Assistant 23 sobered up. “Y-yes. Every word. Please believe me, Kur’tok, I never wanted that to happen to you...”
Kur’tok flexed and unflexed his fists. I stroked his arm, reminding him I was there. He wasn’t facing this alone.
“Paz was right, then,” Kur’tok mumbled. “Unit 44diduse me.”
Hearing him finally realize the truth broke my heart. I hugged him tightly. “I’m so sorry, Kur’tok.”
Haz’rull and Arr’tow hesitated, then approached him. Their feelers floated over to touch Kur’tok’s shoulders. They wordlessly shared their sympathy and understanding through their feeler-connection.
Kur’tok shivered, as if feeling things he hadn’t felt for a long time. “Thanks,” he muttered. When we eventually withdrew, he shook off the frazzled emotions. “Tell me, Assistant 23. How are you even alive?”
Assistant 23 squeaked like a trapped mouse. “Why? Are you going to kill me?”
“Not unless you keep annoying me,” Kur’tok griped.
“He’s joking,” I clarified, patting him on the chest. “He looks big and scary, but on the inside, he’s a sweetie pie.”
He shot me a grumpy look.
“R-right,” Assistant 23 said. “Well, after it all went down, I got scared and ran away. I expected the villagers to find and killmenext, since I was technically complicit with Unit 44... but they never did. So I hid. And ate whatever weird plants I could find.” He shuffled inside the hazmat suit, as if embarrassed. “Some of them had, er, extremely odd side effects...”
I cackled. “Oh, no. You ate the aphrodisiac fruit, didn’t you?”
“How did you know that?” Assistant 23 blurted.
I grinned. “I’ve eaten it before, too. It’s good stuff.” I wagged my eyebrows at Kur’tok. “Though it’s probably more fun with a partner.”
Kur’tok frowned. He must’ve been annoyed thathewasn’t there when I ate the horny fruit.
“And for that matter,” Assistant 23 went on, voice trembling, “how is there another human here?”
The question stopped me—and Kur’tok.
“What did you just say?” Kur’tok asked in a low voice.
“So, I was right,” I said, nodding slowly. “Beneath the suit, youarehuman.”
Kur’tok’s tail went rigid. “You knew?”
“Not for certain, but I was pretty sure.”
Kur’tok glanced down. His feelers flashed with jarring mismatched colors, pulsing with uneasiness and confusion. “Then... you’re not the first human I’ve met.”
“No,” I agreed. “Unit 44 and Assistant 23 were.”
The sound of Unit 44’s name made Kur’tok shudder. He stared at his palms, then clenched his eyes shut.
I could tell he needed a minute. I took his silence as an opportunity to keep talking with Assistant 23.
“My ship crash landed here half a year ago,” I explained. “But it was weird. Eukaria didn’t show up on our navigation system. We only saw it with our bare eyes when the systems shut down. For all intents and purposes, Eukaria didn’t exist.” I tapped the translation device in my ear. “But when we spoke to the Maeleons, our ITMs functioned perfectly.”
Assistant 23 fidgeted with his hands. “Um... that’s because of me.”
My brows raised. “Huh?”
“Our mission was top secret. Even back then, nobody knew about Eukaria except a couple high-ranking officers. I was just an intern, but I wasn’t totally useless, no matter what Unit 44 told me...” He cleared his throat. “I’m a linguist. My job was to learn the local language and add it to the ITM database, which I succeeded at.”
“Whoa! That’s really cool, man,” I said.
