, filling the space between them. Without a word, he drew her head against his shoulder.

  “You’re not useless. At least I have a reason…”

  She didn’t understand those unfinished words, but he was being sincere, she could tell.

  “Was the meal tasty?” he asked at last.

  She smiled, still resting against him.

  “I have to say… crabs are not as bad as I thought — but I liked that serpent more.”

  He chuckled.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I should hunt some more of them if I get the chance.”

  “Maybe we could try herbs from the forest as spices. But you should taste them first — I don’t know how superhuman my stomach is.”

  “What am I now, a guinea pig?”

  She laughed, then looked up.

  Two moons hung over a clear sky. The coral tree’s glow pulsed lazily in the dark.

  Maybe this world — as alien and brutal as it was — really could hold her future.