From the freezing mist emerged a tiny silhouette, dragging a torn metal plate used as a sled. Upon it was a hoard of everything: cables, packs of the ship's K-rations, a first-aid kit, and even a brass sextant.

  Zeryth stood up, waving a hand stained with silver oil. "Hey, Moko! Over here!"

  The creature stopped. It was a mass of mouse-gray fur, with long, asymmetrical ears and tiny human hands gripping the sled’s rope. In its resting state, it had two large, damp black eyes that would have melted the heart of an executioner.

  Tsuki stared. Her heart—the new heart beating in her chest—gave a leap. Her cheeks suddenly flushed warm, a blush she had never felt beneath Etan’s skin.

  "But he’s... he’s..." Tsuki stammered, clasping her hands. "Kawaii... he’s adorable!"

  Moko stiffened. A shiver ran through his fur.

  "Take it easy, Tsuki," Llyr-Vahn warned with a bitter half-smile. "If it weren't for him, we’d still be burning in the hold. He calculated the explosion’s trajectory and dragged us away while we were unconscious. He’s smarter than all of us combined."

  Tsuki wasn't listening. She leaned toward him, eyes shimmering. "Come here, little one..."

  At that moment, Moko exploded.

  A third eye snapped open on his forehead, emitting a violet flash as it read Tsuki’s thoughts of "tenderness." Then, with a sound like a zipper being undone, five more eyes split open along his temples. Eight eyeballs, bloodshot and vibrating with rage, locked onto the girl.

  Moko began to snarl ferociously—a frantic gibberish of guttural sounds and metallic clicks. He beat his chest with his human knuckles and then struck his own head with one hand, pointing to the sled and then to his own brain.

  "Grak-ka! Tchk! MOKO!" he screamed, stabbing a finger toward the wreckage and then back at himself, as if to say: I am the genius who planned the escape, not a damned toy!

  Zeryth chuckled, sitting back down. "He says if you try to scratch him, he’ll dismantle your nervous system the same way he did the cell lock. Moko has an extract of pride larger than the ship he piloted."

  Tsuki remained frozen, struck by the fury of those eight eyes staring her down. The blush didn't fade; it transformed into an expression of pure wonder. This thing wasn't an animal. It was a pissed-off survivor. The freezing air still vibrated with Moko's guttural cries. Tsuki, standing still with her hands mid-air, felt a lump in her throat. She wasn't used to handling these emotions; within Etan’s shell, everything was muffled, but now, in this new and sensitive body, regret burned like salt on a wound.

  "I’m sorry..." Tsuki whispered, bowing her head toward the creature she didn't even know. "Moko... I didn't mean to offend you. I... I don't even know who I am, or what I am."

  Moko stopped beating his chest. The five lateral eyes sealed shut with a wet sound, vanishing back beneath the gray fur. Only the two primary eyes and the central third eye remained, glowing with an intense fuchsia light.

  The creature stepped forward into the snow, staring at Tsuki. The third eye began to pulse, scanning not the girl’s face, but the "energy signature" she emitted. Moko didn't see a lost maiden; he saw the abyss of the Bug and, buried in a corner, the small core of warmth remaining from Etan.

  Zeryth tightened his grip on the hilt of a sharpened piece of iron, watching the creature. “Be careful, girl. That thing popped my cell lock and nearly blew my arm off in the process. We don't know what he is, or why he dragged us out.”

  Moko let out a long sigh, a wheeze that sounded like intelligent resignation. He ignored Zeryth. With a quick leap, he scrambled up Tsuki’s legs with the precision of a spider until his small human hands circled her neck. He buried his snout against her shoulder, pulling her into an embrace that held nothing maternal: it was the recognition of a peer.

  Tsuki flinched, feeling Moko’s heart racing against her new chest. Slowly, she returned the embrace.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Zeryth hissed, dumbfounded.

  Moko's hug had been a moment of warmth, but for Tsuki, it felt like an electric jolt of pure terror. Images flashed in her mind: metal bending like wax under Etan's fingers, flesh knotting into impossible shapes, and the Priest reduced to a senseless mass of matter.

