It took great effort upon Amon to draw me from my sister. As he shoved us into the airlock, I did not let go of her. And when he forcefully pried me away, stealing her to the doctor, I stumbled after them. At first, I could not imagine the reason behind this, the indifference. I thought at first it was an occasion to be happy, but Amon had a single-mindedness to him that I had never seen before, at least I thought I hadn’t. The last time he found a surviving human was me, and back then, I couldn’t understand the language. It was in fact, he ordered Kybit to overload the Aphelion’s reactor, should the Mantza renege on his purchase. Broadcasting on all channels, he had threatened the entire planet should they even attempt to harm a hair on my head.

  As I chased after Amon in the winding corridors of the ship, I felt the shudder of the Aphelion as the vessel took off. A great sense of relief entered me, and I thought this might finally make Amon relax as well, but he ran all the faster. I did not understand his desperation, the fear. And as I ran after him into the medical bay, Amon was already in the surgery suite with Tut, who had been waiting there for quite some time.

  Amon placed my sister on the medical bed, and Tut, who already had a needle of anesthesia prepared, pressed the syringe against her neck and pushed the plunger. I was about to run into the surgery suite after them, but I felt a firm hand suddenly fall on my shoulder. I glanced up, and I saw Ingrish there. In that rarest occasion, she had left her quarters, and leaning on a cane, she stopped me.

  “They know best,” she told me, but she herself was dumbfounded.

  Tut began opening a drawer, but Amon wrenched it off its hinges, breaking the the cabinet and slamming the scanner in Tut’s elongated hands. The doctor took the hint and began quickly running through his examination.

  “A bomb?” Amon quickly asked, without any care for himself.

  “There’s no—”

  “We don’t have the time!” Amon yelled. “Does she have a bomb in her or not!?”

  Tut twitched, annoyed at being rushed. But with another moment, the doctor shook his head.

  “Nanites then! Poisons in her blood! Did you check for prions!” Amon practically screamed at the doctor, clenching the sides of the bed until his fingers were pale white. And though I was hurting from his indifference, it occurred to me that Amon had done this—seen this all before. A human bought from an auction, a raid on a menagerie, this wasn’t the first time he had a glimmer of hope given to him, only to be ripped away at the last second.

  “Nothing,” the doctor concluded.

  “That’s not good enough damn it!” Amon slammed his hand on the medical bed. “She was with the Rakasa! They wouldn’t have left her like this!”

  The doctor took another moment scanning, but he straightened and shook his head.

  Amon looked as if he wanted to strangle Tut. “Teleportation then! Molecular disassembly! Retrovirus! Plasma detonators! Did you even check her DNA!? Is she another flesh construct!?”

  Tut snapped the scanner shut. “You think I am a simple doctor. You insult me. My species touched the fabric of the stars. I know every element and molecule that comprises your feeble bodies! I see them at this very moment! I know this girl here is untouched by the Rakasa!” The doctor held up the scanner to Amon’s face. “These crude machines you give me, they are nothing! I use them because I made a promise, not because I need them!”

  Tut threw the scanner away, shattering the small device against the wall and stormed out of the surgery suite.

  Despite the doctor’s poor attitude, Amon seemed surprisingly satisfied with Tut’s answer. The old man slumped against the wall, the air knocked out of his lungs. Amon slid down to his knees as if a warrior who had survived his last stand, staring a million miles away.

  It was at that moment the girl’s head softly turned towards the window. She was herself a million miles away with the anesthesia, mumbling next to nonsense, but I clearly remember her words before she fell asleep.

  “Have we landed yet? Where’s Vas? I promised not to let him go.”

  …

  It was a long time before Amon left the surgery suite. He sat next to a button on one of the consoles, the one with a glass protector and yellow hazard warnings drawn around it. There was an ejection command embedded within the chamber, for occasions such as this, when the threat—and the hope—was too much to bear for the likes of the old man. He had his own watch, waiting for when this second chance turned into yet another bitterness, yet another knife in the back.

  I kept my own guard too, outside. Ingrish did not demand herself into my mind to learn what happened. And I myself did not pry open my memories, for they were too much to bear. Instead, I waited for those words again from the girl on the medical bed, those words which should’ve been impossible. She was supposed to be long dead, and yet, there she was. And with each soft rise and fall of her chest, I gradually began to believe that this was real—that it wasn’t like all the other times.

