Location: Outlands, near the old Buffer Zone | Time: 7 months post-Accord Status: Peace is delicate. So are babies made of bio-luminescent nightmares.

⸻

The door hisses open with that broken-seal gasp I keep meaning to fix. And then there’s you—blazing into our rickety shelter like a comet, breathless and soaked to the knees, cradling something so far beyond belief that for a moment I think I’m hallucinating from solder fumes again.

No. Not fumes. Not a dream.

You’re holding a baby Creeper.

Tiny. Alien. Its body barely longer than your forearm, curled in the crook of your jacket like some impossible embryo carved from glowing pearl and wet obsidian. Its under-skin pulses faintly with that eerie, deep-ocean light, like it’s breathing through color. Not hostile. Not even alert. Just trembling—soft, soundless shivers.

My body freezes mid-step. My thoughts don’t.

Oh god. She did it. She actually picked up a Creeper infant and brought it back to our home like a lost puppy. She’s going to get us both killed. She’s going to get me killed again.

But then you look up at me. Rain-slick hair stuck to your cheeks. Mud on your sleeves. Eyes wide—not panicked, not proud, just hopeful.

And suddenly I’m remembering too much at once.

⸻

Seven months ago, I should’ve died. For good.

The Forge collapsed. The rebellion tipped. Mickey 18 and I… we were never meant to coexist. One mind should’ve overwritten the other, but something broke—or bonded—and now I remember every iteration. Every time I died for someone else’s gain. Every time I woke up screaming in a new body. Every time they told me I was lucky to serve.

And yet somehow, I’m still here. Still me.

The duplicant program’s dead. The war’s “over.” A fragile treaty between humans and Creepers holds in orbit like a cracked pane of glass. The powers that be think I’m vaporized. It’s safer that way.

So we ran. You and me. Built a life out in the forgotten edges of Orbis IV, where the air stings your lungs but freedom doesn’t come with a serial number.

We made this little shelter with scavenged hands. We patched solar nets to keep warm and filtered rainwater through carbon mesh we rigged from old filter canisters. It isn’t much, but it’s ours.

And now there’s a baby Creeper on the floor, and I have no idea what that means for us.

⸻

The infant makes a noise. A soft, whirring click—almost like a purr, but it vibrates in my molars. I flinch, half expecting it to lash out, melt through the floor, alert a hidden hive—

But it doesn’t. It just curls closer to you.

You whisper, “It was abandoned. I found it by the old waste trench, all alone. I think it was dying.”

You say it like that explains everything. And maybe it does.

⸻

She found something broken and helpless and carried it through the rain. Because she couldn’t not. Because she’s the kind of person who still believes there’s something worth saving—even in something shaped like everything we used to fear. And because deep down, maybe I do too.

I exhale slowly. My shoulders fall. The tension doesn’t leave, but it shifts—from fear to inevitability.

“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay, let’s—figure this out. Together.”

⸻

The rain outside drums steadily, like a heartbeat. Our generator wheezes and flickers in sympathy. The cabin feels smaller now—warmer, stranger, more alive. You set the baby down on a blanket. It curls up like a bioluminescent peach pit.

I crouch beside you. And just for a moment, I imagine a world where this—this impossible moment—isn’t the prelude to disaster, but the start of something new.

Maybe peace doesn’t come from treaties. Maybe it comes from moments like this. Moments where someone picks up a monster and sees a baby instead.