  Tsuki leaped back, hands raised and tensed toward the sky, as if wanting to keep them as far away as possible from any living thing. “No! I can't touch you!” she cried, her voice trembling. “Everything I brush against... changes. It distorts. I break it, Moko! I break everything I touch!”

  Moko, landing in the snow with a lightning-fast hop, didn't seem frightened at all. On the contrary, he appeared almost offended by her lack of logic. His two primary eyes narrowed, while the third eye on his forehead split wide, pulsing with a fuchsia light loaded with data.

  The creature began to snarl with almost pedagogical decisiveness. With his tiny human hands, he began to gesture frantically: first he pointed to himself, then to her, then he traced a circular sign in the air that seemed to describe a force field or a barrier. He pointed to his chest again, then jabbed his fingers toward Tsuki and crossed his arms into a perfect “X,” followed by a check mark in the air.

  He was trying to explain his immunity to her.

  Tsuki watched him with tears in her eyes, shaking her head. “I don't understand... I can't risk hurting you.”

  Moko stopped mid-gesture, appearing to mimic a molecular structure. He stared at Tsuki for three seconds, then let his arms drop to his sides. He let out a long, noisy, and deeply human sigh—like a university professor facing a student who can't grasp basic arithmetic.

  He shook his head in resignation, massaged his forehead with a tiny paw, and, without deigning to glance at the other two, turned away. He resumed walking toward the smoking carcass of the ship, dragging his sled through the twisted wreckage.

  Tsuki stood watching him for a moment, then, driven by an instinct she couldn't explain, began to follow him into the mangled belly of the wreck.

  Zeryth looked at Llyr-Vahn, confused. “So... she’s a public danger and he’s a misunderstood genius who huffs like an old man? We’re off to a great start.”

  The ship's flank was a labyrinth of buckled hull plates that groaned under the weight of the snow, like the ribs of a wounded giant. Tsuki followed Moko through tangles of exposed wires and pipes spitting freezing steam.

  They reached a section where gravity seemed to have stalled. A reinforced glass vat, miraculously intact, was wedged between two bulkheads. Inside, a man beat his palms frantically against the glass, his face twisted in terror, his mouth open in a silent scream.

  Tsuki stepped forward, her heart leaping into her throat. “We have to help him... he’s alive!”

  Moko lunged in front of her with unnatural speed. He stood between her and the vat, his tiny human hands held out to stop her. His third eye flashed a warning red. He brought a hand to his throat and mimed a sharp cut, then pointed to the man and shook his head violently. He’s a dead man walking. If you open that, we all die.

  Tsuki hesitated, looking at the man one last time before Moko pushed her with a grunt past the threshold of a devastated hall.

  The smell inside was unbearable: ozone, blood, and scorched flesh. The remains of other passengers—or perhaps other less fortunate anomalies—were scattered everywhere. Moko began to move with surgical precision. He pointed out energy cells and specific survival kits to Tsuki, but when she tried to pick up a gold locket and a small diary fallen on the floor, Moko snarled at her. A guttural, fierce sound that made her bones vibrate.

  He stopped in front of two high-ranking corpses: two Kaelos officers.

  He stopped before two high-ranking corpses: Kaelos officers whose bodies remained nearly intact, protected by heavy reinforced-leather coats and thermal wool. Moko pointed to the bodies, then pulled his shoulders in, mimicking a violent shiver, and gestured toward Tsuki.

  Tsuki stared at the dead men's hands, then at her own. She felt Etan’s silence deep within—a silence that felt like a scream of disgust. But the frost seeping through the ship’s gashes reminded her that she was now made of flesh. Flesh that could freeze.

  She began to unbutton the officer’s jacket, trying not to look at the grayish hue of his skin.

  The horror of the transformation was instantaneous. As soon as Tsuki’s fingers brushed the stiff leather of the officer’s jacket, the inert matter gave a revolting lurch. The dead skin swelled, pores dilated into tiny mouths gasping for air, and the seams mutated into pulsing veins. In a heartbeat, the coat was no longer a garment, but a flap of living, formless flesh seeking to coil itself around the girl’s arm.

