George and Tutor had been watching Kevin comically try to take down a Queiie for the greater part of two hours. At first, they both had wanted to interject and to let him know that he was forgetting that his Leva hatchling, as well as all Leva for that matter, possessed a weapon well suited for creating openings of attack against a species of space crabs that could reactionally far outclass most alien species. The fact that Kevin had chosen to handicap himself and to try to fight it like a knight of old, was simply icing on the cake.

Tutor had begun to feel bad for him when she had arrived with Sublimis and had been about to step in to show him how to win when she caught the slight shake in George's head.

"Don't. Can you feel it? He is growing and learning from this. He can't get hurt, and this is only bruising his pride and letting him learn that he needs to invest in himself to get better. His determination to succeed is priceless. Besides, I get the feeling from watching you train little Sublimis that you will only need to show her once how to fight and she will become a prodigy at it." He said as Tutor and Sublimis floated up to stop beside him.

They could both see that Sublimis was closely watching her adopted father struggle against the Queiie as well. Her massive head tracked his movements perfectly and they could tell by little twitches in her muscles all down her body that she was deeply invested in what she was seeing.

"Ummm... Tutor..." George said with a slight tone of concern as he noticed ridges beginning to form through the thin layer of obsidian and gold cr armor. "I believe she is getting angry."

Sure enough, to the surprise of both of the AI, Sublimis was developing characteristics that the Tela had only observed in the oldest and most feral of Leva. All down her length she had begun to develop sharp thorn-like spikes in anticipation of combat. The spikes were small at this early stage, barely formed, and could only be seen along the silhouette of her profile due to the light-absorbing nature of her obsidian armor.

"She is burning through her body's resources to create these; I think we should step in soon before she uses too much of what she has left." Tutor said worriedly as she reached out to stroke Sublimis's starburst pattern in an attempt to soothe and calm the hatchling down.

It was during this moment of distraction when an inconceivable thing happened with their host human.

He left his Personal Live Matrix.

A state of shock swept through everyone as they watched his body stop reacting in the instant that they felt his being leave them entirely. The Queiie took advantage of this moment by grabbing Kevin's left arm before dragging it rapidly in and feeding it into its chomping mouth while continually batting roughly at his sword arm and head with its other limbs.

This, before anyone could say anything to question what was going on, was enough of a threat to her parent for Sublimis to lose control of what restraint she had been maintaining. To everyone's surprise, they heard her scream in rage as she charged toward the Queiie clutching the body of her adopted parent.

The Queiie only had an instant to register a new threat before the entire chamber was blasted by a fatal level detonation of Sublimis's indigo photon burst. The Queiie died well before Ess's huge mouth ripped half of its body apart as its neurons were completely fried from the excessive raw power released by the hatchling. From there the young Leva went on a rampage towards the stunned swarm at the other end of the chamber.

"Meditati! George! Invicta! What just happened to Kevin?" Tutor shouted out, requesting any information that any of her brother and sister AI had possession of. They all instantly replied with a resounding negative. None of them had any clue. That left one being to question.

Tutor looked around for the little manifestation of the being known as Nurse that Kevin had left with her, only to find a thin trail of cr dispersing and heading towards the wall of the chamber to be reabsorbed.

"Nurse? What happened to Kevin?" She shouted out, knowing that the being could hear her easily and wondering why it had chosen to reintegrate with the ship.

The voice that answered her was not in any way similar to the voice that had spoken and answered her questions earlier while Kevin was present. Before it had seemed to be friendly and even social, now this voice was a mix of voices, as though it was many people of various ages speaking at exactly the same time. It was slightly creepy in its emotionless state as it answered her. It almost seemed as if it didn't have any feelings whatsoever.

"My Monarch has left his Personal Live Matrix and his swarm entirely."

"Yes, we know that. The question is, how and why did this happen?"

"He wanted to enter his swarm and to use their power to defeat the Queiie. While in a rage he shoved without regard for what method he was using which resulted in him using both his swarm's ability to share his mind as well as the Tela's ability to transmit the contents of his Personal Live Matrix. "

"But that is impossible! There isn't a destination address. I have checked everywhere in VR and his Matrix!" Meditati yelled from VR after she checked Kevin's empty Matrix logs. Somehow his transmittal seemed to have bypassed the regular channels and he hadn't used any of the stored Tela technology contained in storage. It troubled her and made her feel like she was missing something. They had only just acquired the technology for Kevin, yet somehow he had already had the ability in his possession even before his swarm could absorb and learn it.

