Page 1 of Alien Guardian's Vow

RIVERA

The circuit board sparked under my fingers, sending a sharp jolt through my hand that wasn't caused by faulty wiring.

"Damn it." I dropped the soldering tool, the delicate instrument—its tip slightly misaligned from being dropped one too many times—clattering against salvaged hull plating. I rubbed my temples, hard. The pain started at the base of my skull, a familiar, insidious bloom, then spread outward like liquid fire. Beneath my shirt collar, my markings flared—a hot, prickling sensation that made my skin crawl.Not now. Not again.

I shoved away from my workbench, the legs of my stool scraping harshly against the polished stone floor. The sound echoed in my head, amplified to an unbearable, high-pitched screech that seemed to drill directly into my brainstem.

Every noise in the settlement—the distant, melodic cadence of Nyxari conversations I could never completely understand, though the small translator stone resting against my collarbone faithfully relayed their words, the rhythmicclang... clang...of tools from the forge down the corridor, even the subtle, pervasive resonance of the living stone walls that the Nyxari found so comforting—seemed determined to tear through my skull.

Faulty wiring,I thought bitterly, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.That's all these markings are. Faulty biological wiring picking up every damn energy signal in this place.It wasn't even consistent; the salvaged human tech I worked on created a low-level static, manageable most days, but the Nyxari systems—the living stone, the healing chamber energies—resonated differently, painfully, turning the background hum into a physical assault.

My vision fractured at the edges, static creeping in like television snow—a shimmering, gray haze that made the salvaged comm unit on my bench blur, double, then triple. Its display flickered erratically, a patchwork of salvaged parts barely holding together. "Piece of junk," I muttered, picking up the component again, trying to focus through the swimming visuals.

If I could just isolate the faulty transmitter array, maybe we'd have something resembling a working long-range communication system. Something better than runners carrying messages between settlements, something that might actually reach theotherhuman camp, wherever Hammond had established it after the split. Assuming he hadn't shot down any attempt at contact, given his escalating paranoia.

A tremor shook the room. Small, but sharp enough to rattle my collection of tools—a mix of salvaged Seraphyne tech and crude Nyxari implements—and send several delicate micro-capacitors skittering across the workbench like metallic insects. I grabbed for them instinctively, catching most before they hit the floor.

The tremor passed, but the pain in my head intensified, pulsing in time with the thrumming energy of the settlement. The markings along my collarbone burned brighter, hotter, responding to something I couldn't see or understand.Useless. Worse than useless—a liability.

What good were these damn things if all they did was malfunction? Mirelle's danger sense had saved lives. Mine just turned me into a walking migraine whenever I got near anything with an energy signature stronger than a handheld scanner—which, in a settlement built from living stone and incorporating Nyxari energy systems, waseverywhere.

The settlement hummed around me, a symphony of discordant energy only I seemed to perceive. The living stone vibrated at a frequency just beyond normal human hearing—but not beyond my markings' maddening perception. Add in the healing chambers down the corridor with their concentrated energy fields, and the whole place became an assault.

Another tremor, stronger this time. My tools jumped. A calibration meter I'd painstakingly repaired—its casing cracked, held together with adhesive strips—slid off the edge and crashed to the floor, glass shattering with a sound that lanced through my already overloaded senses.

"Perfect." I bent to pick up the larger pieces, ignoring the way my vision swam and nausea churned in my stomach.That's the third one this week,I thought, straightening slowly.Not normal seismic settling. This feels like... like system instability. Like a reactor approaching critical.Where was it coming from?

How was I supposed to fix anything, contribute anything, when I could barely function? The others were out there doing important work—hunting, scouting, building. I sat in this corner, playing with broken toys salvaged from our dead ship and fighting my own damned skin. A waste of time. A waste of skills. A waste of me.

Damn it... My own translator stone, resting beneath my shirt, offered no help here—it only bridged spoken words, not the raw energy signatures making my nerves fray.

"You look terrible."

The quiet words startled me. I looked up, squinting through the visual static, to find Mirelle watching me from the doorway. Concern etched her features, softening the usually composed lines of her face. The silver markings framing her eyes seemed to shimmer with empathy.

"Thanks. Just what every girl wants to hear," I managed, trying for sarcasm but landing closer to exhaustion.

She crossed the room with her usual quiet grace and perched on the edge of my workbench, careful not to disturb the scattered components. "Headache again?" Her gaze flickered to my collar, where the markings still pulsed visibly through the thin fabric of my shirt. "Your markings are practically glowing."

I glanced down. She wasn't wrong. The silver light throbbed like a trapped pulse. No point denying it. "It's nothing," I started, then sighed, dropping the pretense. "Okay, it's something. They've been acting up all morning," I admitted, rubbing my temples again. "Worse with the tremors."

"That's actually why I'm here." Mirelle picked up one of my salvaged circuit boards, examining the crude repairs with interest before setting it back down gently. "I need someone to investigate energy fluctuations near the ruins."

I put down my stylus, my focus sharpening despite the pain. "The ruins? You mean the site from—" The place that had nearly killed Selene, where ancient tech was known to lie dormant. The place that hummed with a different, deeper energy signature, laced with the scent of ozone and decay even from a distance.

"Yes, the same complex. We've been monitoring it since... everything that happened there. Standard procedure. But something's changed recently." Her expression grew serious. "The tremors started shortly after our remote instruments detected unusual energy patterns emanating from that area. Spikes, drops, instability."

My engineer's brain kicked into gear, overriding the headache. A real problem. A complex system failure. A diagnostic challenge. My heart rate picked up. "Why me?" I asked, suspicion immediately returning.Is this just busywork to get the malfunctioning human out of the way?"Wouldn't Kavan or one of the Nyxari scientists be better suited? They understand this ancient tech better than I do."

Mirelle offered a small, knowing smile. "Two reasons. One, you have engineering expertise none of the Nyxari possess. They understand their ancient technology through tradition, not technical knowledge."

Tradition, right,I thought, stifling a scoff.Probably involves chanting at it.I briefly pictured Selene and Kavan back at the main settlement, recalling rumors about some ancient neural implant they'd found that bridged the language gap instantly.Sounds invasive as hell, sticking alien tech directly into your brain, but maybe better than trying to decipher energy signatures through a migraine.

"And two?" I prompted, pushing the thought away.

"Two," Mirelle continued, her gaze sympathetic, "I've noticed your discomfort increases significantly when you'reinthe settlement. The living stone, the healing chambers—they all emit energy signatures that seem to affect your markings more intensely than others'."

She wasn't wrong. The constant background noise, the energy hum I couldn't filter out, had been driving me slowly insane.

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