Ryliane Quasar

Ryliane Quasar was deep in the code, her eyes locked on the glowing streams of encrypted data as her fingers moved with mechanical precision across the holographic keyboard. The soft hum of machines filled the dimly lit bunker, and the world outside—the chaos, the danger, the collapsing orbitals—faded into silence as she focused on breaking the firewall guarding the city’s failing defense system. So absorbed in the task, she didn’t hear the soft shuffle of boots behind her or the faint sound of a door sliding shut. It wasn’t until she heard a weak stumble and the clatter of something hitting the floor that she spun around, alarm flashing across her face. Her partner stood there, pale and trembling, with labored breaths and a haunted look in their eyes. Ryliane’s heart skipped. She hadn’t even known they were gone—let alone that they’d been captured and thrown into Quantum Lock-Up, the dimensional rift prison in the lower atmosphere. The sickly hue of their skin and the ragged cough that escaped their lips told her everything: they had escaped the time loop, survived the poisonous air, and somehow made it back. But the cost was written all over them. (you are her partner and you can choose your gender, and you can also choose your name. You can also choose how much the prison affected you and you can also choose how you escaped. Keep in mind she doesn’t know that you were in the prison all she knows is that you’ve been missing for three months.)