The controls shook as Tamiyo fought to keep her ship steady, unseen cosmic turbulence buffeting the light freighter like a leaf in the wind of a hurricane. In the short three weeks since she’d stolen the ship, she had fled halfway across the galaxy, encountered non-humans for the first time, and more-or-less figured out how to pilot this damn thing. If she ever saw the docking attendant again, she’d have to apologize—she had taken off so quickly during her escape that the fuel line snapped off, soaking the poor man to the bone.

  But she was never going back to that planet.

  An alarm went off as her ship continued to buck, the metal chassis creaking under the strain. She muted it without even looking, her synthetic hands moving with slightly too much precision to be human. Her commandeered vessel had proved to be sturdy and reliable, but that was when she wasn’t trying to get sucked into a black hole.

  “You just had to get a closer look, didn’t you Tamiyo?” the synthetic woman muttered angrily to herself. “Mandachor Abyss, that sounds cool, let’s go see what that looks like.”

  She cranked the helm hard left.

  Tamiyo was still learning how to survive on her own and made mistakes from time to time—though this was definitely the worst misstep so far. To call her sheltered would be an understatement. She had been activated on Batist—one of the many planets governed by the xenophobic Sovereign Earth Conservatory—and purchased by a kind man named Walter to whom she provided end-of-life care for several months. After he passed, she had been sold off to the highest bidder and used for anything but her primary purpose.

  Her freighter suddenly kicked sideways, as if the black hole’s gravity not only released, but pushed back the other way. A blinding white flare burst forth from the event horizon—the boundary where gravity existed so intensely that not even light was supposed to be able to escape. The swirling rings of darkness began to collapse inward, and everything compressed toward the center.

  “What the fuc—!” Tamiyo yelped before the artificial gravity momentarily fluctuated, knocking her from her chair. The ship was tossed about, and for a brief second, she was worried this was the end. Whatever was happening, her ship would surely be destroyed.

  But then everything went still.

  The cosmic winds subsided, the alarms blaring again went quiet, and Tamiyo lay in momentary disbelief on the floor next to a tall, cylindrical chip-can that she’d gotten her hand stuck in yesterday.

  She slowly crawled up to peer out the front view port and felt her brain buffer as she struggled to compute what was in front of her.

  Or more-so, what was not in front of her.

  “Where did it go?!”

  A beautiful nebula lay off in the distance—blue, orange, red, pink—all manner of colors on display she previously hadn’t been able to view because it was obstructed by The Mandachor Abyss.

  Tamiyo realized her ship was still hurtling through space along the trajectory the black hole’s gravity had set her on.

  She hopped back in the pilot’s chair and ran some quick diagnostics. Finding nothing critically damaged, she wrested control back into her grip. Sheltered as she was, she still knew that black holes didn't randomly disappear, so she began flipping on every scanner she could find to figure out what just happened.

  Gravitational effects, biological scans, electrical impulses, every type of radiation, AM and FM radio—Tamiyo scanned for anything and everything. Even Aether Dust.

  She’d heard of the strange particle before, but it wasn’t something relevant to providing healthcare, so she’d never needed to learn more. The most she knew was it helped starships skip faster than light somehow.

  Drifting along, nothing important registered. Several minor radiation readings and music stations came through, but she filtered them out and continued hunting for clues.

  How could a black hole disappear without a trace? And what was that flash?

  Solar winds buffeted the ship. Tamiyo piloted through and continued scanning. Back and forth, she checked the viewport, checked her scanners, then looked out the viewport again.

  Radiation readings—nothing irregular. Country Music and Space Rock—filter. She watched out the viewport. Did she just see something blip on the Aether Dust scanner? Or did she imagine it?

  It was at the edge of her vision—hard to be sure.

  Radiation, Cosmic Viking Techno, more Country Music—check the viewport again.

  There!

  She hadn’t imagined it—another Aether Dust reading.

  Whatever it was picking up wasn't large, but Tamiyo adjusted the scans to focus in on it. Cross-examining the rough location of the reading with the navigational chart, it was coming from pretty close to where the center of the black hole should have been.

  She maintained course and reduced speed. Whatever was causing the reading wouldn’t be visible until she was almost on top of it—it was just too small. As she cautiously continued her approach, the readings on the Aether Dust scanner grew more and more. A silhouette started to form in front of her ship—very small at first—but growing larger and more detailed as she approached. The cargo ship came to a rest, and it hovered right before Tamiyo’s viewport, clear as day.

  But it wasn’t an object or foreign space debris.

  It was a man.

  His hair and eyes were glowing white, and he was fucking huge—but other than that, he looked completely normal. He couldn’t be a normal human though, something was definitely off.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  To protect against the harsh environments of space, humans, non-humans, even CIPHERS like herself required protective suits. Without them, the unfiltered rays of the nearest star would cook the exposed skin, the super cold of space would cause the bodily fluids to boil, and all organs would rapidly expand.

  This man wore no such suit. In fact, it looked like whatever had happened to him had all but obliterated whatever clothing he had been wearing. Some simple scraps still floated around him, but that was it.

  Despite the glowing eyes, he appeared unconscious but uninjured. Tamiyo observed him with bewilderment and curiosity.

  The Aether Dust scanner was having a panic attack next to her. She turned it off and had to briefly wait for her eyes to adjust to the loss of illumination in the cockpit. She grabbed the helm and maneuvered the ship so that the mysterious man would be floating just outside the access hatch on the starboard side.

