As Shayla and E00 sat and looked into space, the wind died away. She stroked her index finger between the fingers of her other hand, rubbing harder and harder until the agony forced her to concentrate. Her tired mind fought to form logical ideas, to focus on something, to devise a strategy. Her mind was plagued by images of the purple eyes.

“Shayla, I know what you are thinking, but you can’t simply stroll in that area,” E00 stated, his robotic voice disturbing her train of thoughts. “There are beta and gamma radiations that can harm your body irreparably.”

“I have to. I need to see with my own eyes that there is nothing left, that his existence has ended.” Shayla paused, gasping for air. “His recklessness is something that I acknowledged since the very start, but I can’t believe he would throw his life away. At some point, he mentioned something about a self-preservation instinct embedded at the core of his species.”

Shayla came to a complete stop. Even if her lungs appeared to be resisting, she needed to breathe in. Her heart was racing like it was in the thick of a shootout. Her perplexity was heightened by her shallow breathing, to the point that she couldn't make a decision.

The rusty body of E00 stood tall in front of her as Shayla didn’t even try to get up. The robot’s eyes reminded her of Tejeda and that made her muscles twitch and look away. 

"I'll go get him," E00 said. "But, for the time being, I'd like you to get inside the shuttle and stay there. Even though the amount of radiation here is smaller than in the hypocenter of the explosion, you are still at risk after extended exposure. The shuttle was far enough away that it was not destroyed, although it may have been damaged. Nonetheless, its construction should remain intact and offer you adequate protection."

“Get him?” Shayla mumbled. That was the single thing she heard from E00’s speech. Was he implying that Tejeda lived?

"I am not implying," E00 answered her unspoken question. "I am saying it. I can feel him. But he is different. I didn’t want to tell you this because I was afraid you would run to him and that area is too dangerous."

“Different how?” Shayla asked, not interested at all about E00’s worries.

“He is dazed. A darkness is rising against him, harsh and powerful, flooding over his conviction until nothing but that darkness would remain. His only lingering thought is about the need for the right body and the right lie for him to be anyone, but never himself.”

Shayla darted forward, in the direction of the dome. The pile of rusty metal that made up E00’s body stood in her path. "Shayla, I said I would go and you get inside the shuttle. I can get to him faster than you as I know exactly where he is."

Her hands fell on her sides. “Ok, I will go to the shuttle. But what about you? Will you be ok?”

"Of course, radiation can’t hurt my metal body. And as an energy being, I can feed off any kind of energy, including radiation. This will only make me stronger."

"When you come back, you should tell me more about what an energy being is." Shayla gave a sad smile before going to the shuttle. ‘Bring him safely to me,’ she thought, knowing that E00 could pick that up.

The ground zero was burnt down to ashes by the intense burst of thermal radiation. The effects were comparable to a two-second flash from a massive sunlamp. Because thermal radiation travels at nearly the speed of light, the flash of light and heat occurs seconds before the blast wave, much as lightning is seen before thunder is heard.

The debris that remained after the explosion was all jumbled together, making it hard for one to tell what object they came from. The flash of heat that raised to the temperature of a yellow dwarf star rendered everything the same.

E00 went straight to his destination, where he dug through the debris with his metallic hands. His joints were rusty, to say the least, which made his endeavor even harder. But the radiation gave him more juice than he needed to unearth Tejeda, or better said, what was left of him.

The energy being residing inside the robotic construct thought he had seen everything there was in the universe. Feeding on residual cosmic energy for eons while traveling across space, he encountered the most unique species there ever was.

Still, all things considered, Emotions Infinity had never seen something quite as idiosyncratic as now. The pearlescent structure he was now holding in his right hand was not of organic nature. It resembled a bone or a stake made of an unknown, dense material, tougher than E00’s metallic body.

Flattened at one end, the entire length of the object was a complicated network of inlays, which E00 could best compare with a neural network. All the relays converged to the other end of the bone, where it ended in a sharp tip.

E00 would have thought that he was going insane if he wasn’t so certain of the things he was perceiving. That object was giving him the same vibrations as Tejeda did, even though the emotions transcending through it were less complex and of lower intensity.

He couldn’t suppress his curiosity and touched the tip of the bone. That simple gesture sent an impulse that traveled through the neural network as a flash of sparks from node to node. If E00 wasn’t sure by now that something was alive, he was certain of it now.

As his steps ventured forward to the shuttle, his thoughts were a mess. Eons ago, E00 left behind his corporeal form when he reached ascendence through the psionic path. He lowered his head to stare at the thing in his hand. That being was merely a few steps away from attaining the same level of mastery through the biological way. 

At that moment, E00 decided he would stick to this robotic body if it permitted him to stay close and observe this marvelous being called Tejeda Hajar.