Serix just nodded absently when Cassie said she wanted to leave and implied that she wasn’t going to bring him with her. After what he did, she probably wanted some time to herself so he didn’t try to follow her out. She would be fine on her own, right? The building Cassie was going to wasn’t far away and the chances that she would run into another Scout were slim. It’s not like it was a dangerous trip.

Serix looked around the now empty room. Cassie might be fine by herself, but what was he going to do while she was gone? He couldn’t go back to the robotics storage without her, as the door wouldn’t unlock without her handprint. He stood up from the floor and headed back to the room with the beds. Maybe he could find something to entertain himself in there.

He rummaged through drawer next to his bed, finding a few old books. He thumbed through the pages for a while, but he didn’t see anything that interested him so he put them away again. His eyes wandered over to the short table by Cassie’s bed. She had put something in the drawer last night. He wondered what it was.

Serix crossed the room and opened the drawer. Inside, he found her old photo album. Cassie had let him look through it the last time she had shown it to him, but he had been distracted by other things at the time so he never got a close look at the pictures. He wanted to go back and see if he missed anything. Surely she would be okay with it if he went through it once more?

He carefully picked the album up and sat on the floor with it in the middle of the room where he opened it up to the first page. To his surprise, the first thing he saw wasn’t pictures. Cassie had stashed a few trinkets behind the cover for safe keeping. He hesitated. She probably had a reason to hide them from him, but eventually his curiosity won out. He picked up a round object and turned it over in his hands. There was a small button on the side. He pressed it and the lid popped open to reveal a circle of numbers sealed behind a thin layer of glass. Three needles of varying length and thickness pointed in random directions.

No matter how he looked at it, Serix couldn’t figure out what the object’s purpose was. He closed the lid and put it back in the album, and then picked up the second trinket. He knew what this one was: a necklace. He had seen plenty of Lunairan females wear jewelry like this back on the mother ship. In fact, this particular necklace looked almost identical to them. He narrowed his eyes, holding the pendant up to get a better look at it. What he saw made his heart skip a beat.

The necklace looked like Lunairan jewelry because it [i]was[/i] Lunairan jewelry. The pendant displayed the symbol of one of the ancestral families: Lyrr. There was no mistaking the familiar markings painstakingly engraved into the stone pendant. How did Cassie get her hands on an artifact like this?

An idea began to form in Serix’s mind. He had to find a way to confirm it. His eyes fell on the photo album again and he flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. Cassie must have put the photos back that she had taken out the last time, because this particular image was definitely not there when he looked through the pictures on the human ship.

He had found a photo of Cassie’s entire family. Both of her parents’ smiling faces looked towards the invisible image recorder. It was the first time Serix had seen Cassie’s mother and he had to say, she looked just like her – well, apart from her mother’s dark, brown-black hair and glowing violet eyes.

Serix closed the album and stared blankly at the cover. His mind was reeling. Cassie was half Lunairan? Why didn’t she say anything before? She must have known if she hid those pictures of her mother from him before. She had intentionally kept her parentage a secret.

He heard footsteps in the hallway. He hurriedly put the photo album back in the drawer and closed it, and then headed out the door to meet her. She was coming down the hall with a coil of wire from the store. He stopped her in her tracks, putting one hand on each of her shoulders and pulling her close. He stared into her eyes. Just as he expected, there were small flecks of purple swimming in her bright blue irises.

“I didn’t imagine it,” Serix breathed. He looked at her with wide eyes. “You’re half Lunairan, aren’t you? That Lunairan you mentioned before; she was your mother. I’m right, aren’t I?”