23:23, February 23, 2295

  Near Arrington Lagoon, Evanston, IL, 60201, Terra Alliance territory

  "Argh!" Lorna jerked awake with a gasp, her heart hammering against her ribs. The remnants of Oslo lingered in her mind. Blue luminescence threaded through her veins—the Nucleus Virus visible beneath her skin in the Space Rover's dim lighting.

  "Nightmare?" Xin kept his eyes on the snowy path as he drove through the outskirts of Evanston.

  "Yeah." Lorna tugged her sleeve down to cover the glowing veins. "The virus makes them more...vivid. More real." She massaged her temples and watched the city lights recede through the windshield.

  The Space Rover's cabin smelled of chicken nuggets and matcha tea. Pawan, Xin's Omni-Drone, hovered near the ceiling, its sensors blinking in the darkness.

  "Your skin..." Xin's voice trailed off as he navigated around a fallen tree.

  "I can handle it," she replied, fingers tracing the outline of the silver pendant against her chest. "How does my scar look? It's been another day."

  Xin examined her. "A small part of the scab has come off. It's healing up."

  "Good, that's a relief," Lorna took out her vial of Medi-Vap and inhaled a dose. A cloud of teal mist escaped her lips.

  "Just take it easy," Xin said. "So, where are we heading?"

  "North. There's something I want to show you. Something about who I really am."

  The Space Rover trudged through the snow, its cannon swiveling to track movement in the darkness. As they crested a hill, Xin gasped.

  Below them spread the remains of New Uppsala. Unlike Alliance cities, these buildings merged curves and angles in ways that defied conventional design, seeming to emerge from the snow itself.

  "It's beautiful," Xin said, slowing the vehicle. "I've never seen anything like it. Those spires – they're like European castles, but different somehow. More...organic?" He adjusted his glasses. "The history books never showed us this."

  "Of course they didn't. The Alliance prefers everyone to think Valorans built everything worth preserving in North America. But this was New Uppsala. A haven for Nordlings who fled here when the outbreak in '84 made Scandinavia uninhabitable. Before the quarantine, before the Nordic Exodus, before..." She trailed off.

  "Let's take a closer look," she said suddenly.

  "Are we allowed to?" Xin asked, already steering toward the settlement's entrance.

  "No." A bitter smile crossed Lorna's face. "But that's kind of the point."

  The Space Rover descended into the valley, its headlights cutting through darkness to reveal the abandoned entrance. They stopped at a security checkpoint, its systems long dead and Alliance banner hanging limp above obsolete scanning equipment.

  "We should leave the rover here," Lorna said. "Less chance of triggering any remaining surveillance."

  They stepped out into the bitter cold, breath forming clouds. Snow crunched beneath their boots as they moved past the checkpoint. Lorna touched the worn scanner.

  "The Ancestral Verification Protocol. AVP. It traced Nordic heritage through genetic markers in our bloodline. They claimed our DNA made us more susceptible to the Nucleus Virus."

  "Was that true?" Xin examined the technology.

  "Partially. Studies showed Nordlings had a genetic sequence — a psionic predisposition — that the Nucleus Virus targets. But it wasn't about protecting us." She kicked the scanner. "It was about controlling us."

  They walked deeper into the settlement. The main street stretched before them, buildings merging Alliance standards with Nordic aesthetics. Snow had reclaimed much of the space, but market stalls, gathering places, and empty gardens remained visible.

  Lorna stopped at the community center. Its weathered walls still displayed murals that captured Xin's attention.

  "Yggdrasil, the World Tree," Lorna traced the faded outlines. "And here, Valhalla, where warriors feast eternally. It's J?turmál mythology."

  "What's that word mean?" he asked.

  "The Tongue of Giants. Some people say it's rough sounding, but...it's the language my people used to speak."

  She led him to a structure with a peaked roof, its unfinished frame reaching skyward. "That was meant to be a stave church. Traditional Nordic architecture, all wood, no nails. They had the lumber imported from Canada, craftsmen brought from Europe... but then the quarantine came."

  As they explored, Lorna shared stories of Nordling refugees who built New Uppsala to preserve their traditions. The gradual implementation of restrictions, first "for protection," then increasingly punitive. The quarantine that became permanent.

  They entered a home. Snow had drifted through broken windows. Despite the decay, personal touches remained: faded photographs, hand-carved furniture, a child's toy in a corner.

  "When I was eighteen, my father left," Lorna picked up a wooden horse. "He stayed behind to fight the Fenris Horde while I fled."

  "You know where he is?" Xin watched her.

  "Hopefully Europa now, if he's alive. He had a laboratory there."

  "You tried to contact him?"

  "I wish I could. No one know where he's gone to. Only that he's alive somehow." her expression was bitter. "Thorin H?ggsson, an old friend of his, told me about the lab. Said my father was creating..." She hesitated.

  "Creating what?"

  "His own version of Radi-Mons. Controlled ones. He called them the Jokull." She set the toy on a windowsill. "I didn't want to believe it. Still don't, really."

