Thalia sat at her console, adjusting frequency filters on the long-range array. The anomaly hadn't pulsed again in over thirty-six hours, and that silence was beginning to feel more ominous than the signal itself. She stared at the waveform, recalibrated it again.
Still nothing.
A flicker of nausea rolled through her.
She blinked, one hand touching her abdomen reflexively — not because she thought something was wrong. It was just... sudden.
She brushed it off. Fatigue, perhaps. It had been a long week, and the mental bonding ritual had taken a toll. The doctor had warned them their biologies might still be adapting to the bond's lingering harmonics.
And yet, she had a strange thought — not quite her own.
> Something's different.
She pushed away from the console, stood. The wave of dizziness that followed made her grab the edge of the station.
That was new.
---
By midday, the symptoms had compounded. Nausea that came in short bursts. Heightened sensory input — stronger than usual, even for her. Her neural filaments twitched with residual sensitivity, responding to crew members' proximity, flickers of ambient emotion, even the faint scent of the hydroponics lab as they passed it in the corridor.
She'd lived in this body her entire life. She knew what baseline felt like.
This wasn't baseline.
It felt like... blooming.
---
By late shift, she'd quietly slipped into the medical bay under the pretense of a follow-up regarding the mental bond. Dr. Prell, as always, was both sharp and respectful — if curious.
> "Still feeling neural static?" he asked, running a bioscan over her form.
> "Some," she said. "But also... something else."
She hesitated. Then added, "Lower abdominal sensitivity. Brief nausea. Mild disorientation."
The Andorian's antennae straightened. "That wasn't in your file last time."
She nodded. "It started this morning."
Dr. Prell hummed as the scanner whirred. His gaze narrowed at the results.
> "Well," he said after a pause, "you're not ill, Lieutenant. You're pregnant."
Silence.
Thalia stared at him, stunned. Her neural filaments stilled entirely.
> "I... what?"
> "Five to six days gestational equivalent," he said gently. "Your combined physiology is producing a hybrid gestation sequence unlike anything in our database — but... viable."
She pressed her hand to her stomach again, this time understanding the strange warmth she'd felt all day. Her skin had already begun adapting — soft blue filaments tracing inward toward her navel like delicate brushstrokes.
> "I didn't... I mean, I knew it was possible. Theoretically. But not this soon."
Dr. Prell stepped back, offering a rare look of sincere softness.
> "I recommend rest. And discretion. You can come back tomorrow for a deeper scan if you want. But Thalia…"
> "Yes?"
> "You'll want to tell him."
---
She didn't have to.
Anthony was already waiting outside sickbay when she stepped into the corridor, his arms folded, face unreadable.
> "You felt it," she said quietly.
He nodded.
> "Not clearly. Just... a jolt. Something warm. Then your silence. I knew something was different."
She searched his face, unable to read him through expression alone. So she did the only thing that mattered.
She opened the bond.
And let him feel it.
The soft pulse of second life inside her. The trembling edges of her fear. The awe. The wild, flickering joy that hadn't yet found a safe place to settle.
Anthony stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her before she could say anything else.
> "Thalia," he whispered, his voice full of something rough and fragile, "we're going to be parents."
She nodded against his chest. "I'm terrified."
> "So am I," he admitted. "But I'm also... kind of ecstatic."
A laugh bubbled up in her throat — uneven and disbelieving.
> "Of course you are."
> "You're the one who said unexpected chaos makes us stronger."
> "I was speaking philosophically," she muttered. "Not biologically."
> "You're still philosophical. I'm just over here imagining our kid with turquoise skin and my eyebrows."
That earned him a small laugh, and a pulse of violet through her filaments. The tension between them lightened, if only a little.
---
Later, in the quiet of her quarters, they sat side by side in silence, their hands lightly touching, bond humming with subdued awareness.
> "We haven't told anyone about the signal," she said.
> "We'll contact your aunt tomorrow."
> "And now this," she murmured, glancing down. "What if the signal is... watching us more closely than we thought?"
> "Then we protect this," he said simply, resting his hand gently over hers.
---
The stars outside flickered like ancient witnesses, silent and endless.
And in a dim console buried deep in the ship's lower decks, a monitoring subroutine flagged a spike in bio-neural harmonics — timed precisely with Thalia's confirmation of pregnancy.
It was a signature.
And it had been seen.