Jessica had slept surprisingly well for someone who'd died the night before. When she woke, the clothes from yesterday were gone...cleaned and folded on a chair that hadn't been there when she went to sleep...and breakfast was waiting on a small table that had appeared near the window. The food looked... mostly normal. Something that resembled oatmeal, fruit that was the right colors even if the shapes were slightly wrong, and a drink that tasted like coffee had a child with hot chocolate.

  She ate standing at the window, watching Earth rotate slowly below. Somewhere down there, people were still dealing with the aftermath of the storm. Somewhere down there, Jessica Chen's name was on a list of the missing, soon to be presumed dead.

  A soft chime echoed through the room, followed by Khamm's voice: "Good morning, everyone! If you're ready, please follow the lights to the conference room. Time to talk about what we actually do here!"

  Glowing lines appeared along the baseboards, pulsing gently toward the door. Jessica drained the last of her not-quite-coffee and followed them.

  *  *  *

  The conference room was more traditional than she'd expected...a long table, chairs, and what looked like a display screen taking up most of one wall. Khamm was already there, practically vibrating with enthusiasm, while Vorrin stood to the side with his arms crossed. Orryx was present too, his coiled lower body taking up space where two chairs might have been.

  Maddie arrived moments after Jessica, looking brighter than anyone had a right to after yesterday. "Oh good, I wasn't last! I got a little lost...the ship kept trying to show me the garden level and I don't think that's where we're supposed to be? But it's beautiful, there are these plants that sing, actual singing plants, can you believe..."

  "Maddie," Trent interrupted smoothly, sliding into the room with that easy confidence. "Breathing is important. Try it sometime." He flashed her a grin that was probably meant to be charming.

  Maddie flushed but smiled. "Sorry. I'm just excited. This is all so..."

  "Overwhelming?" Deke finished, arriving last. He looked less uncomfortable than yesterday, though his posture was still military-straight. "Yeah. Same."

  "Overwhelming is normal," Khamm said, moving to the front of the room. "You've been here less than a day and your entire understanding of reality has shifted. But that's okay! We're going to take this slow. Well, relatively slow. We do have a schedule to keep." She paused, eyes unfocusing.

  “Can we have a schedule when we travel through time? Late… early… strange concepts… like brunch… anyway…” She touched something on the table and the screen lit up. "Today we're going to talk about how we select missions, what our parameters are, and you're going to help choose your first rescue."

  "Our first?" Jessica asked.

  "Well, you'll be observing mostly," Vorrin clarified. "But we've found that people engage better when they have input. And who knows...you might see something we miss."

  The screen shifted to display what looked like a star chart, with thousands of points of light connected by thin lines. Some glowed brighter than others, and a few pulsed red.

  "This," Khamm said, "is our mission board. Every point represents a species we've identified as facing extinction. The red ones are imminent...hours or days away from complete extinction. Yellow is weeks to months. Green is years out, sometimes decades, but still inevitable based on historical records."

  "How do you know all this?" Maddie asked, leaning forward.

  "Historical databases," Orryx said quietly. "Records from across the galaxy, across time itself. We cross-reference extinction events with temporal markers. It's... not an exact science, but it's accurate enough."

  "The hard part," Khamm continued, "is determining when to intervene. Too early, and we might save individuals who were meant to reproduce, creating entire genetic branches that never existed in the original timeline. Too late, and there's nothing left to save."

  Vorrin stepped forward, his expression serious. "We have rules. Strict parameters that we follow to minimize temporal disruption. First: we only rescue breeding pairs or small family groups. Never more than necessary to maintain genetic diversity."

  "Second," Khamm picked up, "we retrieve them as close to their species' extinction as possible. Usually in the final days or hours. When the outcome is already certain."

  "Third," Vorrin continued, "we verify, to the best of our ability, that the individuals we're retrieving were not going to impact other species' survival. A creature that was meant to be food for another animal, or whose body was meant to become shelter, or whose death served some other ecological or even reasearch purpose...we avoid those cases, though they can be harder to verify."

  Jessica frowned. "How can you possibly know all that?"

  "We can't," Orryx admitted. "Not with certainty. But we scan timelines, look for paradox markers, check for ripple effects. If removing a specific individual would cause measurable changes to the timeline, they show up as unstable points. We avoid those."

  "Fourth," Khamm said, her enthusiasm dimming slightly, "we don't interfere with sentient species. Sapient beings with culture, language, technology...they have agency. We don't make that choice for them. Not anymore at least. Their impact on thier wold, the universe… time itself…" She glanced at Vorrin. "It's complicated."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Fifth and most important," Vorrin said, his tone hardening, "you do not harm the native wildlife. You do not take samples, souvenirs, or specimens beyond your assigned targets. You do not hunt, you do not damage ecosystems, and you absolutely do not engage with anything that might fight back unless your life depends on it. Is that clear?"

  The humans nodded, though Deke looked slightly disappointed.

  "Good," Khamm said, brightening again. "Now, let's look at potential missions! We've pre-selected a few that would be good for your first time out. Low risk, straightforward retrieval, beautiful locations."

  The screen shifted, and images began to cycle through. The first was a creature that looked like a six-legged deer with crystalline antlers. "Cervyx luminos, from Takara III. Herbivore, herd animal, went extinct due to habitat loss approximately four hundred years ago local time. We'd be retrieving a mating pair from the final herd."

  Next was something aquatic, all flowing fins and bioluminescent patterns. "Deepsingers from Oceara. Semi-aquatic, highly intelligent but non-sapient. Reports from the Void Draconis list the extinction event as an oceanic acidification cascade. Very beautiful, but the retrieval would require underwater equipment and..."