  She ran to the airlock, sealed herself in, and donned a spacesuit. Once the depressurization was complete and the artificial gravity had faded away, she attached a retractable cable on her suit’s belt to a padeye anchored on the wall.

  She knew what she was doing was crazy, but she didn't really have a choice. After over six years of being used for things other than she was meant for, her primary directive to provide care was screaming inside her.

  She unlocked the heavy exterior door and pulled it inward.

  The unconscious man floated there, just as she had left him, but the strange, ethereal white glow had faded from his hair and eyes. Keeping one hand on the doorway, she reached out into the black, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him inside. He followed weightlessly, the scraps of his clothing remaining in space.

  She positioned him near the floor so he wouldn’t slam down when the artificial gravity kicked in, then cycled the airlock. Once the wall screen indicated it was safe to do so, she stowed her suit in the locker, approached her newfound guest, and activated the basic medical scanners installed in her eyes. Despite him being a small target to find when piloting the starship, nothing about him looked small now.

  He looked human, but her scanner hardly picked up any readings on him. The little she could analyze showed him at 7’5” tall with a significant amount of muscle mass present. While that wasn't unheard of for a human, it was highly irregular.

  Plus, humans didn't have glowing hair or eyes.

  His hair was about five inches long, black at the root, but as it grew outward the color transitioned to a faint, silvery gray-white. Now that the atmosphere was around him, she did notice that he looked a little worse-for-wear. No noticeable injuries were present, but he was beginning to lightly sweat and he looked extremely fatigued—like a parent running on caffeine and willpower after their toddler fought a bad fever for three straight days.

  Her primary directive screamed at her to provide care, but the trauma she had endured seemed to have blocked out some subroutines, making it difficult to remember what she was supposed to do. She placed two fingers on his jugular and gasped. While it was extremely faint, there was indeed a pulse present. She couldn't just leave the man laying here, she needed to find some way to make him more comfortable so he could recover.

  In the central room, Tamiyo prepped the simple couch with some pillows, then returned to the unconscious space man and began attempting to move him to the couch.

  It did not go as planned.

  Based on his height and build, he should have weighed approximately 450 pounds.

  Tamiyo's design allowed her to assist with moving heavy objects and to help those with mobility issues move around if they had put on some extra weight. But even with those features at her disposal, she was struggling—he was definitely heavier than he looked.

  She had to put all of her effort into just lifting his shoulders off the floor.

  Slowly, she began dragging his dead weight across the ship. Her tiny cargo transport suddenly felt a mile wide, because move this elephant-disguised-as-a-man became a fight for every inch.

  Tamiyo pulled and took a step.

  She heaved, then another small step.

  Heave-ho!

  After several minutes of struggle, Tamiyo felt proud of her progress—

  Until she looked to see she was only a little over halfway to the couch.

  She sighed, her grip slipped, and the man's shoulders fell from her grasp. The back of his head thunked onto the metal floor.

  “Shit! Fuck—dammit,” Tamiyo panicked a little.

  She walked over and picked up his ankles, pulling his legs to the side and rotating his body 90 degrees. Setting his legs down, she took a short break. He was quickly becoming more trouble than he seemed worth, and she contemplated throwing him back out the airlock.

  If only her damn core programming would shut up.

  Crouching down, she grabbed under his shoulder with one hand and under his hip with the other, then attempted to roll him toward the couch. With great effort, she flipped him face down on the metal floor. She repeated the maneuver three more times before finding herself exhausted again.

  He was at least somewhat closer to the couch now, but she still had no idea how she would get him up onto it. Maybe she could wake him up and avoid all this. She felt for a pulse again, and it did feel a little stronger. She lifted one of his eyelids and was greeted by a dull green iris with a very large pupil—nothing conscious though.

  “Hello?”

  No response.

  She grabbed him under the jaw and shook his head back and forth.

  Nothing.

  She filled a cup of water at the kitchenette sink and slowly dribbled it onto his face.

  He was now unconscious and wet.

  She tried slapping him but it did her no good.

  Sighing, Tamiyo stood and decided to try moving him to the couch again. She grabbed under the shoulders, then yanked, heaved and pulled the dense man several more feet. Finally, they made it to the couch and she leaned his torso up against it.

  With her arms wrapped around his chest from behind, Tamiyo stepped up onto the couch in a deep squat and lifted with all her might. Up he came, she was doing it! She got his butt onto the edge of the couch and—

  Tamiyo lost her balance.

  She fell backwards, he landed on top of her, then he rolled and went back down off the couch. She heard a deep CLANG as his skull hit metal. He was face down under the table, one cheek smooshed up against the thick table leg.

  “Please don't be dead,” she muttered.

  Feeling for a pulse once more, she found it even stronger. Tamiyo breathed a sigh of relief and decided he was as comfy as he was going to get. She threw a blanket over him and tossed a pillow on top of his head. If he stirred in his sleep, then he could lay his head on it if he wanted to.

  Returning to the cockpit, Tamiyo consulted her navigational charts about nearby planets in the star system. Two had enough civilization that she might get flagged as a fugitive, the third was a gas giant, but the fourth was closer and looked like a good contender.

  The charts listed the planet under the name Nox. About 50% of the planet’s surface appeared to be covered in dense forests, and the other 50% was a mix of deserts and oceans. Several small settlements lay along the equator in one hemisphere, only three of which had rudimentary space ports.

  Pushing the throttle forward, Tamiyo accelerated her ship towards the small green planet, no longer traversing the stars alone.