Anthony wasn't used to silence meaning something. Not in this way.
He stood beside Thalia on the dim observation deck of the Asteria, both of them watching Proxima's star flare faintly in the distance. They hadn't spoken for over a minute—but their shared presence hummed between them. Even in quiet, there was contact. Not words exactly, not thoughts either. Just… presence.
He knew she was at peace. He could feel the soft tension in her shoulders unwind, the steady rhythm of her internal state smoothing into calm. He suspected she knew he was anxious, and was letting him set the pace.
"We've been back two days," he finally said. "And I still wake up expecting to find that crystal vessel on the table. Like the ceremony's about to start."
Her neural filaments rippled gently, the motion not quite laughter but close.
"I keep expecting to see your mind in full clarity," she replied. "Like it was during the mental bonding. Now it's more like... echoes. Soft and distant."
He nodded. "I miss it sometimes. The clarity. But I also like having my own brain back."
That earned a full laugh from her—musical, sincere. "I understand. Constant access to your thoughts was exhilarating. But also... overwhelming. You humans think so much."
"That's a generous way of putting it," he muttered. "My mother always called it noise."
They fell into a natural silence again, but this time it was lighter. Companionable. Through their connection, he felt a faint pulse of amusement from her—followed by something deeper. A quiet warmth, contentment.
He looked over. "Is this what it's going to be like? Just… living like this now?"
"Living with someone in your head?" she tilted her head. "Sort of. It fades. That intensity doesn't last forever. But the bond remains. Sometimes a whisper. Sometimes a roar."
He gave a dry smile. "Comforting."
She turned to him, her neural filaments brushing lightly against his arm. "It will settle, Anthony. You're adjusting faster than most. Some Narian pairings take weeks to establish equilibrium."
"Right," he said. "But most of them didn't start with a translator glitch."
Her filaments fluttered again. "And most don't have an entire diplomatic community following their relationship status."
"Fair."
---
The first signs that something was off came the next morning.
Anthony was mid-shower when the noise started—a high-pitched hum that pulsed at the edge of hearing. Not mechanical. Not internal either.
When he turned off the water, it stopped.
By the time he stepped out of the stall, it was back.
"Computer," he called, toweling his face. "Is there a systems alarm in this section?"
"Negative. No alarms registered within deck seventeen."
"Then what's that noise?"
"Specify: which noise?"
He frowned. "Never mind."
---
Later that shift, he was at his station on the bridge when the hum returned. This time, it was accompanied by a pressure behind his eyes—faint but persistent, like altitude sickness on a mountain he hadn't climbed.
Across the bridge, Thalia suddenly stiffened. Her neural filaments stood upright.
Their eyes met.
"You feel that?" he mouthed.
She gave the slightest nod.
Captain Renara didn't notice. She was in conversation with the Xentari envoy via holoscreen. The rest of the crew seemed unfazed.
The pressure faded, leaving only a faint tingling behind Anthony's eyes.
After their shift, Thalia pulled him aside.
"In the briefing room. Now."
---
The room was quiet. Empty. Anthony leaned against the console as Thalia sealed the doors.
"That wasn't just you, right?" he asked. "You felt it too."
"Yes. At first I thought it was external—some kind of frequency interference. But I checked. There was nothing."
"I heard it in my quarters earlier. Like… a signal. High frequency. Almost subliminal."
Thalia paced slowly. "It was synchronized."
"With what?"
She turned. "With you. With us."
He blinked. "You think it's connected to the bond?"
"I think it might be the bond. Or some layer of it we haven't encountered yet."
Anthony rubbed his temples. "That doctor from the bonding trial—Prell—he said our bond formed faster than expected. That we were syncing on neural and biochemical levels more rapidly than documented."
"Too rapidly," she added.
He looked up. "You think something's going wrong."
"I don't know." Her neural filaments shifted again—hesitation, uncertainty. "Or something's going… different. Uncharted."
Anthony leaned forward. "Then we chart it."
She smiled, but the worry behind her eyes remained.
---
The next few days blurred together. They resumed full duties aboard the Asteria, but every interaction felt subtly changed.
Crew members gave them a wider berth—not out of rudeness, but out of awe or discomfort. Draic, the Arcturian first officer, had taken to calling them "the Harmonics." It wasn't clear if it was mockery or admiration.
And then came the dreams.
At first, Anthony assumed they were just stress-induced: flashes of blue light, the sound of water moving through stone, filaments brushing across his vision like sea grass in current.
But the dreams were shared.
Thalia confirmed it after the third night.
