I stumbled back into the house completely drained, still reeling from the unspoken rejection of my colleagues. Slumping onto the floor right by the entrance, I tried to pick apart the day and map out some kind of survival strategy. I could always try asking Morana what was going on, but I refused to let them see me sweat. This wasn't exactly how I’d envisioned my first real job. “You know, you are allowed to sit on the couch,” Zargo offered with mock hospitality. I snorted, pushing myself up. Old habits die hard. In my old micro-dorm pod, you were basically in bed the second you crossed the threshold. “It’s been a killer day. Let me just enjoy being home first.” Zargo propped his feet up on the coffee table, a faint smirk playing on his blue lips. Clearly, unlike me, he’d had a fabulous day. He’d also changed into an outfit practically dripping with rings and rivets. I could only assume the strategic cutouts in the most unexpected places were a high-fashion designer statement. “What’s for dinner?” he asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. “How about takeout?” I countered. “We’re on a restricted-access colony world. Do you honestly think UberEats delivers here?” To be fair, I had no idea what this planet did or didn't have. The local planetary network had only just opened up to me, and I hadn't found a spare second to explore it. Right now, my exhaustion was so heavy I could only manage to drag myself to the sofa and collapse face-first into the cushions. “Throwing in the towel already?” I cracked one eye open to glare at him. He looked thoroughly pleased with himself. “Tell me, Tan. Did you arrange my transfer to the orbital station on purpose?” “Whatever makes you think that?” “No one wants me there. They don’t even know what to do with me. The place is packed with geneticists. They don’t even have real plants up there.” He didn't even attempt to mask his grin. That was all the confirmation I needed; the jerk had definitely pulled strings. And since he practically owned the laboratory, nobody was going to tell him no. I mentally mapped the sheer number of personnel on the station compared to the four people who had shared my return shuttle. It meant the vast majority of the staff lived on the station permanently, only descending to the planet with special clearance. Having a literal paradise world right beneath your nose and being barred from it had to be a bitter pill to swallow. Maybe someone felt I was stealing their spot planetside? As the full weight of how badly he’d sabotaged me set in, I felt a fierce urge to punch him. Instead, I forced myself upright and pressed my hands together in a mock prayer. “Tan... is there any way you could transfer me back to the nanobiology department?” “How many cycles do you think you can last up there first?” His sudden curiosity put me on high alert. “Do you want the honest truth?” He nodded, his blue lips stretching into an amused smile. “Five full cycles. I don't have the cash to pay off my grant obligation. I don't have any assets to back a bank loan. And I refuse to dump my financial problems on my family. So, I will show up and do my job every single day, even if every person in that lab treats me like an invisible ghost.” Zargo stared at me as if I were a particularly stubborn insect that refused to be squashed. “Tell me, Tan, why are you even staying here anyway? Don’t you have a mansion of your own somewhere?” “I ask myself that every day. My estate is undergoing a structural overhaul. The planetary foundations suffer from periodic atmospheric corrosion and require specialized reinforcement. So, it looks like I’m stuck under the same roof with you for the next three months.” A surge of hope flared in my chest. Three months. That was it! Knowing there was an expiration date made tolerating him infinitely easier. “So... about that transfer, Tan?” He leaned forward, parting his lips to flash a smile that prominently displayed all three pairs of his upper fangs. “No.” “But why?” “Because I don’t want to.” I choked down the overwhelming urge to strangle him. Crawling fully onto the couch, I assumed a meditative posture. “Tan Zargo, let’s look at this logically. We share a house. By exiling me to the station, I’m entirely dependent on the shuttle schedules. Look at tonight: you beat me home, you’re clearly starving, and there’s no takeout. If I were stationed planetside, I’d be walking through that door an hour and a half earlier every single day.” As far as arguments went, I figured this one should appeal directly to the stomach of a pampered mama’s boy. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about me. I can manage the wait.” Right. So he was fully committed to exploiting me as a live-in maid while making my professional life an absolute misery. “I need to change,” I muttered. I stared gloomily at the staircase. No matter. I could endure this for now, and eventually, I’d claim the ground floor. As it turned out, tackling that vertical ladder after a grueling shift was a whole different level of torture. Completely spent, I finally collapsed onto the second-floor landing, letting my legs dangle uselessly over the edge. “Still waiting on that dinner,” Zargo called out from below. I didn't move an inch. “You know, there is a third department at the facility. Maintenance and sterilization lab techs.” That spiked a shot of pure adrenaline right through my exhaustion. The lab tech pool was the absolute bottom of the barrel. It was a mind-numbing cycle of scrubbing biological hazard zones and sterilizing thousands of instruments. If he transferred me there, I wouldn't last two months, let alone five years. Galvanized by fear, I threw myself through a quick shower, threw on some clean clothes, and hurried down to the kitchen. Facing the overwhelming variety of unfamiliar alien ingredients, I froze up again. Zargo strolled over, peering over my shoulder into the refrigeration unit. “I want meat tonight. Sear it.” He reached past my shoulder, hauled out a substantial cut of some extraterrestrial protein, and dropped it into my hands. Honestly, I didn't mind the choice. “Any preference on vegetables?” “Dealer's choice. I don't eat them.” Zargo sauntered back to the sofa, kicked his boots up on the table, and tapped his holographic interface. After skimming through a few channels, he launched a game and pulled out a controller. He was clearly dug in for the long haul. He kicked off his evening with a cozy resource-builder game before switching over to a high-intensity tactical shooter that made me flinch with every explosive sound effect. Despite the distractions, the meat turned out beautifully. As I set the table, I glanced over at the floating display. Zargo had paused his game, and the holographic resolution was so staggeringly crisp and lifelike that it reminded me of my earlier wish. “Hey, want to watch a movie or something?” Zargo sat