Dani
The storm hit on day nine, just when I thought things might actually be improving.
That morning, I woke with renewed determination, armed with my notes about Pip’s actual personality rather than textbook theory.
Breakfast had gone marginally better. Pip had cried for five minutes instead of fifteen, and she ate half of what I had prepared.
A minor victory, but I celebrated it. I considered breakfast a win.
By mid-afternoon, we even managed a full ten minutes of play without incident.
Pip showed me how she liked to stack the colored blocks.
It wasn’t by size or color, but by some internal logic.
I didn’t understand it, but respected her choices.
I sat, letting her lead, handing her block after block.
For a few precious minutes, she seemed comfortable with me.
Then the sky turned green.
I’d never seen a sky turn green before. Thanks to our guarding shields, we managed and predicted our weather on Earth down to the minute.
Storms were scheduled events, and authorities announced them days in advance.
These storms occurred in designated zones, and shelters had protocols in place.
This roiling mass of chartreuse clouds that seemed to boil across the horizon was something primordial and wild.
“Andrek?” I called, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice. Pip stared at the sky with wide eyes, her fur pressing against her body, patterns shifting to darker, more muted tones. Thanks to my notes, I’d learned it was a sign of anxiety.
Andrek appeared in the playroom’s doorway, and I saw his ears flatten against his skull the moment he looked outside. “Quantum storm,” he said. “I should have been monitoring the weather systems. Get Pip to the interior shelter, now. I need to secure the research equipment in the east wing."
“How bad is it?” I asked, scooping up Pip, who whimpered. “I’ve never seen a storm like this.”
“Bad enough.” He moved down the hallway, his tail lashing with urgency. “The shelter is three doors down from your quarters. Heavy door, reinforced walls, emergency supplies inside. Get there and stay there until the all-clear.”
“But,” I protested.
“Now, Danielle!”
Andrek’s sharp command sent a jolt through me, and Pip let out a frightened cry. His ears flattened further, and he paused just long enough to press his forehead briefly to Pip’s. “It’s all right, little star. Danielle will keep you safe. I promise.”
Then he was gone, disappearing down the corridor toward the research wing at a run.
I clutched Pip closer and tried to remember the way to the shelter. Three doors down from my quarters. Easy. Except Pip was crying now, her small body trembling, and I could feel fear radiating from her body.
“It’s okay,” I murmured, trying to project calm. “We’re going to a safe room. It’s going to be fine.”
The first crack of thunder hit, and the entire house shuddered, the lights flickering. Pip shrieked, her hands clutching at my shirt, and I broke into a run.
I made it outside the room as the power died, plunging the house into total darkness.
The bioluminescent panels that provided soft background lighting throughout the house all went out, leaving me blind and disoriented.
I stopped short, Pip screaming in my arms, and tried to remember the layout of the hallway.
Three doors down. Which direction? Left or right?
Another thunderclap, this one so loud it felt like the sky was splitting open.
Something crashed in the distance; glass shattered and metal collapsed.
Pip’s screams reached a pitch that seemed to pierce directly through my skull, and my shirt dampened.
Was it raining inside? No… that’s Pip. She’s making herself sick. Calm her.
“Okay, okay, it’s okay,” I chanted, spinning in the darkness, trying to orient myself. My eyes adjusted to the darkness until I could pick out dim shapes in the green-tinged light that filtered through the windows. “We’re okay, Pip. I’ve got you. The storm is outside; it can’t hurt us here.”
I started moving again, one hand on the wall, counting doorways. One. Two. Three. This should be it. I fumbled for the handle, found it and pulled.
Wrong room. Storage closet.
“Fuck,” I breathed, and Pip’s crying intensified. She felt my panic, I realized. Every spike of fear, every surge of adrenaline, she felt all of it. My fear made everything worse.
I backed out and tried to think. Three doors from my quarters. Maybe I miscounted. Maybe in the opposite direction?
Between rumbles of thunder, I heard Andrek’s voice calling out.
“Danielle!” Andrek's voice, distant and strained. “Danielle, can you hear me?”
“I’m here,” I called back, covering Pip’s ears with my hands. I tried to pinpoint the direction. “Where are you?”
“East wing.” He stopped as a crash hit; the sound of grinding metal filled the air. “Ceiling collapsed. I’m pinned.”
