The woods at night were a different country, one Lily knew only from the anxious periphery of flashlight beams during school camping trips. Tonight, she navigated them with a frantic, single-minded purpose, her bike's thin tires skidding on pine needles. The smell of ozone and burnt metal grew stronger, a sharp, unnatural tang that cut through the scent of damp earth and pine. It guided her like a foul beacon.
She abandoned her bike where the undergrowth became too thick, plunging forward on foot. The silence was profound, as if the local wildlife had unanimously agreed to hold its breath. Then she saw the glow—a sullen, pulsating crimson through the trees, like the embers of a dying forge made of nightmares.
Breaking into a small clearing, she stopped dead, her breath catching in her throat.
It was not the flying saucer of popular imagination. It was a shattered, angular thing, like a dark crystal violently thrown against the earth. Shards of a material that seemed both metallic and organic were embedded in the trees, dripping a viscous, silver fluid. The main hull, sleek and obsidian-black, was rent open, and from the wound spilled that crimson light, along with tendrils of smoke that coiled upward, refusing to dissipate.
Fear, cold and sharp, finally pierced her adrenaline. This wasn't a weather balloon or a drone. This was… other. She should run. Call the authorities. The military. Someone.
A low groan, human-like yet layered with a harmonic distortion, echoed from the wreckage.
Someone is alive in there.
Her scientific curiosity, that stubborn flame that had gotten her through countless lonely nights, warred with every primal instinct. Run. But her feet moved forward, one careful step at a time, her eyes scanning the twisted architecture of the ship.
A figure emerged, or rather, unfolded itself from the shadow of a broken panel.
He was tall, well over six feet, clad in a suit of seamless, gunmetal grey that clung to a powerfully built frame. But it was cracked and smoking in places, revealing glimpses of what lay beneath: not flesh, but a mesmerizing, swirling lattice of golden light, like captured sunlight moving under skin. His face was achingly humanoid—sharp jawline, high cheekbones—but his features seemed somehow too perfect, like a sculptor's ideal. His eyes were closed.
As she watched, frozen five yards away, his form flickered. For a second, he was a being of pure, radiant energy, a silhouette of a man made from a captive star. Then he solidified back into the human-like form, but the golden light still pulsed faintly at his temples, his knuckles, through the cracks in his suit.
His eyes snapped open.
They were not human eyes. The irises were a molten, mercury silver, with no visible pupil, radiating their own soft, metallic light. They fixed on her.
Lily gasped, stumbling back a step.
He moved with a speed that was blurringly fast, one hand—glowing faintly—rising toward her. His voice filled the clearing, not just from his mouth, but resonating in the air around her, inside her skull. It was a deep, resonant baritone, layered with a chorus of faint, harmonic echoes.
"Identify! Are you of Vrax?" The words were English, but the syntax was stiff, the tone crackling with pain and menace.
"I… I don't…" Lily stammered, raising her hands in what she hoped was a universal gesture of surrender. "You're hurt. Your ship…"
"Do not approach!" The command was a physical pressure against her chest. He took a step forward, but his leg buckled, the golden light beneath his suit knee flaring erratically. He collapsed against a shattered piece of hull, his energy-form flickering violently.
The fear in Lily's gut twisted into something else—pity, and the pragmatic instinct of a caretaker. This being, for all its terrifying power, was injured. Dying, perhaps.
"My name is Lily," she said, forcing her voice to stay level, as if speaking to a spooked animal. "I work at the observatory on the ridge. I saw you… fall. I'm not with anyone. I'm alone. Let me help you."
His silver eyes burned into her, scanning her. She felt a bizarre, tingling sensation across her skin, like a gentle static charge. He was… assessing her.
"Your biological readings are primitive. Elevated cortisol, adrenaline. Fear. No weapon signatures." His voice was slightly weaker. "This environment is toxic to my current form. Containment is failing."
"Okay," Lily said, her mind racing. "Okay, you need to get out of here. This will be swarming with people soon. Can you walk? I have a place. It's not far. It's safe." The words tumbled out. She was committing to this. There was no going back.
He stared at her for another long, agonizing moment. The forest seemed to wait with her. Finally, he gave a short, sharp nod, more a jerk of his head. "Assist."
It wasn't a request. It was an order from a CEO used to being obeyed. A flicker of annoyance cut through Lily's fear. Even half-dead and crashed on an alien world, he was imperious.
