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.

Most systems gave you something. A room. A sky. A door to walk through. This one gave her nothing. Featureless white in every direction, ceiling and floor merging into a horizon that refused to move. “System status?” “Haven, version 4.” Linuka took another step. Then another. It felt real. Too real.

It was hers. The room. The walls. The narrow slit of light near the ceiling. Linuka Omga stood frozen, staring at a place that should not exist anymore. Her childhood bedroom. Rebuilt. Piece by piece. Her father had saved her here once. He should be gone now. But he wasn’t. Somewhere, across the fractures of reality—he was still there. And the Assembly knew it.

Immortality had never looked so much like sacrifice. Vriishany stands ready to give up everything for forever—willing, hopeful, and blind to the truth. But as the ritual begins, Linuka feels something go wrong deep within her. Not fear. Not doubt. Something older. Something that recoils. And suddenly, the path ahead narrows to one inevitable destination.

The immortals ruled through time—through endless futures, carefully weighed and chosen. So why would Linuka Omga collapse them all into a single moment? Rige stared at the unfolding pattern. Fewer possibilities. Fewer paths. A forced move. And finally—an opening.

No evacuation. Rige was glad she had made that call. There was no point—unless someone wanted to evacuate the entire star system. She almost laughed at the futility of blast doors and containment fields. Linuka Omga had not sent a message. She had sent a causality bomb.

“We need a bigger threat.” Linuka’s hand rested on the alien cylinder. Cha stared at the causality bombs lying silent in the Hikshuur’s cold storage—relics of a species that once destroyed galaxies.

“Kel Chaada saved the galaxy,” Linuka said. “He became its staunchest defender, its champion to the end. You have looked around on this strange world, and I hope you agree with me that here, where I put this belt into the ground—halfway between fire and ice—is the place Kel Chaada can rest, having pushed back chaos and glacial complacency all his life. It comforts me to know that in so many realities out there, Kel Chaada is still fighting for us.”

“Do not do anything I ask for.” Cha stared at her. The blood on her cuffs had already dried; the wounds beneath it had vanished. Oonzu’s silicate mass withdrew from her shoulders, steady, protective. Linuka’s pupils were still too wide. “It wasn’t me,” she whispered. “It was my Uurmi.”

“The greatest mystery of multi-awareness is the requirement of a causal connection. Our own experiments stalled because unrelated events or persons cannot neither be accessed nor manipulated. Linuka Omga developed—or always possessed—the ability to create this connection, to anyone, anywhere, anytime.” “She can decide what becomes reality?” “No, she is there—before a decision is even made.”

The law had not been written for moments like this. Vriifaach Deegb could feel it pressing against the edges of reason, old statutes resurfacing from frontier times when survival mattered more than clarity. Adoption. Citizenship. Precedent. Across from him, Linuka Omga waited in silence, already thinking several steps ahead. Some problems could not be solved by power. Only by knowing which rule still applied, and which could be bent.

The woman looked like Linuka’s mother. Elegant. Alive. And utterly wrong. She spoke with the calm certainty of someone already seated at the center of power, dismantling Linuka’s assumptions piece by piece. Plans Linuka thought were invisible had been seen. Anticipated. Neutralized. For the first time, Linuka understood the difference between having power—and wielding it.

A reality was chosen. Linuka stepped onto the palace floor barefoot, the stale air of the hall washing over her. The guards hesitated, confused, uncertain whom they served. The Assembly Member tried to shout, to command—but his will caught on itself. If a weak mind believes it is trapped, Linuka thought, then it is.