“Where’s Yan Qing?”

  Chen set the data tablet aside as Xiao entered the cockpit.

  “He’s sprawled across the display,” Xiao said, his face as impassive as the ship’s diagnostics. “Watching Pluto and its moons. Apparently, this system is more captivating than you, Your Majesty.”

  The ship hovered in the outer belt, sunlight reduced to a faint, distant glimmer.

  Chen offered a noncommittal smile, folding the tablet and flicking his wrist. The data crystal slid into the console with a sharp click and vanished. “He likes astronomy.”

  “He likes very little else,” Xiao muttered, then seemed to realize he’d spoken aloud. “Otherwise, I doubt he’d have let you move back in.”

  Chen glared at him.

  Xiao stiffened. “Sir—about Lian.”

  Chen rubbed his brow, the light catching the tension in his fingers before he let his hand fall.

  “Give me one Earth day,” he said. “Then we return.”

  His hands closed, slowly, as if holding something back.

  Xiao nodded, not daring to ask how Chen knew.

  Everyone knew.

  Teleopeans rarely stayed dead. Even catastrophic damage only delayed the inevitable. And whatever had once bound Chen and Lian did not dissolve so easily.

  “What are you thinking?” Chen asked suddenly, his tone mild.

  Xiao hesitated. “I was reviewing the archives. The older ones.”

  He paused, then ventured, “Why did Lian fixate on you—and the other royal bloodlines—so much?”

  The question lingered, unwelcome.

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  Chen’s expression remained unchanged, but the air seemed to chill.

  “What does accuracy matter now?” he replied. “Distortion doesn’t erase consequence.”

  “And if it’s just curiosity?” Xiao asked, then immediately regretted it.

  Chen gave him a smile that revealed nothing. “Then stay curious.”

  Xiao met his gaze with professional blankness.

  “And, Xiao.”

  Chen’s attention shifted to a screen that had opened silently beside him.

  Dark hair filled the frame.

  Xiao followed his gaze, irritation flickering.

  Yan Qing was writing equations directly onto the viewport—with a marker.

  Xiao’s marker.

  “Sir,” Xiao said flatly.

  “Mm?”

  “You’re watching him.”

  Chen didn’t deny it. “You were drifting.”

  Yan Qing paused mid-line, frowned at his work, then added another term. Xiao exhaled through his nose.

  “Besides that distraction,” Chen said, “I found something else in the facility.”

  He glanced at Xiao. “Care to guess?”

  Thirty kilometers outside New York City

  “Search everything. Don’t miss a corner.”

  Floodlights swept the cornfield as the team clustered around the open hatch. Inspector Hollins stood apart, jaw clenched, eyes burning with fury.

  The specimen had vanished.

  If they couldn’t reclaim it alive, he’d settle for whatever was left.

  One by one, the team descended.

  When the last suit disappeared below, Hollins stepped forward—

  The hatch slammed shut.

  “What—?”

  A voice drifted through the field, light and amused.

  “Looking for me?”

  Hollins froze.

  He turned.

  The figure should have been human.

  Half his face was gone. Bone gleamed beneath torn flesh. One eye stared steadily; the other hung useless, dragged down by damage that should have been fatal.The rest of him was no better. Each step made the remnants of muscle shudder, as if his body hadn’t decided how to hold itself together.

  Hollins stared.

  “Extraordinary,” he breathed. “Such regeneration…”

  He stepped closer, hands trembling, reaching.

  The movement ended abruptly.

  A clawed hand passed cleanly through his skull.

  Hollins’s body collapsed.

  Lian withdrew his hand and wiped it on the dead man’s coat, his expression curdled with distaste.

  “Disgusting,” he muttered.

  He picked up a stone near the corpse and twisted it.

  Far away, metal shifted.

  The hatch reopened.

  Lian turned toward the darkness below, what remained of his smile stretching wider.“It’s time to hunt.”