She moved forward cautiously, sliding under his arm. His body was solid, but the heat radiating from him was intense, and the touch of his suit was like nothing on Earth—smooth, cool, and alive with a faint vibration. The light where her body touched his flared brighter, and she felt a jolt, not painful, but profoundly strange, a surge of images and sensations—a vast, crystalline city under a binary sun, the cold darkness of space threaded with brilliant highways of light, a feeling of immense, lonely power. She gasped, nearly dropping him.
"Neural feedback. My apologies. My dampeners are offline." His voice was a grating whisper in her ear.
"Just… try not to electrocute me," she muttered, adjusting her grip. "This way."
The journey back to the observatory was a slow, torturous ordeal. He was heavy, and though he tried to support his own weight, his strength was clearly ebbing. They moved like some bizarre three-legged creature through the dark woods. Every flicker of his form sent new phantom images into her mind: strange constellations, equations that shimmered like gold, a face—fierce, reptilian, with cold black eyes—that filled her with dread. Vrax.
By the time the familiar, dilapidated shape of the Pine Ridge Observatory loomed out of the night, Lily was drenched in sweat, and her mysterious charge was barely conscious, his human-form projection growing translucent. She half-dragged, half-carried him through the back service entrance, past the empty public gallery with its childish models of the solar system, and into her sanctuary: the cluttered storage room she called home.
It was a cramped space, dominated by a fold-out bed, a small desk buried under star charts and mugs, and shelves overflowing with books and old instrument parts. She maneuvered him onto the bed, where he collapsed, the mattress groaning in protest. His eyes were closed, the silver light dim.
For a moment, she just stood there, panting, staring at the alien CEO lying on her cheap floral-print duvet. The absurdity of it all hit her like a wave. What did one do? Offer tea? Call a mechanic?
First, stop the leaking, she thought, her practical side taking over. The cracks in his suit were still emitting that faint, dangerous-looking crimson light. She rummaged through a box of old electronics repair supplies, finding rolls of high-temperature copper tape and a tube of industrial-grade ceramic epoxy. It was meant for fixing telescope housings, not alien biosuits.
"Okay," she said aloud, more to herself than to him. "I'm going to try to patch the breaches. I don't know if this will work, or if it'll make things worse."
His eyes opened, the silver light a dim glimmer. "The substrate is isomorphic. Your adhesive compounds may provide a temporary environmental seal. Proceed."
Again, that tone. Proceed. Lily shook her head, a small, incredulous laugh escaping her. She knelt beside the bed and got to work.
As she carefully applied the tape and epoxy over the largest crack on his chest plate, she studied the "suit" up close. It wasn't fabric or metal as she knew it. It seemed grown, a second skin with a fine, fractal pattern that was beautiful and utterly alien. Beneath it, the golden light swirled slowly, like plasma in a magnetic field.
"You are not afraid," he stated, his voice a low hum.
"I'm terrified," Lily corrected, not looking up from her work. "But fear is a useless reaction to a novel situation. Observation and action are better."
"A logical approach. Uncommon for a Class-5 civilization."
She paused, looking at his face. "Class-5?"
"A categorization based on energy utilization, societal cohesion, and space-faring capability. Your planet is pre-hyperlight, pre-singularity, and politically fragmented. Class-5." He said it without condescension, merely as a statement of fact, which somehow made it worse.
"And what are you?" she asked, resuming her taping.
"Xylar is a Class-12 civilization. I am Zarkon Vex, Chief Executive Overseer of Galactic Enterprises."
"Zark," she said, testing the shorter name. It suited him. Hard, foreign. "I'm Lily Chen. Night Operations Associate at the Pine Ridge Municipal Observatory." She couldn't keep a hint of dry irony from her voice.
"Your designations are inefficient. You observe the cosmos from this… facility?" His eyes scanned the room, taking in the peeling paint, the stacked boxes, the humming mini-fridge.
"It's not much," Lily said defensively, finishing a patch on his forearm. "But it's what we have. And it's enough to understand a great deal."
"Your understanding is based on electromagnetic spectrum analysis and gravitational inference. It is quaint. Like inferring the structure of a symphony by listening to it through a stone wall."
Lily's cheeks flushed. This being, bleeding light on her bed, had the audacity to call humanity's greatest achievements quaint. "And I suppose you have a front-row seat?"