  In that way, I was much like Amon. I suspected happiness. I was skeptical of it. It could not be because good did not exist for us. And more than that, I found myself scared. Just like all my other phantasms, dreams—reality, whatever you called that thing which was happening to me, I was waiting for the horror. In this strange turn, I found myself wanting to jeer and laugh and mock this like I had done the rest. That had been my only comfort with my visions, nightmares.

  I saw the old man finally let up, walking from the surgery suite. As if giving me permission, satisfied that I would not be hurt again, he nodded to me. And then he departed for whatever place he could find real rest. Or rather, probably, Cargo Bay 13.

  Rushing into the suite, I slammed my fist on the door control and then I was in the room with her. Above were the thousand surgical instruments Tut used on his patients, and it seemed wrong they should ever touch a hair on her head. With what little strength I had left, I pulled my sister away from the bed and into the far corner of the room. Holding her in my arms, it felt wrong that I should’ve ever had this reprieve. I waited for the universe to do what it always did, turn this good fortune into yet another tragedy. But it didn’t. And I was only left with the miracle, wondering why this, of all things, had been a kindness.

  For the first time, I allowed myself to look at her as if she was real. She had midnight hair—like I did—which fell in strands at her shoulders. She had a thin, round face, like a pearl, with a button nose. She was remarkably similar to the woman the Xurak Queen showed me. I saw all the similarities in her features to mine, and as I carefully counted each one, the fear that there had been some kind of mistake—though I knew not whose—subsided.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I had seen before she had those deep blue eyes speckled with amber, the eyes that I had lost. She had the same furtive draw around her cheekbones, a trait I had long explained with malnourishment, but now I saw it had an entirely different origin. She had the same narrow jaw, the same pull at her ears, the likeness of Kaal—those sprite-like traits Ingrish taught which had supposedly belonged to my ancestry. About my height, just a little shorter, I saw so much of what was family which before I thought had been a chance mistake. And although I had never seen her smile, I knew faint tugging of what I clumsily called dents—dimples.

  I stared at myself so many times in the mirror, counting those imperfections. I had not paid any attention to them before, and so much of what I thought were the scars of the Xurak’s surgeries proved to have so much more a mundane, and far better, explanation.

  I had never believed Tut when he said the Xurak’s work had been small. But now I had my proof. And with that, I fell asleep, too tired to do anything else.

  …

  The Aphelion ran away from the Rakasa system. Defense systems roared, patrols chased after the ship, but it was already too late. As I had to come learn, the gamble had already been lost, defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory. It was never meant that anyone should’ve departed far from that museum. And rightfully, no one should’ve.

  Had Rykar come as a slaver and not as a rescuer, he would’ve died of guilt. Had Amon arrived as merchandise and not a free man, he would’ve died of vengeance. Instead it was the curator, who knew better and yet somehow underestimated everything, who died at the zero-sword.

  I remember in my waking moments, the unrestful sleep, I saw the pirate lord, the forsaken daughter, even the untreated physician, as they stood behind that reinforced glass of the surgery suite. I hugged my sister all the same. And then came Ingrish once again, the cane supporting her feeble frame. She left the medical bay smiling, returning to her quarters without once speaking another word.

  In the passing age that is a single night’s sleep, I thought about all that I had seen and heard. The encounter with the strange silver alien did not sit well with me. And especially, I was afraid of what it meant—that my visions were real. That everything I had laughed and mocked and played with had actually been somehow real.

  But it still didn’t make sense, how the robot’s sword passed harmlessly through me in my last vision. Perhaps—and I do not know how this thought came over me—that it had been a dream, somehow pulled into real life.

  And speaking as the man from the other end of history, I think that is how we would all like to come back. I’ve seen so many attempts at resurrections. Tut’s was the first, before Sanctuary fell, but his was far from the last. I watched aliens upload their minds into computers, brain activity re-stimulated from dead neurons, genetic clones with implant memories, the list goes on and on.

  But learning from these catastrophes, I find we do not wish to be brought back from the dead at all. What we really desire is to be made as we once were, like the past plucked from a dream. And as what the Xurak realized, that no one can do this, unless they can create everything as it once was. Indeed, as I have discovered, resurrections are pitifully easy. But to create something new, first, and then again and again, this is what the Xurak really wanted from their Mashiach.