"There may not be an address to a Tela destination but there is one for the swarm."

"What? Where did he go? Back to the Blue Dwarf that we found Sublimis?" Tutor asked, relief creeping into her voice as she thought that they could go retrieve Kevin with ease.

"No. He went into the original swarm that existed before he took control of the chunk that infected him and made it his own. Her swarm."

"Her? Her who?"

"The queen that rushed to infect him when he was asleep and died before she could she could finish her mission."

"What does that mean? Where is he?" Invicta's broken and panicked voice could be heard as she zoomed through VR to his Personal Live Matrix and back to her place inside his inert body over and over again, trying in vain to find any trace of his mind inside the system.

George, who had been engineering and upgrading parts of the ship last, was the first to notice that his control of the huge vessel had been revoked and that the ship had begun to divide into smaller craft.

"Hey, Nurse. What is happening with the ship?"

"I am fulfilling my Monarch's wishes while he is either absent or dead." the emotionless voice of Nurse replied as the ship shot off twenty-four tiny golf ball-sized projectiles in seemingly random directions before the major changes to the craft took place.

"All Tela technology has been absorbed and learned for later use."

"A ship is being sent back to earth with an Alpha key – In progress. Earth protection and improvement pending."

"Division of vessel into many ships complete. Dispersing now." Nurse spoke, listing off what she was doing as the AI watched Tutor's once massive ship turn into ten smaller shapes before each moved rapidly away from each other.

"Wait, wait, wait! What are you doing?" George demanded as he tried to stop the dispersion of the massive ship. It wasn't that he saw anything wrong with what was happening, he just had no control and wanted to make sure that the living beings inside the ships wouldn't suddenly get turned to paste because this parasite was following orders without regard for safety.

"I am in possession of the entirety of my Monarch's memories, up until the moment that he left. Don't worry, his wishes will be fulfilled to completion." Nurse said as the majority of the vessels practically vanished from sight in the same instant as they left at full speed to random destinations unknown. The two slowest ships were the one that they happened to be standing in with Sublimis and the other, presumably, was the one with the Skii boxed up inside their crates.

"Linking the craft together with the absorbed Tela hub technology. You are free to claim any of those vessels as your ship or home as Kevin had wished." Nurse continued as each of the AI found that the VR space suddenly was linked to each of the other craft, including the one blasting towards earth at insane speeds.

"None of that matters! We have to get Kevin back!" Invicta cried.

"I am attempting to do so as we speak."

"No, you aren't! That was just a list that he made up on the fly to keep himself busy." Invicta railed at the emotionless swarm. Of all the AI, she was having the most difficulty losing Kevin. He was her first and best friend.

"Yes, I am. Those commands were my Monarch's standing will. I had to complete those before I could attempt to use the rest of the swarm to try to go after him."

"But, you just sent everything to the far corners of every direction! How does that have anything to do with getting him back."

"It doesn't."

"What?!?" the four AI yelled as one.

"I am now free to use his massive amount of swarm residing back inside the Blue Dwarf to retrieve him from my dimension. I had to do the other things first in order to have some freedom of will, there was no rescue command within his primary list or use of the extra swarm, only his memories state that he would want someone to come to rescue him if he ever was lost. This is what I am using to guide the swarm, with the rest of his memories that I hold."

"But aren't those memories subjective?"

"Indeed, and they give me some room to work in. I am, however, bound by his will to always try to do the best that he can in most cases. That is an impossible riddle for me to attempt to understand, but one that I must try to maintain regardless."

"We could... help you to discern which possible path or choice he would have taken." Tutor said, understanding what the swarm was trying to convey. It was asking for help without the genetic programming that told it to ever seek help from another being.

"Accepted. Please enter VR once Ess is taken care of and I will show you what I am doing and how we are going to bring Kevin back." Nurse said.

A prickle of fear ran through Tutor as she and George both turned to see what Sublimis had been up to in the last few minutes that they all were busy.

"Oh. My. Word." George muttered when he took in the carnage.

"Invicta did say that she was going to be a killer." Tutor whispered to herself as they both swept the cavern with their gaze. Where they had expected to see an enraged swarm of frantic Queiie ganging up on the hatchling, instead they observed a complete slaughter of every last Queiie that had subdivided in the gigantic bay. Of the food cubes, there was only a small section remaining of one, signifying that they had almost reached their full potential before they met their demise to the savage maw of Sublimis. Not only were there crab bodies scattered everywhere but Sublimis was practically spewing blue flames from her mouth as she worked at devouring every last space crab in revenge for biting her parent.

