Page 182 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

A game.

A session.

A cosmic doodle that failed to vanish.

My fingers tighten around the shard until the cold edges bite my palm. “You were playing.”

Echo studies me. “Playing is close, but your emotional charge around the word complicates accuracy.”

I take one step toward the rupture. Ghar moves with me immediately, one bloody hand hovering near my back. “Were you playing?”

Echo’s almost-face shifts again. If a sunbeam could wince, it might look like that. “Yes.”

The word lands inside the chamber with more force than any collapse charge.

Sira closes her eyes.

Brakk whispers something profane and very quiet.

Ghar’s breathing changes behind me, rough and controlled. I do not look at him because if I do, I will feel his pain before I finish having my own. I stare at Echo, at this distracted, embarrassed remnant of incomprehensible beings, and a fury so clean it frightens me cuts through the awe.

“All of this,” I say, and my voice shakes hard enough to embarrass me. “All of us. Every civilization, every war, every child, every person praying under some sky or dying in some trench or loving someone they know they’ll lose. That came from you playing?”

Echo dims.

The chamber’s light lowers with it.

“I did not know,” it says.

The answer is too simple. Too small. Too late.

“You didn’t know what?”

“That persistence would deepen. That local events would self-complicate. That matter-patterns would become experience. That experience would make value.” Echo’s gaze moves over us, the fascination inside it becomes almost tender. “We thought the field would resolve.”

Ghar’s voice is low and dangerous. “Resolve means end.”

“Yes.”

My chest aches. “And when it didn’t?”

“The original observers attended briefly, then less often.” Echo looks toward the records. “Other recreations existed. This one continued without requiring sustained attention.”

Brakk stares at it. “You got bored?”

Echo looks at him with clear discomfort. “That is an unkind simplification.”

“It is also accurate.”

“Yes.”

Rolaev laughs.

It is not a sane laugh. It is small, broken, and absolutely unlike the controlled woman who stood before us with mercy sharpened into murder. She covers her mouth with one massive hand, but the sound escapes anyway.

“Yes,” she echoes. “Yes, of course. They were not cruel. They were not wise. They were not even watching.”

Echo turns to her. “You are injured in meaning.”