“Sir, sir,” said the general manager. “Thank goodness I’ve found you!”

  “Hm?” Vertan started confusedly. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”

  “Well, not quite, but I suspect it was still important,” the manager says in a more hushed tone. “Do you have a bit of time?”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world while we’re here,” answered Vertan. “By the way, I’m sorry, but what was your name again? I haven’t seen you in a minute.”

  “I go by Bertii,” says the general manager named Bertii. He looks in the direction of the city for a moment before continuing on his walk back to his office.

  Stepping into his office, he ushered Vertan in, and quickly closed the blinds to all of the windows, and locked the doors. Vertan eyes Bertii suspiciously for a moment, and keeps a hand over his handgun hidden beneath his clothes.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t try anything funny,” continues Bertii as he offers Vertan a seat. “But there is something you might have to worry about.”

  “Well then, what is it?” asks Vertan.

  “Just earlier today, I got a knock at my door to a bunch of MNS agents outside,” says Bertii. “They said they were part of an organized search, and asked me if I knew anything about the whereabouts of any suspicious vessels that came in recently, as well as an individual that matches all your physical descriptions! Plus the ‘anomalous demon’, but I don’t know about that. Not to mention, there was this very scary looking lady I saw. Might be their superior, who knows. Purple skin, four arms, four eyes. I was sweating my balls off.”

  Vertan’s heart skipped a beat for a moment underneath his stoic exterior as he processed the information.

  “I mean, I suspect they might be looking for you!” Bertii continues. “And having dealt with similar people before, I suspect they’ve been here for quite a while now, and only just got to me.”

  “Wait, so they left?” Vertan asks. “What about the carrier ship we came in? They didn’t notice that, either?”

  “That brute was scrapped a while back, nothing remains of her besides some parts kept under cover,” replies Bertii. “But again. They were looking for an individual matching your description, any unusual vessels, and a large number of fugitives from it. I almost thought we were bust!”

  “I believe they’re looking for us too, alright,” replied Vertan, breathing a slight sigh of relief. They were in the clear, for now. Their efforts to lie low and keep communications to a minimum have thus far protected them.

  “Now I see why you paid me to stay quiet,” Bertii chuckles nervously. “I mean, I have to anyway. I’m dead meat if they found out I colluded with you!”

  “Bertii,” says Vertan. “So how are our ships coming along? How much longer would it take to get them running?”

  “So the good news is, given all the spare parts you gave us from your old one, they are pretty much next to finished,” says Bertii. “If you want any further quality of life tweaks, it’s going to take a little more time.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The bad news is we haven’t tested any of them. They all work on paper, just haven’t put them through any trials. With your situation, as long as those guys are here, that’ll risk giving them a lead onto us.”

  “Scratch the trials, then. Just have them ready to the best of your abilities as quickly as possible.”

  “You sure? We could try waiting until they leave their inspection over the planet, ship trials are generally non-negotiable for safety these days—”

  “Not with that four armed-woman.”

  “So I was right to feel bad vibes off of her!”

  “I’ll pay you extra for the trouble.”

  “No, don’t mind it at all. The biggest favor you can do for me now then is to shoot for the gateway and get on out of here as soon as you can. As part of our initial deal, I’ll keep covering your tracks the best I can. I oughta be showing gratitude for what you gave me, anyhow.”

  “You’re a real one, Bertii. You’re not as bad a man as you say you are.”

  “Where’s the other guy by the way? Isn’t he also in charge of all of this?”

  “I’ll let him know. We’re working together on this one.”

  Nodding at this statement, Bertii fishes through a drawer in his desk, and produces a small and simple looking electronic device.

  “You’re going to want this before you leave,” Bertii says as he leads Vertan back to the door, peeking through the blinds to make sure the coast was clear. “It’s nothing special, but I’ll ping it when your ships are ready to go. It’ll flash and vibrate, you’ll feel it in your pocket and it won’t emit any sound. That way you’ll know when to come here without having to use StarComms or any of that nonsense and risk bringing those MNS bastards over.”

  As Vertan eventually departed from Bertii’s office to inform Gahn, his thoughts raced at the new information given to him.

