Chapter 7: What Threnaal Wanted
On the twentieth day, Threnaal spoke.
Not with words. Cardiac symbiotes don't speak. But they communicate through rhythms, pulsation patterns that bearers learn to interpret over cycles of coexistence.
Kael was sitting in the unregistered space when Threnaal emitted a sequence he had never felt before. Long, spaced beats, almost like a lament.
- "What is it? - Kael asked, placing his hand on his chest."
The symbiote repeated the pattern. This time, Kael realized it wasn't a lament. It was a request.
Threnaal wanted to expand.
Throughout the First and Second Cycles, Kael's cardiac symbiote had functioned as a stabilizer. It regulated his vital rhythm, compensated for the oscillations of his duality, kept Kael alive in situations that should have killed him. But it had never asked anything for itself.
Now, it was asking.
Kael went to the Arin medical center. The technician on duty, a woman named Thess, examined Threnaal with a symbiotic scanner.
- "It's healthy - she said." - "More than healthy. It's... ready."
- "Ready for what?"
- "To reproduce."
Kael blinked.
- "Cardiac symbiotes don't reproduce. They're sterile. They were designed that way."
- "Yours isn't - said Thess, turning the scanner so Kael could see." - "It developed a reproductive nucleus. It's emitting search signals for a compatible host."
Kael looked at the image. Threnaal, which had spent cycles hidden between his ribs, now glowed with a new light: a small pulsing point at the center of its translucent mass.
- "It wants... to have an offspring? - Kael asked, incredulous."
- "Basically."
Kael-Zhur, the Navigator of Contraduality, sat on the examination table and laughed. He laughed until tears ran down his face. He laughed because Threnaal, which had survived the Void of Fractures, the Rejected Core, the renunciation of the Axis, now wanted to be a father.
- "Alright - he said, still laughing." - "Let's find someone compatible."