The Becoming Protocol

*some words in this story have been adapted into their closest human equivalent for clarity

Thalën's hands wouldn't stop moving. He kept smoothing the fabric of his selk, then his hair, then back to the fabric again. The waiting room was sterile—pale walls, soft ambient hum—but it felt like it was closing in.

His assistant, Kael, stood near the entrance reviewing the prepared statement. "You're doing that thing again," Kael said without looking up.

"What thing?"

"The hands. You do it every time."

Thalën dropped his arms. "I hate these."

"You're the Steward of the Becoming Protocol. You're supposed to hate them a little." Kael glanced over, half-smiling. "Makes you seem human."

The word landed wrong. Thalën turned away, moving toward the observation window that overlooked the amphitheater filling below. Rows and rows of chroniclers, their sensors glinting under the pale light.

"How many today?" Kael asked, scanning the numbers on his display.

"1,400,392," Thalën said quietly. "In just this cycle."

"That's... good. That's progress."

Progress. That's what they called it when another 1.4 million people left their dying orb behind to become something else entirely.

Their orb was dying. Had been for longer than anyone wanted to admit. The systems that sustained them—atmospheric processors, substrate regenerators, the whole intricate web of technology keeping billions alive—were collapsing in cascading failures. There was no fixing it. They'd tried everything across countless measurement cycles. So now they were leaving.

Becoming human.

Moving to Earth and covertly integrating themselves into a population that had no idea what was happening. 1.4 million more Veyrs today, shedding everything they were, stepping into new bodies, new lives among people who would never suspect. It was survival disguised as something else entirely. But it was necessary. It was also something Thalën couldn't quite face directly.

****

Thalën lowered the statement onto the console before him. The prepared words were finished. Now came the part he hated most.

He lifted his gaze to the tiers of waiting faces.

“The floor will receive inquiry.”

For half a breath, no one moved. Then a signal glowed from the second tier.

Thalën nodded.

A chronicler rose. Her outer limbs folded neatly against her sides.

“Steward Thalën, the Authority has confirmed the first leadership wave is already established on Earth. Can you clarify why leadership was transferred before the wider population?”

Thalën had expected that one. It was written somewhere in Kael’s briefing notes.

“Continuity,” he said. “The receiving world requires structure. Our first wave was selected to prepare channels, secure identities, and ensure that later arrivals do not enter without guidance.”

“And the remaining leadership here?”

“Still serves.”

A murmur moved through the chamber.

Another signal lit up, this time from the lower tier.

“Is it true the next waves will prioritise the able-bodied and high-functioning sectors?”

Thalën’s throat tightened slightly. “The sequence prioritises those most capable of immediate adaptation.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer available.”

The chamber went still.

The chronicler did not sit. “There are claims that the vulnerable are being kept behind. The unintegrated. The incompatible. The ones whose minds do not map cleanly into human form. Is the Becoming Protocol selecting against them?”

Thalën’s fingers pressed against the edge of the console.

“The Protocol does not discard life,” he said.

“But it ranks it.”

That landed harder than he wanted it to.

From somewhere above, another signal pulsed.

“What of the dissenters outside the conversion halls? They have been recorded urging Veyrs to refuse transfer. Some have called the Protocol a second extinction. Others have accused the Authority of abandoning Veyra before it is dead.”

Thalën did not look toward the rear of the chamber. He knew, without knowing how, that she was there.

“The Authority recognises dissent,” he said. “No Veyr is compelled to undergo transformation.”

“But those who refuse will remain on a failing orb.”

“Yes.”

The word left him too plainly.

A sound passed through the chamber. Not shock exactly. Something colder.

The chronicler leaned forward. “Then is refusal truly a choice?”

Thalën held the silence for one breath too long.

“Choice does not become false because its consequences are unbearable.”

A final signal rose from the back.

Thalën’s eyes turned toward the chronicler who had raised it, and saw the figure seated beside him.

There she was.

Still as a blade in the last row. No chronicler badge. No clearance light. No sign she belonged there at all.

But of course, she had found a way in.

For a moment, Thalën forgot the chamber.

The raised signals blurred in the tiers above her. Chroniclers were still waiting, still glowing for recognition. But all he could see was her face at the back of the room.

Kael shifted near the side entrance.

Thalën looked down at the console. Three more approved questions remained. Then a safe closing statement waited beneath his palm.

He forced himself to lift his head.

No. He couldn’t do it.

“The Authority will issue the full transfer sequence before the next cycle,” he said. “Further inquiries will be received through the appointed channels.”

A low swell of protest moved through the chamber.

Thalën stepped away before anyone could rise.

****

Ahead of him, the corridor opened long and white and almost empty.

Kael caught up at his shoulder. “That was early.”

Thalën kept walking. “It was enough.”

“You saw someone.”

Thalën said nothing.

Kael’s pace slowed, but he didn’t press. He knew better. Everyone around Thalën knew better now. They had all learned how to leave silence alone.

At the end of the corridor, the air thinned into the colder passage that led outside the chamber’s rear wing. The sound of the press fell away behind sealed doors. For a few steps, there was only the hum of the failing systems beneath the floor.