down at the table, leveling a long, unblinking stare at me. “You are completely not my type.” I choked on my own saliva, hacking so violently I nearly slipped off my chair. After a desperate struggle to regain my dignity, I chugged a glass of water. “You are completely not my type either! Where do you get the nerve? What kind of ridiculous leap is that?” “Then why did you just ask me out on a date?” “Since when is watching a movie a date? We share an automated house. Can’t we just behave like normal human beings? Like roommates? Tan, when you were studying, did you never live in student housing? I’m treating our living situation as a standard roommate arrangement.” “And I am treating our living situation as an arrangement between an employer and his maid.” I leveled a withering glare at him, but he dismissed it with a display of truly imperial indifference. Zargo dug into his steak. He really hadn't been kidding about the vegetables. As far as I recalled from my xenobiology courses, Sibians possessed incredibly robust digestive tracts, but living on a diet of pure grease and protein seemed like pushing it. If he gave himself a cosmic ulcer, I’d be the one stuck playing nurse. Note to self: make oatmeal for breakfast. “I think we need to establish some formal cohabitation boundaries. Let's agree to stay out of each other's private quarters and respect personal space,” I suggested, vividly imagining him waking me up in the dead of night to fetch him a glass of water. “Suits me. I’m turning in.” Once again, Zargo vanished, leaving me to deal with the aftermath of dinner. His actions were perfectly aligned with his abysmal opinion of me. Amusingly enough, he only vacated the living room long enough for me to clear the counter space. The second I retreated up the stairs, the sounds of his shooter echoed from below again. The guy was systematically crowding me out of the common areas. I was facing a massive wall of hostility here. He disliked me, and so far, nobody else on this planet seemed particularly thrilled by my existence either. I’d talked a big game to his face, but five years of absolute isolation was looking like a terrifyingly bleak prospect. Deciding to take control of what I could, I resolved to research my new colleagues. I didn't have names, and I’d been excluded from the lab group chats, so I was thoroughly baffled when a message popped up from an unlisted ID—Nasferi-rani-Tarin—demanding my presence at the planetside laboratory by dawn. A quick scramble through the facility's directory revealed that this mouthful of a name belonged to our Senior Lab Director. The page was followed by an automated data drop on the Zelgalo tree—a dense manual on cultivation and care spanning over three hundred pages. Was the Director of genetics trying to dump me onto the planetside nanobiologists? Frankly, he didn't need me; I was just an extra body cluttering his station. The only downside was that I had exactly four hours of sleep left, and the commute required leaving an hour before dawn. Knowing that falling asleep would make waking up an impossibility, I waited until Zargo finally retired for the night, then crept downstairs. First things first: I dissolved a high-potency stimulant tablet in a glass of water and downed it. I was locked in for eighteen hours of artificial alertness. After that, I’d either have to pop another one (highly discouraged) or crash hard. I managed to whip up the oatmeal anyway, leaving it sealed under the thermal dome on the counter before summoning a taxi-flier and slipping out. I arrived at the facility forty minutes early, fully prepared to wait it out in the lobby. Except the moment I stepped outside the flier, Sanbili threw me another curveball. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and my lime-green jumpsuit was doing nothing to block the biting chill. Nasferi-rani-Tarin was already there, perched in the main lobby and signing off on digital manifests. Spotting me, he cleared me through security with a casual sweep of his upper arm. “Follow me.” The command sent a thrill of genuine excitement through me. Finally, I was going where I belonged. I wondered which department I was being assigned to—nanobotics engineering or environmental botany? The Director led the way across the sprawling compound, turning into a long, ribbed conduit that looked like a subway tunnel if it had been excavated by a giant cosmic mole. The path terminated directly at a cargo bay. My stomach did an immediate, uneasy flip. Especially when we walked straight up into the loading deck of a massive freight transport. A crew of dockworkers was currently securing three specialized environmental domes, each housing a half-meter-tall Zelgalo sapling. The harsh reality hit me like a physical blow. The Diangosan was moving to live-tissue trials. And since he suddenly had an authorized nanobiologist cluttering his payroll, why waste the asset? I was being drafted as a glorified space gardener. Pruning twigs and checking water levels. Living the dream. It was a step up from burning holographic data drives, sure, but it also meant any chance of transferring away from the orbital station was officially dead in the water. A datapad was shoved into my hands, and it was my turn to sign off on a mountain of digital waivers. That was followed by a secondary terminal requiring a biometric password. Once the final system logged my confirmation, the trap snapped shut. Any fantasy of a planetary transfer vanished into thin air. Especially when, as a final parting gift, the foreman handed me a tiny, pastel-pink, plastic watering can. The only silver lining? Zargo was going to have a hell of a time trying to demote me to a sterilization tech now that I was logged into a live trial. The cargo bay of a freight vessel lacked the basic comforts of a passenger shuttle. The internal climate and atmospheric pressure were optimized for delicate biological cargo—meaning it was freezing cold, and the thin, oxygen-depleted air forced me to breathe deliberately. I didn't need the automated system to tell me twice before I latched on a light pressure suit. Stepping against the bulkhead, I pulled down the mechanical harness. The restraint locked into place, treating me to the wonderful sensation of being a bug pinned to a specimen board. The heavy cargo doors sealed shut with a resonant boom. I closed my eyes, bracing myself. I absolutely despised the crushing gravitational drag that literally glued you to the wall during ascent. The ultimate insult, though? Nasferi-rani-Tarin was casually anchoring himself to a single handrail with one arm, his other three limbs perfectly stable as he scrolled through two datapads simultaneously. The only comfort was that the flight was short. Which was great, because while yesterday I’d been stressed about Zargo's stomach, today my own was tying itself into a very tight, very anxious knot.