About an hour later, a wet human male crawled to the shore and slouched onto the leafy grass on the riverbank. His ears caught the sound of two sets of steps approaching. Two women came into his line of sight. One had furry ears and the other had a shiny object around her neck. But she didn’t need trinkets to sparkle. The luster of her dark hair and her cunning green gaze captivated him.

As he realized who he was, a sensation of calm flowed over him. Tejeda Hajar wore the same body as before the Spreah cave event. This DNA belonged to an officer who volunteered for this following his little encounter with the admirals.

“Let’s go grab you a uniform,” Shayla said, gesturing for him to rise.

“You see me naked. I feel fully clothed.” He sprang up. “The skin you see is my costume. Don’t be fooled by it. My exterior can have a pinky, soft skin, or green scales, or a flurry mane. I am always fully clothed.”

Tejeda turned around and went ahead upstream. His hunched, naked figure tottered down the path along the river.

Shayla trailed after him and gestured to Cato to remain there.

“But” was the only word the Ferali managed to mutter.

The strong voice of the second in command cut it short. "Stay here or go back to the ship. This is an order."

When Shayla found Tejeda, he lay on the grass again with a small device in his hands.

"The neurological connections aren't always in the appropriate location when I change my appearance." He felt compelled to clarify certain things in order to assuage the unsaid inquiries in her gaze. "They need something to kickstart my awareness for the real me to take over the new brain; else, the primitive impulses take hold."

“That’s what happened on Uthion?” She asked as she perched down next to him with her legs squatted beneath her. 

"Yeah. In the smaller dome, I've slaughtered everyone." His eyes glistened in the beams of the sun. "There were, unfortunately, members of the Universal Consensus. Their hive mind allowed the others to witness the horrors of my actions, and they connected the dots, recognizing who I truly am. It was by accident that I obtained the Oculus Grandi and found my way to the main dome. Or perhaps it was a lingering conscious idea. Only after I spotted you did I feel like me again." Tejeda gulped as he heard his own words. He dropped his sight from her eyes to her neck, where he discovered Carmen dangling. "Carmen. I was talking to Carmen."

Shayla graced him with a mocking glare. “Of course. I figured that out.” She took out the chain from her neck and gave it to him. “You dropped her in the cave.”

“Yeah.” He straightened his voice, assured that he covered his blunder. “She is my centering mechanism every time my mind goes astray.” 

“I figured that out too. My question is: why?”

He studied the spoon in his hands. It was easier to talk looking at Carmen than at Shayla’s piercing green eyes. “She reminds me of the real Tejeda Hajar.”

“You know, when E00 found you after the explosion on Uthion, he said you are never yourself. Who is the real Tejeda Hajar?”

For a while, only the birds’ screeches permeated through the air.

“What? No jokes? No sarcastic retorts?” She chuckled. “I guess this is a tough question then.”

“The loudest laughs cover the saddest tears,” he muttered under his breath. Then he continued on a higher pitch. “Something else is more important now.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Tejeda didn’t know if he should hear the message with Shayla there or not. But he needed to find out what this turn of events was all about. He pressed a button on the mysterious device. An unknown male voice reverberated through the small gadget. “Do you still hear the screams? I hear them all the time.”

That jerk wanted to remind him of the nadir of his despair. "In return for scrapes of Carmen, he provided Hanga the equation and rare material needed for his self-sufficient repair droids. He's the same man who taught the Spreahs how to build that trap out of Nubilonia sand. He's the same person who left this message for me. He knew I would go into the river to wash away the sand and find the gadget. He's following me everywhere. Or, better said, he's one step ahead of me."

“Who is he?”

Tejeda sensed what his pursuer was, but not knowing who he was terrified him. "I'm not sure. I could find some hints in my memories. But I don't have the patience to sift through the dross. I'll track him down by other means."

His unwillingness to recall those events had nothing to do with patience. Tejeda would never tap into those forbidden memories. That person wanted him to relive that pain and loss.

“Okay. Then let's try to find him using another method," Shayla replied, attempting to come up with a life-saving solution. “What about those screams he mentions? Do you know what that is all about?”

That simple question made Tejeda’s mind unwillingly fly in the past at the experiment. He shuddered as he remembered the torture a scientist could inflict upon other beings in pursuit of knowledge. 

“If you were living in an underground bubble because the pressure outside would tear you apart, what would you do? If there were beings able to create blood, organs, and bones to withstand the atmospheric conditions outside, would you experiment on them? Would you inflict terrible pain on others to save your race from extinction?”

Shayla’s eyes widened as she tried to grasp the full implications of his questions. His gaze went straight through her, looking somewhere far beyond her. She wasn’t sure if he asked her or himself those questions.

“I’ve already said too much.” He jumped on his feet and left, leaving Shayla on the riverbank with even more unanswered questions than before.