  So not only is General Hiau and her troops here, they have been here for a while now. They might have been looking for them in the months between their transit. Was that who the protesters were rioting against the other day?

  *****

  General Hiau found herself somewhat suspicious of the shipyard by the lake for some reason, as she stood in the conference room of her ship amongst a few others. There felt to have been some hidden clues there they may have initially overlooked.

  Somehow, she knows that might lead her to where Zviedal, Subject-000002, and the Ulminhans are. She just can’t prove it yet.

  The shipyard for some reason seemed to be surprisingly more dense with activity than what usually goes for other shipyards. As though there seems to be a particular rush for a rather demanding client.

  Furthermore, even if her memory may be somewhat blurry, some of the newly built ships finishing construction didn’t appear entirely “new”. There seemed to be a subtle combination of older, recycled parts. It in fact stood out a little bit more obvious, given that the parts were old enough in design to be noticeable. Was it that some of these parts resembled the ones originally on some of the Ulminhan ships?

  “The search thus far in the past few weeks has yielded no results in this last part of World Pliua,” states one of her subordinates. “As such, we’ll be moving our search to neighboring World Amrita, and schedule our leave for tomorrow—”

  “No,” General Hiau replies.

  The man nervously looks over to the imposing woman.

  “H—How come, General?” he asks.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “We will return to this city’s shipyard for a more thorough inspection tomorrow,” General Hiau states. “Bring the troops this time, I want every inch of that place searched. Should there still be no results, we will make our departure thereafter.”

  Internally, the subordinate found this rather sudden judgment confusing. For what reasons? Under what assumptions?

  But he didn’t dare question the General.

  “Understood,” he replied, as he and his peers nodded their heads in approval.

  “You are all dismissed,” General Hiau states, and they soon leave the room.

  From the window of the room, General Hiau could see the shipyard far out in the distance, her four eyes peering at it with great suspicion.

  *****

  Itching from the stress, Vertan suppressed the urge to light himself another cigarette. He had run out of his pack of cleaner-candies, and going to the store to buy one was a bit too far out of the way. He could of course still smoke nonetheless, but for some reason, he felt more self-conscious about it as of late.

  Talking with Gahn just now was stressful for seemingly no reason to him. Somehow, as of late, Vertan found himself dreading having to be with his old friend rather than finding any form of ease.

  Coming back over to the more hidden part of the lake, he once again returns to meet with Lym at their usual spot during their stay on Pliua. Deep within him, he found his stress and anxiety fade and melt away as he approached her.

  Somehow, he found himself to have begun finding comfort, relief, and solace in the presence of someone he had once feared and worried over so much.

  Technically, he still did worry over her; just in another manner.

  Upon approaching Lym, he found that she attempted to be doing something strange with her biological arm. With a hissing snap! she yanks her arm back, as though she had painfully burned herself by accident.

  “Lym!” Vertan exclaimed as he instinctively rushed over to her.

  Lym whirls around with machine-like precision, her face stone-cold and with an expression that subtly exposes a hint of frustration. But this too faded and melted away upon seeing Vertan. Her expression warmed, her eyes relaxed, and a soft and gentle smile moved onto her face.

  “Hello, Vertan,” she replies.

  “Lym, are you alright?” Vertan asks her, still confused with worry. “What was that? What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m alright, really,” Lym reassured him. “I haven’t tried this since being held in Ritus, and for some reason, it’s much more difficult than I thought.”

  “What do you mean? Try what?”

  Stepping aside to demonstrate what she meant, Lym extended her palm out towards the ground, her eyes focusing onto the task, and her face furrowing with focus.

  To Vertan’s amazement and shock, he swore that he could see the air around her arm begin to distort and wave. Heat seemed to emanate from her arm, and for a short moment, a sort of sizzling crackle could be faintly heard coming from her extended hand.

  Then, in the most unnatural way, it was almost as if her hand suddenly opened itself. But it didn’t quite open itself in a manner that made physical sense. The visual information that reached Vertan’s eyes gave him something nearly inconceivable to his mind. Parts of her hand seemed to slip into other parts of nonexistence, or moved into nonsensical positions, and the spectacle appeared to be overall a highly confusing one visually.