"I saw your childhood home," she said, quiet and almost disbelieving. "The tree outside your window. The drawing etched into your desk. I've never been there, Anthony. But I could smell the pine in the air."
His stomach had turned at that. "I saw... your mother's voice. I don't even know what that means, but I heard her, even though she didn't speak. I felt it."
"It's starting," she said, and her voice was both awed and afraid.
"What is?"
"The echo phase. It happens in old bond-pairs. Decades in. Not within days."
They sat in silence for a long time.
Then Anthony asked, "Are we changing?"
Thalia didn't answer for a long time.
When she did, her words were soft. "We already have."
---
They submitted themselves for evaluation—voluntarily. Doctor Prell conducted new scans, cross-referenced them against their bonding profiles from a week prior, and consulted with Thalia's aunt via encrypted uplink from Proxima.
The results were... inconclusive.
"Your neurotransmitter patterns are now entrained," Prell said, antennae twitching nervously. "Which we expected. But the amplitude of the synchronization is... anomalous."
"Is that a medical way of saying dangerous?" Anthony asked.
"Not yet. But it's definitely not standard. Thalia's neurofilaments are producing harmonics we haven't recorded in Narian pairings. And your own bioelectric field appears to be fluctuating with hers."
Anthony glanced at Thalia. She didn't look surprised.
"You've been feeling it, haven't you?" he said.
She nodded slowly. "Sometimes I hear your heartbeat even when we're on separate decks."
Doctor Prell looked positively delighted. "You're describing sensory bleed. Full-spectrum echo resonance—this is incredibly rare."
Anthony raised a brow. "I thought you said this wasn't dangerous."
"I said not yet. We don't know what this level of overlap means over time."
"Is there any chance it'll... fade?" Thalia asked, her tone unreadable.
Prell considered. "Maybe. Or it might evolve. The bond is becoming something... else. Perhaps it's adapting to bridge your species. Or perhaps it's a new phenomenon entirely."
"Could we be the only ones it ever happens to?"
"It's possible. More data is needed."
---
Later, in the ship's arboretum—one of the few places on the Asteria with natural flora and simulated sunlight—Thalia knelt beside a cluster of low-growing moss and ran her fingers through it absently.
Anthony stood a few paces away, watching her. "Are you afraid?"
She didn't look up. "Yes. Aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Because it's unnatural?"
"No. Because it's... irreversible."
She stood and turned to face him. "I don't want to reverse it."
"Neither do I."
That should have been comforting. It was—but not fully.
Their bond was growing beyond them, and neither of them could define what that meant anymore.
---
They began documenting the changes themselves.
They recorded when the shared dreams occurred. When the sensory bleed was most intense. What stimuli triggered it—emotional highs, physical proximity, neural filament contact.
They shared the files with Prell and Thalia's aunt, who fed the data into a Coalition science node on interspecies biocompatibility.
"Congratulations," Prell said dryly during one visit. "You're now the most studied couple in the sector."
Anthony leaned back in the exam chair. "Does that come with a stipend?"
Prell's antennae twitched. "It comes with more testing."
---
Despite everything, life aboard the Asteria moved on.
They returned to their respective stations. Briefed officers. Reviewed supply chain updates. Coordinated docking procedures. Attended morning briefings. Shared meals in the mess—sometimes together, sometimes not.
Some days felt normal. Others... didn't.
One afternoon, Anthony stood alone in the lift, en route to the comms suite. A sudden flood of emotion surged through him—raw grief, like a cracked dam.
He staggered.
"Thalia—?"
He reached for the comm, but before he could touch it, the doors opened.
Thalia stood there, wide-eyed, neural filaments withdrawn to tight coils.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to send that."
"What was that?"
"My uncle. He collapsed this morning. They just confirmed—he suffered a neural feedback fracture."
"Is he going to be—?"
"He's stable now. But it startled me."
Anthony stepped out of the lift and embraced her without thinking. "You don't have to apologize. I'd want to know if something happened to my family."
She leaned against him. "But I didn't tell you. You just... felt it."
"That's what this is now."
---
That night, they stood on the observation deck again, back where the chapter had begun.
"We can't live in each other's heads all the time," Anthony said. "We'll lose ourselves."
Thalia nodded. "But we can't cut it off either. That would damage us both."
"So where's the balance?"
"I don't know. But maybe... maybe it's not about balance. Maybe it's about trust."
He turned to her. "You trust me with all this?"
"With all of me."
"And I trust you."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was filled with presence, understanding, and something like peace.
But somewhere—far below conscious thought—an echo stirred.
A pulse. A rhythm. A signal.
Something watching.
Something... listening.
And it was learning.