My neck hurt. I had to turn my head so many times during the fight that I almost dislocated my shoulder. Those Pirates would have been nothing if my ship hadn’t crashed, but after having to abandon it back on Primordial Earth, everything seemed to go so slow. The engines of this ship weren’t particularly strong, and having to play by the rules of this era, turned out being quite an ordeal. Arming a gun with that peculiar helmet was another one of those limitations.

Back in my days, when the Esuh ships traveled through the systems at a speed of light, pirates wouldn’t dare attack us. They would even take a long detour so as not to coincide with our route, making sure we didn’t even spot them at the neighboring systems.

Nowadays, it seemed that the galaxy had fallen back to chaos. Humans and all the other species were useless. Esuh of the Two Faces, my people, were the ones that had managed to bring justice to the world, and since they had mysteriously vanished, everything returned back to the same chaos.

Eladia, the female human scientist that woke me up from my eternal cryo-sleep, was now walking next to me. After we had managed to scare away those fighters, she seemed especially radiant, like she had won a war singlehandedly or something.

Frankly, what she did was indeed unprecedented for a low human. To manage to keep up with me, a military trained Prime while shooting down those fighters, that was a feat all by itself. But it was certainly nothing to celebrate about.

I walked ahead of her and pushed the button to the elevator. Her black ponytail swung behind her, while her dark eyes sparkled with excitement. Eladia seemed kinda cute, more now than before. Adventure suited her well.

She was standing behind me now. I could smell her fragrance, an intoxicating aroma of otherworldly flowers and a tint of soaked dirt. A little closer and her breath would have caressed my back. For a moment, that thought seemed more alluring that I would dare admit.

“Human...you did the right thing today,” I said.

An Esuh Prime always counted his words, never saying anything more than he had to. However, those five words seemed excess and inappropriate. And yet I felt good for sharing them with her.

“Thanks,” she interrupted me. “ We did this together, especially you, someone not accustomed to the current technology. But--”

“But, in a true fight, you would have died today. You were too slow, missed one for your shots, and were too fast to admit defeat. If I hadn’t given you that command back there, we would be in trouble.”

My words weren’t meant as a scold, but rather as a warning. Eladia had potential, but she was also too young and immature when it came down to warfare.

Not that I shall be the one to talk.

Having forgotten almost everything about my people, our customs, the battles we fought and almost anything that mattered to me, I was just as immature as she was.

And that bugged me.

When the elevator doors opened, I waited for her to get in first but she did not. I thought that Eladia would stay back, but eventually, she stomped inside. Now, she seemed annoyed and like she had lost her mood for talk. I couldn’t understand why, even though I had just complimented her, but thankfully, I was not in a mood to chat either.

We rode the slow pod to the upper floor, where the bridge was. I waited for the door to open, but Eladia was faster than me and squeezed herself off the elevator even before the doors had opened all the way.

I didn’t know what was wrong with her, and at that moment, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. Six months had already passed since we first met. Six months with no new memory of my people, not a new lead of what had happened to them, nothing that could actually help me learn who I was and what my purpose was. The only thing that seemed to recognize me was that tiny cube, that little, red thing that was always kinda warm.

The silver android, Silver, had run some tests on it throughout our trip to the planet Yaerus, but she could find nothing, or at least anything indicating why it had connected with me in that way. That was the reason why Eladia decided it would be better to spend six months traveling from planet to planet, from town to town, visiting libraries that supposedly were humanity’s storage of amassed knowledge.

And yet, failure after failure, nothing.

I arrived at the bridge, my head hurting from the deep dive in my thoughts. I spotted Eladia looking at the monitors above the main console, coming up with some sort of schedule.

“Yaerus is the last place we can check about the cube. The Professor should be able to point us to the right direction,” she said, half mumbling to herself, half consulting Silver.

She pulled her hair into a tighter tie, and she frowned while watching the monitors, even though I was certain that that frown was intended for me.

“Eladia, are you sure you want to visit the Professor again?” Silver asked.

Again? Why does the robot sound so uncertain?

That was my cue to butt into the conversation.

“Isn’t this Professor of yours your only chance to analyze the Nusae thing?”

I put my hand in my pocket and revealed the tiny cube. Both Silver and Eladia looked surprised at seeing it. Every time was like the first time for them. It wasn’t like I could leave it behind in my room. The one time I did, it almost went through the wall to return to me. It was weird.

After they went through the first shock, they started explaining things to me. Eladia was always the first one to talk.

“The Professor is the only one with the level of knowledge we need right now, about the Great Mystery of the Nusae. Of all the Chroniclers that research it--”

“There are not all that many left,” Silver added to the conversation. This sounded a bit cynical.

She earned a side glance from Eladia, but the human didn’t get discouraged. “--the Professor is one of the greatest. After all this time to still find reports to the Archives about the Mystery is a big feat, and a significant part of the research the Professor conducted, helped me find this relic. There’s no one better to consult if we need more information and a good lead.”

“So, why didn’t we go straight to this man from the start? Why we had to visit all those libraries throughout the last six months?”

Eladia wanted to say something, only for Silver to stop her this time.

“Man? What man? The Professor is just a crazy person. An eccentric lunatic that most of the time jokes about everything. Certainly not a person of trust.”

Eladia sighed but didn’t reply.

She looked at me for a moment, but she quickly averted her glance behind me, seemingly thinking about something else. This was happening for two months now, and I had no idea what was going on with her. At first, I figured she was sick, her face being red all the time, and her eyes glistening. But she had no other symptoms, so I decided to turn down that possibility.

Nevertheless, in the end, the only chance I had to find out more about this artifact and my people was a crazy, old man. That was just my luck. But, an Esuh Prime Officer never relied on luck. That much I remembered.

Yaerus sounded like a big planet. There must had been someone that could help me there. Looking at the one human I had met since I woke up, and her peculiar robot, I didn’t think I could be surprised anymore.

Wait. There is also another human here, the hairy, young one. Where did Zan go?