Page 117 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“So does not kidnapping my friend.”

“Compassion matters too,” Rolaev says. “That is why your current course is so dangerous.”

My fingers hover over the final trigger layer.

I look up despite myself.

Rolaev ’s projection stands across the field from me, serene amid smoke and gunfire. She looks like a priestess carved from the worst kind of certainty, the kind that has survived doubt and become harder because of it.

“You keep using that word like you own it,” I say.

“I use it because I understand its burden.” Rolaev gestures toward the command files flickering beside us. “You have seen enough of the archive now. You know the First Architects treated creation as exploration before stable reality carried suffering. You know the Precursors inherited and curated records rather than originating every sacred structure later attributed to them. You know that your discovery will not enter civilization as pure knowledge. It will enter through fear, politics, grief, ego, and hunger.”

My mouth has gone dry.

I keep working.

Rolaev steps closer within the projection. “Tell me, Anita Prentiss. Is truth without purpose moral?”

The question lands so quietly that the firefight seems to retreat around it.

I want to answer instantly. I want to say yes because truth matters, because lies rot institutions, because people deserve reality even when reality is ugly. I want to throw my whole life at the question like a shield: the fake miracle stones, the tourist traps, the professors who smiled while dismissing me, the years spent chasing evidence everyone else found inconvenient.

But Sira is kneeling in a field with a collar at her throat.

Teren is dead.

Marrit’s Well burned after a fragment leaked.

Rolaev ’s records are not imaginary.

My scanner pulses in my hand.

The final trigger layer waits for me to cut it.

I cannot answer.

Certainty abandons me in the middle of an argument.

Ghar turns slightly, and I feel him notice my silence. His face tightens, but he does not speak because three attackers press from the left gallery and he has to meet them before they reach me.

Sira’s voice emerges as a strained whisper. “Anita.”

The collar flashes as if punishing her for the attempt, but she continues, each word thin and difficult.

“Do not fear uncertainty simply because frightened civilizations prefer comforting lies.”

My eyes sting.

Rolaev looks at Sira with something like sorrow. “You would risk collapse for ambiguity?”

Sira’s mouth trembles under the pain of speaking. “I would risk honesty for growth.”

The collar flares brighter.

Sira chokes.

That snaps me back.