Chapter 5: Hard Reset

  Next morning, I woke to the sterile light of Medbay.

  I was still alive, but it hardly felt justified.

  It wasn’t just the brightness that stung—it was the purity of it. Clinical. White. Blinking lights above me like stars I no longer trusted. The hum of medical equipment was a dull, ambient throb, like a shipboard lullaby written for the half-dead. Something hissed near my ear—automated fluid dispensers, maybe, or a neural dampener releasing a steady stream of analgesics. My nose filled with the faint antiseptic tang of sterilizing mist, the kind that clung to your skin and made you feel cleaner than you had any right to be.

  The low murmur of the biofunction scanner accompanied each beat of my heart. The air held a crisp sterility, utterly lifeless.

  I tried to remember where I was, why my body felt like it had been through a car crash. The memories trickled back, sluggish and surreal—the jungle, the tail whip, the cold voice, the cracking of bone like the drier twigs underfoot.

  My body ached in layers. Deep bruises spoke of impacts I didn’t remember.

  My ribs hurt when I breathed. My shoulder felt like it had been yanked out and crudely welded back in. My right arm was encased in the regenerator brace—soft blue light pulsing with each cycle of the repair field, its oscillations syncing to my heart rate. I hoped my arm was finally healed

  I tried to move.

  A mistake.

  Pain lit up my side like fire licking bone. It bloomed from my ribs outward, stealing the air from my lungs. I gasped and froze, my breath caught somewhere in my throat.

  "Remain still," a voice said.

  Dr. Senar stood at the foot of the bed impassively. The Thaelari’s expression was unreadable to most, but I’d spent enough time around T’alkar during Academy training to recognize the smallest crack in the mask. But just above his emotionally detached spherical eyes, with slitted pupils like a cat.

  His feline shaped brow—just barely—was furrowed. Concern. Or perhaps something close to disappointment.

  "You sustained a radial fracture, moderate soft tissue trauma, and a concussion," he hissed in that maddeningly calm and serene Thaelari cadence. "You were fortunate. Had the safeties been fully disengaged, that break would have been devastating."

  My mouth was dry. I coughed before replying. "I thought they were disengaged."

  From the table beside the bed, Senar picked up a Medjector. His clawed but precise fingers guided the Commonwealth’s standard-issue cure-all to my neck. A hiss. A pulse. And within seconds, the edge dulled. The cocktail kicked in fast—bioengineered and species-specific NSAIDs for clean, non-drowsy pain relief, plus low-dose healing accelerants. The pain didn’t vanish. It just pulled back far enough for me to think straight.

  "They were lowered. Not off. That distinction may have saved your life."

  A pause.

  Then the door hissed open.

  And she walked in.

  Commander Ka’Rina Zeth.

  The air changed when she entered. Not just in my body, where tension spiked, but in the room itself. Even the machines seemed to hum quieter, like they, too, were wary of her presence. She didn’t glance at the monitors or at Dr. Senar. Her focus was entirely on me, gold shining like I was being irradiated by the sun.

  But I didn’t feel any warmth there.

  I only saw an impassive conviction.

  She approached with precise steps. Her posture straight. Her training suit gone, replaced by her usual charcoal grey and command crimson topped uniform that somehow made her even more imposing. The light caught her scales in prismatic slivers—greens and silvers and hints of burnished gold. Her tail moved slowly behind her, just enough to suggest movement held in reserve.

  There was something about her presence—unapologetically primal, but restrained. Like an apex predator who had learned to navigate a world of sheep.

  She came to a halt beside my bed and looked down at me.

  A blank expression.

  Unreadable.

  Just watching me.

  I sat up instinctively.

  Regretted it.

  Pain flared.

  She saw it but said nothing.

  Her golden eyes searched mine, and for a moment, I thought I saw the faintest flicker of emotion there. An essence of compassion. But not quite remorse. And then something else. Calculation, perhaps. A criteria being assessed. A quiet ledger, updating

  "How does it feel?" she asked.

  I swallowed. "Painful."

  She nodded once.

  "Good. That means you remember."

  She turned as if to leave.

  "Commander—"

  She paused.

  "You could have seriously—"

  She turned back, quite slowly. Her expression didn’t change, but the air between us did. It grew quite cold, like the room was holding breath.

  "I could have what Varr?"

  I could only stare, at a loss of words to her manner.

  "You embarrassed yourself Ensign," she said quietly. Her voice carried like a knife dragged along steel. "But worse—you showed the crew what happens when someone overestimates their worth. Your arrogance, unpreparedness and failure lie in all our hands."

  She was furious. I flinched under her gaze, but I didn’t look away. This was unfair, and I had to right to know.

  "I put you here, Varr. So I can try to reform what the Academy failed to temper."

  Then, softer—softer than I expected, just above a whisper but more like a growl:

  "If you survive that, maybe there’s something left to rebuild."

  I stared at her, aghast.

  She didn’t know me.