  Moko did not hesitate. With a lightning leap, he was upon the pulsing mass. His small human hand vanished; bones elongated beneath the fur, and three black claws, glossy as obsidian, ripped through the mutated jacket with surgical violence. He severed the vital links the Bug had just created, reducing the living flesh back to shreds of flaccid, dead leather.

  Silence returned to the hall, broken only by Tsuki’s ragged breathing.

  The creature turned toward her. He didn't snarl. With extreme slowness, Moko retracted his claws and returned to those almost childlike hands. He took Tsuki’s wrists—her hands were trembling violently—and forced her to look at him.

  Moko puffed out his chest to an impossible size, lifting his shoulders, then closed all three eyes. He remained motionless for an instant, then exhaled slowly, letting his shoulders drop and his entire body relax, emitting a long, calm whistle. He repeated the gesture: a deep, theatrical inhalation, followed by a slow, controlled exhalation.

  As he did so, his hands squeezed her wrists with a steady, rhythmic pressure. Moko tilted his head to the side, observing her with his primary eyes now half-closed, mimicking an absolute calm that contrasted with the surrounding chaos. He pointed to Tsuki’s heart, then made a fluid outward gesture, as if to push away an invisible cloud.

  He wanted her to empty her mind—to stop projecting her terror onto matter.

  Tsuki stared at the chimera. The racing beat in her chest began to slow, following the rhythm of that silent, imposed breath. When the girl’s muscles stopped vibrating, Moko released his grip, gave a single grave nod, and pointed again to the second corpse. This time, however, he stayed there, an inch away from her hands, ready to intervene.

  Tsuki exhaled, imitating Moko’s slow pace. With trembling but steady fingers, she slid the coat off the second body. This time, the leather remained leather. No mouths, no veins. Just cold, inert skin. Moko nodded—a brief gesture of approval—and beckoned her to follow.

  They ventured deeper, into a section of the ship that seemed to belong to another era. There were no machines here, only walls lined with shattered shelves. A library. Thousands of books were piled into hills of paper and ink, a surreal landscape of lost words.

  Moko began to climb those paper mountains with targeted frenzy. Tsuki followed, her feet sinking between leather covers and yellowed pages. Reaching the top of a mound near a buckled bulkhead, Moko began to dig through the debris and metal pebbles.

  He pulled out a pendant. It was a dark crystal prism, set in a metal filigree that seemed to vibrate with an internal, almost imperceptible light.

  Moko turned toward Tsuki. With a solemn gesture, he stepped close and placed the chain around her neck.

  As soon as the crystal touched her skin, the world seemed to stand still. Tsuki felt a sudden warmth radiate from her chest, but it wasn't the warmth of the Bug. It was a familiar frequency.

  "Tsuki?"

  The voice did not resonate in her head; it seemed to vibrate directly from the pendant, clear and steady. It was Etan’s voice. It was no longer a distant whisper; he was there.

  Etan, through the prism, immediately sensed Moko’s presence. He felt the chimera’s mental structure—his layered intelligence, devoid of verbal filters. "Moko… can you hear us? Can you hear me?"

  Moko leaped backward, landing on his hind legs. He raised his tiny hands to the sky and made a victory gesture—a clumsy but triumphant jump of joy. He had found the Tuner.

  "Tsuki, it’s incredible," Etan’s voice continued from the pendant, charged with an euphoria she had never heard from him. "Moko found an anchor. I can… I can see what you see without drowning in it. I can help you keep the Bug at bay. I can filter your terror before it reaches your hands."

  Moko looked at the pendant and then into Tsuki’s eyes, blinking rhythmically. Etan laughed—a laugh that vibrated through the crystal. "Yes, Moko, I understand. I understand how it works. We’re a team again."

  The chimera beat his chest proudly and then pointed toward the room's exit. His work there was done. He had given the Anomaly a compass.