Mosa was believed to be impenetrable. Mosa, humanity’s greatest city, the jewel of Yaerus. When I see the rumbles of the Great Embassy lying all around me, I can’t help but feel fear grow inside me about my planet, my race, about myself. And yet, the only thing in my mind, even among this chaos, is what does Jay feel about me?

Can I earn his trust again?

I don’t know. Nonetheless, I keep running after him. Well, not run but certainly limp. Having just survived a fifty-floors plunge to our deaths, we are mostly fine except some minor injuries. Jay, however, is the only one that seems seriously hurt, lying on the ground, his face filled with blood.

It’s a miracle that we’re all still alive.

Before I can even begin to understand what’s going on, Jay is on his feet, trying to get away from me. I don’t know how he’s able to even stand or where he finds that inner strength to keep moving, but I’m not sure I want to find out soon. Probably, he’s trying to get away from me.

Behind me, Zan and Silver try to keep up with us. Zan is in shock while Silver remains the same emotionless android as always. To be honest, I don’t blame her. She’s not programmed to have feelings after all.

Everything is blurry. I...I don’t know what to think anymore. Today is the first day I saw someone die in front of me and the day a building collapsed on me while we were still inside. If I’m in shock, it certainly feels empty in here; empty and distant.

Yeah, that’s the word...distant.

“Eladia...you should back off. Give him some space. He doesn’t want to see you now,” Silver says to me although I hear nothing except my name.

Eladia.

My name is not mine if it doesn’t come from his lips.

God, I’m so selfish. The world just crumbled and fell on my head and the only thing I can think is our moments up on that roof. When he got me naked under that chilly sky and made love to me.

The distance between us shortens with every step. Soon, I’ll be able to catch up to him. But what am I going to say to him then? Am I ready to face him?

His dark expression is imprinted on my mind, his eyes sparkling flames of blame. I want to stop following him but I can’t. I can’t turn back now. We’re way too deep into this to stop.

“I told you before human, stop following me,” he suddenly says.

Jay stops. His voice is a mix of cold and blank feelings. There is nothing in there reminding me of the old Jay, my Jay.

“You know I can’t do that. We have to talk. I want to explain to you how I feel,” I say, but I know my words can’t reach him.

A cloud of dirt covers everything around us. It must have been over half an hour already since the time the bomb on the Great Embassy set off. Only a haunting silence remains now. Are there more victims? Was there something I could do to stop it?

“There is nothing...there is nothing you can do now. You were lying to me...you...you…” he keeps saying, muttering. For a moment it feels like he isn’t talking to me but to himself.

“I had to keep this secret from you, Jay. You don’t know what your other self can do.”

I can hear the despair in my voice; despair and misery. What troubles me the most, however, is that if I can hear it, then it’s sure that Jay must have picked up on that himself. I feel something running down my back. It’s itching and hot. There’s a voice inside me telling me that it’s blood. I choose to ignore it.

“You speak like you wanted to protect me, but you only wanted to protect yourself,” he says.

Jay starts walking away from me again.

My body feels heavy, and I want to sit down and rest for a while, but I know that we don’t have much time before the police arrive. Jay is an Esuh, part of an extinct alien species. If the police find out about him, they will keep him stranded in a research facility somewhere on Yaerus and experiment on him for many years before they let him go. I can’t let that happen.

I’m ready to take another step forward when Zan rushes to my side and stops me.

“You don’t have to do this. Jasih is afraid and alone. Jasih is like Zan before he met Silver.”

The young boy sounds anxious and sad. He’s wearing normal clothes now, and he doesn’t walk on his fours all the time, but he’s still hairier than common humans, even though Silver insists in grooming him every two weeks or so. His dark hair makes him look older than his real age, and his green eyes sparkle in the middle of the night.

Still, even he’s right.

My lips curl upwards in a tilted smile. I stretch my hand and touch his thick-with-hair head. I pat him; he seems confused for a moment.

