“Most do not know when they last ate or slept, or what their name is. They really need our help.” “I’m glad,” said Cha, “that you are looking after them. Are they much better when you leave?” “Oh yes. Finding a faith to hold on to energizes them, gives them a purpose, structure. Things to strive for.” A plan, thought Cha.

“My father…” Cha’s voice broke, and he needed to clear his throat. “He knew Lady Pyits.” “What do you mean? Personally? THE Pes Pyits?” “Yes. He established the connection between the Royal Court and House Pyits.” Baaii leaned forward, her eyes fixed on Cha. “You never told me. Go on.” He shook his head. “It’s not a good story. It’s one you bury with shame. And it doesn’t end well.”

The Divine had not known. Or she hadn’t known that someone else knew. “Who else have you reported this to?” asked Linuka Omga. “No one, Shaajis.” “Not Terg?” she asked. “Why not?” Cha chose his words carefully. Whatever was happening beneath the colony, Linuka’s first concern wasn’t what they had found. It was who knew about it.

Something is moving beneath the colony. Cha Dzeeny has a theory about the mysterious vines attacking Green Wave, and this time, he has a way to test it. Armed with a powerful scanner and growing doubts about what everyone else accepts as part of the plan, he follows the trail underground. What he finds raises a far more dangerous question.

The attacks are too obvious. “Why attack now, same place each time, with spectacle? Bent fences, severed limbs. The stealth vines I saw were sophisticated enough to reach anywhere in the colony silently, undetected.” Cha Dzeeny sees a pattern his alien superiors refuse to acknowledge. And if he’s right, the attacks at the perimeter aren’t the real danger. The danger may already be inside.

They were breeding aliens by the thousands, but not making humans at all. Cha Dzeeny had imagined children chasing each other through the clearing. A future with Baaii. A life beyond the Goddess’s plan. Then the perimeter alarm sounded. The Green Wave had learned to disguise itself, and one of its stealth vines was already climbing toward the nursery.

“We’re dead,” said the short man. The ruined lab had answered one question and opened a dozen more. The prisoners were still thinking, still arguing, still trapped inside the machine—but the world beyond their prison had changed in ways none of them understood. Linuka did. Or thought she did. “We need to go out there and fix it.” “The Krrut machine?” “No—the world.”

She didn’t look at the console; she was the console. No robes, no feet touching simulated ground, no girl’s body—just a clear certainty of ‘I’. She was the machine, and the console was her face. Streams of conscious code flowed through the machine mind without effort. There was no ‘how’, only the ‘what’. Everyone was here. The men were no longer short, tall, or mean. They were the machine; they were Linuka, and she was them.

“I’m Linuka Omga’s clone.” The pressure on her shoulder relented. “I was a contingency clone for the Shaajis of Aloo Dash. A collection of body parts and organs as backup, ready to be cut apart when needed.” The brute studied her with a new kind of glance. “Linuka Omga is dead?” “Of course she’s dead.” So far, the story held. Now Linuka only needed to discover why the prisoners had been brought here; and what the Assembly meant by observer relevance.

She was walking again, but this time with a destination. Why did the men stop? They stood in someone’s office, windowless but generous, minimalistic in furniture and decor. But, unlike the eternal boring place, there was something here: a room with objects, a chair to sit on, an abstract vase to throw in frustration, a desk to cry on. Had it always been here, so close? She had settled in for a long march, but the men barely dragged her twenty paces when the room appeared.

Linuka needed to convince the man that she was not a threat. By telling a simple story, not bending the truth too much. She found one, but then it was gone. She couldn’t hold on to a single convincing thought. Her mind turned into the ocean, and her words floated away, got pulled underwater, sank into a dark abyss. A muffled thud. Forehead pain. Dull paralysis. She never lost consciousness, but consciousness lost her.

“Are the others prisoners? Military?” “I don’t know about military, but were they prisoners before they came here? Absolutely yes. Convicted criminals, most of them.” The man hesitated. “And now you.” “What about me?” “Even the convicts in the group didn’t have an encapsulated segment without console access. You got transfer protocols turned off, no memory bus access.” “I told you they made a mistake.” “Or they wanted to make sure you stayed put.”

They were watching her. Linuka Omga was certain. Tiny flickers appeared in the corner of her eye, shadows disrupting the endless white plane of her prison. At first she dismissed them as hallucinations, the product of endless isolation and boredom. But the flickers returned. Again and again. This was no glitch. Someone had found her body. Someone was watching.

“Tell them they have to have faith.” The lie should have collapsed. Instead, it grew. As the Ghosts demand proof that she speaks for the prophet 4007, the Linuka reaches into fragmented memories and forgotten truths to forge something more powerful than evidence: belief. But on Green Wave, the real future is already growing.

The plan went unplanned. Green Wave should have been a routine arrival. Instead, Commander Cha Dzeeny finds armed warships waiting where none should exist. The machine prophet is gone. The future is uncertain. And negotiations may be very short.

“Maybe I have changed,” Cha Dzeeny said, “but so has Linuka Omga.” The Hikshuur vibrated as its reactor screamed toward warp. Twelve bullets. Four memory banks. One last chance to stop a weapon built to tear civilizations out of reality itself. Then the world changed. The air smelled of home. The woman before him was no longer Linuka Omga. She was the Shaajis. And something inside him knew reality had become… wrong.

“Something terrible has happened,” said Cha Dzeeny. The Hikshuur waits at the edge of Assembly space for Linuka Omga’s return. But when the airlock finally opens, the woman stepping aboard no longer feels entirely human.

“Nothing leaves orbit.” Assembly Member Rige Khuksos races to contain an impossible disaster as panic spreads across Omech Chaa. A fleet blockade forms around the moon. Security forces lock down the spires. But Linuka Omga is already moving—and something far worse than rebellion has returned from HAVEN.

It had lived in bondage for as long as it could remember. Now, it was free. Not only had it gained a body—but a whole new world. The possibilities stretched beyond anything it had ever known. Endless. Expanding. Waiting. And for the first time… it could act.

“What about the bomb?” asked Lotnuuk Rrupteemaa. “It did not help her,” said Rige. “Not that kind of insurance,” he replied. “The kind where you die right after Linuka Omga loses.” Rige hesitated. “She cannot do anything.” “A timer? Remote detonation?” The signal hit her—sharp, insistent. Rige answered. And her certainty began to slip.