  And just as suddenly as this happened, a slight beam of energy emits from her hand just before it closes back into its normal self again. At the end of the beam where it struck the ground, a scorched burn mark is now present, a wisp of smoke rising into the air.

  At the same time as this, Lym yanks her hand back in response, and shakes her arm in slight pain. Quietly, Vertan wondered how damaging the ordeal must really be for Lym to have such a visible reaction, even as slight as it is.

  “Well, try that,” finishes Lym. “Whatever that is.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” Vertan says in amazement. “Since when could you do that?”

  “I didn’t know I could do that, either,” replies Lym. “And I only found out when I was held captive.”

  “So, you could just do this the whole time, and you didn’t know? Happians can do that?”

  “No, not necessarily.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “My memory is a little blurry. But I remember when the planet fell, I was overwhelmed by the chains binding me. Maybe there was a power surge. After that, it felt like my body had absorbed and metabolized all of it, and suddenly, I had to vomit it back out, and what came out of my hand was a lot more intense than this.”

  “Is that what that was? Gahn told me he and many others witnessed a beam of energy cut through the planet when they came to break you out.”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  “I see.”

  “I just, I haven’t been able to do it since.”

  “It must be so draining for you. Maybe that’s why it’s been taking your body so long to recover. Maybe that was a one time survival thing?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Once again, Lym attempts with her hand again, and is met with the same result as before, and she yanks her hand back, more in frustration this time than in pain.

  To her shock, she felt Vertan grab her hand.

  The moment lingered just slightly too long.

  “Oh, um, I’m sorry,” says Vertan. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  The two avoided eye contact for a short moment, but Vertan felt Lym’s hand return to his. Tentatively, he held her hand, as though to signal to her to be more gentle with herself.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, with a slight hint of frustration. “I was able to do it, why can’t I do even a fraction of it now?”

  “You’re already capable of so much, Lym,” replies Vertan.

  “But not of something I’ve done before?”

  “Maybe, let’s try it again differently.”

  This time, Vertan held up her hand with his.

  “Are you breathing?” Vertan asks.

  What a silly question, Lym found herself thinking, but she nonetheless found herself with a deep exhale.

  Vertan for a moment found himself in a moment of thought.

  “How have you been trying to go about this?” he finally asks her.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “To replicate what you did on Ritus.”

  “Well, I try to replicate what I know, so I tried to replicate what I felt.”

  “And what did you feel?”

  “A lot of suffering.”

  “Can we try letting go of that?”

  “Why?”

  “Just try it.”

  “Would it work? How?”

  “Maybe in thinking you can beat it, you’re letting it hold you back more than you know.”

  Frustratedly, Lym lets out another exhale. But, it was worth a shot.

  Attempting to clear and empty her mind and hearts, she allowed all of her inner self to channel itself into her arm, with Vertan still next to her, his arm placed on hers.

  Slowly, the same process played out. The air distorted and waved, and a kind of heat began to emanate. It soon became very strong for Vertan, but he nonetheless tried to power through it, gritting his teeth and keeping his hand in place, no matter how much it hurts.

  And then, for just a moment, her hand once more opened up in its magical and unnatural manner, and this time, a more sustained, and controlled beam came out, stronger than before. Soon, a small fire burst out in front of them on the ground.

  With the heat too overwhelming for Vertan, he yanks his hand back and clutches it close to himself.

  Seeing this, Lym immediately closes her hand back up, and her arm instantly cools back down. But this time, gone was the pain, and she had no need to yank her arm back as she had done so before.

  “Vertan!” she exclaimed. “Vertan! Are you alright? Are you hurt? I’m so sorry, I’m so—”

  “I’m alright!” Vertan responded, waving his other hand up. “I’m alright, whoo, that was tough.”

  “Let me see your arm,” says Lym worriedly.

  To their surprise, Vertan exhibited no burn scars of any sort despite it all. Lym breathed a sigh of relief, and Vertan let out a chuckle.

  “What?” Lym asks. “Aren’t you hurt? How are you laughing?”

  “Don’t worry about that for a second,” Vertan chuckles. “It worked though, didn’t it?”

  Realizing what they had just done, Lym couldn’t help but return a smile as the two looked down at the small campfire they had just made for themselves out by the lakeside.