Page 1 of Fated to the Dragon Alien

ONE

Cerani

The wind scratched across Cerani’s visor with grit peppering the outer layer of her Enviro-Protect suit. She didn’t blink. Her gaze tracked the line of bodies ahead of her, each one wrapped in the same dull gray armor of survival, moving in one sluggish row toward the mine’s opening.

Beneath the suit, sweat crawled down her spine. Not from heat, but from unease. The man in front of her, Jorr, was coughing again. A low, rattling sound that didn’t stop. He was older than her, and the surface conditions had chewed him up faster than most.

The moon they were on didn’t even have a name. FK-22R wasn’t a place meant for life. The ground was cracked and dry. Iron-colored dust stretched like old scars in every direction. Jagged rock clusters jutted from the dirt like broken teeth. Nothing green lived here. Nothing ever had. Even during the wake cycle, the twin suns’ copper haze cast more shadow than light. Every few meters, metal rods stuck out of the crust with blinking sensors, a reminder of who really controlled the land.The air was too poisoned for most to breathe outside the suits. And the sky? Always the same smudged red, as if the whole moon had never stopped bleeding.

Cerani adjusted her pace to stay close behind Jorr. His hunched shoulders gave away more than his cough. His steps dragged too much. “How long’s the coughing been this bad?” she asked.

“Six cycles,” he said through the suit’s comm system. His voice was brittle. “Maybe more.”

“That’s more than enough. You need med intake.”

“They take you offline after four med visits. I’ve seen it happen. You know that.”

Cerani did. They didn’t say someone died here. They took prisoners offline just like tools when they broke. Jorr was right. That kind of record meant one thing.

“I’m not letting you die in that tunnel,” she said.

“You’re a sweet kid,” Jorr replied, and his breath hitched. “But I don’t think that’s up to you.”

She clenched her jaw and faced forward. The others around them looked the same—bent shapes in gray suits, moving slow, coughing hard. To her left, Sema stumbled. Just a hitch in her step, but Cerani caught it. Sema’s suit hung looser than it had five cycles ago and Cerani knew that under the EP suit, Sema had a sealed patch on her arm—a quick fix for radiation blistering. She was shrinking. So was Toval. And Elba. So many of them were running out of fight, their bodies giving up before their minds did.

In thirty-three cycles, Cerani hadn’t seen one person get better.

She stared at her own hands. No tremors. No weight loss.

The mine was eating everyone but her. And she still didn’t know why.

Cerani’s boots kicked up another small swirl of dust as she stepped forward. It settled fast, sinking back into the soil like it had a thousand times before. Nothing here wanted to be disturbed. Not the ground. Not the dead. Not the truth, whatever that was.

Cerani adjusted the air intake settings on her wrist panel, even though she knew it wouldn’t help anyone. What worked for her didn’t seem to work for the others. She didn’t understand it, and saying anything about it only made the other prisoners stare harder, like her lungs had betrayed them.

“Keep the line tight,” said the mech guard at the rear. The static of its vocal processor was loud in her helmet’s comm.

Cerani didn’t answer. No one did. Talking wasted air.

Above them, the twin suns of FK-22R pushed through the dusty sky, bleeding red through the atmosphere. The mine ahead looked like a wound in the ground, rough edges vibrating faintly with the tremble of machines already at work below.

She hated this place. Hated what it did to the others held here. The act of extracting basian crystals was very detailed and nuanced, and so far, no machine had done it as successfully as trained living beings had.

Cerani straightened as the line began to descend toward the entry platform. The railing buzzed faintly under her glove when she grabbed it. Even with the suit’s air filters, the mine air smelled metallic and sharp, like breathing rust. But her chest didn’t seize the way the others’ did. Her blood didn’t throb in her temples. The moon was killing them, and somehow, it wasn’t touching her.

Her boots thumped on the steel-plated ramp as the platform groaned under their weight. Below, the chamber lights flickered across jagged rock walls and tunnels carved by hands and drills that never stopped. The stench of burned ozone hit hard. Someone had overloaded the plasma cutters again.

Cerani glanced across the platform. Sema had fallen further behind. The mech guard didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.

“Step up,” the guard barked again, louder this time. Several in the line flinched but quickened their steps.

Cerani turned back to look at Sema, who was hunched low now, one hand on her side. She should’ve said something. Called a med warning. But that would’ve drawn attention. And attention here was a death sentence in waiting.

The metal grates under them creaked as the elevator scraped lower into the shaft. The noise was constant—hydraulics groaning, tools whining, the endless scrape of tools on rock. It filled the space in her head where thoughts used to go.

She glanced up. No sky now—just steel beams strung with cold lights and the press of stone all around. Down here, time didn’t move. Only the shift did.

Jorr coughed again. So did Toval behind her. And Elba. The sound was spreading.

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