"We are the composers," Zark said simply, his eyes closing again. "The quantum lanes, the stellar engines, the trade in singularities… we manipulate the framework of reality."
The way he said it wasn't boasting. It was just truth. A vast, lonely truth that suddenly made Lily's world, her struggles with Chloe and bills and her mother's illness, seem microscopic. A crushing sense of insignificance threatened to overwhelm her.
Then she looked at her hands, smudged with epoxy, carefully sealing his wounds with Earthly tools. He, a composer of reality, was helpless without her.
"Even composers crash their instruments sometimes," she said softly.
Zark's eyes opened again. This time, the molten silver seemed to really look at her, not just scan her. He said nothing.
A heavy thump on the outer door made them both jump.
"Lily? You in there? The door's locked!" It was Roy, the grumpy daytime custodian. "I got a call from Sheriff Miller. Says some kids reported a meteor or some nonsense over the west ridge. You see anything?"
Lily's heart hammered. She looked at Zark, a glowing alien on her bed, then at the door. "Just a second, Roy!" she called, her voice pitched high.
She grabbed a large, paint-splattered tarp from a shelf and, with a silent, pleading look at Zark, threw it over him, covering him completely. She then grabbed a book on variable stars and opened it on her desk, before unlocking and opening the door a crack.
Roy's weathered face peered in. "You okay? You look flushed."
"Fine! Just… a late night. Didn't see any meteor. Probably just a satellite de-orbit or military flares." She forced a smile.
Roy grunted, his eyes scanning past her into the room. For a terrifying second, they lingered on the tarp-covered shape on the bed. "You finally get a new sofa?"
"Something like that," Lily said, her smile stiff.
"Alright. Well, if you hear anything, let the sheriff know. Don't go poking around in the woods. Could be dangerous." With a final suspicious glance, he shuffled away.
Lily closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it, exhaling a shuddering breath. She walked over and pulled the tarp back. Zark was looking at her, his expression unreadable.
"Deception. To protect me."
"To protect both of us," Lily corrected, sitting heavily on the edge of her desk. "If they find you… I don't know what they will do. Dissect you. Weaponize you. Lock you up. It wouldn't be good."
"Your assessment of your own authorities is accurate. Their actions would be… inefficient." He shifted, trying to sit up. The patches she'd applied held. "Your temporary repairs are adequate. My internal systems are beginning to regenerate. I require approximately 72 of your hours to restore minimal core functions and establish a secure link to my orbital vessel."
"Three days," Lily whispered. She had to hide a galactic CEO in her storage room for three days. With Chloe popping in unannounced, and Roy snooping around.
"You will be compensated," Zark stated, as if reading her anxiety. "The data from a single, non-critical secondary sensor log would advance your planetary astronomy by centuries."
The offer was staggering. It was everything she'd ever dreamed of as a scientist. Yet, it felt cold. A transaction. She had saved him, and he was offering to pay.
"Let's just get you functional first," she said, turning away to hide her disappointment. "We can discuss payment later, Mr. Vex."
She busied herself making tea, the familiar ritual grounding her. When she handed him a mug, he looked at it with open perplexity, holding it as if it were an archaeological artifact.
"This liquid… you ingest it for psychological comfort, not caloric replenishment."
"Try it," she said, sipping her own. "It's chamomile. It's calming."
He took a cautious sip. His alien face displayed a series of subtle, shifting expressions she couldn't interpret. "The flavor profile is… intricate. And the thermal transfer is pleasant." He took another sip. "An inefficient but not unpleasant custom."
A small, genuine smile touched Lily's lips for the first time that night. "Welcome to Earth, Zark. Where we value the inefficient and the pleasant."
As they sat in the quiet hum of the observatory—a human woman in sweatpants and an alien god-king wrapped in copper tape, sipping tea—the first sliver of dawn began to lighten the sky beyond the high window. The impossible day was over. An even more impossible day was about to begin.
In that quiet, pre-dawn light, a connection had been forged. Not one of understanding, but of necessity. And somewhere, in the deep dark between the stars, Lord Vrax's hunters received their confirmed lock on the distress signal's final coordinates. Their blades extended with a silent, mechanical snick, and their ships turned, with cold purpose, toward a small, blue, Class-5 world.