Chilling emotions formed inside Khan and spread through every inch of his body. An instinctive reaction fueled by years of desperation engulfed him and tried to take over his actions. He was on the verge of attacking, but he remained still. He didn't even blink.
That stillness worried Rodney. Something told him that the faintest spark could escalate the situation, so he suppressed the gulp rising through his throat and waited for Khan to move.
Khan knew what he wanted. His urges had never been clearer, and that wasn't even his first time experiencing them. The test on Nitis had been a perfect example of his stance, but the situation was different now. The hand in the container wasn't an illusion.
In theory, that would lead to even wilder reactions. However, Khan had matured a lot since Nitis. He didn't have Istrone's trauma looming over his mind anymore. He had actually found some long-deserved clarity after the years spent suffering, despairing, and blaming himself.
That clarity didn't offer an alternative path. Khan had already made his decision. Still, his new maturity granted him the time to think before his inevitable reaction.
The matter wasn't as simple as it looked. Rodney couldn't see the entirety of the situation, but Khan had spent the past months gathering clues. He knew far too much not to connect the dots.
Raymond's interest in the Nak suddenly made sense, and Khan's realization went much further. Their private meeting gained a specific purpose, and the warning from the woman slowly revealed a meaning.
The hand inside the container belonged to a Nak. Khan couldn't fail to recognize it even if he wanted to. Yet, a few details became visible as the inspection continued.
Compared to Khan's nightmares, the hand lacked its azure halo. It was dead in ways that went beyond the simple absence of the rest of the body. That chunk of flesh and bones had mana in its insides, but that wasn't enough to turn it into a Nak's limb.
Moreover, the hand wasn't exactly complete. Its skin lacked some pieces that left part of the muscles exposed to the greenish liquid. Long scars also covered its surface, but the container's glass hid their features.
The workers there had been up to something specific, and Khan had every intention to uncover what. He mustered the entirety of his self-restraint to divert his gaze and inspect the room, but the area didn't have much. Even the tubes disappeared inside the ceiling or floor.
Only a few metal boxes and smashed consoles existed around the huge container, and Khan approached them to check their state. The machines were useless in his eyes, but the cases had something that claimed his interest.
Inside one of the three boxes, Khan found strands and pieces of elastic fabric. Their shape didn't reveal much, and their broken state would be a hindrance even to an expert eye. Yet, Khan only needed a few seconds to realize what he had just found.
'The reinforced fabric,' Khan exclaimed in his mind. He had memorized the material's energy signature on the second asteroid, so he felt sure about his conclusion.
A bitter feeling rose through Khan's mouth. The investigation was finally complete. Khan had found the stolen reinforced fabric after scouring Milia 222 for months, but that success didn't bring any happiness. It simply couldn't with all the issues surrounding it.
Rodney had remained silent even after Khan moved, but he couldn't shake off the pressure that had fallen on him. He could almost taste the tension in the air, but he still didn't know where it would lead.
Nevertheless, Rodney had to abandon the careful approach when he saw Khan returning to the container with his knife ready to strike. His intentions couldn't have been more transparent, so Rodney felt the need to intervene.
"Wait! Wait!" Rodney exclaimed as he stepped forward to stand between Khan and the container. "Don't get all intense as your usual. We must talk about this."
"Move," Khan said in a chilling tone while advancing as if Rodney wasn't even there.
"Do you realize what we just found?" Rodney continued while lifting his arms and retreating a bit. "Do you have any idea how much this thing is worth?"
Khan didn't even bother to answer. His next step pushed Rodney's back on the container. Khan was ready to strike whether Rodney was on his path or not, and the latter understood that very well.
A curse came out of Rodney's mouth as he jumped to his side to clear Khan's path. Meanwhile, Khan reached the container and thrust the knife into the glass, but the attack didn't produce any serious damage. Only a tiny crack opened.