  They moved to a research facility with walls breached, though it was hard to tell whether it was explosive force or something worse.

  "The Lineage Studies Facility," Lorna read from a fallen sign. "Remotely owned by the Champaign Institute of Technology." Inside, equipment was smashed, documents scattered, everything burnable reduced to ash.

  "Someone wanted to erase whatever they were studying here," Xin examined a broken container.

  "The official story is that researchers destroyed everything before evacuation to prevent virus spread. But Nordlings weren't contagious. The virus doesn't work that way, like Doc Nikki explained. We were quarantined because of who we are, not what we carried."

  She brushed snow from a folder. The logo remained visible with "Psionic Predisposition in Nordic Bloodlines."

  "This is what they feared," she handed him the folder. "Not virus spread, but abilities that couldn't be controlled."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Xin skimmed the pages. "These are genetic studies... comparing Nordic DNA with other Europeans... focusing on 'the last sequence in the human cell nucleus'..."

  "The genetic marker for psionic potential. Found in about ten percent globally, but nearly thirty percent among Nordlings. That's the 'scientific' foundation for containing us. They turned our tragedy into justification for exclusion."

  "How did you escape it? If AVP is so accurate at detecting Nordic heritage..."

  "Director Otis," Lorna touched her pendant. "When I came to the Alliance, I had nothing—just my pendant, whatever money I'd saved... But my psionic aptitude caught his attention. He helped create a new identity, alter my genetic records, even sponsored my admission."

  "Why would he take such a risk?"

  "He saw something worth preserving, I guess. That's the irony of the Alliance—as an institution, it's as prejudiced as the Imperium. But individuals within it can be remarkably kind."

  In the administrative center, Lorna paused before a wall of photographs. Community celebrations, groundbreaking ceremonies, ordinary moments preserved in fading images.

  "Do you see it, Xin? Look at these people. They could be anyone from the Alliance. That woman could have sat next to you on a train, that man could be a Vanguard in your unit. There's nothing visibly different about us."

  "That's what makes prejudice so insidious. It creates divisions where there are none."

  "Exactly." Lorna traced a group photo. "The AVP doesn't detect disease. It detects ancestry. It's not about protection—it's about control."

  Outside, night had deepened. Osram hung overhead, Chicago glowed on the horizon. As they walked back, Lorna broke the silence.

  "There's something else I need to tell you. About Skarn, the Radi-Mon Primarch we encountered in Taipei."

  Xin turned to face her.

  "He wasn't always like that. Before he became... that thing... his name was Sven Solheim. He was my classmate at Lund University. Maybe even a friend."

  "You knew him before his transformation?"

  Lorna nodded. "We were in Advanced Psionics together. He was brilliant, charismatic—and deeply resentful of how the Alliance and Imperium treated Nordic communities. He believed Nordlings were superior, that our psionic potential made us rightful rulers of the Inner Sol. The last time I saw him human was at Oslo Starport, when Radi-Mons attacked. He'd already begun transforming, calling himself Skarn."

  "That's why...when he met you in Taipei..." he left the sentence unfinished.

  "Yes." She drew the pendant from her jumpsuit. "My father gave me this the day everything changed. The Pendant of Mánagrát. He said it would protect me. When we fled Oslo, he gave me something else. A crystal vial with strange liquid. He told me to take it to Thorin H?ggsson at Lund."

  "Did you?"

  "Yes, though I nearly walked out when Thorin demanded my pendant too. He claimed my father was creating monsters on Europa, that the pendant was connected to them. I gave him the vial but kept the pendant. It was the last thing my father gave me. How could I part with it?"

  They reached the Space Rover but didn't enter.

  "You're a Nordling." Xin nodded as he looked at her.

  "It's who I am, Xin. My real name is Sigrún Fjeld. Lorna Weiss was created to survive in a world that fears what I am. If anyone in SIMU discovers my identity, I won't just lose my job. I'll be deported immediately. Any chance of finding my father—gone." she met his gaze.

  "Why tell me? Why trust me with this?"

  The virus surged within her, patches of skin becoming transparent, revealing glowing tissue beneath. She made no attempt to hide it.

  "Because you understand what it means to live under a system that wants to erase you. To remake yourself just to survive. And because I've seen how you keep fighting, even after what the Imperium did to your homeland. You don't let them win by becoming what they want you to be."

  A sudden beeping from the dashboard made them both jump. An incoming transmission.

  "Let me check,” Xin said, checking the display where the holographic text ‘T. Mendoza’ flew. "It's…Thomas?"

  Lorna's heart rate spiked as she rushed into the Rover, the virus responding with another surge of cerulean luminescence. This was the first test of her trust in Xin – how he handled this call would tell her everything she needed to know about whether she'd made the right choice in revealing her secret.

  Xin's finger hovered over the holographic interface. "Should I...?"