"Nurse. Would you take over Kevin's body so that his pet won't think that he is dead? Just have him go up to her, pat her on the head, before exiting the door behind us. This way Tutor can take over and make it look like it was all meant to happen this way." George asked as he considered the traumatic behavior of the Leva. He had not planned for anything to go this way. What he had meant to turn into a bonding experience for Kevin and his pet had instead turned into a fear response for the hatchling. It was good that she was eating, the Queiie would not spoil, but it was just the experience behind the event that had made it into something else.

It seemed that she was very protective of her human.

"Accepted." Nurse said as the body of Kevin seemed to return to life. He stretched and seemed to dust himself off before dispersing the sword and armor and flying towards the distraught gorging Leva.

His reanimation seemed to calm the Leva down because she stopped her constant gorging and lessened the blue flames that were seeping out from her mouth. She watched him intently as he flew closer to her and patted her on the head before turning around and gliding away. The large head of the hatchling stayed locked on him as he receded, almost as if she suspected that something wasn't exactly right.

Tutor set her body in motion. She moved in front of the hatchling's head, attempting to block her line of sight of Kevin while distracting the large hatchling with her soothing movements and words.

"Hey, hey there." Tutor cooed as she drew up close to the upset hatchling. "You need to eat and to grow larger and stronger Sublimis. This is why Kevin had all of these crabs brought here for you. He isn't ok at the moment, but we will work to get him ba... better." She said softly to the large head as she gently patted the large scales. "He needs you to grow and get stronger ok? You were very near to starving." She continued before picking out a random morsel to tempt the hungry hatchling with.

Sublimis held still for many moments, almost as if she could understand every word that Tutor was saying and considering them in detail.

"Tutor, please request access to her helm for me. I can't access Kevin's without his permission and I want to see if the hatchling's device noticed anything. Her kit is the last piece of Tela technology, besides Kevin's, that I need to check. That book doesn't count."

"You still won't try to read any of the Last Engineer's books, will you?" Tutor asked as she placed her hand against the side of Sublimis's head and requested the needed access. Some events were common knowledge to all AI. One such bit of common knowledge was to never, under any circumstance, attempt to hack into the Last Engineer's books or technology. It always led to disaster.

"No, not after the last time that I tried. I had to delete all of those clones lest they infect me with his malware. He never did trust AI, regardless of how much he had to do with putting us in place."

"I have access, here you go." Tutor said, letting Meditati quickly check the surface records.

"I knew it! He did have unregistered Tela tech installed inside his helm! This was how he was able to travel without any records and to hide his research! Check out the last set of logs. The helm has been gathering data for a long time and just was able to seed a transmittal."

What no one else had been able to see besides Ess was the message that had displayed for her the moment that Kevin had unexpectedly used the hidden "Disha Tah" feature that his helmet possessed when he had connected with the foreign swarm in the next dimension.

Connection established.

Collected data sent.

Personal Live Matrix packet sent.

Confirmed receipt.

Connection lost.

"But no one has heard from the Engineer in ages! Everyone thought that he died studying the Skism." Tutor said as she considered this news. The line about "Confirmed receipt" meant that it had connected to a node linked with the living Engineer. Anything else would have been denied.

"Any idea on what data he requested the helm to collect?"

"No, and I am not going to even try to access it. I learned my lesson long ago to stay away from digging into his data. At least we know that Kevin's helm connected as well. The Last Engineer would see these logs as well and know that someone came with the data. We can only hope that he tries to find Kevin as a result."

"But Kevin's Personal Live Matrix didn't register an end address..." Tutor said with worry.

"Indeed. I have no idea how that is possible. Let's go see what his parasite has to say." Meditati said as they both returned to the accelerated time of VR, leaving Sublimis frozen in time.

Before they both headed towards the command deck together Tutor stopped Meditati and cautioned her, linking to the other two AI at the same moment. "I think we should call her Nurse. We need to be careful of how we interact with her, I get the feeling that we are too volatile of a mixture together, AI and alien swarm. The behavior that we observed in Kevin's memories is how she has to react when dealing with him. She has no limits with any other being. From her side comments and actions, I understand that her kind are the embodiment of death, and it is all held in place by the tiniest of pins: Kevin's control as a Monarch."

"Agreed," Meditati said, getting an echo from George and Invicta at the same time.

It was time to work together to find Kevin. Nothing could be allowed to get in their way.