Kaura woke to the sound of voices coming from the kitchen and couldn’t immediately make sense of where she was. The disorientation made her tense, and she sat up abruptly — only then realizing she had fallen asleep in the creative room. A moment later her sleepy mind reconstructed reality: the sounds were from a show her cousin was apparently watching over breakfast. Something smelled pleasantly appetizing.

Kaura chuckled too and asked what Gayana was eating, then ordered the same for herself.

“So, how’s the show?”

 “It’s good. I talked to Uncle Mayur and Aunt Zaryana this morning — they’re inviting me to their farm. And you know, I think once they take this cast off, tomorrow or the day after, I’ll go. I’ll have things to do there.”

Kaura didn’t get a chance to answer — she caught a notification appear on her bracelet:

“With all this stress and all these nerves, I’m really in the mood for sex.”

Kaura stared, stunned by the sudden frankness, and not trusting her eyes, tried to read it again. But she didn’t manage it — the message vanished; the sender had deleted it.

He must have sent it by mistake. It had clearly been meant for some other close woman. A small pang of resentment pricked her.

 Of course. He probably has someone — why didn’t that occur to me?  And why should it have? she immediately corrected herself.

“Ay, are you even listening to me?” her cousin’s voice pulled her back.

 “Yes, yes — do whatever’s comfortable for you,” Kaura replied, still disoriented.

Her cousin restarted the show. Kaura felt her appetite vanish. She tried to catch the thread of her last thought. It felt like she’d been trying to shape her anxiety into words — she liked turning everything into formulas and definitions; it eased her nerves. So what was it… what exactly had she been thinking about this whole situation with Auran?

A word from her cousin’s show suddenly burst into the flow of her thoughts. Whatever was happening on the screen was just white noise to Kaura — but this one word slipped through and struck her with uncomfortable clarity: “Jealous, are you.”

She grimaced and slipped out of the kitchen, heading to her room, almost as if afraid her cousin might somehow catch her in the act of thinking such things. In truth, Auran had deleted the message the instant he sent it — he himself was startled by his own audacity.

 “What the hell came over me? What’s she going to think? She’ll decide I’m some sexually obsessed idiot. But I deleted it quickly — maybe she didn’t have time to read it? Please let her not have read it…”

He began looking for his clothes around the hospital room.

 Or rather — it felt to him like he was looking; in reality, he was pacing from corner to corner, not focusing on anything at all. His clothes, meanwhile, were calmly hanging on a wall hook right across from the bed.

“So I really am jealous… jealous of some imaginary woman!”

 The admission sent a nervous flutter through Kaura.

 “And gods, I want sex too… all this Psychoenergy stuff has me buzzing!” she kept confessing to herself.

 “Shame that message wasn’t meant for me…”

On the same impulse as earlier, she immediately sent Auran a message:

 “You probably sent that by mistake, but I completely get you. I’m in the same state right now :)”

Her bracelet chimed.

Auran jolted, as if expecting a slap — but he still looked at the screen.

Phew… His face broke into a grin, and being someone who never bothered with coyness, he replied at once:

“Oh, I definitely wouldn’t have let you sleep!”

Kaura felt like a horse long kept in a stall suddenly catching a gust of wind from an open stable door.

 She really had gone a long time without sex, and with everything that had been happening lately, losing herself in physical pleasure sounded like exactly what she needed to keep from slipping into agitation.

“Mmm, that sounds promising!” she sent back.

“Oh, absolutely! Want to meet?!” he shot back immediately, straight out of the gate.

A wave of arousal swept through her body. She smiled, satisfied, anticipating.

Then her work-call melody chimed — and the anticipation vanished instantly.

 The ecologist scrambled to remember: was she waiting on information from this client, or was the client waiting on her?

 Right, both! She slipped into work mode.

When the call ended, Kaura skimmed through her work framework and saw that the result for the photon-fuel fraction request was ready. Inside there was only a historical overview—the analytics bot built into her scientific circuit had gathered all available references and logged the report in her work journal.

 Kaura studied the table closely and noted the absence of any recent data: not a single mention in the past ten years, no references tied to the catastrophe or the water samples. This type of fuel had clearly survived only as a historical relic—its appearance had gone completely unnoticed.

Hm… what a puzzle, she thought, frowning in concentration.

T’lin! — louder than usual. An alarm call. Kaura turned her wrist so the bracelet screen faced her.

“Why are you silent? I’m worried over here!” Auran demanded, almost childishly.

She couldn’t help but soften.

“Got distracted by work, sorry. Yes, let’s meet!”

“Tomorrow at 16:00, in the city center? Until the next morning?”

“How efficient you are,” Kaura smiled; all that remained was to agree — and she did.

Catastrophes, the Fields, even the mystery of that old substance — all of it went quiet. The moment passion is sparked, reality itself slips into the background. Kaura only managed to note, briefly, that this is how chaos gains the upper hand — through the pull of the body. And she was no longer capable of stopping it.

Human flesh against human flesh… man or woman — it makes no difference.