I couldn’t believe my eyes. The Dark Jay was back, and he just choked the hairless human to death.

Who does that?

He was stronger than the Regular Jay — he couldn’t help me by himself so he called that monster back. But, even though he had saved me once again, I felt awful. Seeing him strangle the life out of that creature...no one deserved getting killed like that, not even that bald human.

Jay had left for some time now, he moved towards the flashing light, the thing that it was possibly the Nusae relic. After everything that had happened, I didn’t know if I still wanted to keep going on. Maybe the flashing light was another animal that would actually kill us, or something that could make Jay go even crazier.

Dark Jay was mad. He couldn’t control his strength, and at this moment I didn’t know if he actually wanted to. The pleasure he got from killing the pack of wolves before, and the disinterest of removing a life now. That man was dangerous.

Silver morphed back to her humanoid form. She continued shedding light to the tunnels, which were a much-welcomed difference. I checked myself for any wounds, but I found none. I was lucky. Zan not so much. He had a deep biting mark on his thigh.

“What happened Silver? Is Zan okay?”

She looked at me with concern. “He will be fine, but we need to take him to a clinic immediately. If his wound gets infected, then things can get dreadful, fast.”

“Okay. I’ll go and get Jay.”

Silver stood up and stopped me in my tracks. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. I passed out after that thing dragged me in here. The last thing I remember was its disgusting breath next to my ear. Seriously, what was that?”

“If I had to guess, seeing how Zan evolved on the surface, this man must have belonged to another evolution path of the human species, one that got accustomed to living underground. From what I managed to gather, he was blind and probably relied on hearing to navigate his surroundings.”

I looked at him lying on the floor, a lifeless husk.

Damn, something is wrong. How can humans evolve so differently in such a short distance from each other? And so fast, between other things.

Significant changes to human genome took millenniums to develop, and they just changed so much from one century to the other.

Zan interrupted us with his pained grunts. “Eladia, do you really have to go and get him? He’s dangerous. You saw what he did to...it.”

Silver was right. I should have known better. But the thing was that I had promised that I’d help him. So that, I would do. “I’m sorry, Silver. I have a promise to keep. No matter how violent he is, he saved us all more than once already. We can’t leave him behind.”

She lowered her head and tended to Zan’s wounds. “Do what you have to. Just be careful.”

I followed the flashing light down the tunnel. The trails were big chunks of metal lying on the ground, useless after years lacking maintenance. Nowadays, on Yaerus, everyone used magnet buses and hover trains. Trails were a thing of the past, as oil was. Even so, it was interesting seeing how early humans used to move around.

The longer I walked, the more I wanted to return back to Silver. Dark Jay or Jay’s mad counterpart was a jerk, someone who could kill with the same ease he would use to spread butter on a slice of bread.

I mean, he didn’t even flinch. But, he also saved me. He searched for me, and he remembered my name, unlike Regular Jay. He only calls me human female.

What are you going on about Eladia? What does this have to do with the Nusae relic or your situation?

I felt like I needed a good, long week of vacations. Maybe I should ask the Professor to give me some time off.

The light was getting stronger by the minute. I wondered how much longer it would be until I got to the end of the tunnel. My question was immediately answered after I finally reached at the end of the tunnel. In the middle, Dark Jay was standing in front of the light source.

“Hey! Hey, you. Jay. We’re leaving. Are you coming with us?” He didn’t reply, even though I heard him mumble.

I’m sure he’s saying something offensive about not wanting the help of puny humans and all those nonsense he sputters since he woke up. “Last chance big one. I’m going.”

Again, He didn’t reply.

What is wrong with him? Who does he think he is?

I got closer to him, only to hear him talking nonstop in an intelligible language. Silver was back in the tunnel, so I couldn’t translate what he was saying, but as I was standing on his side, I saw the flashing instrument ahead of him.

“Jay? Jay, what’s going on? What happened?” I used my hands to shake him a bit, but he didn’t seem to snap out of it. He was in some kind of trance and a pretty thick one as well. “Jay, please. Tell me. What is going on?”

The light source suddenly exploded, tossing us both down on the ground. I opened my eyes to see a large cube floating above Jay’s head. It was a pitch black thing, symmetrical and perfect in every aspect. I got a sudden urge to stand up and touch it, but the thing started pulsating randomly, getting big and then small, and then big again. It was like it couldn’t decide on its shape.

“Jay! Wake up! We have to go. This thing...it’s gonna explode!” But he didn’t hear anything. Instead, he just kept rumbling in different languages. I could recognize some words here and there, but nothing that actually made sense. He repeated the words Esuh and Nusae a lot.

The cube descended down on his chest slowly, and while the ash gray-skinned man was now lying on the floor, he quickly stretched his hands to reach it. The moment he touched it, the cube suddenly became tiny, a thing fitting in the palm of his hand, and the flashing disappeared.

Silver and Zan appeared from the tunnel. She saw us lying on the ground, so she placed Zan carefully down against a wall, and ran to my side. “Eladia! What’s wrong? What happened?”

I didn’t know how to explain it to her.

Damn, I don’t know how to explain it to myself. “I think...we found the relic. Or rather, Jay found it.”

We both turned our heads and looked at him. He was awake, and luckily, not ash gray anymore. The platinum-skinned man had returned to his regular form. I urged Silver to help me so that we could get closer to him and examine the cube.

“Human? Are you...okay?” I had never seen him mumble before. I didn’t know if I wanted to see him do that again in the future.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“Except my hand feeling like burning, and my knee that I think is broken, I’m fine. Esuh can handle a lot more than that.”

Sure you are. If you knew about your symbiotic parasite, then I’m sure you would brag even more.

Even so, I prompted him to open his palm. He heard me for a change, and he did open it.

“Silver, run it on the archives, although I think you won’t find anything like that in there. This is an intact Nusae relic Silver. We finally found it!”

The pitch black cube had turned into a red light-emitting mini cube, with five inscriptions in almost every side of it. Those runic symbols seemed very familiar, but we had to wait for Silver’s scan to complete to be sure.

In the meantime, I took a good look around me, seeing Zan, the feral human that shook down the evolution theory, my unique android assistant, and a silver-skinned alien that didn’t remember a thing about his past.

The mission was successful, but I couldn’t feel excitement anymore. Being a Chronicler was a dangerous job, that much I knew, but usually, it was your fame and integrity that got on the way, not the lives of your friends. I wanted to apologize to Jay, but as soon as I saw the look on his face, the one saying that I would have failed if he wasn’t here, I decide not to.

“Jay, can you carry Zan to the camp? I’ll show you the way,” I said, waiting for him to disagree. Instead, he followed my orders and grabbed the young boy by the hands, tossing him on his shoulders. They moved ahead of us, straight into the dark tunnel.

I looked at Silver, and I knew that this adventure was far from over. But most of them all, I was thinking about Jay.

Damn, why am I thinking about Jay?

Quickly, I opened my pace and followed them. It was already getting dark outside.