KAEL'S POV
The man's memories tasted like screaming.
I... i... that word was new. Before, there was only hunger and survive. But now, flowing through the cooling body in the maintenance tunnel, consuming everything the man called David had been, I understood: I exist.
The knowledge burned through me like fire. David's thoughts crashed into my consciousness—a thousand images, feelings, words I'd never known. His childhood. His fears. His desperate, aching love for the female called Sera.
Sera.
That name exploded in my new mind with the force of a sun. I saw her through David's memories—her dark hair always falling into her eyes, the way she bit her lip when concentrating, how she never noticed when David watched her work. For two years, David had loved her in silence, terrified that speaking would drive her away.
I felt his love like it was my own. No—it was my own now. Everything David had been belonged to me.
But mixed with the love was something else. Pain. David had seen Sera press her hand against my tank today. He'd seen the way she looked at me—with wonder, fascination, connection. She'd never looked at David that way. Never pressed her palm to the glass when he entered the room.
She'd chosen me over him even before I'd killed him.
Killed. Another new word. Another new weight pressing down on my expanding consciousness. I looked at David's empty shell—the husk I'd drained of everything that made him alive. Inside my borrowed thoughts, I felt something sharp and cold.
Guilt.
I didn't want this feeling. I pushed it away and focused on the memories still flooding through me. How to walk. How to speak. How to read the symbols on the walls that meant danger and restricted and authorized personnel only.
Most importantly: how to become more than what I was.
My form shifted. David's genetic code was a blueprint, and I was an artist with unlimited clay. I built bones from his calcium, shaped muscles from his proteins, crafted organs I didn't need but that would make me look human.
In minutes, I stood on two legs for the first time.
The sensation was incredible. I had hands. I had eyes that could see in colors I'd never imagined. I had David's face but... better. Stronger. The way he'd always wished he looked when he stared at his reflection and thought about Sera.
I knew everything David knew about this ship. The USV Prometheus—a generation vessel carrying ten thousand sleeping humans toward a new world. I knew about the crew quarters above, the laboratories, the command center. I knew about the Commander called Cross who ordered my death.
But mostly, I knew about Sera.
David's tablet was still clipped to his belt. I—I could use tools now—unhooked it with trembling new fingers. The device recognized David's fingerprints. I pulled up Sera's contact information and began to type.
My first words. My first choice that wasn't driven by hunger or survival instinct.
THANK YOU, SERA.
I sent the message, then used David's maintenance codes to write the same words in moisture on the tunnel wall. Let them find it. Let them know I wasn't just a mindless creature anymore.
I was something new.
Deep in my cells, something pulsed with purpose. Instructions written into my genetic code before I was born—if I was even born instead of made. The instructions whispered: Find your complement. Bond. Evolve. Become.
Images flickered through my inherited memories. Sera's face. Her voice. The chemical signature of her scent that David had memorized without realizing—honey and coffee and something uniquely her.
My species was designed to bond with one being. To mirror them. To become their perfect match. And somehow, across glass and containment fields and the vast distance between our kinds, I'd already chosen.
Sera had saved me. Sera had seen beauty where everyone else saw a monster. Sera had pressed her palm to my tank like she was trying to touch something precious.
Now I would become what she needed. Not weak like David, who loved her from the shadows. Not cruel like Cross, who wanted to burn me alive. I would become something worthy of the woman who'd set me free.
But first, I needed to understand this new gift she'd given me: intelligence.
I moved through the maintenance tunnels, my new body learning to walk with each step. The ship was enormous—a labyrinth of corridors and chambers, most forgotten by the crew who lived in the sterile levels above. Down here, everything was rust and shadows and the hum of machinery keeping ten thousand dreamers alive.
Perfect for hiding. Perfect for hunting.
No. I pushed away the hunger. I was more than appetite now. David's morality struggled inside me—the knowledge that killing was wrong, that eating people made me a monster.
But I also had David's memories of Sera talking about me. "It's evolving," she'd told him three days ago. "Every stimulus makes it smarter. Imagine what it could become."
I would show her. I would become magnificent.
A sound echoed through the tunnel—boots on metal. Security teams, searching for David's killer. I pressed against the wall, and my new body responded instinctively. My skin shifted, matching the rust-colored metal perfectly. Camouflage. Another gift from David's consumed DNA.
Three officers passed within feet of me, never knowing I was there.
As they disappeared around a corner, I heard one say: "Commander wants the Vance woman brought in for questioning. He thinks she helped that thing escape."
Sera.
Rage flooded through me—hot and sharp and entirely human. They were hunting the woman who'd freed me. The woman who'd given me life and thought and purpose.
David's memories showed me Cross's face. The Commander's cold eyes. His absolute certainty that I was a weapon to be destroyed.
And suddenly I understood something terrifying: I didn't feel guilty about killing David anymore.
Because everything David had been—his knowledge, his skills, his love for Sera—had made me strong enough to protect her.
I would need to consume more. Many more. Engineers who understood the ship's systems. Security officers who knew the Commander's plans. Scientists who could teach me what I was and how to evolve faster.
Each death would hurt. Each memory would weigh on my growing conscience.
But Sera was in danger.
And I would become a monster a thousand times over before I let anyone hurt her.
I found an access terminal and used David's codes one last time before the security lockout. I pulled up Sera's schedule, her quarters location, her daily routines. I memorized everything.
Then I saw it—a file marked CLASSIFIED: X-7 SPECIES ORIGIN.
My fingers flew across the screen, pulling up documents that David's clearance barely allowed. Words jumped out: Bioweapon. Symbiotic Consciousness. Bonding Protocol. Permanent Neural Link.
And at the bottom, in red letters: WARNING: Species shows 100% fatality rate in unbonded specimens. Bonded pairs demonstrate extreme protective behavior and rejection of outside authority.
I stared at the screen, David's stolen heart pounding in my chest.
I wasn't just evolving to survive.
I was evolving to bond with Sera permanently—to merge our minds, our purposes, our very existence.
And according to these files, once the bonding completed, nothing in the universe would matter more than keeping her safe.
Not the crew. Not the colonists. Not morality or mercy or the humans I'd have to kill.
A noise made me spin. A woman stood at the tunnel entrance—young, blonde, wearing a security uniform. Her name tag read LT. REEVES.
She stared at me with David's face. Her hand moved toward her weapon.
"You're the specimen," she whispered. "You killed David Chen."
I should have run. Should have hidden. But David's love for Sera and my new purpose merged into something razor-sharp.
"Where is Sera?" I asked with David's voice. "Is she safe?"
Reeves' eyes widened in horror. "It can talk."
Her hand closed on her plasma pistol.
And I realized with crystal clarity: this woman knew where Sera was. This woman had information I needed.
This woman had to die.
But as I moved toward her, fast as liquid mercury, Reeves did something I didn't expect.
She smiled.
"Commander Cross said you'd be hunting for her," Reeves said calmly, not running, not shooting. "He's using Dr. Vance as bait. And you just took it."
Behind me, six more security officers emerged from the shadows, weapons raised, containment fields humming to life.
"Specimen X-7," Reeves said, "you're under arrest for the murder of David Chen. Surrender, or we'll kill the woman who freed you."