For the first time since being abducted, things had settled into something resembling normal. Well, as normal as life could be when you were stuck on an alien ship working off a debt you didn’t entirely understand. My initial escape attempt had caused more damage than I realized, and now I owed these weirdos a fortune in repairs. That meant I had to pull my weight if I ever wanted to see Earth again.

  At least the crew had started treating me like something other than a dangerous anomaly. Vrixibalt still hovered over me, eager to study whatever it was that made me "special," but I’d learned how to sidestep his more invasive experiments. Meanwhile, the others had grudgingly accepted me as part of their dysfunctional little team.

  That didn’t mean things were easy.

  The biggest hurdle was communication. My ability to understand their language hadn’t been instant—it was a slow, frustrating process that seemed to accelerate when I wasn’t thinking about it. At first, everything was gibberish, but over time, my brain started filling in the gaps. The ship’s consoles and displays, which had once been unreadable, started making more sense, too. Vrixibalt theorized that prolonged exposure to the ship’s systems was influencing my cognitive functions. Something about "passive neuro-resonance adaptation."

  "Like a translator chip?" I asked.

  Vrixibalt’s frills twitched. "No, no, no. If it were that simple, you would have instantly understood everything. Instead, your mind is adjusting naturally, which is much more fascinating."

  "Yeah, real fascinating," I muttered. "You’re saying the ship is teaching me how to read?"

  "Not just the ship," Vrixibalt corrected. "Everything around you. The technology, the ambient energy fields—your species appears uniquely suited to subconscious adaptation."

  "Right. So basically, I’m absorbing information without realizing it."

  "Precisely!" Vrixibalt clapped his hands, looking far too pleased with himself. "And with time, you may achieve full fluency without direct instruction. Fascinating!"

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  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The idea that my brain was passively reprogramming itself was unsettling, but at least it meant I wasn’t completely useless anymore.

  Since I wasn’t about to sit around and let them experiment on me all day, I started picking up jobs around the ship. The tasks were menial at first—moving cargo, cleaning up, basic maintenance—but even that gave me insight into how things worked.

  One of the engineers, a gruff, four-armed alien named Krethik, begrudgingly admitted I had a knack for fixing things.

  "You don’t understand the machines," he grumbled, watching as I tightened a loose panel. "But you got instincts. That’s rare."

  "Yeah, well, back home, we call it ‘winging it,’" I said, securing the last bolt.

  He snorted. "Keep winging it. Maybe you’ll pay off that debt before you die."

  Encouraging.

  Of course, Vrixibalt was still fixated on what made me different. He was convinced my "luck" wasn’t just coincidence, and he was determined to prove it.

  "Probability does not function normally around you," he insisted, pulling up data from my previous encounters. "Your survival, your ability to influence outcomes—it all defies standard models."

  "So what, you think I’m magic?"

  "Not magic," he said, exasperated. "Something else. Something… unknown."

  I had no idea how to respond to that. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t special. Just a guy trying not to die in space. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had been getting lucky in ways that didn’t entirely make sense. Doors that should have been locked just happened to be open. Systems that were broken suddenly started working when I needed them. Even the ship itself—Vrixibalt had admitted that it should have ejected me as a security threat, yet for some reason, it hadn’t.

  That was… unsettling.

  As I worked alongside the crew, I started to see a path forward. My debt wasn’t just a burden—it was an opportunity. If I kept proving myself useful, maybe they’d start seeing me as more than just a walking anomaly. Maybe I could negotiate my way home instead of just waiting for them to dump me back on Earth.

  But deep down, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.

  The universe had already thrown me too many curveballs.

  And something told me it wasn’t done yet.