“You can’t be more right, Zan. But like you’ve found Silver, Jay needs to find that one person he can communicate with. Only that he’s not so good at talking as you were when we first met you. That’s why I have to chase him and teach him how to talk,” I say.

I’m not sure he understands completely but still, he nods. Hell, I’m not sure I know what I’m saying myself. I’m just another Chronicler trying to follow the trail of clues the Nusae left behind before vanishing. The Great Mystery seems an easier task to tackle now, certainly easier than finding the right words to mend this situation.

And so, I keep following him.

Zan wants to come after me, but Silver stops him. He tries complaining, but the last thing I hear is Silver saying to him: “she has to do this alone.”

That’s a pretty wise comment from a robot that thinks in ones and zeroes. She must have picked this up from a film or something.

Five minutes later, we’re still walking. We have wandered off the area of the destroyed embassy. I’m not sure where we are, but we’re still walking. In time, I hear the first sirens of police vehicles echo in the dead silence of the night. The flying shuttles head to the area of the destroyed building, their blue and red lights flashing prominently.

My attention is drawn to them so much that I forget for a moment that I’m on a mission to win back Jay’s trust. When I turn my head to check on him, I quickly notice that he has stopped walking. He’s standing perfectly still. My heart skirts wildly; the first thing that comes to my mind is that he must have changed his mind, that he wants to talk to me after all.

“Jay...,” I start, but he doesn’t react to my voice.

He’s just standing there, his statuesque build towering before me. I can still feel his hot breath on my neck when he hugged me before, on that roof. This time, even though we’re just a breath away from each other, I know I have to keep my hands to myself.

I open my mouth to say something, but the words never come. Even though I’m not ready to give up on him yet, I don’t know what to say. So, I grab my ponytail and pull it down to a tighter knot.

I start putting random words in a line, forming sentences; it sounds like talking, but I’m not sure it’s me that it does it.

“The first time I saw you, you were just a tall man with a really pale skin sleeping inside a cryo-pod. The only thing I thought back then was that these pods have the power to last for years and that I have to set you free from your eternal sleep. However, that day, when we got attacked by a pack of wild animals that tried to kill us, you fought them with all your strength, but you couldn’t win.

“And that’s when your dark self, woke up and protected us all. With ash gray skin and bloodlust filling his eyes, the man inside you took over and almost killed us. I was afraid, thinking that the next time you turn, the same thing will happen again.

“So, we all agreed that it would be better if we never said anything to you. And that worked for the first six months, while we were traveling from planet to planet. You didn’t change, not even once and even we had started to forget our own lies. Around that time, Silver came up with a theory that you only change when you’re in a pinch, like when you hit your head, or you’re in danger. How could I’ve known that you could also change when making love to me?”

Throughout my monolog, Jay doesn’t talk, not even once. If he’s giving me the cold shoulder, then he’s way too good and way too stubborn. It’s not like him to not say anything, even when he knows he’s right. He always wants to have the last word.

So, I walk around him and get in front of him. His body is stiff and full of dark red stains. I was sure that there were countless wounds under his clothes, but I never expected to see him collapse. Jay falls to the ground, first hitting his back and then his head.

The pain must have been immense. He came back for a second, shouting in pain before his eyes rolled back and he passed out again.

Fear hits me like a cold wave of water. I start shaking seeing him lie on the ground motionless, lifeless. I want to do something, but I feel like my will has abandoned my body. Fortunately, Silver and Zan appear out of nowhere and take over.

Jay was the only thing giving me the strength I needed to stay conscious. Now that he collapsed, my legs start trembling, and my stomach is trying to push more bile out of my body.

I manage to hold back a new round of throwing up, but I’m way too tired to keep my eyes open. So, without saying anything to my friends, I make the two steps needed towards the nearby pavement and sit on the concrete. Before I know it, I’m lying there, sleeping the sadness off.

It has been a long day.