Time moved strangely after Venth Prime.
The anomaly had not been reported — not officially. Anthony and Thalia returned to duty as if nothing had shifted. But under the surface, everything had.
Thalia's pregnancy advanced with few complications, physically speaking. Yet her neuro-harmonic readings defied classification. Her neural filaments would sometimes pulse to frequencies previously undocumented, sometimes even when she was unconscious. The child moved irregularly — not erratically, but with intention. As if responding to environmental cues no one else could perceive.
Doctor Prell recorded everything. Silently. Carefully.
Captain Renara grew more watchful by the week. She didn't speak directly to them about it — not yet — but her eyes followed every detail, and her command logs showed a shift in tone:
> Captain's Log 872.4.2:
"Lt. Thalia's pregnancy is progressing within expected biological markers, but there are anomalies in her energy field during REM sleep. Dr. Prell continues to assure me it's safe, but I've ordered a diagnostic sweep of the Asteria's long-range telemetry systems. Too many coincidences. Too many unexplained signals."
> Captain's Log 874.7.9:
"Neural feedback loops between Lt. Thalia and Commander Lawrence are increasingly synchronized. This exceeds typical bondmate behavior. I've refrained from intervention, but I won't indefinitely."
The logs continued — measured but pointed. Renara didn't want to accuse. But she knew something was happening, and command would expect answers soon.
Then came the day it could no longer be hidden.
---
It began not with contractions, but with resonance.
Anthony was halfway through a systems review when he froze, a sudden pulse rolling through his mind like the hum of the ship's warp core — except it wasn't mechanical.
It was alive.
He turned, breath caught in his throat, as Thalia's voice cracked through his comm.
"I think it's starting."
She was calm. Too calm. That tone only meant one thing: she was covering something far deeper.
---
The ship's medbay dimmed to accommodate Thalia's neural fluctuations. Her filaments glowed in erratic pulses, scattering patterns of violet and deep ocean blue across the biowalls.
Anthony held her hand as Prell monitored from a distance, calibrating the systems with grim precision.
"She's entering active labor," he said, antennae twitching. "But… there's more."
He tapped a readout, and Anthony's stomach clenched. The screen showed an energy field — not Thalia's. Not the baby's. Something else.
It shimmered just outside visible light, brushing against every diagnostic node like a whisper.
"Do you see that?" Anthony asked.
"I do," Prell said quietly. "And I've never seen anything like it."
---
The field grew stronger with each contraction.
It wasn't just a presence — it was a chorus. Vast, layered, harmonic. Not loud. Not invasive. Just... present. Noticing. Observing.
The Watchers had come.
And for the first time, they didn't hide in the lattice of subspace. They hovered close — not as invaders, but as witnesses.
Anthony felt them through the bond. Thalia did too — her neural filaments extended fully now, glowing white-blue with an intensity even she had never experienced. Her breathing was steady, though beads of sweat dotted her temple.
"It's not pain," she whispered. "Not exactly."
Anthony leaned in, holding her gaze. "What is it?"
"They're here." Her voice was breathless, wonder-struck. "Watching. Waiting."
Doctor Prell looked up sharply. "They?"
Thalia's eyes didn't leave Anthony's. "They're not threatening. They're... ancient. And they care. Not like we do, not emotionally. But they choose to care."
Prell stared between them, torn between monitoring vitals and scrambling for a recording device. "I'm detecting spikes in gravimetric resonance. This isn't a hallucination."
"It never was," Anthony said.
Then the lights flickered.
Not out — just briefly dimmed. And in that moment, a pulse spread through the room. It wasn't sound. It wasn't light. It was meaning.
Anthony felt it like a breath against the soul.
So did Prell.
So did Thalia — who cried out, not in pain, but in release. Her filaments arched, her body tensed—
—and then relaxed.
The cry came seconds later.
Small. Guttural. Alive.
Prell caught the child and quickly began scanning, but even his seasoned hands trembled.
"She's stable," he said hoarsely. "Everything's... functioning. Normal."
But nothing about what they'd just experienced had been normal.
Thalia cradled the child against her chest. The baby's skin was a soft pearlescent blue, deeper than her mother's, and faint swirls of glowing indigo flickered just beneath the surface. Her eyes blinked open — not violet like Thalia's, not hazel like Anthony's — but a star-washed gray, impossibly deep.
Anthony leaned close, eyes damp.
"Welcome to the chaos," he whispered.
Another pulse rippled through the room — gentler this time. A confirmation.
Blessing.
Recognition.
Continuance.
The Watchers spoke — not in words, but in the deepest, purest silence Anthony had ever known.
And then they were gone.
Just like that.
The room felt smaller without them. The air felt heavier. But the light from Thalia's filaments still shone — joined now by the faint glow of their daughter's.
Prell stepped back, visibly shaken. He stared at the child, then at Anthony and Thalia.
"What are you raising?"
Anthony held his daughter tighter.
"Someone the universe's oldest minds decided was worth blessing."