Surprise
Eone woke up in a vat of liquid she could breathe in she found out after only a moment of brief panic. Tracing the designs cocooning her it lit up and the seams spread apart as it opened. She sat up breaking the surface and turned over the side to cough up what was in her lungs. Looking around, disoriented. In a place she didn't remember, or how she got there, she heard the door opening but her vision didn't focus enough yet.
Krale came in to find her already awake sitting in the decontaminate chamber, looking around. He approached her with new clothes and knelt down into her vision and she looked at him. He braced for the recoil and scream but it didn't come. Instead she tilted her head to him gently and hesitated. Then let her bare fingertips touch his skin along his jaw and cheek. Eyes following her fingers, she was so gentle but not as if he would break.
Those strange eyes looked to him, no fear, but there was a deep awe and yet burning curiosity.
"What are you?" She asked softly.
Krale hmm'd but didn't understand, not yet, he was still grasping to learn her language but he touched her hand and again there was no recoil, she turned it and traced his fingers to compare her hand size to his smiling. Krale shivered inwardly, and grabbed her hand gently to pull. She got up with his help and swayed to grab hold of him. She did recoil this time and flushed bowing saying something he realized it was an apology most likely. Nodding to her he gestured and was pleased when she started to walk with him.
She had to walk faster to keep up but looked around seeing others like him they looked at her and she smiled waving hello a very tall one and Krale's senior blinked and rose a hand to mimic with a tilt she smiled more nodding in a bow a bit and followed Krale's heels. Krale arched an invisible brow glancing his elder to find him looking at his hand and back at her. A greeting given to him openly by a human glad he wasn't the only one perplexed by Eone.
Truthfully Eone surprised herself, but at the same time she knew freaking out would not help anything. She was actually equally as excited as she was terrified, but this was her job, what she signed up for coming to deep space to the outposts. Even more though she had dreamt about something like this when she was seven on the last colony, Eone was genetically enhanced, she had to be to survive to term with her parents in such deep space. It had caused some…differences. Besides she would be one hell of a crappy ambassador to turn around and make these aliens think she was a raving madness. They weren't harming her; if they wanted her for dissection study she wouldn't be alive right now.
Krale got her settled into very nice quarters actually and left her on her own. She grinned when she found supplies that hadn't been locked away. Krale came back with the Commander and stopped to find her in a suit of her own design made with their material. Standing with hands at her back watching the stairs, her hair was fully down reaching her waist, the sides half way the ribs. Bangs gently streaked, yet it was all pinned with that material too so it kept her hair down but out of the way.
Turning to them she bowed in an incline a bit greeting them, Krale returned it and his commander did so after some moment of hesitation. Krale moved aside to allow the Commander further in and he moved around Eone hesitating but he touched her hair and clothing, following the design giving her a questioning look. Eone smiled in return and took his hand startling him but she pulled gently taking a step. He hesitated but followed and she gestured to Krale. Laying out the material and her designs.
They startled, it was one of their drawing pads. Krale made one blank gesturing to her and the pad then his wrist. She realized he wanted to see her make something. She took his hand and used her hands to measure around the wrist and mid forearm. Then looked at the pad and traced, the A.I. activated and allowed her access both looked at each other but then watched her.
Eone didn't notice the look she got lost in her work, pulling the threads of lines pulling them up into a hologram display like she would in her lab the light moved around Krale's wrist and she worked quickly. Adjusting with very intuitive problem solving, moving the material around his arm using the synthesizer codex it shifted and remade the material as they watched. Krale stiffened as the cloth excess fell away and he had a comfortable bracer he could store data chips in among other things, multifunctional. Engineered.
She smiled admiring her work and blinked when large pale fingers took her chin and made her look up to the left. Looking up at the Commander, blinking softly, his thumb traced her jaw, staring at her. He bent down a bit and looked her right in the eyes and she fought not to swallow. Eyes on his, she noticed his oblong almost plus shaped pupils. He blinked and stood up letting her go and stepped back saying something in his language. Their voices were very deep.
Ancient but she shivered; it was very pleasant to hear as it was intimidating at the same time. Krale blinked and looked at her closely also bending down to look into her eyes. She blinked and stared back, was there something wrong with them she wondered. Krale concentrated and saw it, the edges to her pupils were not normal. Nor the color, it was darker, very darker yet transparent. Standing he put out his hand to her. She looked at it and put her small slender hand in it and he pulled leading her out after the commander.
They ended up in some kind of medical room and she frowned gripping his hand to look at him. Krale saw her worry and concern. He shook his head and brought her to the chair pointing at a scanner and himself using it. She saw the scan go and materialize as a hologram. She sighed and felt an odd tension leave. They just wanted to scan her. She let him help her up and she sat still and compliant. Calm. Letting him scan her and he looked behind her where she could hear the hologram forming.
Krale studied her genetic sequencing, he knew humans came from them but they were more curious over differences. It showed more clearly and his Commander looked it over then at Krale who glanced him. She didn't see the overlapping sequences. She had a Thirteenth gene. One short of an Engineer. She was not like the rest of her population, the genetic markers they had on file for murder, violence anything of a darker nature came up to overlap. The gene for murder and abhorrent violence were not there and surprisingly she was genetically the most non violent and had a sequence that came up suddenly branching out in red forming out to a rare gene imprint. Guardian Gene. A picture came of Sokar…the Engineer who seeded Earth. It was the marker that led to his selection in the first place.
His now very human descendant carried his gene. Krale felt his heart race a bit and he immediately filed her to send to the council. She was going to their homeworld, even the look his Commander had verified it and she would never leave their world. She would be studied, if they could learn how to replicate these sequence humans could be saved instead of culled perhaps. That was up to the council. He helped her down and to go back. Eone was tired though but she did eat and wouldn't sleep until Krale ate something amusing him. She wondered where exactly this interaction would lead as she fell asleep, unaware of the ships already launching departure.