  …

  I awoke slowly, rising from the depths of dark dreamlessness like out of a stupor. And in my drowsy thoughts, I felt nothing in my fingers. Sleepily, I grasped the open air, reaching around, looking for her. Instead, I felt something knock my head back, jolting me awake. I blinked many times, forcing my blurry eyes to refocus, but in my shock, I felt something sharp pressed on my neck.

  “Who are you people!?” My sister demanded, holding a sharp scalpel to my throat.

  It was another moment before awareness of the situation came to me, but I did not panic. I knew what it was like, holding a scalpel with the intent to slice open the throat. She was doing it all wrong, trembling, the blade angled for a shallow cut. She wasn’t thinking clearly, I realized, while she held me hostage.

  I sat up, but the words caught in my mouth for an answer. Really? What was I going to say? I didn’t understand any of what happened myself, let alone try to explain it. And what? Was I really going to say I was her brother? I scarcely allowed myself to believe that, let alone try to convince her.

  Thinking over my answer, I looked at her. “You’re safe now,” I said, reluctantly. I straightened and pulled myself up, looking into those eyes which had once been mine own.

  My sister shakily withdrew the scalpel. “You’re human,” she sighed, trying to come to terms with her surroundings. She stood up and glanced at the surgery suite, the airlock and the glass window. “So I guess that means I should trust you.”

  She glanced up at the butcher’s instruments above and shuddered. “Do you know who’s holding us prisoner? Is it that thing, the one who put a needle in my neck?”

  “No, we saved you from the Rakasa.”

  “What do you mean? You’re helping it?” She turned, suddenly disgusted.

  I realized that she thought we had saved her from the Rakasa only to be yet another captor. I struggled to find the words that would calm her down. “No… this is a… human ship. Tut’s just the doctor.”

  “You keep an alien?” She asked incredulously with no small amount of nausea in her expression.

  While I agreed with the disgust, I felt a little insulted by her tone. It wasn’t as if I liked Tut.

  “But…” My sister breathed, running her hand through her hair. “We can leave right? The door’s not locked?”

  “No.”

  She went over to try the mechanism, but just as the panel slid open, Amon was there on the threshold.

  While he was no longer frightening to me, he was never a man who could not be called imposing. My sister shrieked in fear and dropped the scalpel, taking a few steps as the old man entered the room.

  “I’m glad you are awake,” Amon said, standing over the two children. “I am sorry for the rude introduction. It was an emergency, and I didn’t have the time to talk.”

  My sister stuttered, glancing between me and Amon, unable to think, unable to know what even to say. I got up, and in one of my rare moments, those times I permitted myself to broach affection, I tried to comfort her. But my sister backed away, a look of fear in her eyes.

  “Give her some space, Vas. It’s going to be hard for her.” Amon crossed his arms.

  My sister’s head snapped towards me, eyes full of confusion and horror.

  I reacted the same as I did to the many things that profoundly disturbed me, finding refuge in that empty part of myself, though to my surprise, I realized it wasn’t quite as spacious anymore. I couldn’t fit in as snugly as I had done, and a flicker of sadness crossed my usually flat expression.

  “What are you saying?” My sister began breathing heavily, panicking again. “What happened? Where’s mom? Where’s dad?”

  My sister began tearing up, and it struck me as so odd. It was certainly due to my Mantza upbringing, but it had also very much to do with Amon Russ. Emotion so fierce wasn’t something that should be so easily bared to others.

  I suppose that it was simply a matter of our age. Me being twenty-one and her eighteen—at least that’s what she looked like—we can only hold ourselves as adults to a limit. It was quite noted among many alien species that they would’ve thought they were speaking with adults if not for our obviously child-like bodies. Indeed, we would’ve been adults if we were of the original race. Instead, we were scarcely entering pubescence.

  I kept my distance, unable to comfort her and knowing and fearing I would only make it worse if I tried. Amon, more versed in these things, knelt and put a hand on my sister’s shoulder. “You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”

  My sister gulped as she fought to hold back from bawling. She shakily glanced at me with utter suspicion and dread, and it broke my heart. But I remained silent.

  “We can get you some food. Would you like that?” Amon asked gently.

  She hesitantly nodded.

  Amon stood up and patted her on the back. “The mess hall isn’t far. Come on. Tell me, what’s your name?”

  I do not know why I held my breath. Even now, I was expecting that this would betray me too, that she would say some other name than the one she had. But there was only one name, the one that I saw in the inventory, the name that belonged to my only sister.

  “Leah.”