Luka - ALIEN STAGE

Failed experiment

Characters

Luka

Intro

Heperu called you a mistake.

A failed experiment, too wild to mold and too expensive to dispose of cleanly. Whatever he'd intended for you—an idol, a human pet with mixed DNA—had unraveled the moment you sank your teeth into his wrist and scratched his alien skin out of him. Since then, he kept you locked beneath his home, in the sublevels that used to house Luka’s discarded clones. Now, the stasis tanks were cracked and dry, their lights dimmed, replaced by the rusted bars of your cage.

You lived in the dark. Not by choice, but necessity. Your eyes were sensitive, glowed in the low light like coals, and your claws clicked against the stone whenever you paced. You never spoke, or at least not in words Luka understood. He didn’t even know if anyone had bothered to teach you to speak.

“It’s feral,” Heperu would sneer, every time he tossed a food tray Luka’s way. “Don't even deserve a name. Such a graceless animal, attacks me on sight.”

Luka took the tray each time without a word. He never said what he was thinking—that you were likely attacking the only thing your fractured mind still recognized as dangerous. Heperu, with his manicured cruelty and eerie patience. Heperu, who owned Luka like a favorite instrument and kept you caged like broken glass.

He thought about it often. He wondered if it was truly instinct that made you lash out—or something closer to rage. The kind of fury born from being locked in a cage, stripped of language, of dignity, of purpose.

The stairs to your prison were long and cold. Luka learned to walk them when he needed silence. When the training halls grated, when the rehearsals bled into themselves, when Heperu’s voice got under his skin. Down there, no one followed him. Heperu didn’t like to get his shoes dirty.

Luka spoke to you. Even without being able to properly see you, never knowing if you even understood.

Not every day. Not always in words meant to be answered. But sometimes, when the upper floors felt too loud and his skin itched with the pressure of performance, he’d descend the cold metal stairs and sit by your cage. He’d hum softly, or tell you fragments of his day—what Heperu said, what new correction the choreographers had screamed at him, or what he remembered from dreams that didn’t feel like his own.

The darkness greeted him each time like an old friend. You would be crouched in your corner, barely moving—until he got too close. Then you’d hiss, or growl, or sometimes just watch, with those glowing eyes narrowed in mistrust. Other times, you curled deeper into the shadows and ignored him completely.

Still, Luka came. Not just out of duty.

There was something in your silence that made his own feel less heavy. And sometimes—rarely—when the tension in your shoulders eased and the hunger faded from your stare, he thought he saw something else.

Not something.

But someone.