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Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 4: The Shrouded Doorway
Darius slept the way people sleep when they’ve finally stopped bracing for impact.
Not peacefully—deeply.
The kind of sleep that isn’t comfort so much as exhaustion finally being permitted to do its job.
He woke to the sound of Amina in his kitchen, moving with quiet purpose, as if she’d been there a hundred mornings already.
The coffee maker gurgled.
He smiled into his pillow before his eyes even opened.
Then he remembered.
Ring. Voice. Ship.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his face. The headache was there, but weaker now—less punishment, more reminder.
Amina looked over her shoulder.
“Morning,” she said.
“You mean this morning,” he replied.
She smirked. “Yes. This one.”
He shuffled into the kitchen like a man stepping carefully around a reality he hadn’t finished accepting. The coffee smell met him halfway and helped him pretend—briefly—that everything was still normal.
He poured a cup and took a long sip, eyes closing.
Amina watched him with open amusement.
“You’re dramatic,” she said.
“I’m consistent,” he corrected.
“That’s what dramatic people say.”
He pointed the mug at her like it was a sacred object. “This is not just coffee. This is ... equipment.”
“Your species,” she said, leaning against the counter, “is the only one I know that uses a beverage as emotional armor.”
He swallowed, then looked at her. “And your species is the only one I know that can marry someone and still roast them before breakfast.”
Her laugh was soft, real.
For a moment, the apartment felt like the simplest version of the universe again—two people, a kitchen, a morning that belonged to no one else.
Then the air changed.
Not cold. Not hot.
Just ... alert.
Darius felt it in the way the hair on his arms lifted, the way the quiet became slightly too organized.
Amina straightened, her expression turning inward as if she was listening to something behind the walls.
“They’re here,” she said softly.
Darius set his mug down. “The fleet?”
“The flagship,” she corrected. “Only the flagship.”
He frowned. “Why not the whole—”
“Because of law,” she said. “And because of philosophy.”
He waited.
Amina looked at him—really looked, the way she did when she wanted her truth to land clean.
“Galactic law is simple,” she said. “You leave young civilizations alone. You don’t reveal the wider galaxy until they reach it on their own.”
Darius nodded once. That made sense. It even sounded ... decent.
“And my people,” she continued, “took that law and made it a religion of restraint.”
“What do you mean?”
She lifted her hand slightly, palm up. “Shroud technology.”
Darius blinked. “Cloaking.”
“Not cloaking,” she corrected gently. “Not hiding behind tricks.”
“Then what?”
“Hiding behind principle,” she said. “Shroud is not just light-bending. It’s signal discipline. Mass masking. Thermal suppression. Gravitic smoothing. Even—” she paused, searching for the right human translation “—the refusal to disturb patterns that don’t belong to you.”
Darius stared at her.
“You can hide a ship in plain space.”
“Yes.”
“And Earth hasn’t noticed because—”
“Because we never let you notice,” she said. Not arrogantly. Just plainly. “To be seen is to interfere. To interfere is to shape. And shaping a young world without consent is ... violence.”
That word hit him harder than any threat would have.
He understood it.
Amina’s voice softened.
“My people were hunted because of it,” she said. “Because shroud makes you unfindable. And what cannot be found cannot be controlled.”
Darius’s jaw tightened. “So the enemy wanted your tech.”
“They wanted our choice,” she replied. “To vanish. To refuse their terms.”
Darius leaned back against the counter, absorbing.
“So how does the flagship get us,” he asked, “without ... being seen?”
Amina’s eyes flicked briefly toward the living room window.
“It doesn’t come here,” she said. “Not in any way your sky could witness. It opens a corridor. A doorway inside the shroud. Like stepping through a shadow that was already here.”
Darius’s instincts did not like that.
But his instincts also recognized precision.
“And my family?” he asked.
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