My blood turned to ice. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m manageable. But I can’t move. Did you get Pip to the shelter?”
I looked down at the screaming child in my arms, then at the surrounding darkness. “I can’t find it. I’m trying, but my eyesight,” my words cut off with another clap of thunder.
Another massive boom followed, this time accompanied by a brilliant flash of green-white light that illuminated the entire hallway for a split second.
In that moment of visibility, I saw the shelter door.
It was in the opposite direction from where I looked, marked with reflective safety tape that I missed.
Through the window at the end of the hall, I saw the storm, and it was like nothing I could have imagined.
The sky was alive with energy, writhing bolts of lightning that weren’t white or blue but shifted through a range of colors.
The twin moons were visible through the roiling clouds, and they looked wrong, almost distorted, as if I were seeing them through warped glass.
Quantum storm. I didn’t understand what that meant, but looking at the sky, I knew it was worse than any weather Earth’s shields could produce.
“Danielle?” Andrek’s voice was weaker now. “The shelter?”
“I see it,” I said, already moving. “I’m getting Pip there now.”
“Good. Good.” A pause, filled with the sound of his labored breathing. “Pip will be frightened. You need to…” He broke off with a pained sound. “You need to calm her. The fear, it can damage developing empathic centers if it’s too intense for too long.”
I reached the shelter door and wrenched it open, stumbling inside with Pip.
Emergency lighting kicked on, dim and blue-tinted, but better than nothing.
The room was small but well-equipped, lined with supplies and featuring a reinforced door that I pulled shut behind us.
The moment it sealed, the sound of the storm muffled to a distant roar.
But Pip didn’t stop screaming.
“How?” I called out, hoping Andrek could still hear me through the door. “How do I calm her?”
I looked down at Pip, and tears streaked her face. Her small body shook with the force of his sobs. Her eyes were squeezed shut, chest heaving with hyperventilation.
If I didn’t stop her tears, she’d have permanent damage to developing empathic centers. Not on my watch.
I held her close and attempted that low, resonant hum that Andrek taught me. What came out was pathetic. It did nothing to soothe Pip. “I can’t make the sound.”
I was alone with a terrified, traumatized child who needed something I couldn’t give. All those hours of practice, all those failed attempts at replicating Yxian techniques, none of it mattered now. I couldn’t do this. Pip needed a real caregiver.
But all I had was myself.
I’d been so focused on trying to be what Pip needed, trying to become some hybrid of human and Yxian caregiver, that I’d forgotten authenticity formed bonds, not perfection.
Pip didn’t need me to be Yxian. She needed me to offer whatever comfort I had to give.
I couldn’t hum like Andrek. But I could sing.
I shifted Pip in my arms, holding her against my chest the way Andrek did, and allowed Pip to feel my heartbeat. I found a rhythm that worked for me and was more natural to my human body. Once I settled into a pattern, I sang.
The lullaby came from somewhere deep in my memory, a place I hadn’t thought about in years.
My grandmother sang it to me when I was young, before she died, before my parents embraced the surveillance state philosophy.
It was old, pre-regulation Earth, passed down through generations in a language that was itself almost extinct.
The words were simple. Something about stars, sleep and safety. I didn’t remember all the verses, so I repeated the ones I knew over and over, letting my voice find its own melody rather than trying to force it.
“Hush little starlight, close your eyes,
The night is gentle, full of lulls and sighs,
Tomorrow brings the sun again.
But for now, just rest, my little friend…”
It wasn’t the powerful, resonant humming that Andrek produced. I sang with my untrained and off-key human voice. I poured every ounce of love and desperation I had into it.
Pip’s crying tapered off.
Her small hands, which pushed against me, relaxed their grip on my shirt. She wasn’t clutching in panic anymore.
I kept singing, swaying in the dim blue light of the shelter, and felt Pip’s breathing sync with mine. Her skin patterns stopped their frantic flickering and settled into a soft, pulsing glow of lavender and pale blue, colors I recognized as calm from my observation notes.
Not long after, I felt it.
The sensation started as a warmth in my chest, right where Pip’s head rested against my heart. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but definitely noticeable, like drinking hot tea on a snowy day.
Except it didn’t stay in my chest. It spread upward into my throat, my head, my mind.
And then I felt Pip.