Rodney frowned. He didn't have Khan's senses, but his eyes worked perfectly well, and they had seen how his companion didn't summon his mana. Khan had only relied on his brute force during his thrust.
The glass was obviously reinforced, so it made sense for it to resist the full physical prowess of a second-level warrior. Yet, Khan was a chaos wielder. His element was meant to destroy things, but he didn't use it.
Rodney understood that he was missing something, but he didn't ask questions that Khan wouldn't bother to answer. Instead, he remained silent and shook his head while Khan thrust his knife into the container again.
At first, the knife only dug a crack. However, as the offensive continued, a proper hole opened in the glass, and the greenish liquid poured out of it. That dense substance didn't stop Khan from continuing his assault, so the small gap slowly enlarged.
Cracks spread past the hole's edges during the offensive. The glass held strong, but its structural stability suffered blows whenever Khan attacked, and the gap's expansion inevitably worsened that feature.
The internal pressure caused by the greenish liquid deepened those cracks until a whole fifth of the glass shattered. Khan remained still as transparent shards immersed in that dense substance rained on him. He had already confirmed that the fluid was harmless, so he found no reason to move.
The container emptied quickly as the greenish liquid spread over the floor. The Nak's hand fell at the bottom of the machine, and Khan jumped through the large opening right afterward.
The greenish liquid was dense enough to cover part of the hand even after most of it left the container, but Khan could get a closer look now. Moreover, a mere layer of that substance couldn't hide details anymore, and some conclusive answers finally arrived.
Khan loudly inhaled a few times and even bent forward to get a closer look at the hand before understanding the nature of the scars. They weren't actual injuries. They were patches sewn to the very flesh of that alien body part.
As for what the workers had sewn, Khan had already found the answer. The cut and torn pieces of the reinforced fabric explained everything clearly. That lab had probably overseen the reconstruction of the Nak's hand.
'They used the reinforced fabric instead of the basic material,' Khan thought. 'It must have allowed them to skip a few steps.'
A complete picture formed in Khan's mind. He could imagine Raymond purchasing a maimed Nak's hand and moving it on Milia 222 to perform illegal experiments.
The hand in its wounded state didn't offer much, so Raymond set up a lab to give it new life, and the reinforced fabric happened to be the suitable material for the process.
Khan couldn't be sure about the chronological order of some events. Raymond might have found out about the reinforced fabric's suitability after the factory completed it, or he might have been behind it from the beginning. Either way, the conclusion didn't change. The hand was there, superficially fixed, but internally dead.
'Don't disappoint him,' Khan recalled the woman's warning, which revealed its meaning now that the picture was complete.
The hand was dead. Its structure was fine, and its flesh was even quite impressive. Khan would normally place it between the third and fourth levels in terms of sheer energy in the muscles and skin.
However, Raymond wanted the power of a Nak, not a random body part, and Khan could be the key to that. He didn't have the scientific knowledge to explain why he understood that, but he felt it. The odd sensation had tried to tell him that since his first visit to the fourth asteroid.
Even when less than a meter separated the two, Khan didn't feel any difference in the odd sensation. It was as intense as ever, but watching the hand so closely revealed its true nature and source.
Jenna couldn't find anything wrong with the fourth asteroid because the environment didn't suffer from any pollution. The symphony didn't have any unique mana that only Khan could feel. The odd sensation existed only inside him because he generated it.
Khan stored his scanner and reached for his nape. He could feel it now. His mana core was the source of the odd sensation. His organ had reacted to the presence of another Nak, creating a calling meant to draw him into the hidden lab.
'It must be similar to the Nele's pheromones,' Khan concluded as his mind grew even colder, 'Something that only Nak share.'
Of course, that realization put Khan into complete killing mode. He wasn't only part Nak. He was enough Nak to manifest some of their innate features, and he wouldn't accept it so easily.
Khan grabbed his knife with both hands and placed himself right above the body part. His experience with the cloud told him that his mana could trigger unwanted reactions, so he had held back while destroying the glass, and he planned to do the same now.