  "Answer it," Lorna said, already shrinking into her seat, angling herself away from where Thomas's hologram would appear. She pulled her jumpsuit closer, trying to conceal the virus's telltale glow. "And Xin... please..."

  He nodded once, understanding without needing more words. His finger made contact with the interface, and Thomas's holographic form materialized between them. The silver gleam of his bionic arms caught the dashboard lights, casting strange shadows through the cabin.

  "Hey, you two. Working late?" Thomas's familiar baritone carried a note of curiosity as he took in their surroundings. "Bit far from the usual training grounds, aren't you?"

  Lorna held her breath, watching Xin from the corner of her eye. Everything hinged on this moment.

  "Yeah, we’re testing the — Space Rover's winter capabilities," Xin replied smoothly, his voice betraying none of the tension Lorna felt crackling through the air. "The terrain north of Evanston provides good practice for Osram's conditions. Read it on the Extranet today."

  The Valoran man’s grin was sly, his amusement palpable. "At midnight, eh? What an interesting choice."

  Lorna's cheeks burned with embarrassment, but she stared out the window, willing her heart to slow its frantic pace.

  "Well, yes, since our mission is tomorrow at 1PM, I thought it’d be good to have some extra practice," Xin added, his words tumbling out but slowly coming together.

  "Of course, Xin. You’ve got that hard-working Imperial spirit in you," Thomas replied as he nodded, the edge of intrigue still lingering in his tone.

  "Tom, just tell us what’s so important you have to call at this hour," The heat of Lorna’s blush felt like it could set the Space Rover ablaze, but she kept her posture.

  "Roger that," Thomas’s hologram flickered as his posting took on a more serious edge. "Diego just sent an update. The Imperium's forces are mobilizing earlier than expected. We're moving the timeline."

  "Alright. What’s the time?" Lorna managed, her voice strained and tight.

  "Emmanuel and I will head for Mare Imbrium within the hour," Thomas continued, a solemn edge creeping into his voice. "As for you, Xin, your StarWhale flight is scheduled for 9AM."

  "No problem!" Xin's voice boomed with enthusiasm.

  "Hold on. What about me?" Lorna’s golden eyebrows knitted together as she placed a hand on her chest.

  "You are to remain on Earth, Lorna. Director Otis will be signing your unpaid sick leave tomorrow —" Thomas eyed Lorna nervously, as if preparing for an impending clash.

  "No way. I'm coming." Lorna insisted.

  "Lorna. You’ve done a lot during that mission in Taiwan. That's not how the SIMU works. You need rest – " Thomas raised a bionic hand.

  "I've come this far and I want to see it through." Lorna cut him off, finally turning to face the hologram. "Besides, I need the money. My rent is due soon."

  Thomas remained silent for a moment before sighing, his posture relenting. "Very well. Do I have your permission to quote that when I go tell the Director?"

  "You do." Lorna pursed her lips.

  "Then I look forward to seeing you both on Osram tomorrow. Should be fun." A grin returned to Thomas’s wheat-hued countenance.

  The hologram flickered out, leaving them in darkness broken only by the dashboard lights and the faint glow of Lorna's virus-altered veins. For a moment, neither spoke.

  "Thanks, Xin," Lorna finally whispered, her hand finding his in the darkness. "For understanding what's at stake."

  "Your secret is safe with me.” Xin's fingers intertwined with hers, warm against her cool skin. "Sigrún."

  The sound of her real name, spoken with such simple acceptance, made her throat tight. She hadn't heard anyone say it in years, not since her father. The pendant at her throat seemed to pulse once, as if acknowledging this moment of truth.

  "My hands," she began, her voice a low murmur filled with vulnerability. "They're not as soft as they used to be. Some people find it...unattractive." She flexed her calloused fingers, the rough texture rubbing against Xin's gentler skin.

  Xin ran his thumb over the hardened skin of her palm, his touch deliberate. "They're the hands of a warrior," he said softly, looking up to meet her gaze. "They've been through battles, saved lives. Strong, resilient. Like you."

  A knot of anxiety unclenched inside Lorna. She looked at their intertwined hands once more, feeling a small smile spread across her lips.

  "I’ll drive us back," Xin said softly, though he made no move to start the rover. "Big day tomorrow. I’ll wake you up when we arrive at Stardust Command."

  "Yeah…that sounds nice," Lorna replied, not withdrawing her hand from his. Here, in this abandoned place that bore witness to her people's suffering, she had found something unexpected – someone who saw her, truly saw her, and chose to stand beside her anyway.

  In that moment, he whispered a benediction she wanted him to but didn’t know how to ask: "Goodnight, Lorna."

  "Goodnight, Xin," she murmured back in contentment, withdrawing her hand, her blue eyes fluttering shut as she drifted toward the edge of sleep once more.

  Above them, Osram hung in the night sky like a silent witness, its cratered face a reminder of the mission that awaited them. But for now, in the quiet darkness of the Space Rover's cabin, Lorna allowed herself to exist without masks or pretense, her virus-touched skin glowing softly as the snow continued to fall outside.