  She didn’t know anything about me!

  What I’d come from.

  The Academy didn’t temper me, because it didn’t build me.

  I did that. Alone.

  Over years!

  Silencing the shadows of my past.

  Lighting a new future for myself, step by crooked step.

  And now she—this animal—was trying to break that down?

  This wasn’t Vanguard discipline.

  This was vindictive.

  And from my perspective, beyond unjust.

  It was torture.

  I opened my mouth.

  Nothing came out at first.

  Her words weren’t just cold.

  They were familiar.

  And cruel.

  They came from every adult who gave up on me. Every supervisor. Every social worker who said I couldn’t make it. Every snob staring down at me through silvered spectacles reading my freshman assessment reports.

  And I hated how much I wanted her to be wrong. To show her I was made of something much older and harder than she could possibly imagine. Just to spite the sheer audacity of her malicious condescension.

  The anger rose like rising waters.

  It was a flood.

  My eyes shot fiercely wide at her.

  And the levee cracked:

  “Zeth, you know nothing about me! I crawled out of an empty home just to make it into that damn Academy! Wrote application letters until my fucking fingers bled—rejected, again and again! Clawed through science textbooks ‘til four in the morning, since I was ten!”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I was shouting now.

  Everything was coming out.

  “You think I was handed anything? Maybe you were Zeth! But I earned my place! From the bottom! I didn’t rise. I had to survive!”

  Her gaze did not move from my eyes.

  Not once.

  Still. Unreadable.

  But something did shift deeply behind those pupils. I knew she was listening, recognizing something.

  And that’s when I realized—I needed to know.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Why am I here?

  I stared up at her, broken from the hospital bed she had put me in. And with what felt like the last ounce of conviction I had left, asked:

  “Why the hell did you do that to me, Zeth? What the hell were you trying to prove yesterday? And in front of officers! How can you justify that?”

  The words hung in the air like smoke.

  But the second they left my mouth, it felt like I just threw coal dust into an open flame. I was now waiting for the flashover. Expecting the burns to come, caught in the last moments before fire enveloped my body.

  My fury wavered—just a little—and the dread surged in behind it. My face winced as the old voices crept in behind my eyes.

  I’d gone too far. Why the hell did I say that? That’s it I’m finished! I fucked it. I was going to be discharged. Deported. Forgotten. You stupid idiot!

  Around they went in my head like an orbiting planet.

  But to my surprise, she didn’t shout.

  She didn’t even flinch.

  She watched.

  Quite carefully.

  And different than before.

  She paused.

  Studying me.

  And at that moment—I saw something unexpected.

  Something… very human.

  In her eyes—large, oval, and solar-bright—something softened. The hard lines around them relaxed.

  And for a moment, I saw a different person.

  There was a ghost of something almost maternal, buried deep beneath that feral demeanour. Perhaps a shadow of remorse for what she did to me?

  Veiled behind something greater, that almost looked fearful.

  A look of failure beneath tired eyes. A longing? A frustration? Either way, the look was like a gateway into something I knew all too familiar.

  The look of someone with a hard past, probably harder than mine. Too much for someone who usually stood so sharp and so tall.

  She closed her eyes, quite tenderly.

  For her, it was almost serene.

  Her clawed hands effortlessly curled into tight wrecking balls fists at her sides… But then slowly opened.

  Softer now. She was letting something go.

  I watched as she breathed in—slow and deliberate. A primal chuff, but quiet—Human.

  Sympathetic. Almost… kind.

  And with her eyes still shut, she raised a hand and swept it backwards through her starling-winged coloured hair. Claws parting each strand with ease.

  And for the first time, I saw it. There was regret in her expression now for what she did. And there was something else, a deeper sadness.

  The kind I’d seen in my own reflection, every time I stood over still waters.

  The kind strangers pass on the street without ever looking down to see it.

  The kind left of the face of a child when a father abandoned them.

  And when her hand dropped back to her side, she opened her eyes.

  And for a moment…

  They looked like a mother’s eyes.

  My mothers’ eyes.

  Like I was looking at her ghost.

  Like someone else entirely.

  Someone who understood me.

  Who saw me for who I really was.

  She considered me like this for a moment—like she wanted to say more. Like she could have.

  But instead, it came like it cost her:

  “I can’t tell you yet, Varr. It’s classified. Until I know you are ready.”

  The look in her eyes told me she was—in some way—sorry for what she did. Genuine, mournful and almost repentant.

  But then… just as it came.

  The veil returned, casting over her expression.

  The mask she’d built for herself slipped back into place with a sharp 'clack. And in that moment, I recognized the wall she kept around her. Because mine was built the same way—Reinforced with concrete steel, keeping back a tide of memories.

  The gaze of the huntress had now returned. The golden eyes of a monster.

  Disciplined. Focused. And perfectly lethal.