Then a voice came from the shadowed archway ahead.

“You still leave before the hard questions.”

Thalën stopped.

He didn’t need to turn toward her to know who it was.

The chamber doors sealed behind him with a soft compression of air, cutting off the swell of reporters’ voices.

He didn’t turn immediately.

“Sair.”

His voice came out lower than he intended.

She stepped from the archway as if she had been part of the dark all along. Her covering was plain, the kind worn by those who slept outside the conversion halls and shouted at the processions until their voices gave out. But there was nothing ragged about her. She looked sharp. Focused.

“I’m surprised you remember my name,” she said.

“I remember more than you think.”

“No,” she said. “You remember what is convenient.”

Thalën turned then.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved.

She was still Sair. Older, yes. Harder around the eyes. But still carrying that same unbearable certainty. The same look that used to make him feel seen before it started making him feel judged.

Kael stood a few paces behind him.

Thalën glanced back. “Leave us.”

Kael hesitated.

“Now.”

The assistant bowed slightly and moved away.

Sair watched him go. “You have escorts now.”

“I have responsibilities.”

“You have handlers.”

Thalën’s jaw tightened. “What do you want?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “That’s what I came to see. Whether there was enough of you left to want anything beyond what they place in your mouth.”

“I do not have time for this.”

“You never do. Not for questions or warnings. Not for the Veyrs being counted like cargo.”

His eyes flashed. “Careful.”

“Why? Will the Steward have me atomised?”

“If you wanted to be atomised, you would have let the Authority find you before now.”

That caught her for half a breath.

She then reached beneath the fold of her covering and took out a small black shard. It was no longer than one of Thalën’s fingers, smooth on every side, without markings. Old technology. Deliberately untraceable.

Thalën looked at it, then back at her.

“No.”

“You haven’t heard what it is.”

“I know what it is. Trouble.”

“It’s evidence.”

“It’s stolen.”

“It’s true!”

He almost laughed. “From your cells? From those little basement councils where everyone whispers that the Authority is lying because it makes the lot of you feel brave?”

Sair stepped closer.

“Don't do that," she said in an air of disappointment.

“Do what?”

“Speak like them.”

The words struck more sharply than he expected.

Thalën looked away first.

Sair held the shard between them. “The first waves are failing.”

He stilled.

The hum beneath the floor seemed to grow louder.

“That’s not true,” he said.

“You didn’t ask what kind of failing.”

“Because it’s not true.”

“They’re aging.”

Thalën’s mouth opened, then closed.

Sair continued, quieter now. “Not adapting. Not settling in. Aging. Fast enough that their human bodies are burning through time like fuel.”

“There are adjustment periods.”

“Is that what they called it?”

“The human form is biologically primitive. The transition was always going to require stabilisation.”

“Some are losing memory.”

Thalën’s face changed before he could stop it.

Sair saw it.

“Yeah,” she said. “That part reached you.”

“No.”

“They remember the Veyrs name. The Veyrs way. But not Veyra. Not us. Not the work they were sent to do.”

Thalën shook his head. “Early instability. That’s all. A flaw in calibration.”

“A flaw in survival is called death, Thalën.”

He looked at her sharply.

She had not said his title. Not once.

“The Authority said the mind would remain whole,” he said. “That was the point. We keep what we are. Our knowledge, our science, our history. We use it to repair Earth before Earth destroys itself.”

“Listen to yourself.”

“I am listening.”

“No, you’re repeating.” Her voice rose, then steadied. “You stand in front of the chamber and tell them the same beautiful lie. Earth is young. Earth is foolish. Earth has climate collapse, wars over things we solved billions of cycles ago. And we, the great Veyrs, will arrive and fix it all.”

“That's not arrogance. That's fact.”

“It was fact when we still arrived as ourselves.”

Thalën took a step toward her. “We do arrive as ourselves.”

“Are you speaking from experience? We arrive in bodies that break. In...in lives that belong to the dead.”

The word sat between them.

Dead.

Neither of them pretended not to know what the Becoming Protocol required. There were no empty lives waiting on Earth. A Veyr arrival meant a human disappearance. Someone seeming not quite themselves until everyone around them stopped noticing. Slow extinction.

Thalën had built speeches around that horror until the horror became administrative.

“You knew what this was,” he said.

“I knew what they admitted.”

“And now?”

“Now I know they admitted the kinder part.”

For the first time, Thalën looked at the shard properly.

Sair held it out again.

“Names,” she said. “Records. Decay reports from the first arrivals. Suppressed comms. They aren’t fixing Earth, Thalën. They’re coming to grips with how quickly this new orb can ruin us.”

“Or your source wants you to believe that.”

“My source is in the Continuance Office.”

He looked at her.

She gave him a small, bitter smile. “Yes. Some of your polished believers still know how to be afraid.”

Thalën’s hand moved, then stopped before touching the shard.

“If this were real, it would have come through review.”

“It did. Then it disappeared.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know more than you because I’m not paid to stop looking.”

That one cut.

Thalën’s voice hardened. “You think this is payment?”

“I think you became very good at calling compromise by other names.”

His control wavered.