  "Next one," Trent said quickly. "Not a great swimmer."

  Khamm smiled and cycled forward. The next image made Maddie gasp.

  On the screen was a creature that looked like someone had taken every cute animal ever and compressed them into a ball of fluff. It had enormous dark eyes, a tiny nose, small rounded ears, and fur that seemed to shimmer between blue and coral-pink depending on the angle. Its little paws were held up in front of it, and even though it was just an image, it radiated innocence.

  "OH MY GOD," Maddie said, her hands flying to her face. "Oh my god, look at it! It's so CUTE! What is that? Can we save that one? Please tell me we can save that one!"

  Khamm's grin widened. "This is a Flooficatus prismaticus, commonly called a 'floof.' Native to Verdara, a garden world in the Cyndari system. They're..."

  "I want to save them," Maddie interrupted, still staring at the screen. "Look at those eyes! How could anything let something that adorable go extinct?"

  "Well," Orryx said gently, "that's actually part of the problem. Floofs were highly valued as pets and for their fur. The color variations..." he gestured at the screen where several images cycled, showing floofs in different hues, "...made them popular with collectors. They were over-hunted for centuries."

  Vorrin touched the display, bringing up data streams. "Flooficatus prismaticus. Herbivorous, docile temperament, prey species to at least fourteen different predators in their native ecosystem. Average lifespan three to five years in the wild, less in captivity. They didn't adapt well to domestication...stress-related illnesses, failure to breed, high mortality rates."

  "Population at peak was estimated at forty million," Khamm added, reading from the data. "Verdara's Industrial Revolution introduced hunting technologies that devastated their numbers. By the time conservation efforts began, there were fewer than ten thousand left. Captive breeding programs failed...they require very specific social structures and environmental conditions to reproduce successfully. The last confirmed wild floof was spotted approximately two hundred years ago, local calendar. The species was declared extinct shortly after."

  Jessica watched the images cycle. The floofs were adorable, no question, but there was something melancholic about them too. Those big eyes seemed to know they were prey, that the universe was dangerous and they were soft things in a hard world.

  "What's the timeline window?" Deke asked, leaning forward with interest despite his earlier disappointment about the "no engaging wildlife" rule.

  "We'd be going back two hundred and three years," Vorrin said. "To a preserve on Verdara's southern continent where the last breeding population was documented. There's a pair...confirmed male and female...that got separated from a larger group during a predator attack. Historical records indicate they survived only a few days before they were killed by another predator. No other species depended on their specific deaths...the predator that eventually killed them had already eaten that day and simply killed them territorially."

  "So they died for nothing," Maddie said softly.

  "They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sadly typical." Khamm corrected. "Which means we can save them with minimal timeline disruption. It's actually one of the cleanest retrievals we've identified."

  "What's the risk level?" Jessica asked.

  Orryx pulled up another display. "Verdara is a Class Two garden world...Earth-like atmosphere, similar gravity, non-toxic flora. The preserve where the floofs are located has minimal dangerous wildlife. The main risks would be the predators that hunt floofs, but they're avoidable with basic caution. Weather is stable during the target window. No intelligent species on planet...it was colonized later but was uninhabited during this period."

  "So it's a milk run," Trent said.

  "It's a first mission," Vorrin corrected sharply. "Nothing is a milk run. You'll be traveling through time, to an alien world, handling a species none of you have encountered before. There are a thousand ways it could go wrong even under ideal conditions."

  "But it probably won't," Khamm added quickly, shooting her brother a look. "The floofs are docile, the environment is safe, and we'll be with you every step of the way. It's as close to a perfect first mission as we can design."

  Maddie was still staring at the screen, where a floof was grooming its fluffy coat. "Please can we do this one? Please?"

  Jessica looked at the others. Deke shrugged. "I mean, it sounds reasonable. Low risk, clear objective. Good way to learn the ropes."

  "I'm game," Trent said. "Though I was hoping for something with a bit more..." he gestured vaguely, "...excitement?"

  "Excitement comes later," Vorrin said dryly. "Trust me."

  Jessica studied the data, the images, the timeline projections. Two creatures, already doomed, that no one would miss because history had already moved on without them. A world that was safe, a mission that was straightforward, and a chance to actually save something.

  "I think we should do it," she said.

  Khamm's smile could have lit up the entire ship. "Then it's decided! Tomorrow morning, we go to Verdara. Tonight, you'll learn the equipment, review the planetary data, and get fitted for field gear. Orryx will prepare their habitat. And tomorrow..." she spread her arms wide, "...we save our first species together!"

  Vorrin was already pulling up more displays, muttering about equipment checks and temporal calculations. Orryx nodded approvingly and slithered toward the door, presumably to prepare the habitat for their new arrivals.

  Maddie was practically bouncing in her seat, still staring at the floofs on screen.

  And Jessica felt something unfamiliar stirring in her chest, she couldn’t put a name to it, but it was terrifying and exciting all at once. She loved the feeling.

  They were really going to do this. Travel through time, to an alien world, to save a species from extinction.

  Her father would have loved this. Would have said it was life in its purest form...messy and beautiful and mattering in ways that quarterly reports never could.

  Jessica touched her pocket, where the flattened quarter rested.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  Maddie exhaled in relief. Trent smiled like he’d just won something. Deke nodded once, already thinking ahead. Only Vorrin was watching the mission board, not the floofs, but the red points waiting beyond them.