Chapter 47: Blue and the Test Subjects

**Main corridor – Kojak 11 Base**

The air stank of ozone, scorched metal, and fear. Lights flickered overhead, sirens still screamed in regular intervals—but Evelyn didn’t hear them anymore.
She was limping forward, breath short, her body shaking with chills. The echo of that call still rang in her head like a divine bell slamming against the walls of her mind.

*"MY’LARI!"*

He had shouted it. Screamed it to the world—no shame, no filter. That word he had guarded so fiercely since Iskaara, he’d hurled it into this hellish base like a blast of raw energy. Evelyn was still trembling, but not from fear. From something else. Something bigger. Deeper. Too vast to define.

And then she saw him.

Vykhor, towering and familiar, stormed down the corridor—bloody but standing. His prosthetic arm still smoked from the last strike. He froze the second he saw her.

His golden eyes scanned her face with a kind of urgent desperation that hurt to watch.

There were no words.

They didn’t need any.

Evelyn took a shaky step forward.

“You’re here…” she breathed, unable to say anything more.

And Vykhor—Vykhor did something he never did. He hugged her.

Not protectively. Not possessively.

Humanly. Fiercely. Uncontrollably.

His arms wrapped around her, holding her tight against his chest, his body still tense with unspent adrenaline. One hand slid into her hair—firm, but gentle.

“You could’ve died,” he murmured, his voice rough, almost broken.

Evelyn stiffened at the rawness in his voice. It wasn’t a rebuke—it was a naked truth, stripped bare.

She looked up at him and saw the war behind his eyes. Anger, fear, guilt… and beneath it, something else.

That fire. The one that matched the one burning in her.

“I’m here, Vykhor. With you,” she whispered.

He held her tighter, anchoring her in the now, in his world. And just as abruptly, he let go—reining himself back in.

“It’s not over. The AI’s adapting. She’ll try again.”

Evelyn nodded, standing straighter.

She wasn’t alone anymore. Not really.

And she knew what had to be done.

“Then let’s finish what we started.”

They locked eyes once more before heading toward the heart of the station.

The room was dim, lit only by the flickering blue lines of a still-functioning terminal. The silence was heavy, broken only by Evelyn’s uneven breathing as she wrestled back control over her emotions.

Vykhor stood nearby, eyes scanning their makeshift shelter. Every muscle in his body was coiled, ready to strike.

But for now, the AI was silent.

“We can’t keep going like this,” Evelyn muttered. “She’s adapting. Learning from us.”

“Then we don’t give her time.”

Vykhor activated a portable holo-projector, and the station map unfolded before them. He pointed to a western sector, isolated and heavily shielded.

“The main research hub’s here. That’s where Tarn Vesik’s data is. And probably… the AI’s core.”

“We’re understaffed, Vykhor. If she shifts her remaining units there, we’ll hit a wall.”

He nodded. She was right.

They were tired, outnumbered… and yet, that fire was back in Evelyn’s eyes.

The same spark he’d seen when she cracked impossible codes. When she refused to back down from a system too complex to be tamed.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, straightening. “A virus. Not to destroy her—she learns too fast—but a decoy. Something to scatter her focus. Fake targets.”

“You can do it?”

“If I reach the right terminal, yes. But I’ll need cover.”

Vykhor stepped forward, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll have it.”

He didn’t need to say more. She already knew.

Right there, in that forgotten room, they were locked onto the same mission. And nothing—not even a hyper-evolving AI—was gonna stop them now.

**Interlude – Onboard the Narak’Tharr**

The Narak’Tharr drifted in low orbit above Kojak 11, quiet and deadly like a predator lying in wait. Inside, everything was calm but tense—tactical routines, encrypted monitoring, full alert.

Kryna tracked Vykhor and Evelyn’s progress through secure channels…

But a secondary signal pulled her focus.

The escape pods Evelyn had triggered remotely had landed. The rescued test subjects—mutated hybrids, scared, some barely teenagers—had arrived onboard.

The ramp hissed open, sterile air flowing out.

Their first steps on the ship's metallic floor echoed through the hangar.

And then… Blue appeared.

Not quite a kitten anymore, not yet fully grown—he lay in the middle of the corridor between the pods and the entryway, his shimmering coat glowing under the Narak’Tharr’s lights.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t meow.

Just stared.

Inside, though… something shifted.

He remembered what Evelyn told him, looking right into his eyes before she left:

"You have to be gentle, Blue. They’re lost souls. You’re the first face they’ll see. Be their comfort."

His tail flicked.

Then, slowly, Blue got up and padded toward the youngest.

A small hybrid child—trembling—reached out hesitantly.

Blue didn’t flinch.

He leaned in and pressed his head against that tiny hand, a deep purr vibrating in his chest.

In the command room, Kryna watched silently.

“Evelyn would be proud of you, Blue,” she whispered.

And in that moment, the Narak’Tharr’s quiet guardian stayed at his post.

**Medbay – Narak’Tharr**

Normally calm, the infirmary buzzed with a new kind of tension.

Lights were dimmed to ease the subjects’ eyes. A soft antiseptic mist floated in the air, dispensed automatically by the healing systems.

On makeshift beds lay the test subjects—human, hybrid, even a few unidentifiable alien forms. Some slept. Some drifted in dazed limbo.

Scars, implants, data ports embedded in skin… restraints marks, bruises. But above all—emptiness. A lack of grounding. No sense of safety.

Kryna floated silently from bed to bed, medical protocols running.

Her voice—soft and synthetic—whispered comfort in multiple languages.

At the center of it all was Blue.

Alert. Quiet. Present.

If one of the children twitched in sleep, gripped by nightmares, Blue moved closer—placing a paw on the blanket or gently licking a trembling hand.

It didn’t solve anything. But for many… it was enough.

That simple contact.

A warm presence.

Not a threat.

Kryna recorded a mental note for Evelyn: Blue is fully following your instructions. He recognizes distress and responds to it. Fascinating.

One of the youngest—a pale-skinned boy with wide, alien eyes—reached for him.

Blue didn’t move away.

Instead, he jumped lightly onto the bed and curled beside him, purring faintly.

In that moment, the medbay didn’t feel like a post-experiment triage center.

It felt like a haven.

A space between two worlds.

An unexpected refuge.

**Underground Base – Kojak 11**

The room they’d holed up in used to be a secondary command center, long-abandoned when the AI took over. The flickering lights cast shifting shadows across the walls, but Evelyn ignored them.

Her fingers danced across a terminal—still functional, thank the stars—while Vykhor secured the door.

“Security status?” he asked, voice cutting through the silence like a blade.

“For now, the AI’s still triangulating our signal. My masking script’s holding, but it won’t last forever. Time to launch the decoy virus.”