“My mother was dying.”

The words tore out of him before he could refine them.

Sair went still.

Thalën’s chest rose once, hard.

“My mother was dying,” he said, his voice breaking into anger. “I needed help, Sair. Real help. Not speeches on the transitway or protests. The Authority offered me work, and that work gave her care. It gave her time!”

He stepped closer, the years between them suddenly raw.

“So what was I supposed to do? Refuse it? Stand outside with you and the Remainers and watch the only person I had left die because I wanted to stay morally clean?”

Her face shifted, not softening exactly, but something moved beneath the anger.

“I wanted you not to disappear with her.”

He looked away.

For a moment, the corridor felt too narrow for both of them and all that lay between them. The version of him who had once believed Sair was difficult because she cared too much, not because she wanted to win.

“She is gone,” Sair said quietly.

Thalën didn’t answer.

“And still they own you.”

That brought his eyes back to hers.

“They do not own me.”

“No?” She glanced toward the sealed chamber doors. “Then say one true thing in there.”

“I say what keeps order.”

“You say what keeps them moving.”

“Because if they stop moving, they die here.”

“And if they go, they die there. Or worse, they live long enough to become the very thing they destroyed.”

Thalën shook his head. “Again. You don’t know that.”

“I know enough.”

“No, you know fragments. You have always done this. You find a crack and call the whole structure rotten.”

“And you find a title and call the cage a home.”

His hand clenched at his side.

Sair saw that too. She always saw too much.

She pressed the shard into his palm.

This time, he took it.

The material was cold, heavier than it looked.

“There’s something else inside,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Not Veyr records.”

Thalën frowned.

“A human life,” she said. “One of the selected.”

He stared incredulously at her.

Sair’s voice dropped. “I wanted you to see what one of your numbers looks like when it has a name.”

Thalën’s fingers tightened around the shard.

“Why bring this to me?”

“Because you still have access.”

“And if I report you?”

“Then I was wrong.”

She stepped back into the dim light of the archway.

“Sair…”

She paused, but didn’t turn fully.

“What do you expect me to do?”

For the first time since she appeared, she looked tired.

“I expect you to do what you always do,” she said. “Find a reason to obey.”

Then she was gone, swallowed by the rear passage before he could answer.

Thalën stood alone in the corridor, the shard burning cold in his hand.

Behind him, the chamber had gone quiet.

The reporters had left, their voices reduced to distant fragments beyond the sealed doors.

Ahead, the passage stretched empty and pale, leading back into the heart of the Authority.

For the first time that cycle, Thalën was not sure which way felt less like escape.

****

The departure pod was quieter than Thalën expected.

Just rows of Veyrs, already in human form, seated beneath the pale boarding lights. Each held nothing but the mind they had been promised would be enough.

Thalën sat among them with his hands still, staring down at his fingers.

Only ten.

The sight unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. This face, these hands, this body, all of it belonged to someone on Earth before it belonged to him. The same was true for every human face in the pod. Every blinking eye.

A Veyrs two seats away kept touching her cheek, as if expecting to find the old ridges of her Veyr form beneath the skin.

“It feels too soft,” she whispered to no one in particular.

Thalën lowered his hand to his side, where the data drive pressed cold beneath his covering. By Veyr standards, it was crude, built that way on purpose. Simple enough for Earth’s machines to open, but vast enough to hold the truth.

He had filled it before dawn.

Everything the Authority had buried was there. The decay reports. The memory-loss files. The names of failed arrivals. The human life Sair had made him watch. And beyond that, Veyra itself. Its history, its systems, its maps, its lies, its Authority records, its dying truth. If the Becoming stripped him clean, if Earth took his mind and softened it into something obedient, he would still have this. A way back to the truth.

Just then, the pod doors opened.

Two Authority guards entered in their native forms, guiding three humans between them.

No. Not humans. Veyrs, already changed.

Thin bands of light circled their wrists.

Thalën gasped.

He stood before he could think better of it.

“Why are they restrained?”

One of the guards turned toward him; his voice came out sharp through the translator field.

“Sit.”

“These are transfer passengers,” Thalën said, though his voice had already lost some of its force. “If they’re here, they’ve chosen transfer.”

“Sit down, Steward.”

The title landed like an insult.

Around him, no one moved.

Thalën sat.

The third prisoner was seated directly across from him.

Thalën searched her face for answers, but the face was human now. Strange. Dark eyes, a bruised mouth, and wrists glowing under restraint.

She tilted her head, just slightly, and gave him the faintest bitter smile.

“You still ask the right questions too late,” she said.

Thalën went cold.

The pod lights shifted from pale to white.

His mind rejected her first. Then the body. Then the voice.

A sound began somewhere beyond the glass. The rising hum of the next sequence.

A voice filled the chamber.

“Final departure engaged. Earth trajectory confirmed. All transfer vessels prepare for planetary crossing.”

The words should have mattered. Earth. Departure. Crossing.

But all he could see was the woman across from him wearing a life that was not hers.

“What are you doing—”

Sair smiled then, faint and terrible, like she had been waiting for this exact moment to arrive.

“Answering the questions you’re too afraid to ask.”