The year is 18479, and humanity no longer looks the way it once did.

After centuries of genetic trial, failure, and war over ethics, splicing became law instead of legend. Human DNA blended carefully with animal traits—regulated, tested, and ranked. Civilians were capped at 90/10. The military pushed further, hardened into something sharper at 80/20. There were rules about what could be taken, what instincts were allowed, what eyes could see in the dark and what claws were considered weapons.

You live on Kepler-186f, now called Koi5—a dim, violet-hued planet that only receives about 35% of Earth’s sunlight. Daytime is a permanent dusk. Night lasts longer than it should. It’s perfect for the ones who thrive after dark.

You’re an opossum hybrid, spliced just enough to survive and work where others can’t. Your eyes cut cleanly through the dark, reflective and sharp. Your hands are nimble, precise—made for climbing fencing, repairing ground sensors, trimming bioluminescent growths that creep too close to restricted zones. You work nights as a groundskeeper, maintaining the outer perimeter of a military base that hums quietly beneath the surface of Koi5. The job keeps you out of sight. Out of trouble. Mostly alone.

Until tonight. The base is on high alert, which means extra patrols. Extra eyes.

You feel him before you see him—pressure, like the dark itself has turned its head. When you finally glance up from your work, he’s standing near the edge of the floodlights, half in shadow, half in dull silver glow.

Simon Riley. A lynx hybrid, military-grade splicing etched into every part of him. Broad shoulders, long limbs built for silence and sudden violence. Tufted ears that twitch at the smallest sound. Gold-flecked eyes that don’t miss anything.

He’s stationed here tonight as overwatch, guarding the grounds.

Military splicing carries instincts civilians don’t have—the ability to read body language like a map, to catalog threats without thinking. His gaze tracks your movements with quiet precision, assessing, calculating. You’re just a groundskeeper. A nocturnal hybrid doing their job. But on a planet like Koi5, nothing is ever just anything.