'I'll disappoint you as much as possible,' Khan exclaimed in his mind before diving toward the hand.
The knife landed at the center of the hand and pierced through its flesh easily, reaching the container's bottom. Khan made sure not to touch that body part directly, and his weapon's sharpness allowed him to draw it without risking any unwanted movement.
Nevertheless, when the knife was about to leave the wound, a strange twitch ran through the hand. Mana left its flesh and became a fuel that the body part could use, and Khan jumped away as soon as he noticed that reaction.
Khan didn't use his mana, but he had put enough strength into his jump to fling himself out of the container. Still, his abrupt action had widened the injury, and the knife had dragged out some dark-blue blood when it left the hand.
Drops of blood flew through the container and toward Khan while he was still in mid-air. They created a gory path that would fall to the floor in a second, but the hand didn't need anything else.
The world in Khan's eyes slowed down. He saw mana squeezed out of the flesh shooting out of the injury and reaching the closest drop of blood.
That energy wasn't as clear as in his memory, but the drop of blood brightened and turned into a glowing azure dot once it absorbed it. Also, it acted as a bridge that sent the mana even further.
The mana left the azure dot to reach for the next chunk of blood, which brightened and took life after it absorbed that fuel. The process then repeated itself, covering the entire gory path created by the knife until, eventually, Khan's turn arrived.
The mana had taken less than a second to cover the entire bloody path. Khan was still in mid-air by then, unable to perform escape measures. He could only watch as that azure energy shot forward one last time to land on the knife and spread until it reached his fingers.
The impact didn't hurt Khan. It barely tingled, and he would even fail to sense the event's implications if he were a regular human since they were so imperceptible. Still, his sensitivity revealed how the alien mana stole a minute chunk of his energy.
The bloody path broke in the following fraction of a second, but it was too late by then. The alien mana sent back what it had gained after Khan flew out of its range. The drops of blood in the container fell as the azure energy retreated to return inside the hand and deliver what it had stolen.
Khan fell butt-first on the floor before quickly jumping to his feet, but the situation had changed again by then. The hand had started to release a faint glow which was brighter alongside the scars and the new injury. Its insides were also in turmoil. Its very flesh shook as if awakening from a long slumber.
"What have you done?!" Rodney shouted, but his words couldn't reach Khan.
A straightforward goal filled Khan's mind and made him disregard any other input. He had to stop that process and destroy the hand even at the cost of being careless.
The knife alone couldn't destroy the hand in one attack, so Khan joined his palms and summoned his mana. He planned to use the chaos spear to eliminate the threat, but the hand suddenly released a deep noise, and his concentration broke.
Khan would never let himself be distracted in battle, but the noise wasn't a mindless cry similar to what the cloud did. It conveyed precise and intense meanings that resonated deep inside him. The hand expressed pure hunger, and Khan experienced that feeling for an instant, which ultimately interrupted his spell.
More changes happened during those seconds. The hand's brighter parts dimmed to create a homogenous halo that revealed the new state of its flesh. The holes and scars had disappeared, and its skin now appeared completely intact.
Khan didn't give up on his plan. As soon as he snapped out of the feelings that the hand had forced him to experience, he summoned his mana again, but his opponent turned out to be one step ahead.
The hand's glow intensified until a series of lightning-like flares shot out of its figure. Khan and Rodney had to deploy evasive maneuvers, and loud, sizzling noises resounded once those attacks landed on the various surfaces.
When Khan managed to look at the hand again, he found it floating in the middle of the broken container. Its azure halo had intensified once again, turning it into the spitting image of his nightmare.
Another deep noise came out of the hand, and a spherical wave of mana accompanied it. The attack couldn't hurt Khan and Rodney, but the broken glass completely shattered.
As for the noise's meaning, Khan instinctively translated it inside his mind. It was another expression of hunger, but it had something else now. It conveyed the firm desire to fulfill that urge in any way possible.
