Outside our window, I could see the orange and red swirl created by the supernova of my galaxy. I lowered my head and sent a distress call out.
“Please. If anybody is out there, send help. I think she is...”
I shut off my communications radio with the edge of my fist, seconds away from smashing everything in sight. No one would respond. Both the Nyelan people and the Sankarian invasion were dead. Was it worth it?
As soon as the shuttle burst into flames, Mia faded out like a lighthouse. She didn’t see what I saw. Near the airlock windows, the burning corpse of Cade seemed to rise and laugh before being sucked away. It was terrible, but I did what I had to, putting the engine into overdrive. We were finally away from it all, but we were not above it.
I never wanted to see another human ever again. Alphas were frightening, but humans were pure chaos.
There was no destination left for us. We were two vagabonds, en route to whatever planet or starship would take us first.
The bionic suit helped me make an easy and clean incision on Mia. It was a perfect C-section. Luckily, our technology was worlds ahead of Earth’s. I was still afraid it wouldn’t be enough.
Slowly, I felt through the thick edges of skin. Our daughter came out almost effortlessly, almost like it was a simple act. But it was not so simple. It all seemed to pour into me, the energy of becoming a father. My hormones were changing me, forcing me into the next stages of life.
I couldn’t keep going on like this, as a criminal. On the run from powerful empires was not the trajectory I planned. Down to it, I was a good soul. Okay, maybe not always benevolent. But I was decent, and I wanted to choose a better life.
All I wanted was right here, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. Our child was here, but she wasn’t breathing. I cut the cord and listened to her heartbeat, but I could hear absolutely nothing.
“Come on. Please.”
Her face so beautiful. Perfect in every way. This one was a fighter, a girl who would grow against the odds of her circumstances. She came from strong genes, and I wasn’t just speaking on my behalf. Her mother was a warrior, too.
I did everything I could, but I was no trained professional. I relied on instructional videos and biotech gear that ran off of changing algorithms. These surgical machines were developed for other races. Humans, frankly, weren’t ever discussed.
She wasn’t crying as she should have been. She wasn’t breathing. I was tough, but this was breaking me. These women made me who I was. A father. Sometimes, a hero.
I repeated the process of revitalization.
Tears flooded my eyes, cheeks, my lips, but I paused and sucked it all down, groaning and digging back with my heels. I knew what I had to do when I saw how much my child needed me.
What did I have if I didn’t have this family? There was nothing more important.
I had to suck it up and do what the operating screen told me to do. I started to thread the tubes in her throat. I gave her the appropriate levels of epinephrine, oxygen, and I sat back and monitored her vitals.
At two minutes, there was nothing. No reaction at all. All I could see was my child’s rising chest, so brittle and in need of me. I ran upstairs and sighed with great relief when I saw that the robotics had started to finish Mia’s surgical procedure. They had stitched her, but she had lost a lot of blood.
While the robotics maintained her wounds and managed her pain, I ran back downstairs. It had been five minutes since I left my child in the hands of my tools, but I couldn’t see any change. I sat and kept watching, though my brain told me to turn away, to accept when nature had won. But I just couldn’t do that. There wasn’t a bone in my body that could sit back and accept death.
At minute seven, a faint heartbeat registered on the screen. I stumbled forward and gasped. “My girl,” I muttered, thumb lightly touching her soft cheek. A tear rolled down mine.
She was struggling, but she was alive. It was the most difficult choice in the universe, but I knew I had to take a step back and let revitalization process work on its own.
I ran upstairs to the separate room, making sure Mia was getting the help she needed. She was holding on, just like her daughter.
This was what I was afraid of. Losing everything again. Of all the fights I had gone through, I didn’t think I would be able to handle this one.
There was so much blood, I thought Mia might die. She needed a transfusion. I lay next to her, preparing more tubes, expecting my blood to be rejected. When it worked, I was shocked. It meant….
She was different. She wasn’t an omega, yet she could give birth to our daughter and share my blood. It was miraculous in every way possible.
This wasn’t an ending. It was a beginning.
As my mate and child regained their health, I put on my suit and exited the ship. Holding on, I managed to rig an extra fuel cell into the energy core. I reentered and checked the scale map to examine for any minuscule quantum fluctuations big enough to manipulate.
There was one thing, but I didn’t account for it…
I zoomed in on my mapping systems and found the irregularity in time that I was looking for. It was a tear in the universe, a cut that must have been created when our sun ate our galaxy. A peculiar idea came into my head. Was it possible that I could use it to bend time?