5

“Come,” Jas said, his voice calm but commanding as he approached and Pyne walked off. Jas didn’t look at Kelly or Dahl—his eyes were on Chrysan.

She hesitated.

He signaled again, a subtle gesture that somehow still felt like an order. “I need to speak with you.”

Chrysan cast a glance at Kelly, who was still at Dahl’s side, then quietly followed Jas out of the medical bay. His strides were long and confident, and she struggled a bit to keep up as they moved through the quiet, echoing corridor.

“I’m Jas,” he said once they were a short distance away, “High Protector of the Phorynthae .”

“Phor… what?” she asked, brow furrowed as she tried to sound it out.

He stopped and turned to face her, his expression unreadable. “Phorynthae,” he repeated. “It’s what we call ourselves—our people.”

She stared at him, a thousand questions forming in her head all at once. Her heart still racing from everything she'd seen—but her mind couldn’t keep up. Protector? Phorynthae? It sounded like something from a novel. A name pulled from a fantasy series, not real life.

She stared at him. Tall. Composed. Unshakeable. He looked human—but he wasn’t. Jas stood tall—easily over six feet—with a frame built like he was carved from stone. Broad-shouldered and powerfully muscled, he moved with the controlled grace of someone used to command, like every inch of him was made for purpose.

His skin was a deep, rich brown, and scattered across it were dark markings—faintly raised, irregular in shape. At first glance, they looked like tattoos or maybe old scars, like the remnants of battles or branding. But they weren’t. They pulsed ever so faintly under the skin, shifting tone with the light, almost like they were alive. Like his body remembered things no one had told her.

And then there was his hair.

Thick, jet-black dreadlocks spilled down past his shoulders in perfect, deliberate order—every lock neat, gleaming, and heavy with some kind of weight that wasn’t just physical. But they weren’t just hair. They moved with a subtle rhythm, as though responding to the energy around him, to his mood, even to his breath. A low, inner hum vibrated through them, not unlike a current, and the longer she stared, the more she felt that his locks weren’t just attached to him—they were a part of him. A living, sentient extension of his body, like vines carrying a silent language she didn’t understand.

They swayed slightly even when he was still. He wasn't human, none of them were. And that was the part her brain refused to wrap itself around.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she said, backing away a step without realizing. “Aliens aren’t real. I mean—they’re not… They’re supposed to be fiction. Like… like vampires. Or werewolves."

“I know it’s a lot,” Jas said, still watching her with that maddening, steady gaze. “But we are here. We’ve always been here. Just not in the way humans expect.”

“But how?” she asked, her voice rising. “You—you look like us. You live among us. Are there more of you? Is this… like some secret invasion thing?”

His eyes narrowed slightly—not in anger, but as though measuring how much truth she could take.

“No invasion,” he said simply. “Survival. Integration. And necessity.”

Chrysan’s mind reeled. Aliens. Real ones. Not green-skinned cartoon invaders or men in black suits, but people—beings—who lived quietly in fortified mansions, with holograms and voice-activated medical bays, and soil pods that somehow healed the body.

The Phorynthae.

And Dahl was one of them. Kelly’s Dahl.

She swallowed hard, trying to bring her thoughts into focus, but they spun like loose paper in a storm.

“I’m… standing in a room with an alien,” she whispered to herself.

Jas tilted his head, his voice lower now. “You’re standing in a room with a protector. Not all of us are like Dahl. Not all of us are as open with your kind.”

Chrysan met his eyes. There was something in them that stopped her cold—not malice, not cruelty, but depth. And conviction.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he added, “but now that you are, you need to understand—this isn’t a dream, and it’s not fiction. Dahl crossed a line, and now everything has changed.”

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