  “Varr,” she said, her voice like steel, “all you need to know is this: I need someone willing to bleed. Someone who can push past their limits and keep going. I need a fighter—sharp with a rifle, brutal in hand-to-hand. Adaptable. Precise. Dependable. Is that understood, Ensign?”

  Her stare didn’t waver now. Just as it had when she first entered the room.

  Whatever was once in her eyes, was in the depths below again.

  “I respect where you came from. I do. But I’m out of time. And out of options. We all are. Maybe you’ve got what it takes. Maybe you don’t. But if that’s a problem—You can walk. You have a choice.”

  She turned. The words hung like fog.

  But as the door opened, she paused. And spoke:

  “Deck 6. Auxiliary gym. 0430.”

  She didn’t wait for a response. The door hissed shut behind her.

  Leaving me alone—surrounded by the hush of machines, and the renewed pounding of my heart.

  And wondering.

  What the hell just happened?

  Dr. Senar was still stood quite motionless, eyes round looking at the door. He was privy to the entire argument but quite unmoved. Professional. Typically Thaelari.

  Then he walked to a console and tapped in a command.

  "She visited before," he said. "Approximately ten minutes before you woke up. Stood at your bedside. Did not speak."

  I just looked at him.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She’d stood there in silence before I woke? Why? Watching me like a specimen before dissection, or something else? The woman who nearly killed me had stood like a ghost beside my bed, unspeaking? That somehow rattled me more than the fight.

  My mind was spinning.

  I lay back slowly, my thoughts a whirlwind of confusion, pain, and shame.

  The ceiling didn’t offer answers.

  Only cold reflection.

  The next hours passed in a blur of medical scans, protein-rich fluids, and quiet glances from passing nurses. I didn’t speak much. Didn’t need to. I was the subject of a story already spreading across the ship—the Ensign who faced Zeth on his first day and ended up in Medbay.

  Apparently, that usually didn’t happen until a few weeks in. A cautionary tale. Or something new?

  Some of the nurses avoided eye contact. Others stole glances when they thought I couldn’t see. One even muttered, “Poor bastard,” under his breath as he walked by. There was no malice in it. Just recognition. I was now part of a club no one wanted to join.

  I replayed the fight in my mind. Every misstep. Every blow. The moment her tail swept me to the floor. The sound my arm made when it broke.

  Worse was her expression. She hadn’t enjoyed it. She hadn’t even reacted. She had simply done what she was meant to do. As if she’d been following protocol. Like I was just another number in a long, endless line.

  And in that moment just now, it struck me—Whatever she was preparing me for… It didn’t require skill. Or discipline. It required a complete lack of empathy. Like I was being trained to walk into death with my eyes open.

  The realization chilled me.

  And yet, beneath the humiliation, the bruises, the pain… was something else.

  Something new.

  I wanted to try again.

  Not to win. I knew that wasn’t possible—not yet.

  But to earn it.

  That evening, the room grew quiet. Medbay’s lights dimmed to match the ship’s evening cycle. Only a single bedside lamp remained active near my cot. I sat upright, despite the protests of my muscles. The ceiling panels above me flickered slightly, their dull amber glow casting elongated shadows across the floor.

  It was then that I first met Rhai—a female human—and Eli—a male Khevarin. The two other singular members of Zeths tactical unit. They brought food. Not replicated. Something warm. Earth like. Eli joked about blending my meals next time since I couldn’t chew with a broken jaw. The Khevarin were a renowned warrior race—Viking in spirit, but far from primitive. Fierce, disciplined, good with drink, and impossibly clever, they were among the first to join the Helion Commonwealth. Their strength wasn’t just in muscle, but in memory—keepers of ancestral epics, tactical genius, and a code of honour older than most stars.

  Rhai just watched me, then spoke.

  "You held your own longer than most yesterday," she said.

  I shook my head.

  "You think the point was to win?" she added. "It never is."

  Eli nodded with a grin. "It’s about surviving boy. And learning. One broken arm at a time. For honour."

  It was a strange introduction. Apparently, Zeth asked them to visit, but why?

  They left after a while. The silence returned.

  The ship thrummed beneath me, engines distant but omnipresent. I turned toward the dim light and looked at my reflection in the dark surface of the biobed monitor. Bruised. Cut. Humbled.

  But alive.

  — Failure, a 21st Century band.

  Every time you roll another lie.

  Twist your view of the real.

  Of all the ways you could have handled it.

  You chose the right to conceal.

  You can't bleed.

  If you don't have the blood.

  You won't see.

  Until you stop the flood.

  Distorted fields of frantic blame.

  Bend your view of the real.

  You could have learned to stand up straight.

  You could have tried to feel.

  Distorted fields of broken words.

  Cloud the air we breathe.

  Let's cut it back to the bone of truth.

  And see what hides there alone in the dark.

  You can't bleed (Couldn't give up, couldn't give up).

  If you don't have the blood (Couldn't let up, couldn't let go).

  You won't see (Couldn't give up, couldn't give up).

  Until you stop the flood (Couldn't let up, couldn't let go).